 Good evening everyone. My name is Adrienne Martins. I'm the Chief Communications and Intergovernmental Relations Officer for the City of Santa Rosa. Thank you for taking time to be here with us tonight. This meeting is to provide you with more information on the settlement funds the city has received from PG&E. The funds are a result of the claim the city filed with PG&E to recoup the city's damages and costs from the 2017 wildfires. So tonight you will have a chance to ask more questions about the settlement funds as well as our status and recovery and rebuilding. And also equally important to provide your input on how you think the Santa Rosa City Council should prioritize use of the funds. So for the agenda this evening I am going to go through a few housekeeping items. I will introduce our panelists and then I'm going to turn it over for the background presentation that will provide more information on the settlement funds. We'll provide a status update on our recovery and rebuilding projects, including the ones that remain unfunded. And we'll also give a quick overview of the additional unmet needs that have been identified in Santa Rosa. So for housekeeping items, as community members do join this meeting, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and your camera are both off and muted. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. If you are calling in from a telephone for privacy concerns, the host will be renaming your viewable phone number to citizen and only the last four digits will show on the screen. Once our presentation of the background information concludes, we will open for Q&A and for input. At that time I will ask you to raise your hand and zoom. And our zoom host who I will introduce in just a moment will move one by one down the list of attendees with their hands raised. And once you have asked your question and shared your input, the zoom host will lower your hand. So now I'll introduce our staff that are participating this evening. So first we have Alan Alton, our interim chief financial officer from our finance department. Alan will be providing the background presentation. Then we have our assistant city manager and director of transportation and public works, Jason Nutt. And from the fire department, we have a fire chief Tony Gosner, our fire marshal, Scott Moon, and our assistant fire marshal Paul Lowenthal. And then from our housing and community services department, we have our director Dave Guine. And then our two hosts who are assisting us tonight, our zoom host, our Tricia Mason, who will coordinate the question and answer part and public input part of the meeting. And then we have Elisa Rawson who is taking all of the notes and collecting the input that is provided tonight. So without further ado, I will turn it over to Alan to begin his presentation. And I will now host just a moment to do that transition. Thanks Adrian. All right, so welcome everybody who is here. This is our first community meeting. And a kickoff of our collecting public input on the use of our settlement money from PG&E. So the next slide please. So as you know, the, the city filed a claim with the, with PG&E, and we were awarded $95 million of settlement funds relating to the 2017 fire. We've set that money aside. So that's what we use for really any purpose. You can go on to the next slide please. There are no restrictions and, and really above all the city council wants to hear from the community on how to use it. So again, with no restrictions that that leaves a lot open, but clearly building up our fire resiliency is a direct nexus to the why we receive the funds. And there are a number of unmet needs that are in that area. And so the next slide we'll get into those. And one more please. So, so there's a number of projects that are currently unfunded we, they were either applied for and denied by FEMA, or still in the appeal process with FEMA. And just to set context on that, FEMA has a number of rules that they go by when we actually start setting up projects to have them approve. You know, and this isn't a knock on them, but they are very good at responding to hurricanes or floods. But wild, wildland urban fires they are not, and it's new to them. So they, they're, they're trying to adapt rules to, to this and, and we struggled with it with this fire hopefully in the future they'll be able to change their, their rules but right now we're dealing with what, with what we with their current rules and we were denied some projects the fire station, five is one that's currently on our second appeal. The idea is to move the fire station to a different area that would be more hardened against and, and safe I guess against forest fires in the area and yet still provide protection to the areas where the old fire station five was that we did receive some insurance money on this. But the remainder of the cost, we're estimating around $14.5 million to rebuild. Next slide. There were a number of roads that were damaged during the debris mission, and those were denied by FEMA. So we're looking at a total of about $24 million for those. Excellent. Also we have, we had fire damage or sidewalk repairs that needed. We're estimating that right now at about 4.1 million. Again, these are, these are estimates. But it gives you kind of an idea of the cost magnitude that we're looking at for each of these. Excellent. Also, there are hazardous trees and we're looking at the whole tree removal and mission, and we're estimating around $5.1 million to either do that or support that program. So for the next one, please. So those are some examples of very specific areas within the fire rebuild or projects within the fire rebuild that we can address. Currently do not have funding sources for them other than the PG&E funds. So those are there for your information. But there are a number of other ones. There are areas within the community that are outside of the burn zone that would greatly benefit from this type of funding. Vegetation management and fuel reduction is one of them. Evacuation routes and improvements in the way is another one in and on down the line. And there's also a more community base. The way that that we look at this is that, yes, there was a very direct tie to the, to the burn areas that should be addressed but the fire affected the community as a whole. So we're looking for that type of input. And so, such as using some money to jumpstart affordable housing or, or other housing opportunities. And looking at infrastructure throughout the city with generators and dealing with