 I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence translation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation interpreter will you please restate this in Spanish. Hey Eddie can we do a quick mic check? Absolutely. How are you stepping in? Good. You sound good. Thank you. Alright Madam City Clerk I recognize a quorum. Can we please call the roll? Thank you Mayor. Councilmember Schwedhelm will be absent from the meeting today. Councilmember Sawyer? Here. Councilmember Rogers? Present. Councilmember McDonald? Here. Councilmember Fleming? Present. Vice Mayor Alvarez? Present. Mayor Rogers? Here. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember Schwedhelm. Thank you so much we had no closed session today so we will start with our study session. Madam City Manager item 3.1 please. Thank you. Good afternoon Mayor and members of council. So item 3.1 the downtown city asset surplus strategy. Jill Scott our real estate manager will lead the discussion. Thank you. Good afternoon Mayor and Councilmembers. If we can start our presentation we can get going. Just give us a moment we're getting it up. Thank you. Okay are we all ready? We're ready when you're ready. Great thank you. So good afternoon Mayor and Councilmembers. As the city manager said I'm Jill Scott and the city's real estate manager and we're here today with the last study session of three regarding the downtown asset surplus strategy. Next slide please. So we first came to council back in January 25th of 2022 of this year regarding a downtown city asset strategy and the background of that strategy came from several different areas plans and goals of the cities and the states. So it focused on affordable housing that we know is a goal of our state and comes from the 2019 update of the surplus lands act as well as our 2016 housing action plan which prioritizes housing in the downtown and as well as our downtown stationary specific plan which also prioritizes over 7,000 units of housing in the downtown over the next 20 years. So the first that was the first session on on January 25th during that session council and staff realized that we needed a little more information to be brought forward for council to make the best decisions. So we brought forward and brought back a series of study sessions a series of three study sessions that we call the downtown series. The first one was on August 23rd and that was a parking update and that went over a full parking study from June of 2022 that was done by Walker consulting and showed the state of the parking enterprise district as well as available parking in the downtown. The second in the series was presented on September 13th and that really focused on the 2016 housing action plan which was a housing for all model as well as a component of that housing action plan was to activate city assets in the downtown for affordable housing and housing. We also covered the 2019 feasibility study on the Santa Rosa Civic Center and that analyzed rebuilding Santa Rosa City Hall making way for affordable housing and housing and also addressing what we know now is an extreme deferred maintenance issue we have on city buildings in the downtown and on the outskirts. And then we're here today's presentation which is going to cover the Surplus Lands Act. It's going to combine information and direction from the last two study sessions of the series as well as the January 25th study session and then it's going to request direction from council on any assets that they may want to surplus. Again we wouldn't be taking action today we would just be getting direction from council on a future surplus action. Next slide please. So the Surplus Lands Act the Surplus Lands Act which you'll hear me call the SLA throughout the presentation and it's government code section 54222. It comes from California state action and it prioritizes especially since the 2019 update that was done it prioritizes in a real way affordable housing on government property. And so what this action says and how how it affects us is that government owned property has to be cleared surplus by its governing body which is the city council for this city prior to any kind of disposition or request for proposals for development even with a continued government use. So this is where everyone gets held up back in the redevelopment days and older days and before the 2019 update to our state policy surplus land was always land that the government didn't have any use for anymore. So it was something we realized we didn't need anymore and we put it off and put it out for sale. Now it can be that but it can also be land that we could still have a government use on but also prioritize the rest of the land or the airspace for affordable housing. And then the second part of that is that that land that surplus if we surplus anything must be made available to housing sponsors for affordable housing through a notice of availability. So you hear us call it an NOA and notice of availability to the State Department of Housing and Community Services prior to it being made available to any private developers through any kind of request for proposals or unsolicited bids. So what we would do is if council brought forward tonight and said we'd like you to surplus these assets we would bring an action back for the surplus of that asset and it would it or it could have restrictions if there was still a government use on that asset and then we would have our attorneys prepare the notice of availability which would go to HCD and be made available to their housing sponsors and it would have those restrictions on it if there were any. It would also according to the surplus lands act process it would have to have a minimum of 25% of affordable housing units in the proposal. When we got those proposals back the city would be required per the SLA to prioritize any proposal that had the majority or the most affordable units and the deepest levels of affordability. Next slide please. So this is the city council surplus policy that we're discussing on this slide and the city council surplus policy we've had for many many many years that predates almost all of us here or probably all of us here and it's an internal policy that has some internal aspects to it but it also follows strictly the state surplus lands act because that is what we are required to do. So the internal parts of the policy would be after direction today we would go to on any assets that the city may want to surplus we would go to housing authority for their review and recommendation then we would take it to planning commission for their review and recommendation and then we would bring it back to council for the final surplus action. The surplus lands act policy doesn't require those internal steps. So staff will be asking council later today in the presentation for direction on that do we need to follow this internal process as city policy as well or should we just go through the surplus lands act which is required by the state. Next slide please. So going back and recapping the January 25th 2022 study session so this was the first study session we brought back before the series. Staff originally looked at the viability and the marketability of specific lots and recommended three lots for consideration to council at the time this is back in January. The three lots were 625 and 637 3rd street and we're going to call that parking garage five today and that is the parking garage on the corner of third and D 705th Street which was parking lot 10 and parking lot 10 is a long narrow lot on 5th Street that backs up to Russian River Brewing. The third one was 505th Street which is parking lot 11 which is just down 4th Street or would be just down 5th Street from parking lot 10 it's also a long narrow lot and it's behind Belly left Coast kitchen for just for sake of knowing where it is and at the time staff had not brought forward the White House site which is parking lot seven it wasn't included because it was part of the Civic Center rebuild strategy at the time. What we realized again I'll reiterate in that January 25th meeting is that we needed to bring that full Civic Center feasibility analysis back to council so that they could consider or not consider White House site. So council direction from January 25th this is prior to the three study sessions that we did was to not surplus parking lot 10 due to very specific needs of Russian River Brewing Company for large equipment and heavy equipment that needs to come in through that parking lot to the business. So at the time staff and council agreed we would not surplus parking lot 10 and we would move forward with the financial asset going forward with the resurfacing of the lot and that is happening now so parking staff has moved forward with a project to resurface lot 10 and then number two consider surplus in the White House site so the community and the council wanted to want to consider the White House site and so we knew we needed to come back as we said before with that full analysis which we did in the last study session and then the last one number three was surplus garage five and lot 11 but council had requested more information on parking of which we brought back the full study as part of this last study session. Next slide please so just review the timeline again so everybody's on the same page we started with the January 25th council meeting with the first action and we realized we needed more information so we brought back the three series which the first one was on August 23rd that was the update of the parking study for the downtown then on September 13th we brought back the full Santa Rosa Center feasibility analysis as well as a recap of the 2016 housing action plan review. Next slide please so this map is a map of our downtown and it was created just for this study session and we can come back to this map during question and answer period if that's helpful as well and I'm just going to spend a little bit of time kind of going through our assets and what we're trying to show here on this map so it's basically a visual representation of the city assets and it's also a presentation of the currently proposed housing development sites and the proposed number of units and this is taken from our new downtown development dashboard which everyone can find online so the proposed developments this is just a kind of snapshot in time from our website and they're the little round circles shown in purple and then they have the number of proposed units within them so these development projects are just the start of implementing of a downtown stationary specific plan which I mentioned previously and the downtown station area specific plan really incentivizes housing development up to 7,000 units in proximity to the smart train and and and to transit and that's over a 20 year period. One of the big incentives in this plan is having no minimum parking requirements for these developments and to instead encourage transit ridership and creative shared and unbundled parking solutions. As you can see here most of the developments are kind of up to the north of the property of the of the map. They're closest to garage 1 and garage 3 which you can see in 3 and those are color coded according to parking utilization from that parking study that was presented back in August so the design day of parking per the study showed that these two garage 1 and garage 3 had parking utilization of 0 to 49 percent so not highly utilized but these two parking garages are our newest of parking garages with the least amount of deferred maintenance of any of the garages so right now most the majority of the develop proposed developments are to the north and near where there is a lot of parking space public parking space then if we come down the map just a little bit we'll see lot two which has 140 spaces this was recently sold by the city the city owned it it was a little over six months ago that it was sold for development the city has an easement in which we operate public parking on now the conditions of development on that property or that those 140 parking spaces will be will be reserved or rebuilt in within the new development and then we kind of go down we're going south on this on this map and we come across a lot 10 and a lot 11 so lot 10 is what I just spoke of it's behind rush and river brewing company our direction was to not surplus that lot and we have gone ahead with the capital investment of resurfacing that lot lot 11 has a little bit higher usage than the other lot 70 to 84 percent on the design day it is a long narrow lot could be potential for redevelopment coming down a little bit farther you'll see the central library site this is one of the city owned assets that is non parking it's the central library is listed there this library site we would consider a part of really the infrastructure plan that council that staff is coming back to council within the future so this might be part or phase two of this overall plan so today we're really looking at individual lots and opportunities to meet our community needs and furtherance of affordable housing so and all of those um the 2019 surplus lands act the 2016 housing action plan and the downtown station area specific plan so central library would likely be part of if you go down which would be south on the map all of the city hall site which is city hall annex chamber west america bank building as well as municipal services center south which is off the stony point road and the cutout is kind of purple and then over to the other side of the map with in blue the city police and fire station all of these lots are included in our infrastructure plan and will be brought back to council as sort of a phase two um to today's conversation so we know we have an extreme deferred maintenance issue um and we need infrastructure plan which staff is working on now we also need um to figure out what our mechanisms for financing these infrastructure needs or a new city hall will be so staff has started recently working with our outside consultants financial consultants to to find out what mechanisms are available to the city to finance all of these needs and of course within that rebuilding a city hall getting it out of the way making a more denser higher building it will make way again for um you know the state's basic affordable housing policy on city land and also the amenities that will need to be made that will need to come with that housing creation so again central library site and all of those sort of a phase two to this with the infrastructure plan that will be coming back to council and then we have all of the sort of the middle of the map garage five which um of the next garage has the most utilization 50 to 69 percent it's also our oldest garage um it's just a few decks i think it's three maybe four decks three decks i think um it also has a large amount of deferred maintenance and in addition to that large amount of deferred maintenance and it being the oldest garage it needs a deck replacement one deck needs to be replaced and that um that will cost the city around six million dollars or the parking enterprise fund about six million dollars for one deck and we'll still have an older garage that has deferred maintenance issues so this may be a space um that council may want to consider for redevelopment then we have the white house lot lot number seven 113 spaces that's a flat open lot um we've heard from a lot of the community that they would see that as a great space for redevelopment so that may be a lot we talk about council may want to consider tonight then we have garage nine um garage nine again is a large garage but also one of our older garages that has a lot of deferred maintenance also needs a deck replacement six million dollars really very much the same as garage five and then we also have garage 12 not as quite as much deferred maintenance i believe is five and nine but still a lot of deferred maintenance um a big garage 727 spaces may also be something council wants to consider um the two left are the very small small lots um one is lot four all the way up to the north and red that has the highest utilization of everything on the map 85 to 100 utilized very small little lot probably not the best for the redevelopment and maybe something council wants to not consider um lot six which is to the east on the map um again a very small space um has some easements going through it which would make it a little more difficult for reconstruction and has a lot of permits in it for such a small area maybe not the highest um and best use for redevelopment on that lot and so that's a basic overview of what we have going on in the downtown and as i said we'd be happy to bring this map back up during question and answer period um and you know talk through any of any of the pieces that i may have missed next slide please so what are we looking what is staff hoping from from council today well the direction stuff is hoping from at a minimum would be um as we recapped we went back and we talked about um what is what council decisions have been made in the past so what staff has heard in the past has been to surplus garage five surplus parking lot eleven and surplus parking lot seven the white house site should those three remain on the surplus list and come back for an action or should any of those be removed that would be our first question our second question would be should there be any additional assets placed on the surplus list and then our third question would be should we bypass our own internal city council surplus policy and just follow the 2019 surplus lands act or do you want staff to follow both of those policies next slide please so next steps where would we go after this so as i mentioned before today there's no action there's just direction staff is looking for direction from council on um if there are any city assets that they would like to bring forward for redevelopment um and to surplus if there are then staff will bring an action back to surplus those items with any um potential government uses that may be on them so development requirements that may be on them and with a minimum of 25 affordable units as per the SLA and then after that there would be a city council closed session where we would discuss the price and the terms for the long-term lease or the sale of any of those lots um from there we would submit a notice of availability to hcd the state housing and community services department making the property available to approved affordable housing sponsors again with those any development requirements that it may have and with a minimum of 25 affordable units next slide please and then the last part of our next steps would be if we received proposals from those developers from the notice of availability then we would review those developments and we would be required to prioritize developments that have the most affordability most number of affordable units and we would probably looking at that time for um for help with uh or or community um community input on these so we would probably looking to um community members to help review these um potentially local developers that are not interested in um in putting a bid in on it city staff we would probably have our outside um financial consultants looking at these to really come up with a best proposal that meets the needs of the community in the city from there if we um could work with one of those developers then we would enter into an exclusive negotiation agreement of which we would bring back to council for approval for final approval if for some reason there was no um interest or we couldn't work out um a proposal a development proposal with any of the housing sponsors then there could be a few different directions we could go and we could look at project sounding to see what kind of project would best work on these sites and we could potentially issue an RFP to private developers and that is um that is the end of the presentation um we are definitely here for questions comments um reiterations on anything and if I could ask to have the whole team promoted which is Ethan Walsh, Chad Hedge, Alan Alton, Reisa De La Rosa, and Claire Hartman um we are all here to answer any questions thank you very much they have they have all been promoted already they just need to activate their cameras if they so choose all right thank you so much and thank you Jill I know that this has uh been an exhausting process but we really appreciate the whole team's efforts on this I wanted to dig in on a couple of questions to start uh specifically around the surplus lands act if we can uh one of the things that I've been interested in in particular has been making the city hall site as beautiful as it is available for housing development obviously there's a city hall that's on it and as you mentioned we don't yet have the financing mechanism uh for us to be able to move forward on a new site or a new city hall is there an ability for us as we look through our assets to say we can make this available via the surplus lands act property but then put a condition on it that says and if you're going to use the city hall site you have to help us or have a an adequate plan in place to