 Okay. Here we go. We're on. We're on live. All right. Welcome everybody. Let's go ahead and move into our study session and then we'll talk about all the cool tools we have in here later on. I'll do a brief introduction here. This afternoon we have a study session on the 2012 short-range transit plan and a discussion of a proposed fare structure and Anita Winkler will lead that discussion. Anita is our Assistant Director of Public Utilities for Transit or Public Works, excuse, Transportation and Public Works. I have utilities on my mind, I think. So she's in the other department that handles things out in the field services. So without further ado, please take it, Anita. I'm not sure which one of those jobs I want right now. So good afternoon, Mayor Alvarez and members of the council. I'm Anita Winkler. I'm the Deputy Director of Transit in the Transportation and Public Works Department and I'm quite relieved that somebody else still struggles trying to get that right at times. So the study session today is intended to update you about city bus service and fare proposals under consideration as part of our short-range transit plan process and have an opportunity to hear your questions and any concerns you may have about the proposals we're presenting. It's kind of fun to give the test drive to the new technology, so this is going to be exciting. So the overview for today, just to give you a quick sense of how we're going to carry this through, an introduction now and a quick financial update. And then I'm going to turn this over to the rest of the team to talk about what we learned at a series of public outreach meetings, the proposed fare increase, the proposed transfer policy reform and the proposed service modifications, and then the next steps. So to sort of get it started, skip that one. Let me introduce the team because otherwise I'll forget to do it and they're really the important ones here. Behind me are Rachel Ede, who's a transit planner. Michael Ivory, who's a transit planner. Joy Gibson, who's our marketing outreach coordinator. And somewhere between the transit operations building in here is Steve Horace, our transit superintendent. You'll recognize him when he walks in, rather out of breath. When we started this whole process, I made a commitment to this team that there were no rules about how we tackled the issues in front of us, that the past was past and the door at this point was open to innovation and new ideas, that we needed to tackle service reductions with a scalpel, not a meat ax, not just ax the whole route but do this very carefully. And that we needed to do the best we could to match our service to the community needs and demands. When you and I last talked, it was during the budget review and at that time we talked about some financing uncertainties that we were facing. Do you not have a copy of the slides in front of you? Okay, hard copy. Okay. At that time, we didn't know what Congress would do, if anything, about transit funding and I was extremely nervous about not being able to use federal funding to help support our operations. In the last couple of months, Congress did enact legislation known as the MAP-21 and I didn't have a chance to get the actual what that MAP-21 stands for but you'll probably be happier just knowing it's MAP-21. That did include provisions that will allow a transit system like Citibus to continue to use some federal money for operating. That's the good news. The harder news is that it's a two-year bill, so we have some relief for two years, but the other part of that is it requires congressional appropriations each year, so we'll see if that part happens. We, however, being somewhat optimistic or operating on the assumption that given Congress got it this far, we'll see some of that money. The second part that we talked about was Transportation Development Act money and Measure M money. Those are both sales tax money and we all know what sales has been like. We managed and have taken a great deal of pride in not cutting service over the last many years when other transit systems were making huge cuts as much as 25% of their service. We had what we call, probably really inappropriately, a TDA reserve. It was kind of a savings account of TDA money that we didn't use every year and that's allowed to accumulate for us in an account and we can draw from it later. The term reserve, when I use it that way, gives the accountants a real nightmare, so I use it very cautiously when I say it here. But we've reached the point now that that's becoming more difficult. Those two sources of money, both sales tax, I'm trying to see how this is going to happen. Amount to 46% of our budget. It's huge. I knew it was big. I didn't know it was that big until we ran some recent numbers. So we're now facing a situation where a source that we're relying on for almost half of our funding is not sufficient to meet that. And our reserve that we've been using is almost depleted. We have enough to make it probably another year and a half, maybe two years. And hopefully the economy is turning around and that will begin to grow. But I don't want to bet this transit service on that happening. So that, let's get the other part here. That brings me to the charge that I gave to the team. And that was I asked them to find a million dollars in either service reductions or revenue increases as the first step towards addressing this problem. It's not the final solution. It gets us a couple more years down the road and gives us a chance to really fine tune things. And then we'll talk a little bit about that as we go on. Well, that next step will be a very intensive evaluation of the overall system. And even the design of the system and really just cutting to ground zero and rebuilding a transit system that will meet this community's needs. The design of that system is as old as the transit system itself from the 1950s. And it worked great when we were a fairly small compact community and everybody could come downtown and go back out. It just doesn't work very well for that anymore. And we're finding that out. So the package of proposals that we're bringing to you today represent well thought through ideas that are supported by statistical data are intended to spread the impact as fairly as possible throughout the community and to form the foundation for the next steps for city bus. It's a creative approach combining service reductions, service improvements and increased revenues. And it's probably one of the most difficult packages that this team has ever had to bring to the council. As I mentioned, City Bus has prided itself on being able to main service while others were cutting service, but we've just reached the point where we no longer can do that. As most of you know, I was here for a long time, a long time ago, and I don't remember ever bringing a service cut to the council during that time. City Bus, well, we recognize as a team and individually that our transit service is critical to many, many of our riders, if not most of them. And we have not taken the impact of these changes on people, of the impact of these changes on people's lives lightly. I need to commend the team for the public outreach that they've undertaken and they'll explain some of that to you. It's very extensive over the last couple months and for the quality of work that they've done to bring something that's creative to you. And we understand that we're asking you, we will be asking you in a couple months for some really tough decisions. We hope we're giving you the information that will help you through those decisions. But we just want you to know that we're very sympathetic to what we're asking you to do. With that, I'm going to turn this over to the rest of the team who will explain the work that they've done. I'll remain available for questions if needed. Good afternoon. I'm Rachel Ede, transit planner. Before we launch into the main part of our presentation, I wanted to take just a few minutes to talk about the public outreach we've done over the last few months and what we've heard in those meetings. We initiated this effort back in May with two traditional public meetings, one at the City Hall Annex and one at the Transit Operations Building. We had about 55 people participate in those meetings. And then throughout the course of this summer, we've been going out in the community and doing meetings and interacting with folks at the other locations you see listed on the slide. And then we've come back to do three public meetings last just last week. One at the downtown transit mall in the old bank building, one at the Bennett Valley Senior Center and one at the Transit Operations Building. And we had over 60 people attend those meetings. So we've had very good attendance. We feel like we've had a good opportunity to talk to a real cross section of the community. So just to summarize in broad terms what we've heard from the community, first on the topic of fares and transfer policy, we received surprisingly mixed input on the concept of a fare increase. Obviously a lot of people said to us, please don't raise fares. These are hard times. Any increase in either the fixed route fare or paratransit fare is going to be a real hardship for me. But we also heard people say, if you have to do something, we'd rather that you raise the fare a little bit rather than cut service more. We've heard a lot of support for preserving the service as much as possible. And then we actually did have a few people who said, you know, city bus is a real value compared to a lot of other operators. You haven't been in for a fare increase in four years. We understand that you need to do this in these times. So we did hear that too. So it was surprisingly mixed. Regarding the transfer policy, we heard a lot of frustration both from our drivers and from the public about the transfer abuse that we'll talk about a little bit that folks are seeing in the system. The way our current transfer policy operates, there's a lot of opportunities for people to hand slips between each other for folks to avoid paying a fare that they should be paying. And the riders see it, the drivers see it, and it's a source of frustration for people who are doing the right thing and paying their fare and using their transfers appropriately. We, of course, also did have people say that if you do tighten up the transfer policy, that will have an effect on us as well. Some people may have to pay an additional fare to complete their business in a day. And that's something that we were working to take into consideration and try to find some ways to mitigate. And then finally, we heard a lot of support throughout the community and with the drivers for the concept of the day pass, which is not something that's included in these proposals for February, but something we're looking very closely at for the future. And this would be a pass that would be unlimited rides for just one day. It would be purchased on the bus. And for someone who has to make a lot of trips in one day, they would pay something less than what they would be paying if they were just paying for every single trip. We haven't priced it out yet. But it would enable people who don't use a transit system enough to buy a monthly pass but want to run all of their errands on one day, which many people do. It would give them a lower cost discounted way to do that. In terms of service proposals, we heard a lot of specific comments on routes, far beyond what we're proposing to you here today. As Anita mentioned, we'll be looking forward to do some more deep work with the system in the coming year and beyond. A lot of folks had very specific comments about route alignment, about major destinations where we should try to find a way to find more or provide more direct service. A lot of comments on our overall system design, frustration with the one way loops we have in our system. One way loops are a great way to provide coverage with a limited resource. But there's a lot of frustration without having, with a lack of two way service, both for riders and also confusion. We heard a lot of suggestions that we need to do more to integrate with our transit partners, including Sonoma County Transit. A lot of our riders are using both systems and want us to continue to work to see what we can do to coordinate and also some comments about future coordination with SMART. Earlier service on Sunday is always a request. We've had this request for years, as well as later service in the evening. And then a series of comments about on time performance on specific routes. Route 6, which is West 3rd Street, route 9, Sebastopol Road, route 14, which is County Center, and route 17, Piner Road. We are addressing on time performance issues on all of those routes as part of these service proposals. And finally, the last comment we heard a lot was that school bell times were seeing some real impacts in the system. We know about this, but some requests both from riders and drivers to try to get a little bit more supplemental service out there to help with those loads. So before we go into fair analysis, I actually, I wanted to end that slide by saying, acknowledging, as Anita mentioned, that what we're really focusing on today is our fair and service proposals for February. But all of these larger issues that the public has raised will be incorporated into the larger short range transit plan. We will be bringing those in as proposals, either for things we could do if we reallocated hours within the system or things we could do if additional operating resources became available. