 It was the nice subtle way of telling us not to make fun of the Raiders too much in Tom because everybody can hear us, right? Everybody can hear and see you Hey Jack, all right, we are gonna go ahead and get this thing started Welcome everybody to this Tuesday afternoon city council meeting. I'm gonna call the meeting to order here at 130 Madam clerk. Can you call the roll? Yes Councilmember Alvarez Councilmember Fleming Councilmember Sawyer Councilmember Schwedhelm Councilmember Tibbets here vice mayor Rogers present Mayor Rogers and I am here as well let the record show that all council members are present All right. Thank you Stephanie council. Just as a reminder keep your audio on mute Unless you are asked to speak or are speaking at the end of each item You also can mute yourselves though. I know Stephanie and Dean are quick with that button as well Staff are going to stay muted unless they are doing the presentation or answering questions from us And for members of the public who've joined the meeting, they'll be participating as attendees Your microphone and your camera will be muted and only the panelists are going to be viewable during today's meeting If you're calling in from a telephone and choose to speak during the public comment portions of today's agenda For privacy concerns. The host will be renaming your viewable phone number to us as resident and the last four digits of your phone number City of Santa Rosa is very committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment where we want people to openly participate Our meetings, but that means that we will also not tolerate any hateful speech or actions And we will be monitoring that everyone is participating respectfully. Otherwise, we will remove people Uh, madame clerk, would you like to go over how the public might better engage with us in today's meeting? Yes. Thank you, mayor After each agenda item is presented They may 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 mayor 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 provided 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 All right. Thank you so much And with that mr. City manager, let's go ahead and open up our first study session on item 3.1 Item 3.1 consideration of a reusable and compostable food wear and litter reduction ordinance joey henowitz administrative analysts presenting Good afternoon. Can everybody hear me? Yeah, okay, so good afternoon, um mayor rogers and congratulations to your appointment and the rest of the city council My name is joey henowitz. I am an administrative analyst in the transportation and public works department For those of you that are new to the council welcome and just to kind of give you a little idea of what I do I oversee the solid waste management collection services agreement with recology and I'm also the project manager for the zero waste plan that was recently passed by city council or that is here So I'm I'm kind of all things solid waste If you get a little bit of background of where where this item is coming from this reusable compostable food wear ordinance We do understand that the city of santa rosa has passed a climate action plan as well as a climate action emergency one of those components in helping to reduce You know global warming and g hg emissions is solid waste specifically in the name of Composed materials and trying to divert those from from the landfill We recently passed a zero waste resolution Our zero waste plan, excuse me zero waste master plan earlier this year And one of those main elements objective elements for us to focus on In trying to help us reach our goal of 75% diversion by 2030 as well as reducing Pounds per person per day, which is the amount of pounds per person per capita. Each person throws away in santa rosa Less than one pound per person per day One of those goals was to institutes a a food war ordinance. And so We've been kind of going back and forth a little bit at the subcommittee level the climate action subcommittee Discussing this option There was a model that was put forward by zero waste sonoma, which I'll go into more detail As the information progresses And I was asked to try to come forward with options for a potentially What a compostable fully compostable food war ordinance would look like I will tell you that I have developed an ordinance just so that you can kind of take a look at it It's a living document I do intend for that to change based off of feedback and any suggestions that council members have after today And I also want to let you know that there are some some significant potential hurdles or challenges In the current environment, which I will go into detail here after The presentation is over so we can go to the next slide please A little bit of background I think it's pretty much obvious for most folks is that the production of management associated with with single-use food wear We use it once and we throw it away. It has significant environmental impacts Those impacts are listed there on the second bullet A little more locally here to kind of Lay out the the degree of why this This ordinance could be necessary and why it would help to achieve some bar zero waste goals is A 2011 study of Bay Area street litter Which is running into the San Francisco Bay found that oh about 67 of all litter items found There's 12 000 of them or single-use food or beverage packaging next slide Bringing that analysis a little bit closer to home There was an analysis in 2017 performed on the russian wherever watershed where they collected over 2,500 litter items and as you can see a similar kind of percentage 60 percent Of these items found were single-use plastics of some variety wrappers plastic bags styrofoam food packaging lid straws, etc In 2019 our stormwater and creeks cleanup programs removed over a thousand cubic yards of trash deposited into our our creeks here in santa rosa And i've also heard and spoken with some of the stormwater and creek staff who say that Polystyrene also known as styrofoam is a persistent litter item found along with just plastic food packaging And styrofoam especially is a Significant problem because it often breaks down into very very small pieces and is almost impossible to retrieve Next slide So it's just more kind of understanding of The origination of this ordinance is 80 percent of marine debris originates on land primarily as urban trash runoff This marine plastic can cause animal disease and mortality and has been found in Human consumption items such as fish bottled water honey sea salt and more and there's even some more updated recent reports where they're finding You know micro plastics in the environment not even in the ocean but just out in the environment in general in the middle of Forest so it is definitely concerning The practice of giving out single-use food wear automatically encourages customers and food vendors to to pay little attention to the quantity Of disposable packaging that they are receiving and that they're consuming Especially in today's environment where we're getting a lot of to-go food wear Given out for folks who can't eat obviously indoors or inside This is this is especially concerning. They're seeing a significant rise in these products and oftentimes you're bringing this food home You don't really need, you know the extra fork the extra knife. That's a plastic fork the napkins Unless you're eating on the run most of the times folks and bring that stuff home and they can use their own reusable food wear Which is really going to be the most zero waste impact As I did mention the city council did adopt the zero waste master plan in january of 2020 with A with a food or ordinance of some nature being one of the plan's central strategy recommendations Next slide So as I mentioned this Ordinance has been being kicked around at this at the climate action subcommittee level Just to kind of give you a background on where we've been with this zero waste Sonoma has developed a model ordinance And I'll go into details about that a little bit later on in the in the presentation but we've we reviewed that ordinance and we've uh been asked by Some city council members to to check into how we might be able to go above and beyond that approach that zero waste Sonoma has developed and potentially doing some models that are similar to what Berkeley and San Francisco Alameda and the jurisdictions like Santa Monica have have done So we came back to the climate action subcommittee with that follow-up report and um, it was uh directed by the climate action subcommittee to Explore and put together a model draft ordinance of what a fully compostable Food wear ordinance would look like and to bring that forward to the full city council for Discussion and review and that's where we're at right now next slide So as I did mention zero waste Sonoma has developed a model ordinance for jurisdictions to consider Which was titled. I won't read the full thing. It's up down the first bullet But the model ordinance does address five areas It does prohibit polystyrene foam food wear from being distributed by food and beverage providers Prohibits polystyrene foam food wear from and specified products. Excuse me being sold by retail stores Uh, it does require food and beverage providers and special events to to use either compostable or recyclable disposable food service wear And it requires the food and beverage providers to provide accessories and single-use products like straws lids cutlery to go condiment packs Upon request only as I was mentioning earlier, you could probably save a lot of A lot of a diversion of waste from the landfill from from simply just instituting that policy right there Where you're only giving it if they ask for if the customer asks for it It does encourage the use of the reusable Right now there is some concern with reusable and food safety, especially with The the pandemic going on. And so this this one is is an encouragement. It's not necessarily An action item asking or I'm telling folks that they have to use reusable next slide So as mentioned, um There were some there are some jurisdictions like Berkeley, San Francisco, Alameda San Juan is is also one of those that have instituted additional food wear measures aimed at increasing diversion And and reducing environmental impact It was mentioned in one of the climate action subcommittee meetings that, you know, Santa Rosa could definitely look into the possibilities of enacting one of these More similar features. And so what the ordinance that you will see here Explained later on is going to be reflecting elements from these jurisdictions And the climate action subcommittee favorite pursuing an ordinance that looks with the goal of Excuse me the goal going fully compostable and banning food wear containing polystyrene foams styrofoam single-use plastics and materials containing fluorinated chemicals known as per poly polyfluor alcohols Also known as PFAS PFAS Next slide So there are definitely some considerations when it comes to compostable food wear Compostable food wear is still relatively new in the marketplace I mean depending on who you talk to some people think it's great and others don't really necessarily think it's the best thing so um One of the things with the compostable food wear is just to make it Actually work for the food providers so they can provide these materials To their customer and they're not have to worry about anything leaking or or you know the breakage of of a container per se they do Have either a polylactic acid which is also known as PLA or a purin polyfluor alcohols which are known as a PFAS chemicals The these products they act as a grease and a liquid proofing agent And they're designed to essentially prevent the the grease your liquid or um, you know, wet based foods beverage based foods from leaking out of food containers PLA is generally made from fermented plant starch usually corn or um sugarcane And these products are designed to be biodegradable But this process can often happen slower than what commercial composters permit in their process And they're generally the the PLA products do need to be You know, um disposed of in a commercial composting operation. They do need to have that hands-on You know a man-made element where there is somebody looking over that to make sure that the conditions arrive There's enough moisture. There's enough nitrogen. There's enough there's enough airflow going through it and so They do need to be put into those commercial composting operations that will be able to accept those materials Next slide On the other hand the PFAS chemicals These are family thousands of chemicals that are generally found in common household items such as stain in water repellent fabrics non-stick products like teflon polishes waxes cleaning products Most of the time these products the PFAS products are used in paper products used for the food packaging and obviously as I said they're used for treating water and grease resistance While there isn't a whole lot of information out there right now They're they're they're currently doing some studies currently into the potential effects of of PFAS There there is some evidence out there that that exposure to PFAS can lead to adverse human health effects And some of these studies indicate that PFAS can cause reproductive and liver and kidney immunological effects in laboratory animals and in some consistent findings in human epidemiology of increased cholesterol levels effects on immune system cancer and thyroid hormone disruption So there is there is some concern obviously of of allowing these products In in to go food wear it can also obviously get into our food stream into the water into the ground and Kind of continue that cycle there next slide so this is this is really this is kind of really important here this slide is Considering whether or not we can go to a fully compostable option commercial composters At least if they want to have the designation of organic compost They they they can't sell their compost material in their feedstock as as organic If it contains any synthetic materials And the national organics program which designates that does consider PLAs and PFAS as synthetic materials So in effect if These these operations these compost operations were to accept Compostable materials that have PLAs or PFAS in them They would no longer be able to resell their compost, which is a significant Business detriment up to about 75 reduction in the retail sale of of that compost product another important aspect to consider is that the These products are currently not accepted and Generally are going to be screened out of the composting process where Santa Rosa delivers our material We do have a harmless a handle. We have three compost facilities where we deliver our material Obviously right now we are working on a helpful Local option here in Sonoma County, but currently we do outhaul all of our compost out of the county And obviously there are concerns some concerns with that, but that's that's kind of a whole different conversation, but What the the thing here is is we would either go to Up in New Kaya cold creek compost we deliver to Richmond and we also Are going to deliver it on on the weekend some of our commercial foodways to the facility out in Napa and Know not one one of these three facilities currently accept What you would what you would call these or these compostable materials So they would be essentially being screened out from the process So we decided to go down down that route for a fully compostable option And as I said, we did get the direction from the climate action subcommittee to to do our best to explore this fully compostable option Recognizing that you know, we do want to move away from the single-use plastic We understand the detriment to to kind of having everything in our world, you know Have plastic on it so to say And looked for me to provide that direction as what what what a excuse me what a Ordinance might look like they'll be fully compostable. So I'll go into some of those details here on the following slides Next slide So who would be affected? This applies to all food vendors who sell or distribute disposable food wear This includes food and beverage providers retailers and special events Special events that would have a permit with the city of Santa Rosa Examples include restaurants bars convenience stores grocery stores deli's food trucks, etc And the ordinance would also apply to our to our city facilities as I mentioned the special events that require Permit from the city next slide So in the working definition of this model ordinance that I've developed a compliant food wear would be Bpi certified. This is a biodegradable products institutes. They they are a An organization that certifies the compostability of products And so we they are a trusted verified Organization that that we would be able to trust and verify those products that they they are bpr certified that they are Compliant food where they are compostable We need to be commercially available to food vendors There are some products out there that are difficult to source just in looking for them. For example Finding food wear that isn't completely PLA based plastic that would be you know bamboo or fiber based only There's not a whole lot of options available out in the market currently as well as lids lids I also found to be difficult for potentially food vendors to to procure so We would need to ensure that if we were going to put this forward that those products would actually need to be available to food vendors And if they weren't then we wouldn't we obviously wouldn't enforce on those on those elements Another important point here with the compliant food wear is it would need to be made up of paper or natural plant fibers And as I mentioned, you know, it would be great if we could go fully compostable without any sort of You know synthetic lining in them with the PLA with the corn starch It's just in my opinion. This is not realistic to ask food providers to to go, you know Completely fully fiber based route because it's not going to be realistic for them to you know Put food in there that has any sort of grease or or condensation and not expect that to leak out So for the purposes of this model ordinance, the natural fiber based food or beverage containers with the PLA coating Would be considered compliant But I would just remind you again that I'm unfortunately with the current situation of where we do Where we potentially would be taking these products these products wouldn't be accepted into the green compost stream To the three locations where we currently take where Santa Rosa takes its compost Compliant food wear accessories So with this we're talking about, you know, your forks or napkins your your stir sticks Everything else that would come other than the container We would be asking that to be made up entirely of paper or plant or natural plant fibers And that it would have to be commercially available to to food vendors Next slide So these are just some kind of general pictures just so you can kind of get a visual look of what, you know Compliant food wear would look like We do have up in the upper left corner there a couple options with the container some cups You will see that they do kind of have that little bit of a shine and a sheen to them I don't look like my forehead right now bad joke, but uh They those ones have the PLA lining in them And so you'll be able to tell you can kind of feel it as well If you look into it, that's the coating in there, which actually has the grease and the The liquid barrier you'll see that also in the second one with the container We have some food wear accessories there with the fork and the Compostable excuse me straw The bamboo fork down below and then there's some additional some additional options that you can see as well For the for all the compliant food wear could look like I'm moving to the next slide, please So there are some items within the proposed ordinance that would be prohibited and Food vendors within the Salem Santa Rosa would not sell any food wear that contains polystyrene, which is the styrofoam Plastic which includes compostable plastics as well fully compostable plastics and and and products with with PFAS I would just mention that The biodegradable products institute as of january 1st of this year No longer certifies products on their website the bpi certified Compostable products that and that have PFAS in them. And so in that sense it would make it a little bit easier to To implement that policy letting people know that, you know, this doesn't have PFAS in it. If you get it from this site Otherwise, you know Finding out exactly what products may have may or may not have PFAS in this current Current environment might be potentially potentially difficult Next slide So kind of getting an idea and a visual look at, you know What we're looking to potentially prohibit here with this reasonable compostable food ordinance upper left you have your classic kind of clam shell which is made out of styrofoam And we definitely want to try to get these products out of out of our out of our environment We have some plastic options as well plastic silverware and One of the issues that we have as well is You know We were looking to allow the PLA line products that are fiber based Considering that we do think that those potentially could be a better option if we wanted to move that direction Then what you see down in the bottom left hand corner, which is what they would call a compostable plastic Um, it does need to be kind of put into a commercial composting operation for that to actually break down There's there's arguments if we talk to you know, does it actually break down properly or does it kind of still maintain its its form That that's still to be discussed But what you see there is it looks almost exactly like A regular plastic cup that you might get in any other sort of Situation and so there's also concern of of if we allow say compostable plastics You know, even if they were accepted at the local facilities There's concern that it could miseducate the public because it looks pretty much exactly the same as any other plastic Um cup there and then there's just some other additional examples there that you can see Layed out there for you in the slide on the next slide, please So dine-in food where this these would be some regulations that we're looking at for folks that are Dining in on premises, um, which we obviously understand that currently isn't happening due to the the pandemic restrictions um But food vendors within the city of Santa Rosa would shall sell or provide food and beverages for consumption on the premises using Reusable which means that it's durable. It's washable. They can use, you know, numerous times up to a couple hundred different times or more Um and and food wear and food wear accessories. So essentially if you're dining in The the requirement would be is that you have to provide folks with a reusable option. You cannot provide a single use Um disposable option if you're going to be offering dine-in service um Any other compliant accessories we're talking napkins, you know straws Which should be available in ponder quest anyways stirs, tray liners We would be expecting those to be to be compliant and to be compostable options Which uh, many of those in the marketplace already are and and it would be too difficult to source those um another another thing that could is a you know, you might think is a small Policy shift, but it could make a big impact Is offering condiments in bulk dispensers rather than the prepackage single use condiment packs And I think that kind of speaks for itself. Uh next slide So take out food wear. This is really kind of the crux of of this its ordinance here is trying to to limit the amount of Materials that you know, not only businesses have to buy but that folks are actually taking home with them The hope is you can kind of do this culture change where we're looking to do reusable first. That's the top of the zero waste hierarchy Um people can you know really just get the container that they need to get Come home use their own fork. They're so aware of their own napkins that type of stuff So what we would be looking here is to provide take out food and usable food wear Compliant food wear, which I I did detail earlier on or items composed or items composed entirely of aluminum the reason for this aluminum kind of subset is um aluminum actually has a high percentage of recyclability and it also is a material that There are what still some pretty good markets for those so the resale value of of that is Is good enough to where you know, it's easy to get it's easy to get those products moved off and into a you know To basically essentially be recycled Secondly, it was when we're thinking about, you know burritos or wraps and that type of thing It didn't really make sense for us to have to have those items be Placed into a you know, compostable or or recyclable Food wear when it's you know already contained within aluminum foil So this would prohibit food food providers from providing food wear and food wear accessories that are not compliant So polystyrene foam plastic food wear food wear accessories and food wear containing PFAS One of the one of the other important things too is the culture change and and really kind of Getting getting the message out and communicating with our food vendors that these food wear accessories should only be provided upon request For to-go orders and if you are having dine-in service You know having those available at self-serve stations or or even potentially upon request as well Where they have to ask somebody from behind the counter to get that And then providing takeout bags that are comprised or composed of paper only plastic bags Would not be compliant for this model ordinance next slide So continuation of some kind of takeout food regulations or measures As mentioned as we kind of know with the the covid 19 situation Everybody's a lot of times should be staying at home or is staying at home They have seen an increase in people ordering, you know to go food to be delivered to their house And so as I mentioned before it's important that we try to Do an upstream Implementation to where we capture whether or not folks actually need those materials from the front end So it's not just automatically provided So we would be asking for the customers to affirmatively request That they need these these additional food wear accessories as when they make their order Um, we would also be encouraged but not required to charge customers receiving any of these food wear accessories 25 cents Um, it is assumed that the money collected will go towards the purchase of ordinance compliant alternatives um as well as as be some sort of a Trying to change the culture by folks if they understand that there's a cost to to to receive these accessories They might be more inclined as to to decline them and just use what they have at home Which is really what we're hoping for is that they use re-usables um Not quite there yet, especially in the the covid environment, but um one of the areas that I do look to Expand and potentially come back to council um as an addition down the road uh is to Require but not provide a credit to customers bringing in their own sanitary reusable food containers So essentially you bring in your own cup where they you know, you get it filled by the restaurant. You walk out. There's there's no sort of You know plastic that need to be used no extra materials that were that were made for you And this will incentivize folks to bring their own food wear containers This is also something that we're very excited about and looking forward to bringing in the future In today's environment, it's probably a little too early and a little too difficult to to really institute something That would be really comprehensive in this in this fashion Next slide. So there are some focused Prohibited retail sales And these are really just going to be prohibited polystyrene products Food wear that is composed and whole are in part of polystyrene foam as I mentioned would be prohibited And then really some of the other items that would be big contributors to this would be Coolers ice chests or similar containers that you see there in the picture as well as packaging peanuts or other packaging materials We would be expecting businesses in within Santa Rosa to no longer be Utilizing these products and to provide You know, either a reusable product in the in the form of a cooler or there are some Fiber based options that are that are currently available for for packaging materials Next slide so as part of the zero waste plan and you know As city of Santa Rosa wanting to to be the leader in the north bay For zero waste efforts. We obviously want to lead by example And so we want to make sure that if we're going to be asking businesses to do this perform these duties We want to do the same thing in our own operations And so the following regulations that I've essentially gone over already would would apply to city purchases and facilities um Yeah, I'd even like to push it a little bit further within, you know, this city city of Santa Rosa organization offices potlucks birthday parties, etc That all city facilities shall use reusable food wear There should be no single use disposables used by city staff and compliant food wear accessories would be used by city staff as well City managed concessions and sponsored events and permanent events would be We'd be requesting that the use reusable food wear or compliant food wear and food wear accessories Obviously anything that's not reusable or compliant is prohibited and we would be looking to Obviously institute whatever decisions were made or whatever policy actions were taken into You know future contracts and agreements that the city has Next slide So this is one of the other elements that I found really interesting from some of the From I think it was the Berkeley ordinance that the they would they've instituted And to be honest with you it's something that's actually a requirement of sp1383, which is a an organics law that will be Coming into effect as of January 1st of next year, which would be really really significant for the city of Santa Rosa Which I will be reach likely returning to council relatively soon to discuss that a little more detail But what we'd be asking is that restaurants that are having a dine-in option for folks who You know for folks always containers would essentially need to provide the three separate containers that you have at your at your house In your residential community So we'd be asking for you know a solid waste container a recycling container an organics container And those should be consistent with recology's collection program With a gray or black container for for the garbage solid waste blue for recycling green for organics To the extent possible given space constraints we would expect all of these to to be together in kind of a tripod and we would be expecting that there would be graphic-rich signage above each Um waste stream so that when folks go to throw their their items away that they that they know what they Where each item should be going into which waste stream Next slide So there are some exemptions Obviously food that's prepared outside of the city Or packaged outside of the city we we don't necessarily have as much direct control over So we would we would be exempting those items But we would be asking and urging those folks to to follow the provisions of the ordinance the best that they can Um, I did already mention earlier that the non-reusable food were composed entirely of aluminum. It would be exempt Um, specifically really for you know, aluminum foil used for burritos and wraps Um, and then as I did mention if the food wearer food wear accessories Made of the compliant natural fiber are not commercially available as determined by the city We would not enforce on those um on those requirements until those items may be made commercially available Um products containing PFAS and polystyrene would would um always be prohibited Next slide um So there are some polystyrene foam products that we just wanted to make sure that we got it out there Even though it's it's uh kind of understood what that would be used for insulating our flotation purposes Or if they're encased in a more durable material and they're reusable those would be exempt So for examples would include surfboards boats light preservers Um construction materials, etc Um, and then also just for the immediate preservation of the public space health and safety do an emergency disaster Um, what have you that the city manager or his or her designee makes and food providers From the provisions of this ordinance based off of uh any sort of public health or safety emergency aspect next slide so we would uh institute a waiver process and So we want to make sure that if there are folks in the community food vendors providers events that if they can Show to the city that implementing um and following the ordinance would create a Undue financial hardship or practical difficulty not available to generally to most folks in those similar circumstances That they should have a an avenue to to potentially uh, you know get a waiver for that Um, so they would they would submit essentially a waiver report where they would detail You know why this would put them in that situation and we would um We would act on that no later than 120 days after receipt of that um that waiver application And if if if a waiver would was to be granted after investigation the waiver would be granted for a term of one year And under extraordinary circumstances An additional waiver of a year would be granted for a total of of two years We're really special circumstance for that The waivers would not be granted passive two-year time frame And it would be expected that the food provider or food vendor would would have to get in line with the ordinance at that point The city manager his or her designee would have a full discretion to verify the waiver and in the decision to grant Or deny the waiver would be put in writing and uh, it's determination considered final Next slide So enforcement is obviously a big component of this ordinance We would be requiring compliance as of as of the effective dates And the effective date that we have um, or at least that i've put forward Initially for discussion is going to be january 1st of 2022. So about a year out from now Um, the enforcement would be administered through our through our Santa Rosa code enforcement department In reaching out to the code enforcement division They they did that uh tpw staff myself know that you know for us to for them to enforce this ordinance There would be the high likelihood of a need for additional staffing to do that And so in checking with um with code enforcement, you're able to find that you know full time Code enforcement official enforcement position would be if sufficient to cover the increased workload of enforcing this ordinance And it would be more of a proactive enforcement You know a program versus a reactive enforcement mechanism where we would essentially just be responding to to citizen complaints You know if folks weren't following, um, you know the the ordinance itself there next slide So the the The intention of the ordinance is by no means to be More of a stick approach. We really are trying to encourage customers And we want to work with them to make sure that they they understand what what would be considered compliant foodware And so we the initial the initial, uh, you know, um enforcement would include a written notice of non-compliance and a reasonable opportunity correct Um food vendors would have 60 days from the written notice state to to become compliant And then entities that are non-compliance after the 60 day period would be subject to a citation penalty schedule Which I'll detail on the next slide, please So, um a fine not exceeding a hundred dollars for the first violation Uh 200 for a second violation of the same code provision within a year 500 for a fine exceeding any additional code violation in excess of two of the same code provision within one year If continued willful violations occur at this point and there's any business that just refuses to to comply for whatever reason The city would reserve the right to Consider suspending their vendors use their vendors use permit Next slide So as I did mention the the proposed effective dates of the ordinance would be january 1st 2022 We wanted to make sure to set that out enough time in in the future to Um allow entities to to kind of chew on on the ordinance understand it Adapt to the changes that might need to be made within their their operation And also it gives city staff enough time to to to adequately You know reach out and communicate the impacts to to the impacted business community Obviously, we are in the middle of a pandemic currently so considering the length In the unknown length and the impact of covet 19 Um, it is it is also suggested by staff You know depending on on counsel's purview is also working with the city attorney's office to potentially align the effective date Um to to the pandemic and to the um the health order c 19, which which is obviously around Um uh covet 19 so essentially, you know, we would we would come up with some language that would essentially say if you know coven 19 if the health order is still um impacting the community And there are there still these restrictions. We're not really back to normal that there would be um a situation to where we could tie that to when that order when that was no longer effective And the proposal would be for for that to be 90 days after that But this is this is all kind of just uh being being thrown out there as an option I know that covet 19 was was a was a concern of the Climate action subcommittee and how that might work out if this is the right time frame for something like this Uh, but obviously we don't want to you know hurt our business community even as much as they've been with with this pandemic And so tying it to um to a health order or something that effect I think would be a creative solution to that to that concern Next slide. All right. So obviously it's pretty important. What's what's going to be the business impact? Um it is somewhat difficult to really compare apples to apples or understand, you know Currently what businesses are purchasing what's going to be the dollar to dollar impact on their business From research that i've been able to find and this this initial bullet is actually going to probably be a little bit higher That did come from one specific article that said that the increase to switch to compostable products is about eight percent I have done just some general kind of you know off the wall research Of my own trying to compare apples to apples. Sometimes it's apples to oranges But I would probably put that in the range of about 10 to 10 to 40 percent. So This is just switching to compostable products. This doesn't include, you know, the overall operational cost This would just be the cost to switch to compostable products Initially would would be anywhere from by about 10 to 40 percent more than You know say single use plastic products that some businesses could maybe be currently using the ready Um, the hope is that the increasing costs could be associated with decreases in inventory costs as I mentioned by making it really Um A culture change where the food wear accessories are not just being provided automatically really nearly just here's your to-go item You're getting all this extra stuff in your bag. Whether you like it or not Um, that would save inventory costs as well as the hope is, um, you know If if folks were to really move to a reusable model It would be a little bit more costly up front But there would be You know numerous savings that could be made over the life of a business if they were to to allow and kind of Highly to or implement a reusable model that would have the most significant environmental impacts as well as cost savings um We have instituted an option for food vendors where they would be able to potentially charge that 25 cent fee to try to recoup some of those increased costs Um in in today's environments, um, sustainability is is important You know climate protection is is is on everybody's minds for the most part And so even in today's environment eco-friendly options can often attract new customers and help retain brand loyalty As well as another feature for businesses next slide all right, so Doing some outreach into the community That we have we have done some initial some initial outreach. I would say that there's there's definitely probably some more outreach That could be done But just to kind of detail what has been done so far from staff is in late october There was an information email describing the ordinance and the potential policy options that was sent to the chamber of commerce The sander is a downtown district man. Is that a chamber of commerce? um in early november Scheduled a zoom meeting with about eight to ten members of the sander of the downtown district of the proposal And just to kind of let you know if some of the comments that were made by some of the business community members that were there is um, california is currently essentially promoting single use items And just single use disposable items currently for health and safety purposes covid-19 There were some concerns about the potential increase in costs, especially in the current pandemic conditions and When we talked about the reusable option There was some folks in there that were a little uneasy of the fact of allowing customers to bring in their own Reusables for to go of food and beverages. There was some consternation on that next slide November 12th It did we meet with a handful of businesses and business owners in in rosin village office basketball Road there. It was actually organized by staff member rafael revero in planning and economic developments Some of the comments that we received from that meeting were that food trucks don't have the facilities to provide Onside diners with reusable foodware They would just want to make sure that there was enough time for businesses and To adapt to the regulations obviously would be important to conduct this outreach in spanish And there were a few folks that mentioned that the press democrat is a is a good medium for information sharing Next slide right November 19th also had a zoom meeting in today's environment with about 12 to 15 members of the latino business owners group This meeting was organized by marco suarez with the sonoma county economic development board Similar concerns with this group as well concern over the cost increases to switch to compostable There were some just kind of clarifying questions that were regarding the three bin system requirements And then there's some clarifying questions that I was able to answer during the call regarding the how the standard was a model might differ from What the zero waste sonoma model has put forth? Next slide so when we're looking at Excuse me fiscal impact directly the the fiscal impact would be To add a one one fte to the code enforcement division would cost about $126,000 annually um, there would obviously there would also probably be some additional fiscal impacts in the form of um, you know outreach materials marketing Radio spots, etc. Whatever we needed to do for as far as the outreach campaign and making sure that all the business owners Receive the information on the ordinance and then also understood that And so we would there would be some materials for outreach materials that would be needed to the purchase and so Due to the likely staffing impacts and another element that would be necessary to bring bring the ordinance forward Staff would be planning to come forward with budget recommendations in the upcoming in the upcoming budget cycle Next slide So overall what you know, you might be asking yourself. What's what's really the point of this? Why why do this? Um, you know, why don't we just continue with with whatever going right now? So the policy is the design to promote reusable and compostable food service where We encourage both the reuse of materials and the reduction of pollutants into the atmosphere The hope is that we would be you know diverting some of these products from the landfill As well as hopefully creating some of that culture change with with composting Really really important for for for Santa Rosa and all across the state Is for us to really focus on Having folks take those compostable materials that food waste and put it in the green bin and that just throw it into your trash at home It does take a little extra effort, but that's that's really essentially a lot of the main focus of sp1383 Which no longer is an ideal and an aspirational goal. We do have this California state regulation that is it's very prescriptive and is essentially going to be Uh, if Santa Rosa doesn't follow protocol properly and this applies to all other cities of California There is the potential for calorie cycle to to find those jurisdictions. So it's it's something that you know No longer is the right thing to do. It's it's it's going to be um, you know required Looking to reduce the amount of litter discharged to our streets and waterways It does um help us achieve those goals set forth in the zero waste master plan, which we passed earlier this year As well as it adheres to the the requirements sp1383 as I mentioned and it helps support our statewide trash amendment and municipal separate storm sewer system ms4 permits Next slide So this is really where the staff as I really want to kind of open it up to to hear from city council I've already heard from the climate action subcommittee. Um, but obviously we wanted to kind of bring you a a proposal a An ordinance that you could actually look at and chew on and pick apart and provide suggestions So I just am looking for your overall thoughts and comments your input um, I do know that The climate subcommittee had asked staff to move forward with this compostable model I would just reiterate that um, this compostable model would go above and beyond the zero waste snowman model and obviously there are significant concerns that You know, we would be asking folks to go compostable But the current marketplace and where we where we take these materials don't currently accept those materials as compost so effectively With those materials would be being screened out and sent back to the landfill So there there there would be some potential questions there as to the the impact of that and whether or not, you know Maybe this is the right time to move forward with that. So I'd be interested in your comments on that Um, how you feel about covet 19 the timing of it. Um, b. Are you okay with tying the implementation date to? Um, you know the pandemic and working with the city attorney's office to develop that language Just overall the implementation timeline what you guys might what your thoughts are on that You know the level of outreach that you would be looking for for city staff to perform And then the level of desired enforcement, obviously I mentioned that with for proactive enforcement We'd be looking for an additional staff member to the code enforcement team You know, would you would you like us to be proactive out there? Or would you like us to be kind of a reactive enforcement mechanism where we're responding to? you know Folks in the community letting us know that certain businesses may not be following the rules And then the next steps would be to obviously Kind of discuss this here here all of your your feedback your input And um, this this is currently a working ordinance a working document So it isn't set in stone the changes can definitely be made and um, my intention would be to to hear from you hear from the public here today and to to uh, you know Take those considerations take those potential suggestions or changes and then come back to you at a future date With a more refined ordinance for you to review at a future date, so At that point, I thank you for your time, and I'm here for any questions or comments that you might have All right. Thank you so much, joey So council if you have a question go ahead and hit the raise hand feature in the bottom right corner of Of zoom for the public What we will do is questions from council members first Then we will come to public comment, and then i'll bring it back to the council for their final thoughts and direction to staff With that i'm gonna See a councilwoman fleming that you have some questions for staff Indeed, thank you for your presentation. Mr. Hanowitz and all of the work that went into this I have a couple of questions. One is um So is around recology and that they currently are unable to process the Certain types of uh fully compostable material is that's what you're saying Well, it's actually not recology. The recology is really just going to be the hauler of the material to those to those sites It's the actual composting site. So like cold creek compost up in ukaya the the site in richmond and nap a recycling facility now But it's the your organization's the actual composting Yeah, and so what What would it take for those? types of businesses to be able to accept fully compostable materials or is there any market driven interest in You know, is there anybody who's sniffing around that just for seeing if there's an onslaught of municipalities and local governments doing this That they would open up the shop that took fully compostable materials It's a good question. Um, I'll be honest with you. I was talking with uh, recology zero waste manager yesterday about this exact thing And I think ultimately I think that there could be something in the future that I would look to work