 en el icono de interpretación y en la barra de herramientas de Zoom, que ahora aparece un globo terráqueo en su pantalla. Una vez según al canal de español se recomienda que al pague el audio de la pantalla. A la reunión, interpretación en vivo en español está disponible y los miembros que deseen escuchar en español pueden unirse al canal. Para unirse haga clic en el icono de interpretación en la barra de herramientas de Zoom, que ahora aparece un globo terráqueo en su pantalla. Una vez según al canal de español se recomienda que al pague el audio primario para que solo escuche la interpretación al español. Thank you. Council Member Tibbets. Here. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Fleming. Council Member Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor Rogers. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Vice Mayor Fleming, have you joined us? Okay, let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Fleming. Great. Thank you so much. And in the spirit of our open government sunshine ordinance we do have interpreter services that are available today for Spanish. Madam host, can you please explain how folks can access the Spanish channel. Thank you mayor. Once you join the Spanish channel to listen to the meeting in Spanish by clicking on the zoom icon interpretation icon at the on your zoom toolbar and may look like a globe at the bottom of your screen. Once you join the Spanish channel we recommend you shut off the main audio so you can only hear the Spanish translation. Pablo. Interpretación en vivo en español está disponible y los miembros pueden escuchar el español haciendo un click. Ahorita que parece un globo terráqueo una vez según al canal español se recomienda que apague el audio primario para que solo escuche la interpretación al español. Thank you mayor to you. Alright, thank you so much. Just some quick housekeeping reminders for council members. Go ahead and keep your audio on mute unless you are ready to speak. Council members can unmute themselves so just be a little bit careful. Staff will remain muted until they're asked to speak as well. And members of the public who participated in today's meetings will be attendees. That means that their microphones and cameras will also be muted. Only today's panelists are going to be viewable during the meeting. If you're calling in from a telephone and choose to speak during the public comment portion of today's agenda for privacy concerns the host will be renaming your viewable phone number as resident with the last four digits of your phone number. Means when we call on you for public comment. That's also how we'll be calling on you. The city of Santa Rosa is committed to creating a safe and inclusive environment free from disruption. We will not tolerate any hate speech or actions that are well staffed to monitor that everyone is participating respectfully. Now Madam City Clerk, can you please explain how public comments will be heard during today's meeting and how folks can interact. Yes, after each agenda item is presented, the mayor will ask for council comments and then open it up for public comment. The host in Zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item. Once the mayor has called for public comment, the mayor will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item. If you are calling in to listen to the meeting audibly, you can dial star nine to raise your hand. The mayor will then call on the public who have raised their hands. Public comment will be limited to three minutes and a timer will appear on the screen for the council and public to see. Once all live public comments have been heard, the meeting host will play voicemail public comments. We provide a live public comment on an agenda item, but also submitted an email e-comment or recorded a voice message public comment. Your email e-comment or voice message public comment will not be duplicated, read or play during the meeting. Additionally, there are two public comment periods on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters at items 13 and 17. This is the time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. Throughout today's agenda, when the mayor calls for public comment, an interpreter will be prepared to assist anyone needing interpretation. Those using interpreter support will be afforded additional time for your public comment as required by the Brown Act. Those listening on the Spanish channel but wishing to make public comment to turn off leave interpretation entirely at the time you hear your name called so you can join the main channel to make your public comment heard and translated into English. This icon may now look like a circle with an E S in the middle. You can then rejoin the Spanish channel at the conclusion of your comment to continue listening to the meeting in Spanish. Great. Thank you so much. We did not have any closed sessions today. So we will go ahead and start with our first study session of the day. Mr. City Manager. Item 3.1 Open Government Ordinance Review, Sue Gallagher, City Attorney, joined by Stephanie Williams, City Clerk, and Magali Teyes, Community Engagement Manager for this presentation. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Rogers and Council Members, Sue Gallagher, City Attorney, and as the City Manager mentioned, we'll be providing today an update on our progress on the implementation of the Open Government Ordinance. I have with me as again the City Manager mentions, Stephanie Williams, City Clerk, and Magali Teyes, Deputy Director of Community Engagement. Next slide. So to begin with just a little bit of background, which most of you I think are quite familiar with. The City's Open Government Ordinance was enacted by the City Council on December 8. The ordinance added a new chapter 1-10 to the city code, and that chapter establishes a series of measures to enhance transparency and to facilitate public participation and access to our local government. Recognizing that ordinance had a number of moving parts, and that implementation was going to be somewhat complex, the Council set an effective date for the ordinance of July 1, 2021. The Council recognized the logistical benefits of a gradual rollout, and it encouraged staff to begin an early implementation, and we have done that. Next slide. The ordinance had six key elements. The first is for translation standards for the Council's agendas, and also translation standards for Council meetings. Second was enhanced agenda standards, and that relates to both the timing of posting of agendas and the contents of those agendas. Third was increased management of meetings for public convenience. Fourth, providing ready access to public records and data. Fifth is providing education for the community and staff as to increased enhanced transparency and public access. And then enforcement mechanisms for the ordinance itself. Next slide. So there's a lot to cover, but today what we'll do is we'll focus on the new translation requirements and on the requirements for early agenda publication. We'll review, and each of those will review the actual requirements of the ordinance. We'll let you know where we are in the implementation, and then we'll consider some of the early impacts that we're seeing. Okay, then we'll give a very brief status update on the remaining ordinance provisions. Next slide. So moving into some of the details of the ordinance, the ordinance provides that all Council member, I'm sorry, all Council agendas, both preliminary agendas and final agendas will be published in both English and Spanish. And then it's also provides that all Council agendas will be provided in other languages, if the resident speakers exceed 5% of the city's population. Upon request agendas will also be provided in languages other than those noted above at no cost, and they will also be provided in braille or enhanced enhanced type of large type all without costs. Next slide. The implementation of the translation requirements, the translation translation of city council agendas is now in place, effective with the city council's meeting of February 9. The council agendas have been published in both English and Spanish. The county's legislature website site includes a forward facing link to the Spanish agenda language and we'll see that link in the next slide. And gov delivery notices, those are the notices that are sent to individuals and organizations and alert them to new agenda postings. Now those gov delivery notices are now provided in both English and Spanish, and any any interested person can sign up delivery notices on the city's website. Next slide. The city's with Legistar website, and you'll see blocked out the link to the Spanish agendas. I know that this began began with a February 8 meeting. We'll see on the slide that first listing for the February 2 agenda. The translation was not yet available, but every meeting since the agenda is available online in Spanish. Next slide. The new translation requirements also extended to the council meetings themselves. The ordinance provides for live Spanish translation of all council meetings, all regularly scheduled council meetings. Special meetings and emergency meetings are exempted from this requirement. The ordinance also provides for Spanish translation of the final archived closed captioning. So the closed captioning is not translated live into Spanish, but once it's archived, it will be translated into Spanish. And then the ordinance codifies existing requirements for provision of telecommunication devices for speech and hearing impaired upon request. Next slide. So again implementation is well underway. All regularly scheduled council meetings. That is our regular Tuesday meetings include live translation that began a few weeks ago last week on March 16. The online virtual participation document has been updated to include an explanation of how to access interpretation services. And we'll see that on the next slide. Also as we've just walked through the information on how to how to access interpretation services is also announced at the beginning of each meeting. Although we do not yet have translation services in place for the Spanish closed captioning for archived videos. It is researching the costs and logistics for providing that service. Next slide. And here are the Spanish language instructions for virtual participation and council meetings and this document is online and available to the general public. And now we recognize that the online posting is not enough and so staff has been and will continue to be looking at additional educational outreach opportunities to ensure that our entire community knows of the opportunities for full participation in the meetings of our city council, both by English speakers and Spanish speakers. Next slide. Implementation has triggered some additional costs. Staff estimates its total monthly cost for translation services, including translation of the council's agendas, the live translation of council meetings, and the translation of closed captioning will likely total a little under 8000 per month. This document is based on the actual cost of translation associated with the council's February meetings and is an estimate for the closed captioning costs. And of course, these are just estimates at this point. We're still early on in the implementation of the ordinance. So, as this involves will give you additional, give you additional data. Logístico considerations associated with the new translation requirements and these primarily concern the timing for the written agendas, as will be outlined in the next section translation of the agenda for publication. General a requires three business days. So it does require that staff have agenda language prepared and finalized just a little bit earlier than than otherwise. Let's look at the early agenda requirements and we can go to the next slide. The open government ordinance requires early agenda postings at each stage so there are early posting for the preliminary agenda. Early posting requirements for supporting documents and early support early posting of the final agenda. And the ordinance does provide some relief from these early deadlines but that relief is very limited and we will look at that a little bit down the line. Next slide. The timing for the preliminary agenda previously prior to the adoption of the open government ordinance. The city parks practice was to post the council's preliminary agenda on Thursday, about a week and a half before the council meeting. This equal generally about 12 calendar days before the meeting. The open government ordinance now shifts the publication of the preliminary agenda back to 12 business days before the council meeting. And that essentially adds about another week, placing the publication at about two and a half weeks before the council meeting. So we generally post absent a holiday, generally that preliminary agenda will now be posted the Thursday, two and a half weeks before the council meeting. We also note that the translation I mentioned earlier that translation service requires three additional business days to turn around the agendas. So the result is that the preliminary agenda language now must be finalized 15 business days three full weeks prior to the council meeting. Next slide. Timing of supporting documents. The ordinance provides a supporting documents and that includes the staff reports, the resolutions ordinances and the presentations. The ordinance states quote shall be added to the preliminary agenda as those supporting documents become available for publication. The staff however was concerned about the workload of a rolling production if we actually tried to do it as each document became available. We would be looking at likely republishing the agenda almost every day. And so we looked at some different options and finally settled on regular to publication dates it's actually three if we count the final agenda. All the agenda packets that are complete that is what we call agenda ready. If those are ready at the time of the initial preliminary agenda publication, then they are included at that time. So in points with the ordinance as we just talked about that publication takes place 12 business days or two and a half weeks before the council