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Joy Gibson to talk about the fair proposals. Good afternoon. I'm Joy Gibson, marketing outreach coordinator for Santa Rosa City bus. As part of our fair analysis, we looked at the California Transit Association's 2011 fair summary. These are the California transit providers whose fairs we looked at. The averages for these providers are shown here for their adult cash fare and their monthly passes. Many of these providers have other media that they use, but these were the ones that were most consistent with what we offer. In the next column, you'll see our current fairs. And you'll notice that we are quite a bit lower than average for the other California transit providers. And the last column shows what our proposed fair increases are that we want to present to you. So even with the new proposed fairs, you can see we're still very competitive and very right on point with what the other transit providers are offering or charging, I should say. In addition, some of the things that we want to do to help mitigate the fair increase is to keep the prices of our ticket books at the same rate. Currently, they are sold at a five cent discount off of a cash price. So we would like to maintain that for people for at least the next six months or so until we can see how that works. Also, as part of that, we want to sell the tickets in 10 ticket increments. Currently, the ticket books for adults are sold in 50 ticket increments and seniors and youth are in 20 ticket increments. Part of our public outreach, we talk to a lot of people that do get paid weekly. So those expenses are significant. The other thing that we've discovered is often people want to get a monthly pass, but so now we're going to offer them at the prorated amount of 50% off on the 15th of the month. Since they're only good for half the month, they'll be half the price. The last thing that we have to take into consideration is increasing the paratransit fare, so that will be double the proposed adult cash fare and that will be $3 per one-way trip. Another important component of this is that we are mandated by our federal regulations to have a 20% fare box ratio for our fixed route service and 10% on our paratransit service. Our fixed route service, we're very close. We're just slightly under that. However, paratransit is significantly under that and we'll be augmenting that going forward with some measure M funds. The second part of the revenue increase is a transfer policy reform. Our current transfers are issued for free with a paid fare. That means if someone gets on a bus and uses cash or a ticket, they're given a transfer. People that have a monthly pass, that's good for unlimited rides so they don't need a transfer. Currently, those are good for two hours. This is a history of our transfer use over the past six fiscal years and you can see in fiscal year 1011 that we broke the one million trip mark on transfers and you can see that the transfer use has gone up significantly over the past six years. By changing our transfer policy to make it a one use transfer for either city, county or golden gate. What that does is anytime somebody boards the bus, they need to give the driver something, either cash, a ticket, a transfer or show them their pass. So that should help with boardings and help mitigate a lot of this passing of transfers around. They would still be valid for two hours and they would be issued on request only. What our projections are, if we can reduce the transfer use and convert those into a paid fare, you can see on the left that if we can reduce them by, say 25%, we have the potential of increasing our paid fares up the amount of 255,000 fares. So it really is significant and we really feel that it's important to make this change to people that are taking advantage of the transfers as opposed to an additional fare increase for people that aren't taking advantage. The impact to the budget with the proposed fare increase and the proposed transfer policy reform would close at about 50%. We're looking at about $500,000 from those two changes is what we're projecting. The rest of the gap will be closed in service reductions. The reductions that we are proposing only account for a 5% reduction in the total city bus service. And I'll turn this over to Rachel, so you're going to take this one? We're bouncing around a little bit, but you have the full team here. We're going to start the section of the presentation where we talk about the service modifications we're proposing, and Michael Ivory and I will be presenting on this topic. As we've discussed, what we're proposing for February that's under discussion here today is really a focus on the fundamentals of our system's viability and health. So the first issue we've really tried to tackle, as I mentioned before, is the reliability of the system and on-time performance. The system runs at least on half-hour headways, if not hour headways. And so when our time transfer system starts to break down because of on-time performance issues, people begin to have real issues with reliability and with trip time and being able to ensure they can get to work or to school or their other destination on time. So for the viability of our system, we need to ensure first that our routes are operating reliably on time. Secondly, we have the financial issue we need to address, which is the $500,000 service reduction. And I want to walk you through, before we talk about the specific reductions, and we're going to go route by route and address each specific one that we're proposing. I just want to walk you through what our process is for identifying routes for reductions. We look at a number of things. Of course, we look at ridership, but perhaps more important is the productivity, which is the number of passengers carried per hour of service we invest in a particular route. And I'm going to walk through a couple of slides on that in a minute. We also look at on-time performance. There's one route that we have a proposal for, Route 6, West 3rd Street, where if we reduce the frequency somewhat from 30 minutes to 45 minutes, we can get it back reliably on time. And so that is a slight reduction in service for the rider, but it means they'll have a route they can really count on. We also look at duplication with other routes. If there are places where we can pull back service, but there are other options for people to get where they need to go based on overlap of routes that's obviously attractive. And then finally, we have really genuinely taken riders' input into consideration, the input of our drivers for several different meetings this summer, and we'll be taking your input into consideration, of course. So this chart is an illustration that provides a shorthand way of looking at what we evaluate when we're looking at service reductions. So the light blue bars on this chart represent the number of hours we have invested in each route in the system, which are the numbers along the bottom. And as you'll see, at a minimum we have about 4,000 hours a year invested in each route, but that can go up to as many as about 100 on Route 15. The red line is the amount of ridership we're achieving on each of those routes. So in this particular illustration, the ideal would be to achieving what we're seeing in the routes highlighted here in green. These are our top performing routes and what you see here is that the ridership line matches up pretty well with the bar for the amount of hours invested. So that's what we're really trying to get to. You'll see Route 10 is our productivity all star, and in fact we're getting more ridership on Route 10 than we would even expect based on the amount of service hours invested. That's the Codding Town route. It's a very good route. At the other end of the spectrum we have some routes where we have a lot of hours invested, but we're not seeing the amount of ridership that really makes a productive route that meets our standards. So we are targeting the routes here highlighted in yellow for some service reductions to try to bring the hours and the ridership in better alignment. So that's Route 2, Bennett Valley, and we'll talk about each of these in more detail. Route 15, Stony Point Road, and Route 17, which is Piner. And then we have three more routes that we're looking at for more minor service reductions on a service hours basis. And that's Route 1, which is Mendocino Avenue. That would be for Sunday only. Route 12, Roseland. That would be for Saturday only. And we're not talking about elimination of the route. We're just talking about a reduction in frequency, which we'll talk about soon. And then Route 8, actually on the Route 1, I take that back. On the Route 1 we are talking about eliminating the route, but we'll do that just for Sunday. And then Route 18, we're talking about just removing a couple of trips from weekday service. And then finally, there are two more routes that we're looking at for a priority on on-time performance, which are Route 6 and Route 14. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Michael Ivory who's going to walk through each of these routes and discuss exactly what area that route covers and what we're proposing in terms of reductions. Good afternoon. As Rachel said, we're going across the board. There's not going to be much that's not touched, but it's only going to consist of 5% of our total service that we're currently providing. The Route 1, over the last after we identified, you can see that the system average identifies the Route 1 as the second lowest performer in the system on Sunday. So we had the drivers doing surveys for the last couple of months and counting how many passengers we're actually carrying up over Shinnate and over Fountain Grove. We do five trips a day with the Route 1 and we're carrying an average of 6 passengers all day long. That's right around $100 a trip and carrying 6 people. That's just really kind of a no-brainer. So we are proposing to stop serving the Shinnate portion and the whole thing on Sunday. And all of that will be covered. Mendocino Avenue is still covered on the Route 14 and the Route 10. They come in bound and go out bound on them. So everything is duplicative service with the exception of the Hill and our proposal is just to remove that from the service on Sundays. So you see it goes up over. We've got low ridership and then everything is really already covered on Mendocino Avenue where it's important on Sundays. The second one, this is the Route 12 and this would be a Saturday change and this, on Saturdays, it's the second lowest performing route. Now we changed this route three or was it four years ago? 2008. 