the emergencies that we have now. The SPS is our becoming a regular event and to be able to have the generators to be able to make a quick transition when the power goes off is an important thing. We're looking at, there's the possibility of supporting businesses and workforce recovery through business loans or grant programs. There are community assets that are needed such as libraries and, and community centers. There are homeless services, road repairs that are outside of the recovery area and park improvements and broadband internet all of those types of things are meeting a number of community needs as as well as the fire area needs. Nothing that is that's provided here is, you know, set in stone, all of these categories or types of projects are just there that their ideas they give the council a direction of which to go so our job in here is to answer as many questions as we can have me fumble through some slides. And then collect all the information that we can to bring back to the council so we, we have two meetings coming up that will do that we have a long term financial policy and audit subcommittee we meet there on Thursday, October 8, where we will present. This information will have the digital survey results by then we will have finished all of our community meetings. So we'll be able to provide that information to the subcommittee, the subcommittee is made up of three council members. They are public meetings. And then on the 27 will be in front of the full council with probably a more detailed report out on all of this information. So with that the next slide. I said, we need input. And that's why we're all here. So that I think I'm ready to turn that back over to Adrian. Thanks Alan. And so Alan did mention a digital survey so I'll just say about that. In addition to this community meeting and two others that we have planned for next week. We are running a digital survey to collect input from the community. And I'll share that URL for that at the end. So I think we all gave staff the direction to go out and collect input. They did note that it was really important to them that we did hear that they were able to hear directly from our fire survivor community, especially one of the reasons we set up tonight's meeting and we've been doing special targeted outreach to make sure we we do reach our fire survivors specifically in addition to all of the community. So I'll just note that before we open it up for Q&A and input. And I'm going to give Trisha a chance now to get us transitioned into that portion of the meeting. But this is a time to ask any questions we've asked all the panelists that are here to participate tonight should should there be questions for their areas. And this is also a time to voice your input and how you feel council should prioritize funding. You know, talk about specific projects or ideas that you have. And again, we have one of our zoom co host Lisa taking notes on everything that you'll be sharing with us so that we can compile those into our report for council. All right, so Trisha I'll let you take it from here. The next speaker will be Ann Barber. I'm going to allow you to speak please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. My name is Annie Barber and I am the vice president of coffee strong. A couple things to say real quick. I'll try to be as quick as possible. We did our own survey at one point we for Coffee Park, and we came up with the hopper corridor, needing to be done road slurries. There's a creek that needs to be taken care of sidewalks and curbs. I think those were the four major was one more in there. I have no pro I understand that the city is in a deep hole, and that they need to use some of this money and I really don't personally have an issue with that. As long as we can make sure that we have as much firehardiness as we can, and that we can at least touch, touch based on some of the things that each community meaning fountain grow us hidden valley needs. The question I would have would be to Paul Lowenthal, and I would like to know what he feels like needs to be done within the next, say 24 months to make us a more more adept at handling these fires and, and how much resources we need for that. So the question I'm sure is you and a number of other members from coffee strong or aware, we did just complete the community wildfire protection plan. That was a project that fire marshal moon had initiated. We're lucky that that was a grant that we did receive funding for, and we were able to bring that back to council and get that approved last month. The goal now is to start implementing a lot of the activities that have been identified in the plan. We're looking very closely at the priorities and the scope different scopes of work that are consultants that I put the plan together identified. Right now, a couple of the key elements that we're looking at are referred to as hardening our evacuation routes so looking at fuel reduction programs throughout multiple large evacuation routes, both in and outside the wildlife interface. We're looking at vegetation management projects within our wildland urban interface, both in open space and on private property, where people can work on mitigating their threat and risk of wildfire around their immediate residents and the biggest and largest most complex issue is going to be actually mitigating and reducing fuels both in the city limits and outside the city limits and the plan identifies a number of what are referred to as compartments and the compartments are located across the city. And so moving forward on implementing those different compartment fuel reduction programs is also going to be a critical element. Through the plan we identified the biggest and largest threat to our community right now is the unburned fuels between the nuns and the tubs. So kind of it would be to the north and northeast of rink and valley and skyhawk. So that's going to be an area that we're going to look very closely at for kind of priorities for fuel reduction. Because that is right now what we identify as the, the one of the greatest threats to our community right now. So there's a lot of work that's to be done. So Chief Moon and myself will be presenting to the public safety committee meeting tomorrow on our vision of a five year plan. And that will outline kind of what we see as the needs moving forward over the at least the next five years. That's the dirt the life of the community wildfire protection plan that we have right now. And hopefully in five years we'll be able to have knocked out as