meeting. So as many documents as we have available, we added to that early posting. Second, the preliminary agenda is republished on the following Thursday, a week and a half before the council meeting. It's equivalent to about eight business days. And that is consistent that posting that second posting the preliminary agenda is consistent with what we have been doing in the past so that that matches up well. And at that time our goal is that all remaining agenda packets are attached at that time so that all remaining all agenda packets will be posted that week and a half before the meeting if not sooner. And then finally the agenda, of course, our packets are republished with the posting of the final agenda for business days before the council meeting. Next slide. Just we've touched on the posting of the final agenda final agendas posted for business days before the council meeting. And once again, we need the three additional days for translation services, and the result is in the final agenda language must be finalized seven business days a week and a half prior to the council meeting. I'll note that we do not translate all of the attachments so those are going on a separate track those are, but the actual agenda language both the preliminary and the final agenda language are are fully translated. Next slide. Now we can talk about implementation of those early postings. This new schedule has taken some time for for us to adjust. But it is now fully implemented as I mentioned, it was as of the February 9 council meeting preliminary agendas agendas are published with any available attachments call business days prior to the council meeting. The preliminary agenda is republished no later than eight business days prior to the council meeting with any additional attachments. The actual language of the preliminary agenda is not changed in that Republic Republication. It is simply republished as it was drafted earlier. Also, effective effective February 9. The final agenda has been is being published no later than for business days before the meeting, and the delivery notices are sent to notify the public each time. The agenda is published or republished or and in addition anytime new documents are made available. Next slide. And let me go back for a moment with respect to the final agenda, the final agenda all then all the supporting documents are republished at that time. And if there are any subsequent revisions to those attachments and you've seen that periodically with updated attachments. Those are generally uploaded and published a day or so before the meeting. So what are the the impacts that we're seeing. As I said, it's taking us all a little bit of time to adjust to the new schedule and to the new rhythm of agendas. And we're seeing a number of impacts, some of the impacts, I think, are really simply a matter of us getting used to the changes, but other impacts are more substantive and significant. The first is workload. The preliminary agenda language now must be completed three full weeks before council meeting as, as I mentioned earlier. And we have frequent republishing of the agenda city clerk is faced with not just the three official publications, but also additional republications as documents get revised over the three week period. And you'll see an indication of that new workload on the next slide. We've seen an increase in the number of delivery notices that are sent out to subscribers again that those notices are sent with each publication and republication so each time. Each of the three agenda publications and any time new documents are added. Finally, you'll note that the shift from calendar to business days, the final agenda due to that the final agenda is published one day generally on Wednesday before the agendas and before the meeting. And the preliminary agendas are published on a different day, generally on Thursdays, the final and preliminary agendas used to align and all be published on Thursdays now we have two separate days of publication. So we've seen significant increase in the city clerks workload in January, as you see, there were city clerk published or republish the agenda, seven times over the course of that month, that was a fairly typical month. And in the first half of March, as of March 11, the city clerk published or republish the agenda 13 times. So if that pace keeps up the month month of March will require 26 publications with a corresponding increase in the number of staff hours required. So again that mark those march numbers are for only half of the month. Next slide. Now we have seen some general concerns. First and probably most important is that staff sees a reduction in our ability to respond nimbly to emergent issues. Things such as societal events, the Atlantic shootings last week, such as a new county initiatives that, for example, the eviction ordinance adopted now month and a half ago, but we'll talk later about how we're addressing to increase our ability to respond to those emergent issues. We also have concerns about time sensitive grants submittals, having to prepare materials early based on prepare materials based on early estimates, and needing then subsequently to sometimes change those published documents. And then similarly concerns about contracts, we want to move the contracts for quickly but negotiations may not yet be complete. And again we need to adjust how we're doing that in order to allow that to go forward and not delay contracts or grant applications from coming to council. We have a couple of examples so next slide. I mentioned the county's eviction protection ordinance. The councils, our councils preliminary agenda was published on February 4, the county board of supervisors then that following week adopted an urgency ordinance on February 9, and declared that that would be operative within the city absent alternative action by the council. Prior to the open government ordinance, we would have been able to put something on that week into our preliminary agenda, because it had already been published we were not able to do that. We did bring the report to council on February 23, two weeks later, but it did require the special findings to allow council consideration. Next slide. Some example from the public works and construction contracts under our provisions must be awarded within 60 days of bid opening. So we have very little room for delays in that 60 day period. We have little time to discuss funding in the event. The bids come in over budget, we need to search out and find where the funding might come from. We have little leeway of a council meeting gets canceled or if a vote is delayed due to absences or extensions. And so there is a significant risk that the city will not meet the contract award timelines. Again, we are working on ways to address those concerns. Next slide. So this is an example from our water department. Concerns about the timing of items that require both BPU approval and city council approval. Those timings are challenging. So at this point we're looking at an option of either publishing the preliminary agenda with tentative language anticipating what the Board of Public Utilities might do at their meeting. We are considering a consideration of the item and sometimes that is really not feasible due to external deadlines, regulatory deadlines that the department has to work with it. Next slide. The ordinance does include some relief balance of how we can address some of those concerns. First with respect to items that are not on the preliminary agenda. We are considering early agenda policy exception that an item that did not appear on the preliminary agenda may still be placed on the final agenda and heard by the council. If the council, by an affirmative vote of six council members, finds good cause and just a reminder, good cause is defined to be, quote, that as a result of exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the council. So that exception preexisted the open government ordinance and it remains in place. And this is what we use to hear the item on the county's eviction ordinance. The open government ordinance also includes a new exception for the 12-day posting requirement and that exception is for appeals from a subordinate board commissioner committee that such appeals may be placed directly on the final agenda if that lower decision grants or denies a right. So, somewhat limited. We've not yet had reason to utilize that exception, but is available and might also note one of one of the things that we've thought about is, would a similar exception be appropriate for items that require both for example, a BPU approval and a council approval or a planning commission approval and a council approval? Might those warrant a similar exception? Perhaps on the rationale that those items will have also had a public noticing in front of the lower body as well. That is not at this point, though, it's only limited to items that grant or deny a right. Next slide. Now some of the relief valves for the final agenda for items that do not appear on the final agenda but have reason to be considered by the council. We still rely on the exceptions that are contained in the Brown Act, so no new exceptions for items that are not on the final agenda. And those exceptions again are the majority of vote of the council that emergency poses a severe threat to public health or safety. Or a two thirds vote of the council that vote there's a need to take immediate action and that the need for action came to the attention of the city subsequent to the posting of the final agenda. I'll just do a little side note here, you know, query how this aligns with our own a good cause exception for the for the preliminary agenda. Our own good cause exception requires a vote of six council members, and it requires a substantial burden on the city's ability to conduct its business or prejudice to a private person, so they don't quite align but they are close. The final exception under the Brown Act is for certain continued items. Next slide. In the month and a half since we've begun implementation of the ordinance, we've used the relief valve. The exception only once and that again was for the report on the Sonoma County's eviction ordinance. But we've instead used some informal avenues to address concerns, including we've used more generalized language and some of our staff reports and resolutions to allow flexibility. We've also included language to allow final documents to be adjusted after either after publication or after council action, subject to approval by the city attorney. And we've also provided for delegations to the public so that they're aware of what the item is about, but it gives us maybe more generalized language to make adjustments going forward. We've also provided for delegations of broader responsibilities to the city manager so those are some of the ways that we've tried to adjust where needed to to some of these early agenda deadlines. And we're, again, we're still early in this process and so staff will continue to work through these issues and try to find the best solutions. Next slide. So those were the two focuses, the translation implementation of the translation standards and implementation of the posting early posting requirements. So now I'm just going to turn to a brief outline of some of the other ordinance provisions and we'll, we'll walk through these pretty quickly. So next slide agenda contents, the ordinance requires four items in the agenda, two were existing to a new existing brief meaningful description must be included as to the item and that's been fully implemented under prior codes. Under prior codes for years existing requirement that the recommended action be included in the agenda. Again, fully implemented under prior codes to new elements for the final agenda is to now include a description of budget impacts that is still in process. Also the agendas are to include a link to prior council actions when possible, and that also is in process. Next slide. A number of new requirements for meeting for management of council meetings. First is all meetings in council chambers will be broadcast and that provision in the ordinance will include not just council meetings but any meetings of anybody, any of our city boards or commissions or committees that are held in the council chambers. Right now, everything is all meetings are virtual so that element has not yet been implemented. Second is to strive for time certain scheduling of hearings, we have not yet begun to set time certens for public hearings, but we are looking at that. Third is to prioritize public hearings to move them up in the calendar in the agenda where possible. And that has been implemented informally by both mayors from home previously and Mayor Rogers current next slide. So, meeting management, the ordinance requires transparency as to agenda changes and continuances. This is to announce early and often as to if items are being continued or items are being taken out of order. And again, the mayor has begun informal implementation of that requirement. So, the ordinance requires additional disclosures prior to and after closed session and city attorney that is, we are informally implementing that at this point as well. And then finally the public education the development of the citizens guidebook that is underway and we do have a slide later to talk a little bit about that. Meeting minutes speaker cards are to provide an opportunity to for speakers to include a one sentence description of their comments and those that description can be used by the city clerk in preparing the minutes that has been implemented. And then in terms of the timing of the minutes council member council meeting minutes. That is in process of the requirement is that if no video is available, the draft minutes are to be available no later than 15 days after the meeting. And the final approved minutes are to be posted no later than five business days after approval. Next slide. Public records. The ordinance codifies many of our existing procedures and existing policies. So requires that we designate the city designates I'm sorry the city clerk as a public records coordinator that was implemented under prior policies. We are to provide staff training and public education and that is