2008. We increased it because it did have good ridership. It was running once an hour so we increased its frequency to every 30 minutes and saw no corresponding change in ridership whatsoever. So we propose to reduce it back to the one hour performance time and that brings up our productivity numbers to make it where we need it above that red line. Change frequency to 60 minutes and eliminate the low productivity and we have the Route 2, the Route 15, the Route 18 all below our average and this is on the weekdays. The Route 17 is, we can't keep it on time. Currently runs for 45 minutes and it just never does get back into the run time. You can't depend on this route to get you where you need to go or to know when it's going to show up where you're at. So we're proposing to change that to 60 minutes run time. Give it that extra 15 minutes to recover and hopefully that will take care of the productivity. People are not going to go stand around next to a pole and wait for that bus to show up. The Route 2 same thing. It's out there running, it runs out in Bennett Valley and it actually does a good productivity is at school bell times. So we're proposing to cut it back to 60 minute service and depending on how it's impacted at the school times we have hours available to compensate for that. Route 15 just low productivity. It runs back and forth from Southwest Community Park to Codding Town. If we reduce this by 30 minutes we can make it a one-hour route. All of its service generators are covered by other routes if you look at Southwest Park the 12 and the 19 both go there. Safeway on Marlowe the 11 goes there though there's we're not taking any service generators out of this. It is fully covered by other routes so it going to make that a 60 minute route and the route 18 it's our circulator it goes all the way around the community it's most of the senior residential facilities all the shopping centers but nobody rides this thing the first hour in the morning or the last hour in the afternoon we've done numerous surveys on this route and it they're just not getting out of bed so word proposed just to take the first that should really is it is a very popular route as we went to Bethlehem Towers and some of the other facilities they love this route they don't have to think about doing transfers they don't have to think about anything but getting on this route go to the store get back on the route and it gets them back home they're they love it so it'll probably be one of our top performers in one of these days so we're just taking the first two hours off and those hours will be available if needed and the route 6 can't keep it on time it's a great route it goes all the way out to Fulton Road and around and comes back downtown on 3rd Street and West College but we can't make that loop and the amount of time we're providing so we're proposing to make it a 45 minute route and that should take care of it people can depend on what time that bus is going to get there for them okay so and if you use Santa Rosa Avenue and Mendocino Avenue corridor the routes are split pretty well evenly on both sides of that corridor we're going to show you what it looks like we're going to fly in each one of these routes now Joy did you do these like for could you just adjust okay there at the route 17 that's going to be we're just increasing the time allotted we're reducing Sunday service route 2 reducing the amount of time that it we're going to take it make it a 60 minute route and 15 make it a 60 minute route and 12 just reduce it by 30 minutes on Sunday Saturday route 6 and give it more time to run that loop 45 minutes and what do we got there that was 18 thank you boy now you just look at your blue bars and the red line now it really really stabilizes our productivity makes it look like something that we could be proud of and the on-time performance will be to the point where our clientele will not be standing out there wondering where we're at so you're going to do this for me thank you this just sort of gets back to you thanks Michael this gets back to the earlier issue that we were discussing about restructuring service and we just still be some roots that are a little bit out of line in terms of the investment of hours and we are not proposing changes to these routes at this time that's Route 5 Santa Rosa Avenue right at 18 beyond the couple of trips removed we're not considering restructuring or any other changes at this time and then Route 19 which is the South City connector which runs from Southwest Community Park over to Santa Rosa Avenue these roots all sort of come up in each other for lack of a better description and what we really see here is a need to look at the Santa Rosa Avenue corridor service in a holistic way and do some restructuring of that service so that it's more efficient and it serves the riders in a better way so these are three roots that we are planning to look at in the coming year for some restructuring is a starting point so we haven't included them for February because we think they do need as Joy discussed the proposed fair increase and transfer policy changes close about half of our million dollar gap the proposed service reductions would close the other half a million of that million dollar gap we also wanted to mention we didn't include these in the earlier slides because we didn't want to over promise to the public or anyone else but one thing we are looking at is whether we could find a way to have limited 30 minute peak service on the three roots that we're proposing for the change on weekdays from 30 minute for Route 2 Bennett Valley Route 15 Stony Point Road and Route 17 Piner we would be looking at hopefully being able to retain some level of 30 minute service in the peak of the peak so we could get people to work in school with a little bit more of a frequent service and so that's something we're really looking at for those three roots to ease the pain a little bit for the riders and then finally as we've mentioned a few times in this presentation we will be looking at restructuring roots to improve service and efficiency I just mentioned and then moving throughout the system as part of our long range planning process so just to wrap up our presentation the next steps are to make adjustments to our proposals based on your feedback here today and we'll be continuing to sort of sift through the public feedback we got just last week to see if we can address some of the concerns that were raised the draft short range transit plan including these proposals as well as the larger service plan will be released in mid October for public review we're currently scheduled to come back to you for public hearing on November 13th adoption could happen at that meeting or it could happen at a later meeting in December and on whatever is approved ultimately in terms of our proposals we would immediately begin doing outreach to the public and marketing to let people know about the changes and make sure that no one has a surprise on the 1st of February when any fair or service changes would go into effect so that concludes our presentation and the whole team is here to answer I just had one question for clarification we talked on some of these routes about I'm not sure what words were used maybe anyway their inability to be on time what causes that is it traffic congestion another factor what is that Steve do you want to talk about that it's a combination of factors but I think Steve would be the best person to address that the main thing I look at when I'm looking at a route and it's ability to keep on time is average speed where I have a this route to maintain its ability to be on time the industry standard is somewhere between you know 11 to 14 miles an hour a route like 6 if you look at a 30 minute well a 25 minute cycle time actually with a 5 minute recovery we're asking that bus to maintain an average speed of 18 miles an hour which is virtually impossible in transit land so by extending the cycle time by it gives it what it needs to stay on time some routes of course are going to need a little more they're going to need 10 miles an hour 11 miles an hour is an average on time based on where they go the amount of traffic lights they encounter the loads they encounter and things like this so there's a lot of factors that go into trying to create a route that's going to stay on time at least most of the day and at the same time keeping it safe exactly good yes thank you thank you very much I also wanted to echo the mayor's comment about keeping it safe we all saw in today's press democrat the letter to the editor the concern about keeping it safe you know when they were pursuing the car chase I know that the bus drivers have an incredible responsibility to the riders but also everyone else they come in contact with to me they do just an exemplary job I wanted to thank you for your excellent presentation it went really quickly I know that you're all under the pressure to keep presentation short but I know that there are some people in the audience here and also at home who when we talk too quickly they have a difficult time understanding so I'm really concerned about the rapidity of performance so that's just something else I did have a few questions we're in a very high tech new environment and I really appreciate all the work that's gone into that I'm sure that it will be given to our techies but in a couple of the slides I noticed that for those viewers at home one of them being my husband where we have these beautiful like the service plan analysis where it let's see these are not numbered pages but it's probably about the six page in service plan analysis after service modifications the light blue compared to the green there was no difference that was distinguishable that's not a big deal to me but it may be a big deal to some people because I've got the wonderful hard copy you know I'm always worried about trees and being decimated but you know it came through as being important another question I have is and maybe I missed it but I didn't see the one that we have and that was about the Roseland so I don't know if for some reason that slide was not presented or I just missed it another one is about how do you keep your stats is it all based on money that is put into the fare box which I know that sometimes people put in let's say a quarter instead of a dime and that would you know askew the stats I'm quite sure that it doesn't mean that a driver has to do a paper pencil kind of a thing because they have already owe so many things to do another question I had is the bus driver has so many things that they're dealing with and I'm wondering I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders what does a bus driver do when a person for example I know when traveling in another country and my language is going to be English and theirs would not be and I want to go to let's say how do I get to a certain region and that bus driver has absolutely nil so how do our bus drivers cope with someone who may be only able to sign language and or have another primary language I think I'm about at the end of my queries oh I see on your fourth slide when you talked about the public meetings one was through May 12 you had about 55 people one you had three meetings in September of 12 and you said about 60 people my guess is that they probably were the same base of the original 55 although maybe you reached a completely different group I just like some answers to those councilmember you have a number of questions there I'm not sure which ones you want some answers I'm going to let them grapple with what they want to answer and if they that's what I'm trying to clarify those are a lot of questions with a lot of detail so are there specific things that you want to answer for at this moment right now for them maybe we can ask those questions one at a time they're a very sharp group I think they could probably bullet to answer many of those things very quickly and I have a feeling that I'm not the only one who's wondering about these things let's see if they were able to capture all that so regarding the driver's ability to communicate to someone at the start of hearing you do have several operators who are proficient we also let them know that the ability to write notes is often used by how the bus driver has seen us for 12 years and that's the method I use for people who have hearing impairment with regards to people who are on-ing speakers we actually pay the premiums who are proficient so it encourages people to come on to work with