with the the composting Industry to understand why these materials really aren't accepted Um, I from what I understand right now one of the main elements is that the commercial composters claim that these materials they don't break down Um in the regular cycle and so effectively it's it's you know, it's not broken down all the way when they're ready to you know put that compost into Production and resale so they they screen out those materials I think one of the most important things is to Is that they they lose their organic designation? And obviously that's that there's they have a clear business need or Reason to try to maintain that designation because they can sell their compost, you know upwards up to 75 80 percent more than they could if they didn't Right. And so that tags on to my second question, which is And they would lose their Organics designation because of the coating materials that you outlined That come along with many of those composables. I kind of got lost. There's there's a lot of detail in there about that stuff Yeah, so the national organics program for for you to be certified organic You're essentially are not allowed to have any synthetic materials in that feedstock And currently the national organics program still considers PLA and especially PFAS Um as one of those synthetic materials so anything that has synthetic material and would no longer be able to be resold as um Okay, so your recommendation is that we use you be very specific about the type of material that you're recommending Become the the facto standard You know at this point I was really bringing forward a model ordinance where you know the best ordinance I thought would potentially bring us to that fully compostable option, you know If you're asking me for my my recommendation my recommendation would probably be at this point to To maybe wait back and see where the industry can maybe go in the future to go fully compostable because I have a hard time having the restaurants change to compostable products Pay the pay the increases and costs that might be associated with that When we know that those materials all in all likelihood aren't going to be ending up in that that green compost stream And that there's some question you're saying around the health effects of the coding on those things um, I I haven't got another question that is um around Any outreach that might have been done with the county health officer around You know people bringing their own reusable products And if you know, I understand we're in a pandemic, but I also understand that it doesn't seem that people are getting this and you know that people aren't catching cobit in general from touching surfaces I mean not that it's not possible, but um, did you reach out and see what the county health officers level of Comfort with people bringing their own products is in general because this got started before the pandemic and then also um, sorry the pandemic So I have had initial discussions with some representatives from the county department of health on this this this was when I was bringing it up to and it was really kind of in the very beginning of of cobit and so Their initial feedback to me was no way right now. There's just no way you can bring this forward, especially in this environment They were interested in speaking with me once, you know, the pandemic situation, you know died down so to say And looking at exploring potential options for this and working with the business community to allow that There is a state law ab 619 that has effectively You know said that, you know, it is okay and businesses would need to accept clean and sanitary To go containers from from, you know, the community and you know use that for to go Packaging or to go foodware, excuse me But there is a lot of industry pushback for the they are they're concerned About about safety and so I think there there still needs to be some Some considerable discussions and some outreach that need to be done for for us to really make that a reality But my intention is to definitely bring that forward and and to include that, you know Moving forward on potential additions and amendments to the ordinance And council member Fleming if I could just chime in, you know, joey's done quite a bit of research on this There are there are not a lot of cities that are already implemented some On ordinance like this that includes a bring your own To go container I think the challenge we're dealing with is the timing and I think that's what joey's trying to To demonstrate is the timing of this discussion when it when we're in such a place of Fully fully disposable Makes some of this just this really a challenging but but there are other communities as joey outlined in the beginning that that have implemented programs That are currently suspended of bringing your own To go containers And the other one and I don't know if the public see the The climate subcommittee considered this or if you consider this but having a standardized pre-use program where you know people Would make a deposit similarly to how one does when you go and buy something from the grocery store if throughout Santa Rosa vendors had standardized aluminum to go where and you Made a deposit and you could take it anywhere. I mean Throughout the city and you know clean it and then I don't know who this Excuse me Oh, I think that was a mistake. So I um There are there are that is kind of as that at the crux of what is being done currently You do see that in some larger cities like san francisco specifically around office environments Which may not be going on right now that that are doing this reuse where you do have that kind of reuse pilot Where are you bringing your you know the containers and in the next week you switch them out for your new food There also are some discussions and I do know that zero waste Sonoma was exploring some potential grant opportunities for a reuse pilot And so those those are definitely things that you know We're at the cutting edge of the zero waste kind of movement and stuff that we are keeping an eye out for but that currently Aren't in place here in Sonoma county, but I can assure you that you know We're definitely doing our best to try to bring that bring that to the community And I was also curious though if you had had a chance to reach out. I've been to certain restaurants In other jurisdictions where they just don't do Um To go You know disposable to go stuff there like you can buy a mason jar Um, or some you know other inexpensive thing. Um, and you can bring it back or you know So it you know instead of like you know all of this consternation over how it's going to get processed Just stopping doing it and doing what people do Um You know it with bags and you know when when people change their Um expectations behaviors follow and it just kind of becomes the norm. I mean it was that explored at all just flat out banning it Uh at this point the flat out ban wasn't wasn't considered. Um, just because I guess the thought would be I'm not really sure what it would leave businesses to be able to deutilize going forward Um, ultimately, I think where you're what you're getting to is really where we want to move I mean our my implementation is not to really go compostable would be to go reusable It's in my opinion where it would say it has the most significant environmental impact as well as I think it'd save Businesses the most money and there actually are some case studies from alameda. They have a rethink disposables Um program where they they've essentially been able to do that and show that it has been able to save those restaurants money And so I think that is something that um You know is is going to be one of those upstream solutions and that that's something that I definitely want to look into in the future Okay, thank you. I appreciate you answering all my questions of course Hey, thank you councilmember councilmember Sawyer Thank you, mayor, and thank you joey for a really comprehensive staff report and Presentation It's it's a very challenging endeavor and you've articulated well the various challenges, and I'm sure there will be more Um as time goes on My question has to do because a year from now is going to happen really quickly So it has to do with the citations and on page eight of your staff report. You mentioned how you would be notifying the business of a failure to To respond to the to the order and I'm a little bit concerned about how I mean there's There's always someone there's always a business that you'll give them a notice They say I didn't get it And this could get expensive if they if they were not to get the order. Were you intended on doing a? A Return receipt on on on some kind of violation or how would how would you know that the right person Is getting the message that they're not compliant Uh, so I think that's a great question councilmember Sawyer, and I think that that's something that you know I could definitely think think a little bit deeper on and get back to you in the future a little bit more clearly but I think the initial intention would be to To send that to send that letter And then my hope with the proactive enforcement mechanism would for there to be an actual face-to-face conversation Because in my opinion a lot of these things is it's culture change and I don't really think a letter is gonna Change that and so I I'm really a big proponent of actually having that face-to-face conversation and assistance To where that person shows up and says this is what you're using. Okay. This this is how you this is how what you should be using We understand all you may be confused You know, it's a lot easier to to to help out the the citizen and the customer if you have that Face-to-face contact so that would be my initial approach would be to to having it be you know How did the letter being sent out? But then also having there be a follow-up An in-person follow-up by one of the the code enforcement members or potentially myself or somebody on my team Yeah, that makes a lot of sense I think that there would be a lot of pluses as just as moving forward in that way, especially with something like a food truck Because an address I'm not unless it's a business license address and that's going to go to somebody But I think you're that the face-to-face approach not only guarantees that the right person gets the information But an opportunity to educate. I think that's a great way to go. That's the only question I had for clarification. Thank you All right Great councilmember tippants Thank you mayor. Joey, this is going to probably seem like a silly question And I'm pretty sure I know the answer But I just want to ask it to be sure when you talk about an eight percent cost increase You're talking about the line item for the inventory not the overall business Correct one item for the inventory costs not the overall business. Yeah Okay, and also to be clear Um, you were talking about uh, we don't currently have the industry for the fully compostable And you are recommending um, that that we go with kind of a A baby step in approach for lack of a better term and do you know when the industry will be online? Is there a guarantee that it will be? Uh, you know, there's no guarantees. Um, you know, I kind of as mentioned by councilmember flemmy It would be working with the compost kind of industry to understand the detriments of having these materials Um, it would also be that you know, these compostable materials with these, you know, compostable polymer Compostable plastics or kind of fiber-based plastics out of cornstarch. It's really kind of brand new. It's cutting edge Um, I was working with one of the local companies here in Sonoma county that does make these products and There is the potential for r&d research and development down the road where They might be able to design a product that is fully compostable And is acceptable by the uh by the compost industry So there's there's kind of you know, you would need to get all those those three segments together the policy makers Which would be the city the city council the the compost uh industry and then also the the business community That's that's making these products. Um, and so I do have uh, I'm I think that in the future there definitely could be something that would be feasible and usable for all It's just right now. It seems like we're not quite there, but um, you know It seems like there there are companies that are currently looking into that to try to Find a product that would be suitable for for everybody And if I could chime in I just want to add onto what joey said and to some of this is a market issue, right? You know as the market builds not only will compost facilities be more likely to expand their offering of what they're willing to take But we're going to see more and more aggressive behavior from the manufacturing companies. They're they're creating These compostable products and so so I think the more agencies begin to work this direction to More fully compostable the more not only products are available But also the more outlets to be able to take those products for composting in the future Okay now, but in the interim I understand the kind of creating the demand aspect in the benefit of going compost now but Is it safe to say that the environmental benefit of doing that now is that if one of these objects Were to fall off the cart and enter the ecosystem It's going to to compose and biodegrade more quickly with less ramifications to the ecosystem You know that is a great question and you know, you could probably talk to 10 different people with 10 different answers their council member tidbits, but effectively with a lot of these compostable products Especially the kind of compostable plastics and there is the argument with the the compostable fiber-based lining Is that they won't break down unless they are actually in a man kind of Seen commercial compost process. So the argument is if you put it out to the natural environment It's going to degrade like any other biodegradable product. And so it's um effectively It really would be compostable in the situation of being in a commercial commercial composting process where it's being overseen with the right conditions I see okay So it is safe to say that we're the benefit is more solely focused on Demand creation for the industry to follow You know the demand creation as well as you know, one of the other benefits is obviously would be reducing Plastics getting plastics out of the environment and getting plastics out of out of the the waste stream Obviously the argument that it sounds like you're making and kind of what I'm I'm understanding as well is You know, there may be some unintended consequences with moving that direction at least in the current environment It may be it may be a little bit premature But I still think that there, you know, there are pros and cons to Either way you look at it, but at this point there might be more Um concerns surrounding it only because You know, you're hoping that it goes into the compost stream It's getting screened out and it needs to be hauled back again by ecology to the landfill. And so You know, it potentially may create additional Work or or issues for the other industries after it gets, you know, out of the can Well, that that's what I was dig. I was searching for is I guess What's the benefit other than demand creation and to me reducing single-use plastics out of the environment is a really important goal You know, I I do think and I'll make my comments later after I listen to the public But I do really like your proposal to phase this in after cobit 19 Um, it just makes a lot of sense from a public health and safety standpoint Economics bottom line standpoint for businesses right now. And you know, this is this could be during cobit We don't want to be engaged in the death by a thousand cuts exercise that we hear about so commonly Um, but uh, this is awesome. Joey. I think it's a it's good stuff right All right council members what help Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Joey for that presentation again I learn more every time I hear different perspectives of it And one of the things that I think we heard at the subcommittee which had an impact on me was the capacity Of our current landfill Uh, and specifically when it will be at capacity if we don't do something do you remember what those timelines and figures were? Yeah, we're looking at about 26 years left of uh of available capacity And that's if we don't do anything such as what we're discussing today, correct Yeah, that's if that's if we continue on the same trend that we are in Sonoma county over the past You know five ten years, correct Great. Thank you. And then are there any other Sonoma county jurisdictions contemplating this or having anything That we're discussing in place Yes, zero waste Sonoma has been reaching out to all the jurisdictions there there have been a few of the jurisdictions that have passed the zero waste Sonoma model Which um, basically allows for it to be compostable or recyclable. Um, which essentially would you know And it encourages the to-go foodware to be upon request and encourages the abusables Excuse me. Um, there are some of the jurisdictions have been sabastopol. They adopted it Um, Healdsburg, I believe and I believe Windsor adopted it But they've currently suspended that due to uh, it's suspended enforcement because of of the pandemic situation So nobody's actively enforcing any anything like this currently Great. And so it would be helpful for me Uh, making the assumption this item comes back if we could see Here's the similarities and here are the differences because I do feel for both businesses and consumers To understand, okay, now I'm in this city and how's it the same and how's it different because I think consistency Throughout our region would really be a good idea and then a lot of the outreach he did and a lot of the information about, uh, Restaurants dining and taking out, um, was covered But this would also apply to grocery stores, correct for like plastic bottles plastic water bottles They would no longer if we passed the similar ordinance for grocery stores or warehouse outlets They would no longer be able to offer those products. Is that accurate? Uh, not entirely so with this one the focus would be on the actual food wear element of it So you would have to be receiving food to go Um, it wouldn't be it wouldn't be covering the broad spectrum of plastics in in santa rosa Which would be a whole separate ordinance and in a whole another lift, but This would only be applying to foods prepared or packaged with the intention of being eaten off the premises um And so, you know Bringing that up there. Well, there was one that did come to mind where it potentially could be where it would apply is like say like in, um, Oliver's or Whole Foods where you get those kind of to pre-made to go foods to go In within the ordinance itself the way that I brought it forward to you would be able to apply to to those to those Folks as well, but it wouldn't apply to like a Pepsi bottle or a Coke bottle now So I guess when we're talking about it is the one of the goals is to not let this enter into you know single use enter into our environment You know, I think all of us if we've attended any of our grocery stores or large warehouse outlets You see cases upon cases of plastic water bottles leaving the facilities Would we have you entertained potentially including those type of single uses? Um, it's I mean it's been entertained. I mean whether or not We could move forward. I think that would be a much significant larger lift Um, and the change would maybe be have to be made at the state level. Essentially, we would be You know, we would effectively be banning all single use plastic altogether Which would be a really really big ordinance and a really big push and and you know, it would probably cause some consternation in the business community Um, ultimately, I think that's that's the goal of where zero waste would like to go in But what we found in other jurisdictions and kind of with other similar cities that are that are kind of doing some of these these things is the The foodware component has really been kind of the the highest level that they've taken on on reducing some of these products That no other jurisdiction has gone to that level that you that you mentioned I guess I'd be interested in further exploring this based on what mr. Tibbets was saying about the business perspective And though at mr. Nutt was explaining to that if we're just eliminating to restaurants the supply and demand from the manufacturer aspect of it I you know, I don't have the data But I'm guessing some of the large warehouse places where I you know The aforementioned case upon case of bottled water goes out probably has a bigger impact And if we're able to get that industry to voluntary comply Due to the impact on landfill and some of the other studies that you said well They pulled out of san francisco bay, you know, I know you can't trace it back to you know the source But I would venture to guess a large part of it is from those grocery stores and large warehouse outlets So if we really want to make a difference, I think that might be you know, maybe not the first step But something the direction that we're going so Thank you. Those are all the questions I had Thank you council member and uh, actually just on that note for the the rest of the council That is a discussion that we'll continue to have at the climate action committee Tom and and joey and I we've had some pretty good conversations about the futures of plastics Including what to do with those single use plastics and and I think to your point one of the things That that we really need to be considering in this ordinance Is the idea that micro plastics don't break down and compost. They just they continue to exist and end up elsewhere And one of my favorite statistics to use in this conversation is to talk about 70 percent of breast milk that was tested Had micro plastics in it. So it is a public health issue as well that we need to be getting to Joey, I wanted to ask you a little bit about an educational campaign around this In particular if we have this three bin Approach for our restaurants And you mentioned specifically that the graphics that will be on top of the bin to try to teach the community What goes where who provides those those bins the graphics and the educational component Is that built into our contract with the brocology currently? The the infrastructure as far as the bins Would not be inside the restaurant The ecology is required for the contract to provide the bin that would be you know The ultimate collection bin outside of the restaurant. So your two the four yard bin They are required to provide that to to all of the businesses that are required for sp 1383 which I've been working on ecology with The expectation would be that the businesses would be expected as a business cost To to buy the in restaurant bins and then the signage would be relatively easy We have the pdf graphics already that are made by ecology and so we can make that available where they could essentially You know have a you know those graphics already pre-made and print it out And then you know laminated and they can provide those relatively pretty easily for the businesses Okay, and do you have an idea what the the cost for those bins would be for the restaurant? It would I would just be venturing a guess, but you know, I'm thinking 50 60 dollars for a bin And depending on how large the restaurant is and you know, they're really only going to be adding an additional compost bin They should already hopefully have garbage and recycling or if not garbage two bins Um, and so you're probably looking at a couple hundred bucks To to be able to do this for a one time for a one time cost Okay, was there any discussion? And I really appreciate by the way You're bringing forward the fte's that it would require for us to actually implement And the cost for the fte I think is really an important component for us to understand was there any discussion of If you do it institute a 25 cent surcharge on these takeouts that you have One cent i'm making this up obviously one cent out of that 25 comes back to the city to help fund The the enforcement of the ordinance. Was there any discussion along those lines? Personally there there wasn't no the I hadn't seen that any of the other jurisdictions, but You know per council's direction if if you would like me to look into that I'm happy to do so But we haven't had any research or any discussions about that currently no Okay, I think that'd be a good conversation for the council to have After we hear public comments as well And then just one more question for you and it's a data question You mentioned in the beginning that our goal is to get to less than one pound of waste per person per day What is santa rosa currently at? We're at about 2.8 Right Yeah, so we're looking to get about a 10 reduction each year, which is a It's a big goal, but we're hoping that you know, we could we kind of start turning the tide a little bit with the community Okay, great. Um, thank you so much. That's the the last question that I have Very good thorough presentation So we will go on to public comment now For folks who would like to speak go ahead and hit the raise hand feature Dina In our clerk will will have a three minute timer for folks You will be able to speak when she allows you to to join in And then we will bring it back to to the council after public comment for discussion First on the list that I see is slown Followed by lizzette. So slown if you want to take it away make sure that you can unmute And hear us and you'll have three minutes Can you all hear me? Yep. Okay, great Um, good afternoon mayor rogers and city council members. My name is slown pogol and I am with zero waste sonoma A couple comments today. Um first zero waste sonoma fully supports santa rosa And going above and beyond the provisions of the model polystyrene and disposable foodware ordinance, which was created by our agency Secondly, I'd like to highlight that pla line fiber compostable products are not accepted through our collection programs and screened out as landfill material Which uh, joey did mention and it was brought up in the questions um Next From a litter abatement perspective compostable foodware is no less likely to become litter than plastic At this point while compostable fiber Products may degrade more quickly than plastic in the environment These items will still persist for months or years outside of the commercial compost facility And finally, um, although we want to reduce the overall use of single use plastics We recognize that recology is accepting and recycling hard plastic food service wear and packaging at this time Which is why these products are compliant under the original model ordinance Um, so again, we think it's great that the staff is proposing an ordinance that goes Far above and beyond what we created and we would love to see some of these changes adopted Thank you for the opportunity to speak today and that concludes my comments Great. Thank you so much slown Lizette followed by Catherine Yes, hello All right, we can hear you Lizette go ahead. I wasn't sure if you could hear me. Thank you My name is lissette van vliet and i'm the senior policy coordinator of the organization breast cancer prevention partners Which is a national organization that focuses on preventing breast cancer before it starts From our exposure to toxic chemicals which have been scientifically proven as linked to the disease um I would like to say that we are very strongly in support of this ordinance as it pertains to the p f as chemicals the single use plastics and the styrofoam band Because all three of these items or chemical categories Are linked with cancer and breast cancer specifically PFAS Several of these have been scientifically associated with increased risk for breast cancer these chemicals never break down They will never be Compostible in the way that we understand the word They can be found in the placenta in maternal cord blood and as was already mentioned in breast milk There's lots more specific details on the scientific findings on our website under the glossary of exposures um So these p fas get into the food Um studies have shown that they leech or migrate into the food They then go into our bodies and then they then go into our babies Um, and it's not just breast cancer. There's also concerns about affecting semen quality affecting Time to pregnancy early menopause onset as well as some of the other concerns that were highlighted in the presentation Moving on to styrene It's a known carcinogen Um, and it was listed already in 2011 by the national report on carcinogens um to do with the um lympho hematopoetic system that's um production of lymphocytes Cells of blood lymph nodes bone marrow spleen and thymus and then just finally single use plastics use a lot of chemicals That are known to be disruptive of the hormones in our bodies and that has been linked to breast cancer as well as lots of other chronic and fatal diseases So we strongly support this ordinance and wish you all speed in your deliberations and look forward to hearing your conclusions. Thank you very much Thank you, Lizette. Thank you for the comments. Catherine followed by chris Can you hear me? Yep. Go ahead. Great. This is Catherine Dodd. I'm a member of the alliance of nurses for healthy environments And I'm want to first say that joey's work was amazing and thorough Um, he probably knows more about waste than most of us And I also want to thank the climate action committee for including um a more aggressive uh model ordinance than sonomas which uh was which does Talk about I spoke to the staff and they said they they do want to eliminate Um PFAS, uh, but they didn't specifically mention it So I really hope that santa rosa as the county seat will lead that effort Sonoma county will be reviewing this in j in january of 2021 Um, PFAS as was mentioned is a forever chemical We don't want it in our landfill where it will ultimately leach into our water We don't want it in our food wear where it'll leach into our body The cdc has pointed out that it decreases immunity And it decreases the effectiveness of vaccines, which brings me to the pandemic We are eating out of to-go containers far more than we ever did So to wait until the pandemic slows down kind of tying it to Opening restaurants defeats the purpose. We need to decrease our exposure to PFAS now For for all the reasons that have been cited We also need to decrease our solid waste and and banning styrene and PFAS coated Containers will do that This is not something we should be waiting on the these chemicals are where it We're being increasingly exposed to them. I want to draw your attention to the consumer's union Testimony which points out that many of our retailers like pandera and chipotle Already comply with this The center for the environmental health is willing to help the other localities Berkeley, San Francisco are willing to help this should not take us two years to implement It should take us six months and I'll leave it at that. Thank you very much Thank you so much Catherine chris followed by Logan Chris if you can go ahead and unmute yourself There you go. We can hear you and go ahead. All right. Thanks. Uh, my name is chris o'neill and managing partner russian river vineyards We're here in forestville And we do serve food um With our uh, you know in our operation and well, we were anyway and hope to again at some time in the Not too distant future. Uh, we serve five or six hundred people a week and although we don't do takeout We use compostable serve where for all our outside dining and Really thankful that the uh council climate action committee is is looking to strengthen this proposed Ordinance because you know getting the PFAS out of the food wear and and and styrene as well It has been difficult, you know getting healthier options to the PFAS and and um But I think that as as joey pointed out that as we create an additional demand for that Those options will become more prevalent and probably less costly. Um, I have worked with Recology and they did provide us with a Comp compost dumpster And everything that we use for service from silverware to uh, you know food containers and what we serve them in in paper bags all goes into The compost and there was actually no additional cost to that compost dumpster for us and so not only do we Reduce what's going into the landfill, but we're actually saving some money because we're Doing, you know less We're having to pay to get rid of so, you know during the pandemic as we're trying to support local restaurants and Purchasing more takeout products. We really need to get rid of the harmful Chemicals in these and you know that that do end up in our landfills and and ultimately our groundwater And I want to just thank you for helping to eliminate some of those chemicals out of making our community Healthier place to live. Thanks very much All right. Thank you sir for your comments Folks, we have a celebrity in the house. Uh, mayor harvey from sonoma. Go ahead. You'll have three minutes I'm going to be pretty strict about it with you Thank you chris and I would like to congratulate you Mayor rogers on your selection to be mayor of santa rosa appreciate working with you on a cta and regional climate protection authority and uh, given thanks to Mayor schwedholm for his time as mayor it was great working with you on the uh The mayor's call so I appreciate about the work Also, I really want to thank joey henowitz. I'm calling kind of in my capacity as a waste zero specialist for recology snowman marin Joey's been a fantastic Person to work with and just really a leader on this and I think the presentation He's put together for you today is really emblematic of that work. And so, you know Joey's joey's really helping you guys lead the way and you guys are leading the county And so I appreciate that just a couple comments that I would make yeah Recology is the implementer. We have uh recycling compost and garbage bins that we place outside for kind of general service We also do education in the restaurants. My role is to go into restaurants and businesses Teach them how to properly recycle compost and and throw things away and reduce their Reduce what they're putting into the garbage and so as something that we take really seriously and we work hard on We also provide some amount of indoor bins But there's sometimes they're charged. Sometimes they're not Just kind of depending on circumstances and it's about 30 dollars for kind of slim gym style ones I'm sure there's there's a range of prices. So just to kind provide some clarity there As far as compostable plastics, I would encourage the council to look and we recently went through the national zero waste Conferences and there's some interesting examples in places like Portland, Oregon and throughout the bay area like go box Where they're doing reusable? There's a program who do reusable Plastic ware and to go boxes and so it's really kind of incredible to have that System running if you could get that started in Santa Rosa or we could talk about doing it in the county Providing kind of a place where our business could come through Wash to go to containers and keep them completely out of landfill which may solve some of these problems about organics Would encourage also looking at organic options in terms of straight paper And wood fiber options. These are kind of compostable food ware options that do break down Significantly better than the bpi plastic But as an implementer of some of these programs, I would say that the bagging the Bpi certified compostable plastic bags are really critical to get restaurants to compost at all There's always concerns about rats and other sort of vermin that can come as a result of having a foodware And that's significantly mitigated or a food waste in a bin outside That's always significantly mitigated by using compostable bags So it's a it's a really critical piece That's there. So again, you know, I Recall that we look forward to continue or continuing our partnership with the city of santa rosa I appreciate you guys taking the lead on this in the county It's all part of our kind of climate goals and our collective goals. And so You know, just appreciate you guys you guys have the manpower. You're leading the way and the rest of us can continue Thank you All right. Thank you so much, mr. Mayor And uh, hopefully your council continues to follow us as well on this one Mara, you're up next Mara go ahead and unmute yourself And dna, can we unmute mara? Let's see if she's there Well, mara, we're having a little bit of trouble with you. I'm going to go on to anita really fast and we'll try to come back to you afterwards Anita, can you hear us? Yeah, I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yep, you got three minutes. Go ahead. Okay, great Um, so again, my name is Anita migliore. I also work with Logan here at recology We're part of a team. Um, that does the zero waste outreach and education So, um, I just wanted to say we're really excited about this ordinance and we appreciate the the council and and the mayor's time To be looking at this and considering it and and we appreciate your your support of this as well. We're very excited Recology as a whole and myself personally have over 20 years of experience in implementing these programs We've done this model in san francisco over that time period and we're really excited to be bringing that Here to sonoma county and just kind of getting that awareness To the general public about, you know, there is a better way to be doing this there's a better way to Be respectful of our environment and just little changes can do that except we offer The the program here in uh, santa rosa at no no additional charge So it's included with the service and so hopefully we we try to educate that with the people And make sure they understand. Hey, this is beneficial for your bottom line and the environment as well as meeting state and county goals So I just want to say we're we're ready for action. We're ready to partner with the um With the city's department to make sure we're educating everyone and supplying the tools to do it and make it easy And basically just make it happen. So I just wanted to say we're we're excited and ready to go Thank you. All right. Well, thank you so much. Anita and thank you for for being here with us today Um, so mara, it looks like you have lowered your hand If you're still interested in speaking, I'll give you another second to to put it back up if we can try again Okay, I'm not seeing any hands raised Uh, madame city clerk. Were there any public comments via phone or email? Thank you, mayor rogers. There were no voice message public comments received and Uh, we did receive several Email public comments which were uploaded into the registrar file and the agenda was republished this morning and made available to the public Excellent. Thank you so much. Uh, and I did see one additional hand pop up that I'll take Before we come back to the council. Uh, and that's barbara. Go ahead, barbara Barbara go ahead and unmute Okay, can you hear me? I apologize Yeah, go ahead. Now. My name is Barbara Sattler I'm a registered nurse and a professor emeritus at the university of san francisco and I I live in somnilma county and I'm just going to limit my comments to the PFAS issues And I know that others have talked with you about The health effects associated with it and I just want to tell you that Every semester one or two of my students and this is for the past Several years have always done a literature review on PFAS Choosing that and the literature just keeps expanding in terms of the health effects And right now 95 of those of us who are on this zoom conference As well as 95 of our relatives including children are likely accumulating PFAS in our bodies And we know this because every year the unit u.s. Government through the cbc Tests a representative group of americans For the presence of toxic chemicals that should never be in the human body and PFAS And similarly constructed chemicals are found in 95 of the samples of blood and or urine And so to me these results are an indication of failed chemical policies A sign that our state and federal governments are failing to protect us from very harmful chemicals But you have this amazing opportunity to put forth a policy that will begin to protect us from at least the food wear related PFAS exposures And I want to just share another public health success story and failure story in the 1920s When we began to know that lead was really An unforgiving poison particularly for children They banned the use of lead in europe in the 1920s in paint It took the u.s. Till 1978 to do that And just think about how often you repaint a house, right? So how many layers Of lead based paint um and associated lead based paint dust have we made our children Around the country exposed to so we are at a moment now that is similar to the 1920s moment And you can be making a decision about this known poison and reducing it and removing it from our environment So it really encouraged you to adopt an ordinance that protects not just Individual and public health, but the environment all at the same time. So thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to say this Yeah, absolutely. And thank you barbara for joining us And with that i'm going to bring it back to the council Joey can you go over your last slide one more time? Uh for council members so that we're clear on what type of feedback you'd like to hear at the end of this study session sure Once it's queued up. I will uh I will do that okay, so Some of the feedback that i'm looking for from you today mayor and city council members is Just your overall thoughts and your overall input on the direction of the ordinance how you feel about it Are you comfortable with it? Would you like us to go further? Do you want us to rain it back? You know what I think one of the big really the biggest star that I would probably have Near this thing would be the second bullet is Obviously we want to be as aggressive as possible. We wanted to try to be as fully compostable as possible But I just want to make sure that we understand if if we do go this direction We can give her to those single-use plastics but in in the current environment and currently with the industry If we do go fully compostable with just the understanding that those those materials in all likelihood Are going to be getting screened out and taken back to the landfill because they won't be accepted at the compost facility, so I just would be interested in your thoughts on that obviously Regarding the COVID-19 implications and the timeline. Are you comfortable with the implementation date of january 1st? Would you like to implement sooner? Would you like to tie it to potentially that health order so that? We don't you know, we don't impact those businesses Even further than they've been impacted during this during this time That implementation timeline. I kind of just spoke about as well There has been some some limited outreach that has been done and my hope is to do some additional outreach but I would be interested on your Your desire for the level of outreach to the business community I would also kind of especially considering that there probably isn't going to be many in-person meetings That would be available. So these would be through digital means And then also your level of desired enforcement. Do you want us to be proactive or reactive in the enforcement? And then really just any other comments or feedback that you have is great It might my next plan would be to incorporate your feedback incorporate your policy direction And to come back with you with a little bit more of a refined ordinance after I hear from you For your future consideration Excellent So with that, I'm going to first see if councilmember Schwedhelm who is On the climate action subcommittee if he has any thoughts or if you'd like to try to answer some of those questions for you Sure. Thank you, mr. Mayor Once again Joey, I'm uh, I really appreciate all the information you've been providing. This is the direction I think we do need to go My biggest concern is the implementation timeline and is that outreach with those business owners Are going to be directly impacted by this. I'm not in that industry. So I'd want that continued Dialogue and I'm very hesitant to say, you know, six months after the public health order expires We need to continually stay in dialogue with them because I'm guessing as quickly as this last shelter in place order You know, I think we had 24 hour notice if I'm running a business in trying to understand what impacts will that have on my business As we're evolving through here. I don't want to add additional stress To these businesses that are in a very challenging situation So again that constant dialogue and actually letting them brainstorm together because one of the things in my meetings with business owners Um, they said just give us. Okay. Where you want to go and let our Entrepreneurial spirit come up with some solutions and that really resonated with me. I think it would also resonate With this challenge. So let's lean on those entrepreneurs to come up with a timeline I would hope that they recognize where we need to go and I would just ask that they help us get there And I think those are my comments Great. Thank you councilmember. Councilmember alvarez Thank you, mayor. Uh, I do believe the time is now I believe there's no better time than now, especially now during the pandemic. This does allow us, uh A period of time where we're a business owner, especially in my district with the top of trucks down to basketball road Do have an opportunity to implement the strategy with that said I would like more information about possible vendors To make them available to the top of trucks And I would also like to know the breakdown of your your assessment of the line item being up to 40 percent more expensive to to implement the the renewable sources In regards to outreach one of your your Questions, I definitely would recommend the social media as well as the facebook Local radio stations. Those are extremely Effective in the spanish community and I would like to see more of those being used and I make myself available to you In order to make that part of it happen There was a important subject that was brought up or or issue brought up with from councilman fleming in regards to The the recology center. We just heard a speaker say that they are more than happy to help us implement this this program Um, I would like to know what what what they have actually available for us at this point in time But at the same time, I would like to know what the cost associated is for the hauling of the the The material that we cannot process here in in sonoma county And I would also like to to maybe do more more Collaboration more conversation where we can help The local businesses have the potential to to take on This this matter and so where they don't take the loss with the 75 80 percent of their Their their their products that they do have for sale or they can make available to the to the market In regards to the enforcement education should always be first. I would hate to see that we would be Uh in the reactive part of really Enforcing the defiance or the penalties to the community, especially as one they're dealing with the covid issues at this current time And I believe I believe that is it for now But again, I do make myself available to any of the efforts that you that you uh have in mind Especially with the with the community in the first district as again the talk of trucks from my perspective They will be the most heavily affected by by this ordinance But again, uh, something very important that you just state it's a cultural change and when we see over 2,500 items in the russian river or 1,000 cubic Yards of wastes in our creeks It's hard for any of us to say that this is not the time to to make that cultural change. So thank you for that All right. Thank you, sir councilwoman fleming Thank you, mayor. Um, so, you know where I one thing that really resonated with me is what councilmember schwedhelm said about You know empowering the business community to solve this problem And so to that end I say let's be bold And not say, you know Just do this. Let's say That we want to stop using reusable Um items and I know that it probably sounds crazy, but I was watching um Boardwalk empire a couple years ago and watching the guy take his food around. I mean, it's it's really a new thing that we use reusable items and it's You know a big thing that the plastics industry pushed and they're going to be aggressive about this But they've really confined this conversation and defined for us So that what we're doing here is we're really in a reactive position Um and living in fear because we've been taught that we we have to have these items that the best we can do is trying not to poison, you know our Our people at night, you know, it's the percentage of women You know who are lactating is as high as you say it is I think that First of all, I mean, I don't want to conflate the PFAS issue. I am completely there That just has to go That's completely unacceptable But I I think that the ask really from the business community. I see all kinds of branding opportunities in terms of having reusable and to take out things but um, you know as far as like Building a secondary cottage industry around Um dealing with the problematic aspects of compostable Uh serve where just it just seems kind of nutty to me. I think we ought to you know Go back to basics and use glass and aluminum and you know be the adults