many of the kind of 48 actionable items that were identified for the community and kind of go from there. So that's a really long answer but there's there's a lot of work that needs to be done. The kind of the biggest takeaway that we've come that's come from this that we want to make sure our community knows is that we're we have not just been sitting back and waiting for these funds to see how they're going to play out. The city has for the last number of years, both before and primarily after the Tubbs fire put together multiple grant applications at both the state and federal level. And believe it or not, the only grant that we've actually received in the last four or five years was in 2015 was for the development of a educational program that we were awarded in 2016 and rolled out some vegetation management education before the 17 fires. Since the 17 fires the only grant that we've had approved is the development of the community wildfire protection plan. We've been unsuccessful at both the state and federal level for for funds to jumpstart a program here locally. It's a little disappointing. You would think that Santa Rosa being kind of the home of the largest what the most destructive wildfire at this of the state at the time would have been a prime recipient format. But we have not had much luck, regardless, even as we're having these community meetings, we did just submit for additional notice of interests for both federal and state funding for some of the programs that we just discussed. So are you are we still are you needing some of this money to fortify our situation. Yeah, what we've learned through the grant process is that it's definitely not a guarantee that's that is that is our takeaway is that although we do continue to apply for grants. They're not a guarantee. And we've now waited a number of years to try and push a program forward and we're to the point now where we can't continue to wait the plan has been approved and the plan is only good for five years. Well, like I said, at the same time as we're, you know, efforts going into figure out how to disperse these funds, we're going to continue to apply for for grants but we need money to get to get going. And this could be a collective thing between the city and the county, correct. For fuel reduction. Yeah, for the finances coming from both sections to say yes so yes so the county is also determining how to spend their money correct. So the work that we've identified in our plan that would rely on county cooperation so there will be work that needs to be done, both through our community wildfire protection plan and the work that we need to be done. The county's also in the middle of putting together their community wildfire protection plan, and they will see some of the things the same things we've seen so there's going to be some a need for some shared shared costs for some of those areas that impact both the city and county. Great. Thank you very much. Jeff, I'm going, you're going to be the next speaker followed by Steve, please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Yeah, my name is Jeff O'Crecky, living coffee park of the founder of coffee strong. Thank you guys for taking this, taking your time to hear us out and ask us our opinions that actually means a lot to be involved in a process like this. So to kind of piggyback off of what any had said the things that were important to us and important to our community. We did receive hundreds of responses to the survey that we put out and it was a part of the communication we sent into council members and to city staff. I'm sure you could probably dig that up word for word if you if you guys wanted to but some of the major things that we wanted to do where we're hopper corridor, redo that miscellaneous street repairs. We did because of the burns cars and even without the burn scars, the PCI status of those it's fairly low over in coffee park and then you put burns cars on top of it, and it, it, it not only looks horrible but it's not great condition either. So, want to do the miscellaneous curb repair from wherever FEMA or whoever else drove over something and broke it. Possibly, we had discussions about some sort of reimbursement process for those that did want to wait is three years now, but took money out of their out of their insurance to repair their sidewalks and streets for stuff that was already damaged. And also, Piner Creek mitigation. It's pretty bad pretty overgrown. We would like to see some of that, you know, reduced down as it's the closest, you know, I guess would be kind of fuels to us but it borders the entire east side of our of our neighborhood. So, if we could get something like that going that'd be great. You know, I'm all for the evac routes and the tree mitigation and take out the trees and the vegetation management. I think that's all great stuff. But my overarching concern is, you know, in these in this presentation that we just had was I appreciate is, you know, safer and more resilient community, but to get safer from something you have to start at a net zero. It's not like you take away everything and then, you know, you get to a net 90% and it's all automatically safer. You got to get to a net zero and then move forward to make it safer and make it whole and that's what I would copy strong and myself want us to do is try to fix these things that are still outstanding and also use the funds to help make us safer and stronger going forward. Okay, Steve, I'm giving allowing you to talk please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Hi, my name is Steve wrong. I am current the current president of coffee strong and been lived in Coffee Park for off non for 20 years. My main purpose for speaking today is just to recognize that. However, there's a lot of things in the city that needs to be funded. Everything from homelessness to mental illness to wildfire hardening. I feel like the unmet that these funds are for the unmet needs due to the fire, and that I would like to see those funds be used for those issues or those needs. I think that was the first before we spend it on the other items. I think that there's sufficient money to provide. As Jeff said, you know, Pioneer Creek is a big issue and could be potentially be a problem. The hopper corridor with the sidewalks and trees that we used to have the sidewalk and curb replacement. But, you know, as being a member of this organization, you know, in the wonderful community that we have is that, you know, we all gave, you know, we've, we've received monies through grants, we've