take care of the new city hall first uh same thing for our public safety building you can have access to the public safety building but you have to help us or we have to be in a position where we have figured out how to better locate or upgrade our public safety building does it contemplate that that sort of restriction at all it does and I'm going to ask for Ethan Walsh's help on this um possibly so even and I did meet with um the department of hcd and asked just that very question um the surplus lands act does allow you to bundle pieces together and to put restrictions on those surpluses so we could bundle and this is what I was referring to when I talked about phase two of the plan um which would come with the infrastructure plan that council will be coming back and those financing mechanisms so we can bundle certain assets we could put for just for an example we could put together the city hall site the police site mscs and the central library we could bundle all those with the restriction of we need a new city hall and a library and a police and fire station show us what you can do on this um so those restrictions would be put on as part of the NOA Ethan is there anything that you want to add to that I don't I don't think so Jill that pretty much sums it up there there is the reason we checked with um hcd is there is provisions in hcd guidelines for implementation of the the surplus lands act that allow us to place conditions on a notice of availability and so we were but we were concerned that that might be a bit too kind of a significant of an ask to put within the surplus land act um context but we did discuss it with hcd and they said no that would be okay if we were going to sort if we were interested in disposing of that property but but we'd only want to do so if there was a solution for say our our city hall or our public safety building that we would just build that into the notice of availability and put it out and see what kind of response we would get we would have to run run the notice of availability by hcd to confirm with them that it met all their requirements but but we do think it's uh it's a possibility to put them out in that manner and I will just add to that when the city is ready to do that and we have the infrastructure plan in place we have to be ready to negotiate with those housing sponsors as those come forward so our full feasibility our updated feasibility study and we'll need to know how much square footage we need we'll have to have our financing available so those financing mechanisms mechanisms will have to be available so that we know we can pay for it to be able to um negotiate with those housing sponsors um so we need to do a little more work on that when updating the infrastructure plan and the financial um mechanisms so as it pertains for today is there potential benefits or potential disadvantages to us uh still putting this out there understanding we don't have those updated documents that you're talking about or that we still have that potential restriction of needing to come up with the financing plan uh in order to see what's out there and see if somebody can be creative and actually bring us a solution um I mean we're not taking an action today right so the surplus item that we'll bring back is the actual action um that we'll move it forward council could decide to tell us that they'd like for staff to move in that direction staff is planning to move in that direction we're putting together the infrastructure plan we've started meeting with our outside financial consultants to put together the financing mechanisms for the extreme deferred maintenance issues that we have so we are moving in that direction as far as today um it's really up to council if you'd like to tell us to move forward we are already moving forward in that direction but the actual surplus action itself likely shouldn't be taken until we are ready until we are at least the NOA step um we could go forward with the surplus action itself but as Ethan said the NOA step we really need to be able to ready to negotiate meaning we have some sort of financing plan okay and then obviously one quick second just for the record can we actually introduce Ethan um sorry I apologize Ethan Walsh is from BBK law and he is our outside um uh council um on all of these matters so he's our expert when it comes to these matters of the of the SLA thank you madam city manager and we're lucky to have him so obviously the 25 percent affordability requirement can be a challenge and again understanding that the point of the surplus lands act is to put an emphasis to focus on making these properties available first and foremost for affordable housing development have you seen in other jurisdictions through the RFP process private developers and non-profit developers able to partner together to be able to move forward something that meets that 25 percent requirement yes and in fact I've just heard about it in Sacramento and San Jose um and that seems to be what's happening since it's not 100 affordable it's 25 percent affordable um on the NOA and so we are seeing um uh you know groups of people that build different types of construction commercial construction uh housing construction affordable versus market rate um coming to work together on you know different um different projects perfect uh have we started to look at or could we give direction to staff to potentially on the city hall site issue look at what our existing vacancies are in our downtown core for office space and see once we update our our needs coming out of COVID and having a little bit of a different understanding and a different work from home policy is there enough vacant office space that we could repurpose as a city hall to at least then get us to the point where we can have city hall on the table as an asset yes I mean that would be direction from council to um to staff but I will say that we know there's a lot of available office space all over now since COVID and in the time we're looking at now it could be a lot less expensive for the city to repurpose office space rather than rebuild at this time so that's something we could definitely look at if we have council direction to do that we just have to find we'd have to do a little bit of work on what our current feasible or square footage needs were and then we'd have to find a space that could hold all of that okay have we been in conversation at all with the state about the D street building or the federal government um about their building right across the street from us or even USPS with their prime location in the middle of our downtown that they distribute from yes um the federal building um the the federal government is doing a massive and they've been working on this for about two years now a massive surplus of parcels all over the United States actually all over the world I think um and they've hired a company to look at all of their buildings and prioritize them in order so our we did meet with the federal agency um that is doing and we or we met with the consultant that is doing it and the federal sponsor um they did let us know that the federal building here in Santa Rosa and the downtown is not in phase one it didn't make it into their most desirable surplus actions but it was likely will be part of phase two which I'm guessing is probably three four five years down the road they do know that the city is interested in it and they have committed to local agencies that they would be the first to be able to purchase the buildings um so we have a contact there and we have been keeping in contact regarding the federal building the state building we have over the last five years been in constant contact with the state on um and still are the um department of DGS is responsible for surplusing any state buildings and believe it or not that building according to the state department is um not underutilized per their standards so it looks like there's not a lot of uh people in there but to them it's not an underutilized building at this point that they would consider surplusing now in the future um it could be something we might want to bring forward an idea to the state of what we might do they may be open to that but at this point it's not on their radar and then um the usps building um in the past they have been open to moving somewhere but they would need a piece of land to move to um we haven't had any further conversations with them as we didn't have a place to move them to but at the time that the county was considering coming downtown there were conversations about them moving to a different location so I think that it could be a possibility okay and my last question that I'll turn it over for for council members is you know obviously we're not talking about this issue today uh but uh in order to start to frame our thinking and understanding of how we go through the surplus property uh components the parking replacement is obviously one of the biggest elephants in the room how much needs to be replaced should it be replaced I know that today is not the time to have that conversation but for Ethan while he's here in particular does the city have any legal requirements or any obligations around parking that as we consider these assets we should be aware of so I think as we've gone through this process in the past I think historically we've always assumed that you would need that parking that the parking that you had available currently was was part of what you actually needed to meet parking demand within the city um based on the studies that you've done more recently appears like that actually is not the case and there may be some some more creative ways for you to uh to to deal with your parking issues um I think you do need to be sensitive to what the the parking demands are and kind of the impacts that has kind of on on your uh your land uses in the in the downtown but in terms of I think historically there there had been an existing parking district that it issued bonds for um for for parking improvements but there's currently no outstanding debt for that for that parking district and no one is paying any assessments so I don't think you're required to keep all the parking spots that you currently have I think you just need to go through an analysis as to what your specific parking needs are and if you are going to kind of reduce the total number of parking spaces in the downtown you have the ability to do that but you have to do it as part of kind of an overarching analysis of of what those needs are and and what an appropriate level of production is so but no strict uh legal requirements that would prevent you from doing that Joe you look like you wanted to jump in also sorry I was muted um I'll also add to Ethan's what Ethan is saying in that um if council does decide tonight that they would like to surplus any of the parking assets that when we bring the surplus action back we would bring back also an analysis of the parking of what staff sees as being needed or not needed okay yeah so understanding that that's not the conversation we're having tonight it sounds to me if I can paraphrase that the replacement of existing parking assets if we repurpose some of these lots will be a policy decision not a legal requirement is that fair I don't think that's fair to say yes okay I'll go ahead and see if some of my colleagues have additional questions council member mcdonald thank you mayor and thank you for leading the discussion a lot of the statements that you made were were similar to where my line of thinking thinking was um but you said it a lot more eloquently so I appreciate it um a couple things that concern me around moving in a direction is I'd like to see if we could do a full maybe study session or working session where we have all the maps out in front of us and preferably looking at when some of the new council might be seated and the reason I say this is I found in leadership roles that I've been in it's easier sometimes to implement things when everybody has brought along during that process so a little bit of my concern around giving direction on where we want to surplus things to is one I might not have the full picture of everything where the economic development and planning and businesses fit into the full plan and and so it feels a little disjointed to me because we've done these sessions consecutively that perhaps we could just have one day where we have all the maps out in front of us where we can have almost like an overlay of these are our choices on housing these are potentially where we could put the new city hall if we make this decision this is what would we go to next this would be the impact to businesses specifically in the downtown corridor of if we put housing here or if we had disruption of building in those specific areas so that's a little bit of my hesitancy that said the things that you were talking about do bring me a little bit more comfort like if we did this we have an opportunity to say how are we going to finance that and where are we going to actually move to which is really I think the first and foremost conversation that needs to be had is where are we going to put the new city hall in fact if we surplus where the current city hall is and and that to me is one of the first decisions that needs to be made and so surplacing land doesn't make as much sense to me until council actually can decide where we want to be and what can fit in those areas of current property that we already have so as far as some of the other lots that I looked at it looked like lot number 11 might be a potential and maybe lot number six but but really going back to what mayor said around can we do this around the city hall because we have so much deferred maintenance specifically on this piece of land and it's it's our largest piece of land that we can actually develop to me that's much more attractive and and potentially moving fire and police to a new location if that's their desire as well and using some of those pieces of land and the reason being is as we build kind of from the outside in I see that as an opportunity not only to have more housing but to then support the businesses in the downtown area which I think will be affected if we start maybe on those garages closest to them so that would be my direction and my concerns around everything I know we've you've all been working on this for a really long time and I'm coming a little bit late to you know jumping into rope with all of you but I still feel concerned that we're maybe doing it a little too quickly and I'd like to just wait until at least we have all the new council seated do we have any additional questions council council member Fleming I have a couple of questions I'll save my comments for after we hear from our community members one question is the staff have a preference around whether or not we should go forth with the city's surplus land ordinance or if you would prefer to waive that in the name of expedience and time equaling money when we're talking about construction and development I would prefer to waive the internal policy and move forward I think it it takes up a lot of time when we've already gone through most of it okay that's helpful is there anything that we should know that would be perhaps a trade-off in that aside from gaining more time and less work I I don't think there's any trade-off I also don't think there's any risk involved as planning and the planning commission has looked at these quite closely housing this all goes through hcd and housing and is placed on for you know the goal of affordable housing so I don't think there's a risk that we're moving or losing anything and not following the internal policy it absolutely answers my question I want to make sure that we you know reduce red tape but don't miss anything when we do so so that's a perfect answer my next question is around economic development and making sure that we achieve the highest and best use and in the sequelae question to that is how much can we condition surplus lands beyond the 25 percent affordability can we say add ranking tools like if if developers want to do things like childcare or have activation at the street level can we incentivize them can we partner with the renewal enterprise district or or adopt some of the criteria there how much how much latitude do we have that's probably a question for Jill and then a question for rice is probably do you have a sense here of what'll bring us the most economic investment in our downtown core in the fastest way but also in a way that will serve us for for generations to come I'll start with the first question on latitude and Ethan feel free to jump in on this one as well but the point of the surplus lands acting going through the first first part is that it's a minimum of 25 25 percent affordable units and the goal is for affordable housing which are the city schools as well and so we would be looking and prioritizing for the surplus lands act anything that has 25 percent or greater so if someone brought in 40 percent of affordable housing that would be you know the proposal that we would prioritize just for example so we're really looking for on these spots per our goals but per what the state tells us we have to do we're looking for the most affordable housing units which also can be mixed with market rate housing because they're also looking for housing and can provide some amenities but prioritizing those amenities would be something that we would do through an RFP process if we do not receive any responses through the surplus lands act notice of availability okay so what you're saying is that through the SLA notice of availability we can't add additional conditions beyond the 25 percent affordability I guess we could add more restrictions well I don't really want to add more restrictions I want to I want to say you know if we get multiple offers you know that if somebody is going to come forward with a better offer saying I'll do 25 and I'll build childcare on site or 25 percent and there'll be public you know active park space in there or something like that so we could be able to differentiate between what I'm hoping will be more than one good offer right I would I would say during the first step it's really a two-step process and so during the first step when you put out the notice of availability in terms of conditions I don't think we could include those things as conditions on the notice of availability if we got similar offers in terms of affordability I think we could use those types of considerations as a tiebreaker and that would only be during the first but but in that first step in the first kind of response to the notice of availability you have to prioritize kind of the the affordability level is the number one criteria and and then you can have tiebreakers after that I would say in the second step if we weren't successful in finding anyone as part of that first iteration then we could put all of those criteria into an RFP that that would be doable at that point and and in that second step if anyone's developing housing they do still need to develop develop a minimum of 15% affordable so we would get affordability as anyways so that helps answer that that really does and this is just coming from my experience on the renewal enterprise district where it's helpful before you actually have your assets that you take out to the marketplace to have an idea of what your pie in the sky is whether it's universal design or public spaces because I think that you know while our downtown doesn't have the best reputation I that's going to be changing pretty quickly with all the units under construction here and I think that we're going to have it would be my guess that we're going to have a lot of interest in developing these sites and so I want to make sure that we get the most for our community and that we're supporting our construction people are interested in in constructing to do the do it in the way that will work for them and work for for us in a win-win so that was that question the second question I had is probably not the second we're playing at the ninth question I had but the the follow-up is um if there's any way in from economic development I know you guys are out in the community a lot talking to people want to make sure that in this process I know we have what is it 30 acres of parking in the downtown but want to make sure that the way that we do this is supportive to our business community and that we get the units downtown so that the small businesses and can actually have the support that they need so is there anything here any trip wires that we could be stepping into that we might not be aware of um good afternoon uh that is a good question I think you know the process is what it is um with the state um that I will say from a market perspective um what helps is having residential housing a degree of residential density in the downtown helps all businesses um what is of concern to some of the businesses downtown though they see the benefit of downtown density housing um they have voiced and I know you've heard them voice concerns about the impact of development um you know this is one of the necessities the impact of development