that we are and these things, you know 60 of Businesses which means 50 more businesses in our county are owned by men than women so, um, you know 60 percent of that means that The amount of when we talk about who is this impacting and The developing children are more susceptible to these types of toxins And you know, I really appreciate being differential to our business community as they create a ton of jobs But also they get the benefit of making a lot, you know, in many cases their incomes off of having boysons The earth and and our women and children and in people color and disproportionate numbers So I think that we need to be bold We need to ask them to step up stop using this these types of products and to make these changes right away I don't think that the pandemic if anything it adds urgency to why we should do it because more people are using Takeout services rather than dying in And so I think we need to do it sooner rather than later I recognize that my position might seem extreme But I think if you go forward a hundred years if we haven't completely torched the planet at that point in time It will seem kind of like a no-brainer that we stopped doing this at a certain point not to mention the landfill and problems with Composable and he fast So to to your questions, mr. Heinewitz, um You know, I think I said I don't think that the Coronavirus should have an impact on implementation. I think implementation should be Six months to 12 months the level of outreach. I really like what councilmember albright suggested around that face-to-face contact I think that that allows for business owners to ask questions and feel supported by us and then You know, I think that that hopefully will reduce the need for enforcement But hopefully we'll have a proactive enforcement so that we just don't have more regulations with That that aren't enforced And then You know, I do think that that what we will probably really need are robust education program to go with with this But I think that our residents our kids And people who are bearing the brunt of the reproductive services Which are making the majority of the economic group in our City and county deserve to be cared for in this way and You know, people shouldn't be bearing the the brunt and the expenses All for the sake of the profit. Thank you Thank you councilwoman councilmember tidbits Thank you mayor, let me pull up my list here My overall thoughts and input joey, I mean, yeah, like the speaker said, I was really impressed with just how much you know this stuff And thanks for bringing a, you know, a complete Neophyte like me into some level of understanding My overall thoughts though, I think that this is absolutely a good thing. I want to see us Get to the the fully compostable model, you know, what sold it for me was The plastics getting it out of our creeks and water and ocean, you know, I like to tell the story about When I was crossing to Hawaii, it was just like every minute you saw some kind of floating plastic and it was just such a shame So I'm on board for that COVID-19 implications and implementation implementation timeline for me are Different than the previous council members who spoke. I do think that this needs to be implemented after COVID-19 is over and You know, I think just by for two reasons one when the public health officer tells you please wait I think we have a kind of a responsibility to listen. We are about masks and other important things The second issue for me is, you know, I think that it's becomes easy to forget How difficult it is for businesses these days and they're just trying to make payroll. They're just trying to make rent Keep their space open I was talking to our grant writer at St. Vincent of Paul today and she got a call from her One of her restaurant a friend of hers who owns a restaurant and the person said we're so close to going under Please continue to order takeout from us. And I don't think that story is unique. So I don't think we should be You know piling issues on at this time Um, uh, so we went through implementation timeline. Joey, I really liked your suggestion when COVID is over You know, bring this in and let's go full compost Um, level of outreach. I really appreciate you tapping into marcos rafael. Um, you know, that's keep doing that Like eddie said use the council members as much as as you need Probably doing good, um Outreach to the restaurant tours through the business community is probably important I'd reach out to peter rumble at the santa rosa metro chamber I believe there's even a restaurant association around I I've only heard from them Um in small moments in time But even though you're probably going to create opposition to this by reaching out to them I think it's important that you do. Um, so we can really Uh, get more data like tom was saying, you know making sure that these assumptions in here are correct I'm sure that they are but also just to be able to say that we reached out and you know, your input was was received Um level of desired enforcement. I do not want to pay for proactive enforcement I think that we have a citizenry here That is really diligent and really passionate about this issue and I have no doubt that They'll be proactive in reaching out to uh, code enforcement And and as far as next steps are concerned, I look forward to seeing this come back to council With more input and ultimately, you know, I'm barring more public input. I look forward to supporting it. So thank you Council member Sawyer Thank you, mayor. I'm gonna move from the bottom up. Um Level of desired enforcement. I'm not interested in doing the proactive. I think that that uh council member Tibbets is is correct The the community is watching. They will be good at identifying Those individuals that need a um face-to-face communication Um, and some probably some more education um Which leads me to uh level of outreach. You can never have too much outreach um and the uh the um All of the avenues that you can take advantage of um, and I know that Some of that outreach is already happening with with um zero waste Sonoma They have a very good program and some great employees working on outreach as well. So that that will be Uh as as important as it is you also have a lot of avenues to to to go down In in the outreach area Implementation timeline. I am concerned and I'll tie that to the covet. Um, I agree with with council member Tibbets again I am concerned about putting more pressure on our restaurants as much as I would love to get rid of the plastics And get rid of everything that's bad in our in our waste stream I would be concerned With the timing right now of as important as it is because there is so much to take out It's a little it's it's really a conundrum, but I would be uh, I would be concerned with putting more pressure on our restaurants um At the same time they could be educated as to to like starting the process sooner And since they are going through so much so many takeout containers, I assume they are um Maybe they could uh, you know, we could be in communication with with with the restaurants letting them know that this is coming I'm sure that that's already in in part of the plan is to you know, keep them fully um informed as to the as to the what the future holds because this is going this is not a in if um, but I went and uh, so they they needed the sooner they started kind of in planning on on how to to address these issues And changing who their vendors are and how they buy these products The the sooner they start thinking about it. Um, the better off they will be um In the the fully the proposed fully compostable model one of the things i'm concerned about is Is the wasted effort of putting these things in the in the compost that are now that are just going to be screened out And then put in the landfill How would I be curious about is what the processors and our composters those people that are in the business? um What what are the what if any are the costs involved in spinning their wheels? um Putting these things in the compost bin and then having them take them out and put and then trucking them back to um to central um If they're spending a lot of money doing that I think for for the time being maybe that money could be spent in a different way And I'm just so i'm I have no idea whether you could even you know What kind of research you might be able to Whether they even know how much money there's they're spending spinning their wheels on on uh on these Really not compostable products um It's also a little disingenuous to the community for them to think that they're doing of the right thing When all that's going to happen it's going to get screened out and stuff and dumped in the landfill So I think that they're that There's one of the things that has always concerned me about recycling is that is the the expectation of the Community that these particular things are you look at that little triangle and because it has a particular number on it that they're good to go and uh, it's just not the case and you know people spend so much time and energy trying to do the right thing And this is one of those times where I really want them to know that if they they think that this item that they're putting in the compost Is really going to get composted that it's really going to get composted and and and I so I'm concerned that that we are asking them to Do something that is that is really not as effective as they think it is And so I kind of bow to your recommendation as far as how to move forward with the with the fully composed compostable model um I just you know, I I would be curious to know how much money is being wasted by putting these things in the stream um But I I can't answer that I can't answer that that question fully Perhaps at this point because I I am not sure What the industry is doing about it and how soon we will actually have some of these materials That can actually be composted Not necessarily organic But even the secondary The kind of comp compost that that other where people are not necessarily looking for fully organic Um That they could actually that these materials could actually go into that second grade of um of compost so Um, I'll I'll leave it there. I really appreciate your being our our garbage star You are you know, you do know more than the average bear on uh with compost and garbage in general And I appreciate this wealth of knowledge that you've been able to gain because it has enabled you to give us Presentations like this. So thank you very much Thank you councilmember madam vice mayor Uh first joey, thank you so much for the presentation and for the work that your team has done for the presentation It was very thorough. Um, my overall thoughts is I think that we probably need to act sooner than later. I do realize that We are in, um, COVID right now, but Now, I mean, we can't go backwards and we're not sure how long COVID is going to be here. So We need to find ways, um To do multiple things and that is to be aware that we are in a pandemic But also be aware that we are feeling our environment. We need to stop that Um fully compostable model. I'm not too sure on that one. Um, I kind of echo what Councilmember Soler said about, you know, the public believing that one thing is happening and it's not happening And it's also creating additional, um, Works for other people. Um, implementation. I think we should like I said implement Uh, sooner than later Which leads me to enforcement Um, when I say implementation, I think that we should definitely Speak to restaurant Owners and get the education out there, but I do not think that we need to have proactive enforcement at this time Um in our fines. I think uh, just really with the educational Aspect is what I'm looking for not saying down the road that we do not start with, um enforcement in in fines, um, so I'm not sure what the what the next steps Um would be but those are my thoughts. Thank you Thank you, madam vice mayor, uh and in joey. I really appreciate your work on this As you know, I'm very passionate about this issue and in particular the reductions of plastics And my viewpoint really starts from a belief that, uh, the cost of utilizing many of these, um Plastics and food wares doesn't actually reflect the environmental cost or the total cost that we have as a community By allowing them and what has actually typically happened in california and across this nation is that Our recyclables are sent to other countries to be dealt with Uh, and that marketplace is completely dried up with the national sword policy Uh going across across the world, uh, where china has typically taken our recyclables And and that's how we dealt with them. We no longer have that capacity. The standards are way too high and they're not accepting it So we need to either reduce our use or we need to significantly invest in the infrastructure that it takes For us to be fully self-sustaining uh here in california. Um, I I am again also torn on the question about the fully compostable Uh, and and i'm going to present the other side of it as well, which is the hardest part of what we're talking about is developing new behaviors And is there a value in having even though these these will be filtered out for the time being Is there value in us getting that behavior? Uh, and doing the educational components about it? Uh ahead of time Uh, really worth it for our community I think the answer kind of relies on when these new Materials are going to present themselves on the marketplace if they were to present themselves two years from now We would look like geniuses by being proactive about it and getting the community to start doing this early If it takes 20 years, then we're going to have you know 19 years of looking silly for how do you have that be a requirement? So I don't know how to go about that But what I do know is that for many of these things there is no such thing as compostable when we're talking about plastics Every piece of plastic that has ever been created is still in existence It doesn't compost it it just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces of plastics And going back to that discussion about it making its way into our waterways and making it into our our bodies and affecting our health So i'm going to leave that one alone for the moment. I think the uh, I think the conversation around The the PFAS is is an important one because PFAS are endocrine disruptors And I think we already know this and I think we need to acknowledge that and how we move forward The PLAs is an interesting conversation to me as well Because you do start to see some businesses that are charging for those those linings particularly on coffee cups Where it really is necessary for their business model But for example starbucks actually gives you a 10 cents credit If you bring in your own reusable mug as opposed to using one of these lined cups And and so I think that's something that we should be paying attention to as well As we move through this conversation is that just because we haven't banned them Doesn't mean that we can't take proactive steps to reduce People's dependence on them And to that end. I want to talk a little bit about the proposed Opportunity not mandatory 25 cent charge I actually think that we should have a mandatory charge on some of these takeout things such as the PLAs That we know that we would prefer to get rid of but we can't Because that will actually help shift behavior so that we have reductions in it and by making it mandatory We put it evenly across all businesses and we don't put one Business pitted against another business It is a community-wide effort at that point and it's not reliant on on people who are to jack's point trying to just make ends meet at that 25 cents If that is the number that we go with Can stay with the business I want it to stay with the business so that they can then make their margins and continue to invest In the types of materials that we're asking them to do. I don't need it to come back to the city It doesn't need to be something that is viewed as a money generator for us I think it really is just to to reflect the actual cost of the materials that people are utilizing In the cost the cost of society For the timeline, I am fine with the january 1st Implementation timeline, but what I would suggest after listening to the comments from council members Is that perhaps we do a check-in? We set the date of september 1st and then do a check-in in september in september to see how we are actually feeling about Covid coming out of it I know you had suggested that we build in a 90 days from the end of the the health officer's order I'd actually prefer for us to do a check-in at that point and give some level of clarity to businesses on when it would actually Be implemented and potentially enforced Our outreach is going to be incredibly important and significant And I think we should be pursuing a robust conversation around that with brocology who are willing partners And then finally for the desired enforcement I'm hearing a mixed message from from the council On whether or not they would prefer proactive enforcement or if they think that the community would be able to Help help self police on this one. I am fine if what we want to do is see how the first six months go I do think that either way the the most enforcement is going to be up front as people are coming into it Which is also the time when we want to be the most permissive and educational by nature So I really don't care on that one at the moment on if we are proactive or if we do it through education What I will want is that after the this has been implemented for six months or a year That we have a chance to check in and see where we're actually at on the adoption throughout our community And then have that conversation about if we have to increase enforcement to increase the uptick And and with that that's my comments on it Did you get what you needed from the discussion joey and what the what are the next steps for the council going to look like? Thank you council members and mayor for for the feedback. I do appreciate that it does give me some direction to to move forward The the next steps I think would be for me to internalize today's meeting check in with with My fearless leader jason nut and discuss the item moving forward But my plan would be to what I what I've really kind of heard consistently from the council on on some of the things It sounds like you guys aren't sure but really what I've heard is You know outreach is important continue to do the outreach involve the business community. So I'd like to potentially Try to set up some more Some outreach meetings with the business community potentially kind of like town hall styles to try to to gather that that information and to have them really be involved Secondly, I think one of the important things would be to Maybe try to get a little better clarity I don't think that there's going to be a An end all be all that you know, there's going to be a certain date where these materials might be Acceptable by the compost facilities, but I think it would be who myself and also be interesting to the council to hear back from Me to do a little bit more direct outreach with the composters to see exactly what Their issues are what would be the challenges to potentially accepting those materials in their feedstock? And then thirdly, I think You know really just coming back to you after I've kind of chewed on some of that and coming back to you with a Little bit more of a refined approach potentially with some I get kind of like a buffet of options so I could give you guys so here's an option a here's option b here's option c And you know, this option is fully compostable. This option may be only adopts the zero a snowman model with some additional considerations So you guys potentially have, you know, not just one Potential pathway, but you have multiple pathways that you can sit or move them forward Within I would say the first Few months of 2021 would be my my intention Great. Thank you so much Joey And with that, uh, we have been at this for about a little over two hours now as a council I'm very cognizant of the fact that we have a long meeting for tonight But I am going to grant a five minute break for council members to To go and do what they need to do for a couple of minutes. So we will come back at 340 We'll just call it 345 and I'm going to ask council members to to stick to that timeline because again We do have a long meeting tonight and we'll be back with item An item 3.2 at that time All right, I will bring us back madam city clerk. Could you please call the roll? Yes, thank you councilmember alvarez present councilmember fleming councilmember fleming councilmember Sawyer here Councilmember schwaitham here councilmember tidbits councilmember tidbits Vice mayor rogers mayor rogers Councilmember Fleming have you joined us? councilmember tidbits. Have you joined us? Okay, let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of councilmember Fleming and councilmember tidbits Thank you so much, and I'm sure the the two council members will find their way back With that we will go on to item 3.2. Mr. City manager Item 3.2 wildfire preparedness mitigation and resiliency project Proposed uses of PG&E settlement funds I'm going to give a brief introduction. We can go to the next slide And then I will turn it over to chief gossner Um, so A couple things this is the The next step in a continuing conversation with the council about how to utilize Uh, potentially utilize PG&E settlement funds. Um, this these conversations obviously started back in august We had a series of meetings. We also did a public input session some public input processes The next The next step beyond this The next step beyond this will be I am so sorry. I had preloaded Items my apologies It's all good councilwoman Fleming was grooving I saw The next step will be a january 12th presentation Uh, but with our fiscal consultants pfm to address potential investment opportunities and the restrictions around investing funds and then We will also have a meeting it In the latter part of january early february With our federal lobbying teams and that's really important because you're going to see some items That potentially we're understanding may have some opportunities to be funded on the federal side in this portfolio of opportunities The just as a reminder for council members those federal opportunities, even if they exist Will likely um require a match by the city In some form or capacity Um, so at the end of this you're also going to get a roll-up of all of the requests to date with Uh potential cost estimates from staff um And the question which will uh, we we would like to have answered by the end of the presentation as we prepare for Bowl setting and budget conversations beginning in february Is is there anything else that council wants to see between now and those conversations in february? Again, we'll have a follow-up meeting on the 12th With our investment portfolio advisors And then we will have a conversation With our federal lobbying team about what what we're hearing are potentially some ways To maximize and leverage federal funding And now I will turn it over to chief gossum Good afternoon everyone One second Good afternoon, mayor and council members welcome new new vice mayor rogers and and mr. Alvarez It's good to see you here. My name is tony gosman. I'm the fire chief for the city of san rosa Today, we are happy to present within this study session Some proposed uses of the pgne settlement funds for wildfire preparedness mitigation and resiliency projects Deputy chief scott westrop will deliver the fire department's presentation and will focus on six items Those six items are rebuilding station five moving and adding stations to meet today's needs Discussion of additional personnel to staff new stations and increase command and control Purchase of additional apparatus implementation of a comprehensive vegetation management program And the implementation of the wildland resiliency and response strategic plan which chief westrop was instrumental in developing Myself chief westrop chief moon and assistant fire Paul loathall will be available at the end of presentation for any questions that you may have And now without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to chief westrop. Thank you Thank you chief. Good afternoon, mayor rogers vice mayor rogers and member of the council scott westrop deputy fire chief with the city of san rosa What we're going to be presenting to you this afternoon is what the fire department has determined will be important moving forward and significantly increasing Our wildfire resiliency and response component components of the organization Well, this is a small part of a big picture. We feel it's vitally important to the mission of protecting the community as we move into the future We've broken this down into sort of two categories The first that i'm going to present to you is the strategies that we can immediately Implement and that will have immediate impacts with one time funding And as we move on through the presentation We'll present some strategies that are longer term in regards to completion But not necessarily longer term in in regards to necessity of the need Next slide, please So this first slide is just sort of a executive summary of the two programs that we presented to The public safety subcommittee on both september 25th And then november 23rd 2020 respectively The first is the comprehensive vegetation management program. We'll go into that more in detail in the next slide And then the center is a fire department wildland resiliency and response strategic plan, which we'll go into more detail Here in the next couple slides as well The important thing to take away from these Is we really feel that the funding of these proposals would immediately improve the prevention mitigation response capabilities For the community the city The department and without and this is without adding additional stations or operations bureau personnel Which we'll get into much further down the road here Next slide, please So the first thing we wanted to present to you was the vegetation management program This is very important to us. It's something that we have been lacking for a long time And then we've seen through the tubs The concave and the glass fire is vitally important to protecting the community So some background on this in september of 2020 The city council unanimously unanimously approved the final draft of the community wildfire protection plan or the cwpp Uh, the plan was a result of a community-based planning effort to quantify and evaluate the city's wildfire threat The plan develops hazard mitigation strategies to enhance the protection of life safety and community assets And the cwpp uses the latest wildfire science coupled with community input To serve as a guide in the development and implementation of a comprehensive vegetation management program The proposed vegetation management program will focus on improving evacuation routes community wildfire education wildfire and evacuation preparedness structural hardening of homes and infrastructure Vegetation treatments to reduce the wildfire threat Implementation of defensible space standards and increased staffing dedicated to wild and Excuse me the wildfire mitigation workload The proposed program will provide annual updates to the city council And at the conclusion of the five-year period of this plan will allow funding to complete for an updated cwpp Fire marshal moon and assistant fire marshal lontho will both are both in attendance at this meeting As the chief said and they can answer specific questions regarding the cwpp or the vegetation management program at the end of the presentation Next slide please The center is a fire department wildland resiliency and response strategic plan It's a bit of a mouthful. We call it wwe 2.0 around here Just because we tend to screw that up. So Essentially what this plan does it examines the risk and threat potential of wildland fires And so we look at that and then we're going to adjust the prevention mitigation and operational response components of the organization So it's a holistic assessment of the organization and adjusting to what we find through best practices state standards local standards or what works best for our organization to To better prepare for and respond to why these wildfires that are coming into the city limits Keeping in mind that None of the fires that we've had and we presented this to the public safety subcommittee None of the big fires that we've had have started in santa rosa. They've all come into santa rosa This is a living document that will guide the department over the next five years At which time we'll do another strengths weaknesses opportunity and threat analysis And develop a new plan moving forward based off the off the opportunities and challenges that we faced it faced in the last five years The wooey 2.0 plan will assess and adjust six major strategies That comprise the fire department wildland programs Number one's legislation. We're going to be looking at ordinances statutes fire codes state and federal policy Chief mule will be leading that strategy moving forward with a team of of internal cyber big matter experts Capital enhancements, which is essentially when we start talking about that. We're talking about Increasing our our apparatus inventory. So we're buying type 3 wildland firefighting engines type 6 wildland firefighting engines And other apparatus to support the wildland problem that we face One of the big issues we run into is often when we have these big fires We have to recall our personnel or we up staff on on red flag High fire severity danger days and we run out of equipment very quickly So it's putting the the right tools in the hand of the personnel that are going to go out and protect the community Non-capital enhancements. We're looking at increasing our ability to have better radios better communications That's always the the weak link in the chain of response Tool caches. So when we do do those major recalls and we bring our personnel back We have the proper equipment to put on those new fire engines And other apparatus that we're going to have in service and upgrading our PPE So we have some variability on our personal protective equipment for the personnel that are out there on the front lines We're going to look at our operations. We're going to sort of do a zero base budgeting approach to our operations We're going to look at our daily response matrix Our reinforced matrix on our extended matrix. So sort of the different layers of how we would respond to a major incident We're going to look at our training strategies tactics and our command level presence Within our internal organization Looking at staffing we're going to be utilizing the We're going to look at the staffing models But we're going to use the current personnel that we have assigned to our position control list So this is not adding additional personnel In this regard is basically looking at Changing some of the plans or augmenting some of the plans that we already have in place including Our up staffing plan staffing patterns and our recall policy revision And really the biggest one is community engagement while we have a community engagement Department within the the city. This is looking at how we're going to speak to the community about The wildland fire problem evacuations and everything that revolves around the wildland threat that we face And really what this is ultimately is looking at how we approach it from a whole community inclusion aspects So we're speaking to everybody regardless of demographic social economic status Or access and functional needs. So everybody's getting the same message at the same time through the proper channel So that's what that strategy group is going to be looking at Next slide, please So in addition to the previous two proposals in order to provide a more comprehensive approach We're going to look at some more long-term strategies and I said their long-term As far as completion but not necessarily in relation to how important they are And really this revolves around adding fire stations and the apparatus and personnel that go along with that Rebuilding fire station five which was lost in the Tubbs fire remains essential and unfunded although the property the purchase of the property Is is in progress Additionally as identified in the standards of fire department strategic plan and deployment analysis Two current fire stations that we have should be relocated and two additional stations should be constructed These stations would ultimately improve the capacity and capabilities of our ability to respond to the wildland urban interface areas of the city But not only just the what the wooey threat or the wildland or midface wildland urban interface threat But the strategic locations of the stations will ultimately provide better response to all districts of the city all of our fire districts And while they take one time expenditures as far as building a station, they do have ongoing costs Next slide, please So the relocation and rebuilding of fire station five We need to still build fire station five as we talked about it was lost in the Tubbs fire And the city is currently in the process of purchasing property at the corner stagecoach road and fountain grove parkway Rebuilding fire station five will restore permanent service to the fountain grove neighborhood and protection of that wildland urban interface component We do have temporary service in there But essentially our crews are in a double wide mobile home with a semi permanent structure to protect the apparatus The new location of this station will enhance the service to the entirety of fountain grove And also improve the service level to the northern portions of north mendicino avenue in the adjacent areas The property for the new station five is in the purchasing process and currently in the sequel process We've worked tirelessly staff Within the fire department within the city have worked tirelessly with the consultants to secure federal funding to rebuild fire station five However, we've been unsuccessful in that venture largely due to federal policy Next slide, please So construction of four new fire stations Um, we need to improve the strategic locations of our fire stations to better serve the wildland urban environment And we recommend the construction of four new fire stations These stations would allow us to increase service levels in several areas of the city including roseland rink and valley fountain grove skyhawk and south park In addition to providing increased service in these areas the additions would benefit the entire city as a whole by reducing High reducing call call volume at high volume stations and increasing the number of fire engine and personnel on duty What this would result in is a reduced in response times throughout the entire system So we start to play that that chess game of we move one station We have to build another station, but it's improving the capacity to the entire system as a whole Two of these additions would add protection to the wildland urban interface areas directly in the rink and valley and east fountain grove areas Add protection to the taylor mountain area and add protection to the roseland lower santa rosa avenue area So to do this we would need to move fire station six, which is currently located on calistoga road to the area of mount hawk drive and highway 12 construct fire station 12 a new station in the area of mission boulevard and monocino avenue Move fire station eight, which is currently located on burbank avenue to the area of herne avenue between whitewood drive and highway 101 And construct the new fire station nine in the area of quanta terrace and france cough avenue Next slide, please Now obviously these new fire stations More only as good as what we can put in them as far as personnel and apparatus So to adequately staff the additional fire stations and provide proper management supervision We recommend the addition of 21 additional full-time employees The relocated stations obviously we could still use the current staff that we have on duty For staffing but the new fire stations fire station nine and fire station 12 would require additional staffing The fire department currently staffs our engine companies with three personnel across three shifts So essentially a new fire station would be nine personnel In order to adequately staff these new fire stations the fire department would require the addition of 18 additional fte's into operations Additionally in order to properly manage and supervise these crews We would need to add one on duty battalion chief We currently have only have one battalion chief is on duty on a daily basis and they they have a supervision level of one to 12 so adding Pardon, they have 12 stations, but they have 14 captains that they report to them So adding a second on duty battalion Across three shifts or f three fte's. We've reduced that span of control from 14 to 1 to 7 to 1 Next slide, please And then the additional apparatus to staff the new fire stations To adequately provide fire suppression emergency response We would need to purchase two new additional type one fire engines, which is the fire engines you see on a daily basis Two additional type six fire engines, which are wildland specific firefighting fire fighting engines and one utility pickup truck The relocated stations we we could use the current apparatus that we have for response And the new fire stations fire station 9 and fire station 12 Were required the new apparatus with the ability to cross staff to a wildland specific fire engine This is in addition to the request that we talked about earlier in the center as a fire department wildland and resiliency and response strategic plan These would be specifically for those new stations and not that snapshot in time that the wooey 2.0 plan has in it The purchase of these apparatus would increase the abilities and capacities of the department on a daily basis As well as in times for need for upstaffing department recalls and during those large scale innocence that occur Within or jason to the city limits So that's it will be available at the end for at the end of the entire presentation for any questions or comments That you may have and i'll turn this over to assistant city manager jason that Good afternoon mayor rogers vice mayor rogers and council members i'm jason that i'm the assistant city manager and transportation and public works director And the community wildfire protection plan outlines a number of the of additional Areas and strategies to better protect this community from future wildfires and other disaster events On some of those are capital in nature. Some of those relate to activities They're currently in process and we'll be running through those in a systematic way In addition as you've heard from chief westrope. There are also opportunities where The improvement may be something that's within the generalized control of the city There are other improvements that may require coordination with outside agencies either at the regional state or federal levels So next slide please One of the products that we've identified In the community wildfire protection plan is the construction and activation of a hot emergency operations center We have traditionally operated a cold center, which means that whenever an emergency occurs There's an all calls to staff members who are on the appropriate Love are the appropriate initial call out phase. They'll Rally at the At the ufo building, which is where our current eoc is located And then they will unpack and set up the equipment in such a way that sets the eoc to an appropriate configuration for the type of Of activation that's being asked for We conducted that activity five times in 2019 And five times in 2020 A hot eoc what that would do is provide those facilities up operational and ready to go when a disaster hits at a time when Our emergency manager makes a phone call to those staff members Informing us that we are activating the emergency operation center We'd be able to come in and begin work immediately rather than the one and a half to two hours of build up time necessary to get that center operational In 2020 this year we did make a shift Because of some mechanical issues that were occurring at the ufo We shifted to utilize the transit operations building and the adjacent msc north building On the south side of the ufo's parking lot Those facilities worked pretty well for us in the types of activations that we had this year And we've been leaving that equipment up and operational Since we've been in in the pandemic series daily operations where we're having and utilizing that space as the As a training center is just not occurring and therefore we've been able to keep this operational as a hot eoc and we've definitely seen the benefits of having that in place We expect in order to make this a permanent facility would take approximately $400,000 to convert those two spaces to a permanent location for a hot eoc And in addition We'd have to incorporate some modifications to the existing equipment that exists in that building as well as About $150,000 to add an emergency generator A lot of these facilities have already been installed at the ufo is that was the way it was constructed The challenge is is with the type of operations that that facility sees on a day to day basis It's very difficult to set up in a specific configuration to continue to maintain that as a hot site So we're looking at alternatives and we have looked at other facilities around our our inventory to see if there are other places The transit operations building and msc north seem to be the most Properly suited To support that activity next slide please During the last couple of years actually since 2017 We have identified that there are a number of Facilities or or tools that we could benefit from in order to help assist in evacuation activities One is during the course of both the 1719 and 2020 fires Our transit system was called into action to provide support for Long-term care facilities residential care facilities and hospitals to evacuate personnel And residents to other locations to get them out of harm's way What we did notice is with the equipment that we have which is a 40 foot long bus One is very difficult to navigate some of the more narrow streets up in the high wildfire areas But we also identified that the current configuration which works great on a day to day basis for our transit riders Makes it a little bit challenging when you're dealing with Multiple wheelchairs Walkers and in some cases even this year We found that there were there were full gurneys that were being asked to try to load Into these spaces and so one of the suggestions was to create and purchase A bus that was fully convertible with tie downs in an effort to ensure that we could do the best possible Evacuation for those facilities moving forward In addition, we've identified that there are a number of barricades Of all different shapes and sizes That would benefit moving forward some have flashing yellow beacons that go on the top We have retrofitted some back in 2018 during the first ps ps events And we found that those were beneficial as as Drivers were having difficulty identifying where the intersections were which intersections were signalized and how they were supposed to respond We also noticed this year for example with some of the issues that occurred in in march and april That we needed a different kind of barrier in order to be able to try to help manage Traffic movements and help better direct movements in the course of both our downtown and in other areas of town And so you'll see on the list that there's a number of different components in here that we feel That we don't have currently in stock that would be beneficial for us to be able to incorporate So that we can support better and more efficient movement of people during mass evacuation routes next slide The police department has been actively engaged with developing their new radio system and converting from their prior Operation now all of the radios in this in in town all of our two-way radios are actually connected on a similar repeater system And so once the police department starts to relocate to move their Program into this new system others will have to do so as well And so we're in the process of working with police to figure out how we're going to modernize our radio system And as you can see we've started the installation. It does require some system hardware and software improvements and It's it is a work in progress but there are capital needs in order to Implement this in some of the other departments next slide please Evacuation routes seem to be one of the biggest questions that has come up from both the 17 the 19 and the 20 fires And there are a few ways that we believe in looking through the cwpp as well as talking with our city traffic engineer And listening to the feedback that we received that we could benefit and improve the scenarios To improve to figure out how to better remove people in and out of our high wildfire fire areas one is to Add quick connects into our traffic signals that would allow us to to place portable generators We did see some of that occur during the 2018 psps events and again in the 2019 psps events In some cases it was last minutes. We cobbled together. We made it happen We're suggesting more permanent locations where we have less worry about leaving those facilities out in place During the length of time that some of those signals may be out We are in the process of retrofitting all of our traffic signals with battery backup battery electric backup systems That would allow them to operate anywhere from six to 12 hours depending upon the configuration of the intersection But many of our events where power outages occur extend beyond that and that's where the generators would come in We're also looking at the development of fleshing plans So the fire department did a fantastic job working with our community engagement team and our public information team on the development of evacuation areas and evacuation zones And this year in 2020 As we looked through the glass fire There was a systematic approach on how we went through the evacuation procedures for many of those areas that were impacted What would be the next step is to develop an actual systematic traffic model that would help us identify proper Utilization of those zones so that we can ensure that we have the best flow through Our congested streets so that we reduce the amount of impact to the street reduce the delay for folks trying to get out of their evacuation zones and so we've identified that that is a key thing for us And a couple of the other things that are very important as well Most of the signals that we have in our wildland urban interface are not interconnected either with copper or fiber Given some of the inquiries that have come forward in the fact that fiber optic cable is a far superior product to copper We believe that the implementation of fiber optic interconnects through all of our signals out on the wet out on the east side of town Is critical and important it would allow us to implement closed circuit cameras So that we can monitor situations at the critical intersections so that we know where and how to deploy our staff the best Whether it's fire resource police resource or public works resource It gives us more information during the course of an event so that we feel comfortable managing what we think might be limited resources during those high time events next line In addition to the evacuation routes We did identify that there were some concerns Over the last couple of fire events with our capacity for fire flow fire flow meaning this is the water supply to our fire systems And especially up in the hill areas You know we when we lose power It creates some problems as you recall from 2017 We did see some reduction in pressure in the system And that's and that is what ended up drawing some of that superheated air into the the water The water system that that caused some of the contamination in a small area of fountain grove We've been happy that none of the most recent fires have caused us to lose any pressure within the system And we were able to provide the type of Support needed for fire to act to activate and do their job successfully As we looked in detail in our system You'll see that there are a list of things that we could do to further enhance and improve that network so that fire sees in Sees the highest possible benefit to fight fires in the future and that includes increasing pipe to the diameters it includes adding some suction pipeline improvements increasing some of the size of our high flow pumps and um We we believe we've got some very specific pressure zones that we could make those implementation Or we can implement those techniques into that would be of high benefit next slide please continuing on the evacuation routes There are there are four primary evacuation points And i'll say points which is which is where we want people to try to get to so that they have choices on how to then Evacuate in an appropriate manner Three of those locations are within our specific control meaning their their projects that the city currently has Or the city has full control of so Shanae road is a good example That's a fairly important or it's a very important Evacuation route for the hidden valley area the Montecito area and the lower fountain growth area It's not a particular road that we've studied in an effort to try to identify all of the techniques to improve the evacuation But the initial statement or the initial thoughts that we had were removing the