ongoing that has. We have done that in the past and we will continue to enhance that training and education. Next slide. Public records. The ordinance also sets forth time frames and procedures for response to a public records requests and public records. And those again, it's codifying existing policies and laws and those are already implemented. And then two new elements. We are to provide annual reporting of public records requests and the response corresponding responses, and that will begin this calendar year 2021. And we are to have in place a complaint and appeal process for those individuals that feel that they did not get an appropriate request appropriate response to their request. And that is in process also and we'll have that in place by July one. Next slide. Access to city data. The ordinance provides it all data generated by the city available it should be available for public review unless that data is except from disclosure under the public records act. That is reflective existing law and it has been implemented under prior codes. The other element is that all of the city data will be consolidated into a single web portal for ease of access, and that is is going to be a little bit complicated and that is in process. Next slide. The ordinance has educational elements and that is the most significant element is a preparation of the citizens guidebook. That is in process, and that will include descriptions of the city government structure and organization description of the city government responsibilities and functions. Next slide. A dictionary of local government terms and definitions, and it will describe how citizens can get involved, how they can participate, what are all the opportunities for for access and, and the public to get involved. The ordinance also calls for ongoing training and education, and of course that will also is in the works. And we can also ask Magali if she has additional elements she would like to talk about as to the citizens guidebook. Next slide. Enforcement of the ordinance ordinance also sets forth a series of requirements for enforcement for its enforcement. That is underway, we do not have yet those forms or procedures in place, but they will be in place by July one. Next slide. It will include that the complaint must be filed within 30 business days of the violation. There will be a hearing before the city manager within 90 days of the receipt of the complaint, and then that the city manager will issue his decision within 30 business days of the hearing. And finally that we will provide an annual report to the council and to the public of the complaining complaints and the dispositions of those complaints. And that is it, and I would like to offer both Stephanie Williams, City Clerk and Magali Teyes as director of community engagement if they have anything they would like to add or expand upon from the presentation. Yes, good afternoon if I could just add in terms of the citizens guidebook we're very excited. We finalize our contract with engagement HQ so we're looking at different ways aside so just enhancing the citizens guidebook and having different modalities so we'll be able to have surveys, quizzes, videos, different ways that community could engage with the city in terms of the information that we'll be sharing and the different education that will be happening so happy to, you know, continue reporting out on that or if there are any specific questions. And then I would like to add that we are finalizing the hiring of a limited term position in the city clerk's office to help relieve some of the burden that we have not only with the agenda but really specifically with our public records requests, we are at over 350 for 2021, and we reached about 1000 in 2020, so that is a huge workload for one person, one person who's currently doing it so I am completing that hire, and that new person should be starting very, very shortly. And if I may follow up just briefly on that, yes, the public records system, it has tremendous workload associated with it, and many complications working across the city with all of the different departments, working on reviewing documents for privilege for privacy issues. It is a very complicated process and I am very happy to have that city clerk's office will have assistance additional assistance with that so. And I will also note that in terms of the concerns that I described a little bit today, we did ask for input from the department so that is information that we have received from the different departments. And again, it is, it has been a challenge to adjust to some of these, particularly the earlier deadlines, but we are trying to work through it all. And we do appreciate this interim period to for implementation. Alright, thanks Sue. We'll go ahead and we'll start with some questions from council members I see council member tidbits with his hand up. Thank you mayor. I guess my first question would be for Stephanie. It was obviously pretty concerning to see that your workload under the new provisions of the agenda almost doubled I think you went from 13 to 20 hours. And now that's leading to the hiring of a limited time position. So that's my question is so this limited time position it can't be blended. Well, let me let me step back and ask a different question. Under the PRA requests we've got in 2020 that was 1000 those weren't related to the ordinance. I'm assuming that was just, we're becoming a bigger city we have a lot going on and people are aware of their right to request a public record finding so are we we need that position no matter what it sounds like unrelated to this ordinance correct. Correct. Okay. Could this position be somehow blended with with the limited time position that you're seeking or to those explicitly need to be separated. Well, the position that I am finalizing now is to help with the public records request and the hope is that by bringing on the separate this additional person. Free up some time for both persons to then help with either boards and commissions or agenda management is right now, our public records request is handled by one admin tech working with all of the departments. I'm hoping to alleviate that burden so that there's opportunity for both employees to work on other project and projects in the city clerk's office. Thank you so if I could ask this and I'm sorry to be putting you on the spot but I said this during the last meeting when we first discussed this. We're wanting to clean staff's perspective because we're not the ones who are going to live with the the any consequences of this decision so I hope that staff feels that this is a safe space to kind of really talk collaboratively and constructively about how to make the best ordinance I think the Council is committed to it, but really trying to figure out what what works well for you so with these positions, still being needed in your opinion. Even if we didn't have the open government task force, so what I'm driving at is, does the addition of the task force require the second hire, or does your department, even if we didn't have the task force and the ordinance at all, would we be still hiring these folks. I'm trying to really draw a clear line between what's the additional impact of the ordinance and what is not. Right. Yes, we would because the city is growing. The records request double from one year to the next, and as our city has grown and transparency has become a big issue for cities and a goal and objective for councils across the state. We are not finding, not only in our city but other cities that requests are coming in more frequently, because the public is learning that they have the right to request records. And so that is the trend that we're seeing in city clerk's office across the state. Okay, thanks. And then I have a question for. I mean, I saw the department feedback, it was a little concerning on that the addition of three extra business days to the timeline, could somebody from PED share any any impacts that they've been experiencing as well as somebody with from public works, just to kind of Was there, for example, any incidents or specific cases where you realized oh wow this is really encumbering us and here's how it slowed us down or here's how we got around it. I'm just trying to get a feel for how some pretty key departments adjusted the big concern to me in this report was obviously grants and our ability to quickly respond to those opportunities to bring in revenue from outside the tax base. So, so I'm I am going to ask Jason not to address that we will have to follow up with in terms city manager clear heart man because she's out this week, but we will, we will get you some feedback on that route. But I will turn it over to Jason to feel the public works side of this question. Thanks city manager mclin, councilmember tibets, mayor and council members. Thank you for the question. I will just let you know that that's the additional time has created a challenge to some extent as we're looking at anywhere from three to six weeks of lead time meeting to to be able to get respond to those, but it's it's in those instances that we're going to end up running into problems with this particular, with this particular ordinance. We just haven't had that specific impact. Y me anticipate es, we start to get back into no what normal business. The rest of the state isn't seeing the timelines the same way our organization is does. And this is where that's going to provide where or result in the most challenging impacts. Y si, si puedo seguir rápido y apreciado. Gracias por la pregunta y por la respuesta. Y Jason ha hecho un buen punto es que las líneas que viajé en el poder, esos son las líneas de publicación. Y y no estamos listos para que todo pudiera poner en todo ese día y publicar. Hay varias semanas en avance de eso para llegar a nuestro proceso de agenda internal y a través de todos los diferentes departamentos. Cada ítima va a ir de un departamento y va todo el camino, va a ir a una revisión secreta, va a ir a la financiación, va a ir a nuestra oficina y a varias otras. Así que es, es, de nuevo, estoy muy contenta de que el manager de la ciencia no lo apreció, que esos, realmente tenemos que tener todo listo, como dijo, tres a seis semanas en avance de todo eso. Y yo voy a añadir al manager de la ciencia de la ciencia de la ciencia de la ciencia de la ciencia. Uno de los desafíos que tenemos ahora, es actualmente evaluar esto, porque hay tantos problemas que vienen a nosotros, muy, muy rápido. Y incluso arreglar simple conversaciones es, es, es muy, muy difícil, porque la cantidad de lead tiempo. Y yo creo que inicialmente pensamos que, tal vez, podríamos publicar cosas, pero es, en realidad, más confusión, si publicamos cosas que no están listas, porque luego tenemos que ir atrás de eso y tener una conversación. Entonces, yo diré, estás empezando a ver algunos de los problemas con esta acción. Es todavía muy tarde, no puedo decir que no es algo que no podemos trabajar, pero yo diré, lo que estoy escuchando de los staff es un montón de problemas, un montón de revisión y un montón de desafíos intentando figurear simplemente cuando tenemos que tener algo. Y, y así, yo diré, es probablemente una de las cosas que estamos volviendo, para tener una conversación más profunda sobre lo que necesitamos resorcioamente para manejar esta conversación, porque estamos, estamos estupendiendo. Estamos estupendiendo ahora con esto. Y, y yo, yo justo, quiero decir lo que el manager ha dicho en términos de regresar a usted para otra conversación, porque nosotros tenemos más experiencia. Estamos realmente sólo un mes y medio en esto, así que no tenemos ese full, el full impact, el full experiencia y el full habilidad de los staff para empezar a tener un uso de este todo proceso y las primeras, primeras líneas y cómo, cómo mejor respondemos. Así que, me gustaría preguntar por eso también. Así que, entonces, nuestros requisitos may be para darme más tiempo para realmente trabajar en esto. Para nosotros, para figuring out what's a process issue that we need to straighten out and we'll get better over time and what's a response. I would say we're all seeing July 1 loom really, really heavy on us and not to, to not be able to provide you a satisfactory answer and I'm feeling the anxiety within the organization about that. I appreciate all that honest feedback. One of the things that came to my mind, Jason, was well in the scenario of the grant, we do have the ability to post this to counsel and get six votes and bring it forward. But procedurally, would your staff then, for example, plan that that would be the outcome? I mean, would you start generating a grant with the expectation that that would be the process? So to be quite frank, we would do one of two things. We would either go ahead and anticipate and then try to get to counsel before the deadline or quite frankly, we'll just simply make the submittal. It's easier sometimes to pull things off of a, off of a regional calendar than to, than to try to do things retroactively. So our, our goal would be to try to crystal ball as much as we can to be able to get in count to get, to get to counsel before the regional deadline. But we do have to anticipate and I'll just say this when it comes to some of the things that MTC has put forward, that's not even an option. We don't even learn of a specific deadline until the, until we have a two week time to turn it around. And so the way some of those things come forward, there's really not an opportunity for us to even get on a council agenda even with, I mean, we would, we would require a majority vote or a the two thirds vote in order to get on an agenda at the last minute and to be able to make the findings that it's critical could be challenging to do. And so while we would ask for it, it's just one of those, it's the, it would end up being an exception that we would, that we might have to do more often than we would like. Well, it's interesting to me because in what you just said, and I would support that Jason, if you guys just submitted a grant without bringing it to the council's attention because it was an opportunity to get money to support the community, I would wholeheartedly support that. But in that pursuit, we have now made something that was