is one of the necessities of getting the housing that we we need um and if I understand your question correctly too in terms of community benefiting assets and though we can't condition um you know per what Ethan and Jill are saying um through the SLA process um I will say first and foremost housing is needed to make any community benefiting asset viable uh and so um you know this may change over time so where we might have one development on one site um and then other develop housing developments on other private sites um just the act of new housing opens up um more a broader market for opportunities for um grocery stores um other uh commercial entities like that and even for potential for more childcare or for education to come in for um health care um there is some degree um depending on what that asset is there is some degree of the requirement of some sort of density in the area to support it um as it is so any housing is good for that in that regard okay that's excellent to hear have we seen another jurisdictions that have done similar things in their downtowns who maybe didn't maximize their redevelopment potential but are now looking to revitalize where they go through this surplus lands act process have we do we have any examples of those and if so um do we know what levels of density they're using and similar that might be too specific a question to have a comp but I'm just curious to know if we go out and do this are we going to get the kind of density that I think from behind the dais um we're imagining um are we going to be able to get that will developers need to be as dense as we want them to be in order to make it pencil I'm not sure if that questions to me I can speak to you from a business perspective it really depends on what you're looking for so a grocery store has a different requirement of density to go into sort of like an infill space without a lot of parking then say a child care space or even a healthcare clinic so they all have some different specific needs from an economic development standpoint we can pursue anything based on the property or the opportunity that is given to us so I'm not sure if that was the question if I'm answering that correctly or if that was even directed to me I think I get the point thank you so much I was a very specific and unusual question and as usual you did a great job thank you to staff for putting this together I'll hold my comments I'll go ahead and see if there's any additional questions from council members council members where you had your your hand up are you good was your question again thank you very much asked and answered excellent thank you so much we'll go ahead go to public comment then on this we'll go let's start here in the chamber are you going to give comment you few trial 520 3rd street first time in the chamber since you've reopened a pleasure to be here things have changed a bit of course as you know I'm the chair of the downtown action organization but I'm not here representing the DAO today I'm here in my private capacity representing my my own company and and very very briefly as you know my company has built quite a number of buildings in the downtown core we do tend to build what gets entitled low income as well as market rate commercial as well as residential one of our sites is at 4 e street which is east of the post office it is adjacent to the city parking lot which is at 10 e street and correct me where I'm wrong Jill or anyone but I believe that that is lot 6 on the map if I've got that wrong please do that is correct we have in process and design a 55 unit market rate rental project lower price point not to compete directly with our building under construction of big o tires we had a pre application meeting with city staff actually this morning and since mid summer we've been in discussions with with city staff regarding a permit allocation agreement for the surplus spaces in in in lot 6 that is not a surplus in action it is a permit allocation agreement similar to what others have done including our firm in the downtown core it's a bundled parking approach we do believe that this would be a transit rich project but certainly people do still have cars uh this particular lot because the center rose at the sonoma county aqueduct runs through the middle of it because the creek side setback absorbs half of it is actually not available for for any other on any other purpose anyway and it's very small and I haven't had the impression anyone in on the city side is is excited about bringing it bringing it forward because it can't be developed but it's important when the meeting is over if possible that it could be clear that we can move forward with staff and conclude that permit allocation agreement so we can submit our design review application and move forward on a timeline in which we hope we would be under construction with this project in october with well designed carefully considered project if there's any questions about what I've just said I'm happy to answer them otherwise that's what I wanted to contribute to the meeting and thank you very much thank you so much Hugh let's go to our comments on zoom we'll start with Natalie followed by Callum yes we can okay okay good afternoon mayor vice mayor council members I submitted a letter earlier explaining why we're requesting that garage five not be deemed surplus land or staff be given direction to deem it surplus land however you want to state that but I didn't send it until late so I just wanted to quickly overview my main point and there's been a lot of talk about parking replacement which they brought up but really what I want to emphasize is that most harm to our building is going to be caused during the pre-construction and construction phases which I broke down kind of in the letter and by the time that project is actually completed we're most likely going to be in foreclosure due to lack of tenants so I wanted to focus really quickly on the pre-construction phase because that's what relates most mostly to your discussion direction today before shovel even breaks ground our building will suffer large increases in vacancy this process will take years before construction can even begin the following would have to be completed including an RFP release an RFP creation process an RFP selection process environmental review a ton of community engagements and public meetings by this process creates uncertainty which creates rumors to which then causes fear and leads to more uncertainty as an example of something like this that happened the uncertainty about whether or not courthouse square would ever reunify this is before it was obviously and was the only catalyst of Wells Fargo leaving our building and moving up to found growth so we know we've been a part of this actually happening and and additionally the project's unknown parking situation regardless of whether it ends up being replaced it will be unknown for quite a while is going to recreate even more uncertainty so not only are we going to start losing the tenants that we have but it's going to be really difficult to lease new space to people no one's going to want to come and lease office near a development project with an unknown start date or duration it is for these reasons that we're requesting the council not Dean garage 5 surplus land or give direction if this occurs the ability for us to lease our building will begin to diminish immediately so not just when construction starts or when you know the RFP is just right you know once once rumor gets out once this information gets out we're going to have a harder time leasing our building we already deal with safety issues residents current negative view parking downtown which I'm sure you guys are all aware of and then recently COVID which has changed obviously as you know and you mentioned the office landscape and and people's decision where to work those are all problems we're already currently battling and we just asked today that you don't add any additional hurdles thanks thank you Natalie we'll go to Callum good afternoon Mayor Rogers Vice Mayor Alvarez council members and staff my name is Callum weeks I'm the policy director of generation housing where we lead the movement for more more diverse more affordable housing I just like to start by thanking everyone for being here and for working on this I know it's a challenging process and there's a lot of concerns and you know we totally understand that and that's why this is a collaborative process I'd also like just to know you know as we move forward it's really a pair that we take a holistic long view and that you you know really ensures both livability diversity of commercial and residential spaces and really the cultural track means the downtown area if you look at you know communities like Healdsburg and Petaluma both you know suffer from a dearth of parking spaces they're very vibrant communities there's a lot of traffic there's a lot of people that like to visit those communities because they have a lot to offer and I think you know when we take kind of again the long view and we're looking at what we want you know for the future of Santa Rosa it's imperative that we really focus on moving forward on things now because we can't say with any given certainty what market conditions will look like 10 or 15 years from now when eventually we do have to replace something like the third st garage and and ultimately you know do something with that that parcel and the same could be said for D street both you know combined will have a 12 million dollar necessitated investment to extend their you know service life really only 15 years and and I just like to echo you know previously we discussed this but I think it's important again to to note that parking occupies 25 percent of the downtown area and not only that 75 percent of all downtown parking spaces are not occupied on a typical busy day it's it's things like this that we really need to take action on I know people express concerns about parking consistently to all of you both staff and council alike but at the end of the day there's just a substantial amount of parking that we do not need and there are other opportunities we can take advantage of such as shared parking working with our private developers who have empty spaces and there's you know software applications that we can use to essentially ensure that we have adequate and sufficient parking to accommodate future development and and I'd also like to really thank you all for for really looking into partnerships that we can gauge on specifically the state and the federal government I'm really happy and delighted to hear that you guys are having those conversations I would possibly add to that because I know you guys have had these discussions before collaborating with Santa Rosa City Schools they have a very nice six acre parcel that is grossly underutilized on Ridgeway as you all well know and that would be a great spot to potentially redevelop for affordable housing and then maybe co-locate them with you on your city campus so as we move forward I would just you know really like to say that we would like to collaborate as much as possible and and communicate kind of our own concerns and vision for the community and and see what we can do to come sort of to come to some sort of mutually you know agreeable you know decision that is is both financially feasible and and can help sustain our our business owners which we we do have concerns about that as well and with that I'll leave it there and I look forward to talking more with all of you about this thank you very much for your time have a wonderful day thank you that's the last comment that I see did we have any pre-recorded voicemails on the item we did not okay I'll go ahead bring it back then for councilmember comments I'll start with folks on zoom uh councilmember Sawyer do you want to start thank you mayor thank you very much and you know as a former downtown merchant I've been closely watching the evolution of our various parking assets for close to 50 years and I want to make it clear that I want to make it you know I want I very much value our various downtown property assets and at the end of the day I'm looking to allow the option for as much developer creativity flexibility and opportunity as possible this will be accomplished by surf plusing as many sites as a majority of the city council feels comfortable with based on their feasibility so it's kind of a that's my kind of my bottom line I'm not interested in investing in estimated $12 million in deferred maintenance in garages five and nine I I want to waive our internal process we're prudent I do not want to consider a lot six as surplus as articulated by mr futrell um and I am very much in would like very much to investigate available office space for the the movement of city hall to an already existing building and I think that covers what the what staff is looking for if I missed anything let me know thank you councilmember and I'll check in with Jill and see was that all of the input that you needed or is there anything that you need from the council member and then subsequent council members I think that's all the input I need I'm assuming when you said most sites surplus that were leaving the the original three on as well garage five lot 11 and white house site yes that should be good then thank you okay mr vice mayor thank you mayor well council member sorry just made it easy for me to end in which case Jill as I agree for harvey with the statement in fact that even goes far as saying that we should be seeking our our development partners to seek direction and we're no professionals when it comes to what is a feature of these sites so I definitely want to keep all ears open to our partners and also say that if we are going to promote development in downtown centers which I fully agree with we should we should facilitate the program and the process so they are entitled and are actually enticed to do so and with keeping with with revitalizing and beautifying our downtown area I'd even say take a look at how our redevelopment fees are structured and targeted towards our downtown specifically the definition of the word parks and where we can develop and and and invest our our fees so for me it really comes down to promoting housing again not as stated before not spending an insurmountable amount of millions to to reconstruct parking which apparently is is is not needed as as much as we thought beforehand so again work with our partners promote housing and revitalize revitalize downtown San Rosa we need we need the housing to in order to support the businesses that are currently failing in our downtown corridor and I said before if downtown San Rosa thrives the rest of San Rosa thrives and that includes my district of Rosin and South Park thank you thank you mr vice mayor I'll come all the way down here to councilmember rogers thank you mayor um so just to go off of the questions that we have here I uh agree with the three lots uh being on the list um ultimately I would like to see us put as many sites up as we can to see what developers can do with them we are really looking to revitalize downtown and a part of doing that is to just put everything out there and see who can do what with what and like uh vice mayor alvarez said I'm no developer so I don't know that process or what people can actually do with the lots that we have available and I am in favor of waiving the internal policy if it does not get in the way um of anything else thank you thank you councilmember mcdonnell yes thank you um so I am going to stand because I might behind my earlier comments of wanting to hold off on surplus of land until we have a full picture of what we really want to do specifically with moving city hall but your comments earlier mayor around if we surplus this and then can we condition it some way so that we have a place so that we know what we're going to move and how we're going to pay to do that um I would be interested first in finding out um the current annex building if there's room for staff to move over to there or any of the other buildings that we have in the downtown area I feel like sometimes we're still doing things a little bit um sooner before we have all the information and maybe it's just because that will come to us um when when everything is brought to us so um so I'm a little uncomfortable with that I still stand behind my much earlier comments around not wanting to surplus garage five even though there's some replacement that's needed on it I I'd rather not do that because I do think it would be disruptive to the businesses in the downtown area I'm comfortable with lot 11 um and and the concern around surplusing the white house site for me really has to do with is that someplace that we need to move to and if we were to surplus it what would that do to the future of maybe a city hall being there if we were to then surplus the city hall building so I think that that's where I'm still feeling like I'm wavering on do we surplus this before we know exactly where we're going to go to um and so I'm not sure if that does everything waving the internal process anything that we could do to cut through red tape specifically to help support developers is something I would be interested in the cost is rising for construction and so anything we can do that as the city goes I'm comfortable with and then um I do want to comment on lot number six I wasn't clear if it needed to be surplused before we can move through that process and if that's the case and I prefer not to surplus that that was confusion on my part and I apologize for that so I'm going to retract my earlier statement um and and say yes move towards the permit process so that we can um get that underway on lot number six I still also would like to hear from the police and fire on potentially moving them and if that's something that they would desire or feel like that's would be a good move um for both of those departments and then that is a potential for us in the future councilmember Fleming well councilmember Sawyer certainly made it really easy I'm going to just go ahead and say all of the direction that he give I concur with I will add on that in future sessions I'd like to hear about the idea of surplusing our city hall site and using that as part of a plan to achieve um additional housing and a better more update as lovely as this site is and you know it doesn't seem that the public is clamoring to come down here it is got its charms um but it does as those of you who have been down here know that it it is really quite old and um could be probably put to a better and higher use um and if that process is taken up I want to make sure that the daylighting of the creek is is an in restoration creek restoration in economic development is an integral part of it I want to take a moment and say why it is that I believe that we're doing this and why it's so important and this goes back to what our values are you know we're not just developing downtown because it's a fun project although I think that some some people might enjoy the project part of it and it would be great to have a sim city board that we can move all the pieces around together and that would be a fun exercise I believe however the reason that we're doing this is that the urban three study shows us that when we invest in our downtowns we get economic return and what we do with that money is we can go out both in the downtown but also do our more suburban parts of our city and invest in parks and sidewalks and other features that reduce um adverse childhood experiences they reduce draws on police and fire and they allow us to pay our city employees and maintain our community and beautify our community some of the things that I hear most when I talk to constituents is frustration around sidewalks around medians around things that we just financially can't we can't we can't afford to take care of our city the way that we need to so this is for me really you know there's a lot of government talk a lot of wonk talk in this but at the end of the day for me it's about creating an engine so that we can meet the the demands and frankly the what I believe our residents are entitled to in a way that's fiscally responsible which they're also entitled to thank you council member I first and foremost want to thank Ethan and Reissa and Claire and Jill and everybody else who's been involved in this I think one of the things that we haven't emphasized enough is that this action by council or the bringing forward action to be taken it's not off of only a couple of study sessions it is consistent with the downtown specific plan and that is consistent with the community input that we spent years bringing in to make sure that we are charting a better course for our downtown as council member Fleming was talking about I am not unsympathetic to the concerns of downtown business owners and to office spaces that are there but other cities develop all the time other cities have housing projects that are right up against businesses and they have found a way to make it work and I think that we all can agree that if we could snap our fingers and have these downtown projects done