Removing the medians looking at some traffic circles to reduce the number of non non-controlled intersections And doing some lane modifications in an effort to provide Both community residents an opportunity to to have easy access out But also our public safety staff to be able to manage not only the large groups of people exiting But their ability to continue to get up into the area that may be That may be suffering from a wildfire Santa was avenue pedal in pedaluma hill road This really is the access to highway 101 through the herna avenue interchange There are a couple of other projects and you'll hear about those along the way that connected this But the herna avenue interchange is a primary location While we've while we've had most of our fires in the northeast and the east side of town The taylor mountain area in the southeast part of town is also highly susceptible. It's part of our wooey and When you look at the challenges we see Evacuating out of Bennett valley the Bennett valley area and along highway 12 The highway 12 and 101 interchange is a major bottleneck and it's a structural problem that we're not likely going to be able to Find a way Of making substantial improvements And so looking at dividing that traffic into different points along highway 101 is important And the herna avenue interchange is one of those keys Then when we talk about Sonoma highway Sonoma highway is actually the center part of town that highway This is the one I was just mentioning where you're talking about the highway 12 101 That that interchange is is highly impacted not only during Vacuation processes, but also during our regular rush hour And so when we conducted a series of traffic impact studies in and around that area It was identified that the farmers lane extension project as an evacuation route Made substantial benefit to the highway 12 101 interchange That does connect to the herna avenue interchange and like I said, it's part of an interconnected system But that is an evacuation route that both of those projects are in essence shovel ready Herna avenue interchange actually is fully designed fully environmentally compliant And there's just a waiting funding The farmers lane extension project is 90 design has a fully certified environmental document However, it has gotten stale and will need to be refreshed along the way So both of those projects are are part of that southeastern part of town. Next slide, please There as I mentioned, there are projects that are Critical to us to look at as well, but are not necessarily in full control of the city And so I'll walk through those here right now next slide So when we look at undergrounding utilities, obviously PG knee owns the infrastructure For the overhead utilities and we would need to work very closely with them They have a number of programs such as rule 20 a rule 20 b and rule 20 c All of which are associated with the undergrounding of utilities for various purposes and with various funding streams What we heard is we talked with the fire department Is that is that there were a series of areas in in our communities that have very narrow streets. They're windy They get a little convoluted as far as access and ease of movement of not only Our fire and public safety apparatus, but also for the general public in an effort to evacuate And that's compromised when we have when we have times where power poles and power lines are down And we did see some of this in prior in our prior events over the last few years Where areas like Los Olivos road or Or juliet drive or sunrise avenue Experienced power outages and down lines and there was very limited ability for Both the public and our fire response units to be able to get into those areas And so if we had to look at priorities for undergrounding for the benefit of future wildfire safety These two areas Are the ones that we identified as the most critical not just for the ability to get folks out, but it's really and and Chief Westrope will probably be able to chime in on this if you ask Really our ability to get into those areas to provide the public safety need that that is is really so critical and important next slide And then there's a two additional evacuation routes One relates to fountain growth parkway, which is really the relief area at the Mendocino over crossing That over crossing, you know, we kind of joke about was an experiment at Caltrans at some point in time They wanted to see they were it's almost felt like they were testing out interchanges In santa rosa because because no two are the same This one in particular has some substantial limitations in its capacity And as we saw when we were evacuating folks in 2017 It created some fairly robust backups along not only fountain growth parkway, but also Mendocino avenue This has not Risen to the level of project per se It is in our regional transportation plan as a future project to study and investigate We estimate that it does have about a 50 million dollar total Cost to not only evaluate study, but also then implement Sonoma highway, this is the eastern part of sonoma highway. We've heard for decades that There's an interest in wanting to see sonoma highway widened from the current two lane portion To something wider whether it's a three or four lane It is it is a question that continues to come up As the state of california owns operates and maintains that section of highway It's something that we could initiate as a partner But it would not be something that we would necessarily have control to implement on our own and so That is those are two Two projects we think are valuable to consider to look at and continue to move forward with In the future with our partnership with caltrans next slide And with that i'll turn it over to uh interim chief financial officer Good afternoon council as jason said i am the interim chief financial officer I'm going to take you through a number of slides That summarize the cost that that we are dealing with with these projects They're shown in the order of the presentation and then i'll take you through The cost that we've identified From previous presentations So next slide please So one of the things that we've tried to do is provide some sort of a legend Color coding if you will to Allow us to identify those projects that are general fund funded Those that we are still Searching for state and federal fundings those that are are funded by the enterprise fund and those that have been Denied by theme or or are under appeal so we have the Projects that are shown in blue type Our enterprise fund Are potentially enterprise fund funded The orange Type is for the state or federal funding The purple is for the ones that are under appeal with fema And the red are is the one there's only one listed that Has been appealed and denied by fema Most of the projects that you're going to see are in normal black type face Um For two reasons one We while we are actively pursuing state and federal funding grant and legislative funding They haven't been completely identified yet And or Anything that is not enterprise funded will Most likely require the general fund either to initially fund the project And as we go through a grant reimbursement program or that there'll be a local match Next slide please So the projects that were Described by chief westeros for the wildfire resiliency Are listed here and So the the first was the comprehensive five-year vegetation management program and estimating at about 5.25 million dollars For that five-year program Then the wild land resiliency and response strategic plan Excuse me. It is a tongue twister. Louis 2.0 is about 2.7 2.8 million dollars Rebuilding and relocating fire station five now. This is one that is Shown in purple. It is currently under appeal with fema However, it is our second appeal with fema on that But that's about 15 million dollars We're moving to and adding to fire stations for a total of four fire stations At about 60 million dollars is the cost there Now not included in these totals Are the uh the additional staffing costs that will come with it and I did that because we're primarily looking at one time funding and capital Needs when we're looking at at at these large projects, however As was stated earlier When you build a new fire station, you do need to staff it. So we're looking at around 4.6 million dollars a year Of ongoing staffing costs that would go along with that and then of course there is the additional apparatus That would go for those new stations at about 2.3 million dollars for a grand total of about 85 million 305 thousand dollars For those projects listed under the wildfire resiliency next slide, please So moving on to the infrastructure projects and as as jason mentioned There are those and we we broke them out between those that are city control That are completely within our jurisdiction and those that are Um, uh, would need other agency involvement. So the city controlled ones $550,000 for the evacuation equipment Or for the the hot eoc 650,000 for the evacuation equipment The radio infrastructure. So we we include the total price. We we kind of lumped All this together of about three point Two million dollars. However, the water enterprise fund the the cost for the radio is involved in there would be about 450,000 and we're looking at Traffic signalization and we've identified the depth potentially available for federal Or state funding We have the fire flow facility improvements and that's largely a water enterprise projects That could be funded through that enterprise And then we have the improved evacuation Rounds from the wooey and 88 million and again. These are projects that could be Utilize state and federal funding Uh, and then moving over to the other agency involvement programs We do have the underground utilities in the wooey at 21 million dollars That would You know, obviously we would need to work with PG&E as was mentioned and then we have the larger evacuation route area at 100 million and again the potential of looking for Funding with that. So of the one time infrastructure projects that are under city control, you're looking at about 128.7 million dollars and then when you add in or the Take into consideration the Regional projects you're looking at about 249 million. I know that that we've kind of combined that there even though As you can tell the sub total of the regional projects would be 121 million dollars. So we're adding there Next slide, please So, uh, these projects, uh, were identified in past presentations As Sean mentioned before we we've had several Both at the council, study session level at the subcommittee level and um out with the community in various community virtual meetings So, uh, they're identified here. Um, I'll go through them briefly As you recall, we we had unmet needs that we identified in the Fire burn area So first of which we have the local assistance Or the local match for any of the public assistance programs Or projects that we're going with through FEMA These are for projects that have already been approved and obligated with FEMA. We're estimating that That there's potential local match of about 1.1 million dollars with them and then we have a a project that was This doesn't really come out as red as I had Thought but that should be red. It's sidewalk repair In the damaged areas. This was uh appealed and denied through FEMA We estimated those from those identified that went in on that project at about 4.1 million however in We've been asked What the sidewalk repair? Rather damaged or not in the total area And we were able to come up with a cost estimate of about 45 Little over 45 million dollars And that's taking into account about Little over 1.1 million dollar 1.1 million square feet of sidewalk And about 70 735 ramps that would need to Be both removed disposed replaced There's design costs. It's allowed and that's in there. There's some contract costs So you're getting that's how it comes up with 45 million dollars for that Then there are potential Ineligible costs from FEMA. So we know that That included in an obligated project. So FEMA will will agree to the total Project, but there are some things that upon closeout Probably won't be allowed. So a lot of that has to do with landscaping and those types of costs So we have kind of a broad estimate there of about 5 million dollars that that That we may need to pay for with that. And then we have another one that is Under appeal, this is a pavement repair again pavement identified as as part of a FEMA PA project Of 24 million. So you're looking at the the unmet needs including the sidewalk sidewalk repair Damage did not damage of Of 79.4 million dollars On september 15th, we had a joint study session with Our joint presentation In front of the council at study session of staff and management partners will showing the how we ended the 1920 fiscal year and giving an update of the The fiscal condition of The city at that time of the general fund at that time, but also revamping our our long-range financial forecast to further take in the the end of year numbers and changes in our COVID recessionary projections And in that there were number of suggestions and strategies that were included by management partners and one of them was to Was to provide 30 million dollars to restore general fund reserves to allow for that fiscal stability And what that's representing is the costs that have come from the general fund over time as we've Hit a number of disasters All the way up through including to the costs That we're experiencing or the drawdown of reserves as we're experiencing from COVID impacts Then there were additional projects you heard some of these before there's Jump-starting the housing in the downtown of 10 million dollars Members of the southeast greenway committee have identified land acquisition and at about 12 million dollars There and then we have a rough estimate of the rosalind library At about 10 million those are those are projects that have come up in a number of presentations both in front of council and within the community Next slide please So this is a complete roll-up of everything that we've seen so from the the Slides in this presentation, but then also in prior in prior slides. So you're looking at about Three hundred and fifty five million dollars of projects city control projects The ones that were mentioned tonight being the Or presented tonight being the 85 million of wildfire resiliency and 128 million dollars of infrastructure Then you have your Unmet needs in the burn area of little over 79 million And then the mouth for fiscal sustainability of 30 million and 32 million dollars of other projects And then when you add the regional projects of 121 million dollars to that you're looking at 476 million dollars in change I would also note that the ongoing staffing costs like I mentioned before we we Did not have that included in the one-time projects. It's there There's a typo in that in that it should be 4.6 million dollars So that wraps it up with that and the next slide please So then there were other projects that that came out Of our community meetings and and just at council presentations as well But they're rather broad in range and we haven't As of yet narrowed the scope to be able to come up with a A real cost estimate for those They're just shown here in that These were important to the community in terms of People speaking to them, but we just don't have a cost for those yet and as Sean mentioned before next slide, please What we are looking to do And in terms of next steps In that this is the final scheduled presentation Of these types of projects for the use of PG&E settlement funds Staff Can answer and provide additional Information as we move through the winter and or through december and into The budget season just some kind of quick notes for you In addition to what shah had mentioned to keep on your radar Internally staff starts developing the budget And and loading it around mid january Toward the end of january On february 9th, we will have a budget priorities Public hearing this is required by charter And we will include with that a mid-year budget update and then there's of course Goal setting that is february 18th and 19th Ideally any of these projects to move forward they we need Direction from council to do that to be either able to either Include within the budget or or outside of the budget, but those are the The uh, I at some point in the future. That's the direction that we'll need from council and with that Uh, I think all the staff is available to answer questions And I turn it back over to the council Great. Thank you so much. Mr. Alton I will start with council questions if you'd hit the raise hand feature if you have any And I'll start with councilwoman fleming Thank you, mayor and thank you all for um the great presentation and I have to say I'm a huge fan Of the uniform santa rosa background thing the fire while really cool looks like donuts And I don't think that's really your brand over there in fire. But anyway, um So, uh, what the person I wanted to know is um have um we collaborator Rather we have y'all collaborated with the county around any of this fire mitigation stuff and the The reason I'm asking you this question is because in You know in district four, which you know along with districts, uh, let's see Um two and three, you know, we get a lot of the brunt of Uh fire risk, um, you know, I know napa is famous for exporting auto parts But now they're famous for exporting fires as well Um, I think they'd like to be better known for wine. But at any rate, um, we're we're sort of on that that eastern front and um And I'm just curious to know given that some of my district and probably other districts have these County pockets in them. Um, if we're closely collaborating around the fire mitigation and vegetation management um And um abatement programs with with our county counterparts and where they're at with that I'll go ahead and start. Dina if we can promote scott moon and paul lone fall They're they're ready to participate. So yes, uh Councilman we're flaming there We do participate with at a regional level I will say that I know paul is working With a group fire safe sonoma. He's on their board of directors So there's a lot of collaboration with the county was sonoma county fire district was surrounds the city and all other entities combined so In the fire prevention side of the house, uh, they are constantly meeting on the vegetation management program One of the problems that I see it's got to be a regional Issued to deal with The big fires that come to us come from another county And there's a lot of land in between there and that's not only Private but it stayed it's local there everyone owns a little bit of that land And it's very difficult to to create shaded breaks where you need them because of the patchwork of ownership And and really what you would need to do the last landscape to to make that happen I appreciate that answer and you know, um, it's difficult as it is The the reality is is that fire really doesn't care about jurisdiction It's the or ownership of property. And so I am, um, you know, hopeful that At least with our county partners and perhaps with our partners in nappa that we can Try to address some of this stuff because you know, it gets really on the granular level and in my district where You know, they'll someone will email their supervisor about eucalyptus grove, you know behind The civic market or rural cemetery and they'll be like, well, which block are you on? Literally, you know, it's like one block might be city and the next block might be county And so, um, at least to the degree that we can set that stuff Aside or reconciled out within, you know, our more densely populated areas. I get that further out there There's it's even more complicated But um in the in the urban the wooey area in my district, I'd be very interested in supporting Whatever whatever efforts are underway Overage it. Yep. Thank you House members by them Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you all for the presentation. Again, it's feedback that we've been soliciting and now we're Overwhelmed with information and options one question. I did have on slide 26 about the sidewalk repair Because I know many in northwest Santa Rosa were severely impacted by that Obviously, if we took the option of the entire sidewalk repair 45 million bucks worth It takes this question out But if we went for the 4.1 million Where would constituents go to find out does that include the sidewalk in front of my house? Thank you. Councilmember Schwedhelm We do have a map that identifies specific locations that we submitted to FEMA that shows where damaged was identified whether it was specific cracking From the debris removal mission or if it was discoloration and potential spalling That occurred because something very hot burned adjacent to it. So if we get to the point where we actually have Funding for this We're happy to go ahead and post that information. So folks can identify where those are I guess I I totally understand why you know wait for the approval before we identify it But I know a lot of residents would like to know because if hey, how come mine's not included How would I get my sidewalk included in that dollar figure? You understand? So I will um, I will ask staff to assess that and how we can get that information out Councilmember Schwedhelm Thank you, but it was a there was a great deal of conversation I think at both the surveys and in some of the public meetings that would be very helpful Thank you, Mr. City Manager. That's the only question I have right now Thank you councilmember. Are there any other questions from council? All right, I've got a couple and I don't entirely know who who all to uh address them towards One I'm gonna start with paul because I've been bending paul's at ear about this for a little bit One of the ideas that I was curious about and I know some folks in the in the public were curious about was whether or not a Trail network in the uh, northeast side of santa rosa could act to both be an enhancement of our quality of life For our constituents who like to get out into nature But also potentially double as a firebreak and an access point for uh fire vehicles Particularly some of the ones that we've talked about potentially adding in here Um, and I I don't know if that would be even remotely useful. Obviously, it's it's not the the priority that's been put forward from Uh, from the department But is that something that the city would be potentially interested in looking into? Uh, or would it or their drawbacks for why we wouldn't probably want to go down that route? so, um So first i'll start off with uh Councilmember fleming's question And which kind of works my way into uh, mayor roger's question Yes, we do collaborate with the county. In fact, the development of the community wildfire Protection plan included what was formerly rinking valley fire district And is now sonoma county fire district because they have a lot of pockets of county property Within the city of santa rosa as well as directly around us That agency was also like I said part of the development of the plan And ultimately some of the actionable items that are specific to vegetation management Include what have been identified as fuel Treatment areas that are needed both in the city and outside the city So there are specific scopes of work that are identified in the actionable items that will require That coordination with our county partners In regards to your question Mayor roger's um ironically the The consultant that we use geo elements when they did their presentation to us They did a Community wildfire protection plan for monocetope fire protection district in santa barbara And they identified a very linear Fuel break which is similar to what you're describing as that kind of walking path along The northeast corner of the city That fuel break Met a very specific need and clearly we've seen and identified a threat from our community From that side of town so any type of Application whether it's a trail network that's linear and can be used for both firefighting apparatus apparatus as well as A fuel future fuel treatments as a fuel break would obviously be beneficial But ultimately the plan itself Has utilizing science climate, you know climate science both a lot of the The studies that were done on our actual fuels our topography Outline not only areas that would benefit from that trail, but ultimately Fuel treatments across not only our wildland interface all across the city, but around it as well So those treatment areas have been very detailed and outlined in the plan itself But it's definitely something that can be explored Yeah, I think I'd be interested in just a little bit more information This does seem like the type of opportunity to both enhance our ability to to fight fires as well as as I said Give give something special to our residents or something additional to our residents Kind of on the same the same path. I got a question from a constituent About why they weren't hearing about more controlled burns or the funding for more controlled burns Uh, it's what I'm hearing from you is that some of that discussion about the fuel load reduction They should be looking into the the specifics of the community wildfire protection plan to find some of those opportunities or areas So that's Two different things. One is the fuel treatment, which is the reduction the physical mechanical removal We are looking at actual burning. That's something that we've discussed During the initial developments of the community wildfire protection plan And we're actually in communications with the city attorney's office right now It's something we heard loud and clear from our hillside communities primarily fountain grove Where they have a lot of open space Where they are actively doing fuel treatments and don't have the means to get the fuels out of essentially harms way Chief moon and I actually met with some of the open space Board members and toured some of the work and the millions of dollars that they put into Treating a lot of their areas already But ultimately they would stand to benefit from an ordinance here locally where they would be able to burn Conduct burns of piles of treatments that have been that have taken place But we're really making sure that as we Look into that and potentially bring that before council that we do or do diligence to make sure that it's going to be beneficial and really Target very specific applications throughout the city. We don't have intentions to just allow open burning Anywhere in the city it would again be very specific as we continue to Look on the potential ordinance ordinance including Larger parcels over five acres areas where they truly wouldn't stand to benefit from that Or right now it there's no way to get it out other than flying it out Okay, great. I really appreciate that. Thank you And obviously as councilwoman Fleming mentioned a lot of this is coordination with other entities One of the things that we had originally this is a question for the city manager One of the areas that we had Initially pursued in the build rebuild ad hoc meeting right after the 2017 fires Was a joint powers authority between or joint powers agreement between Santa Rosa county of Sonoma some of the other cities that are involved And I just wanted to see if we could get a status update on what that effort might look like Especially given that we've been through a number of different emergencies that I know that I've derailed it And if there's still value in pursuing that conversation Well, thank you Mayor rogers. I think there is a lot of value in that conversation There has been some real transition within A variety of partners both on the municipal level and the county level and then a set of emergencies I do think that You're going to hear about this conversation with the the mayor and Mayor's group mayors and council members groups coming up in the first half of next year There may be a need to provide some pressure. I think some of the regional conversations require All of us sitting at the table as we saw I was just reviewing this conversation from back in 18 about the trips we made to san diego And assuring that everybody had a single vote and a real representation and that We got away from some of the territorial conversations that unfortunately go in in some of these Into some of these developments are these these agencies, but I think We just can't continue as we are and we need to step forward and have Equal representation across the county for all of the major Jurisdictions in this conversation So that we can make as as council member Fleming referenced earlier regional decisions Including regional investment strategies, right? I mean, this is one of these things that both the county and the city have received Potential PG&E settlements But but I would say we could go further In working together to try to figure out how to maximize Investment going forward it will take some time It will take some joint decision making and there will probably be some other players in the conversation the other cities But I think it would be really worth the effort And and you know, I think we'll have some opportunity to address it But we've got to break down these continue to break down these silos and work as a region For the protection and safety of our constituents I appreciate that now chief I know one of the conversations that Obviously had worked its way through that you were involved in was the Fire measure that the county put forward that obviously failed. There's a new one that's being put forward as well For some of this increased staffing and the potential of the staff The the two new stations and then the two move stations Um Would the new measure potentially play a role in funding that or does the city still need to help identify additional resources That would be needed I would say both so major g which did not pass by a very slim margin They were talking about bringing that forward in this this june There will be a campaign behind it if it does move forward. I will tell you that plan does It it gave us three stations to build out and the personnel as well as the the second battalion So that is all encompassing of the major g the old major g if you're talking about the west county hotel Tax that has nothing to do with us and that has that that one we will not see any money from that So I would say yes, we do need to you know, we got to look at prop 19 We got to look at everything that's new to the city to see where we can Fund some of these positions, but if measure g just go forward and it is successful We are a part of that and it will uh fill those vacancies All right, I appreciate that. Thank you that obviously uh the 400 and something million dollar price tag for this this whole wish list We might want to entertain conversations around some form of a fire resiliency bond And I'd look to the city manager for what that discussion might look like Or where we could potentially start to have some of those conversations on funding Outside of the PG&E settlement funds since this would obviously exhaust that Well, we're part of today is to understand if there's any other places We need to actively look in preparation for the budget and the goal setting and that's an absolutely A conversation we can have during both setting do we want to look at these through some kind of bonding? Opportunity so Staff's open for that guidance Just we want to make sure that you have all the information That that you need going into the next budget and goal setting cycle As I said, there is this conversation about investment because that was one of the questions that Councilmember tidbits brought forward and we're going to have our experts come forward And and talk about what you can and cannot do In the investment realm on January 12th Great. Thank you so much. And that was my my last question So if it works for folks, I don't see any other questions from council members We will take public comment on this item If you are interested in speaking You have the ability to raise your hand in the lower right hand portion of zoom You'll have three minutes to address the council And then we'll bring it back for any final comments from council members There anybody in the public would like to speak on this item Okay, madame city clerk. I'm not seeing any hands raised So if we can move on to No voice message comments. How about email comments? Email comments received by 5 p.m. Last night were uploaded this morning and the agenda was republished The public has access to those email public comments Excellent. Thank you so much Uh with that I will bring this back to the council for any last comments Councilmember alvarez Yes, thank you. Thank you mayor Uh for the general public just a little bit of history lesson. It was uh 1861 where San Rosa introduces first volunteer prior fighting teams It was 33 years later that a transitioned into a A paid organization My question to my fellow My firefighters is have we looked at introducing a program such as Volunteer firefighters for san rosen's to be able to Support your efforts in fighting fires I'll turn this over to uh chief westrop as he's he's working on as part of the plan moving forward Not so much volunteers but an explorer type program Chief westrop Yeah, thank you councilmember alvarez so We're looking at a couple different things right now A true volunteer fire department or what it would essentially turn our fire department into is a combination fire department Is not something we've necessarily explored But one of the things that we're working on through our recruitment and diversity strategic plan Is to bring on an explorer program So that's bringing in youth of the community into an explorer post And we can not necessarily use them in an emergency environment, but that's more of a breeding ground for Recruitment and diversity later on down the line that comes with the mentorship program And so there's that aspect that's coming into play and we presented the Recruitment and diversity strategic plan in the public safety subcommittee a few months ago So we are handling it from that component, but the volunteer components very Very complicated in a lot of realms and one of the problems is we don't have the management or oversight to do so And and quite frankly it's it's going to be a major issue within the labor groups and things like that to bring in volunteers But at this point nothing's off the table As far as us moving forward particularly in the realm of recruitment and diversity So it's something that we could explore a little bit, but it's it's pretty far down the road as far as our list of things to do at this point Great Any other questions councilmember alvarez? Yes the following of more of a comment I noticed that a lot of our and rightfully so a lot of our funds are definitely going to the areas They're most affected by the fires, which is our east side east of one-on-one specifically But nonetheless though to my fellow councilmembers I would hope that we also take into account those individuals who show up after the fires have subsided Those individuals who show up to clean up the grounds that have been burnt by these fires Specifically those members from the district one who are tasked with cleaning up our our hill sites and with that being said I hope that we take the issue of the library Very seriously and and it is a way to compensate for the efforts and the The sacrifices that the members of my community are making sure to to help out the members of the other side of my community And I assure you I am willing to defend the east side if need be with a hose and a shovel if it hasn't happened Right. Thank you All right. Thank you, sir councilwoman fleming Thank you, mayor So a couple of things that to this point. I just wanted to once again make staffers such a comprehensive And technically deep dive into what would be You know an amazing way to spend 400 million dollars throughout a community. However That haven't been said, you know as we get closer to You know the decision date I'll be looking for when I talk about this with investment portfolios in our PG and money But I'll also be looking to to you and your expertise about what will be the most effective way to spend You know the money that that we have Or a portion of the money that we have to to do this and how can we You know not avoid reinventing the wheel or double doing and how we can streamline with our community partners and which things Well, we yield us the best return on investment in terms of life safety and fire prevention And community assets. So um to that end I'm really looking forward and reviewing this and Having conversations with you all about The most effective way to deploy our limited resources I did have one follow-up question that I should have asked earlier, but which is Was around the radios. I know that last year We spent five million dollars Leave outside of the police budget to augment their radio technology Do you guys use a separate? Radio system. Is there any way to Is this unified in anywhere? I remember when I talked with chief Navarro getting A lesson on you know radio technology and be interested for the rest of the council to hear how how that works Yeah, thank you for the question We do use a separate radio system. We belong to red com Which is a regional dispatch center for all fire and ems agencies within the county law enforcement, which is considered the primary public PSAP primary public dispatch center They each city has their own the county has one the city of santa rosa has one and most other cities also have Their own primary dispatch. We are separate from that in terms of the hardware and the The radio waves that we use ones uhf ones vhf. So we're on separate systems They do make radios that are compatible to where we can talk to each other It essentially patches through and we're all looking at at looking at that type of technology But it they are separate systems Okay, i'm just curious to know if ideally Because to my mind it would make sense given how closely you work with Police and sheriffs departments and evacuations and the role in this It would make sense to start looking toward a consolidation of you know, the various technologies and interested to hear going forward And maybe to the public safety subcommittee what the pros and cons of each system are and you know, not disrupting things as folks are used to using them but Creating greater efficiencies and greater opportunities for safety and savings so We do We'll schedule that for an upcoming public safety subcommittee to begin a conversation about dispatch And where there might be Opportunities to coalesce in a different model. So yeah, I certainly don't know enough about it Yeah, I can look forward to learning a heck of a lot more. We'll bring it forward. Okay. Thank you um, so that was just one outstanding question that I had um a comment around um, so my primary comment was around efficiently using the funds that we have uh to best protect and harden our community and then the second thing I had was to council member Alper as his point which is that you know, I think that this is not just about The folks who come in and clean up after us. It's the fact that the PG&E funds were awarded To reimburse the entire city for the entire city's expenditures that have been unreimbursed Not one particular area. So I'm very mindful and grateful to the efforts put forward And the financial support that the whole city um lend to my district in recovering from the touch fire And I do believe and hold equity really close to my heart And to that end, you know, I think that we ought to look at things like You know, if we are going to repair sidewalks, which we've decided as a city are The responsibility of individual homeowners but have been placed Disproportionately in white and upper and middle class areas Should we not spend it would be probably in visa financially invisible to spend an equal amount on sidewalks in lower income areas But should we not at least spend an equal amount of money on trying to build out infrastructure Not just the library but Also sidewalks and and there are things that will make it safer for for children and families to utilize their neighborhoods across our city So i'll be interested in having this conversation What through the lens of the equity one comes down to making a decision Thank you Thank you, councilwoman council members twiddle Thank you, mr. Mayor. Uh once again, I just want to uh applaud the city manager and staff for providing us all this information We will be having some rather i'm sure dynamic Conversations about the use of these funds moving into 2021 But as this is our last uh city council meeting, I do want to of 2020. Um, I do want to acknowledge and congratulate Mr. Deputy chief westrup will become our interim fire chief upon the retirement of our fire chief tony gosner And tony, I really want to thank you for your years of service I wish we could do some in-person things But this is uh, I think our last opportunity because I'm not sure you're later on in the agenda But I think for both you mr. Westrup and you mr. Gosner the city of santa rosa has been very fortunate to have fire professionals of your caliber serve this community So I utmost want to thank you and respect the job that you've done for us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Um, I'll I'll just say um various more coming on that. Um, uh, some transitional conversations during the city manager's update if uh, I don't want to Uh leave council without an opportunity to thank some key staff members Yeah, and uh council members will have a chance to weigh in uh on item Uh, I believe it's eight on the agenda Uh council member soyer any comments on the study session No, thank you mayor. Just thanks for such a um, this would have been an incredibly difficult task to put together all of these numbers Thanks, allen and to be able to with all the input coming from staff in the fire department You guys have done a stellar job It's it's a daunting task for the council to make any kind of decisions um, you have laid out before us of an amazing task and um, I'm just I know that the 95 million Um, I knew all along that it wasn't going to amount to much when we looked at our our needs But um, at least you you put it in front of us and I really appreciate the detail And I appreciate the the in some cases the prioritization I just wish the needs weren't quite this this giant But we're not going to do it in one day and you know, well at least we have 95 And but there's there are so many different paths where that's going to have to go But um, we got a good picture of what the needs are as far as moving forward with our public safety As far as fire goes and I really appreciate the effort Council member timmits Thanks mayor. Yeah, I just want to convey my thanks to everybody in the fire department and alan And others who contributed to putting this together You know, I think that the problem that I'm having with it Is it's so daunting to look at those price tags and then try to begin To look at what's going to be the most valuable asset for our community and their safety and future fire events Is it is it the new engine assets? Is it widening all those roads which by the looks of it? We can't afford unless we go buy a powerball ticket Or doing you know looking at any number of things but So I'd like to follow up with what I think councilwoman Fleming said which was you know could could fire maybe prioritize To us, you know, what what's the the top 25 million? You know or you pick the number but itemize I mean it can be everything but in this hierarchical order Here's what's most important to us. It's going to help us provide the best service to the residents of santa rosa I think that's going to be what's going to influence, you know, my decision going into The PG&E discussion Just from my you know own Under limited understanding of fire. It seems to me that vegetation management might be the most significant Um, uh program that you brought forward tonight And I'm gonna just tell a quick story about when I had the opportunity to go Visit the glass fire burn area with victoria tom and and the chief And uh, you know chief if you'll remember we're walking around looking at how the fire Basically stopped right at the edge of those homes in oakmont And you pointed the ground you said looks like there was some goats grazing here Or this was the fire break caused by the dozer line And and I know that dozer's not so much vegetation management but that concept of adequate defensible space not having a lot of Undergrowth and things like that to me seems like it's going to be the most important My follow-up question, uh, you know, will be is how do we fund that year after year? I like that we have a multiple year plan here, but um, does it then become a conversation about well, we're going to invest Uh 25 million into the lake if that's our only investment option But we have a funding source for robust vegetation management into the foreseeable future to protect the city So those are my thoughts after listening to your presentation and again, thank you for it Thank you council member uh vice mayor Um, so I would like to say thank you for the presentation and also for both of you From fire. Thank you for your service to our community Um, and the people that you work with Uh, I would like to echo much of what, um Victoria said and Jack about effective ways to use resources and prioritizing It seems like a lot when we look at it all at one time. So, um, I'm not sure if we would give you a dollar amount And then you would prioritize or if you would, you know, how that would work, but it really would Uh, be easier for me if we, uh, have some prioritization about how you guys wanted to Spend a certain dollar amount or what you felt was Our most need in the community although I know it's all of you Thank you Thank you so much and I think my comments are going to be exactly the same thing that it would be helpful for me as a council member to hear from From fire what the priority list is going to be understanding that with a price tag so big We're not going to be able to do everything at the same time I did have a question an additional question for you paul with the community wildfire protection plan We have typically been talking about these funds from pgd in terms of timeline aligned with the city's budget From a weed abatement and vegetation management perspective, what is the best timeline for us to kick one of those programs off and uh Is there a sense of urgency that the council should be aware of So, thank you. And actually uh fire marshal mononiac had that conversation this morning The issue we're running into specific to the community wildfire protection plan Is that that plan is only good for five years and it very clearly identified nine categories with over 40 specific items One of which we kind of dealt with and that was adding staff So If you recall we approved that one extra body a limited term through your position to help With the implementation of the program But ultimately From our standpoint the sooner that we're able to get Funds the quicker that we can start on the plan We fully respect and understand that it is a long list and there's a lot of competing priorities But as i'm sure as councilman refleming mentioned that we're hearing from a lot of those residents too And we're directing a lot of them back to understanding what the plan is and knowing that it's there But we're just actively seeking funds. So Even as we're waiting for decisions on how the funds will be spent and whether or not it'll help kickstart this program We're still actively engaged in trying to secure grant funds as well to help augment Whatever we're able to get through this settlement if at all With that, uh, we have two grants that we're trying to but even with their progress that's being made That's we're still looking at a year two years out before we can actually potentially see those funds But that's over three and a half million dollars in improvements to fuel reductions the evacuation routes home hardening Again things that are just outlined in the plan. So The sooner we're able to get the funds the the sooner we can literally start Going down the list and and knocking off items And then ultimately like we said the the plan will have to be rewritten So whatever we're able to accomplish will be great But we can't we'll be worked into the next one and or we'll look at obviously maintaining the future of vegetation management Similar to what council member tidbit said is that it's you know, it's not a five-year program It's a long-term program So there's actually a very specific item that talks about how we're going to track and manage the work that we're doing through these funds for long-term use. So There's it's it will cost more than five million dollars to do it But that's the first ask we have to get things going All right. Thank you so much, sir Um, I I would be to me. This is the most important thing That's been presented to the council in terms of moving forward And so if uh, mr. City manager if there was a sense of urgency When you talk with the department about bringing forward an item a little bit sooner than the june budget I would hope that you would uh work with us So that the council has a chance to weigh in on on starting that sooner rather than later And with that we will finish up item 3.2 As I did mention prior we do have a really long agenda tonight So I am going to ask Council to keep moving if you do have to step away for a minute go ahead and turn your camera off Just make sure that we do still have four council members who are sitting here participating to maintain our quorum And I think what we will do Because I have heard