originally transparent unavailable to the public. And I think that's an important thing to keep in mind with this process. And as we work through it, maybe grants are something that we want to exempt from this ordinance as well. Just, just because the public needs to know about grants we're submitting for so they can organize their community and anticipate, you know, how they want to influence it being spent on their streets, their parks or whatever the grant is for, their transportation. I guess the, the last thing I will say is, you know, just my general thoughts, I'm with staff. I'm very happy with this ordinance. I am so thrilled. I got to tell you to see an agenda with a Spanish translation finally. And my hats, it had us off to the mayor and his task force for making just that very thing happen and a lot of this other stuff. But I'm leaning towards, you know, personally, and I want to see this through to July 1st, definitely, and for better understand it, but I'm leaning towards, okay, we're talking about, correct me if I'm wrong, a difference of three business days. So we're going from nine to 12, but it sounds like there's really big financial ramifications on the side of grants, on the side of some impacts to the clerk's time and we're not even in election season when her office will be really impacted. So, but my deep, my really sincere thanks to people for trying to make this work because it's a, it's a cause I think and it's something worth trying to do. All right, council member Sawyer. Thank you, mayor. A couple of my comments and questions are really in line with Mr. Tibbets. This has been the one issue as supportive as I am and as having been in the beginnings of these conversations. The, our ability to be nimble has been the one concerning peace. And I'll just say out front that if staff needs some extra time, I would be one that would be looking to give them that the ability to do some further analysis and some further research into where we might be able to give that flexibility that could be very important to certain departments to get those very funds that Mr. Tibbets was talking about. But I do need, if ma'am said attorney, could you re-read the good cause definition for me again? That's certainly and of course I don't have it fully memorized yet. I would hope not. So good cause is defined and this is the good cause to hear something that is not on the preliminary agenda but is on the final agenda. And it's that, it's the finding that as a result of exceptional circumstances beyond the control of the council compliance with the 20% of the commission beyond the control of the council compliance with the 12 business day notice requirement would impose a substantial burden on the city's ability to conduct its business or result in prejudice to a private person. Okay, so and I don't mean to be confusing here but this ordinance is within the control of the council. So if we are creating a situation that is in control, that we control, that we put into place and then we decide to exempt ourselves from it, is it in control of the council or have, this is not state law and in fact if I'm not mistaken, what the city council in Santa Rosa is doing is rather unique in the state. If I'm not mistaken, I'm not sure how many other municipalities have these stricter requirements. So there are positives and negatives to this, of course, but I'm wondering if we start using that exception too often, will it lose its effect and will the community begin to, will they question us and basically say you're using this all the time so you're really, you're defeating what your intent was, that's a concern of mine. It's the crying wolf issue and are we indeed, it's kind of creating a situation that puts us into jeopardy of being accused of just ignoring our own rules if we keep coming up with exceptions. Now admittedly you did say that it's only been used once in February, I believe, that it was since during that month, but as the future, we don't know what the future holds and if we start using it all the time that would give me some concern. So I think, and that's in part why I think giving it the staff needs more time to look at the challenges of this particular piece of the ordinance and I would be in favor of giving them that time as opposed to using this exception over and over and over again when it becomes kind of meaningless over time. So that would be my concern and I thank you. Thank you and I would like to just clarify well, the two things. One I want to clarify that yes, it's our ordinance that is that has this exception, but the exception is in our settlement agreement with Sierra Club from the late 80s, early 90s, I forget the exact date. And so, but the settlement agreement related to a nine day, nine calendar day posting requirement. And so if we didn't meet that nine day posting requirement which is like the Sunday a week and a half, a week before the council meeting and so we were posting it. Our practice was to post the agenda on the Thursday, a week and a half before if we were missing that deadline that's what's required by our settlement agreement but because we've now moved that Thursday week and a half to Thursday two and a half weeks that's where you would have flexibility in making changing the exception. I don't know if that's clear that's a little bit confusing but it's that it's because we've moved the publication of the preliminary agenda a week back that's where your flexibility is. That language as I mentioned we did an exception for appeals that are coming up generally from the planning commission and we are allowing those to go straight on to the final agenda and the council in making that decision found that those delay of those would appeals would always result in the prejudice to a private person. So it was based on that finding so if we were going to carve out any additional exceptions we're going to have to be able to make some finding that keeps it within the terms of the Sierra Club settlement agreement. Thank you for that because I had forgotten about that settlement it just pops up and I forgot that forced us into a certain practice which had seemed workable where we got used to it so anyway I'm good thank you very much for that clarification. Thanks councilmember Alvarez. Thank you mayor for myself I just want to echo the statement that was made a little bit earlier where we are here to support our staff so with that being said I want our staff to know that they do have my support and I will be leaning on them for direction on their needs it would be disingenuous for me to say that I know what you're going through as I do not but I hope that you will express and further express the needs from our staff so we can compliment your efforts and I do appreciate you for those efforts especially for a Spanish speaking community as I see every day how important it is for us to be involved and educated so we know what's coming down the pike and why it's important for us to be involved so I thank you. Thank you. Thank you mayor Thank you to staff for this presentation I have a clarifying question for assistant city manager not around the two weeks that sometimes are required to turn things around in particular MTC grants and so forth when you say that it makes me wonder there's times when we don't have a council meeting for two weeks and that would happen anyway what do you do in those circumstances? So we generally hope that we're going to align with some council meeting coming up I will say our biggest argument is that MTC asks for some very short turnarounds that most agencies struggle with in many of those cases they relate to transit issues where a majority of the transit operations within the region are actually managed by an executive or a general manager and not necessarily a board that requires that's required to take action and so many of the larger transit agencies have a different level of authority that they're able to turn things around in a much quicker fashion with the type of system that we have we're beholden to city policy and in that regard some of those become very difficult and we do periodically have to do the best we can with the information that we've got we have been lucky that I think only once in the last six years have we had to ask for forgiveness for taking action which we took some we did the best that we could to take council into consideration and we felt it was reasonable to take that action but every other time we've been able to get on the council agenda at the very last minute to be able to make things happen it is getting tougher and tougher but we continue to try to ask MTC to be more cognizant of city rules as opposed to some of the transit agencies that can move things quicker and so far in the last year we've been we haven't seen the very tight turnarounds that we had a couple years prior thank you for that information I see this whole endeavor is trying to balance two really admirable goals the first is transparency and the people's government and the second is financial responsibility and the ability of staff to get things done in a timely manner and neither you know getting funds back home nor public transparency neither one trumps the other in my mind it has to be a balance here between the two because both goals are essential to the functioning of our government and so I tend to side with let's continue to see how it goes let's continue to upstaff the city clerk's office let's make the plans with the BPU and the planning commission and whatever other boards might have matters coming forward so that we can get things turned around quickly and then let's look at how we want to address grants as that goes forward so that we can try to achieve transparency and fiduciary responsibility simultaneously with an understanding that we can't do things perfectly because we're dealing with other governments we're dealing with other agencies and this is kind of the epitome of why things go slowly and government is because of this balance between these competing interests wherein we try to to be responsible but the responsibility is sort of it's a catch 22 so I want to thank staff I want to thank Stephanie in your office in particular as well as other departments that are working so hard to get things done and I do agree with council member Sawyer in that the Sierra Club decision probably did take some time to get used to and that this is an expansion on that settlement agreement so perhaps in sometime we will get a little bit more used to it and also in time we will understand the particulars of where we need to make adjustments and I'm all for us making those adjustments as necessary so long as we maintain the spirit of why we're doing what we're doing here so thank you alright thank you council member I do have a couple of additional questions and one is a clarification so as you had mentioned that the only time that we've used the exception was for the county's eviction defense or the eviction ordinance I just wanted to clarify because it made it seem like we used the exception but it still took two weeks for us to get it on the agenda but the actual reason that there was two weeks between when the county acted and when we acted is we didn't have a council meeting in the prior week right our council meeting on the 17th was canceled or 16th was canceled and that we had goal setting and so we didn't add it to goal settings we brought it back at our next available council meeting council meeting yeah I just wanted to make sure that I clarified that because I didn't want to leave the public with the perception that this had been delayed an additional week because of the ordinance right right it's just that we had to get it you're right we could have gotten it on a final agenda I'd have to look at the calendar as to how that works but yes we could have gotten it on the agenda for it still would have been anyway yes yeah I just wanted to make sure that that was put out there I did have a question about it seems to be that for me and maybe I just missed this when we were first discussing the ordinance when we passed it but the biggest change seems to be not the additional day that we've requested for items to be available but actually the additional three days on top of that for the Spanish translation that seems to be the biggest variable that I don't think I don't think we discussed much so my question is sort of is there a way for us to reduce that three-day timeline that we need for items to be translated I mean going the direction that we're going in terms of better communication with the community is this a position we might want to consider pulling in-house that could potentially turn around the agenda faster than three days we can look at any of those options mayor I think you know there's going to be a considerable escalation because I don't think it can fall to one individual it would have to be multiple individuals to provide the associated backup but absolutely we can look at any of those questions we don't have an answer to that today but absolutely can look at that. Yeah I'd be interested in more of that information later not just in regards to the agenda but some of the other requirements that we have and some of the other quite frankly direction that the council wants to go on things such as Spanish translation during or documents potentially being translated that might be an avenue to explore to help reduce that timeline while still providing the same intent and getting an overall better outcome for the community so I'd be interested in more on that the other question that I had was for Stephanie with the public records requests that you're seeing and I appreciated hearing councilmember Tibbets questions around how much of this is related to the ordinance versus changes that we've seen part of the ordinance helps build in the infrastructure to make it so that these requests that you get that are consistent are also then publicly available through the open data portal and I just want to get your take on if you see that as a net positive yes an increase in workload now but once that infrastructure is in place do you think that that will help long term in terms of being able to point the public to where the data is already available instead of having to recreate it every time