it's better overall for the city of Santa Rosa and for those businesses and that there might be some short-term impacts that we very well can address that we can bring forward with the surplus actions the ability to support our businesses and our office spaces while still achieving the long-term goal I know that there was concerns around how courthouse square did we learned lessons we can do it better and and I know that that when your livelihood relies on that that that's hard for you to accept and to hear but we have a sincere offer on the table to support in any way that we can to try to get to a better future for our downtown with that White House lot yes garage 5 yes lot 11 yes lot 6 no if that's going to get us a project faster to do it through our normal course of business and especially hearing from multiple different sources that there's no other real use for that site let's get that project built faster garage 9 yes garage 12 yes city hall site yes with some of those conditions but let's get the ball rolling city police fire station that's on Sonoma Avenue that is not an adequate station for our public safety officials we need to address that so yes let's put that on the table with that condition as well and one of my council member colleagues questions I was downtown when a fire alarm went off and when all was well I was talking with some of the firefighters who responded to the call and they told me that they given the development that was happening or planned in downtown that yeah it would be more strategic for them to come further into our downtown particularly if we do start to see mid-rises that have a different level of service that are necessary so absolutely let's see if we can bring them downtown and have a better standards of coverage for our community central library obviously we'll have to replace it but yes let's put that out there with a condition and see if that's something that we can move forward on let's give folks the ability to be creative within the downtown specific plan that we've created and I said it to our team many times and I'll continue to say it I would rather we try something and fail than to continue to do what we've been doing for 20 years which has gotten us nothing and I know council member Sawyer has seen this he's gone through many iterations of our downtown plan and what he will tell you kills a downtown faster than making the wrong choice is being stagnant let's try something new and I think that that's where we're at and that seems to be the direction the council has given tonight any additional questions Jill I just want to clarify um a couple of questions Vice Mayor Alvarez are you okay with bypassing the internal surplus policy and going to the SLA that was only I am Jill okay and then I just want to reiterate what my understanding is um and please crack me if I'm wrong um um the majority of council members with the exception of um council member McDonald would like to move forward with surplusing as many locations as possible not including lot six that's what I heard from council members okay I've seen thumbs up council member McDonald has a question just for clarification on this Jill would there would it be possible if you could bring back when the plan comes before council sort of a tiered program similar to what we've been talking about like this could be first phase this could be second phase and third phase so that even potentially council could help prioritize that or would that be part of the next discussion anyway I think that's going to be part of the next discussion but part of that will be in a tiered plan as the mayor brought up earlier we can surplus a lot of the city assets like City Hall Sonoma Avenue Central Library MSCS but we are going to need to have our infrastructure plan and our financing mechanisms mechanisms in place before we could put them out on an NOA so because of that it will be tiered anyway a lot of the other lots and garages we we can put forward immediately does that answer your question yes thank you thank you and just to reiterate one of the questions that I asked earlier as this comes forward in the SLA process as those resolutions come forward I hope council members take the time to talk with folks in the community and formulate your thoughts around the policy question of replacing parking and obviously we have our parking study that we have uh that we have talked about that'll help guide some of it but really that'll be the next key question I think when these resolutions come back to what extent do we need to replace parking and how do we use that discussion to facilitate the construction of housing particularly affordable housing again not getting into it too much today but for folks watching in the public for council members that will be the next big question so I wanted to make sure that that was very transparent in how we do this process any additional comments or questions from council or from staff okay we'll go ahead and recess we'll come back at four o'clock for our regular council meeting good afternoon folks and welcome to our council meeting for today madam city clerk can you please call the roll and re-establish our quorum okay thank you mayor council member schwedhelm will be absent from the meeting today thank you mayor uh council member schwedhelm will be absent from the meeting today council member soyer here council member rogers president council member mcdonald here council member fleming here vice mayor alvarez president mayor rogers here let the record show that All council members are present with the exception of council member Schwedhelm. All right. We start today with the proclamation It is for domestic violence awareness month I think that's why we have a fine contingent of folks here in the chamber tonight So I'm going to kick it over to councilmember Rogers to read the proclamation Thank you Prior to reading the the proclamation. I would like to make a quick announcement This proclamation is very near and dear to me because I am a survivor Of a family that went through domestic violence. So I am very honored To read this proclamation. I would also like to point out That the YWCA on Saturday, October 22nd is having a spring lake regional Run so it's why I run and it's raising awareness about domestic violence with every step we take So if anyone can join us that would be great It will be at 9 30 a.m. For check-in and the run will start run or walk. So don't let that discourage you run or walk The runner walk will start at 10 a.m. It's a $20 registration fee But I will be registering today and I hope to see many of you there now for the proclamation. Thank you, mayor Whereas the city of Santa Rosa Recognizes that domestic violence affects one in four families in our local community and that the crime of domestic violence violates an individual's privacy dignity and security based on the systemic use of emotional physical sexual psychological and economic control or abuse and Whereas established in 1975 YWCA Sonoma County is our community's singular and vital resource for a local Residents experiencing violence in the place we should all feel the safest inside our own homes and whereas the YWCA Sonoma County a not-for-profit agency who relies on our local community for support embodies its mission to empower Educate and advocate for domestic violence survivors and their children and Whereas YWCA operates Sonoma County's only confidential safe health shelter and Sonoma County's only 24-7 domestic violence crisis hotline and whereas their counseling support services offer Trauma-informed individual therapy along with support group therapy for victims of trauma and domestic violence including the students at YWCA's therapeutic preschool serving children ages three and five years old and whereas Only an informed community effort will end the cycle of violence for local families and encourage members of our community to participate in YWCA scheduled events and programs to support their mission and to eliminate domestic violence in Sonoma County through awareness Education and empowerment now therefore it be resolved that the mayor Chris Rogers The mayor of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council do hereby proclaim October 2022 as domestic violence awareness month. Thank you so much Honorable mayor and members of the city council. My name is Madeline Keegan O'Connell I'm proud to be the chief executive officer for YWCA Sonoma County and Natalie We're just going to put you on our team because that introduction of our fun run was just perfect. Thank you so much On behalf of the board of directors staff volunteers and especially the families in the care of YWCA Thank you so sincerely for honoring domestic violence awareness month with your proclamation Established in 1975 our 24-7 DV crisis hotline is the only one in Sonoma County And it is still the most direct path to support for families in need our confidential safe house shelter is also the only Only one in Sonoma County for family seeking refuge from harm And I'm here to share that calls to the crisis hotline in 2021 were increased by an astounding 46% higher than in 2020 and I'm so proud to be joined by members of the DVS team These are the heroes of the YWCA. I assure you I am merely the spokesperson We managed to steal them away this afternoon From a very very busy home. We currently have 19 children 19 children in our beautiful house and eight adults on last count So they're a busy bunch here and I'm grateful that they're here too Equally of note and often attributed to the pandemic is also the increased complexity and severity of the situations that callers Are sharing with our team and we want you to know that safety planning and strategies to ensure relief are at the forefront of every call As you can see we're also joined By the San Rosa police department so happy to see chief cregan and Officers and detectives who work strictly on domestic violence cases here with us Thank you as ever for your strong support of our mission and then i'm also here to remind you that we've been here since 1975 and We've been supporting sonoma county families and we will be here as long as sonoma county needs us I did share with the clerk some of our materials. We have a very colorful calendar of all the activities that we're doing in october But especially our fun run slash walk Lots of folks come out to spring lake and walk with us and it builds awareness For the fact that one in four families nationally and locally will be impacted as was shared earlier Thank you so much for doing that. So thanks everybody for your time and Let's enjoy october. Thanks No, thank you so much madeline and thank you for all of the effort and all of the work from the team We really really appreciated and we know how important it is here in santa rosa Chief did you want to step up say a couple words on behalf of your team as well? Not to put you on the spot Sure, I didn't prepare anything too fancy But my name is john cregan the chief of the santa rosa police department But when madeline talked about her team like here's our team right here and we have Six detectives that are their full-time job is to mexican violent sexual assault and one sergeant who leads that team And we have a lot of cases that come into our investigative bureau But without a doubt this is the busiest team that we have and they work at our family justice center Which is in close partnership with the sonoma county district attorney's office and they're embedded right there with some of Our advocates that are able to support and it's a one-shot for any of our Victims of domestic violence or sexual assault can come to our family justice center Get the immediate assistance on their criminal investigations and then immediately get some of the care and assistance They need to get back on their feet get temporary restraining orders and everything they have So i'm so proud of our team and literally the countless hours they put in every week on helping victims across santa rosa Thank you. Thank you chief and let's one more time if there's anybody who needs help out there How do they best get in contacting access services? That would be one of the easiest phone numbers to remember 5 4 6 1 2 3 4 We've had that number since the 1970s 5 4 6 1 2 3 4 and we answer that line 24 7 every day of the year without fail Thanks for asking chris. Oh, thank you so much. Are there any additional comments from council members? How about we take a photo if that's appropriate? We would love that come on down How many of us? How many did you bring? Everybody is welcome come on down Time for a bigger chamber All right while folks filter out We will see if there's any additional public comment on our proclamation for today If you we are conducting a hybrid meeting so you're able to leave comment in person Or if you want to hit the raise hand feature on your zoom I'm not seeing any additional comment madam city manager. Let's move on to our staff briefings for tonight Thank you. Um, I have no covet update today Um, and we will move on to item 7.2, which is the community empowerment plan update Deputy director magali will give the presentation. Thank you Uh, good afternoon mayor rogers vice mayor on bodies Members of the council magali day is here with a quick community empowerment plan update Uh, so regarding the herron community hub We'd like to thank everyone all community members who came out on october 6th A special thank you to lc allen high school principal gave avavera And all of the students who joined Many other community members on the evening of october 6th to finalize community For their vision of the herron community hub So at this event the community further focused and prioritized ideas Needs and programs that they'd like to see at the herron community hub I can share that some of those noted were the need for access and space for health services Further noted was a need for space for health screenings a space to meet with health service providers This includes space for mental health services through the therapies through therapy suites And resource centers for individual and group therapy resources A youth center was a consistent theme by both parents and youth alike Requests were mentioned for a safe space for young people to gather After school and programming to go along with that Lastly, uh, there were very specific acts to make sure that throughout the center That there exist opportunities for families to gather celebrate culture and educate youth and community About their specific cultures so that youth can continue passing on rich traditions That some of some of which have been lost unfortunately Due to the lack of physical spaces To hold events and other similar cultural activities So we still have our let's connect sr page Active so we are still taking questions comments suggestions And we will have one more Presentation done by our consultant group rdc on the evening of november 16th at the cab meeting So we are going to continue Taking information from the community making sure Everyone's had An opportunity but yes on october 6th that many of the The needs were Really prioritized So with that that is the end of my report. Thank you Thank you deputy director. I'm going to look to my colleagues to see if there's any questions Mr. Vice mayor Once you unmute that is Thank you mayor. I appreciate that sir My galley was there anything that the community stated that they did not want to see at the at the heron hub? That that's a really great question I think really just the The bulk of it. I mean the laundry list was very long And and folks were very excited about the opportunity to have a pool Excited at for all the potential things that were to come but I wouldn't say there was a specific thing The really the focus was on on things that people wanted to see Um, I couldn't really say having attended all the sessions that there was something that people were Collectively adamantly against I appreciate that and I too have not heard anything that's good But since I wasn't able to attend this week, I just want to inquire if anything had come up. But thank you Thank you, mr. Vice mayor. We'll see if there's any public comment on the report out Okay, seeing none. Thank you deputy director. We'll keep moving through our agenda We have item 8.1. It's our report on settlements and active litigation and I'll kick it over to our assistant city attorney jeff burk Thank you mayor. Good afternoon. You have in your materials our report of settlements and active litigation. There is one Matter the apogee gardens cases that is over $50,000 settlement and I understand our city attorney reported on that at our last meeting And I have nothing further to report. Thank you Thank you We'll go to statements of abstention by council members Does anybody have an abstention from tonight's agenda? Seeing none. Let's go to our mayors and council member reports I'll start with zoom john or eddie do either of you. Let's go with the vice mayor. Go ahead start us off Thank you, mayor. I do have a request. I'd like to place a motion forward Requesting a feature agenda item to discuss cc ordinance 2519 traffic chapter 11-16 And I'll be for support for my colleagues And I'm looking to see if there's a second Second Okay, and council member. I think we'll also be discussing kind of how and when and Some of that item a little bit later We'll have it on as a feature council agenda item unless we Give some other further direction later tonight or or at least roll it in with some of our directions that work for you It does sir. Thank you, sir. Perfect Council member swear. Did I see you leaning forward? Uh, you did mayor. Thank you very much. Was it to hula or was it to give comment? Well, if I could hula I would hula but uh, As much as I love watching it. I'm afraid that my hula days are over But in any regard I I would like to first of all, I I'm going to be exercising a great deal of brevity I'm hoping that my brevity does not give our assistant city attorney any heartburn But I am uh referring to this request as the todd road area annexation We vote I got a second uh for this item at our last meeting and Including my own it's my hope to receive at least three more affirmative votes to place this item on the council's agenda As soon as possible for further discussion Without going into too much detail prioritizing this annexation Represents a good opportunity to help meet the council's housing goals and therefore our communities near and long-term housing needs One last piece I would like to add is the developer is willing to pay for a consultant or additional planning staff To expedite the process eliminating some of the costs normally borne by the city and I will leave it at that I appreciate that council member. We will deal with that just after we finish our council member reports If that's okay with you, then I'll come back to you if you have any additional Comments or or introduction Thank you, and I don't have the agenda in front of me because I only have one screen So I I apologize if I jump jump again. No, absolutely. You're you're good council member Let me see if there's any other report outs first. We'll go to council member mcdonald Thank you, mayor So on 9 28, I was able to go to a ride along with officer rayman I just want to say thank you so much to chief cregan for setting that up But I want to also thank the officer that took me along. We were able to support a gentleman that was in the downtown area dealing with some trauma And what I really was able to witness was the care and the respect that the officers treated him with and then we also had some restraining order issues and Just the focus on who was calling in and the um The concern that the officer paid to them I just want to say thank you to the police department for giving me that opportunity To see the detailed work that they're doing And I'm really the respect that they're treating our citizens with and I just want to say thank you for that On 9 29, I went to the loci event and I just want to do a shout out to Herman Hernandez for a great Line up a panelist that day I lost my wrap if anyone found that at ssu. Um, it's near and dear to my heart So if you found a black wrap, please turn it in it's cashmere On 9 29 also, I was able to go to the tlc child and family services mixer that evening Where we heard from a community member and that had been experiencing Being unhoused and her story was so compelling and um heartwarming to me That she shared it and she was in that youth transition housing and um, then a gentleman who actually owns property That works with tlc Was there to share his experience as an owner of a property and so I just want to say thank you to That program that's here locally and with the point in time Count there's about 450. I believe if that was pretty accurate Of kids that are aged between 18 and 25 and that area is um a particularly hard group of kids to get housed And so I just want to say thank you to all of the groups and nonprofits that work with that That age group On 9 30 I went to the child's schultz museum for their commemorative stamp event The best part of the event was that snoopy was there So, um, it was really