from staff that there is a level of of urgency around item 14.1 Is I think we will work our way to item 14.1 And then at that point we'll take a quick dinner break and then come back for our public hearing item 15.1 So for the public that probably We're looking at probably an hour and a half before we start item 15.1 at the at the soonest But we'll keep plugging along at this point item 14.1 report Resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa approving a professional services agreement with c collaborative llc To provide consulting services in the development of a city equity plan Amy re human resources director kicking us off And mr. City manager, I just want to make sure I was clear with the public We will also do our council member reports our consent calendar In finish up before we take our dinner break and then come back after the dinner break for item 15.1 Understood All right. Good evening mayor and council member. I'm amy rave the director of human resources for the city of santa rosa The item before you tonight is a resolution approving a professional services agreement with c collaborative in partnership with the perception institute To provide consulting services in the development of a city wide equity plan I'm pleased to recommend this resolution Which approves the partnership with c collaborative to provide consulting services that support the development of a city wide equity plan A fire department diversity and recruitment strategy plan as well as an equitable policing plan All three plans focus on advancing a more equitable inclusive Indiverse city as well as the santa rosa fire department and santa rosa police department Next slide, please next slide, please following a review of submitted rfps and presentations By and interviews with two finalists And after receiving favorable references for c collaborative The selection committee has determined that c collaborative provides the best strategy for developing and introducing meaningful city equity goals I'm pleased to introduce the consulting team from c collaborative and they include evan holland john powell and paul hudson Amy you want to speak i'm like, okay There you are paul, okay, okay. Um, i'm sorry i was uh Do we have our powerpoint amy or yes next slide will be your powerpoint great Um council members, it's a pleasure to be with you tonight. Thank you so much for having us and for entertaining Our presentation tonight. This will be a brief presentation. It's an overview of our approach to the work Our process and how we do the work and A time frame of how long it takes to do the work So next slide So this is we're going to quickly introduce our company Talk about our approach to the work And our process involves due diligence Facilitation and then the goal is the the deliverable outcome is to give the city an equity plan That covers the city policing and the fire department and we'll end with a timeline that Projects how long will take us to do this work? next slide So evan i'm going to turn it over to you to talk about seat Good evening Really happy to be with everyone here today The pictures you see on the screen before you is the c collaborative team Minus some recent hires where it busy growing In doing lots of equity work around the state Again, my name is evan holland I'm one of the co-founders of c collaborative and I helped to head up our equity work and our organizational development work C collaborative is a company that was started in 2019 Primarily to work at the intersection of collaboration equity diversity and belonging Seat is a restructure of a company named hudson and holland advisors that paul and I started Eight going on nine years ago now But we expanded our team the breadth of our work and therefore restructured our name and our brand Yeah, I'll keep it brief and be happy to expand more when we get into questions Next slide evan Okay, so I'm going to turn the approach over to john pal who's part of our team This approach was pretty much developed by john and so I'm going to turn it over to you john Well, thank you paul. Uh, can you hear me? Yes, okay great. Um, and I thank the city for uh Spending time with us and for taking this approach Um, so Equity is actually, you know, as you know a major staple now in terms of Trying to figure out how to approach the work and I could take you down a rabbit hole I won't do that. I will say a couple of things. First of all, I'm a professor at uc berkeley um, and I run something called the othering and belonging institute and In the early 90s, there were three of us that developed the concept of equity as a way of approaching work and um, analysis for work Took about 10 years for it to really take off And as it took off I noticed that the way people talked about equity or more accurately the way people practice equity actually created problems It created something which I'll refer to as breaking to have the next slide And so I coined a new phrase called targeting universalism And the reason was that when people focused on equity, they almost entirely focused on one Marginalized groups Two closing disparities between the marginalized group and their parent favorite group Now it's nothing necessarily wrong with that. In fact, I think it can be useful But that actually creates tensions And so the goal then under the way people practice equity is to get to what the Proceed favorite group has And oftentimes what the perceived favorite group has, uh, is not the actual actual goal. I'll give you a concrete example For the last 10 years it's been an effort to close the disparities between suicides among white males and black males And I have some good news that disparity has substantially closed and not gone away Have some bad news It's not because Black men are killing themselves less. It's because white men are killing themselves more Um, but if you're just saying focus on disparities, uh, that is celebrated as an achievement Um, and when you when you mention that people say no, no, no, that's not what we're talking about Excuse me. So what were we talking about? We're talking about really reducing suicides or eliminating suicides for all groups So that becomes the goal not achieving what The more group the perceived as favorite has but achieving something that we all agree Is important and we want that's the goal and that's the universal But the way we get to that universal Is to target its strategies Based on how we're situated within structures within culture And in relationship to those calls themselves. So, uh oftentimes we have Uh universal strategies Which means we treat everybody the same But that doesn't make sense because not everybody is the same let everybody's situated the same and the difference then Should inform our strategies um, so, um And plus again oftentimes where we focus on equity we focus on how do we actually lift up the most marginal group? Again a very lofty goal um But if you're not in that group, you're oftentimes seen as being ignored What about the group that's just above that group and just above that group? Target universalism the goal of target universalism is for everyone To get to the universal And you end up focusing on structures that actually impede that universal and transforming structures to make that happen um So because of time and I know you have a long agenda I won't say much more except The way people practice equity is to again focus on disparities and then have different groups Fight over what's perceived the scarcity um And that creates a fight that creates polarization that creates resentment. We call that breaking um, and so actually even though the goal may be Lofty it actually creates tension within an organization um Perversalism is saying we're not breaking. We're actually trying to achieve something for everyone um And but we're going to do it in a way which we recognize people are situated differently And therefore we're going to get attention to that Uh, and therefore you actually have a communication strategy How do you talk about these issues and you also have a programmatic strategy? How do you think about resources? How do you think about programs? In a way that actually includes everybody we call that bridging Uh, and so bridging actually brings people together because you actually invite people to see how they're situated differently And that everybody not just the most marginal group Not the most favorite group everybody has a Stake in it and everybody belongs so bridging facilitates belonging um So I sometimes refer to this as equity 2.0 I notice you may not have heard the concept of target universalism. It's actually correcting some of the ways in which we misapply equity And addressing some of the things we learned along the way And as paul indicated I'm the primary Generator for the concept is now being used fairly broadly, but i'm the one who actually initiated it Next slide I think that's it for me. I think thanks john So i'm going to ask evan to go through so this part of our presentation really goes through the process of We talked about the approach now. How do we apply this? In santa rosa and what are we actually going to do and so i'm going to ask evan to talk about due diligence Sure. So next slide So we've essentially oh, yeah, thank you We've essentially recommended that uh, the city of santa rosa including the fire department and police department go through a robust due diligence process So that we can get input and stakeholder buy-in from a broad array of stakeholders both within the city and key external stakeholders The goal is to work with our key point people within the fire department the police department in the city of santa rosa to identify Stakeholders to interview and to conduct focus groups with We'd also like to do a survey as broad a possible survey potentially with everyone working in or connected to The city in the ways that they'll be involved in the project So we can get broad understanding of the current dynamics around equity around diversity around belonging and So that it can inform ultimately our strategy And so we'll also be collecting organizational documents so that we can get a sense of policies procedures and have Robust and thoughtful response to those policies and procedures as we think through things like fire Um by fire program diversity for example and inclusion And we're also going to be bringing best practices to the table case studies to the table around how other cities have implemented equity strategies grounded in the targeted universalism approach and the outcomes and lessons learned that we Can apply here in santa rosa um The the one thing i'll say about our the way we approach due diligence is to be highly inclusive to begin that process of bridging By bringing folks together to be able to bring input um The focus groups is also a great way to bring key stakeholder groups together And and connect folks as a part of moving the process along so Uh, yeah, I think i'll stop there next slide so then the next Part of our processes facilitation and this is where the real work begins and we collaborate with the city and the police department and the fire department around Understanding the findings understand the due diligence and using that due diligence to inform strategies and we work in collaboration with your with your with your staff and your representatives around building strategies and initiatives and policies that um That roll into an overall plan for the city so the next slide um, so The way we do this is through You know group process we have we're proposing that there be a work group of the city We're proposing that We have subgroups for the police for the city and for the fire department And we have these groups so that we can get feedback on from the city from the people that are doing the job From the people that have the responsibility um to Okay, this is what we're this is what we're finding in our interviews and our surveys and our focus groups This is and we get feedback from the city and that feedback helps inform strategies It also the the whole idea Facilitation and feedback is that it's your plan. It's not our plan. It's your plan. It's that you own it that you build it And through that process we get group buy-in on the plan and as john was saying We want it to be everybody in this city feels like it's their plan and that they have That they benefit from this plan And through this process it creates a sense of ownership of the process in the outcomes We build trust through this process and we we work Our our philosophies that we work around consensus decisions. So we try to Talk things through until we have a consensus to move forward next slide So here's here's The way we've organized these facilitation groups We believe there ought to be one group that kind of oversees Everything we're doing from police to fire to the city and we're calling that equity work group and these groups are really Decided by the city We don't tell you who who has to be on these groups. We we we can provide guidance We definitely think key stakeholders ought to be at the table but this group The city task force the police task force and the fire recruitment diversity task force Will do the nets and bolts work and that will roll up to the equity work group and the equity work group will actually um Reach a consensus around the the the strategies that initiatives the policies that will be that will build the plan that we That this group presents to the city council for your approval next slide so as I said it's assumed that The work group will do them will will review all these policies practices and strategies We'll staff all of these our team will staff all of these work groups and task forces And that we will be in partnership With the work group to bring research best practices do diligence findings And help support in terms of the development of strategies policies and initiatives within the city next slide So then in go to the next slide ultimately Our our deliverable is an equity plan or equity plan Probably one for the police department one for the fire department and one for the city citywide plan these plans would cover the gamut of hiring Structural issues that john talks about that may impact Equitable or inequitable policies that are that that affect different communities that could affect Different programs So that's The final outcome what the city council can expect is a comprehensive plan that has been vetted through task forces That has been a consensus Approved and agreed upon by this equity work group of key players and stakeholders within the city Next next slide Next slide So this is this is The timeframes that we're looking at to do this work Roughly These aren't exact but roughly six months to do due diligence We should call it is all the things that haven't talked about six months of meeting facilitating discussing negotiating and agreeing on strategies policies and practices and structures and then finally a couple of months to Not only write the plans but get Agreement on the actual wording of the plans get the edits done from from from the city staff So when you get when the city council gets these plans, they will have been vetted By the city staff and by key players within the city to say yeah, this is this is the plan that we all agreed to that We are submitting to the city council for approval and and hopeful We all believe that equity is not something that you achieve overnight. So This will probably be These plans will probably involve phases of implementation one building on the other That ultimately you you The city of santa rosa will will be a much more equitable place where everyone feels like they belong Um, I think the next slide. I think we may be that may be yet. Yes So we're going to stop there. I don't if the council members have questions that we can respond to We'd be happy to do that Great. Thank you council members any questions for our panelists councilmember soyer Thank you mayor and thank you very much. That's a great presentation and it's exciting. I'm looking forward to To the process what i'm curious about is um, and you mentioned it is is these Plans once and once put into place They don't It's not something that happens overnight where you start to see effect and success In the few how how do you how does the check back work? I mean, I I assume that there is a check back Will you check back into santa rosa and see how things are working in a water? Are there tweaks that need to be made? Are there? Are there parts of the plan that? One would think we're going to work, but they didn't have the desired effect What has been your experience and how you check back to the community to see how the plan is is is functioning? So a key component of targeted universalism is to build in evaluative processes and monitoring so as part of the plan there would be recommendations around periodic reviews Milestones that you should be hitting if you don't hit them A check back We would our goal would be to build within the city the muscles to do the evaluation Within the city so that you wouldn't have consultants always coming back We we'd be happy to do that, but the idea is that yourself itself. It's sustainable self-sustaining going forward And so if if there's training needs to be done if there are systems that need to be implemented We would try and get all that done before we we we leave the city Great. Thank you very much. If I could just add two things one You know, we sort of went through a lot of interior very fast, but just a couple of points So target universalism is outcome oriented as opposed to process oriented So you have processes, but the process is all earned service of a certain set of outcomes And so having some clarity with those outcomes are as important And then we said very different because sometimes people will say we raise your money for schools I said, but the schools didn't get any better So the outcome wasn't raising money the money was uh instrumented getting to the outcome So we will try to get you to really be clear on what those outcomes are And a big part of of course is trust and one way you get to trust Is when paul talked about consensus We also used the term co-create What people feel like this is your thing you created collectively co-created it And we found that trust actually matters a lot And then people can do things that you couldn't just do with mechanisms You'd have to have the mechanisms in place. You have to have the structures in place But you also have to have a sense of shared ownership which comes from co-creating And then finally your question which I think is a very good one in a sense. It's never completely done You know the world changes Situations change your budget change So it becomes really an aspiration it becomes the way you orient yourself And so you may come back later and as paul said we'd be happy to come back to and say You know, we made some progress, but now we unearthed something we hadn't paid attention to before We didn't even notice that before And one of the groups who's part of this is not at this presentation is perception institute And you may or may not know it's probably the leading institute in the country on mind science On things like implicit bias a stereotype threats Although people misunderstand those those are not Simply internal processes. There are processes where internal and external Is communicating with each other What you think inside your head is actually reflection of the outside world. It's not just what's inside your head So i'm just sharing all that to say that there's some nuance and As this muscle gets stronger and better you'd be able to meet that nuance. So you may have to pull back and say, okay, let's examine this again. Let's Make some adjustments and we'll try to help you put those in place But at times you may actually say we need to talk to paul again because we hadn't anticipated this Excellent. Thank you councilwoman fleming Thank you, mayor And thank you again to see collaborative for making the time to come out today I couldn't be more impressed by by your work And as a social worker, you know you speak my language And one of the things that you know is essential to social work is meeting people where they are And it's sound and one of the things that most attracted me to your approach is that The concept of breaking and bridging really does just that it looks at people in their environment and And ask how can we meet them where they are? And so what I think might be helpful if you could would be to give an example of how You know you or a case study that you review that uses your approach Has been effective in bringing folks who Because what I think that that it sounds like you're pretty adept at doing is helping The vast majority of people who are well-intentioned But like we all are our bias to come to these targeted universals and then feel that they own it and move forward with that For for the groups of people who stand to benefit or believe that they stand to benefit from the status quo And where we we encounter reluctance or people or where someone actually is at is no How how have you been effective in helping organizations to move through that in a way that That doesn't cause more breaking than than necessary in those situations Well, I'll jump in person and invite my team members in so we have a long history on this now and have a pretty powerful success record Where you wouldn't expect it So and some of this is public and some of it's not public. So I'll try to speak to the public part You had better if you wanted to stay private I will say that one of my Clients is uh google and I have to sign like 300 non-disclosure agreements. So that's all you know Just I I agree yeah but Did some work years ago with city of cleveland and the surrounding suburbs around a whole number of issues dealing with policing dealing with fire dealing with schools dealing with uh taxes how to do and it was pretty tense And it's racialized because the city was primarily black and the surrounding suburbs was primarily white And it took a while You know if I had more time I could tell you I mean no one thought it would work And it did work and part of it was In terms of bridging part of is part of bridging is listening Some people call it radical listening Some people also call it empathetic listening and engagement So instead of trying to convince someone of your position or their position. It's like just listening establishing What a person's as your point is what's a person really experiencing because part of things we're in different situations And we project our situation onto others or we think others understand our situation And therefore they disagree because must because they're bad people And so little I remember meeting someone saying in the city of Cleveland unless you fix the schools. This is a bs process and we're not going to do anything And then I go off to the suburb and they say if you touch the schools We're walking away from that the city schools are broken. We don't want part of it So that was that was the start You know But we're able to get them to talk to each other. We're able to get them to do some tech space sharing We're able to get them to do to stop poaching. They were selling each other's jobs companies and We also asked them to put away their swords because when we first went there There was letters every week about how racist this group was and how Insensitive this group was and people wanted to actually focus on that history Which is you know, all of us have history and we said Undoubtedly, there's some stuff that's happened, but we're going to ask you to stop writing those letters for a little bit And We have them on we suggest that they do a five-year plan I'm skipping around but on tax-based sharing. We suggest that they don't do anything now People are more willing to share money that they don't have future money than the share of present money So we said there will be no sharing right now But they'll be sharing in terms of new businesses to come in the region. You have a formula in five years They started doing it have to I think a year and a half On their own partially because they built trust with each other. They start seeing themselves as interlinked They start seeing the region was only going to thrive if they work together A lot of positive things happened not everything perfect But when people looked at that they came back and said, how did you do that? Um And so there's been a lot of examples like that But part of it again is getting people to really listen to each other and then one last example Worked with the california endowment was the largest foundation here in california Um, and they had 14 cities. I think I don't female a billion dollars are going to go to 14 cities and it was really again They brought me in to talk about target universalism because all the groups were fighting each other uh Blacks whites latinos and part of the fight was whose pain was the most serious And so they felt if they could make the case that their pain their suffering was the most serious they would get the money um And so it's that idea that fighting over some scarce resource and this is a billion dollars, but it's still scarce given the size of the problem um We again through targeting the universalism got them to make clear that we're actually moving everybody We're not leaving anyone out And we did some mapping so they could actually see how different groups were situated And so they weren't situated differently because one group was black one group was latino. They had a different experience They had different things they were trying to overcome um, and once they saw that The temperature went down And uh, it was a very successful program and the endowment is now Um re-upping for a second billion dollars And but more importantly it's got all these groups to work together and initially they sell themselves as competing with each other for scarce resources Thank you Councilmember sweat on Thank you, mr. Mayor. Thank you so much for this presentation. I'm so excited to get this underway and mr. Powell I'm really excited to learn more about targeted universalism Is there going to be an education component more than what you just provided here today so we can learn more about this? Oh, sure. And I mean, uh, you know, whatever you have an appetite for, uh, I do teach at berkeley and I I'm looking for students. So But we have a long, um Booklet online that's some videos booklets. I think over a hundred pages It goes into a lot of detail a lot of nuance and a lot of examples But we do we've done trainings just on target universalism now. There are literally several books that have been written about it in different fields Um, so we we don't actually don't expect you. I'm sure you've already been to berkeley But uh, we will try to give you what you need, but it really is I mean when you think about it Um, so here's so tom. Here's one of my favorite things about target universalism It's I'm the one who coined the phrase, but you know who coined the idea Aristotle Seriously, uh, and uh back in the day when I was Back in school. I was uh Philosophy minor and I studied Aristotle and he actually talked our concept of equality comes from Aristotle But Aristotle had some nuance that we missed And he used to say he's one of the things was fairness means that you treat people who are situated the same the same But it also means that you treat people who are situated differently differently We got the first part And we left out the second part and what target universalism goes back and recaptures the second part that if people are situated differently They need to be treated differently Uh, and that's the heart of target universalism, but I'd be happy to talk to you personally or uh, if it's appropriate Um, uh do some more, um Uh, you know with the council and others collectively around target universalism Thank you. Yeah, I would personally really appreciate that But I would even maybe offer if just like with our last presentation, you know, if you could maybe prioritize Uh, because it might be a challenge for me to go back to UC Berkeley But if you prioritize, here's the one resource that will really give you a better, uh understanding of it Because for me, and I know my colleagues on council We're involved with a lot of other groups where they're dealing dealing with homeless issues Water issues public safety issues that I think some of what you're speaking about I'd like to start, you know applying that to all reaches even just to explain to my constituents What we are doing in regards to this and I'm by no means a sub-matter expert So I'd like to learn more so that I could share this whole concept with others that we interact with on a daily basis I'd be happy to great. Thank you. Um, and then I'm not sure if this is for the city manager or Who would be but on september 25th the public safety subcommittee heard a presentation from the fire department recruitment and diversity plan where I had five focus areas 15 different strategies And I noticed so that was back in september and they've already implemented or it's ongoing And now the same deliverable is part of this contract. How are those going to intersect or work together? Well, it's always a Council member. It's always a developmental process and as as the the group said we're we're going to take all this information in We're beginning someplace. This is going to be wrapped in. I don't see them as competing. I see them as building upon each other I I guess for me my only concern would be if there's a duplication of effort And I don't want us to be going in the wrong direction with the work that's been done And I notice in the contract the deliverable for this item is like january of 2022 I'm just hoping that maybe some of the work that Some of fire staff has already done might speed up that deliverable Well, we'll see. I mean, I think we we need to get into the the listening and the understanding part of this And there's I I think the work has value that's happened so far But we may have other places to go and this is the beginning of that conversation So similar to that then what's the intersection also because in June we Approved we being counseled equal employment opportunity diversity and inclusion program with the eoc and diversity officer. Could you update us on a where that? Recruitment or classification is and again, how is that program going to intersect with what we're hopefully going to be approving tonight Sure, I don't I don't mind responding to that question So we just finalized the recruitment brochure for that newly created position and we'll begin the recruitment process I have described that position to the seed collaborative consultants And we expect that they will be a key player in terms of this process And we'll be one of the staff members who will be continuing to reinforce and roll out our plan as we go through the years Great. Thank you so much. You're welcome councilmember alvarez Thank you, mayor. Uh, mr. Powell appreciate your presentation My question specifically what examples could you give me of your approach and what you've seen work and what it hasn't worked in the land next community? Thank you um thanks for the question so As I mentioned that uh early on There were three of us to sort of put equity on the table. It was uh, uh, manual pastore, uh, who's uh, labnex As a global black whale by myself And we the three of us continue to be very close and work work all over the country and all over the world They were not happy that I was shifting from equity to targeted universalism And that's the reason one reason I called it equity 2.0 I think they were right in terms of conceptually. They're actually quite close But in practice, they're very different. Uh, so the group that I talked about in terms of california endowment Uh, the vast majority of uh, the largest single constituencies were the labnex communities But they were situated so that uh, the labnex community, the asian americ community black community poor wise those four or five groups were seen as in competition with each other um and since then They're not only work most more closely together. They're using the same language Um, we have a thing called blueprint for belonging which is now runs throughout california work with, uh, 200 different community groups across california It's really been quite powerful. Um, and there's little literally a film on how california became what it is Which I'd be happy to share with you. Um, so Um And and of course we are very sensitive also in terms of, um People being situated differently mean to have different needs. So sometimes those are language needs. Sometimes those are cultural needs sometimes just, uh, I mean We were one of the first groups in the country if not the first group to basically say you can't Governor Cuomo made the comment that the corona virus was the great equalizer. I said no You know that it's It's going to actually show up differently because people are differently situated And so we actually pushed the state of michigan to start desegregating data Because one of the ways you know how people groups are situated is by looking at the data And uh, so as you know, michigan was one of the first states that said wait a minute blacks are dying at a much higher rate And we actually have on our website tracking how different groups include Latinx and particularly in Inland empire were being affected by the virus And then but it's not just the data. You also need a story. How do you make sense of that? How do you talk about it? And part of the thing you do is you involve people who are affected In that story. So you don't talk about people you talk with people They get to tell their own story as part of this larger thing And the person who runs the uh blueprint for belonging For the elderly and belonging institute is the latin lab max and so One of the things that's been a little tension although it's it's Sometimes when when one group gets focused on right, they'll say they won't they won't don't want to include the other group and that's one of the Powerful things about tardy inverses missing everybody But we have certain certain groups may be centered at any given time, but this is really to include everybody Councilmember, do you have any other questions? Great My only question is uh for the city manager or or mr. Alton The funds for this comes from the unassigned reserve balance That's our our strategic reserves that we have Where does that fund currently sit? I know obviously there's been a lot of uh discussion related to the impacts that covid-19 is having on the city resources Uh, thank you mayor. I think I can you know this it's a point in time, but I think it's um You're probably looking at Man of what we pulled down in order to pass the budget in july probably looking at about 10 million now So we you think we have about 10 million in our reserves. Is that correct reserves? Yeah, okay, great. Thank you Madam vice mayor. Did you have a question? No question. I had a comment Okay, uh, we will go to a public comment and then we'll come back to council members for any last-minute questions or comments If you are interested in providing a public comment on this item hit the raise hand feature on zoom You'll have three minutes to address the council Give anybody a couple extra seconds here So I am not seeing anyone raise their hand. Uh, madam city clerk Can you please provide any phone or email comments? I hear there were no voice message public comments received and There were no email public comments uploaded to the agenda and republished for the public Great, thank you so much. I'll bring it back to council then council any last questions or comments As we move forward council member alvarez Uh, simply make myself available to the seed group, especially when it comes to the latinx and really the the Unrepresented and marginalized community. So please uh, I make myself available to your efforts and please come into work. Thank you Thank you So one thing I appreciate that and one one thing mentioned the latinx. So like I said, we have a lot of work and a pretty good staff So yes, I want to take advantage of that but I also think about Um, uh, as you know, a large number of latinx in the united states level million are Undocumented and I don't know to what extent that's An issue in santa rosa But in terms of making sure that voice and that perspective Is present and some of the normal Quote-unquote mechanisms for reaching out to a community doesn't work with that group So if that's an issue there, I would hope that um Um, the council or you'd help us identify People to make sure we reach that community All right councilwoman fleming you have this item. So let's go ahead and have you Put a motion on the table for discussion And then if you have any thoughts or comments, uh, let's go ahead and hear them after Mayor any reave is looking to speak I'm sorry mayor rogers. There were two Final slides that I'd like to go over which um does just for transparency go over the fiscal impact I thought perhaps I could cover those before Yeah, please go ahead and jump in on it Okay Is it possible to bring the last slides up? Thank you dina One moment. I'm just advancing them So thank you, uh the funds for the services to be provided in fiscal year 2020 and 2021 as you already mentioned mayor They are in the amount of $402,000 approximately and they are not included in the adopted general fund budget and would be appropriated from the unassigned fund balance Next slide please And of course our recommendation Is that the council by resolution approve a professional services agreement with c collaborative to provide the consulting services To assist the city in the development of an equity plan Thank you Great. Thank you. Amy It's councilwoman Fleming go ahead Thank you mayor. Um, and it is my great pleasure To introduce this motion after having uh met with the c collaborative and participating in the rfp and um, you know Reading about this type of work for most of my adult life and even younger so it is uh A real honor to bring forward a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa approving a professional services agreement with c collaborative llc To provide consulting services in the development of the city equity plan and related plans And wait for the reading of the text second All right, we have a motion from councilwoman fleming the second from councilmember schwethelm Does anybody have comments on the item? Go ahead. Madam vice mayor Okay, so, uh, I have a few notes Uh, I just wanted to say that I appreciate you guys presenting to us We this is definitely needed in our community. So, um In addition targeted universalism being a woman of color um and wanting to Work with other people of color other The marginalized communities I I think it's so great to have the targeted universalism. So we're not all fighting For resources, but we're finding similarities ways that we can share the resources that we have and to see how we can build everyone up um You spoke about uh being highly inclusive the bridging these are all things that I am so very passionate about to bringing back a sense of community To the city of sarah rosa So the way to do that is to get everyone's feedback to lay everything on the table and to see how we can move forward So i'm so happy to hear you guys speak about that um And lastly i'll say thank you for coming in not as an expert but allowing us to be our own expert and you guys assisting us by Facilitating so again, thank you so much for the Thank you. I just want to just add one comment because it comes up a lot Uh, we we work all over the country and sometimes even out of the country um So and we the inclusive we actually go beyond inclusive we say belonging So inclusive from us is like where you go to somebody else's thing you go to someone else's party But it's their party belonging is your party. It's our party. It's not my party. Your party is our party Um, but the other piece of that that I just want to underline um Especially for groups who are grounded in social and racial justice Sometimes there's a willingness Even an enthusiasm for working with other groups of color, which I think is important, but it also includes whites Uh, and that's again one of the things that distinguishes us from the way equity practice has been rolled out When we say everybody we really do mean everybody and sometimes people Are challenged by that But we also acknowledge that not everybody's situated the same So that means different groups have Uh, we're doing a lot of work and paul is leading that work with native communities of north Very different situation than other non-native communities Um, but anyway, so I just want to make it clear we really do mean everybody Great. Thank you john evan paul Uh, if there are no other questions or questions or comments from the council Madam city clerk if you would please call the roll Yes, thank you mayor councilmember alvarez I councilmember fleming I councilmember soyer I councilmember schwedhelm I councilmember tibbetz I Vice mayor rogers I Mayor rogers I So that will pass with sorry go ahead dina or 70 That motion passes with seven eyes Excellent, uh, thank you everybody for the presentation Council we are going to jump back to public comment for items not on the agenda that is number 13 on our agenda And then as I mentioned before we will take a quick dinner break and then come back for items 15.1 We'll take our procedural items. Uh, our councilmember reports our consent calendar We'll do all of that after the public hearing in accordance with our new sunshine ordinance Where we are trying to take the items of the most public concern and public benefit earlier in the meeting particularly on longer ones so madame city clerk if Let's go ahead move on to item 13 And for the public this is your opportunity to make comments on items that are not currently on our agenda If you're interested in addressing the council go ahead to hit the raise hand feature on zoom You'll have three minutes And we will take the first 12 public comments in this first non agenda item public comments section Madam city clerk, I'm not seeing any hands if you could move on to the voicemail and email public comments Mayor there were no voice message public comments on this item nor were there any email public comments received and uploaded to the agenda Great, thank you dina And with that we will take a 20 minute dinner break as I mentioned earlier the council's been at this since one o'clock So we will come back at 6 30 for item 15.1 Uh, we'll see you at 6 30 All right, madame city clerk. I recognize that there's a quorum of the council. Would you please call the roll? Yes, thank you mayor councilmember alvarez councilmember fleming President I'm not used Councilmember Sawyer here Councilmember schwedhelm here councilmember tibbetz here Councilmember alvarez. Have you joined us? vice mayor rogers Mayor rogers here Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember alvarez Great, thank you so much and we will go to item 15.1 our public hearing Go ahead mr. City manager Item 15.1 public hearing appeal of the design review and cultural heritage boards decisions to deny preliminary design review An appeal of the cultural heritage boards decision to deny a landmark alteration permit For the flats at five to eight b street a proposal to construct A five-story mixed use structure at five to eight b street with the st. Rose preservation within the st Rose preservation district assessors parcel number zero one zero dash zero three five dash zero two two file number prj to zero dash zero zero five Bill rose leading us off Thank you, mr. McGlynn Mayor rogers vice mayor rogers members of the council. Thank you very much and vice mayor rogers We've not had the opportunity to meet but i wanted to say congratulations and welcome to the city council So i'd like to say just a few opening remarks and then i'll be turning this over to susie murray senior planner And she's going to give the the main presentation. So First off the item before the council tonight on appeal is a five-story mixed use project at five 28 b street It's a combination of residential with some ground floor floor commercial Both of the uses are permitted uses. So no conditional use permit is required and the density is allowed as well The project is also consistent with all development standards. So there are no variances or exceptions that are required or being requested However, two discretionary entitlements are required a design review application and a landmark alteration permit The design review is to be acted on jointly by the design review board and the cultural heritage board And the landmark alteration permit is acted solely by the cultural heritage board the The interesting thing about the design review the joint action is it requires a consensus approval So that's agreement between both the design review board the drb and the cultural heritage board the chp And then this instance that we didn't reach consensus. We had a five-oh unanimous approval For from the designer view board and we had a three one vote on the cultural heritage board and that one dissenting vote Broke the consensus and therefore that permit was denied Moving over to the landmark alteration permit It was a two-two vote and that deadlock is an effective denial And one other interesting thing about the cultural heritage board Is the zoning code in place at the time requires four affirmative votes Now both the consensus requirement and the four affirmative votes have been modified the council in recent actions related to the downtown plan With some zoning code amendments removed those requirements. So effective january 1st. Those will not be in place One other thing the the primary concern of those in dissent on that those actions Was the height the height was deemed to be too tall for the site in the neighborhood The council i'm sure also remembers recently Taking action on the downtown plan and specifying 12 properties in the saint rose district Whereby it was determined that a reduced height was appropriate This parcel this project site was not included in those 12 parcels So that's just a brief summary as I mentioned susie's going to give the the presentation now We have a number of staff Present behind the scenes so hopefully we can answer any questions the council may have And the applicant is prepared with the presentation as well So with that susie if you would please Give the presentation Good evening mayor rogers and vice mayor rogers The appeal of the denial for the flats at 528 b street is the project before you tonight Next slide please As bill mentioned it's a mixed use Building it's five stories with commercial space on the ground floor and residential units on the four floors above What's before the uh the council tonight is the appeal actually of the preliminary design review and the landmark alteration Next slide please Here's an aerial view of the site What you see on the the right side of the Slide where the stripes are is actually the fourth or fifth story of the parking garage next door And then you can also see I cut off the The tip of the age there, but this is also where healdsburg avenue and b street converge And then the image in the upper left hand corner is was taken from across the street Looking east so what the existing building now and then the view of the garage Next slide please so just to give some context for the neighborhood here the the 528 b street is outlined in blue on the slide And to the north and east it's generally commercial uses and to the south and west it's generally commercial uses Next slide please So we've been working with the applicant on this project for about two years back in january of 2019. We held a neighborhood meeting And then uh in october last year We had a concept design review meeting before both the cultural heritage board and the design review board We received the formal applications in february and then the the probably the highlight on this slide is that november 23rd um joint meeting of the boards again is is bill explained Um, there were some there were some interesting interesting circumstances that applied um, there Some things that weren't mentioned that that could have affected the outcome. There were a couple of vacancies One on the design review board and one on the cultural heritage board um, and then as bill mentioned that in order for the The cultural heritage board to actually make make the decision are uh Approved the project they would require for affirmative votes. Now it's regardless of how many Uh board members were present this night. Um, there were only four board members present Um, so in which case they had to have a unanimous vote in order to pass the item either item And as bill also explained that this is kind of a a unique situation because um For preliminary design review it required both boards to vote on it, which is it's That is a a unique situation that has been updated with the uh recent zoning code revisions to implement the downtown Station area specific plan update So next slide please So staff's um analysis concluded that the project is as proposed was consistent with the general plan with the 2007 version of the downtown station area specific plan And without going into a deep dive on the analysis it appears that um, it's also Uh consistent with the the new update Um, it's consistent with the zoning code design guidelines processing review procedures for owners of historic properties And the secretary of the interior standards for rehabilitation So next slide please For design review, there's six required findings. Um, kind of uh shortened up there on the screen um staff found that all of the findings could be met and those findings are shown on the um Resolution the draft resolutions that would be granting