that skill and even so our existing employees have actually gone out and taken classes to get that extra premium that's great thank you thank you and actually we could probably have them get to look at the finance sheet to get what we have to go for 61 people that would be different individuals great thank you very much for the wonderful work you do thank you for the presentation to staff Anita at the very beginning of the presentation you talked about a redesign of the system and yet I just see modifications to existing routes can you elaborate on that okay got you so you'd anticipate or the council and the people public at that time would anticipate an integration with smart as well as Sonoma County would there also be a discussion as to integrating any proposed day passes okay appreciate that how many routes do we have that serve the junior college for is because I've always loved the idea of approaching the junior college for a semester fee they can write all the area buses and I would love to see that effort continue or start along with Sonoma County Transit and perhaps smart it's more of a comment than a question this was that they cite a reason why or they've quit doing that because of their funding issues so I'm not sure if that was one of the reasons why they quit probably have to pay for that big garage yeah the big parking garage right joy you also talked about a farebox ratio could you go over that again what would you want real quickly I missed two or um has a short court the the farebox recovery is the ratio is the ratio of the farebox revenue to the operating cost so a 10% farebox recovery means you're recovering about 10% of your operating cost from your fares and there are guidelines from the federal and state government it's actually state for transportation development act and it's 20% for the fixed route and 10% for the paratransit service okay and then lastly what I would like to see is on your California Transit Association all these various operators throughout the state some of them don't quite seem comparable and there's three San Luis Obispo Davis and Santa Cruz that jump out as being really analogous to us do we have a night because those are college towns and roughly the same size and maybe there's one or two more can we get an average from comparable operators as opposed to some of these larger systems and then and then lastly I'd like to have a discussion with you some of us are aware that there's some proposed changes that war our hospital so it concerns me that route 2 would be diminished because what might be going in there they're going to need the bus thank you was anybody aware of that that's that's the first we've heard of those changes we'll follow up and get some information I'd be happy to have a discussion with you thank you Mr. Bartley leave it down okay council member Gordon I have a question regarding the reduction of service on route 1 which serves Sutter hospital and though I recognize that Sutter is going to be moving they're still there now and mental health outpatient facility is there and a number of other county services there that may or may not need service on a Sunday and I'm sure obviously your survey has taken note of the ridership on a Sunday but that is a facility that is serving the lower income population and they would have no other way to access those facilities in that location there has been employees doing shift work also at Agilent and Medtronics but I'm not sure that they actually have a great number of employees that would use the service on a Sunday so I'm just a little concerned about the total elimination of service on a Sunday for that route so yeah I mean this is one that is a tough one because that's the only component of what we're proposing that is an elimination as opposed to a reduction in frequency and while the ridership is very low and we've been doing counts on Sundays to see the on's and off specifically at Sutter and there's been about five or six a day you know we did also hear from the public that I need to get there every Sunday but people were a little uncomfortable with the idea of having no way to get there on a Sunday so that that was feedback we heard as well it's hard you know it's important to have feedback from you folks on this issue I mean it's it's hard to justify the cost of running that route for the level of ridership but not everything we do is strictly based on the bottom line it's something that we would see guidance on as well okay go ahead I did talk to one of the coordinators at Vista Health which is on round barn she was quite concerned when she first saw the notice and then I asked her if they had appointment scheduled on Sunday and they don't so she was really quite relieved to hear that so we could certainly check with Sutter and see if they do have appointment schedule or if it's just emergency use you know they have the public health facilities there they have the mental health facilities there I would outreach to them it's one of our hilliest areas as you in the bus really know and for those of us on bicycles really know so to suggest to folks that they just use bikes or walking doesn't make a lot of sense I know that I've had discussions with Vista and just looking at a some kind of circulator bus that might round robin for some of the health care facilities with the new location for Sutter Kaiser Vista and we might be proactive in outreaching to those areas or those uses to see if there is a need for a circulator bus and how we could get that even though it's outside of our service area with the new Sutter hospital and I think some of us suggested that loudly and clearly to the managers and the executives of Sutter but it is what it is but there will be and probably is an emerging need for us to consider more circulation among 247 or 7 days a week or 5 days a week or something but we should be proactive in that as well but I am concerned about the elimination of service and maybe there is a way that Sutter and or some of the major users along that route could be more proactive with their employees and especially but just responding to a change or a decline in ridership thank you thank you councilmember hours I just want to say thanks for a very logical and seemed well thought out presentation so you have given us the tools I think to move through this system and it was a good one thank you very much and mr. vice mayor you have a question thank you mayor what kind of reduction in revenues or ridership do you expect right after the proposed increases if any historically and when do you generally recover after people kind of get used to it and first of all I want to appreciate your creativity and flexibility and you probably showed some restraint in your recommendations as well for the fair box so I'm just curious what's a little bit of a fall out that you might expect the past history of city bus stretching back to what I was here before is it seemed like we could raise fairs almost with impunity and not see a loss in ridership I think that's because of the large number of our riders that are dependent on transit the part of when we said creativity and new ideas is the transfer policy the change in transfer policy is something that we haven't tried and we haven't been able to find many people who've done it to be without one we could make enough people irritated that they don't ride the bus I don't think that's going to happen but that's the one that I think is probably the riskiest of the there's typically some ridership elasticity when you make some route changes and certainly I think when you move from a 30-minute frequency to a 60-minute you're going to lose some of the people the commuters for instance those typically aren't the people that are riding those buses and we didn't show you the work that these guys did and looking at hour by hour ridership on those routes and we didn't see huge numbers during the commute or that would indicate to us that there are people who have that pattern that would be moving to an hour would be have a huge impact so in the end I don't we don't anticipate a major hit of what we heard from the public is we don't like it but we understand you need to do it and you haven't done it in a long time and the transfer policy we've given you the best estimate that we could about the impact on that Does that answer your question? It does indeed I appreciate it Thank you Mr. Bartley Yeah just the comments regarding the elimination of the Sunday service I have to say I'm very impressed there is to the system given the situation we're in I mean it comes back to showing how important sales tax is to our city and the things it does that a lot of people don't realize Obviously if we were to somehow get not eliminate that service it's going to have a trickle down and a bunch of other things which I suspect will prolong I'm assuming it'll be sharing the pain or imposing greater pain on any particular one that you must have looked at it Why did you choose to eliminate this one? I mean there must have been a more compelling reason or a compelling reason why you didn't look elsewhere The package that we presented is our best proposal to you based on ridership and productivity We have a pocket full of other things we could do and if if we needed to that will impact more riders The route one and that set our issue is one that we've really struggled with it's five or six people getting total on's and off so if you assume somebody's making a round trip it's three people it's not clear that that's the case because we don't know and when push came to shove as kind of unpalatable as it is to not serve a hospital seven days a week it was the one place that had the least impact on our riders We have lots of others on all pieces that we can change if we need to and if the council directs us to the other thing is the council can say don't make that change on route one and don't make any additional changes we won't hit the million dollar mark and that has kind of an impact in out years on the budget and if we're really lucky sales tax turns around if we're not so lucky we'll have to deal with it in the next round of service cuts so there's any number of options that we can follow based on where you all want us to go and you're coming to us at this point because of the time frame and the complexity of the long range plan which I assume is going to be a you know we've had the discussion before that we're dealing right now with a hub and spoke sort of transit system to council member Gorin's comment about connecting all these future things that could very well be a completely different type of system I'm assuming to make really clear is we don't intend to wait four years to bring another set of recommendations to you for service adjustments you know the biggest expense for us when we do it is basically printing the map and the schedules so we're looking at at least every six months and maybe more often to come in and keep tweaking the system if we made a mistake in something that we recommend and that you accept so we're not going to let this language and I don't want to leave you with the impression that we're done doing this kind of work once we start the long-range transit plan this will be an ongoing effort for us and we'll be back here regularly so you're not facing big pieces like this again okay thank you I appreciate your hard work and your candor and acknowledging thank you council member Busta pray yes three points one is that I think public bus is one of the most significant socio-economic devices of equaling the many issues that we all face and and you've recognized that you need the council input because you know that not all the people who attend the public meetings are you know going to be representative of the writers for whatever reason the writers are busy with their families they're not able to come to public meetings for whatever reason so I'm glad that you're giving us all this input and opportunity for additional input we as a city council used to meet with Santa Rosa city schools Santa Rosa city schools is just one of the feeders to our middle schools and high schools and you serve you know pretty large geographic distribution when I spoke about the socio-economic issue I'm reminded yesterday I attended a lunch in