certainly if we have documents on our website and can point the public to it then that will make it easier for the public to access the documents that they want we would still need to administer it as far as logging the record even with pointing them to that portal and we are still bound by the public records act to respond within the days that we are required to respond but yes if frequently asked documents are on a portal or somewhere where they can go that will make responding easier. I don't know that it would diminish the number of requests that we receive and I do want to clarify that the data portal is for city data not for city documents and I know we discuss that several times at the subcommittee of the original proposal was to have all city documents available through this portal and the reality is that's what tens of thousands of documents so we narrow the subcommittee did and then the council did keep it to that the open the data portal is for data that's generated by the city not for documents that being said our new public records act software does allow people to see what other requests have been made and to then look at the documents that were provided in response and I don't know you know I don't know from Stephanie how often it's hard to tell how many people have avoided submitting their own request by going on to that system and doing a search I just don't I don't have that information and I don't think there's a way to track that if somebody goes to our website where they're going and if they're looking at that next request portal data that system that we use to manage our public records request yeah no I and I appreciate that and I guess this goes sort of in line with the question around translation I'll be interested long term in hearing from you if having that temporary position to help get the infrastructure built would be worth the upfront investment for the time savings that you could potentially see long term from having that call it a database whatever the new systems implementation looks like I think that would be a good conversation for us to continue to have as well so again I think you're hearing a lot of questions about what we're going to do and what we're going to do and how we're going to be able to engage and try to find solutions the city manager is just very concerned about the bandwidth within the organization to do this type of work right and so and we're fast coming up on July 1 and we still have to have conversations about a lack of willingness to try to understand as councilmember Fleming suggested where's that space between councilmember Sawyer adapting to a new model and what do we need to do that I think there's a lot of willingness to do that I just I think we're here we're concerned about being able to meet those expectations by July 1 and so when we come back may be asking for some more runway to actually help do the things that we're talking about now thank you for that I will also acknowledge that you know we're trying to figure out what the most good is and I've heard consistently the concern around grants I'm happy to take that back to the open government committee and talk about whether we want to make an amendment there or an exception there I also think resolutions is one and I'll bring that up actually later in our meeting tonight I will go to public comment on this and then I'll bring it back to council I think what would be helpful for me in particular to hear from council members and comments is areas where you would like the open government committee to explore further or different approaches to get the current outcomes that we have if you can be creative or if you have things that you want us to explore and work with staff on but first I'll go to public comment so if there's anybody who would like to speak on this item go ahead and hit the raise hand feature alright and Stephanie I'm not seeing anybody raise their hand did we have any voicemail public comments on this item item 3.1 study session open government don't have open government although some of the older members of the city council may not be in agreement with that type of activity the only way we'll get truly open government with authentic community engagement in our governmental process is if you folks begin to make the opportunities for the public to participate in these discussions open to the public again open up our government you've closed it down for a year you've used this exclusive zoom type approach which keeps people out you should open up city hall let people come in at certain specific times for certain items and participate on zoom there if that's the only way you'll do it but keeping people out because they don't have access to the internet is totally wrong it's not open government it's exclusion that's what's occurring so please stop that and open our government backup maybe more disadvantage than the will to do who have all the internet connections thank you for your time that concludes voice message public comments received for item 3.1 great thank you so much Dina so I'll bring it back to council as I mentioned I think what would be really helpful for me is to hear from council members which additional areas you'd like the open government committee to explore or what additional information you might need to hear from staff before full implementation of this ordinance going forward so who wants to start let's go with council member Alvarez more of a question actually what are the implications for allowing staff other than 7 point on our agenda to make the concerns known to the council is it possible for in the committee en item 10.0 under other or is this a violation of our brown act I'm not sure I understand in terms of when are you asking when might yes for example if staff notice that they had an issue in regards to grants bids or a contract award would they be able to disclose the need for our attention under a section on agenda or would this not be ample notification to the public which would be the brown act college go ahead we would be bringing those I'll let the city attorney address the particulars but just council member we'd be bringing those concerns back to the subcommittee as we move forward and back to the council as part of the report out of place and so staff's concerns are being brought forward you're hearing some of them there will be more as we learn more and there will be a Claire will be following up on some of the concerns that are generated out of PD shortly so so there's going to be ample opportunity for that feedback just structurally in the community so that to the extent your question is about concerns leading up to full implementation on July 1st the city manager is exactly correct and beyond July 1st as well those can go to the subcommittee and then be brought up to the extent that your question was with respect to ongoing if there's a grant that's coming coming up to that is really no it needs to be on the agenda in one of the there's a report or consent item and that would need to be posted in accordance with the ordinance or subject to a specific exemption thank you both councilmember thank you Mr. Mayor first of all I just want to thank everyone who's been involved in this project then Mr. Sur and I are prior to being sworn in 2014 we heard the first open government task force report to that council and we've been working on it ever since it's kind of crazy once you start looking what has occurred in the city of Santa Rosa since December of 2014 you understand why we got it here and just the number of people who are in different roles when back in 2014 or even not with the city are now currently working on it so I really appreciate everyone staying through with this one of the things for me and it's been mentioned several times here I would ask keeping the task force open and I would ask that that is the venue that's in my opinion why we have a subcommittee so all this can go deeper dive than we do here with the city council and also my request would be that those that are still interested that who had been on that open government task force the original one I know a lot of those folks are still there please involve them in the process because they did that real deep dive they've explored much of what we have discussed some recommendations some we accepted some we didn't so I would just ask that if they so choose to continue to be involved with that but I appreciate what the process is the other thing that I think is a priority and Magali talked a little bit about it the residence guidebook because I really see this as a shared responsibility it's really easy for some members of the community appoint fingers at us but so much information is offered by the city on either a website or a data portal so I think that education aspect is going to be huge, I really look forward to seeing that product in the near future Thanks councilmember councilmember Sawyer Thank you mayor and I agree with councilmember Schwedhelm about involving or getting input for those that are willing to offer it from the original task force because they did an enormous amount of work with the community and also the task force themselves I appreciate the work mayor that you have done in helping to receive public input as we continue that process of receiving input from the community and your dedication to this endeavor so as far as giving you what you're looking for today I kind of appreciate councilmember Fleming's bringing this back to balance and it really is it is an issue of balance of the open government the frozen government and how to get the job done I'm looking so I would be suggesting I believe we and we can always to get more public input but I would be at this point I am looking for those areas of greatest concern by the staff in being able to satisfy the intention of the results or the changes to how we conduct business and that they give us bullet points on those issues that continue to be or they are concerned that they are sticking points as we have made more stringent or changes that were more stringent in our reporting or in our preparation for our meeting I know we received a lot from the community and we've had some cautions from staff as well and we're receiving some today but those are really the issues what is the biggest impact on staff and to bring those back to us and see if there's some relief that we can give them or delay for instance for them if necessary it was mentioned by the city manager that July is sounding very close and indeed given how long our agendas can be and the issues that we are challenged by currently giving them a bit of extra time may be a prudent move July back when we put the timeline together seemed like a long way away and it isn't so far down the road now so I would be looking for staff input and the potential for delay in certain parts of the implementation because we've already started doing part of it so we may be able to do more but there may be some that are the sticking points that we want to throw back to the task force or the subcommittee and let us chew on it or let those that are involved chew on it so we can see if we can come up with some changes and indeed there may be we can't find our way around and that we might have to compromise potentially on the product that has been presented so far so I'll leave it at that thank you alright thank you Mr. Tibbetts thanks mayor I got this right off the bat I am supportive of everything in this ordinance the only thing that I carve out as an exception because I'm still watching it is the timepiece to the agenda I really can't express how glad and grateful I am that we now have Spanish translation services I think that the Chris you're right about the portal concept I don't know what the technicalities are of having servers that size and information storing and uploading but I hope that the public will try to utilize that portal before immediately leaping into a public records act request process and I think it has the potential to be that so I'm super supportive of the public having access to that information as well the only reason why I get hung up on the agenda timeline process is because it's not as if we don't post it's not even as if we do the state mandated minimum we're doing nine calendar days which to the best of my knowledge is already ahead of the county and most if not all other cities again I could be wrong but we're doing a good job there and I haven't really had anybody yet tell me why we need the extra week you know it feels like it's one of those things where it's just an area that we can be better and that's a good reason to be better but not if it comes at the expense of freezing or tying the hands of a lot of our staff and their ability to be nimble because four years ago five years ago this city hall was no longer known for being anything but nimble we had that culture problem where it was taking too much time to get any policies done or you know permits out of planning and things done at public works and through the efforts of the two previous councils and hopefully this council has been to undo that and certainly the efforts of the city manager and staff to change that culture to create a nimble and responsive government and and if staff comes back to me este extra week que estamos imponiendo a nosotros, es realmente restricción de nuestra habilidad para hacer eso. No estaré ahí para apoyarlo, pero estoy mirando adelante a escuchar de muchas de las personas que traen este propósito, estoy seguro de que hay una razón para ello, especialmente Karen Weeks, y algunos de los miembros de la TASFORCE original y Pat Cuda y Sandra Zitt together. Así que, admitidamente, tengo que salir y llegar a esos folks y encontrarles, ¿qué fue la razón para el extra week? Pero eso es lo que estoy pensando, señor. Y, de nuevo, quiero agradecer a ustedes y a los precios de la TASFORCE originales que están haciendo este propósito, porque creo que hay mucho que celebrar en esto. Gracias, señor presidente. Señor presidente Fleming. Gracias, señor presidente. Sé que esto posee un desafío para nuestro consejo, y también para nuestros miembros de la TASFORCE. Por lo tanto, creo que el espíritu es algo que debemos ser muy orgullosos para llevar algo de 2014 a 2021 con todos los desafíos que hemos