cool. There was hundreds and hundreds of people there getting the um the peanut stamp And so I just want to say thanks and to go see the child's schultz museum if you get an opportunity to and um And and patronize those businesses as well And then on 10 4 I was able to go with jenny lin homes to tour the new caritas center and and walk through My favorite part is the head start program that they're going to be able to have for the children that are in that particular program And and what we find so often is families that are experiencing this trauma that their children often start school so far behind And so to have a head start program right there on that campus for families is so critical the most um The most photographed item in that particular Program is the tiny toilets. So I I have photographic evidence of those and it's on my facebook And then I do want to do a quick shout out To our city manager smith as where as well as mere rogers for presenting at the sonoma alliance breakfast They did an extremely Excellent job and a really comprehensive report on the state of the city of santa rosa And I was really proud to be in the audience Witnessing that and be part of this incredible team And last but not least I do want to do a quick shout out to my son dentin It is his 31st birthday today. I know you're shocked. I have a 31 year old, but I absolutely do. Thanks for the filters on zoom Council member rogers Um, thank you mayor. I wanted to uh put an ad out To just let everyone know that I am seeking to make an appointment to the community advisory board So if anyone Would like to serve This would be a great opportunity for you to do so. So please reach out to me by email Also, I was able to Attend a picnic for the athena house This past saturday Because its doors will remain open and a few months ago That was questionable whether or not athena house would continue to have open doors So that was a wonderful experience and i'm also very grateful and happy that the doors will remain open And to thank everyone that was involved in keeping the doors open. So that's their staff bucklue programs I believe it was the the gallagher family and Just the the people that have gone through the program that know the impact that it has on the community Um, I was able to attend faith in blue and many of you are probably like what is that? Well this past sunday, we had um officers from the santa rosa police department go into our places of worship and uh Engaged with the community and it was a wonderful wonderful event Um, I look forward to having more events in the community like that The congregations were very welcoming Um, and it was a shock for them And they just uh had open arms for the officers So and thank you to all the officers that went to All the services because there were a lot of services and they had a very busy schedule and they kept up and they they Showed up to all the services that they were supposed to go to Um, and I I would like to thank uh chief greegan for thinking out of the box really And for for bringing these type of ideas to the city. I think um, they're very important for us and also a city manager smith for Allowing us to have these what may seem like Ideas that people have never had and really thinking out of the box, but allowing us to do it Added as a way to engage our community and to to push to push forward So thank you to both of you On october 23rd from 9 to 11 a.m. I will be doing a a park cleanup At a place to play Donuts and coffee will be served So if anyone would like to join me that would be great and again Putting the request out that if anyone has a park or a creek or an area within our city that you think needs Some tlc to please reach out to me because this is something that I really love doing it takes All of our community to make Santa Rosa a beautiful place and lastly September no saturday october 15th from 11 to 1 p.m. I will be at bayside church with Santa Rosa fire department and other participants for a series Called empowering neighborhood voices. So I hope to see everyone there. Thank you so much mayor Thank you so much councilmember councilmember flaming Thank you mayor A few weeks ago. I had the opportunity to work in the community garden at my daughter's school And these are really special opportunities if anybody gets a chance to go It's a lot of fun It's also a great way to teach children about our ecology biology and Produce food and flowers and the kids get a big kick out of mostly sitting around eating donuts while the grown-ups work Um, I I'm grateful to the police officer's association for meeting with me on Friday morning I love anytime I get to meet with our employee unions And it's an open invitation to any of our employee unions to reach out to me so that we can connect I can better understand your needs and we can continue to move forward in partnership And then of course on saturday a big. Thank you to the mayor The fire chief and the city manager for organizing What was the five-year anniversary of the tubs fire? It was a really impactful event at coffee park It was really well attended and it was one of many events held throughout the region during that day it was a Sombra and solemn occasion, but it was also one that shows how strong we are as a community and Also that we don't want to have to be that strong again and that we've Done a lot of work to get there and we we've got a lot more to do for fire hardening and and safety But our our administration here at the city is to be commended Thank you council member And it's been a couple of weeks So there's a lot of items that that we've we've ticked off and events that we've been to and I really appreciate Not losing sight of the importance of them. I'm going to highlight three specifically One was the This month's Sonoma clean power meeting which i'm proud to serve on for the city of santa rosa One of the issues that came up with the previous heat wave that we discussed Was the ability of our infrastructure to actually withstand The impacts that we're seeing from climate change And i'm just going to put on the radar of the council members one thing that we don't yet know enough information about But during the heat wave To our north right in humboldt county the transformers were actually unable to Handle the load of what was happening including development And so all development was shut down During the heat wave And I think actually is still going to be shut down as they try to figure out how to Invest in their infrastructure So particularly for a city like santa rosa that's been focused on housing development I just wanted to put that on folks radar as we learn more that There's the flip side of that that we always talk about and that's infrastructure and making sure that we're having those conversations When we talk about housing and when we talk about climate change Because it's a very real impact that nobody saw coming. So that was one of the discussion points that we had The other was approval and I will disclose to the council I've been invited to represent sonoma county at the un climate conference In egypt in a month or so it'll be sponsored by sonoma county water as well as the Sonoma clean power We'll actually have a pavilion and we'll be presenting on all of the incredible things that our community is doing I'll be joined by the mayor of roner park jackie elward It'll be and and some great staff support as well And i'll report back to the community as we do that but It's a great opportunity to go learn from other countries that are experiencing the same issues And also to talk a little bit about our own experience. Um, so i'm looking forward to that We also had our sonoma county transportation authority and regional climate protection agency meeting. Uh, just yesterday Two things particularly of note. Uh, the first was scta launching a Development dashboard for the entire county Not quite as detailed as what our staff have done with our housing development Particularly in our downtown, but it is really important and unique to see where Pending development is across our region As a spoiler santa rosa makes up about 32 of all of the pending development That's not surprising for a city of our size and especially when we look at city senator growth But it is something that the council should be proud of that that's been the focus And we are seeing that get across the finish line The other thing of note as we had a presentation on electrification of police vehicles and other transit and fleet vehicles Katadi actually is the first in the region to cut the ribbon on a tesla police vehicle I will tell you they did a full cost analysis of it over the lifespan of the vehicle It is four thousand dollars per vehicle cheaper And that's before they take into account that it retains its value longer And actually has about 20 000 dollars in additional trade-in value when it's time to upgrade those vehicles So not only did it make sense for them economically it made sense for them from an environmental perspective Less maintenance, uh, and when they did their analysis gas was only 350 a gallon Which obviously it is no longer 350 a gallon. So those numbers actually go even further in their favor So scta passed a resolution urging ordinances urging urging all of our jurisdictions To take appropriate steps to begin to electrify our fleets Obviously, we've been doing that on our transportation side Huge shout out to rachel ead and the team Who have secured funding for half of our city bus to be electrified? But but chief we're coming with some teslas We'll figure this one out because that's where we need to go if we're going to meet our climate goals And then finally I did want to recognize the five-year anniversary of the tubs fire Uh, a couple folks in the room have heard me over the last week It's been a roller coaster of emotions for me for our team for our fire survivors for our community There's a lot of emotions that we could express from the dais But I think tonight I just want to focus on gratitude I'm still so grateful for our firefighters for our police officers for our nurses our doctors Our dozer drivers our water team our bus drivers for everybody in the community every staff member who stepped up in some way It felt like we really Came around the corner as we approached five years The community has more than 90 percent of the homes have been rebuilt Are in rebuild or have been approved to be rebuilt And if you throw in the pending uh approvals, we've got about 200 units that are waiting for approval That's 97 percent of the residential units that we lost in 2017 Our team has been sprinting trying to get people home and i'm just so grateful for everybody's work and thank you so much For sticking with it for coming home if you're a fire survivor We could have easily broken apart as a community and we didn't we chose to pull together So that's what I was thinking all the way through the weekend and wanted to express it here tonight as well With that, let's see if there's any public comment on councilmember reports All right seeing none councilmember, so you already started to introduce Uh item 10.2 that is the request for a council agenda item uh specifically adding A discussion and expediting the todd creek annexation There are some associated general plan amendments that might be needed Did you have anything further that you wanted to add on that item? No, I think you've done a good job of summation mayor It is the reason for the necessity of having a a good thorough discussion is there are some issues that are fairly complex and um The trying to expedite this is could conceivably be a bit of a challenge But a worthy one and that's why i'm bringing it forward And I received my second from vice mayor alvarez a couple of weeks ago And this is a this is the the third step in a three step process to get the item on the agenda And that's what i'm so i'm requesting the council allow us to move forward with four affirmative votes Perfect and as you mentioned Last week was the first step this week. We're voting specifically on whether to add this to the agenda Uh, and then we'll bring the item back for discussion and approval should it receive four votes Council members. Do you have any additional questions? Questions only councilmember mcdonald My question is do we have to add a time certain on when it's back on the agenda or just direction on the agenda? Yeah, no, if if we have four votes, we'll bring it at the next available time Which is dictated by our open government policies on how much lead time we need to be able to bring it All right, let's go to public comment on item 10.2.1 Welcome On your right hand side. There you got a there you go Thank you Thank you, mayor rogers. Good afternoon ken mcnab k mac advising Representing or speaking on behalf of ownership of approximately half of the todd creek or 2010 area Which is about close to 300 acres First of all, I want to thank the council for considering this item Housing is one of the greatest challenges facing our community and communities throughout california You are all aware of this And the infill and intensification projects we're seeing throughout town Our testimony to council's proactive action to stimulate and remove barriers to housing And while into infill and intensification Are important and should absolutely be continued They are not going to be enough to meet the city's longer term housing needs To meet our future housing needs We are going to need to include vacant lands as part of the housing equation If you look at the city's vacant land inventory The todd creek annexation area or 2010 area Stands out as probably the single greatest opportunity For the city to address its future housing needs In addition, it's close to transit close to services close to the downtown core And will accommodate a significant number of housing units of various types and sizes The owner is ready to move forward With what will be a lengthy and complex regulatory process To annex this property, which will probably take years to complete at best The owner is also prepared to fund appropriate technical studies as well as city city staff time As was mentioned by councilmember soyer to help with the effort that will be needed to coordinate this annexation process To help streamline the process And to help the city deliver future housing We request that the following items be considered should there be a formally scheduled discussion on this topic One is that the todd creek annexation area or the 2010 area Be identified in the 2050 general plan document and the eir as a priority annexation area The second request is for the council to direct staff in its policy to allow flexibility On the type of land use studies that are going to be prepared prior to annexation of the todd creek or 2010 area And let me expand on that just a bit In your current general plan there is language calling for the preparation of a detailed land use plan Prior to the area's annexation It is our understanding that staff is interpreting that language as meaning a specific plan is required Our concern is that a specific plan Would take what otherwise might be a three to five year process to position this property for development Into a seven to ten year process and add an additional cost of approximately one and a half million dollars to prepare the specific plan and environmental documents For this area, we honestly believe that there are alternatives to a specific plan that are worth discussing considering and exploring Before any decision on what type of land use plan should be made or should be prepared And so we ask that you Include that direction or that is a discussion point in your future agenda item Thank you so much Oh, is that it three minutes? That is I know it's a lot different when you've got the uh, you get to sit down here Mayor rogers. Yes, I was remembering those days and uh, you may remember the last time I was in this chamber You mentioned the 2017 tubs fire. It was a 2019 concave fire where Windsor town hall was in an evacuation area in the city of santa rosa was gracious enough to let our council Meet in this chamber and continue continuity of government. I believe you're at that meeting even yeah, absolutely Good to see you again Is there any additional public comment on item 10.2.1? Okay, I'll bring it back. There's a motion in the second that's already on the table Any additional discussion? All right, madame city clerk, please call the vote councilmember soyer Hi councilmember rogers. Hi councilmember mcdonald. Hi councilmember fleming I Vice mayor alvarez Hi Mayor rogers. Hi that motion passes with six eyes and councilmember schwedhelm being absent All right. Thank you so much We'll have that Thank you councilmember and we'll have that on as soon as we can get it scheduled for hearing. Thank you Council let's move we have three approvals uh for our cb2 approvals for minutes the june 7th 2022 regular meeting As well as the june 21st 2022 regular meeting Were there any questions or amendments to those two items? Okay, let's see if there's any public comment on items 11.1 or 11.2 Seeing none. We'll show those adopted as presented without objection And I see no objection Move to our consent items Mr assistant city manager, and I apologize go ahead councilmember soyer Thank you, mayor. I just want to it's just a bit of housekeeping. I will be um Leaving the council meeting at this time. So I will not be here for the remaining Um the remaining council meeting Okay, thank you councilmember Thank you very much And mr. Assistant city manager, let's go through our consent calendar. Thank you mayor Item 12.1 is a motion contract award santa rosa pavement rehabilitation in various streets Item 12.2 is a motion to reject all bids santa rosa avenue corridor improvements Item 12.3 is a resolution extension of proclamation of existence of a local emergency Relating to the threat to community health posed by covet 19 Item 12.4 is a resolution Making required monthly findings And authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing For public meetings of the city council and all the city boards commissions and committees Pursuant to assembly bill 361 Item 12.5 is a resolution extension of proclamation of local homeless emergency Item 12.6 is a resolution approval waiver of competitive bid and purchase order for micro Micro micro law excuse me on-site hypochlorite generator system It's a mouthful Item 12.7 is an ordinance adoption. It's the second reading in ordinance of the city of the council of the city of santa rosa Increasing the compensation of the city attorney to provide effective may 8 2022 A 5 percent merit increase in salary and a 3 percent increase in deferred compensation for a total city contribution amount of 8 percent And that concludes the consent items mayor Okay, thank you so much. Thank you council. Do we have any questions about the consent calendar? Seeing none, we'll go to public comment If you have a comment on tonight's consent calendar go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom And seeing none, I'll go ahead and bring it back. Mr. Vice mayor. Would you like to make a motion? Yes, thank you, mayor Oh, my apologies. Do we have a voicemail? Yeah, thank you. Let's go to our voicemail Harris weaver with the Sonoma county bicycle coalition with a comment on agenda item 12.2 The rejecting all bids for the santa rosa avenue project. I just wanted to say I I fully understand the issues of price increases doubling, you know bids coming in double than estimates is is quite Remarkable But also wanted to express concern and disappointment that how much longer they have to be able to make a decision Remarkable But also wanted to express concern and disappointment that how much longer that is going to delay This project which we've been Tracking and following for years now what i'm also really curious about that isn't really addressed in the staff report is Is putting this out to rebid in a year Going to Necessarily come back with bids that are very much lower. Is this just a short term blip? Or do we need to be revising our estimates of project costs for all projects? If inflation is projected to continue at the current rate and what does that mean for prioritizing All the other projects that we very much would like to see Thank you. Thanks. Okay. I'll go ahead and bring it back Go ahead mr. Vice mayor Thank you, mayor. I move items 12.1 through 12.7 and weigh further reading of the text Second We have a motion from the vice mayor and a second from councilmember rogers. Let's call the vote councilmember rogers Yes Thank you Councilmember mcdonald. Aye councilmember flimmy. Aye vice mayor alvarez Aye Mayor rogers. Aye That motion passes with five ayes council members soyer and schwedhelm are absent Okay, it's not yet five o'clock. Let's move on to item 14.1 Item 14.1 is a report item introduction of an ordinance to the santa rosa city code adding chapter 10-26 side shows Chief cregan our police chief will begin the presentation. Thank you Do we give the chief enough time to get from here for the presentation to his office for the next presentation? Let me send the link to the chief right now Let's go ahead do this. Let's take a brief recess See