the appeal Next slide um, the primary tools for landmark alteration are besides the zoning code, of course The secretary of the interior standards for rehabilitation um, that's another change that was just updated Saying changing it to secretary of the interior standards or applicable standards There are several um other categories not just rehabilitation, but in this case this was the required finding and the um The secretary of the interior standards for rehabilitation don't really apply because this it it's more that applies to buildings that are being modified In this case the existing structure is being removed The and important to note on that is that the existing structure is not a contributor to the district It was constructed well outside of the um the period of significance for the state rose preservation district So the processing review procedures is a uh, uh city document and it provides guidelines for new development within preservation districts And the one of the biggest things that it drives home there is that they once it can or it Sears us to contemporary design and is real clear about not mimicking the um existing You know architecture found in the district although it does want that existing architecture to inform the design um, it uh focuses on compatible height and similar proportion uh rhythm along the streets shapes and keeping windows and doors right up at the um the sidewalk um and exterior materials and roof shape and whatnot so the building shape Next slide please review considerations for a landmark alteration permit Our our and findings are shown here the one uh kind of um the finding that the the zoning code requires Here is that the um for the additional height Is that the increased height does not detract from the character of the preservation district or adjacent contributing properties um the the way the site is designed um the the The building is placed on the south side of the the property So it actually leaves an open space area for that's for exclusive use of the the residents of that building or occupants of the building But it separates that structure from the single family structure to the north character defining elements were Incorporated from nearby structures, and I believe that the applicant will include those that discussion in their presentation um and another um The the street really right there on b street it acts at this point as an entry way to the city Coming down. I I showed that slide earlier Coming down b street if you're southbound coming into santa rosa you really see um, you get a good view of the garage and kind of the existing conditions on the site The building putting it there would really effectively screen the view Um of a parking garage. So uh, that's that's on the adjacent parcel to the east So next slide please some of the key elements for consideration is um that item one is the the parking garage And again as I just mentioned that the entryway Two where in here you have a clear a clear view of where those two streets come together and then Three shows us nearby contributors in the district. So the building is is surrounded to the north and south by uh Buildings that are considered contributors to the district or they are contributors to the district and the building building to the south is More like a three and a half story building. It's it's not the the normal three story. It's um in its period Then the building to the north and as I said, you can kind of see The way the building is now you can see how they're separated and the existing building where the star is is placed further on the south side there so Um The uh buildings across the street are um a couple hundred. I think a hundred feet away 150 feet away uh minimum distance so um Anyways next slide please So I tried here to get you a similar um perspective Uh obviously existing on the left and proposed on the right And next slide please The project was found in compliance with CEQA and uh section 15183 and 153282 or two that you see Quite a bit, but we actually added into the staff report another section 15182 Which is consistent with the uh downtown stationary a specific plan for which the the council certified a um an eir Uh for that plan as well. So we added to it Um, I also Let's see next slide please There we go. I thought I missed that slide. Um, I wanted to mention that we did receive some additional comments this afternoon. So the public comments that um, we received We're generally talking about height, but also generally in favor of the design We received some additional supportive documentation today that was not included in the late correspondence supporting a denser mixed use type of development and really for critically needed housing Um, there was also a comment about providing jobs or workspace that would provide jobs in the commercial area on the ground floor um, this helps address climate crisis concerns by putting our residential units next to You know in the downtown where people can walk to work and also near our some of our transit hubs both the the smart station and the bus station And just bringing um kind of vibrance to the downtown There were also some um comments that were received opposing the project There was concern for the amount of shadowing that the the new building Would put on on the neighbors specifically the neighbor to the north And then the the building really dominates the space so staffs um review and the Has as there has resulted in no unresolved issues um next slide please So tonight the council has several options some of them are listed here The first is you can deny the appeal which would effectively deny the project The second is you can approve or grant the appeal which effectively approves the project and if you do that there were five conditions added by the design review board um And you could also add conditions yourself and then the the um the third option is to continue for redesign and following redesign You could direct the applicant to bring back bring the item back to council Or direct them to go back to the design review board and the cultural heritage board Next slide please So with that it's recommend recommended by the cultural heritage board and the design review board that the council Deny the appeal and deny preliminary design review It's further recommended by the the cultural heritage board that the council deny the appeal and deny the landmark alteration And that concludes staff's presentation. I know that the applicant is anxious to give their own Thank you. Susan before we go on to the uh applicant's presentation Now is the time for council to disclose any ex parte communications that you might have had on this project So i'm just going to go around the the circle here. Uh council member schwethelm Uh, thank you mayor. Yes, I had contact with representatives of um the project team I visited the site myself and I watched not all but a majority of the drb culture heritage Hearing and all of the information I gathered from those contacts are contained in the numerous documents on this Uh, it's available to the public. Thank you. Thank you council member Sawyer Thank you mayor. Um, I did have a meeting with staff. I visited the site I did have a phone conversation with one of the neighbors. I spoke with it with a planning commissioner and That but but it was all contained in the staff report. So I learned nothing from those from those meetings other than perspective Thank you. Council member tippets Yeah, I spoke with representatives from the santa rosa metro chamber of commerce with um the architect who designed the project Concerned citizen in regards to a letter submitted by the transportation and land use coalition and Pretty sure that's it Thank you councilwoman fleming Yes, thank you. I spoke with um A representative from the santa rosa metro chamber with the architect peter stanley and While those conversations were Illuminating they did not provide any information that is not already in the public documents Great councilmember alvarez Yes, thank you mayor. I did speak with the metro I did speak with the pedestrian near the site. I did visit the site this morning I spoke with both uh applicants and as well as a member from our staff But there's nothing new to report. Thank you Thank you and madame vice mayor No communication Great, thank you. And I did have a chance to speak to the architect I spoke to various community groups including folks from the land use coalition as well as the metro chamber I've spoken to a number of neighbors Received a number of comments on it and then also Walked the area multiple times And grabbed some food at brew And with that we will move on to the appellants presentation Okay here First of all, can you hear me? Yes, sir Great, thank you all. Um first off before I begin my name is tom karsten I'm the owner of the property For the proposed redevelopment Before I proceed. I just want to make one quick correction to Susie's wonderful presentation She mentioned that the buildings to the north were residential properties. That's incorrect. Those are commercial properties immediately to the north So, uh, I'll begin along with my development partners Peter Stanley and Mitch conner at archeologics We are the appellant on the matter before you We are here to ask that you grant the appeal and approve the preliminary design review And the landmark alteration permit for our mixed-use 24 unit apartment project that was denied because of a subjective feeling that it is too tall Even though it's only allows for a five-story structure on this site Some background before we tell you a bit more about our project and address our appeal My partners and I have each lived in Sonoma county for 30 plus years We bring what for us is a lifetime of real estate investment development consulting construction management and architectural experience to the project separately We have devoted a great deal of our time in community service Serving on design review boards planning commissions and groups responsible for spearheading the criteria for urban design That helped guide the general plan and future growth that demonstrates a long-term vested interest in our community With guidance from staff coupled with feedback received from both the drb and chp during concept review Along with additional advice from our architectural historian mark parry. We designed the project before you One that are one that all board members and neighbors alike commended favorably on the design itself In doing so we have taken a site with many development constraints And designed a project that followed all the rules and met all the standards placed upon us Met all the design criteria and checked off all policy and staff review boxes In doing so the project implies with the city objectives to build high density housing appropriate for a city center pedestrian friendly environment Please go to slide two This slide shows the proposed project relative to the surrounding area Compared to the more apartment complex to the north that encompasses an entire block And the massive parking garage to the east We believe the proposed building fits well into the context of the neighborhood The current building on the subject site was built in 1969 to serve as a podiatry clinic And surgery center until my firm purchased the property in 1995 and have occupied it since Prior to purchasing the property we were tenants in the adjacent two-story office building to the north of the subject property for four years Therefore we have been a resident and property owner in the neighborhood for 29 years And have been privy to the changes that have taken place over that time Including witnessing the construction of the garage In early 2017 we envisioned redeveloping the site with a mixed-use building comprised of ground floor commercial office space That will serve as new offices for my firm and archeologics With the upper four floors comprised of one and two bedroom apartment units Allowing for six units per floor for a total of 24 residential rental units All units will have outdoor balconies While the garage is not a contributor as an historic structure Because of its location how tall it is at 48 feet Uh tall and given its immense size that dwarfs all structures around it It cannot be ignored as it is in every way a contributor to what is going on around us However, because of its location we are able to incorporate it as a vital contributor to our project For it allows us to engage the garage in ways originally intended when it was completed 20 plus years ago Please go to slide three Over the years we have witnessed lots of change on B street with the street seeing several significant alterations over the years The current reiteration Changes brought forth with a reunification of courthouse square that expanded the north to south arterial to two lanes while also in the story of bike lane The reconfiguration dramatically altered traffic flow on B street to one that could best be described now as the major north south thoroughfare connector that funnels faster and more significant traffic through and around downtown and to freeway on ramps In fact, we suspect there is now more traffic on B street than on mendicino where one can build a 12 story building with far fewer restrictions The point being that B street was not envisioned as a nice country lane in an historic district But more so as a commercial boulevard designed to funnel traffic I'll also note quickly that on the first drawing you'll see a line number says 131 feet That is the distance between our building and the resident resident the three-story Victorian residents to the west of us Please go to slide four a brief comment about shadowing The neighbor to the north has voiced concern that a new five-story building will shadow its property in the winter months That is a fair statement, but it should be noted that currently is shadowed by the garage These mid-morning and mid-afternoon photos were taken a couple weeks ago What they demonstrate is that at this time of year when the sun is low in the southern sky Both the existing office building on the development site as well as the two buildings to the north are predominantly showered Shadowed, excuse me by the existing three and a half story apartment building situated some 70 feet to the south So the neighbor's property has been in shadows for decades only now it has become more of an issue As our shadow study in your packet demonstrates during a good part of the year the sun will be predominantly overhead So there will be substantially less shadowing cast down on the adjoining property to the north Simply put the nature of buildings located in tight urban infill locations is that buildings cast shadows onto other buildings In closing our project aims to help kickstart the rebirth of what city councils and community leaders before you As well as business leaders have been striving to achieve for years We excited with some of the changes we are seeing in the neighborhood Exemplified with our friends across the street at brew who with great spirit and energy provide a safe haven for the community to gather And that of the museum that is ever growing With this housing development, we hope to provide a safe downtown residential haven for the community Not all on our own, but with your help I'll now turn our presentation over to peter stanley who will walk you through some of the essential site and policy issues We faced and I want to thank you for your consideration Thank you council. Thank you mayor rogers and members of the council I'll move through this quickly But I do want to hit some five points here because I think from a policy standpoint We need to reiterate that this has been going on for a long time these ideas that have been presented Through our development and many others as you saw from the appeal package Our project meets all the objective criteria put forth under the 2007 Downtown station area specific plan as well as the tier one housing goals from city council The o7 plan created a cd5 district that allowed for buildings of five stories With 55 foot cap on height of which our project complies next slide, please Not only does the project comply with the o7 plan It also is in compliance with the newly adopted 2020 plan Which places an far floor area ratio of four and a 50 foot height limit on the particular site Our project comes in under the development criteria with an far of 3.8. Next slide, please So in terms of design, we just want to reiterate that despite an 8 1 vote in favor of our design Including design support from district residents opposed to the height The project was denied approval because of a procedure of technicalities since corrected by council I'd like mark parry our architectural historian to briefly go through that design process related to the height of the building Could you elevate mark? I'm here Thank you. Thank you, peter. I would brought it. I just brought into the job After the october drb and chb Meeting and my main task was to help address The building's context to the preservation district And a real critical point to be made is that there were no contributing historic resources They were affected in this project the building that was there was not a contributor That's important because I strongly oppose this council or any community ignoring or dismissing the local state or national protections Established to preserve our listed Um cultural resources and mr powers Uh, I loved his presentation because he explained One of the places I find myself in and that is trying to address the concerns of the developing community And trying to address the concerns of the preservation community because These preservation districts were created by the residents of them They they these districts were created with a shared ownership co-creation idea So when developers come in and ignore that stuff It creates a problem that these are not those developers. These guys are not from out of town These guys came in and respected this this neighborhood Specifically and they we I'm really proud of what we've done I've been looking for 10 years to try to come up with a project that would do what this one did It was the challenge and I'm entirely confident that we we succeeded at creating a contemporary Expression of appropriate treatments for new and large-scale buildings to fit In 20 seconds and not detract from the historic fabric of the district We did that in this project and sir I wanted to jump in just for a quick second and make sure you heard the clerk You do have about a minute left to your presentation Okay And just looking at this at this um sideflot this slide here You'll see how we applied Character defining elements from other buildings without the district because the main Thing we were able to do was to use Composition not contemporary Not contemporary modernist design, but traditional compositions Reflecting historic elements That's the secret that means a large building that's out of scale Actually fit and contribute to the district dumping a big Modern building demolishing historic buildings does not respect or address the districts This one does it's a good example of it. Thank you. Thank you mayor. That is 10 minutes All right, thank you sir and thank you to the appellants Council We'll come back for questions from the appellants in a couple of minutes here But I did want to give the chairs of the design review board and cultural heritage board an opportunity to Give us a little bit of context about what happened during their meetings and make them available for questions as well We're unable to speak in permissions for drb chair scott confede and chb Brian muser Scott go ahead Good evening, mayor rogers vice mayor rogers and council I will be brief with my presentation because as president tonight and As always city staff has done a exemplary job of prepping you and us on the facts of the project I think the numbers will tell you that We achieved a unanimous approval of the design review board for approval of the project including its height and We're looking to move the project forward to building permits so I am around for questions And if you have any, I'll I'll be available. I'll keep it brief. Thank you Thank you, sir and brian Thank you, mayor rogers vice mayor rogers members of the council I'll just be brief also and just give you kind of a A background as to The members of the culture heritage board And they're they're voting preferences With regards to the preliminary design review three board members concurred with the findings and the resolution And one member found exception to the findings As it pertain to Its height Basically the architectural design of the proposed mix use building is compatible With the character of the surrounding neighborhood and that board member Felt that and and remember the cultural heritage board is looking at this from The preservation of this short neighborhood And So With regards to landmark alteration We had two board members concur with the findings Of the landmark alteration resolution and two board members found exception to the findings Basically the findings that they found exception to Were the ones that stated proposed changes compatible with adjacent or nearby landmark structures design elements Basically the design elements are compatible with the adjacent structures And the increased height does not detract from the character of the preservation district or any adjacent structures so basically the The the overall Proportions of the building and the height of the building Two of the board members felt Uh rendered it Incompatible with the historic district So that concludes my report. Thank you Great. Thank you, sir So I will bring it back to the council council. Are there any questions for either staff the appellants Or brian or scott about their respective boards and the discussions therein I'm not seeing any hands from council. Uh, I did have a question, uh, mr. Rose Particularly this has been characterized as an entryway street type And I do Reading through the design guidelines. Uh, there is a six foot step back for Development along entryway streets Above the third floor Can you talk a little bit about that element as it pertains to this project? You know, I'm actually going to defer to susie on that to see if she can provide commentary on that technical aspect of the review I can that's more of a guideline. So we have guidelines and we have Development standards Standards are and need to be adhered to guidelines are guidelines and so in the the downtown station area plan it also suggested that it but given the The size of the size and the shape of the site that was um, that was limiting. So I I can let the Applicant talk about the design issues a little bit more, but again, it's not a development standard. It's not a requirement It's a guideline Okay, thank you. And then that would also uh, I assume be the same for the 15 foot front yard setback That's in the guidelines for new development within the st. Rose in west end areas I we When in conflict if that came out of the zoning code um, when in conflict the zoning code defers to um, uh a station area plan a specific plan And in this case they're they're If if they were in conflict the station area plan would supersede and that says bring it up to the bring it up to the sidewalk and in terms of the entryway street in the the um, the project was reviewed against the the previous the 2007 downtown station area specific plan and in that plan the street was designated as a um An entryway street It lost that entryway designation with the new plan But regardless of the designation the street acts as an entryway when you come into santa rosa from the north That's the way you cover. That's why most people come in So um into the downtown so Okay, thank you council. Are there any other questions? All right, then I will open the public hearing on this item and go to public comment And then we will bring it back for discussion afterwards So first I see Mr. Former mayor mr. Bartley You'll have three minutes to address the council and then we'll move on to luke after that Thank you mayor rogers and uh, congratulations And vice mayor rogers. I'm met um I was I I prepared a whole lot of stuff that you've already heard about how this checks every box in what we've been working For in the city for the last 26 years um, but I Thinking about it. You all know that. Um, this is exactly the sort of project we need in our downtown um it it will Be a lynch pin to make us Be what we want to be And if we don't approve it or if you don't approve it I'm afraid it'll set us back under five or ten years because developers are going to look at this And they're going to say it's not worth the monetary risk Um to to jump and and invest the substantial money it takes to get to this point um That was my that was what I was going to say and and me and it checks all the boxes But the reality is I actually watched most of that excruciating five and a half hour joint meeting And having served on the designer review board and the planning commission and the city council I can tell you Sometimes meetings and the new council members won't know this the existing ones do sometimes means just kind of go off the rails And that was a meeting that went off the rails And they couldn't recover from it It might have been because of the zoom setting, but somehow they could never regain their center um And I think it's really unfortunate. This project happened to be the the unintended victim of that And that's not the fault either board It's because it's just what it's just what happens when human beings interact And I think partly because you're interacting with you know television monitor Um rather than talking to each other I really hope you Support the appeal I'm really concerned for the future of the city and I really think this project will really be a springboard So thank you Thank you, sir. We'll go on to luke followed by inanda Thank you and good evening. Uh mayor rogers vice mayor rogers and san rosa city council My name is luke lindenbush with generation housing I'm here to express generation housing support of 24 new homes in san rosa's downtown core at 5 28 b street Creating infill housing opportunities in downtown san rosa like the proposal for you now is essential to the health and economic success Of san rosa into our entire region One and two bedroom homes like the flats at 5 28 b street are often called affordable by design Because lower square footage generally correlates with lower rounds These homes are sorely needed in our community Especially for false small families seniors and young synomens who don't want her need the larger units more commonly built countywide I also want to add that I was at the november 23rd meeting and that by and large The design review and cultural heritage boards offered their support for this project of that meeting Despite that an absence and a vacancy created ultimately what was a fluke circumstance We're just a single nova required the appeal to the city council currently under consideration So we're glad to see that this process has been streamlined and hopefully we won't have to encounter something like this account The architectural significance of the saint rose preservation district is well protected For good reason and all of the historic neighborhoods flanking downtown san rosa as you know including this one We're thoroughly reviewed in the process of the recently adopted downtown stationary specific plan 5 28 b street is proposed in the spirit of balancing of growing downtown and a low rise historic neighborhood In terms of building scale at five stories The flats at 5 28 b street would create a smoother transition between the saint rose neighborhood and the downtown core The building to be demolished is not of any historic significance So there's no reason to deny it on that basis and city staff has further established the project's compliance across the board To be perfectly clear a five-story building at this site will not block a view of anything but the parking garage directly behind it With that generation housing encourages the city council to grant the appeal of the preliminary design review and landmark alteration And approve the construction of the flats at 5 28 b street. Thank you for consideration in your time Thank you. Luke Good evening. Mayor rogers and members of the council. My name is ananda suite I'm with the Santa Rosa metro chamber and i'm here to express the Santa Rosa metro chamber's support of the flats at 5 28 b street project First, thank you so much to the applicant team and city staff for your work on such an important project This proposed project is really exactly what the city and this community have been asking for Is a mixed-use infill project with a commercial ground floor near transit and downtown businesses It fills a critical housing need while meeting the vision of a vibrant downtown Santa Rosa's housing shortage is an enormous threat to our community And one of the largest challenges for local employers who need to recruit and retain employees in order to stay and grow in Santa Rosa A vibrant downtown is also a crucial actor in recruiting a high quality workforce and for new business development More residents within walking distance of downtown shops and employers means a larger customer base and increased economic activity This project contributes directly to those critical needs and will provide Santa Rosa a high economic return on its downtown investment The project aligns with the city's downtown stationary specific plan and the city's goals and vision for downtown Santa Rosa And your support is critical as it sets an example of what is possible for projects in downtown Santa Rosa to come. Thank you Thank you. Ananda next up is willard followed by mr. Dietzen My name. I'm willard richards. I live in santa rosa adjacent to the southernmost tip of the county's shanae property You have a letter from the snowman county transportation and land use coalition that I signed as chair of that organization But my comments this evening are Different and they've not been reviewed by the sctlc. So I'm speaking as an individual The staff report finds that the appellants project complies with all of the applicable planning requirements Which include the general plan the downtown stationary specific plan the zoning code design guidelines and the processing Review project procedures The applicant also claims Uh that that that they comply with all of these guidelines And i'm not aware of any claim that the project does not fully comply with all these requirements Design review is somewhat subjective, but this project received an eight to one vote By the design review board approving the project It appears to me That the reason this bill is before you this evening Is a couple of cultural heritage board members decided that the rules in the city's planning and zoning documents were not adequate They wanted to follow their own rules They wanted to say that the proposed project had too many stories for this location And they voted against the project For me a key reason that the appeal must be granted Is the city cannot allow a couple of board members to set different rules Uh differing from those of the city's planning and zoning documents Developers need to know what the rules are Otherwise they will be reluctant to go to the expense Of proposing projects that we so desperately need downtown I urge the city council to grant this appeal. Thank you Thank you willard. We'll next go on to joe followed by pamela Joe go ahead and unmute yourself You'll have three minutes to speak Okay, i'm sorry. Thank you mayor rogers My name is joe deets and i'm speaking today to express my support for the development project known as the flats at 528 b street I'm a resident of the st. Rose neighborhood and have lived directly across b street from the proposed project site since 1987 Our home property has been in our family since the early 1900s and the runyon metska residents itself Will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year My wife and i along with our whole family have committed ourselves to the preservation of our houses To the stability of the st. Rose neighborhood and to the success of downtown santa rosa While i highly valued the history of the neighborhood I believe that new market rate housing combined with well-designed functional commercial space Is going to be crucial to the vitality of the downtown area As a banker was worked in downtown santa rosa since the late 80s I believe I understand the economics of real estate development Given the cost of new construction today a project needs more units to be feasible and financeable with more units comes more floors Enhance a five-story project Also a project that is in conformity with the santa rosa downtown station area specific plan And with regards to the project i've also reviewed the most recent architectural development plans And appreciate the changes made from the initial renderings to the building's exterior finish and to the outdoor decks on units above b street I believe that the project when built and occupied will be a positive addition to the local neighborhood Bringing quality tenants individuals and families both to downtown santa rosa Who will benefit the neighborhood and the downtown at large? They may well be working in the downtown area and importantly, they will be local shoppers and diners Leading to increase commerce or our small businesses Maybe even a grocery store downtown will eventually follow So And finally and finally I urge you the members of the city council to approve the appeal. Thank you Thank you for your comments joe. Pamela followed by paul hi um, I would just first like to say um that Respond to scott martley's comment. He says it will set back developers because if it's not passed But that's just really not true. There are many many tall apartment buildings right now being constructed in downtown santa rosa Right downtown and on college avenue also on third and dentin and also there's a huge project almost completed on petaluma hero road And koana springs road. I'm not sure any of them are affordable Um, so I really don't think that's the case and I would just like to say that This building does not fit within the guidelines of an historic district and um I don't think making this building a bit smaller or shorter is going to negatively impact the housing shortage The owner knew he was within a historic district when he um When he proposed something like this And I worry that he was encouraged to propose this tall height by people In the city who are determined that tall buildings will be cover a city, which is fine But this is an historic district. I'm concerned that passing this project will set a precedent for other proposals within our district And also, um, I worry that um historic what our historic guidelines just for looks Are they there just to make the city look good on paper? And when it comes to developers and the historic districts, do we just toss the guidelines out the windows? Um Back to the precedent setting on lincoln street in a parking lot next door to my house another tall apartment building is proposed A four-story apartment apartment building Again, the developer wants to address the housing shortage in santa rosa Does everyone look to the saint rose district to answer housing issues? Our district already is the answer to the homeless issue With morgan street catholic charity soon to be caritas the hotel isura and it appears We are now targeted as the answer to the housing shortage None affordable with two tall apartment buildings proposed within the saint rose district And I think this is inappropriate and in fact mr. Carson's presentation He cited the moor building as a precedent for his five-story building Um, so that's that's my comment. I just I think this project is too large and it's overbearing and it should be modified It's in an historic district Thank you Thank you for your comments pamela paul followed by demise I'm sorry. Is it pamela or paul speaking now? Paul you're up. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, mayor rogers My name is paul schwarz. I'm a commercial real estate broker here in santa rosa And a member of the metro chambers Governmental advocacy council who i'm speaking on behalf of this evening. I want to first say that Several of the speakers have summarized My thoughts very accurately very well So I I don't want to be too redundant, but I will point out a couple of things again about the 528 b street property which I Development proposal which I support and chamber supports First I want to reiterate that it is an infill project with moderate density Where jobs and residential housing Will be in close proximity, which is of course one of the primary objectives of the city the I would say the business and development community are paying close attention to This project not because of its large scale, but because of the message it will send to other developers about urban or downtown development proposals and the receptivity of these proposals by the council Obviously that housing is much needed in the downtown area and throughout the city and this provides 24 units that can be occupied by moderate income housing You know applicants So it does send an important message to the community. It's also an important entryway as has been pointed out To the downtown area and needless to say I think we could all agree that we could use some substantial enhancements to that corridor And this project definitely provides One important enhancement to that to that b street corridor It has been noted of course that the parking garage is five stories and the project Is to scale with the community with the area of downtown that it will sit in It's a great mixed-use design and frankly is dwarfed by that parking garage as has been noted by the applicants Uh, the project should be approved and as I said, we'll send If approved send a proper message that downtown Santa Rosa is open to and will receive Will receive openly Any very well-designed plan developments And lastly, I think this accomplishes many city objectives It's a small development that it's set since it sets a precedent for other potentially larger developments in the downtown area so I encourage your support of the appeal and Frankly, I think it's important that you show as a council that you're moving forward with a unified voice So I appreciate your time and would appreciate your support of the project. Thank you Thank you, paul denise followed by mr. Plager Hi, denise hill with the saint rose neighborhood I live here And before I get started, I just want to say first I want to congratulate mr. Rogers on his appointment to mayor and to the two new council members Who recently won their elections? Um And for the new council members and any other council member who hasn't taken a tour of our preservation district and jack tibbet I sure hope you're going to take us up on this one of these days Please know know that you have a standing invitation to tour. You can see how much infill we have We probably are the downtown neighborhood with the most infill. Maybe it's not infill that was built in the last 10 years But it's infill And we also Have the most threatened historic district. That's why it was the first one set aside to uh be preserved because they felt development was going to destroy it And we do have guidelines that residents here have to abide by and we would expect that developers would have to abide by them too And if any message gets passed along if this gets uh sent back to be redesigned to uh, you know, uh Actually fit with the guidelines of our neighborhood which do say that the the cap For a streetscape to be for a building to be sensitive in the streetscape is around three stories Uh, if any message is sent to developers, it's that we care about our cultural resources We care about our history. We care about our historic neighborhoods and we don't want to look like roner park There are plenty. I believe 800s parcels in downtown santa rosa that got increased density based on the stationary plan that just got approved We are not the make-it-or-break-it neighborhood or this is not the make-it-or-break-it project And that is going to change whether or not we have uh enough housing and by the way it is market rate It is not affordable housing. I want everybody to consider that And when we talk about the more project, it's just north of it The mr. Kirsten wanted to bring up as being the reason to have a project this large That project actually the part that is in the historic district Which is only a small part was brought down to two stories to assimilate into the historic district and follow the historic district guidelines um I'm going to use the last of my comments to say that they're uh that meeting that happened on 11 23 with the chp in the drb was um Really, I've never seen such poor civil behavior by two of the design or cultural heritage board members Uh, mcpew and grannica. It was just outrageous. It wasn't a zoo meeting going off the rails It was two people who felt like they should have gotten the vote to go their way and it didn't and they were It was really the poorest performance I've seen in a city meeting and I I really think if you appointed one of those people you should reconsider it And you should definitely look at appointing people that are passionate about our history about our culture That's the only way we're going to preserve it and I thank you for your time Thank you. Denise next we'll go to joe followed by roy Uh, good evening. My name is joe plager and I live across the street at 442 8th street I'm in full support of this project and would love to see this building in the neighborhood I believe it's fully compatible with the nearby structures as it sits in a sort of transition zone between the historic components and new ones And the mix of commercial use during the day and residential in the evening and weekends would bring more vibrancy and presence to the area We talk a lot about history here today and historically the nearby houses were really affordable for families and working class residents And now they push close to a million dollars and they're really out of reach for Anybody in those sort of situations It's clear the system is broken and we need more housing period And echoing many others. I ask that you approve the appeal and move the project forward as it stands today It's a office building that serves no purpose and downsizing To meet standards and goals is will not achieve our broader objectives. Thank you Thank you for your comments joe roy and he'll be followed by thomas Good evening. Um, hope you can hear me. Um, I uh First I wanted to thank the uh, the city council for its, um Uh, vote on november 17th. You've given us a great deal of hope in the saint rose historic district Also, I want to thank those members of the cultural heritage board who voted their conscience in the face of a great deal of ugliness Being in a minority is never easy And now in terms of the project that's been the appeal of the project the flats at 5 28 b street I was prepared to make a much more anodyne statement But after hearing mr. Karsten Amin use talk about this being a subjective issue. There is nothing subjective about five stories It will be the tallest structure in the saint rose historic district and I want to point out a little detail The average height of the great wall of china is 25.6 feet This will be a structure twice the height of the great wall of china It is not compatible in height or proportions To the rest of the historic district and it will distract. It will not only distract From the neighborhood. It will dominate and it very very likely oppress That section of b street that it that it will be located on I didn't expect to make these statements But I see what we in the neighborhood we live in this neighborhood We love this neighborhood and we're not opposed to development if this project were outside of a historic district you would hear me Expressing my approval of it But it is in a historic district It will be in a historic district and it will change the historic district in a way that I don't want to see Thank you very much. I'm done Thank you, sir Thomas and he'll be followed by sandra Hi, i'm thomas pope. I'm the clinical director of the lomi psychotherapy clinic and we reside at 5 34 b street And that is the building directly to the north of this proposed building And I just want to object to the Uh, they have the approval of this design as it is currently designed This building will impinge on The historic integrity of our neighborhood There are significant buildings to the north And to the south of this building and it is so large And it will overshadow Literally and figuratively all of the buildings in on the street It comes all the way out to the sidewalk. It is very imposing And it is going to have a negative impact on our neighborhood And it will have a negative impact on our property And which is my objection Uh, also it has their privacy concerns the design review was concerned about the balconies, uh looking down on the apartment building, but They don't have any concern with the i'm looking down on our building, which Will be impinged by this building Um, there's a big public safety concern with the building of this building on b street in that the traffic does move fast all the Move in move out and also the Deliveries that will be coming to this building Will block traffic and cars will have to move around At a curve and it is already a very dangerous street And then cars moving fast Will meet cars moving around trucks and delivery Vans And it's going to create more of a problem I have almost been hit a number of times crossing the street over to brew And I know how fast cars go. I hear squeals and I hear collisions All the time so i'm very concerned about that What the city Is going to gain with this building Will be dwarfed by the negative impact Of this building on the neighborhood Thank you Thank you for your comments, sir. Sandra and she'll be followed by greg Hi, thank you for allowing me to Have my input. My name is Sandra Fitzgerald. I am a newer resident to the st. Rose Historic district. I've been here seven years I represent one of the younger families that have moved into the district and since my tenure here Since 2014 it has been an uphill battle of just onslaught of Things that we have to deal with in this neighborhood in terms of development I'm not going to go into all the other issues We bought this place because we love historic homes and we love the st Rose historic designation And the cultural heritage board are really the only people that have our back We There's a lot of other people here. I'm just going to represent like the young families who have come in Put a lot of money into restoring these homes And it's actually cost a lot more to restore these homes than just typical homes that are outside these districts And we abide by them and we spend a lot of our heartfelt and sweat equity into these homes But whenever a developer comes in or Some other entities say keratoss village and the hotel azura purchase to save the view All of our needs within our neighborhood is completely overlooked and just bulldozed And so I really would like you to honor the actual vote that the cultural heritage board made and some of the The appeal from some of the st. Rose residents in terms of the height Once again, we work hard to preserve the character of this neighborhood and oftentimes when developers come in It is often disregarded And in terms of the cd5 designation allowing the five story to go in on that property and other properties within st. Rose that was not Deemed inappropriate. There's one right across the street from me If a building goes up there or right next to pamela who spoke earlier It overshadows my one-story bungalow. And so the cd5 Five-store designation doesn't really represent the preservation of the st. Rose district So I would like you to hear the st. Rose residents our appeal to preserve Our neighborhood and I really moved to deny the appeal and deny this landmark altercation. Thank you Thank you, sandra. We have greg followed by paul greg harper st. Rose historic district Uh, good evening, mayor rogers vice mayor rogers and risk of the city council and staff I'd like to refer you to on a part of your parcel or The things you handed out part their attachment for project plans pdf Page 18 of 19. There's a rendering of A view from the south looking at the current building, which is just south of the project and the project to See what the change in Math is the difference in size of these two buildings There are 16 parcels of In the historic district long v street and the saturday afternoon club on 10th street Five of those are one story eight or two story two or three story And one is this parcel this thing dominates that entire street um There smaller ones there's what said there's four non contributing parcels out of all of these Two of them have already been developed The other one would be grew which probably won't be developed because it's so small and this parcel So this is probably the only parcel that will be developed along v street and it's out of character with the entire section along v street I Read some things here that they're looking at the 2007 2020 downtown station area specific plan. I'm not sure Which one they're using but one of the Handouts uh flats on v street page seven of 16 They mentioned zoning code section 20-28 .040 which is the historic combining district zoning and Part of if you read that zoning Code for our historic district It says 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 That is indicating to me that our historic guidelines The zoning for us should be predominating on this project It