experienciado en la ciudad de Santa Rosa, con todos nuestros miembros de la TASFORCE, y miembros de los miembros de la TASFORCE, trabajando muy difícil de llegar a sí, creo que esto es algo que realmente demonstra nuestra liderazgo en el norte de la TASFORCE, y incluso más. Y así, mientras hay desafíos con el miembros de la TASFORCE, y con la ejecución de esto, creo que el subcomité tendrá que adrecer a los desafíos de la TASFORCE, y que los miembros de la TASFORCE comuniquen a los miembros, y vamos a llevarlos a los miembros y figurear las soluciones que tienen los problemas. Y por lo tanto, el tema de la TASFORCE es lo que recordamos que, cuando empezamos a poner esto en motion, en nuestra última reunión, ha sido en motion hace mucho tiempo, pero es que, o sea, recordo personalmente, diga lo que necesitas, sino que no hay suficiente bandas para darles un estimado por lo que necesitas, ahora es difícil de predictar lo que necesitas antes de que oslayos algo, así que eres parte de la manera de tratar algo, y darte más a la TASFORCE. ¡Es genial! Quiero darles lo que necesites para encontrar las necesidades y las necesidades de los que, por lo tanto, compramos este gobierno, y nosotros estamos aquí para servir lo que nuestras instituciones quieren, Y yo creo que esto está tomando grandes estrellas para hacerlo y estoy muy, muy orgulloso de la obra que estás haciendo. Así que muchas gracias. Allá, gracias, miembro. Yo quería destacar una de las cosas que Stephanie mencionó, y es que la parte de el aumento en las PRA que estamos viendo es una comprensión más grande de lo publico, de lo que información están entitos. Y para mí, eso es el espíritu de la comunidad de engagement que estamos intentando fosterar a la ciudad, es que, sí, es que va a tomar más recursos, pero la comunidad de engagement no es una cosa de una vez, y creo que, como las PRAs en el sistema de California, el acceso a información que estamos intentando dar a las personas, creo que las personas van a comenzar a reconocer y relajar y comenzar a utilizar un poco más, y eso nos ayudará con una comunidad más informada. Y te diré que, desde el pasado, han habido muchas veces, donde he hablado de las personas en el publico, que han desagradado con las decisiones que el Council ha hecho, donde dicen, bueno, ustedes just tried to ram this bias without anybody knowing that it was happening. Y yo he tenido que decir, no es cierto, que nosotros tenemos una de las más lindas de la ciudad que he hablado de la nación, y más oportunidades para la comunidad de engagement para que participen de cualquier otro lugar. Y ha sido una oportunidad muy significativa de aprender, y, claramente, una gran feera en la hata de la ciudad, de estar tan deseado para llevarse ese input público a trabajar con las personas. Se va a llevar tiempo, pero creo que es un paso en la dirección correcta. Lo que voy a hacer es tomar la información que estoy escuchando aquí para los miembros del Council, las preguntas, las preocupaciones. Volvamos a trabajar con los miembros en el subcomité, con el vicepresidente, como bien como miembros del Council Álvarez, y, probablemente, con una implementación, podemos, ya que, haber sortido algunos de estos problemas para que los miembros estén adecuados, para que los miembros estén contentos, y para que los miembros estén contentos. O, a ese punto, podemos continuar con una conversación sobre los trade-offs y ver si hay una dirección diferente o una lengua diferente que nos gustaría en algunos de esos órdenes. Mr. City Manager, el vicepresidente de la ciudad, y Ms. City Clerk, ¿hay más preguntas o comentarios que vienen de la sesión de estudios? Voy a ver que hay miembros. El Council va a tomar un breve 10 minuto de break, y vamos a volver a 4.15 para el resto de nuestra reunión de hoy. Allá, Ms. City Clerk, vamos a ir adelante y resumir nuestra reunión. Vamos a llamarla de vuelta al orden, y vamos a hacer una convocación, por favor, o una convocación, por favor. Gracias. El Councilmember Kibbetz, el Councilmember Schwedhelm. Aquí. El Councilmember Sawyer. Aquí. El Councilmember Fleming. Aquí. El Councilmember Álvarez. Presidente. El vicepresidente Rogers. Presidente. Mayor Rogers. Aquí. El Councilmember Kibbetz, ¿habéis ayudado? Ok, déjame mostrar que todos los Councilmembros están presentes con la excepción de los Councilmembros Kibbetz. Great, thank you so much. So, as was mentioned earlier in today's meeting, we do have interpreter services being provided in Spanish. Madam Zoom host, Dina, can you please walk through one more time how folks can access the Spanish channel? Thank you, Mayor, we'll do. First of all, I'd like to ask the interpreter not currently interpreting on the Spanish channel to raise your hand so I can bring you back over to the panel aside to translate. Thank you. That live trip, excuse me, live translation can be heard on a Spanish channel and you can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon on your Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off get the main audio so you can clearly hear the Spanish translation. Charles, would you mind? La interpretación en español está disponible. Es personas quienes desean escuchar en español pueden pasar al canal de español para cambiar de canal. Haga clic en el icono de interpretación ubicado en la barra de herramientas de Zoom. Parece un globo terráqueo ya que según al canal de español, recomendamos que paguen su micrófono para poder escuchar la interpretación claramente. Thank you, Charles. Mayor, back to you. Great, thank you so much, Dina. So, Council, we did not have any closed session. We have no proclamations or presentations. We also have no staff briefings this evening. So, let's go ahead to city manager and city attorney reports. Sean and Sue, who wants to start? I have nothing to report. And I also have nothing to report this evening. Perfect. We'll go on to item number nine. Councilmembers, are there any statements of abstentia? Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I'll be abstaining from 11.1 due to the fact that I was absent for that meeting. OK, we'll make sure we keep that down. Is there anybody else? All right, we'll go on to our mayors and councilmembers reports. Item 10, who wants to start? Councilmember Alvarez. Yes, thank you, Mayor. I respectfully ask that today's meeting adjournment be dedicated to Danny Rizzo, who passed away recently due to COVID-19. Danny, a leader in our community. Someone who I'm very thankful for. To throughout my life and specifically even running for city council, one of the people that bless me with their signatures on that piece of paper that allowed me to be a candidate and for the amount of kids in South Park and beyond who have benefited from the goodness of his heart. And I would hope that we can dedicate the gentleman to to him and and his family who continues to fight. Absolutely, Councilmember Alvarez. I'll be happy to adjourn tonight's meeting in his memory. Do we have any other councilmember reports? All right, council, I do have one item that I want to bring to your attention. So we've had two different incidents throughout our community and throughout our nation over the last week since our last council meeting. The first was an incident with the vice mayor en Runart Park, who received threatening and racist calls related to a vote that she took on the Runart Park City Council. I just want to report back to the council that I joined with the other mayors and the chairwoman of the board of supervisors in writing a letter of support for vice mayor Elwood down in Runart Park, as well as expressing our condemnation for any racist attacks against anybody within our community. Subsequent to that, we also saw a spike in hate crimes related to our AAPI community. And it was requested that the city pass a resolution in solidarity, condemning those hate crimes and standing with our AAPI community. This is one of those areas that we had sort of talked about with the Open Government Task Force report in order to get a resolution on the agenda. This is why I brought that up as a possible amendment that we might want to make. We would have had to have found, made findings about the urgent nature of the resolution. What I chose to do with the council, I hope's blessing is instead turned it into a letter to the public, to our AAPI community, a letter from the mayor's desk that is attached to the agenda for you to review. And I wanted to bring it to council members to see if there was interest in adding a resolution, a formal resolution to our next agenda that basically has the same sentiment of standing in solidarity with our AAPI community and condemning any speech or actions against marginal minority communities within Santa Rosa and more broadly. It certainly supports the motion. Tom, go ahead. I'm supportive of that, Mayor Rogers. I think it's a great idea. Second. Absolutely. All right. I'm saying all thumbs up for that idea. So we'll go ahead and the resolution was actually prepared. We're trying to figure out how to bring it. So we'll add that to our next meeting agenda for approval. And then in the meantime, I will point you to the letter at that's in written communications at the end of tonight's agenda to see sort of what we have already put out there publicly to our community as well. And I will say that this is in compliance with our support that we have provided for our community over the last four years, starting with our Indivisible Community Ordinance. Councilmember Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I this would be a good exception. I think that this goes. Things happen can happen very quickly that deserve and need our attention. And even though this is probably on in a sense, kind of on the lighter side of that particular exception, because it's a letter, but the impact is important and vital. And I think that we need to add that into our that bullet list of things to exempt whenever necessary, without having to jump from too many books to do it. Yeah. And that's why I wanted to bring it to your attention as well, Councilmember. You know, it just happens to me that it was one thing after another. We wanted to figure out how to make the timing work. And I know I can speak very, very candidly for this body that we all stand in support of everyone within our community and want to make sure that we make that voice heard and make make folks feel supported and welcomed here in Santa Rosa. So with that, we'll bring it back at the next the next meeting. Did anybody else have anything for for our councilmember report outs? OK, saying none, we'll move on to approval of the minutes. That's excuse me. I'll take public comment really fast to on councilmember reports just because we did give a substantial report and see if there's anybody in the public who would actually like to participate as well. Right, I'm not seeing any Madam City Clerk, could we have any voicemail public comments? No, we did not. Right, we'll move on to approval of the minutes then item 11. We already heard that councilmember Sawyer will be abstaining from this item. Were there any changes from councilmembers on these minutes? OK, we'll go ahead and see if there's any public comment on the minutes and any voicemail public comments. No, no, we're not. OK, we'll bring it back. Councilmember Alvarez, you have a question. Well, more to clarification. If I and actually it's it's it's concerning a comment that councilmember Victoria Flamie made in regards to the two alternates on one of the boards, if we actually got that clarified if those represented on the minutes for that meeting and I wish I knew more of the details, but it just came to me that there was a question in regards to having two alternates opposed to only having or allowing one alternate. I just can't remember the name of the board at this time. If any of us remember that comment and I don't see councilman. Not I'm not certain what it is that councilmember that you're referring to. It had it had to do with with if two alternates were allowed on a certain board, I just wish that I remember what board that actually was. And I did go over the the minutes, but I cannot apparently if there's no issue, then there's no issue. It's just something that came to my mind and I had to bring it forth, but apparently it's me. All right, I'm not here in any additional information. So councilmember Fleming, if you're good, we'll show the minutes adopted as they stand. I am indeed. Thank you. OK, no other objections from council. Great. We'll go ahead and show those adopted then and we'll move on to the consent calendar. Item number 12. Adam, 12.1 resolution approval issuance of blanket purchase order utilizing the state of California cooperative contract one dash one nine dash five eight dash six nine with Geotab USA Incorporated Vehicle Telematic System item 12.2 resolution authorization to submit a 2021 Early Relation Health Grant Program application to first five of Sonoma County and committing any necessary matching funds. Item 12.3 resolution professional services agreement with architectural resource group to prepare a downtown station area historic resource evaluation. Item 12.4 resolution appropriation of water budget for the previously approved refund of overpaid water demand fee to identify multifamily properties. Item 12.5 resolution designating authorized city staff to enter into agreements with Governor's Office of Emergency Services, Cal OES. Item 12.6 resolution authorizing certain city staff to enter into agreements and execute other documents with the California Housing and Community Development HCD for CDBG project development in response to the 2017 Tubbs fire. Item 12.7 ordinance adoption second reading of the ordinance to the Council of City of Santa Rosa adding chapter nine dash two eight to the title nine health and safety of the Santa Rosa city code pertaining to fuel mitigation pile burning. All right, Council, are there any questions on the consent calendar? Council members, what I'm being this mayor, I just had a process question regarding 12.1 and so I'm not sure Mr. What you want, but my question comes out. It sounds like we did an RFP, we evaluated proposals, listen to presentations and the staff decided to go a whole different route. And I'm just not clear as to that process