if we can find the chief Let's say we'll come back at five o'clock to public comment for non-agenda items and then move into 14.1 Does that work for staff? Okay, we'll be back at five o'clock Yeah, I think it might Be in It's five o'clock. Welcome back madam city clerk. Can you please re-establish our quorum? Thank you, mayor councilmember schwedhelm is absent from the meeting and councilmember soyer has left the meeting and will no longer be attending for the remainder So councilmember rogers present councilmember mcdonald here councilmember fleming here Vice mayor alvarez president Mayor rogers here Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember soyer and councilmember schwedhelm Thank you, madam clerk. So it is five o'clock So we will go to our public comment for non agenda items If you have a comment that is on an item that's within the city's jurisdiction But not on our agenda for tonight either approach the podium or go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on zoom Do we have any voicemail public comments? We do not Okay, eric. Are you giving comment? Okay, go ahead. Okay. Thank you very much This is eric frazier and I you recognize me with truth and tourism I'm not sure if this projector works or if I need it It takes a few seconds to warm up. All right Well, we're waiting and we'll we'll give you the three minutes once it's up and running That's very gracious of you chris. I I hope I do see that there's a way to plug in Your computer or a thumb drive in this maybe. Okay. Thank you very much So, um, yes, thank you very much. Uh, this is eric frazier with truth and tourism And uh, as you know last week there was a party at a short term rental Short term rentals are a subject that I study quite a bit We've assembled quite a team of researchers here before I start. Let me see if you can hear this Well, it's not working But what I wanted to show you or let you hear is testimony online from the people that threw the party Bragging about how successful it was You know, there's a trade show in town last week and we love our trade shows. We love attracting businesses here But there's really quite a conundrum when it comes to Uh, how cannabis is accommodated here when it comes to trade show events in this case a short term rental property owner It's totally victimized By people that book their home their beautiful home that they've been paying taxes to the tot on Since 2015 to hold an illegal party They blew through all the stops and the contracts Emails everything to hold this party. They're they're no hold bar And I sent out the uh research that we have showing the party the invitations all the social media. What have you? But this is a strong testament to how we're not managing these things correctly. It's not the strs that aren't being managed I know that a lot of people are hungry for empirical evidence. That's why I'm I'm kept hopping I'm in demand But you know, what we have here is a situation where it could have been avoided Uh, I don't have to remind you. I don't think about the difference between how the urgency ordinance was crafted Compared to the cannabis urgency ordinance, you know having two public hearings on short term rentals demonizing them endlessly Uh staging things to make them look bad Not having an ordinance that has due process That holds people accountable whether they're a gust or a vexatious neighbor I mean these things are not The type of stuff we want to see in our democracy We want to We don't want these parties. We want the guest held responsible. We want law enforcement working with us. We want our public Our who we pay Working for us not against us not in some charade some political charade That's enough of that already. Thank you. And I did send out all these media links I hope you do take a moment to look at them. They're quite exculpatory And um, you know, maybe I see your minds changing over time So that's good But you guys have a long ways to go to get real on this issue. Thank you. Thank you, eric When I do see a hand popped up on zoom, let's go to lisa Hi there. Sorry. This is my first time and I have no idea how to work this. Am I actually being heard right now? Yeah, it's all good. We can hear you lisa. Okay. Thank you so much. Well, um, like I said, this is my first time here and what I wanted to talk about is I am currently experiencing a problem having to do with um multiple RVs and trailers parked on my street. I happen to live on Silver spur drive in santa rosa The zip is nine five four zero seven It backs right up to um southwest community park And what's happening is is that they're just we had gotten rid of all of them It was clear for about two weeks and I was like perfect because I put my house on the market And I really need to sell it and all of a sudden Within one day, there's four in a row stacked up They also have a lots of Visitors coming and going that looks like they're selling things to each other. Maybe stolen goods perhaps Um, then there's at least four more Down the block further. So Right now It's looking like a slum. We've got some cars that are On jacks You know jacked up because they're under repair, I guess and then they've got their hoods up So when people drive by, you know, it's like it looks like it's the mechanics On the side of the road and then you've got um oil all over the This this asphalt you've got trash when you walk right by on the sidewalk You can smell the strong stench of urine. You can see some dried feces whether it's human or animal I have no idea And all of this is going on on a lovely city street Where we live where we you know walk where children walk. It's just It's unbearable and I'm just wondering What is being done and you know, all of us on our street are talking to each other now and getting a little bit more and more intense as The volume increases And I'm the volume of the trailers increase and um And the other thing they're doing is they are running Generators powered by gasoline 24 seven. So we've got We've got to breathe in those fumes Um, I heard that somebody is coming along and and giving them gas and water Which means that that's almost like condoning what they're doing in any case What we're trying to figure out is who can we talk to who could be our go-to person to find out What's happening and what solutions we can be a part of because right now we're just kind of in a quandary and Agitated and like I said, I can't I can't sell my house That's a pretty big deal. I think for anybody To um to have to face the fact that your own personal economic situation is being directly impacted I could end up being homeless over this whole thing too. So that's what I just wanted to Bring up and and I guess my time is almost up right about now. Yeah, thank you so much Lisa So we typically don't get into a back and forth and public comment because it's not on the agenda and there's brown act issues But if you can I'm not going to ask you to give your contact information publicly But if you can shoot me an email at c rogers, that's r o g e r s At sr city.org I can get some help and then also madam city manager. What date are we bringing forward our rv ordinance? Mayor we don't have a date at this time. Um, I can probably update you after our Well, probably when the city attorney returns. Okay, so we're on it We're looking for a date and I'll make sure that I can get you some assistance and then also that date once we have it Okay, and then do you are you can you hear me still? Yes, okay, so um, do you want you want me to send you an email directly? Yeah, please send me an email with your contact info and I'll get back to you Okay, sounds great. Thank you so much. All right It's the last hand that I see for public comment. So I'm gonna go ahead. Oh, excuse me two more popped up while we were talking Let's go to surely followed by cassie Hello, hello. This is surely chill I surely chill here. Um, I just want to talk a little bit about homelessness. There's a lot of um Things in the paper right now about the chronically homeless Um, and I think they are labeled as those who often don't want services those who are mentally ill and um those who are using drugs Um, and and I read this morning in the paper about the four candidates in my district. Um, one of them was saying, um We need tough love One other one was saying oh, we need to give sympathy another one good will a good will campaign and um Victoria Fleming was saying about disrupting the cycle of homelessness Which I have to applaud Um, I also want to give a shout out though for the people that we're dealing with in our safe parking program. Um They are often Overlooked because they're not chronically homeless. They're newly homeless. They're working with case workers They are stressed from not having a place to go and having to live in their car But they're really working hard to improve their lives And I just think that putting funds to the chronically homeless um Yes, it can be good. And I think that public will think that that's a great idea But I just want to put a shout out for those who don't really fit into that character That characteristics of those people um, they're they're decent people trying Trying very hard to improve their lives and um, sometimes they get Missed completely. They're not family people. They haven't got a family. They're not I don't have children And sometimes they're not over 65 So I just want to say let's not forget those those who are not Predicted those were not mentally ill and those who are falling through the gaps. Thank you Thank you. Shirley. We'll go to cassie We get cassie unmuted Cassie, I think you are being requested to unmute If you can go ahead and hit unmute and begin your comments Can you hear me now? There we go Sorry about that. It wouldn't wouldn't collect sorry Anyway, I too live on silverspur drive and I've contacted pretty much all of you guys regarding Two issues one being the multiple Rgs and trailers parked on our street and all that comes with that and I think the previous person that lives on my street brought up What goes on Not to mention they steal our gas. They keep us up at night and whatnot. It's really disruptive So if you could send the information, I'll send my email address to you to me as well So we know who to contact To get help Because the police are of no help. They're usually too busy to be quite honest with much more important matters um, the other issue is the park The park has an event that's held once a month for a basketball game and the guy is outside the Purview of his permit, but when you call the police for help To find out if there is a permit what you know The rules are of that permit they point to the parks Which is closed on a sunday when you contact the park they point to the police. So I did research the park Issues a permit and the police issue the amplified sound permit and this guy is not working within the permit But it seems like we can't get any help out here With that whole situation is to making sure we're not disrupted by This guy with his permits not working within the permits and he also Has people that poop and pee I've got a tons of it on video I've actually sent those videos to you guys And it's just become living hell to live on silversphere between the Arby's the trailers The want the month event in the park It's great to have parties and everything in the park but having someone on an amplified speaker starting at 8 30 in the morning and going till 8 30 at night is unbearable and You know there's got to be something that can be done And I'm looking hoping you guys will get this figured out and how we can get this resolved Okay, thank you Cassie and We'll go ahead and get you some help there. Uh, so feel free. I know you shot me in the email I think it was yesterday. I'll get back to you on that one But feel free to also shoot me another one if you want to give me your cell phone number In contact. I'm happy to give you a call Great, thank you. With that, I'll go ahead and bring it back to the council. Let's move on to item 14.1, please Very great item 14.1 introduction of an ordinance to the santa rosa city code adding chapter 10 dash 26 side shows so we do have our chief of police ready Thanks very much. You guys were ready to go today Um, so I'll start today with uh, just a brief power point if we could bring the power point up, please And we'll go to our next slide So we'll start off by just laying a foundation and unfortunately Everyone in our city council most in our community are quite familiar with what a side show is But for those of you who may not be a side show is we're seeing these Kind of pop up events that are occurring across the city of santa rosa and across even our county Some are occurring in private lots and parking lots and others are occurring Actually taking over intersections in our streets of santa rosa and you're seeing vehicles doing what's called spinning donuts of kind of spinning recklessly in circle and Spinning the tires when they do that and then we're seeing What we're seeing in santa rosa often is what quickly grows 75 to 100 vehicles and hundreds of participants Who we're standing around cheering them on and we'll have a video here Coming up that shows one of those incidents right here in the streets of santa rosa But what we're are seeing if we go to the next slide We'll talk about some of the dangers that we're seeing associated with these side shows here in santa rosa And we can go to the next slide if you don't mind And then so what we're seeing the unfortunate reality is not only you're seeing of shutting down these roadways of Some in the intersections. We're seeing sabastopol and west and On fulton road and we're seeing You lupa and summer filled and really all across the city of santa rosa We're seeing shutting down these intersections But not only the dangers associated with the vehicular traffic in there, but we're seeing Frequently shots being fired sometimes just in the air Sometimes at other people and most recently on sinko to maya We had a young man tragically shot sabastopol and west and someone who was arrested for attempted murder as a result of that We've also seen stabbings. We've seen fights break out where people are injured We've seen vandalism To city property and private property there in the area and often we've seen these vehicles Which are recklessly spinning around Resulting in collisions with injuries that have resulted to those and one just outside the city limits at Stoney point and Todd we saw last year one of the spectators tragically injured and killed As a result of a site show just outside the city limits in the california highway patrol Investigated that incident. So it's a great significance for our community here in santa rosa and we've heard Many comments from our community about wanting to see a more proactive Approach from the police department in our city on this effort if we go to the next slide, please And so this is one where I really want everyone to pay attention to because it really demonstrates what we're trying to talk about this So you see this intersection and this was actually in november of 2021 So, uh, not that long ago just eight months ago or so right here at west ninth and link in santa rosa And you see right here. You see the intersection is shut down So a vehicular traffic is not able to proceed through this pretty major intersection in the city of santa rosa And you see it's shut down both by vehicles and by pedestrians or our spectators Which are coming in kind of egging on the streets And you see also once the video starts going you're going to see how the passengers are actively involved in the side shows So they're not just sitting passively in the back seat, but they're hanging out the windows They're cheering this event on they're egging on both the spectators and the driver of this Vehicle so I think it really talks about the ordinance that we're going to talk about today Which talks about the drivers the passengers the spectators and the promoter organizers and you're able to see each one of these Positions or these activities play a key role in this video. So if you don't mind playing the video, please And so we just put a brief clip of this video And this was from one our santa rosa police department drone operators and one of our Our officers were able to fly drone over this area and take some overhead footage But you see in the vehicle of Of young people hanging out the side of these windows extremely dangerous The other spectators which are really crowding into that intersection The other vehicles which are waiting in line to engage in this sideshow behavior completely shutting down these intersections And and we have video after video Describing this type of dangerous behavior occurring here in the center city of santa rosa and it terrorizes the neighbors who are in this area This intersection is surrounded by residential homes With a park being just a couple hundred feet from this intersection And we hear just calls of fear and terror from our community members who say I can't come out of my street And I can't go to work and I can't go the other things i'm doing because they've completely shut down the intersections In my neighborhood and unfortunately in the past we were seeing Of not as much of a proactive approach and we were seeing these where they were maintaining these intersections for an hour to two hours And now thankfully we have a little bit more proactive approach that we work county-wide To address these sideshows and we're working to not let them turn turn into such large-scale events But as we'll go through this presentation today, we'll talk about how necessary our city ordinances to help us continue to combat These dangerous sideshows and if we'll go to our next slide, please So now when we start talking about the impact so we've talked about it already in that video just demonstrated it very powerfully But you're seeing the block roadways so west ninth and link is completely shut down And we're seeing that across our city and as it's really Prohibiting people from coming and going to their businesses and their residents and carrying their everyday life here in the city of santa rosa Then we're seeing the dangers with shootings stabbings fights vandalism collisions occurring at these We've unfortunately seen officers injured where we're seeing Uh the reality is when officers are moving into these of rocks and bottles being thrown at our police vehicles And our and our firefighters and paramedics that are moving into these scenes to provide medical aid when we've seen people injured We've seen damage obviously to our vehicles our street signs and other private property as well And then one of the things that we're really seeing is some of the environmental impacts and I've had some conversations over the last couple weeks with our storm water crews here from the city of santa rosa and talking about the significant environmental damage with The tire debris that's being left on the roadway and the rubber and how when we're getting when we do get rain And even without rain, we're seeing just through some of the vehicular traffic of it pushing it into our storm drains And it's causing pretty significant impact And then we're seeing just the nuisance uh people who are trying uh to enjoy their lives on a friday night or saturday night And you're hearing 45 minutes to an hour to two hours of just a constant squilling of the tires and the shouting and the yelling Unfortunately, even gunshots being fired in the air associate it with these events We're going to our next slide, please So some of the things that we've done to address what's leading up to this uh leading up to the city ordinance We've worked over the last 18 months the santa rosa police officers have impounded in total over 100 vehicles associated with sideshow activity over the last 18 months And that's been having an impact and uh, we're seeking court orders And seizing those for 30 days when an officer actually sees them involved In sideshow activity and it goes before a judge and a hearing for the judge to decide if they're going to keep that car for 30 days And they're overwhelmingly being upheld by the judges and kept for the full 30 days It ends up being about $3,500 in tophies that the driver ends up paying to get their vehicle back out of impound And it's taken off the street for 30 days so they can't participate in future sideshow behavior We've really been working proactively with our team to detect upcoming events and be able to upstaff our staffing Our staffing for these events and be better prepared to not let them turn into these large-scale events With that comes the cost though and when we did this slide We put for 35,000, but actually I pulled the numbers today and since january just on side shows We spent $94,000 on sideshow overtime efforts that we've done and just for this fiscal year It's been $54,000 for this fiscal year So it's it's having a financial impact on the police department and ultimately the general fund for the city of santa rosa For us to proactively be going out and addressing this but this proactive enforcement We're starting to see some of the impacts on our city And we're certainly seeing a decrease in the number