helped get our park built, we've helped raise money, and we just want to be whole. And to be whole. We just need the city to finish that last, last mile. And I think that we're out of the overall funds I put some budgets together. You know, with 1422 coffee park homes. You know, I, I looked at the budgets of what it would take to repair those things and it feels like, you know, coffee park is only 10% of the overall money. And if we could get whole, you know, those other funds could be used for the, the amazing effort that all the city workers have to figure out to spend that money. Everything from general fund, like I said, the city expenses. So, I just wanted to speak my mind as far as that. That's all I got. Thank you, Steve. At this time, if you have any questions or comments, please raise your hand. I am seeing no hands raised at this time. Okay. Brian, I'm going to allow you to talk please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. I just got a microphone. Can you hear me. Yes, I can hear you. Thank you. I'm Brian Bouchon. I'm a homeowner stakeholder here in coffee park. I've been working on a few projects. And the only one I'm really going to discuss is the sidewalk on San Miguel. I'd work with Jason nut and he put me in touch with Rob sprinkle on that. And I appreciate that Jason thank you. Last year, we're able to do the north side of San Miguel and fix those berms and get that safe for the students to travel to Schaefer school. The south side where everyone actually walks is currently still undone. They have firms that have been pushed by various trucks, FEMA trucks and all that, making it unsafe on the south side for kids and pedestrians of all sorts to walk to school, walk down to the school to use the fields there. I'd like to see maybe a sidewalk put in over there and over. I know the creek was talked about the creek there is a mess on that south side. If we can turn that right where passes over the creek into a small pedestrian bridge for a little more safety. One example is I watched elderly gentlemen walking across that area, which the walkway is about a foot and a half to walk. And one of the larger trucks mirror hit them in the back of the head. So it's really not a safe area for pedestrians much less our children walking to school. Does that be a good thing I think to get addressed as well as fixing up a coffee creek. It looks horrible. And Paul you just talked about fuel reduction. Well, that's a mess of weeds it's not being addressed and burn trees all the way down. I don't really have anything else, but thank you for your time today. And thank you for putting this on. Thank you, Brian. At this time I see no hands raised. So if you have any last questions or comments, please raise your hand. If not, I will turn that back over to Adrian. This time there's no hands raised. Well, I want to thank everyone for taking time tonight to tune in and thank you to our panelists for being present and participating for questions. I do want to actually bring up the survey link screen if we could Trisha just so we have that posted for everyone to see. So this is actually a URL to our project information page so you can get more background information on the settlement funds. The presentation that Alan provided is also available on that website and on this website you can access the survey. I encourage all of you to take it if you haven't please share it with your neighbors and others so that they can also take it to you have until a through October 4 to complete the survey and after that we'll be closing it so we can spend time compiling all of the results and putting the data together into a report for council. I also want to mention those two upcoming public meetings where city council members will be considering all of the input received the first again was on October 8 that's the long term financial policy and audit council subcommittee meeting and then the October 27 council meeting and information on both of those meetings is also posted on that website. And that's all I have so I just want to thank everyone again for joining us and we will have the information posted sometime in October all of the survey data once it's made public so you can do that as well. Thank you for your time. Okay. I'm sorry. One person is raising their hand now. All right. I will allow you to talk and if you could unmute your microphone. I just wanted to say that it is coffee strong we really appreciate the fact that you made sure that we knew about this meeting. Almost embarrassed that nobody else took an interest. But if there's any meetings in the future we still would like to hear from you and we appreciate all of your time that you're putting into this. Thank you. No problem. And thank you for that comment. And just to say, because there isn't representation here tonight doesn't mean. And people haven't participated in the survey we are actually seeing really good participation. And we have a few thousand survey responses. And so they and certainly coffee park and residents are represented in that. So an agent now Pamela has raised her hand. Okay. So I will allow you to talk Pamela if he could unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. My name is Pamela and health some and I'm from coffee park. And I, I apologize because I had to listen to this at the same time as my child's back to school meeting, which was also at six o'clock. Of course that's very important. So I hope it's being I see that it's being recorded and I would like to review it. But maybe I'm being repetitive of someone else's comment. I don't know, but I just want to urge our city to just do everything in its power with these funds that we don't burn down again. I just think that's the bottom line for me. We just cannot burn down again. So if that means beefing up our fire, fire force, if that means every bit of fire. We just have to make sure that there's enough mitigation by taking down weeds or, you know, making sure there's enough water, whatever, whatever it is. We just have to make it so our, it's not constantly at threat of being burned down. As simple as that. Thank you Pamela. Any other hands Trisha. No, at this time there are no more hands. I want to thank Pamela for reminding me we are recording this meeting and it will be made available on that website URL up on the screen. Probably in the next day. So that others can do it if they weren't able to catch the whole thing or miss tonight's meeting. All right, so if there are no more hands, we will adjourn the meeting. Thank you everybody. Good night.