and why that wasn't done before. We went through the whole RFP process. Jason, do you want to cover that? I actually may have staff online that may be better prepared to support that. Is Zach, Zach Brand available? I'm here. Zach, can you answer Council Member Schwedhelm's question please about process? I apologize, Council Member, I didn't catch your entire question, I had a little clip there, but it sounds like you were wondering how we ended up in a state contract versus a standard RFP. Well, in reading the staff report, it looks like an RFP went out, three departments were involved in the selection, there was evaluated, seven proposals were received, four finalists were named, went through that process, Council Member Schwedhelm, o el staff hizo la recomendación de ir a la ruta que vamos, y se parece como un orden de ir a la ruta, así que si puedo entender un poco mejor lo mejor que por qué hemos elegido esta ruta versus el original RFP proceso que el staff o el staff está en el panel y las personas están preparadas para hacer esta presentación. Entiendo, fue interesante. Así que iniciamos el RFP para encontrar el mejor producto o el mejor servicio disponible a la ciudad para los servicios que estamos buscando y dos o tres de los vendedores. Creo que fue dos de los vendedores que respondieron a la RFP y ofrecen el producto de la tienda de contractas de la ciudad como el mejor valor para la ciudad. Pero la manera de obtener ese producto es usar el producto de la tienda de contractas y el producto de contractas de los vendedores para ayudarnos a iniciar la implementación. Entonces, el orden de pérdida no será asociado a los vendedores que respondieron a la RFP. El orden de pérdida tiene que ser asociado a la tienda de contractas de los vendedores. Así que aprendemos esa información por ir a través del proceso y entonces este proceso que hemos concreto es en el mejor entorno y más eficientemente para la ciudad para hacerlo. Eso es correcto. Muy bien. Gracias. Ahora lo entiendo. Gracias por la claraficación, Council Member. ¿Hay otras preguntas para el staff en el calendario de consenso? Council Member Tibbets. Es un comentario para el vice-mayor. Si pudieras retirar el item 12.3 y hacerlo separadamente, voy a recusar de ese item de la asociación abundante porque la organización que trabajo en su propiedad en el área de estación en la estación de la tienda. Así que es la razón. Bien, aprecio eso de una asociación abundante. Vamos a ir a la publica y ver si hay any public comments en el calendario de consenso. Si estás interesado en hablar de cualquier de los items aquí, vamos a poner el feature de la mano de raise en tu zoom. ¿Alguien que está hablando de los items 12.1 a 12.7? Bueno, no he visto ninguna de las manos. Vamos a ver si hay any voicemail comments. Es una. El item 12.6. Comunidad de desarrollo, la funda de grantes. Dwayne D. Witt de Roseland. Según las estipulaciones de la casa de Estados Unidos. Mi apologies. Accidental click. Comunidad de dirección para los fondos para ayudar a la comunidad afectada a las personas que sufrieron durante el fuego de los tubos. Ellas deberían ser una parte de el proceso de decisión. No deberían ser dejados a los bureaucratos locales que normalmente tienen sus planos set antes de que este tipo de cosas cambie. Por favor, empuera a los residentes que están directamente afectados por el fuego de los tubos para participar en el plan y las actuales deliberaciones. Las discusiones sobre cómo el dinero será expuesto de los fundos de la comunidad de desarrollo. Por lo tanto, estás violando las guiones de la guía de desarrollo de la casa de Estados Unidos y no lo haciendo como realmente quiere ser hecho. Gracias. Y eso concluye los comentarios publicados en consenso. Gracias mucho. Vamos a llevarlo. Madam vice mayor, creo que tenemos dos noticias para pasar. Me muevo los noticias 12.1, 12.2 y 12.4 a través de las noticias 12.7 y a través de la lección de los textos. Bien. Tenemos una noticia de la vice mayor, un segundo de la memoria de la ciudad de Schuethelm. Madam City Clerk, diga la ropa. Gracias. Councilmember Tibbet. Hola. Councilmember Schuethelm. Hola. Councilmember Sawyer. Hola. Councilmember Fleming. Hola. Councilmember Alvarez. Hola. Vice mayor Rogers. Hola. Mayor Rogers. Hola. La noticia pasará con 7 ayes. Me gustaría también mover el item 12.3 y esperar la lección de los textos. Un segundo. Bien, la noticia de la vice mayor, un segundo de la memoria de la ciudad de Schuethelm. Se llama la ropa. Councilmember Schuethelm. Hola. Councilmember Sawyer. Hola. Councilmember Fleming. Hola. Councilmember Alvarez. Hola. Vice mayor Rogers. Hola. Mayor Rogers. Hola. La noticia pasará con 6 ayes con el councilmember Tibbet recusando. Allá. No es 5 oclock, vamos a skippar nuestros comentarios para los ítimos de agenda. Vamos a volver después. Item 14.1, el manager de la ciudad de la ciudad. Yes, item 14.1 report. Sonoma County Water Agency. Sonoma Water 20. Transmisión, budget y rate. Increase. We're being led off by Kimberley Zanino, deputy director of Water Admin. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor and members of the council. Tonight we are bringing you a review of Sonoma Water's Water Transmission Budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Ms. Roselli from Sonoma Water will provide you a detailed review of the proposed budget, but I will first start by giving you a brief update on the work that leads up to the approval process for Sonoma Water. Each year the City Council reviews this budget and decides on a recommendation for the city's representative to the Water Advisory Committee, or the WAC, currently Council Member Schwedhelm. Prior to the City Council deciding on a recommendation, there are multiple reviews made by different committees and boards. The first step is a budget subcommittee of the Technical Advisory Committee or what we call the TAC. We need to review the budget in detail and work with Sonoma Water to arrive at the final proposed wholesale rate increase. This year's subcommittee consisted of representatives from Sonoma Water, Town of Windsor, City of Katadi, City of Santa Rosa, North Moran Water District, Moran Municipal Water District and the City of Sonoma. The first proposal from Sonoma Water had the wholesale rate increase at 6.56% for the Santa Rosa Aqueduct. However, after several meetings, communications and considerations for the current situation with the pandemic, there were several reductions made and the final proposed wholesale rate increase for the Santa Rosa Aqueduct is 3.47%. The budget was unanimously approved for recommendation by the subcommittee and after that process, the full TAC also reviewed the budget and also approved for recommendation as well as a review and recommendation by the Board of Public Utilities. We are now requesting your consideration to recommend that Santa Rosa's WAC representative votes to approve recommendation to the Board of Directors of Sonoma Water. And with that, I will now turn over the presentation to Ms. Razzelli, who will provide you with a review of the final proposed budget and wholesale water rate increase. Good afternoon, mayor, council members. Thank you for having me. I'm Lynn Razzelli, Sonoma Water. I am the Administrative Services Division Manager. I've been with Sonoma Water for 12 years and we have a brief presentation for you to discuss the proposed budget and rates for the water transmission system for next year. Next slide, please. So for those of you that are not as familiar with the Sonoma Waters Enterprises, we have water supply, the water transmission system, flood protection for many miles of streams and channels, eight wastewater treatment and reuse facilities and an energy and sustainability program. We will only be talking about the water transmission system today. And any revenue that any one of these enterprises receives has to be used for its intended purpose. So any revenue that we receive for the water rates goes only to the water transmission system. It does not get transferred to any of the other enterprises. Next slide, please. And again. So this is a 10,000 foot level map of the water transmission system in the upper left-hand corner are the Mirabell-Woller production facilities on the river, Russian River. And then there's three main aqueducts, Santa Rosa aqueduct, Petaluma aqueduct, Sonoma aqueduct. We prepare a budget and rates for each aqueduct and the customers on those aqueducts pay the rate for the aqueduct that they're on and on the Santa Rosa aqueduct there is City of Santa Rosa and Town Windsor. Next slide, please. So as Ms. Dunino mentioned, we engaged in a transparent and collaborative process in accordance with the restructure agreement for water supply that governs how we prepare the budget and the rates. The restructure agreement was signed by the eight water contractors and Sonoma water in 2006. And we use that to develop the budget and rates. It also governs a lot of the water supply issues associated with the water transmission system. We began developing this budget back in November. We prepared a draft and gave it to the technical advisory budget subcommittee in January. We talked about it with Ms. Dunino and Ms. Burke for those two months and along with the other water contractors. The technical advisory committee voted to move the, make a recommendation to move the budget forward, budget and rates forward to the water advisory committee to recommend it. I've been making presentations to city and town councils so that they understand our budget a little bit better and understand how the rate was developed. And then the water advisory committee will vote on April 5th and our board will adopt it on April 20th and that's required by the restructure agreement of the water supply that we approve and adopt that our board approves and adopts the budget and rates before the end of April. Next slide please. So these are the budget categories, operations and maintenance. There are four sub funds. There are five capital funds and there's several debt service funds. And under the sub funds, the water management fund is for the urban water management plan which was completed, is being completed this fiscal year. So there are only minimal costs in next fiscal year which we will be funding out of fund balance. The watershed planning and restoration sub fund is the biological opinion, the National Marine Fisheries Service biological opinion that was signed in 2008 and is good for 15 years. I will be talking a little bit about the larger dry creek habitat enhancement project that is budgeted on that watershed planning and restoration sub fund. Next slide please. So we're gonna start with the budget for the hazard mitigation projects, construction projects. Santa Rosa would be responsible for the Mark West Creek Crossing, Russian River Crossing and the Santa Rosa Creek Crossing. The other two projects that are listed are on other aqueducts and are not the responsibility of the city of Santa Rosa. City of Santa Rosa only pays what is their share of the Mark West, Russian River and Santa Rosa Creek Crossing projects. All three of those have offsetting FEMA grant funding and will be active in next fiscal year. The budget for these hazard mitigation projects is 5.4 million. Next slide please. Other capital projects that don't quite fit under the title of a seismic hazard mitigation project. The first one there is Sonoma-Gustapump Station which is on the Sonoma aqueduct so it doesn't get charged to the city of Santa Rosa. But there's also the Mirabelle Dam ladder replacement and the Warm Springs Dam Hydro-Termin Retrofit projects that will be active next year. They're both critical projects for water supply and the Warm Springs Dam Hydro-Termin generates energy, water energy and provides a source of revenue to the water transmission system. And the budget for these other capital projects, this isn't a full list, but for these other ones it's 4.3 million. The total for all of the capital projects is 9.7 million. Next slide please. So on operations and maintenance side we have cathodic protection on the Santa Rosa aqueduct and the Russian River Katadi intertie that will be occurring. We have well pumps and valves and tank maintenance projects that are scheduled and that need to be done and cannot be deferred any further. We have a regional water supply resiliency study that the water contractors are participating in and various other studies that will be ongoing in next fiscal year. The ONM budget is 30.5 million. Next slide please. And as I mentioned, the biological opinion compliance project is the Dry Creek Habitat enhancement phase four project will be constructed next fiscal year. The water contractors are responsible for phases or miles four, five and six. The good part about this is that the core has committed to paying 65% of the costs and the water contractor share is a 35% cost share. And that will again be active next fiscal year along with other biological opinion related activities. And we're in the third driest year on record and looking at drought like conditions. And so it's critically important that we have a robust conservation program and a water use efficiency program. We are working with the Sonoma Marin saving water partnership and with the water contractors to support their water conservation and water use efficiency programs. We have weather irrigation controllers and prop one grants and a prop 84 grant. And some of those funds get passed through to the water contractors. So the budget for the sub funds is 11.05 million. Next slide please. So this is a comparison of next fiscal year's budget with this fiscal year's budget. And at the total line there you can see that the budget for this year is 59 million and the budget for next year is 56 million. The biggest difference there is 3 million which is pretty close to the capital projects difference. And we heard the contractors indicating to us that you still have to supply water to your customers. But some of your customers obviously can't pay due to the hardships of the pandemic. And so we made every effort we could to cut where we felt we could cut. And we got the biggest bang for our buck in the capital projects line item. At the bottom there you can see that we have the grants use of fund balance and bond proceeds 16 million for this year and 8.5 million for next year. When you take the net budget for this year it's 43 million and the net budget for next year is 47 million. And that difference in the budget it's what driving the rate increase. Next slide please. This is a pie chart that just gives you a visual of where the budget is allocated. It's 54% operations and maintenance costs. 