of these sideshows But we without a doubt have not eliminated them from the city of santa rosa We're also working to train our staff We had the california highway patrol from southern california specialized unit Came down to did a county-wide training that we posted here in santa rosa on sideshow enforcement efforts And some of the specific enforcement codes that we could be utilized We have a team of drone officers Which that are trained and that we have them deploying these drones during these operations of gathering Evidence that we can use in these criminal investigations and as well as our impound hearings before the judges when we 30 day impound these vehicles Next slide, please We're also really working and this is one area that i'm really proud about is collaboration with our other law enforcement partners here in sonoma county and actually We've been working on this over the last couple months of that We weren't seeing a coordinated effort in sonoma county and quite frankly We don't have enough resources for the santa rosa police department to put the 30 or 25 to 30 officers That it takes to respond to one of the large sideshow events to be able to safely shut those down So we started working with the other chiefs throughout sonoma county and our sheriff and came together and talked about how we all have Mutual in it interest in being able to stop these sideshows And now we have a commitment from the other chiefs and the sheriff here in sonoma county to send Allied mutual aid resources when we call for the sideshows Unfortunately, most of them have been in the city of santa rosa But we are seeing them in other areas outside the city and our commitment is that we're going to send santa rosa resources to those when they occur whether it be rona park or pedaluma or wherever it may be but this coordinated countywide effort And proactively reaching out as soon as we see sideshows starting to begin is certainly having an impact And really sending the message to those participating that we're not going to tolerate this behavior in the city of santa rosa But we still need some additional tools to completely eliminate it from our community We also work on some of the basic things we talk about the three E's with traffic enforcement and that starts with our traffic efforts That's what the enforcement efforts we're talking about But we're really working on the education piece as well And that's one of the hopes that we plan to use this city ordinance with is using as an education piece Whether it be going to schools whether it be talking to parent groups Whether it be working with our key partners with community engagement and the santa rosa Violence prevention partnership about some of the dangers associated with it And now talking about some of the increased criminal penalties for those who still continue to be engaged in this And then our Transportation and public works has been such a key partner in helping us with this and helping with some of the bot dots We now have Uh multiple intersections that we've identified. I believe we identified 30 intersections throughout the city and we've actually The tpw is installed at 23 intersection the bot dots and those are those white raised markers Uh, and then also we're experimenting with these raised the liniators Which are even larger and our first intersection We did with sabasco pull and west and really seeing some impacts without about using some engineering techniques to be able to deter the behavior from occurring Also continuing to work with our state legislators and uh last year in 2021 our state legislators in sacramento Did pass assembly bill three? Uh, and this allows for uh licensed suspensions from 90 to six months 90 days to six months For those participating inside shows unfortunately our state legislators postponed that uh until taking effect until july 1st of 2025 Which is frustrating because this is a problem that's occurring today and we're not going to see that help until 2025 We're working with our governor affairs officer here in the city of santa rosa to set up meetings with our state legislators and delegates About some of the more pressing needs that we need today and that'll be an ongoing conversation that we're having We're also working with The countywide protocol that we talked about and really working to have a consistent response from all of our law enforcement agencies here in santa rosa Throughout sonoma county to be able to shut down these side shows quickly and safely We'll go to the next side show, please So, uh, we talked about some of the things already with engineering and this has the you see an example of both the bot dots And it's the it's the little square patterns that you have in the middle of the intersection And that's to help when vehicles are spinning around in those donuts the tires Catch those and it deters them. But to be quite honest, it hasn't Stopped the show behavior. It's just basically an annoyance to those who are doing the side shows But you also see the four sections of the raised white the liniators and those are those plastic Uh little sticks that are poking up and they have little Plastic or rubber humps on the bottom those have been more effective Even though we did see it one of the last side shows what they uh They ended up knocking all those down But we're continuing to work with transportation and public works and looking at different models across the state that are being deployed And it's definitely been one of our key strategies, which has at least helped deter some of the side show behaviors You go to the next slide, please So today we'll talk about the heart of what we're here to talk about today And this is the new side show ordinance that we're proposing before our city council and it has four different sections So it's uh the technical part of it here. It's it's the 10 dash 20 sex point Zero one zero and that'll be a new a new city ordinance that we talk about and we'll go through in some of the coming slides talking about Four primary sections and it's the participants broken into two things Both the driver of the vehicle and a passenger who's actively participating in the side show The spectators or the crowd who's actively cheering on and egging on the drivers who are participating in the side show And then the promoter organizers and these are the individuals who are going on social media platforms Snapchat instagram and a host of others to be able to promote and say people Hey come to this intersection and that's what we're seeing it quickly traveling And then you'll quickly get dozens of hundreds of participants showing up at these intersections And each one of these four are these four participants play a key part in making this illegal and dangerous behavior occur here in the seat of Santa Rosa Next slide But this starts breaking down each one and everyone has the power point So i'm not going to go line by line through this But the first one we talk about here is for and the key words that are in bull print right here Is knowingly participate as a driver So you have to be able to show that this person is actively and knowingly participating in the side show Behavior and the same thing with the passenger And this is the passengers who are saying hanging out the side of the windows We have previous warnings or citations for being participating in these and the officers to be able to show like preponderance of evidence that Without a doubt this individual whether it be the driver or the passenger They know what they're doing is illegal They know that they're participating in a legal and dangerous side show and we're going to start by some of the things with Like with warning citations We have filled interview cards that we can do to document this behavior and we're going to start by Leading with education and talking about the dangers to it But ultimately when it comes up to it as a last resort They're going to either be able to receive a citation or even be arrested for a violation of the city ordinance Next slide, please This one talks about the spectator and again two key words that are in here Is about knowingly engaging and being part of this So this isn't talking about someone who's walking their dog down the street and stops to see what all the noise is about This is someone who you saw in the video is actually coming out to the intersection Is actively and knowingly participating in the side show and again before officers make a rest We're going to be able to pause and look at some of the things how they receive prior citations warning or filled interview cards Warning them to not participate in this behavior. What was their actual involvement? And this is where some of the drone footage is going to be able to document that and be able to show before An unbiased party for a judge or a prosecutor to be able to look at this to show what their active participation was In this thing and we're going to encourage our officers to make sure they slow down Make sure they have all the facts and then make sure that people who are cited are held responsible for this audience This ordinance are knowingly and actively participating in the side show Next slide, please Then we talk about the key part about the promoter organizer and these aren't happening without the promoter organizer saying Hey, we're going to meet on friday night at this intersection and sending out on social media and getting people to be there So this is a really an important one that we see and we see different like Dedicated snapchat and instagram that are dedicated specifically to promoting side shows In santa rosa and throughout the north bay and so it's important for us to hold those responsible and make sure they understand The legal and criminal responsibility of what they're doing when they're promoting a legal activity on social media That's bringing a legal and dangerous and sometimes violent side shows to the streets of santa rosa Next slide, please So the penalty so right here it talks about for the city ordinance It is a misdemeanor or infraction That can that we have some discretion and certainly the city attorney and the district attorney has a discretion The maximum penalty is six months in jail and a thousand dollar fine I do think it's important to understand that this is the maximum penalty It's not necessarily going to be the norm But that's ultimately up to the judge to be able to decide what the punishment is going to be and that's going to be the person's number of context they had for this behavior before And the judge has options about going even down to community service for these events things like that That's actually ultimately not the police department's Decision on that but it'll be here before the judge to be able to view the facts of each individual case and each individual defendants prior history The judge also has the ability as with any criminal case to be able to assess Restitution finds for any damage to vehicles city property or private damage that could occur at the result of a Sideshow but that's not up to a police officer. That would be up to a judge to make that ultimate decision The city attorney or even private owners could also seek other civil remedies against those individuals But that wouldn't be part of the city ordinance right here Um, we and ultimately what we're talking about here is like our objective of the police department Is to not go out and make mass arrests with the city ordinance Our objective the end of the day is to use this as an education deterrent that we want to go out and we're going to work with Our communication team with the city of santa rosa and our public information officer here For the police department that they would have put that out of social media to put it out of community events They would have put it out of our schools about this is illegal and dangerous behavior And I really feel that it's going to be a key tool in helping us deter This behavior from ever occurring again, and then we're not putting police resources out there We're not seeing some of this dangerous behavior ever occurring in our neighborhoods And I strongly believe this is going to be a tool that's going to help us get to that And hopefully work for to eliminate these from occurring the streets of santa rosa next slide please So at the end of the day our recommendation from the police department and certainly me as the chief of police Is that our city council introduced this new city ordinance chapter 10 Dash 26 prohibiting the sideshows for the four key characteristics of the driver passenger spectator and the promoter organizer And i'll turn it over to the next slide for just any questions that we have from our council Thank you so much chief. I'll look to my colleagues first to see if there's any questions councilmember mcdonald Thank you chief and thank you for working on this. Um, I have a couple of questions um, and and some of them you might not be able to answer but Under 10 dash 26 point six point six zero on page four of the ordinance what I don't see specifically is the promotion of These under social media Does that language need to be included under the ordinance? It just says promoting the event And so i'm not sure if we need to clarify that that would be use of social media platforms such as instagram or Whatever everybody's using in that age group now a day So, um, I don't know if we can add that to the ordinance or if that would be appropriate or if it's even necessary for us And then my second question has to do with the language that was included in ab 3 and I have not read that law One i'm i'm disappointed that it's not implemented until 2025 So that's that's problematic, but there's nothing I could do about that here except for maybe call a few people in the state But under ab 3 sometimes it's good to see what language they're including in that And is there anything that would be beneficial to us to include in the ordinance? That could be consistent with that language that we can also implement right now in santa rosa Okay, i'll start out with the first question about the promoting and organizing section And quite honestly almost all of the promoting is done on social media That we're doing but we met with our city attorney's office and worked closely in crafting the city ordinance We look toward other models at san jose, sacramento, vallejo Are some of the ones that we looked at at modeling and we feel like the language in here about Being broad so it talks about any person who knowingly Encourages promote instigates assist facilitates aid of bets in the gathering of person So we believe that we can demonstrate that through doing it through social media that they would be meeting these elements of the law And we could be able to bring the violation forward with them with the way it's currently written But it wouldn't be a problem if city council would like to be more specific about adding that but I I think with our knowledge of the city attorney's office who work with us and I believe we have Jeff berk with her today if he wants to weigh in any more on that I'm comfortable with the ordinance is the way it's written, but if you wanted to add a definition It couldn't hurt, but I don't think it's necessary for what it's trying to accomplish And then the second question on assembly bill three We certainly have it. I actually have printed out here in my desk We looked at assembly bill three and we believe that we're consistent with the language in there about our description of what a sideshow event is and And though the assembly bill three specifically is focusing on the drivers and to be able to spend their license So that's where it's focused on that, but we believe that we're consistent with that and we certainly studied that as we prepare this ordinance Great, thank you. I appreciate that so sometimes I like to be more explicit And I know sometimes in ordinances we like to be a little bit more vague. So it gives us some leeway I just want to make sure that we can capture that if it's being promoted in any platform Including just papers going out that that would be inclusive and we wouldn't have any room for That to be thrown out under our own ordinance So we can either make the amendment if council is comfortable or if the rest of council comfortable with the way that it's written I'd also be comfortable with that And then last I just want to commend you on working with the other law enforcement in our community Specifically the sheriff's office to make sure that there's enough officers on duty to be able to handle these issues So um, those would be my questions and comments other than that I'm comfortable with the ordinance unless the rest of council wants to add that language to make it a little bit more explicit Thank you councilmember. We'll go to councilmember rogers Yep, you're good councilmember fleming Yes, thank you, uh chief and thank you to your team for really upstaffing this model quickly in having a more robust response I do have a question. I think we talked about it during planning for public safety subcommittee, but I I'm wondering if you've been able to gain any more insight into why the state deferred the implementation Of this of these rules to 2025. It seems Confusing to me You know what I actually scoured through some of the language on the legislation to see if they weren't put a reason in there They didn't we're working with our government affairs office And we're actually going to be setting up some meetings in the coming weeks To talk to our legislators and what our goal is they're out of session right now and they'll be back in session in December So our goal is to be able on their december session to start talking about what amendments could be made or our other legislation But I believe I mean this was passed during a Moment in law enforcement about we're looking at some of the different laws and looking about some of the things So I can't say specifically why they wait until 2025 and it wasn't in the In anywhere in the bill we're talked specifically about that that I could see Okay, well My request would be if you are able to gain any insight into ways that we might be able to help motivate them to implement this sooner That you let us know my last question is You know from from what I observe when I see people either drag racing or engaging in these They're fairly specialized vehicles, but are there you know Instances where they are not specialized vehicles or vehicles may have been borrowed from a family member Where the person who owned the vehicle did not know intend or consent to that specific use And if in those instances do you have discretion to release that vehicle to the it's rightful owners so that they can Commute to work or something like that If they're able to say you know go in front of a judge and say hey, you know I won't let my vehicle be used by my uncle cousin whatever For future illegal behavior Yes, absolutely in this city ordinance won't change anything with impounding vehicles That'll be a separate vehicle code section But the officer their first level of discretion is with the officer and hearing some of the facts and evaluating it But if we 30 day impound and we're actually seeking a court order to 30 impound them Then they would go before a judge and an independent judge would weigh the facts the registered owner of that vehicle would come in of able to present the evidence Before the court and then the judge does have the discretion to release those vehicles. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you very very helpful Well, thanks as much chief. I think you and I talked about this a few months ago I went to the us conference of mayors and on day one I had a side meeting with the Deputy director for department of justice and she asked me what was going on in santa rosa and I said side shows She said what the heck is that I had to explain it By the end of the conference she came back to me and she said, oh my god Every single meeting that I've had with west coast cities is talking about side shows So it obviously is an issue that's been growing and I can appreciate The effort and and being some of the first out the gate for Innovative thinking on how we're going to enforce against these and I do want to give a shout out to to you and to the officers as well Who came to us a couple of months ago and said, you know We understand you're trying to protect officers by not putting us in a position To have bottles thrown at us and and some of that element that's been happening But but we need to be more aggressive and we need to get there sooner And we're certainly seeing the impacts of that Positively in our community and I'm hearing about that from my constituents as well I had two questions specifically about the ordinance One is on section 10 dash two six point zero two zero. It's one of the definitions in d1 You specifically and I guess this is a question for for the assistant city attorney We use the word predetermined A predetermined location We've talked pretty consistently about this that oftentimes You have a promotion of a sideshow at a specific location And if we engage it early they bounce around the city until they can find Whatever Intersection that they're actually capable of going to and I'm seeing some sideways glances So I'll a more motor vehicles and persons have arrived at a predetermined location on a public street or highway Should we have predetermined in there? I know it's a really technical Nitty gritty thing But oftentimes the stories that are the most frustrating that I hear from officers Are not the predetermined location, but actually where they think they've gotten a hold of it early And it still pops up elsewhere in the city So really minor technical issue that could potentially matter So i'm asking if we should just strike the word predetermined From that sentence Yeah, I know reviewing that I can see your concern and I would certainly have no objection to eliminating the word predetermined And then we just talk about vehicles and persons who arrive at a location on a public street or highway or off street I think that meets our needs and I can understand I'm not sure if our assistant city attorney jeff perk has any different opinion on that So I I think that's a good catch and a good suggestion. If you didn't delete it All those subsections there are oars So I think others would probably fit, but I think that's a good good suggested change and I I I agree it should be deleted Okay, thank you. Then my my second question is for the assistant city attorney The promotional aspects I understand wanting more specificity and i'm i'm fine with that however we want to do that But could you discuss for a little bit how We are sure that we don't have a first amendment issue With the promotion of these events So i'm not sure that it's the mere promotion that's being Um penalized or criminalized. I think it's the conduct So, um, I mean it is already in place in many jurisdictions in california with If not identical extremely similar language and and that issue has not come up. So I'm not seeing that as a concern at this point. Perfect. Thank you Any other questions from council members? All right. Thank you so much chief Let's go to public comment on this item If you are interested in providing comment in the chambers go ahead approach the podium Otherwise go ahead hit the raise hand feature on zoom Do we have any pre-recorded voicemails? We don't but we do have one person on zoom that just raised their hand Excellent. Good catch. Let's go to lisa Hi there since i'm still on here from the homeless issue I just wanted to say thank you so much to the chief for This huge effort and it sounds like you guys are really hard at work To make this happen and I have to tell you I really really appreciate it because it's just been Such a nightmare listening to that from a distance and it just sounds like such violence and horrible behavior And I don't know where it came from out of nowhere. So i'm really glad that you guys are getting a A foothold and taking care of it Thank you so much Now thank you lisa Do we have any other public comments? Okay, I'll go ahead bring it back Let's go ahead start by putting a motion on the table and that's councilmember fleming City or acting city attorney. Do I need to Say when I read the motion with the amendments as discussed Yes, okay Great. Well once again a big thank you to chief and your staff for coming up with A nimble and creative solution to an oppressing public problem not only for safety for our community but for our officers as well as an environmental Catastrophe that our side shows and with that it is my pleasure to read an ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa Amending title 10 and adding chapter 10 dash 26 to the santa rosa municipal code Regarding reckless driving exhibitions hereafter referred to as side shows and way further reading of the text and including the the change of Predetermined as mentioned by the mayor I'll say We have a motion from councilmember Fleming and i'll give the second to the vice mayor Uh, I will echo the the comments and the thank yous and I do want to bring up as well What I've heard consistently from the community members and and I hope the vice mayor will talk about this as well Is that there's a very distinct difference between a sideshow? And cruising and some of the other elements that our car clubs who have been participating in and helping us with sideshows Engage in so I want to make sure we're really clear on that as well And I know that the vice mayor made a motion earlier for us to continue to discuss The latter element as well I hope that this continues to send a signal To outsiders in particular who come here and destroy our streets and ruin the quality of life for our community That you are not welcome That this is Inappropriate behavior for all of the reasons the chief listed the safety of our officers The environmental damage the cost to our community the lack of Solitude for our neighbors Who have to listen to this crap Night in and night out And I want to thank our officers again for their efforts on this and I want to thank community members For being patient and working with us as we figure this out Thank you to all of the other jurisdictions Who participate in this task force because we know these issues are too big for one one public safety agency to deal with And again just a huge thank you to the team Assistant city attorney everyone in your office as well for bringing this forward I think that the community will agree that this is a good step in the right direction I'll open it up and see if council members have any additional comments Councilmember mcdonald Yes, I just have one more question comment to the chief. Is there a way that somebody could report Maybe anonymously a video or something where they have been a spectator or a participant so that It could you know aid Law enforcement to find who these folks are when they're broken up Yes on our police department website We have an anonymous tip line that we can always reach out to and there's also just the email address s rpd info That you can send so it's s rpd info at srcity.org That you can send an email to and those will get to the appropriate person or at any time Feel like you can call 911 or a non-emergency line of five two eight five two two to report that behavior occurring And then would there be any way to incentivize folks to do these tips to the santa rosa police department? And specifically if we have repeat offenders that are participating in these sideshow events We are looking at things and we've had a tip fund through the sonoma county alliance before that We use for more violent offenders But we have looked towards some of these vehicles that have been identified and we put out Warrants to impound their vehicles about so we're looking at a program to incentivize that so there's not anything currently in place at this time Okay, i'm comfortable with the ordinance with um mayor rogers changes If we don't feel that we need to add anything around social media or promotion of that in the platform As far as being a little bit more specific to these items I'd be comfortable with moving forward with the approval with the changes that Mayor rogers gave us. Thank you. Well, I just want to thank the chief again for your hard work and ability to collaborate with other law enforcement agencies That are around us in order to to get this to santa rosa because it is definitely needed Thank you. Now mr. Vice mayor. I'll give you the last word Thank you, mayor First of all chief. Thank you for addressing the mission that's plagued my community our community for well over two decades This has kind of been going on much earlier than in the movies that that depicted this as a as a fat With with and actually many you spoke on it. I did sit with our nobody community and in our car enthusiasts was our concerned citizens And the reality is is that we're happy to see that this issue is being addressed There's a clear difference between the sideshow enthusiasts and those of us who love the mercantile card the Ability to express ourselves Through a vehicle, which is sometimes all we can afford We take great pride in that I'm hoping that in the future we can revisit this and and and see how we're doing And again, it's very important for for southwestern rosa to rid ourselves of this issue We want to show that we are making strides In alleviating the the concerns I mean, this is something that literally happens outside of our doors And i'm happy to see that we will not be plagued with the plume that we were so accustomed to I do have a question for you chief in regards to I guess, you know where i'm going uh in regards to to restorative justice how we look at the possibility of Of using restorative justice to educate our our youth In regards to The issues that they're the damage that they're causing their own community and the damage that they're doing to to to their own economy Especially when I speak of district one In the rosa area. I'm hoping that the the youth can see what the damage that they've done to a street that I took great pride in fixing and was destroyed within a week of doing so Um, so i'm hoping that there's some type of metrics. There's some type of restorative justice aspect to this and and And then we can reserve visit this issue to assure that we are making strides Thank you chief once again for your efforts and addressing the issue that I can we've been dealing with with for decades And I and i'm and i'm sad to say that people from outside of district one have just been made aware Of the detriment of side shows But i'm happy to see that that you stepped up sir to address the issue. So I applaud you. Thank you Thank you so much for your support and for all of council and it's easy for me to kind of be the Point of here presenting taking the credit for tonight, but it's really been such a team effort of our traffic lieutenant janine cooker Lieutenant dav becker lieutenant josh lucky and captain ryan corkin have all put a lot of work in helping us develop this plan So they've really been kind of the catalyst behind the scene. So I really appreciate them on the restorative justice model That is important. So that's one of my like Priorities that I have stepped in the role of chief is to be able to build a more robust restorative justice System the data is very clear that when juveniles are diverted from getting into the criminal justice system for low level offenses that it helps prevent them from Committing other criminal offenses later in life. So we launched a program through juvenile promotion And through a nonprofit called cynica that we're doing that we're doing a small one that we started earlier this year Diverting low level juvenile offenses from the criminal justice system And we're still working through the process right now creating an mo u with restorative justices Which is another program where we're going to use a similarly bill 114 funds To be able to fund that program. So we'll have to come out of police or general fund funds But that's a second juvenile restorative justice program And sideshow behavior would be a fence that would be able to be eligible for that So that's on the discretion of an officer based on the offenses And the presence of each circumstance, but it is at least one more option that we have available So right now it's a go on cynica and it's still working and developing the restorative justice model Which I hope to have done by the end of the year Thank you, sir. If there's anything that can do to help you in those efforts, I would be I'll be honored to do so, sir Thank you. Thanks for your support All right, and with that madam city clerk, please call the vote Councilmember rogers. Hi councilmember mcdonald. Hi councilmember phleming. Hi vice mayor alvarez Hi Mayor rogers. Hi that motion passes with five eyes and councilmember soyer and councilmember schwedhelm being absent Great work chief great work team. Let's move on to item 14.2 Item 14.2 Sonoma county tourism business improvement area assessment modification Removing the $350,000 revenue threshold for collection Deputy director de la rosa will present. Thank you Good afternoon. Mayor rogers and the council We have a quick PowerPoint for you You can go to the next slide, please so As city manager smith said the resolution before you seeks your consent to amend the sonoma county tourism business improvement area ordinance Or bia for short So by way of background What the bia does is fund the sonoma county tourism zero The purpose for which is to drive overnight stays in sonoma county lodging establishments Primarily those are really for those that pay into the assessment And this in turn drives revenue into county through tourism activities So specific to the resolution what sonoma county tourism is seeking to do Is to remove the $350,000 revenue threshold for applicability of the assessment so that all lodging operators within the Um, she knew within the bia Would be required to pay the 2 assessment on their collective rents So just as with the process that established the bia, which is basically what you see on the slide I'm sensing the county ordinance In order to modify it all participating jurisdictions have to adopt resolutions of consent Prior to the board of supervisors taking any action So the the first action that the board of supervisors will be taking Is to adopt a notice of intention, uh, which they're scheduled to do on october 18th This will trigger a series of activities and meetings culminating in a public hearing on december 13th So assuming there are no, uh, determinations of or there is not a determination of a majority protest at that public hearing That's when the board will adopt the ordinance Amending the existing ordinance And the changes for that would then go into effect on, uh, january 1st 2023 And next slide please So, um, again, the only action required of the city is to provide consent to the proposed change And as noted on this, uh, slide Of the nine incorporated cities only seven participate in the, um, the tourism assessment Uh, with the cities of hieldsburg and sonoma, uh, having declined back in 2004 to pass resolutions of inclusion Um, the only other thing I wanted to note on this slide Is that the statement regarding property, uh, I'm sorry proposition 26 is incorrect So since writing the staff report, we did get confirmation from county council that because this is an assessment and not attacks Prop 26 is an applicable And then, um, lastly in anticipation of a potential question as to, uh, what this change means to sonoma county tourism In terms of revenue They anticipate that the removal of the threshold would bring, uh, an additional, uh, two and a half to three million dollars in revenue countywide Unfortunately, they don't know or fortunately or not. They don't know the per city breakdown of this figure But it would be an increase of about two and a half to three million dollars Um, and then on that point as to what sonoma county tourism's current funding structure is In addition to the two percent, uh, countywide bia funds That's the majority of their funds. They get a very small portion Of the transient occupancy tax that's collected in the unincorporated areas of sonoma county So it's only the county's tot and it's a very small portion of that Next slide Uh, so this is a simple item with that it is recommended by the planning and economic development Department that the council by resolution Consent to change the assessment methodology outlined in sonoma county ordinance number five five two five Removing the three hundred fifty thousand dollar revenue threshold For participation of senator was allotting establishments in sonoma county tourism Business improvement area pending the outcome of the sonoma county board of supervisors public hearing and subsequent action And in addition to myself if you have any questions We also have staff from sonoma county tourism there in the audience to help answer anything we may ask with us Thank you so much, raise. Uh, yeah Let me look to council members to see if there's any questions on the item council member flaming Yes, thank you for the presentation miss dilla rosa. I'm curious to know this This seems pretty benign, but what i'm wondering is how do our hoteliers feel about this? When you go and talk with them so this it is a vote of the assess properties and Again, sonoma county tourism staff members are available to answer They did meet with every single one of the at well almost all of the the current voting members, uh, and To my knowledge there is not a known Uh degree of protest that would stop this from moving forward Okay, and were you able to um check in with the chamber of commerce as well? Yeah, my understanding. I didn't go to the um any of their Uh board like I didn't do the dao are those things what my understanding is that the the chamber of commerce is um is In favor of this. Okay. That's helpful information. Thank you Sure, I will say um the other thing that I felt to mention is that um We are the last city I believe to to provide this consent again It is a it's a just a narrow thing that's asked of it And I'll put uh all of the other cities that participate have provided the consent So I do know um in the other areas. This is um this has passed as well Thank you any additional questions Okay, let's go to public comment on the item Let's start in the chambers if there's folks who are here to provide comment go ahead approach the podium Eric frazier again with truth and tourism I rise here. I know um the people sonoma county tourism and I do have great respect for them I think between sonoma county tourism And visit santa rosa. There's really quite a world of difference But my research is my research, so I have to present it Um It is true that santa rosa has their own bia and the other two cities that are opting out of this uh Reduction to zero from 350 000 also They opted out knowing that they also have their own bia hillsburg and sonoma So i'm not sure if the sonoma county Assessment is replacing the The santa rosa assessment, but that certainly would be a good question to ask Because at the end of the day these services are provided by these two dmo's are Really quite duplicative ineffective and inefficient and that's not to say that everything they do is Ineffective it's just that when you take a look at the money that was rent and how it was spent You really don't see the the impact for that money if this was a business outside of being a tax supported entity It would be a no-go Okay, other things on the list is that the information that's provided by these bia's are sometimes inaccurate and misleading Very much so in santa rosa a little bit in the sonoma county world Especially around str so again, that's a subject. I study a lot The funds are not spent on capital improvements are spent on administrative costs tens of millions are handled not audited Um in santa rosa the fund supported it looks like they support the metro chambers pack again. That's not straightened out The the taxes uh, it is a tax and let me show you how it is a tax when you have tax forms Here's one from sabastopol showing that the bia is definitely a tax Here in santa rosa the same thing is calculated as a tax When it was passed in 2004 it came on the history of a t.o.t. Tax failing at the polls And this was a way to grab it that money Um, so these taxes are assessed to people that are evacuees burned out of their houses going through personal trauma that live in the area They're assessed this additional set of taxes It's really quite amazing that you allow that to happen Um and whether and the reason that 350 000 plateau exists if we go back in the data We see that there was insulation. There's differences between a business that's paying this assessment And strs which are not businesses Thank you Thank you, eric. Are there any additional comments in the chamber? Looking to see if there's any additional comments on zoom Do we have any pre-recorded voicemails? No pre-recorded voicemails for this item Okay, i'll look to my colleagues and see if there's any additional questions All right, i believe councilmember mcdonald. This is your item. Thank you, mayor I move approval of resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa consenting to a change to the assessment methodology Outlined in sonoma county ordinance number five five two five and way for the reading of the text second Motion from councilmember mcdonald with a second from councilmember rogers. Let's go ahead call the vote councilmember rogers I Councilmember mcdonald I councilmember fleming I vice mayor alvarez vice mayor alvarez I Thank you mayor rogers That motion passes with five ayes with councilmember soyer and councilmember schwedhelm being absent All right. Thank you. We'll go to We have no public hearings. We'll go to our written communications council we have Two items on here Vita requests for ab 2234 that bill was signed Despite our veto requests and support for s senate bill 4517 in congress I'm going to see if there's any public comment on those items Seeing no hands. I'll bring it back and see if council has any questions Okay We'll go to our public comments for non-agenda items If anybody would like to provide last comments for tonight's council meeting go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom And seeing none we are adjourned