Luther Burbank Home and Garden volunteers and one of the volunteers is a person who works during the week making electronic equipment and on the weekend he volunteers at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens and he rides from the northeast and he depends on the bus to get him there you know at 8.15 a.m. he could afford a car but because of his environmentalist beliefs he believes in taking public transit also he said much less stress and it's always on time but of course we know that there are reasons why sometimes our buses for safety reasons are not on time or whatever but you really are the equalizer effect and you know my hat is really off to you on that but with the Santa Rosa city schools I mean we can address all of the public schools and you know to meet with them but I'm hoping that with the new superintendent that we will reorganize and meet again and maybe it's only quarterly with Santa Rosa city schools I am still very upset when I drive by any of the high schools and I see their parking lots are just flooded with cars and I think of the environmental impacts on that and so you know it may be that at least one of those meetings we do have someone from transit to meet with us to talk about you know the positive aspects and it's also going to increase ridership therefore fare box blah blah blah blah I just think that this is an opportunity that I would like to pursue the other comment is about the junior college I really would like to see us pursue again this I don't know if debacle is too harsh a word but I think that there's an opportunity to try to work with the junior college I know that the email that we all receive from Mr. Burtlebaugh yes it's in the future about the over crossing yes it's in the future about smart the stations but I would like to see us do some proactive planning with transit and with the city council as to how we are going to address the needs of students who represent a variety of the socio-economic levels represent a variety of ages on the over crossing on the smart and on the existing ways of getting to the junior college so thank you council member gore just one final comment the the number of comments that I hear are not related to the to the fair size I I think it's as you demonstrated pretty pretty modest it is the sheer amount of time that it takes to get across town and two hours to get across town as they say their words is unacceptable and so what we're proposing here is to decrease the frequency of a number of routes that would potentially increase the amount of time that it would take to get across town so I guess I need to hear in the future an analysis or some descriptor if someone from Bennett Valley were going to Coddingtown at certain times of the day how long would it take them someone from Fulton Road to get to Sutter how long would it take them to go through the transit hub and to get there with the amount of time that we have scheduled on those routes and if it moves beyond the two hours then we will accomplish nothing and our bus system really will only serve those folks who are totally unable to drive we will be encouraging everybody else to hop in their cars Mr. Mayor if I may that issue is exactly why we want to look at redesigning the system when you have a system that focuses primarily on the downtown with some satellite transfer opportunities there is almost no way that you get from one end of town to the other in less than a couple of hours but one of the pieces that we've tried the hardest on is that gets far worse if you miss your connection when the buses are not running on time and we're trying to rectify that that will probably have a better impact than the offsetting tough impact of reducing the frequencies because people will know when to leave home they'll know that when they get to the transfer point their bus is going to be there they won't have missed it and they can get where they're going so I'm I'm not real hopeful that we can design it given the system we have right now that we can really address that to our problem other than try to make sure so there's a little more certainty in what they do it's going to take some other major work to redesign the system and the hard part of that is it probably means they have to transfer more than once to make it happen but hopefully they can make it happen more quickly the one you didn't mention is just north south on the east side of town to get from Venet Valley to Rincon Valley that's a brutal one that probably takes two and a half hours so it's something we're really aware of but I think we're so confined with what we can easily solve well again hats off to you good luck with this and I know that this has been an issue for a number of years we did have a proposed vehicle registration fee that would help us make up some of the revenue losses to our transit system that we've been absorbing for the past couple of years sadly we know that that did not pass and here we are faced with the reality no one likes the choices but you're doing the best you can we're doing the best we can and we recognize that we're going to we will I'm firmly convinced lose even more bus ridership by the changes that we are being forced to contemplate so thanks Anita I want to thank you and your team for the presentation and I think we appreciate that we're not looking for a one-time fix and that you're willing to continue to look at this as needed because sometimes you try to fix something maybe a new problem pops up that we have to address so I think we'll recognize that so thank you for the effort that you've put into this Mr. Birtlebaugh you've been patiently come on up and make your comments please thank you Mayor Alvarez and members Steve Birtlebaugh with friends of SMART we're looking forward to the integration of city bus and SMART in another couple of years and in the meantime we've been watching the declining revenues with a good deal of concern I was happy to hear staff talk about the idea that six month tweaks to the system are in order and I really appreciate the level of analysis that's gone in thus far what I would like to see and I hope we can see it in the short-range plan is some level of funding that we're going to need in order to accomplish the kinds of changes that we're going to need to make in order to make the system truly useful to the writer who is choosing to ride as opposed to the transit dependent writer we really need to attract the commuters other people who will ride out of choice and who don't need to take two hours to get across town who aren't willing to do that so what we're going to be looking for over the next we hope in this plan but certainly in the process of getting into the long-range plan is a sense of what we need to include in these various measures that come along that are going to enhance our income side of things and not always looking at cutting service to match the available income but being able to offer people some options in terms of if you're willing to spend a little more money this is what you're going to be able to get so we're looking for that sort of analysis as soon as we can get it thank you very much thank you Mr. Rordela so that concludes your presentation and we appreciate it and we'll see you soon with more information so that concludes our study session let's take a minute stretch and we'll get ready with our regular session check check check check one two one two one two two one two one two one two one two one two can you hear me good Mark one two two yeah one two one two better Justin one two one two check one two one two three we've got a little headroom one two I've still got about 20% okay let's go ahead and call our meeting to order please we'll begin with the announcement of roll call let the record reflect that all council members are present councilmember Goren has stepped away from the diet thank you and we'll report on our closed session the council met in a closed session for two items as listed on the agenda and no action was taken I think inclusion of that section and subsequently the council met at 3 p.m. in a study session to hear about the 2012 short-range transit plan and the proposed fair structure and no action was taken on that as well thank you very much and today we have three proclamations the first proclamation is going to be for the San Rosa International Film Festival and actually one of the films being shown during this event is very appropriate for today September 11th today is a day of remembrance I think a day that we will probably never forget but we do have here today Stephen Ashton co-founder I believe a director of the San Rosa International Film Festival to accept this proclamation and Steve I'll ask you maybe some of your group to come up and talk to us about what's going to be going on during this this event that's coming back to Santa Rosa and either of you are Steve Mr. Zan Ednister Ednister so I think we have a little bit of a can we just say a few words and then we're going to pass it on I just want you to share with us what's going on oh Jesus this has got to be one of the best film festivals in the world I have to tell you and I'm so proud that Santa Rosa has accepted it and embraced it and I know you have in your own way and all of you have and thank you so much it really is a representation of the pulse of our community and we have brought together so many nonprofits and other organizations along the way so you have to go and see the program you got to come out and see the see some of the film so you get a real sense of what this is all about and just thank you so much city of Santa Rosa for your support I really really appreciate it I'm going to turn this over to Suzanne she's going to tell you a little bit about cinnamon art a duet dialogue which is unique to this film festival has never been done in the world and then of course the vets fest which has never been done in the world and this is a celebration of our veterans and her Williams will speak to that thank you very much thank you I am Suzanne administer I'm a local artist I have a studio in sofa south of a street another upcoming area and this isn't an absolutely unique thing cinema is art art is cinema and the idea that we bring together two kinds of visual art to make something new so I reviewed a film upside down from India that has been rarely seen and as a painter I did a response to that film my painting will be shown at the opening of the film but also all the artists you can see them at Glazer Center this Friday between five and seven there's reception so upside down pretty wild huh I live I lived in India so I have a right to speak to India I think I lived there for two years in Bangalore which is like the most developed part of India it's a film about a little boy who is from a very rural part of India and he gets it he gets a chance to go see the circus in Mumbai and his world is turned upside down the top part of it has traditional designs that are found in houses and clothing in his part of India and then the bottom is more the chaos and joy of the circus and modern India so thanks for supporting this innovative program we look forward to seeing you thank you mayor as a member of the council my name is Herb Williams a year ago a man by the name of Kevin Mencio who my son designated to look after my granddaughter's finances did a bicycle trip from his grave site to 9-11 in New York City by bicycle in 93 days and arrived on the celebration of 9-11 in today is 9-11 also significant is that he joined the army because he was there working at sacks in New York when it occurred and he put all of his money into trust and joined the army my son with was in his mother visiting the site and said I have to go to and they met in Iraq on Jesse's first tour and became friends ever since since then they did that bicycle trip they had a videographer through a grant and when they saw the rushes when they got back the the producer of Godfather 3 said I want to do a documentary on this and it won fourth place at the Seattle Film Festival with 79 other documentary films it is one of the links is being shown twice this next Sunday during the film festival and Lou Rado and myself purchased 300 tickets that we're giving out to veterans so they can attend it what I really like