17% capital projects. 20% is for biological opinion compliance and water conservation. 9% is for debt service. And then we have the offsetting of about 8.5 million in grants, bonds and use of fund balance. Next slide please. So now that we have talked about the budget we're going to switch to talking about how the rate is generated based on that budget. If this is prescribed by the restructure agreement for water supply and it takes cost of operations and maintenance and divides by the quantity of water sold. The quantity of water sold is the lesser of the three year annual average or the last 12 months of water deliveries. Again, whichever is less. Next. And as you can see here, next. Next. As you can see here. Next. And one more. One more, sorry. Yeah, that's it. Okay, that's good. Thank you. You can see here that the 46,095 acre feet is the three year annual average that is the lower of the two. And therefore that is what is used to determine the cost per acre foot. And if you hit next one more time. There you go. So you get your $1,000 per acre foot. 46,095 acre feet is the required budget and amount in drought years in the past. We've seen deliveries as low as 42,000 or 44,000 acre feet, which would be 2,000 acre feet less, which would end up cutting into the water rates revenue that we would receive, which would impact our budget. So we will be watching this very carefully next year. And this is in part why we didn't feel like we could go even lower with our rate increase because of the dry conditions. It's a uniform rate and it's a fully volumetric rate. So when the deliveries go up, your rate increase or rate goes down. And when your deliveries go down, your rate goes up. Next slide, please. And so we wanted to give you an example of what other wholesale water contractors are doing and where we compare. We're on the far left there at about $1,000 per acre foot. Zone seven water agency indicated that they are not doing a rate increase this year, but they will be doing a 6.7% next year. Santa Clara Valley Water District is proposing in April a 9.8% rate increase, but that increase is not shown here because it hasn't been approved yet. San Francisco Public Utilities chose not to do a rate increase. Contra Costa Water District chose to do a 3.72% increase and another 3.75% the following year. And so that just gives you an example of where we are with respect to other water contractors, wholesale water contractors. Next slide, please. So as Ms. Zunino mentioned, your rate increase on the Santa Rosa Aqueduct es un total de 3.47%. It's $1,000 per acre foot. It is based on the full three-year annual average deliveries of 46,095. And on the left-hand side, about two thirds of the way down, you can see that there's a line that says discretionary charges. Those are capital charges to build fund balance for future capital projects. The water contractors on the Santa Rosa Aqueduct elected to reduce this value from last year. This fiscal year is actually $27 per acre foot. They reduced it to $20 per acre foot to get down to a rate increase of 3.47%. That capital charge, it helps build fund balance but also acts as a rate stabilization tool that helps water contractors reduce their rate in years when it's necessary, such as a year when we have a pandemic. Next slide, please. So we wanted to go over the budget and rate reduction measures that we implemented. We came in initially at 6.56%, which we believe was what we needed to actually do what is needed to do and what we thought we could accomplish next year. We cut the rate increase down to 4.1%, and then Santa Rosa and Petaluma came back and reduced their Aqueduct capital charge to come in at 3.47%. So we were able to save approximately 1.3 million. We did that by decreasing capital project costs, increasing use of fund balance. We reduced the water management, urban water management planning, subfund rate to zero, and we decreased labor costs somewhat in water conservation without sacrificing the program itself. And in general, the rate increase on average is approximately 65 cents per household per month. And I know that in a pandemic, when you can't pay your rent and you can't pay your utilities, 65 cents per month increase is also not attainable, but it does seem as though there will be a turnaround with the rescue bill and hopefully things will get back on track next year. Next slide, please. So as we mentioned, we're doing presentations. I believe this is my last one for this month. The Water Advisory Committee will meet on April 5th and our board will adopt this rate and budget on April 20th. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions you have. Thank you so much, Lynn. Counselor, are there any questions on the presentation? All right. Seeing none, we'll go to public comment. Folks are interested in speaking on the item. Go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. I'm not seeing any. Dina, did we have any voicemail public comments? We did not, ma'am. Okay. I'll go ahead and bring it back. Councilmember Swethelm, I believe this is your item. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd make a motion to direct the Central City Council Water Advisory Committee representative to support the Sonoma County Water Agency fiscal year 2021-2022 water transmission budget during the April 5th, 2021 WAC meeting. I'd like to second that. Okay, we have a motion from Councilmember Swethelm and a second from the Vice Mayor. Let's go ahead and call the roll. Councilmember Tibbetts. Councilmember Tibbetts. Councilmember Tibbetts had to leave the meeting. Okay, thank you. Councilmember Swethelm. Aye. Councilmember Sawyer. Aye. Councilmember Fleming. No. Councilmember Alvarez. Aye. Vice Mayor Rogers. Was that a aye? Sorry, aye. Thank you. And Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with five ayes with Councilmember Fleming voting no and Councilmember Tibbetts absent. Okay. So that's our only action item of the evening. We don't have any public hearings. So we will take a quick five minute break and we'll come back at five o'clock for our public comment for non-agenda items to finish up the meeting. All right, Madam City Clerk, I'm just looking for one more Councilmember to turn on their camera. There we go. Let's go ahead and call the roll. Okay. Councilmember Swethelm. There. Councilmember Sawyer. Councilmember Sawyer. Here. Thank you. Councilmember Fleming. Still here. Councilmember Alvarez. Vice Mayor Rogers. Mayor Rogers. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Have you joined us? I'm sorry, Stephanie. I am here. I hear there's a double mute to the process. I'm sorry, but I am present. Thank you. Vice Mayor Rogers, have you joined us? Okay. Let the record show that all Councilmembers are present with the exception of Councilmember Tibbetts and Vice Mayor Rogers. All right. Thank you so much. Left off, we have public comment for non-agenda items. So for folks in the public, if you'd like to speak on non-agenda items, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature or hit star nine if you're participating via phone. Madam City Clerk, I'm not seeing any. So let's see if there are any voicemail comments. We have two coming right your way. Hi, this is Eris Weaver, Executive Director of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition with a Common On Agenda Item Number 13, items not on the agenda. I'd like to thank Mayor Rogers for his efforts in promoting our bike to it campaign, which is encouraging residents to bicycle rather than drive to destinations that are within two miles, which constitute 30% of trips taken in the area. I'd also like to thank the City for including information on this in our other programs on both your climate action planning webpage and in the e-newsletter. So far we've had 75 people sign on to this challenge so far, which will continue throughout the rest of the year. I'd also like to let you know that we are currently hiring. We are looking for a bilingual outreach and education coordinator to assist us in addressing transportation inequity by adapting our programs and activities to better identify and meet the needs of Sonoma County Latino communities. We appreciate any help in spreading the word. Finally, our entire staff participated in the National Bike Summit organized by the League of American Bicyclists, learning from our colleagues around the country, as well as lobbying our representatives regarding bicycle-related legislation. A surprise keynote from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was one of the highlights of the event. And having a bicyclist in that role is so amazing and so important. And I think we are going to see so much more new funding and support for improving active transportation infrastructure. So we are all feeling inspired and renewed in our commitment to make Santa Rosa and Sonoma County the best place to ride a bike. Thanks. Item 13, public comment on non-agenda items. Wayne DeWitt from Roseland. Please open up our city hall and our city government to the residents again. If restaurants can be opened and banks and supermarkets and gas stations and all sorts of other services as essential businesses, city government should be seen as essential business also and opened up to us citizens and residents to again be able to participate fully in the process which has been exclusionary for over a year now. With that in mind, hopefully you folks are paying attention to the Roseland Creek Greenway Trail and how funding for that should be secured as soon as possible. It's been over 10 years since the process was started. Well, excuse me, actually 17 years with the Roseland Creek concept plan which $100,000 grant of taxpayers money pay for. And then 10 years since the property was purchased at the highest price ever paid for Roseland real estate in 2011 for two and a half million dollars of taxpayers money for less than six acres of land. That greenway trail should go forward and you folks should be leading the way. With that in mind, money could come from the purchasing of the new fire station. That could be done much cheaper. It should be built with fireproof material such as aircrete which is far less expensive than what's being proposed now. This whole new fire station seems like a bit of a boondoggle. Actually, not a bit. It's a big boondoggle four times the cost of the previous one. Folks, don't rip us off. Please, this is important to treat us fairly. And last but not least, redwood tree removals. In the city of Santa Rosa, redwood trees frequently are very large and they should be considered heritage type trees because they're the best at CO2 sequestration but it appears you don't need a permit to cut them down. The city of Santa Rosa's cut them down on the city property and now over in Roseland, large redwood trees are being cut down apparently without permits. Please, tell us if permits are necessary. You could at least answer that question during this time period. Thank you kindly. Mayor, that concludes voice message public comments. You're muted, sir. Great, I do see that there is one additional hand that's popped up so go ahead and give an opportunity for Alex to speak. Can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. All right, thanks Mayor Rogers, council members. I want to thank you Mayor Rogers for responding to me last week about the current situation and code and policy that has to do with small cell insulation. And I just like to say that I understand you guys have some pretty hefty priorities and really important things, but this isn't like dealing with the homeless situation or rebuilding an entire city's infrastructure to be more fire resilient. We're talking about just a simple council policy on a very important new technology that's being introduced into our city. And clearly, this current policy is inadequate. We've had four study sessions and the amount of staff time and effort that was into those, it seems like at this, by now we could have an updated policy that is more beneficial to Santa Rosa and to neighborhoods. And forgive me, some of my comments are pointed and I don't mean to offend anybody. I just feel that maybe the city manager, his relationship with some of the most powerful companies in the United States is important and maybe he's delaying this process, because it just seems like we've got new council members and this is easily put on the backburner as time goes on. But remember then Mayor Corsi, how he said Verizon ran roughshot through the neighborhoods. It was a pretty big issue and problem that is still, we're still susceptible to with the current policy in place. And I just don't want you guys to lose sight of that. And I just don't see why it's gonna take another several months to get an updated policy on something that will give you guys a little bit more local control. Because right now we're still just sitting ducks and they can drop a bunch of applications anywhere they want in town, really. And I think we're just hoping they're not gonna do that and put them in inappropriate places. So anyhow, thank you for your time and I hope that you've learned from your constituents that this is a bigger problem than just small sales. I hope you guys don't trust this engineer, Hemet, guys like that in AT&T and Verizon saying that their technology's safe because it's not. And I'm not a bad guy here. I really just want this Santa Rosa to be a healthy place for you, me, our families to live. And that's really all my interest is in this topic. So thank you. Thank you so much, Alex. And we really appreciate you taking the time to keep pushing. So, council, I don't see any other additional hands. As was mentioned previously, we will definitely be adjourning tonight's meeting in memory of Danny Rizzo. And I hope that his family is doing well and we're obviously wishing them the best. With that, we'll go ahead and adjourn. And I'll see you all soon.