further down in that in the same zoning it says that Let's see The review authority finds that the increased height. Oh They they limit you to 35 feet no structure within the h combining district Shall be exceed maximum 35 feet to get out of that they have to prove That the preservation district any adjacent conservative properties are not affected This doesn't meet that and I even didn't get close to what I wanted to say. Thank you much Thank you, sir. Next we have paul followed by s bolt Thank you My name is paul fritz And I would like to ask the council to support this project This is exactly the kind of project that we should be promoting in downtown santa rosa It takes an underdeveloped property increases the intensity of development provides new housing in our downtown core close to community services And that does does this all without expanding any infrastructure. There's no new streets. No new utilities Utilizes what we've already put in place And it brings more value to our community the current Property value is valued at four hundred fifty nine thousand dollars And it brings in property taxes of just over five thousand dollars a year The proposed project, I mean, I don't know exactly what the value will be But it's got to be at least 10 to 20 times that value Which we're bringing 10 to 20 times the property tax to our community This is the property tax that goes to schools that goes to community services We need to promote this type of development and increase the value of our downtown community It's strange to me that you know an eight to one vote between the cultural heritage board and design review board Results in a denial of a project Obviously design review board cultural heritage board generally found this project to be acceptable and one person kind of ended up cratering the whole thing so As someone said earlier knows does not set a good example to any future developer that wants to come to downtown santa rosa This becomes this difficult to build a project like this. It's not that large of a project It's a five-story building. I understand But that site is not that large. It's 24 units. We need housing of all types Even if it's market rate housing that helps we need all types of housing The uh The proposed building will not have I don't believe a negative impact on the neighborhood I understand people who live nearby don't want change change is sometimes difficult to accept But that's a nicely designed building. They took a lot of features that were Common in the historic neighborhood and applied them to the design. I think it was well done. It's thoughtfully scaled A lot of the stretch of b street the neighboring properties around there are not contributing buildings It's a bit of a mishmash architecturally and I think this Building design would go a long way to improving what is now a bit of an you know, eyesore as you approach downtown I encourage the council to approve the appeal and let the project move forward. Thank you Thank you paul. Next we have a s bolt I'll start now. What am I doing there? Okay, everyone give it back to me. I'm hanging up because I'm so frustrated by not being able to talk Okay, so sir, you are uh, you're unmuted at the moment and it's your your opportunity to speak with the council for three minutes Hi, my name is jan bolt One of few owners of 576 b street I see the height of this building is being too tall The thing that really concerns me is they're building a basically a homeless camp Down at the end of the block and you're talking about putting multiple families Residents is in this with children We have people literally this morning defecating on our our front doorstep Happens once a week minimum at our building and Broken windows with a burglary three weeks ago Cars racing up and down that street all the time does not seem like a good place For families to raise kids there at all Uh, you just have to be around that community And the lack of enforcement by catholic charities who keeps promising to help for the last 15 years never appears So i'm concerned with any anybody that indicates that they're going to put in family residences Uh on that street and raise children there. Thank you All right. Thank you for your comments Is there anybody else from the public who wishes to make comments on item 15.1? Seeing no hands. I'll bring it back. Uh, madame clerk. Were there any live public or excuse me voicemail public comments or emails? Thank you, mayor. There were no voice message public comments and there were multiple emails which were received By the 5 p.m. deadline on monday and were uploaded and republished with the agenda Susie did mention that she received additional Email public comments or correspondence And we will upload those Later on this week to the file to make them available to the public Excellent. Thank you so much And with that I will bring it back to the council The applicant will have three minutes to make comments Are Either answering questions or any types of rebuttal from what they heard in public comment Thank you, mayor rogers and members of the council What we mostly heard is that people don't like change There were a lot of residents that that spoke tonight But there were also a lot of residents that spoke in favor of our project sent letters in favor of our project There were downtown businesses That showed favor for our project and brought forward Many items to you Expressing the need for this kind of housing in the downtown. We're certainly not expecting to invest 10 million dollars in the site and create A homeless shelter or a center for crime within the downtown We're trying to expand the opportunities for housing within the historic district You heard from our historical architect. You heard it. You read his report in which he said that This project as designed and as modified over time for the last two years has brought you a project that is in context to the neighborhood I absolutely agree that if you are looking at a one-story building for the last 30 years And now you're going to look at a minor building in comparison to everything else that's in that district The five-story parking garage the more building that in terms of massing is is enormous The fact that it steps down to two feet doesn't mean that it's not a part of the district as tom has pointed out In his presentation the parking garage although on the edge of the historic district is most Most definitely a part of that district and a contributor to it. We have a small building This is 24 units of housing that we desperately need I didn't get a chance to show you the data economics from the urban three slide That was in your package that um was came before you but as paul fritz had pointed out a 10 million dollar investment will translate in as a as a Value per acre productive value per acre of that site brings us in the 50 million dollar range So when we heard the neighbor say that it's not going to bring any value to the community Not does it only does it bring economic value to our community? It brings housing to our community It's sensitively sets itself into the neighborhood and In terms of the neighbor to the north our development guidelines and standards would have allowed us to build up to the property line We made a choice to set back an order to buffer from him so that he did have some Separation between the building and also be noted his building sits on the property line So it's the problem is exacerbated by the development pattern that exists So I would say that we have Done everything that we can to meet all the standards and all the guidelines We brought in the experts to help us move this project into an historical context And we ask you to uh hold our appeal and move this project forward. Thank you Thank you, sir With that i'm going to close the public hearing and bring it back to the city council Susie before I have Councilmember tidbits put a motion on the table. Could you walk through for the council one more time? What our options are? And then once the motion is set we can discuss what an I vote means and what a no vote means Yes, I can if I can find my page So the the three Options that I talked about is the first is deny Uh deny the appeal Which will result in denial of the project both the preliminary design review and the landmark alteration To grant the appeal which would approve the project And to note that there are five conditions that were added by the drb And additional conditions can be added by the council as well Or continue for redesign And if you choose that option You could either ask them to return to the council or return to the drb design review board And the cultural heritage board Great. Thank you so much Councilmember tidbits you have this item I move a resolution of the council of the city of san rosa Granting the appeal and approving a landmark alteration permit for the flats at 528 b street Involving the construction of a five-story mixed-use building within the st. Rose preservation district assessor's parcel number 010-035-022 File number prj20-005 and wait for the reading of the text second So we've got a motion from councilmember tidbits tidbits and a second from vice, excuse me councilmember fleming So for council and for the public and I vote from the council will grant Or will approve the project a no vote from the council will deny the project Sue do you have anything to add on that front? No, you stated it correctly. Thank you Great, uh, we'll go to discussion councilmember soyer Thank you mayor. I have a question for either mr. Rose or miss murray What was the staff's original recommendation? To the two boards that were represented this evening Yeah, the nation was approval for both of the entitlements. Okay. Thank you and the board chairs, uh, so I'm Mayor can I just move into comment or do I are we only in questions? Okay, thank you. Um, the board chair stated it really well, but I think it does deserve repeating Um, it's been stated several times But I think it's important because we as a council respond to our boards and take their recommendations very seriously um The if I'm not mistaken, it's been clear that the the design report unanimously unanimously approved the project of those that were in attendance at that meeting unanimously approved the project of the in the cultural heritage board of those in attendance the majority approved the project But due to the unusual voting requirements, which we have since fixed the project failed to receive the required number of votes eight out of nine affirmative votes to approve the project between the two boards um What we decide tonight will indeed be a watershed event when considering the future residential success of our downtown Make no mistake. I think that those that are that are watching what happens tonight That are interested in in quality evolution of our downtown Are watching very closely to see if our council Is as devoted to that quality evolution as we have been verbalizing for years now So I'm looking looking forward to this project. I think it's a it is a has a great deal to be Thankful for as far as the aesthetics it is It sets the bar high for future development, and I'm very much in favor of moving forward with that project and approving the The the appeal Thank you council member council member Fleming Thank you mayor, and thank you to everybody who called in and to staff and the applicant and the For your follow-through on this for me, this is about a couple of issues and one of them is about governance and as it's been noted the city council has addressed the The prior requirement that for we needed for affirmative votes from our cultural heritage board and you know, there really was You know some extenuating circumstances in which only four of the seven Supposed to be members. They're voted on this and so I don't think that in any other circumstance Anybody would accept a vote for anything in which one person got to take the whole thing out of out of nine people and I think we'd any of us would be up in arms if we voted for You know a mayor or a president or you know a school board bond anything if if you know Eight out of nine Residents voted in favor of it, but one one didn't and so we went with that so for one You know, it's something that the city council recognizes a problem Who's made a decision to rectify it and move forward, but the other is this interface that's interesting between You know policy Predictability and follow-through and this is one of those opportunities where the council gets to choose to work on that Make a decision that might be unpopular with some of our residents After having heard their concerns And follow-through with the policies that we determined are in the long-term best interests of the city of Santa Rosa And I believe that this project meets so many of our goals But also we deserve to follow through With what we tell people we're going to do so we we've said we've made downtown housing a priority We've streamlined the process. We said if you do these following things and you make it through All of our boards and then your project will go through and the the real challenge for developers is being able to Rely on what we say and if we don't do what we say we're going to do we will lose development in our downtown and you know, I heard from Some residents tonight that there there are real serious concerns about Having this development and from from where I sit only a few blocks away from there It's hard to really understand how this will not enhance the quality and character of the neighborhood Meaning that you know, what is there now? I would rather look at this building frankly than the side of the garage If I were there But furthermore, you know, it's a great place to raise kids I'm feel very lucky to raise my kids in the downtown poor of Santa Rosa and You know people are really concerned about where to raise children in this being a bad place to raise children I think that there's plenty of places to look that are not great places to raise children But this is a really lovely one So um from the from the perspective of housing predictability Respect for the neighborhood. I think this project needs all I think we lost council member Fleming Up looks like you're back. All right, I'll go on to council member Schwedhelm Thank you. I was wondering if that was me or uh council member Fleming I'm not going to reiterate what mr. Sorry miss Fleming said because they captured my thoughts Pretty much to a tee. It's like if you want to if you want to develop in Santa Rosa follow these steps For success and that's what I think these developers these well respected developers have been doing I think it does check all the boxes and the one area of concern I had was okay Is it consistent with the preservation district and mr. Perry's comments the architectural historian At the november 23rd meeting really resonated with me, you know, he said it's not going to punch a hole in this district It's not going to be in front to it. It's an addition to the district and I wholeheartedly agree with him And I look forward to supporting this motion. Thank you Are there any other council members who'd like to make comments? Okay, I will say this one is an interesting one for me and and we've been talking for a number of years about the incoming tensions between The city's attempts to build housing particularly in our downtown corridor And as it abuts our historic districts who Are in that same realm And we've had it's pretty substantial conversations about how to do that in a way that is respectful of the history Values our cultural assets and also still allow some progress in our downtown I think if this project was again was across the street, I would have a completely different take on it But for me when I look at it with that five story parking structure there It is hard for me to not see it within the context of what is existing there And I understand that there might be some original sin issues that the folks see and having put that parking garage there But that is where we're at So for me, I will be supporting the the the motion to grant the appeal on the project And We'll continue to work with developers who are interested in developing in our downtown to make sure that they are doing The incorporation of historic elements into their projects like this one To make sure that we do have that high bar so that we do find a way to address that tension between our historic neighborhoods And new housing projects moving forward and it will be a high bar Particularly as I said if it if it is further next to residential properties With that madame clerk if you'd call the roll Miss thank you mayor councilmember alvarez hi Councilmember fleming hi Councilmember soyer hi Councilmember schwedhelm hi Councilmember tidbits hi Ice mayor rogers hi Mayor rogers hi That motion passes with seven eyes Thank you staff. Thank you to everybody who's participated in this public hearing We will take a quick council quick five minute break And then we will come back and I believe where we left off was item five Councilmember rogers. I believe there's another resolution to this item. Oh, I apologize. Let's go ahead and do that I move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa granting the appeal on approving Preliminary design review for the flats at 528 b street involving the construction of a five story mixed use building Assessors parcel number zero one zero dash zero three five dash zero two two file number prj Two zero dash zero zero five and wait for the reading a second We have a motion from councilmember tibbetz a second from councilmember alvarez. Let's go ahead and call the roll Councilmember alvarez Councilmember fleming hi Councilmember soyer hi Councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember tibbetz Vice mayor rogers hi Mayor rogers hi That motion passes with seven eyes And I think we are good to go. So council. We will take a five minute Uh, let's let's say at eight ten. We will come back eight ten sharp. We'll be on item five Our report out from our earlier closed session in study sessions. Thank you All right, madame clerk. I recognize a quorum of the council. Would you please call the roll? councilmember alvarez president Councilmember fleming Councilmember sore president. Oh, thank you Councilmember soyer here Councilmember schwedhelm here Councilmember tibbetz councilmember tibbetz vice mayor rogers president Mayor rogers here And I will and I will know councilmember tibbetz has uh has left us for the remainder of the evening Thank you Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of councilmember tibbetz Great. Thank you. We'll move on to item five on our agenda Mr. City manager madame city attorney Was there any report that you'd like to give on the study session or the closed session earlier this this afternoon? No additional information on the study sessions And as to the closed session the council did meet in closed session on item 2.1 Regarding labor negotiations and gave direction to the city's labor negotiator Great. Thank you so much. We have no proclamations or presentations tonight And mr. City manager if you'd like to go on to staff brief briefings So the first staff briefing tonight is 7.2 covid 19 response update and I'd like to invite dav gline and kelly keikendall to step forward to provide That the first part of that update Good evening council now that we're in Mayor rogers and members of the city council We wanted to use this opportunity to update you and the public regarding san rosa's multiple covid 19 responses To keep our homeless community safe during this pandemic With a focus on our experience standing up Operating and then closing down the safe social distancing program at the finley community center We represented to the community on a neighborhood zoom meeting in may that the finley site would be active for six months And we were able to keep that commitment Cumulating with another community meeting to receive feedback on this experience just a few weeks ago kelly keikendall our homeless service program manager will walk us through a very brief presentation And then we can respond to any questions you may have Thank you kelly Thanks, dav Good evening, mayor rogers, and I wanted to take a moment just to say Welcome Vice mayor rogers and councilmember alvarez, and it's great to meet you this evening virtually via zoom So with that dina, could you advance to the next slide, please? So I just want to touch briefly before I cover the safe social distancing program our covid 19 homeless emergency response And highlight that staff has put all these programs together in addition to our existing programs So one of the first things we did Early on in the pandemic as we made accessible motel rooms for high risk sheltered and unsheltered individuals And these people were identified through the city owns samuel Sam jones hall shelter which is operated by catholic charities and also through our homeless encampment assistance program We worked with the county to locate sanitation facilities So portable toilets and hand washing stations at our near known encampments We continued our encampment resolution efforts With a focus on covid safety for individuals within the camps and to the surrounding community And as you are probably well aware of Um, we have started emergency shelter expansion at the sam jones hall shelter There's a picture of it here in the slide and that's a sprung structure that is being Constructed out of the existing facility. It's 8,000 square feet and we'll restore our capacity to pre covid To pre covid capacity, excuse me, and that will be 60 beds And then the subject of this evening's meeting, which is the safe social distancing program And i'll go into more detail that on that in the next few slides Including providing some information to council about the community meeting that we had last week Next slide please So just to provide you some background on the program The purpose of this program was to create social distancing within existing encampments in response to covid 19 To protect vulnerable population vulnerable population are Community members that are experiencing homelessness as well as the community at large And it was stood up in response to the covid pandemic versus encampment resolution However, um, and i'll go into this in the next couple slides We learned a lot from this that although we set it up for emergency response It did really assist with our encampment um response efforts And as dave mentioned, this was a temporary site. It ran for six months between made in november It just closed the middle of last month and it was set up in the at the finley community center in a section of the parking lot area Next slide, please The program provided up to 68 tents. It was a managed secure site So there's 24 seven management of the site through catholic charities as well as private security The program provided basic services So access to shelter sanitary facilities showers and meals to meet the basic needs of participants as well as Enhanced services including on-site medical services Community referrals and service and housing navigation There were covid 19 safety protocols in place and the cost And we're still finalizing this this is an estimate like I said the program just concluded last month So the cost is approximately $680,000 and that includes our contract with catholic charities as well as the city costs to Stand up the program and that includes the portable toilets The hand washing stations the fencing the staff tent And there was also a tent that was put up over the summer months as a cooling station And like I said, this is an estimate. We we do plan on using the city's federal Community development block grant funding to reimburse the general fund for for these expenses and staff is working on that right now Next slide, please And the report out from catholic charities on this program 210 people were served at the safe social distancing program 94 of them transitioned to interim housing and six transitioned to permanent housing I do want to highlight at the closure of this program in mid-november All individuals were offered a placement at the closure of the program In terms of lessons learned I would say outreach and engage these first two bullets outreach and engagement tool and increased utilization among underserved population What we learned through this is that there was a willingness from individuals that we hadn't previously been able to reach Or serve to come into an alternate shelter programs such as finley Additionally catholic charities reported out that people who had never received services before in the county that are homeless Or had refused services in the past were willing to come into services at the finley program Um, it also served as an excellent linkage to services as I mentioned there were individuals that had never Um, you know come into services before so this was a great opportunity to get them into finley and then access other services in the community and um Also increased the last bullet increased covid 19 Percussions in addition to the basic services that were provided. There were also screening protocols in place that were not available to individuals living on the street Ordin campments basically in unmanaged living situations or unsheltered situations Next slide, please And I think this is my last um, although I will of course speak to the community meeting so public safety um The report out overall from both our police and fire department is that there was minimal impact And really that there was no increase in calls for service directly linked to the program um They likely would have responded to These calls are similar calls in the area um also Public safety also reports out that the program served Much like catheterity share with us that the program served as a tool for encampment response and their experience too was that people were more willing to come into the program than other Shelter models congregate shelter models such as sam jones hall excuse me Additionally that The the program being a managed camp site was much safer overall than Our unmanaged larger encampments in santa rosa A couple more points. I want to make excuse me Just in terms of community feedback, we had a virtual meeting last week december 7th and Three community members provided feedback during that meeting overall. It was positive and they expressed support for the program individual Requested that there be a similar program to failure in each district And also um expanding a range of providers so that we look at working with with um Providers other than just catheterities and there were a couple questions that came from the public related to capacity data and um Potential future funding for another program like finley before I wrap up and hand it over to dave with any additional comments I just really want to acknowledge that while davin are here tonight representing housing community service And I've already acknowledged catheterities fire and police in the presentation I want to acknowledge my other um Peers within the city of santa rosa. This is really a team effort. So I want to acknowledge the staff and public works recreation parks Water and legal as well as our communications team because this was really a team effort And one of the main reasons why this was such a success. So That concludes my part of the staff briefing briefing and i'll hand it back to dave. Thank you. Yeah And and i'll be brief. I'll just echo what kelly just said. This was a team effort It was a rally in the middle of a pandemic It was a decision set that we tried to figure out how we're going to keep folks safe and our known encampments And create new tools to invite folks into services where they Might other might not otherwise go And so it went across all departments that kelly just mentioned so with that we're that's our briefing We're happy to answer any questions Okay council any questions councilmember schwedhelm Thank you, mr. Mayor. Thank you dave and kelly for the presentation I do appreciate all the work that went on behind the scenes to put together both of those community meetings Because I think it was a great to exchange the information One of the things I know that we also talked about uh with our housing and homeless task force with mr. Down kind of like, okay, where do we go from here? Sometimes it's been referred to as finley 2.0. What would be those next steps because I know this body it talked about Different opportunities in different districts. Could you update us on that and what are the next steps in exploring those other options with what we've learned from finley? Yeah, thank you Councilmember schwedhelm. So the next steps would be As staff were meeting with the city manager and the mayor to set up a study session To talk about Next steps and tier 2 priorities Some of you might recall that in july 7th We had a study session where we broke down our work plan into tier 1 tier 2 in response to the pandemic We want to see if there's a way to get to tier 2 resources and build on what we learned from finley to your point 2.0 And that is something we're trying to set up for february before the council goes into goal setting on the 18th and 19th Great. Thank you councilmember alvarez Yes, thank you I did have an opportunity to drive by the site there at sam jones and I think it's a great addition To the building that we see there on site in the initial Picture we we at the finley site. We showed a row of tents Have we Contemplated doing something similar for those individuals in a mobile home or in vehicles where we could actually have A parking space for those individuals opposed to them being up and down this best road corridor Yes, thank you for that question the answer is yes We we call it safe parking where we provide a place for folks who are living in rvs trailers or cars Where they can be where they can go at night The discussion for the council that's going to come forward is should we be looking at dedicating certain real estate? 24-7 for that purpose and in terms of the Our work we call those indoor outdoor shelters in other words You're welcome to come into services if you're living in your vehicle If you're living in your tent But we want to create some structured environment to introduce in the services for that point And that's that we see is what i'm calling tier two priorities that we want to bring forward to the council To consider in your goals to consider in your budget going forward Any other questions council member? Okay, I had a couple for you as well, uh, Dave first of all a really great job I think that the uh initial community outreach meeting that we had with with neighbors and folks who were interested was one of the best community forums that i've seen and I thought that uh I thought that you and the rest of the staff did a really good job of trying to Provide meaningful changes to address the concerns that you were hearing coming out of that meeting And I I think you were very successful in that Uh first I want to ask about the tents. So obviously we scrambled to Purchase tents and I heard the the saga of trying to get them here Where are the tents now and is there some future utility that we would have as a city with those? those resources Thank you, mayor. What we learned is those tents have a useful life I mean we scrambled to find these back in march and in april and we bought them from a vendor And uh, we had to replace many of them But when we started to Close the camp the good news is is that everyone accepted the invitation to services stayed Working with catholic charities moved into into the samuel jones hall But as a we decided that they could keep their tent because basically after six months There wasn't there wasn't any resale value to it. Let's put it that way Okay Um One thing that I think would be really interesting for the council to look at from a data standpoint Is and I and I appreciated from kelly hearing that many folks who had never considered going into services before That this was the gateway to getting them into services And and we know that those are the people who are the hardest to actually Provide services for and and who can't end up being an impact on the neighborhood I'd like to see how the the cost and this sort of a structure Really compares with some of the programs that we are currently using In terms of bang for our dollar to get people into those services And how we might learn lessons from this to better structure our future Programs going forward. That's not really a question. That's more of a comment Unless you had something you wanted to add dave Well, no, I I that's exactly right and the council has an opportunity this the winter spring you have Eight thousand square feet. You just invested in that samuel jones hall to restore restore not add restore the shelter capacity But within that footprint you have options to create more privacy You have options to create more of an opportunity for folks to feel um Sheltered without being in a congregate setting You also have an opportunity to look at the village concept that we learned at The finley center rather than tents. We're talking to st. Vincent de paul. What's her experience out with the palette structures are called out at the low skill of coast pro con there trailers at the fairgrounds So we have a lot of ideas and we can build options for the city council as you move forward in the To consider the next wave of homeless services Yeah, don't I appreciate that and I will be very blunt. I'd always been very skeptical Of the idea of a sanctioned encampment What you were able to create a managed encampment? If it still furthers our housing first goals, which I think that this did I'd be very interested in seeing how we move forward on that I know that there are many folks in the public who'd be interested in helping us to build those those palette Opportunities for for people moving forward. So I'd like to look at that if if we can The last question that I had was about that sprung structure When I took a tour of it a couple of weeks ago. It did seem like it was just about ready for occupancy Do we have A date of when we think that we will be moving folks into it and how will that help us In addressing some of the encampments that we are hearing about along the prince memorial greenway at all of park and so for Correct. Yeah, it restores our capacity. So Friday, uh, december 18th Is when we expect to have our temporary occupancy permit We we working with pg&e to get the lights and power on but we have an opportunity to use generators if that is delayed Then it's a question of operations and that's probably will be built over the holiday the christmas holiday week into the Into the week between christmas and new years But then we'll have the operator ready. We'll have occupancy. So that's a long-winded way of saying probably by the end of december First week of january. We should be able to open up the facility 60 additional beds And will folks get access to it through coordinated entry And looking at the their vulnerability score or will we be using this in the homeless encampment? Um, assistance program Perfect. Yeah, the that's a question for the council. So for the benefit of all the Coordinated entry is where we we try to register the most vulnerable and place them into services as best as possible But we also have a community that doesn't Like to have large encampments in their residential or Neighborhoods or commercial districts. So we would try to work with you on balancing that Around the priorities of the most vulnerable getting a shelter placement As well as a way to address our encampments through our existing protocols Great, thank you Mayor rogers, if I may um, I'll just add that with the 60 beds coming back online online will be evaluating Our capacity and how we broke it down before between coordinated entry and heat dedicated beds But with this there'll be more beds for both Coordinated entry as well as for heat to help us with our encampment response Great. So what I'm hearing uh, just a paraphrase for neighbors who are having issues Help is on the way. We're just trying to get this Up and running Yes, any other questions from council? Great. Thank you so much Thank you Uh, continuing on the coveted response. Um, a couple topics Roll out of vaccines in Sonoma county Sonoma county is expected to receive its first allocations of fizer vaccine 4,875 doses for first round shots between wednesday december 16th tomorrow and friday december 18th The doses will be disseminated to the county's six hospitals on a proportional basis and given first to health care personnel and long-term care facility residents The county is following prioritization guidelines established by federal authorities and decisions Are not made at the city level Stay at home order reminders Sonoma county has preemptively adopted the california department of public health stay at home order Due to rising covet case numbers and hospitalizations The order is in place until 1159 p.m. On saturday jenna january 9th 2021 Under the order residents are directed to stay at home Except for work shopping or other essential activities such as medical appointments All sectors other than retail and essential operations must be closed Outdoor recreation is allowed. However, all city sports fields are closed to take further measures to curb gaps And stop the spread of covet 19 Courts current sports field permit holders May continue to prove youth training and drills But issue issuing of any new permits is suspended until at least january 9th covet 19 outraged collaboration with sr city schools Today the city of santa rosa and the santa rosa city schools launched a collaborative outreach effort Leading up to the school winter break that stresses the importance of not gathering or mixing households During this critical time of the pandemic Conveyed in english and spanish languages the messages are targeted towards students and parents and are relevant to our community But are relevant to our greater community as well Video psas featuring students were published at the city social media platforms this morning and distributed to all teachers With sr city schools for sharing virtually with their students in class At a special holiday a special holidays at home edition of city connections newsletter Also published today as said a holidays at home webpage, which can be viewed at sr city dot org slash holidays at home Beginning thursday radio psas featuring the students will air on multiple local english and spanish language stations And a special holiday edition of city connections will be circulated via the school district's parent parent text email notification system I'd like uh to share the video psc with you now so you can hear the message that our santa rosa students Are helping to share city clerk, can you um play that video that we we got a preview of before To keep our community to school We have more covid-19 risk in our community than we did a month ago We all know about wearing masks to washing hands To keeping our distance Not it's time to stop gathering and mixing as much as you can reduce interactions with people outside of your home It's not about mixing with other people safely. It's about trying to stop mixing until our community's health risk improves That's how we'll stop the spread That's how we'll stop the spread. That's how we'll stop the spread. Thank you food 7.2 Um, if there are any questions Try to field them otherwise. I'll move on to 7.3 Council any questions before we move on Go ahead seven point seven point three glass fire recovery update. Uh assistant city city fire marshal Paul lowenthal to present Good evening again, mayor rogers vice mayor rogers members of the council, uh, paul lowenthal assistant farm marshal with the standards of fire department I also serve as the city's glass fire Debris task force lead and then coordinate both the watershed and debris task force For the city manager. I'll make this very brief tonight The phase two deadline that was initially set uh for today to get our residents that need to opt into a debris removal program following the glass fire was set to expire The state approved a 30 day extension. Uh, so that deadline has now officially been moved to January 15th. Uh, we're hoping that that additional time will allow our survivors To explore their options into which phase two program they'll utilize either state's program or the private debris removal Both deadlines are now set Again for the 15th and we do not expect there to be an extension beyond that with that, uh, we have, uh, accounted for all but about six Of our survivors right now. So we are working very closely with those remaining residents to help get them into a program was also informed today The debris removal did physically start within the city limits today So that was good news originally supposed to happen yesterday, but it was delayed because of the rain um, and our focus remains on getting the 1151 residents in the city that were affected by the glass fire to understand the tree removal program Our goal right now is to really get those numbers up We right now Officially have 18 residents That we've been able to get into that program So that is it for tonight. Um unless you have any questions Thank you paul council any questions All right, you're off the hook Okay next 7.4 transit professionals of the year award and i'll turn it over to rachel eade Okay, just a minute get my video on here Good evening. Mayor rogers and members of the council and welcome to our new council member and vice mayor I am rachel eade deputy director of transportation and public works for the transit division And i'm pleased to bring you this short briefing on a recognition some of our staff recently received Each year the california transit association's small operators committee which represents transit agencies from around the state of california Selects a transit professional of the year to honor for their outstanding contributions to their communities their agencies or the public transit industry as a whole While this award typically goes to an individual and often a transit executive CTA has awarded its 2020 transit professional of the award to all california frontline transit workers including bus operators and maintenance staff Customer service staff who have served their communities during the covet 19 pandemic This includes over 50 city of santa rosa frontline staff Who have kept santa rosa city bus safe and operational providing essential public transit services throughout the pandemic For the city of santa rosa team. This has included implementing multiple service and schedule changes to respond to changing conditions and riders travel needs assisting riders with understanding these schedule changes as well as evolving safety policies Implementing new sanitation and safety practices to maintain a healthy environment on transit vehicles and in transit facilities providing meal delivery services and transportation for unsheltered individuals traveling to safe shelter sites And finally providing additional critical transportation services to our community by evacuating vulnerable residents during the glass fire And just on a personal note. The team has really done this with a lot of dedication professionalism and care for our community CTA has prepared a short video to honor its 2020 transit professionals of the year, which I would like to share with you I tell you now it can't compete with the students from the santa rosa city schools But it's it's still pretty good. You'll see some familiar faces from the santa rosa city bus team in the video So thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to share this recognition of our team with you today And with that i'll conclude my briefing. Thank you Thank you so much rachel and just a heartfelt thank you to everybody at santa rosa city bus We have definitely learned through this pandemic what essential worker actually means And we have seen more More than ever that public transit is critical to the success for our community And we've been able to make changes that have kept people safe and kept things moving So just really thank you to you your team and to everybody else if you could pass that along for the council Absolutely. Thank you so much Send thumbs up from council any other questions comments Great Uh with that I will go to public comment for items 7.1 through 7.4 Uh on our staff briefings tonight If you are interested in a public comment go ahead and rate if you hit the raise hand feature on zoom I am not seeing anyone. Uh madame city clerk. Were there any voicemail public comments? There were no voicemail public comments received on item 7 staff briefings Okay, great. Thank you. We will move on to item 8 then city manager and city attorney reports I have two I have two two little reports that i'm going to be giving this evening. These is the last meeting for two members of the Uh of the team that the council has become really familiar with And i'm going to read a little bit about them And wish them all the best As they step in to the next phase of their life and retire from the city of santa rosa First is dave guine. dave guine joined the city in march 1999 as the program manager for affordable housing Later renamed the santa rosa housing trust He became the director of housing and redevelopment in 2004 And reorganized the department to be the economic development and housing With responsibilities growing in support of neighborhood revitalization programs economic development and parking services is a Key component of the downtown revitalization strategy and his 21 plus year span with the city dave led the city's redevelopment housing authority parking services the housing trust the housing choice voucher assistance program neighborhood revitalization code enforcement homeless services And community development block grant disaster recovery programs Some of dave's more notable achievements include establishing several redevelopment project areas and then strategically closing them when the state eliminated that program in 2011 The former atnt building was the last project that he was able to convince the state To to proceed on neighborhood revitalization focused on the city's most blighted neighborhoods and assisted burbank housing and the acquisition And rehabilitation of 188 units in apple valley while holding other property owners accountable within a property owners association Upgrading technology and introducing progressive pricing policies in parking services should also get noted along with Developing the city's first economic development strategic plan homeless services grew from annual budget of 875,000 to 3.4 million With the introduction of a housing first strategy and associated programs Managing accampments and housing 359 people last year alone director guine Led the housing authority dave participated in production of over 1500 multifamily units And the acquisition of real rehabilitation of 275 units the construction of 150 ownership units An additional 150 special needs beds and a voucher program now approaching 2000 households He oversaw the acquisition rehabilitation expansion of sango jones hall and brookwood shelters and his assisted catholic charities with purchasing Developing the block that will soon become keratots village. Thank you, dave for all of your service and I don't know if council wants to say anything on dave's behalf before I Move to the next one I think I would definitely like to and I think I speak for everybody and will let everybody still speak for themselves But I think I speak for everybody when I say that dave you've just done an incredible job in the face of some really Difficult circumstances and in a policy area that the community does not usually agree on And I've always found you to be approachable Willing to think outside of the box And also willing to take in all of the input take the i'm sure you have many arrows in your back for having done So but you really move this this count this community and this council in a positive direction On the housing and homelessness fronts in particular Uh, I see councilmember soyer is getting ready to speak Thank you, mayor Dave, you know, I'm exhausted just listening to all the things that you did that you accomplished in all those years I had no idea that that the list was was that long and varied. That's really quite something I you probably didn't expect to have one of the most challenging things on your plate as far as our dealing with our Our homeless residents and and and trying to do the best to satisfy the needs of of this very challenging group of people that are in that are in so much need and you've done that an amazing job And and and you and the guidance that you have shown your staff as well Because they will continue the work That you have been so much a part of thank you Enjoy your retirement whatever that looks like and thank you for your service to the city for so long and all the best council members what helps Thank you, mr. Mayor Yes, Dave. It's um, it's so sad to see you go. I think of all of our experiences both when we were colleagues And in that infamous day in november of 2016 Facilitating the community meeting that didn't go so well, but again, what I really appreciate is Your heart's in the right direction your sub-matter expert when it comes to housing and homelessness You've assembled a wonderful team that i'm really looking forward to working With your your replacement Megan bassinger who is equally talented and it's a very deep bench there And that doesn't happen by accident do large in part to your efforts I'm not quite ready to become a fan of any of the detroit sports teams like you are But I do encourage you to stay true to your beliefs there And you've done a wonderful job. You've really added great value to the city of santa rosa. Thank you Thank you, dave next um, I will uh, uh Talk about the outgoing fire chief tony gossner After 30 years of service with the city of santa rosa fire department chief tony gossel will be retiring from From the city next week His announcement to me of this decision several months and ho was bitter sweet news The chief has been an integral part of our organization for decades. And so we celebrate the time he has He has served with us and now we'll focus on his family and personal endeavors We will sorely miss his critical leadership which has guide us through some of the most challenging emergencies in our community's history Most notably during the last few years Chief gossner was originally hired by the santa rosa fire department on october 15th 1990 as a firefighter He rose through the department ranks over the years serving as fire captain detain chief and deputy chief Before being selected as interim fire chief for santa rosa fire department in 2013 Chief gossner was eventually appointed fire chief on august 31st 2014 Those who work closest to the chief would describe him as engaged caring and empathetic in his approach to leadership No time Was that more evident than the beginning of the night of october 8th 2017 when the tubs fire roared into santa rosa from the east He took incident command early in the vent having to to move his command post twice as the fire burned Over five percent of the structures in the city He remained calm collected and strategically driven as he built a command structure that kept city leadership And surrounding fire agencies informed of the firefight He transitioned into unified command and eventually into repopulation recovery and watershed emergency response This was without a doubt a career and life changing experience for him And since then chief gossner has provided tireless leadership and management at the local regional state and national levels To make fire service more effective and efficient based on the tragic lessons we learned in october of 2017 He has worked to improve local firefighting agencies ability to provide immediate firefighting aid to the contiguous counties within our region Help including helping to secure funding to provide pre positioning of firefighters and equipment throughout the region in times of high fire weather Chief gossner again took the role of unified command with cow fire incident management team during the kincaid fire of 2019 As well as the recent glass fire this past fall Chief gossner's experience during the tubs fire approved invaluable to the incident management team and the other unified commanders The chief has shared santa santa rosa's wildfire stories with others around the country to educate them on large scale wildfire and disaster management The chief has testified at the state and federal level to support legislation and policy changes that benefit disaster survivors Bolsters the resiliency of wireless communication infrastructure and better addresses the unique circumstances of wildfire disasters And increases funding and improves fire services Chief gossner has also been an indispensable part of the executive management team Is trusted and respected approach to working with staff and other civic and Service leaders in the community has certainly accounted for the success in his long career We are incredibly grateful for his service and his ongoing dedication to protection of our community Please joining me in wishing him well And all the best in his retirement Thank mr. City manager Chief i think the one word that the city manager didn't use That i would is is funny Uh, and we've gone through some incredibly serious things here in santa rosa and not only has your leadership Been unifying You've been a unifying figure for our entire community But you have also done so with a perfect blend between The level of seriousness seriousness to match the moment with a little bit of comedic levity that helped get all of us through it I just want to thank you so much for being there For for for me over the last couple of years for this community Uh, and as shan said for other communities as well I think everybody in california has benefited from from your experience and from your expertise Over the last couple of years councilmember soyer Thank you, mayor. Tony, um All the seriousness has been uh has been Acknowledged and the mayor took the words out of my mouth as far as your sense of humor So your your expertise your commitment to the city will will be missed alongside Your sense of humor and your occasional mustache councilmember wet hell Oh that last comment just kind of shook me. I just tried That picture um But again, Tony, I so wish we could be doing this in person because your contributions to the city You know the the city manager mentioned some of them, but it's a daily personal interaction You've really made a difference and I truly believe you're the right chief at the right time for all the things that uh, this community Has encountered. I know chris and your kids are really going to be looking forward to seeing more of their husband and their dad And I know you've been waiting for this moment that you're going to enjoy You're ready to go over to chief navarro's office and get that application to become a VIP. I'm looking forward to seeing in there Thanks, Tony Now mr. City manager. Did we want to promote uh, Dave and tony just to say a couple of words before we move on Oh, I I see victoria is trying to to talk Yeah, man. Absolutely can't promote them. Please please promote them while councilmember fleming uh showers them in praise well Hold on a second I want to start by saying that Tony I'm really annoyed that we made you mayor because you took the words out of my mouth about him being funny Tony is um First of all the one of the first things that I got to know about Tony was that he Really wouldn't be cowed by a five-year-old or actually I think of Four-year-old child when we were on the national mall in february of 2019 and I showed him a picture of my daughter pointing at some um dog poop He took it upon himself to find some horse manure on the national mall And get a picture of himself pointing at it so that he would not be outdone by the sensibilities of a small child And you know, it's his sense of humor that That really got our community through some really difficult moments and um, you know in general I I uh, I think it's difficult to to sort of speak about yourself in these situations But I think we really kind of have to hear what he has to say And wondering what what's going to come out of his mouth and uh, you know, I hope you enjoy your your retirement And uh, if you do regrow that mustache, we send us a picture of it, please All right, thank you councilmember. Uh, Dave, I'll go to you first and then I'll come back to you, Tony Yeah, thank you councilmembers. I know you have a full agenda. I just want to express my gratitude to be Fortunate enough to live and work in the city of santa rosa and serve its community Work with some great councils including the one i'm looking at right now great city managers Housing authorities redevelopment agencies and you're right. We have a great staff. We're solid as a department Um, it we we can continue the work without delay and uh, so Again full agenda tonight. It's it's already nine o'clock. I just want to say thank you for the recognition and thank you shan for taking the time Thank you Well, hello, I I didn't realize my sense of humor had such an impact It was kind of a fun thing for me to do everyone's tomorrow I too want to thank everyone working for santa rosa fire department was Just a dream come true when I was a young man And I feel that way today very privileged It's been my honor to serve all of you and the citizens of santa rosa and I will miss all of you But i'm not going anywhere. I'm still i'm going to live here in santa rosa And this is this is where we choose to stay because we love The area I always have always will I do want to thank Sean mcglenn he's been a great boss Really appreciate the support Appreciate the support of all the council members You guys know as well as I spent a rough four years or so and I could not have done it without all of your support um moving through it also And really the department that that you have the santa rosa fire department They are a top-notch department filled with great people That's strived to deliver the best service possible for the citizen santa rosa. She'd always be proud of them I am I always have been And approve it day in and day out and the managers for the fire department are the same way They are truly dedicated to the city and making the department as good as they can as we can be And so I feel really good that that I'm leaving on this really good note with strength and in the management of the fire department and the department itself Uh, a great great department And then finally thank you to my my dad for making me the man I am and uh Lastly my family I could not do this Without the support of my wife and my kids it truly is uh humbling and difficult at times that I could have done it without them So I just want to thank them and all of you um, and um, you know just I'm very very proud to be where I'm at and I'm very proud of the department And so thank you for that. Thank you very much Thank you. Do you both? And with that council will move on to item number nine Are there any statements of abstentia for the remainder of the agenda? Councilmember Sawyer Oh nope He was just waving goodbye to uh to tony and gave I think All right seeing done we'll move on to item number 10 Uh mayors and council members reports who wants to start I'm seeing uh, there we go council members what helm Thank you. I'll be real brief. I said I'd report out. We had their continuum of care The reinstituted 15 member body. We did elect a chair and a vice chair The chair is ben leroy from san rosa community health center and the vice chair is janiel in homes from catholic charities So I think it'll be a nice combination to help us move forward and hopefully coordinate some of the activities countywide that We are doing here in the city san rosa I also just wanted to give an update on ground water sustainability plan Just to plant some seeds about there's some big movement that will be coming this year to Approve the plan there's six different areas that each ground water basin need to to approve Because we don't have any seawater intrusion. We don't have to develop a sustainable management criteria But we've approved two of them are a draft one of land land subsidence subsidence and water quality And then the three that'll be coming up in this year are chronic decline of groundwater levels depletion of interconnected surface water reduction of groundwater storage So those are all beyond our agenda. It's coming year in addition to the Registration program that will also be coming. So I'll be trying to give little snippets of information to council as we started addressing those on the board. Thank you Thank you councilmember councilmember Sawyer No report councilmember alvarez Uh quick question Is this where I inform my council members of any appointment that I've made? Yep. Absolutely. Go ahead And then I did that at the right time. Well, with great pleasure I want to inform my council members and my city of san rosa that I've appointed a tony geraldi to the bicycle and pedestrian advisory board Thank you, sir. And congratulations tony. I know he will serve this this community just as well as he always has I'll do a really brief update for folks We had a tsunami county transportation authority meeting yesterday and a regional climate protection authority meeting as well We did hear an item to try to align some of the county's goals around climate change And in particular carbon reduction And we ended up aligning it with santa rosa's goal So as we had talked about previously santa rosa leading the way And making sure that we are pushing for carbon neutrality by the year of 2030 There is more information that's uh on social media as well as the full staff report for folks who are interested But we did pass our climate mobilization Strategy to try to reach those goals They include decarbonization Uh in in reduction of emissions for transportation reductions of emissions for buildings Reductions of emissions for solid waste, which obviously we uh worked on a little bit earlier today, which feels like a week ago It focuses on carbon sequestration It focuses on resiliency and adaptation and then similar to a previous conversation we had tonight It also focuses on equity and community engagement, which are critical aspects of getting this plan implemented The other thing that i'll report out on uh for again from scta Is that we did have an ad hoc meeting on the future of public transit as a brief reminder We are looking at potential coordination and consolidation between the three transit agencies Uh, so Santa Rosa city bus Sonoma county transit and pedaluma transit We walked through the ties study Which is a step-by-step process for how we might better align those efforts and move into that coordination Uh at this meeting and we have asked staff from each of those agencies to bring back to us The specific steps that they would need to take in order to do joint brand and joint marketing so for example standardization of fees Or a consistent logo those sorts of things those conversations are moving fairly quickly. Uh, and we are looking to Come out of covet in a stronger place for our public transit that we obviously heard the importance of earlier today So I will keep the council Appraised as we move forward on those fronts Anything else from the council? Okay, we have no minutes tonight We will move on to the consent calendar. Mr. City manager Yes, item 12.1 resolution Santa Rosa city bus public transit agency safety plan item 12.2 resolution COVID-19 related homeless services extension of non congregate shelter program item 12.3 resolution approval to add one FTE limited term position in the city clerk's office item 12.4 Ordinance adoption second reading ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa emitting title 20 For the santa rosa city code by reclassifying the property for 3575 mendicino avenue project Located at 3575 mendicino avenue assessor's partial number 173 dash 030 dash 001 to the transit village residential rest Resilience city tv dash r dash rc And transit village residential senior housing resilience city tv dash r dash sch dash rc districts file numbers prj 20 dash 002 and rez 20 dash 002 Item 12.5 Ordinance adoption second reading ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa Rezoning of the properties located at 324 324 328 Yeah Slash 340 330 350 slash 358 yulanda avenue Also identified as assessor's parcel number 044 dash 081 dash 029 044 dash 081 dash 024 044 dash 072 dash 006 044 dash 072 dash 007 And 044 dash 072 dash 008 from the CG General Commercial Zoning District to the IL Light Industrial Zoning District and the property located at Zero Yolanda Avenue also identified as assessor's parcel number 044-030-061 from the R-3-15 Multifamily Residential Zoning District to the IL Light Industrial Zoning District file number PRJ19-002, 12.6, Ordnance Adoption 2nd Reading of the Ordnance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa amending Title 20 of the Santa Rosa City Code by reclassifying the property for the TNL Micro Cannabis Facility located at 3515 and Zero Industrial Drive Assessor's Parcel Numbers 148-050 027 and 148-041-049 to Light Industrial IL Zoning District file numbers PRJ19-039 and REZ19-010. Thank you, Mr. City Manager. Council, are there any questions on the Consent Calendar? Council Member Alvarez, do you have a question? Yes, on regards to 12.6, can I pull that item for recusal? Yes, we can do that. Madam Vice Mayor, I will ask that you take item 12.6 separate from the rest of the Consent Calendar. Madam City Attorney, do you need Council Member Alvarez to state a reason for his abstention? Yes, I do. Please state the reason for the record. Thank you. Absolutely, thank you. Reason for recusal is I am involved in the cannabis industry and I believe that would be a competing or conflict of not interest, but what would be the correct word in this case? You, if I understand correctly and I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but you would like to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest. If that is correct, I would like to avoid the conflict of interest and therefore am must abstain. Okay, and so I believe that's items 12.4 through 12.6. So am I incorrect? No, my understanding is Council Member Alvarez will simply recuse on 12.6. That is correct. He will vote on the other two ordinances. Okay, correct. That is correct, 12.6, thank you. Okay, are there any other questions? All right, are there any comments from the public? This is your opportunity to raise your hand on Zoom and you'll have three minutes to address the Council on the Consent Calendar. Okay, seeing none, Madam City Clerk, did we have any voicemail comments? No, no voice message public comments were received on this item on the Consent Calendar as well as no voice message public comments and no emails. Perfect, I will bring it back then. Madam Vice Mayor, if we can get the first motion. I move items 12.1 through 12.5 and waive further reading of the text. Second. We have a motion by the Vice Mayor, a second by Council Member Sawyer. Madam Clerk, please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Alvarez. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Vice Mayor Rogers. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with six ayes and Council Member Kippitz absent. Okay, and Madam Vice Mayor. I move items 12. Well, I move the item 12.6 and waive further reading of the text. Second. Motion by the Vice Mayor, second by Council Member Sawyer. Let's call the roll. Council Member Fleming. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Vice Mayor Rogers. Aye. Is that you, Council Member Fleming? It was. And Mayor Rogers. Aye. Okay, that motion passes with five ayes. Council Member Kippitz absent and Council Member Alvarez recusing. Thank you, Council. Let's go on to item 14.2. Item 14.2, report professional services agreement with MV transportation for ADA paratransit services and deviated fixed route service. Yuri Koslin, transit planner presenting. Mayor Rogers, I don't see Yuri on the line. I have promoted Rachel Ede in the event he is having technical issues. Perfect. That may be the case. So I can go ahead and lead it off and hopefully Yuri will pop on and I'll turn the presentation over to him at that time. So this item is for seeking award of a professional services agreement with MV transportation to provide the city's ADA paratransit services and deviated fixed route services. Next slide, please. Just by way of a little bit of background as with any public transit operator we are required to provide an ADA paratransit service with for people who are unable to access the fixed route service due to a disability. Our service here at the city has been in place since the ADA went into effect in the 90s. Paratransit provides next day seven day a week service during the same hours that Santa Rosa City bus operates within a quarter mile on either side of existing city bus routes. We also operate through the current paratransit service contract, a deviated fixed route service in the Oakmont community which has been in place through a partnership with the Oakmont Village Association since 1998. You'll see below just a general idea of the ridership for that system. Pre-pandemic we were carrying about 35 to 40,000 people a year in our paratransit service and just over 5,000 people on the Oakmont service. That has decreased significantly with the pandemic and we anticipate it'll take a while to recover but we'll do so over time. Next slide please. Empty transportation is the city's current contractor. They have operated both the ADA paratransit service and the Oakmont service since 2002. We have found them to be a great partner for the city providing safe, reliable, efficient and courteous service. They've continuously gotten good reviews from our paratransit users group which is a group of regular paratransit riders who works with the city to advise us on our paratransit service. MV's current contract expires at the end of this month. We did conduct an RFP process in accordance with the city and federal purchasing guidelines given that this is a partially federally assisted contract. We had eight firms attend a pre-proposal video conference, many questions received and in the end we received two bids and the selection committee identified MV as the most responsive technically advanced and competitively priced of those two proposals. Next slide please. So the proposed agreement includes a 30 month term effective January 1st with four one-year renewal options. And the reason we selected a 30 month term which is shorter than we would usually have for an initial term of a contract of this nature is to leave the option open to have further discussion of potential integration of paratransit services in Sonoma County. And this relates back to the comments Mayor Rogers made about the TIE study and the ad hoc committee process going on at the Sonoma County Transportation Authority looking at opportunities to integrate or even consolidate services including paratransit service in Sonoma County. So we selected this term to align with the city of Petaluma contract and it would already be in alignment with the Sonoma County transit paratransit contract. So we wanted to make sure that by entering into this new contract, we didn't preclude any of those conversations that are beginning to happen regionally. This contract includes a monthly fixed fee and variable costs totaling over $3.8 million. This assumes 17,500 revenue hours which are actually the hours that the vehicles are in service providing paratransit trips. Just a really important note and actually I think the next slide covers this. We don't anticipate in the coming year having anywhere near that amount our paratransit hours are down about 40 or 50 to 60% at this point in time. So we expect our costs actually to be much lower in terms of the variable costs associated with the revenue hours. There is a 7.7% increase in year one of this new contract and a one and a half percent increase in year two. Next slide please. This next slide shows a comparison of paratransit trips pre and post pandemic and the labeling is a little confusing but basically the green bars show what our typical paratransit service ridership levels are in a particular month. The blue bar shows what that has looked like in 2020 as the pandemic hit and we dipped our ridership in April. It's gradually increased to a bit of a plateau coming into the fall and we anticipate that paratransit ridership will continue to be significantly suppressed as long as the shelter in place orders are in place and the pandemic continues. So we do anticipate even with the cost increase at the 17,500 hour level we'll still have lower costs in the coming year due to the much lower level of actual service provided. Next slide please. So MV's proposal includes a number of improvements including upgraded computer and network at their facility which is in their entire need of appropriate proportion of costs allocated. That's just a minor change to how they allocate costs appropriately between the main ADA paratransit portion of the service and the Oakmont portion of the service. It does include some modest driver salary increases, options down the road to improve some of our technologies. For example, as ridership recovers we have the option to provide kind of an estimated time of arrival, call out or text to riders which would be a really nice improvement. We're cost saving right now since ridership is so low but that's something that we look forward to rolling out in the future. It also includes the possibility of continuing a call ahead service that MV is currently operating for us for riders who live in areas where fixed routes are not operating because of some of the reductions we've done in response to pandemic on the city bus system. So for example, in the Fountain Grove area we had a very low frequency, very low ridership fixed route that is currently suspended. We've replaced that service with the ability of residents in that area to access this call ahead service if they can't get to a regular fixed route. So it's just for the members of the general public to be able to have that level of access to the transit system. Contract also provides the option for future additional deviated fixed route services like we have in the Oakmont neighborhood. As we evaluate the fixed route system coming out of the pandemic and look at what's working and what's not and what may have changed, we do have the option through this contract to provide additional services that are responsive to demand that are a little bit different than our regular fixed routes that run on a fixed schedule. And finally, we also have the option to have this contract provide the ADA access component of any future partnership we might have with TNCs such as Lyft and Uber. So essentially if we were to contract with Lyft or Uber or another similar firm to provide mobility services in Santa Rosa, because of the ADA, we need to make sure we have an ADA accessible option within that service for people with disabilities and this contract could provide that. Next slide, please. And then there's some additional language included in this contract specifically relating to the realities of the coronavirus pandemic. There's some special federal language that we've included. So if additional federal emergency funding is received such as the CARES Act we received in the current fiscal year, we would be able to apply it to this contract. It also allows us at our direction, if we feel that, and I don't anticipate this will happen at this point in the pandemic, but if we need to provide this ability for there to be some sort of administrative leave to paratransit drivers in order to lose those highly trained staff members anticipating a restoration of service, we can do that. We haven't done that yet in the pandemic. So I don't see that coming into play, but the contract allows it. And it also ensures that we have PPE and cleaning supplies available as required and necessary to maintain safety on that system. Next slide, please. I think we got to go back one more. Thank you. So the benefit to a word of this contract is the continuity of our high quality paratransit service for people with living with a disability and as well as continuity of our Oakmont service, some new contract provisions that allow for flexibility in the types of services we operate through this contract as we emerge from the pandemic and reevaluate some of our mobility needs within our community. Next slide. So the recommendation here today is that the council by resolution approve a professional services agreement with MV transportation of Fairfield, California for the delivery of ADA paratransit service, a deviated fixed route service and supplementary call ahead service for a 30 month term in the amount of $3.8 million. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. And hopefully Yuri, I don't know if Yuri's made it on but he would be the best person to answer any questions if he was able to get on. He is connected. Okay, great. Well, there you are. I'm gonna mute myself. All right, with that council, do we have any questions for Yuri or Rachel? All right, seeing none, we will go to public comment. If folks are interested in making a public comment on item 14.2, go ahead and raise your hand on Zoom. And I am not saying any hands. With that, Madam City Clerk, if you could go on to voicemail messages. And we're none received for this item here. Great, I will bring it back to the council then for any additional questions or comments. And council member Sawyer, I'm gonna begin with you as you have the motion on this item. I have no questions or comments, just the item. All right, let's get a motion on the table. So before I introduce the resolution, I wanted just a personal comment. Although I'm not displeased with Pete Buttigieg being Biden's transportation secretary, I was concerned that Ms. Eid was going to be tapped first and that she'd be going to Washington and since that didn't happen, we're lucky to be able to still have her here in the city. With that, I'll introduce a resolution for the council of the city of Santa Rosa, approving a professional services agreement with MV to transportation, incorporated in Fairfield, California to provide ADA paratransit services, deviated fixed route services, another complimentary supplementary service and wait for the reading. Back in. Motion by council member Sawyer, second by council member Schwedhelm. If there are no further comments from the council, we will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council member Alvarez. It looks like he may have disconnected. I can hear you. Thank you. Thank you. Council member Fleming. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Vice Mayor Rogers. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes. The motion passes. The motion passes. The motion passes. The motion passes. The motion passes. That motion passes with six ayes and council member Tippitts absent. Thank you, Rachel and Yuri. We'll move on to our next item. Mr. City Manager, item 14.3. Item 14.3 report COVID-19 health order related fee reductions, modifications and waivers for outdoor business uses, Gabe Osborn and Raisa Delarosa presenting. I think I have myself rejoined. Okay, good evening, Mayor Rogers and member of the council, members of the council on behalf of the Economic Recovery Task Force. I'm here tonight with Development Services division director, Gabe Osborn, parking manager, Kim Nado and recreation supervisor, Jeff Tippitts to go over the details of this COVID related fee modifications request. And we also have our chief building official, Jesse Oswald on the line for questions at the end if you have any. Next slide, please. So, as you know, since March of this year, we've been subject to a series of health orders, health order declarations that have placed an ebb and flow of restrictions on weather and how businesses may operate. And when I say ebb and flow, I really mean, of course, it's a flow between being totally closed and unable to operate all the way to being able to operate with modifications, generally at a greatly reduced capacity. This has caused huge stress on the stability of businesses or even their ability to stay open at all, as well as of course, as stress on our workforce. This is a little bit of a sidetrack, but I wanna take just a second to talk about the pandemic's impact on our unemployment numbers, which if you recall way back in 2019, have it around 2.5% for Sonoma County. The county's October 2020 unemployment rate is 6.2%. This compares with an unadjusted unemployment rate of 9% for California and 6.6% for the nation during the same period. And while our unemployment rate has been trending downward since its height in April, unemployment security remains tenuous in some sectors in particular. At the high in April, when we had the most restrictions on business before health orders allowed summary opening of the economy, and before we passed our urgency ordinances in an effort to accommodate businesses, unemployment was just over 14%. And I bring this up because it is the sincere desire to do whatever we can to stabilize and salvage in any way those businesses that are especially hard hit by the pandemic and the jobs those businesses support. And that's what led us to this next step and recommendations by the task force. Specifically among the hardest hit industries that will benefit from the recommendations we're about to go over is the food industry, food service industry, restaurants, bars, cafes and such that has seen a dramatic reduction in businesses and employees due to closures, layoffs, reduced hours. There was a September survey that was done by the National Restaurant Association in which they found at least 40% of operators stated it was unlikely in September that their restaurant will still be open in six months without some kind of creative response. I will say in our case, we were creative or we tried to be and remain creative in what our response to the pandemic is. And just as a reminder, the council acted on a pathway to allow restaurants and the like to move their services outside, accommodating up to an equal capacity as what would have been serviced indoors. And what we're addressing today is the permit costs associated with that. Similarly, hard hit is the retail sector. While retailers have not generally moved their operations outside, but rather have increased their online presence, they are looking for any incentive they can to retain a level of in-person visits. This is especially true, given that there's a huge jump in online shopping. Of course, we hear about that all the time combined with the expected decrease in holiday spending overall. And it's the downtown merchants who are driving the requests to, excuse me, the request to extend parking fee modifications. And lastly, also targeted in the proposed changes you're about to hear is the fitness industry. You may have seen or read recently that some of our local fitness providers have been able to continue operating through online platforms. And while this is great, we have had an uptick of interest in our parks and public spaces to provide adequate outdoor spaces for in-person classes as well. So I just wanna note finally that we are tying the end of these fee waivers to end modifications to a July 1st, 2021 end date or when Sonoma County reaches the state's yellow tier, which is determined by the California Department of Public Health, whichever comes first. So under the yellow tier, most indoor business operations are open with modifications and it is the lowest risk tier under the state's blueprint for a safer economy. And with that, I'll hand it over to Gabe Osburn for the next slide, please. Good evening, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Rogers and members of the council. As Rachel mentioned, one of the more significant COVID impacts experienced by the business community has been associated with the inability to perform traditional interior operations. This has resulted in the need to temporarily relocate traditional indoor services such as dining, retail pickup and personal services to exterior spaces. These temporary relocations have been occurring over the last six months and most of that has occurred on available space on both private property and on public sidewalks and public streets, which are located in the public right of way. Under federal state and local codes, the placement of business operations within the public right of way or exterior spaces on private property requires either a building permit for the private property locations or an encroachment permit for uses in the public right of way. The purpose behind that requirement is to provide a means in which the local jurisdiction can ensure that businesses operations are set up in a fashion that is safe, not only for the patrons, but also for members of the general public passing through that area. This component is fairly critical when business operations occur in the public right of way. The permit also provides a mechanism to ensure that installations meet accessibility requirements addressed in the Americans with Disabilities Act. Under our current published fee schedule, both building and encroachment permit applications require the payment of processing, plan review and inspection fees. For a typical outdoor seating area, the encroachment permit results in a total fee package of 128 per application. The current published fee on the building side is a little bit higher than that. It averages at $650 per application with a percentage of that fee going to the fire department. And I do apologize. We have a minor typo in this slide. The percentage of the fee that the fire department receives is actually 50% of the total, not the 35 presented. The 50% is accurately shown in the staff report. As Raisa mentioned, of course, the goal of this item is to do whatever we can for the business community and provide financial relief to a segment of the community that really has struggled. Our specific proposal tonight is to provide additional assistance through the waiving of any processing, plan review and inspection fees associated with both building and encroachment permits, which will ultimately be associated with a temporary relocation of business operations to exterior areas. Tonight's proposal also involves refunding the fees paid on temporary outdoor seating permits that were issued prior tonight's meeting. And we do have a handful of those permits and the associated fees are addressed in the council package, specifically as an attachment to the resolution. Permitting fees are initially adopted to recover staff costs. And anytime we present a fee reduction or waiver, it's also important to discuss the financial impacts associated with that action. In this particular situation, the financial impact we typically determine by estimating the total number of permits that we may receive through that program, then determining the total fee that would be generated by that and looking at that in relation to what our annual average revenue is for a permitting program. And as we can see on the slide, when we look at the encroachment permit fees, the total amount of fee reduction that would be involved in this action is less than 1% of the annual fees that we receive in a year, 2% for fire and 1% for building. Those are very minor, typically year to year. We see a much more significant fluctuation just simply due to the fact that new permits are not very predictable. So based on those totals, we are not anticipating that the action today and the associated fee reductions results in any significant or any impact at all really to service delivery through those permitting programs for the remainder of the fiscal year. Next slide, please. At this point, I will hand the presentation over to our parking manager, Kim Nado. And Kim will go over the proposed parking fee modifications. Thanks, Gabe. Good evening, Mayor and Council members and welcome to our new Vice Mayor Rogers and Councilman Alvarez. Paid parking resumed in Santa Rosa on July 1st of 2020 with parking fee reductions that were approved by Council through December 31st. As you know, this item will propose us to extend the majority of those parking fee reductions. They include the first hour free and all five garages, free garage parking Monday through Friday from 5 p.m. to 6 a.m., free parking at all five garages on Saturdays and Sundays, one free metered parking session using the passport mobile parking app and that would be to a value up to $3.15. And I would like to make a plug that the validation code to take advantage of that free session is park SR. And then finally continuing the waiver of meter reservation fees for temporary parklets. The only existing parking fee reduction that would be ending at the end of this year would be the rates in the value zone, the parking meter value zone, which would return to a dollar an hour from the reduced rate of 75 cents a hour. The recommendations were developed with input from the merchant community and are intended to support the downtown during the challenges that are presented by COVID and align with planning and economic development temporary permits that support physical distancing and business operations. It's difficult to measure the impacts from these parking fee reductions. However, our best estimate is approximately $50,000 per month in revenue reduction to the parking fund. There is no impact to the general fund. And with that, I'll turn it over now to Jeff Tibbetts in recreation and parks. All right, thank you, Kim. And good evening, mayor and council members. For the park permits, it's a really pretty simple request that we're making here, recommendation that we're making, but we're hoping that it'll, it could have a major impact for some of the businesses here in Santa Rosa. If you look at the park permit fees, we currently have a 15% discount that's ongoing permits are eligible for. What we're looking to do here is increase that discount up to 80% for Santa Rosa businesses that are applying for an ongoing permit under COVID-19 hardship. This would not be retroactive to permits that we have issued, but we would amend current permits for any future dates with the updated fees for businesses that qualified for the increase in the discount. As you can see on the fee structure here, our fees for park permits are based on per park per day and then based off the number of attendees. So given our current status with the pandemic, certainly most of these are gonna be a zero to 25 attendees, although we also listed 26 to 100 as hopefully we progress into better tiers here in Sonoma County. We could possibly see some business permits going for larger than the 25 groups. You can see the fees there, $25 per group. Again, that's per day per park with their current discount that would be reduced down to $21.25 per day per park. But with this approved, that would be a $5 a day fee, which we're really hopeful. The goal is that we can assist the businesses who need assistance in keeping their head above water and giving them another alternative option of conducting their business out of the parks and a fee that's not traditionally part of their business plan that hopefully this reduction in fees would help them look for that alternative. There's kind of another side of the goal for us is we also see that our community for physical health, for emotional and spiritual and mental health, they need things positive activities that they can do. And so hopefully more businesses seeing this as a viable option also means there's more opportunities for everyone in our community to get outside, get exercise, get, you know, participate in activities that they have participated in in the past. So we certainly aren't limited to only doing exercise groups, dance groups, those types of things. You know, park permits is kind of a catch-all, but that's certainly who we see targeting with this fee reduction is those types of kind of studio programs that can't conduct indoors but can move their operations to a park in Santa Rosa. And with that, are we going back to Rice, I believe? Yeah, next slide please. And that's it. It is recommended by the Economic Recovery Task Force that the council by resolution, authorize a temporary waiver of building permit and encroachment permit fees, the reduction of certain parking fees and the reduction of park event at the specific to COVID-19 health order requirements on businesses reducing or eliminating indoor business operations. And we're here for questions if you have any. Thank you, director. I will bring it to the council. If there are any questions for staff on this item. Madam vice mayor. Thank you. It might sound like a weird question, but do the businesses for the park permits, do they have to be established businesses already or can anyone apply for the park permit would be my question? Yeah, so we are looking for them to be Santa Rosa resident, but we would offer it to anybody. We've kind of left it pretty generic so that we're not having to make a judgment at the staff level of each business. So the requirements are pretty generic. If they're an ongoing permit, we're not establishing this for one time use types of permits, because again, park permits serve a lot of different types of events and programs. So we're looking for the ongoing businesses that would be operating out of parks. And whether that's an existing business or it could be someone who closed their business of a brick and mortar type operation and they want to try to open something new, that certainly would be something that we want to accommodate and help in this circumstance. Any other questions? Madam vice mayor. Okay, great. I'll go on to council member Schwedhelm. Thank you. And thank you for this report. I really appreciate staff and the task force looking out for the best interest of city Santa Rosa businesses. And I really appreciate Mr. Tim that you're talking about the importance of getting out and exercising. And on that related note, I know we have another park in Santa Rosa Ben Valley golf course that I know those of us on council back in September received a request that kind of, I think falls into this arena here. And I guess my question is, did the recovery economic recovery task force take a look at the situation out there? Cause I believe the golf course was closed for seven weeks, still maintain the maintenance of the course. And if not, how might that go about getting on the agenda for the economic recovery task force? Well, we've been talking about that park or the Ben Valley golf course and the legends separately at a staff level and looking at it with our real estate manager and understanding and the park supervisor and understanding what the best options might be for that. Also, Mr. Tim as if he wants to or supervisor Tim it's if you want to talk about we have also looked at allowing the use of food trucks. We dealt with a couple of things that we could apply there after the resilient city's ordinance. And so we may not need to do another policy change or another resolution in order to begin addressing that that has risen to the level of discussion currently. Does that answer your question? Well, not really the original memo that I know many of my colleagues also received the request was first made back in April then all of council was brought in on September to say we're just now talking about it. I'm not sure what message that sends to the operator and if there are ways that we can an business operating in Santa Rosa I just have an interest in discussion. I think I may have misunderstood your question because if it's, I was referring specifically about what we're doing with the legends piece of it and I'm not sure I have an answer for the if there's a golf operations piece of it and I apologize. Well, it is tightening because obviously it's an impact to the golf course with our discussions we had regarding legends but the challenge is that the operators already experienced are there and so I'm just looking at ways that we can assist that operator in that operation. Wait, staff can bring that to you. Mr. Mayor, may I ask Mr. Schwedhelm to clarify a point? Sure. So just to be really clear are you asking if the Economic Recovery Task Force would take up the question around the golf course side of the operations park? Well, and I'm not sure if you remember the memo that was sent or the email. I don't, I think that's where I've lost here. In essence, the way it was characterized during the period when the pandemic first came and golf was not able to be operated, right? For about a seven week period but we still had the maintenance of the course. So the provider was absorbing costs. So I'm just looking at ways how can we assist without operation? Again, given our current nature of, okay, we don't have a restaurant there, are there ways that we could help this local business person there? Whether that would be from the Economic Recovery Task Force to have that discussion or another methodology. I'm just a little concerned that it was first brought to our attention in April, September council was pulled in and I'm just wondering if a decision or some action can be taken or some strategy as to what we're gonna do with this. What level it is, whether it be at the task force or staff level. Yes, we will bring that up at the Economic Recovery Task Force. Thank you, I appreciate that. All right, council member, any other questions? All right, I will go to public comment for folks who'd like to speak on this item. Go ahead and raise your hand on Zoom. And council, I'm not seeing any public comment on this item, Madam City Clerk, were there any voicemail comments? No, there was not. Okay, I'll bring it back to council then. If anybody would like to make any comments on this, but first let's go ahead and get a motion put on the table that is council member Schwedhelm who will make the motion. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I move a resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa authorizing the temporary waiver of building permit and encroachment permit fees, the temporary waiver of certain parking fees and the reduction of park permit fees specific to COVID-19 health order requirements on businesses reducing or eliminating indoor business operations and waive further reading of the text. I second. So I have a motion from council member Schwedhelm, a second from council member Alvarez. Let's go ahead and call the roll. Thank you, council member Alvarez. Bye. Council member Fleming. Hi. Council member Sawyer. Hi. Council member Schwedhelm. Hi. Vice mayor Rogers. Hi. Mayor Rogers. Hi. That motion passes with six ayes and council member Tibbetts absent. Great, thank you so much. We don't have any written communications tonight. We will open it up for one more opportunity for the public to provide public comment for items not on the agenda. And so now is the time if you'd like to make your last comments, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on Zoom. And seeing none, I don't believe we had any additional voicemail comments, right? Madam clerk. You are correct. Okay. Then with that note, this is our last council meeting of the year. I wanna wish everybody a safe emphasis on safe and happy holidays. And this council will see you in January. And with that, we are adjourned. Thank you.