about this is that the originators of the film festival turned it into Sunday into what they call the vets fest and they have the Patriot Guard are showing up in your parking lot at 11 30 next Sunday for a parade downtown to the Glaser Center to the opening of the long ride home which is a film about Jesse's friend going to New York I need to tell you and I've never had the opportunity before and when does anyone in politics not take advantage of an opportunity to thank the people of the city for they gave $36,000 to my granddaughter's education fund which I just think was phenomenal and he is now raised with that foundation over $180,000 for her and so I made them stop and on this trip they raise another hundred and twenty thousand which are donating to other families of children the children of families of the fallen so 9 11 is a great day for us to be here under the circumstances that it's sort of serendipitous that we're here today we invite you all to come and if you're a veteran I don't care what part of the party you're in you get a free ticket all you got to do is ask for it and we thank you very much for making the decoration today for the film festival thank you thank you thank you next we're going to have a proclamation for Creek week and we have Denise Cadman who's here to receive his proclamation from Vice Mayor Gonswere thanks for being here Denise you know it's this is doesn't really do that the Creek's justice some proclamation of the size and all of the work and all of the volunteers that dedicate so much of their time and their lives to protecting and maintaining our creaks and being great stewards most people don't even know how many miles of creaks we have so I want to give us a little a little background as what's happening in Creek's week and you know it's a week Republican here what's going on sure well there's an incredible week planned starting on September 15th and going through the following weekend and there's activities every day and evening that involve creeks there's something for everyone it's a great lineup and I'll plug my own Laguna walk and talk on September 22nd which is going to be a lot of fun all the information is available at srcity.org slash Creek week excellent thank you very much in that I saw an Alistair's here too I think of him as Mr. Creek but I don't know if that's something it's not an official title it's always been a pleasure to serve on the on the waterways committee we usually get a lot more information than the public because of being on that particular committee but hopefully the word will get out and people will be able to take advantage activities because they certainly the creeks deserve it. Thank you Alistair why don't you come on down another great body of water that we have in Sonoma County is the Russian River provides water for agriculture recreation wildlife etc and every now and then we've got to get in there clean it up so we have a Russian River cleanup they coming up or so you can tell us a little bit about this project as well. Right September 22nd is a Russian River cleanup and from Cloverdale down to Duncan's Mills there are various cleanups from canoe from the shore on the beaches and last year 250 people turned out and they spent one day cleaning up and then others came back on the Sunday to kind of sort out recyclables get all the tires sorted out and everything ready to be disposed of and all the information you need is at Russian River cleanup one word org and you know this nice weather we're having it should be a great day on the river and I'd like to thank you mayor and all members of council just for recognizing the Russian River and acknowledging the clean water and the wildlife habitat and recreation everything that provides to the county watershed in our city. Thank you Alistair I think the thanks goes to you too for your leadership because you've been there year after year after year to help keep both our creeks and the river clean so thank you for all that you do for our community. The thing is Vice Mayor Sawyer knows it the creek stuff that is not just our stormwater and creek steam doing this but we work with utilities department, public works, police, parks and just about everybody in the city to pull this off. Okay and no we're not gonna have one of the films here at this chamber just seems like it is but that's not it that's not exactly a new car smell that we're smelling either if it's probably a little bit worse than that but we're gonna have a little bit of a study session today right to talk about the new technology here I think we have Eric McHenry's gonna be doing this for us. Yeah we have a few staff briefings and they will be brief we try to keep them to five minutes or less. Our first one is the report on the council chamber audio and video updates and Eric McHenry will make that presentation and he has a team of technicians supporting them this evening making adjustments. Thank you Mayor and members of the council I'm really pleased today to present to you the new audio video system in the city council chambers this has been a project that we've been trying to do for the last probably five years and with the availability of money from the state franchises for audio video franchises we're able to clearly redo what's in here so let me take you on a quick walkthrough of what you see in front of you and different screens. I first though want to introduce Mark Latimer sitting at the table he's the CEO of the company Coda Technology that was a successful bidder and he and his team were the ones that have spent three weeks here over the council break and you can see many of them the pictures here other people like to thank as a community media center who is sitting back in that room back there trying to figure out how to use this new equipment and it's great stuff so what we did is the most amazing thing is the screen you know for many years we've had the screen over in the left now it's up here on the front and you can get a sense of what the quality of the audio and video is. We have full high definition content in the council chambers so the presentations are crisp they actually go out to Comcast and AT&T and our web streaming partner at the same quality but to this point we're not yet ready with those providers to actually have high def to the homes but we now sending a signal out from the council chambers that as good as most residents are typically used to getting on their home sets. So the monitor here and for those in the audience the monitors here to my right and to my left on the walls those are for the City Council only they are showing exactly what's being shown behind the council as are the dais monitors so just like before what you see in front of you on your monitors and on those two on the wall here are the same as what's on on the wall back there. We've added another monitor which on the wall behind the elevator and you can't see it from where you are but that's one of the most exciting ones for me that actually is showing the broadcast feed so on that monitor over there and why you'll see people looking at it is that that actually shows what you see at home. In addition it also shows the closed caption content so for the first time ever we're able to broadcast with live closed captioning and again thanks to the media center and the agreement you guys agreed to a number of months ago but this is our inaugurative view of closed captioning it's going out over the web stream as well as going out of our live broadcasts on Comcast and AT&T. The part though that was the most work is the part you can't see and Mark and his team here are still working on that and that's to get the signal content from here from the microphones from the cameras and from the presentation system but especially the sound getting that so it actually sounds right and as you can imagine it's one thing to adjust the sound in the empty council chambers which they've been doing over the last probably two or three days but now that we have a full council chamber they're making tweaks on the sound system right now and really appreciating feedback you have we can't hear what you hear over there and they're sitting there right now so they can hear what's happening kind of right behind in the middle of the auditorium. So next after this upgrade is we're going over to the utilities field operation to complete the last phase of the project which will enable similar but less expansive technology such that in an emergency we can actually live stream and broadcast from our emergency operations center which is over in the city the utilities field operation building on West College. So it's a pleasure please give us your feedback. The next phase of the project we hope to address the monitors on your desk we've heard from you that we'd like to get those recessed or done differently and that's the next phase of the project which funds allowed will hopefully start in the early part of the next calendar year. Thank you. Questions for Mr. Henry customer Gordon. Wow this is pretty terrific. When we first started talking here and I think our city manager may have been talking it was difficult for me to hear her and now I you must have raised the volume a little bit so that it's it's better for me to hear it still feels a little echo echo it does. Yes perhaps and I don't know whether that is going to be part and parcel of who we are and what we're doing or are you going to tweak that. We'll work on that in fact me standing here. I hear it for the first time also you don't hear it back there but you hear it right here. So again those are the things that a full council chamber allows us to do you know initial room turn on and testing even the Green Center did some of that also in their original testing as well and so we're no exception with audio video balancing and I know for those of us who are aging we have a little hearing loss and I include myself in that for those folks who and I know Mr hours often has his earphones and for members of the public will the system the loop system work for those folks who have the hearing assistance and so it can amplify that but where are the headphones or other devices for them to take advantage of. Yes so the loop system we have I'm not sure how many headsets we have at least a couple the city clerk can get those to be able to say we have four for in addition to the loop as I mentioned we have live close captioning going up on the screen so if even a loop doesn't work then you can look at the close captioning up on the screen but the loop functions as it did before in fact in all of our public buildings where we have meetings we have the loop system and we have that for many years. So for those folks who need access for the headphones who should they contact they should contact you. Do we have any explanation in the back of the chamber that headphones are available and they should come and see the city clerk. That's a really good point. We don't have that. I don't believe it's on the speaker card. It's on the speaker card. Okay. It's also on. Myosferus is saying that it's up there but we may want to maybe put a sign on the door suggesting that we have headphones available and that would be helpful. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes I just wanted to thank everyone you know in the cooperation with the community media center. I think it's a wise use of funds. The only reason I have my monitor down is because Anne Sealy told me I'm too short. Can't see over it. So if this is going to be recess that may help. But you know the person who's going to be sitting in this seat after December 12 may be really tall and no problem at all. So I'm sure that you'll adjust to all those issues. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Bowers. Yeah this is a subject that's kind of dear to my ears. Or what's left of them. It's it's working. There's still things I think these bugs that you got to got to work out with this system. You know it was more than a year that I was here before I was aware that there were headphones available. So it is that's a great idea that you had in it. We there's a lot of people like me that are getting old and they don't hear and they've done bad things to themselves over the years and it's really good that the system works as well as it does. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. The comments or questions from Council. I have one card on the side of Mr. Osborne. Jack Osborne 5636 Del Monte Court. Haven't improved the sound at all. I'll tell you what the problem is and I've been tainted for a long while. You have no mic control. You people talk over this way. You talk over this way and you don't talk into this. Now the problem lies in the fact that unless you have someone down there writing to gain control even at home I can't hear people when I have the volume on my TV set up and the same the same thing here unless you have my could I barely hear him said because he was up here and the mic was down here. It's it's a question that either you have to have someone writing the mic control control at the gain of the audio on the transmission into the speaker. You will never have a satisfactory audio system. Because we have soft speakers like Marsha and and then we have loud speakers. People who speak loud but unless you know you have to speak into the microphone and you don't speak like this the public can't hear you. We deaf people have trouble hearing almost deaf and it's a problem even at home because the audio level changes when there's no one writing the game control mixing the system. I hope you take what I mean seriously but I've been saying this for almost 30 years that this is the politician's friend make love to it so that people can hear you. If you don't want us to hear you just back away and not say thank you very much. I might stay in here long. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Osborne. I think the folks might want your name and contact information. You come back and kind of be their their test here. OK. But thank you that Mr. Osborne that is valuable information. It is important. I think we have an opportunity right now that we're making these upgrades to to hear these concerns and try to address them as best we can. Mr. Henry. OK. Yes. Thank you very much. We've heard that in the media center people were smiling in the back room. They put their head out and said yes please have good mic control and even I not even I have the same thing to remind to keep my mouth close to the mic and even distance apart. Thank you. And that is problematic sometimes for us up at the days when we're looking at each other making you know having a conversation. So we will definitely work on that mic control for everybody. Thanks. What I will say also the media center is writing the mics in the back. That is what part of what they do is that it's a laborious task to try to equalize the sound level between speakers that is part of their job function back there. And that's why are the quality of our broadcast is as good as it is because we have live people manning the microphone levels. So thank you back there. OK. Well thank you. Well can I just say that I have embarrassed my children to tears by projecting across department stores. So Mr. Osborne it would be really helpful if you would tell each of us individually who you can hear clearly and who you can't hear. And so OK. We we we will speak up but also it would be helpful if you would borrow one of the earphones and then give us the same information as to whether or not we are projecting accurately. Well can we we want to know which one of us cannot be heard so that we can help you with what we're saying. OK. Councilmember hours yet another question. I do have to say that these headphones work very well. And if you do want to hear all of this I would suggest to get a pair of them. We have them for you. It's a good solution. If you don't want to wear them I guess you're going to have to put up with what what you can't hear. But the fact is they work. So give them a try. Good. OK. Thank you Mr. Henry. We'll keep working at it and hopefully we'll get it as best we can. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll move on to item 7.2. Our next briefing is a Spanish language community education project on the sewage treatment process and water use issues. Good afternoon. I'm Denise Cadman natural resource specialist in the utilities department here to brief you on a new Spanish language education program that we're going to begin this fall. This is a collaboration between the utilities department environmental services and the Santa Rosa Junior College. I worked with Abigail Zogger from the life science department and Darcy Rosales from Mesa which is math engineering and science achievement. And the idea was to provide a Spanish language tour of the Laguna treatment plant and make that information available as well as other water related issues to what we believe to be a growing and underserved community. What we did was recruit a couple of top notch biology majors from the life science department who happened to be bilingual. We brought them out trained them on the really important take home aspects of sewage treatment and related water issues. They went away and worked together and also with instructors at the college to customize a tour that they will present to four different school groups this fall. The first one is going to be this Friday for the Roseland accelerated middle school and we will follow that with three more tours in October and if all goes well and there is interest and funds available we would like to continue the program in the spring and perhaps even grow it bigger so that we can reach more schools. Two of the tours take place. It's all after school programs so we expect quite a bit of family participation two of the tours occur on Sunday. And this particular series of tours was sponsored by Mesa. They came up with a one time grant that we could use to provide a stipend to the students and part of the stipend will be received when they train the next student tour guides to replace themselves. Hopefully that will occur next spring. I have some fliers here that describe the program and have all the dates in case anybody is interested in joining us on any of those tours and I am of course happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you to these council questions. We have done. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Just a great job. Thanks. This is very exciting. That brings us to the approval of minutes for August 7th and August 14th. Any corrections for those minutes? See and then we will approve those minutes and move on to Mayor and council members reports. Any statements of abstention for this evening? Mr. Mayor I thought there was an individual in the audience that had a comment on the minutes. Did you not get the car I was told. I don't have a card on the minutes. I think this is what is your name sir. Okay. Yeah you had it down for public comment. You wanted to comment on the minutes. Okay. Come on down. That's a little neggy Santa Rosa. Yes specifically in the minutes I understand that you had passed or I'm not sure exactly how to put it regarding the car impound raising the fee and I would ask you to reconsider that considering who is actually going to be paying the fines and its lower income people. I'm sorry was there a question about the minutes specifically Mr. Yes I understand that you had passed a resolution or raising the fine. Right. Can I ask you to reconsider that at this time. I think I'd have to ask for a point of clarification. This is not a question of minutes. This is actually speaking to an item. I'm not sure about the formality of this. An action or motion for reconsideration would come from a member in the majority but it would have to be the following meeting I'm not sure which item or which meeting the action occurred at but we're also not talking about I mean that would that would be something that would originate from the. So the time the time period has passed for us to take that up for reconsideration by the council and that reconsideration has to come from this body from the city council itself from a member. And that time that time has passed. I see and can I make a comment on the sound system because actually I'm not hearing very well here it seems like it's out in a room somewhere but it's it's kind of interesting. It's not like having a monitor right. Thank you hopefully they heard you back there. I'll take that down as well. Okay. All right. Well yeah I just didn't understand the formality. Very well thank you. So we did not have statements of the session for this evening so move on to marriage and council members report we were away for a period of three weeks I know a lot has happened. I guess more recently yesterday I was at the 6th street under crossing ribbon cutting great event great to see the neighborhoods come out business districts come out to celebrate that I think it's going to be a good thing for that part of our of our community. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you mayor only one official. Item to report on the snowman county transit authority I was filled in as an alternate for council member waizaki and I've actually asked staff to come back to us with a with a briefing. Because there was an update on the various projects coming going up. Both in process near completion and some completed throughout the county and it's really there was three pages of projects that a lot of stuff great deal was reported on yesterday but it was given to us in we got a sheet that had all the information I'm asking staff to kind of condense it along with some people from the county so that we can get it council can actually get a briefing on what's on what has happened what and what is near completion because it was a large body of work and I couldn't capture it while the gentleman was speaking so they're going to come back and give the council a full briefing probably in the next week or so. Thank you. Mr. Bartlett. Well I likewise along with the majority of the council and the sixth street under crossing. And last week I was down in San Diego at the California League of Cities conference with the mayor and manager. Very interesting conference and actually I think one of the more interesting things. The manager may think that also to have a set for a presentation on the city of Stockton. And their experience with bankruptcy. And how they got where they are and I think I can speak with some certainty that both of our jobs were on the floor when we heard of some of the things that they've been doing over the years. And my particular thing was the amount of redevelopment money that they were using to fund general service provisions in the city. It was terribly reassuring in terms of how solid we are relative to them. And I actually pick up some information as soon as I get it I'll send it out to everybody on the council because it is a good primer at least on the bankruptcy process. And the experience that they are going through and how they got there which is was real eye-opener. Thank you. Council Member Gordon. I did attend the technical advisory committee. This is the staff members working with the water advisory committee. And I want to let you know there are a couple of items moving forward. The water agency has contracted for a consultant to evaluate the current model of funding water for the water agency. We have consistently said as the contractors that we'd like to see more rate stability on the part of the water agency. And as you may or may not know the water agency funds their operations through the sale of water rather than fixed rates to cover their cost of operations. So they are looking at that model. They will be working very closely with the contractors and customers to evaluate that. And they expect to have some check-in times over the next couple of months. And so that and come back with a final recommendation. Now this may affect our restructured agreement because that does specify how we purchase water from the agency and how much water we are entitled to. And so there may be some interesting reactions on the part of the contractors who are less than anxious to even open those discussions or renegotiation with that agreement. And that was made patently clear to the consultant at the meeting on Monday. And there was one other item moving forward. The water agency is exploring selling $50 million worth of bonds to finance energy efficiency improvements, not only with municipal facilities but perhaps streetlights. And I've alerted our city manager to the fact that the agency is starting discussions about that. And they have sent a request for qualification out to a number of very large energy retrofit firms. So we best really understand what it is they're looking for and whether or not it makes sense for Santa Rosa to participate in something like that. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Rosseiro. Yes, thank you very much. Pardon me. What do you want to watch? That's the television feet up there. OK. OK. Councilmember Rosseiro. Mr. Osborne, if we could see ourselves, we'd spend all our time looking up there and not looking at you. I'm sure it's one of the kings that will be worked out. But I understand what you're saying. One of the points of clarification that I wanted to try to make, a member of the audience, Mr. Attila Nadja or N-A-G-Y Nagy, wonderful little Hungarian name, was referring to our minutes of August 14th. And I, you know, it is a technicality that he wanted it to be reconsidered the towing charge and the impoundment. And I will talk with him that it has to be from a member of the voting majority to vote that we would reconsider that. And that's what part of that protocol is about. As has been indicated, we were off for a very nice long recess while they were doing all of this modernization of the sound equipment. And so I'm just going to mention the August 15th event, it's called Circle of Honor at Santa Rosa Junior College, was fabulous. The number of people from Sonoma County and outside Sonoma County who contribute toward scholarships at our Santa Rosa Junior College, that's what happens. It's open to the public. It's usually the third Wednesday in August. But it is really heartwarming to see these young students come forward and receive the funding that people in our community and beyond have given to furthering their education. I did briefly mention before, yesterday was Luther Burbank Home and Garden Volunteer Luncheon. And we as city council members are invited to those events. And a more wonderful group of volunteers, hard to find. For any people who are out there in the audience or present who do have discretionary time and want to volunteer, our Luther Burbank Home and Gardens is a very, I think, worthwhile endeavor. It's on the historic registry federal and state. And although that means they don't get any additional funds. But we do have a jewel right here. And they did mention that the mayor attended one of their fundraiser dinners. So there are many other things that have happened, the Sixth Street crossing, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Roberts? Yeah, the Sixth Street undercrossing was interesting in a number of ways. It's a great new way to get around town. But also it was kind of sad in a way. It was one of the last uses of redevelopment funds that you can visually see with the kind of thing that we're not going to be able to do anymore. Thank you. Councilman Roberts? Yes, I also attended the Sixth Street undercrossing and I do hope the drainage does work. But we won't know until the rainy season. So you could feel it on the bicycle going through there. Also, Sunday night, I attended the gathering by the Santa Rosa Interfaith Council, but not in our town, in support of our Sikh community up on Bennett Valley Road. And just a wonderful cross section of our town in support of our members of our Sikh community to basically say that what happened in Wisconsin when the Sikhs were gunned down will not happen in this town. Wonderful, wonderful evening of solidarity in our town. It was a good vacation. Also would like to request that we get a report on the taxi ordinance. I got a communication, perhaps many of my colleagues did too, from AC Transportation Services, wondering why there's been a delay in implementation or enforcement of that ordinance. So I said I would request that some featured meeting. I'd appreciate the presentation on that. Thank you. I think for clarification, I do believe everybody received that letter so we could get some communication back to the council on the status of that. This is with respect to the taxi ordinance implementation. Yes, we'll do that. Thank you. Alison Burke, our team council member, you have two more meetings to go. I think next week is your last meeting and you're headed off to college. What's going on? Yeah, in two weeks I'll be off to UC Davis, but there'll be a new sea of faces to film my seat when the fall session between council resumes. And I believe that they will be rotating so that there will be a different person each week. And you've been spending some time in Spain, I believe? Yeah, I took a trip to Barcelona. It was a wonderful experience. Well, we're going to miss you and we'll see you. You will be here next week. I will be here next week. My last meeting. But I'm going to miss this. We're going to plan a roast or something for you for next week. Is there a sorry, Justin? OK, thank you. City manager. Thank you. One of the things I also attended the legal annual conference and as the council member and the mayor said, there were a number of sessions of interest. I probably went to three different sessions on what the meaning of the voluminous changes to the public employee retirement system will become January 13th if the governor signs the bill, which all indication is that he will. And I went to three different sessions and basically got three different opinions on certain things. So I think what it tells you is that the three-page analysis and summary that we have in a lot of these things is probably not going to be good enough for explaining a 700-page bill. And there are many details to it. It will have effects where our staff is going to be spending time with their professional organizations and with the PERS folks to try and understand this as it goes forward. That probably won't start until after the governor actually signs a bill if he goes forward with it. And we'll also need to be spending time with our legal team here as well. But as soon as we have some notion of how we might be impacted, how it works with existing programs in place, what changes there could be in the immediate or longer-term future, because there's some staged implementation within the bill. And so there are a number of aspects that it certainly, based on my overview, it answers some of the questions that we raised in our studies a couple of years ago that really were outside of the council's purview that really rested with the state legislature to enact, but certainly did not answer all of those questions. And so we'll get back to you as soon as we can with some additional information. And maybe we'll try to give you some initial points for discussion, because I'm sure you're getting questions from constituents about that impact. So it's a major statement. It doesn't make all the changes that everybody wanted, but it sure gets a start on a number of major ones. The other thing I would like to do, I'd like to take a moment here and introduce a new member of our staff. Bethany Fossendini has joined our staff as our new Gang Prevention Intervention Services Manager. She's coming down to the podium now. Thank you, Bethany. And I would like to say that Bethany competed well in our selection, and we're really delighted to have her here. Bethany's experience in developing several award-winning programs for youth and families in high-risk environments that would connect them to parks, neighborhoods, and their communities, as well as building a lot of partnerships in the community really put her in the top ranking for this position. And I think we're going to see some positive traction on that fairly quickly. Bethany's been on board for just a little over 24 hours. So I think she's been in meetings from dawn to dusk, and both internally and getting out into the community. We scheduled quite an introductory route for it. And as you know, there are many community partners to be introduced to. But I want to tell you a little bit about Bethany. She's not new to Santa Rosa. She actually graduated from Montgomery High School and also attended Santa Rosa Junior College. So she is returning to one of our locally educated individuals now returning to the community, which has always been the question that we've had in our communities. Do we train people and educate them and then send them out? And we don't bring our best and brightest back to the community. So she has gone on at several different universities but culminated in her Masters of Arts in Environmental and Social Justice at Sonoma State University and comes with some pretty high remarks from the faculty in that discipline at the university. So Bethany was most recently with the East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland and has also been involved in many separate programs, literacy for adults, AmeriCorps, California State Parks, Hope Services, Communities for a Better Environment, and has worked diligently and at the community level and I think is pretty well grounded in our local government and community services. So with that, I want to welcome you Bethany and you may wish to say make a few comments to the council. So thank you very much. Thank you very much for that introduction. My name is Bethany Fachendini and I just wanted to take a couple moments of your time to just say that it's a true honor and a pleasure to be working for the community and I'm very much looking forward to working with all of you and all of our extensive community partners to implement the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force goals and objectives and I'm very open to building relationships and it really does take a community. So I look forward to interacting in the future. Welcome Bethany. Thank you. Report to the city attorney's office please. I don't have anything to report and I'm filling in for Caroline Fallow our city attorney tonight. Very well thank you. We'll move on to the consent calendar. Our first item is a motion for approval of additional funds for Howard Park Pony Ride concessions. 11.2 is a resolution for contract award fleet management system software and item 11.3 is a resolution approval of agreement for election services. Council question on our consent calendar. Do you want to speak on one? I know you don't have a card but come on up Mr. Osborn. Jack Osborn 5636 Dell Monty Court. I don't understand. This contract is funded by Recreation and Parks, Budget and Fisheries and will be offset by revenue from the sale of tickets. You mean we get back all of the money that we get from the sale of tickets? Or is there some loss somewhere? And why would they need more money if they're making money? Just a question. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Osborn. I believe that on this one the service is so in demand and so successful the amount of money we budgeted for the program the success part exceeds that and so this is a boost to the expanded service that's going on and it must be budgeted and authorized by the council for such purpose. I think the shorter answer might be is we subsidize the pony rides? No we don't. It is strictly supported through fees that are raised but we're having greater success apparently than we originally anticipated. Then he's got a good question. If there's more rides and we're going to have less, it's not a big amount. I think the more rides, the more ticket sales we have to we pay for services and there's more ticket sales sold that come back to us so it's revenue neutral. So we're just collecting it. We have revenue collection and also expenditure and we're trying to recognize that through the budget. More ponies? Well, how do you know? It's been a great anniversary so there have been a lot of promotions as well. Very well. Mr. Vice Mayor? We have to move consent items 11.1 through 11.3 and wait for the reading. Second. Thank you. We have 7 ayes. We want to 12.1. Our next item 12.1. I'll be giving this report. It's a report on the Board and Commission's 2012 diversity report. The City's Charter does require us to file an annual report on diversity of the Council appointments to the City Boards and Commission's and that report must be done in public session. And so this is now the 8th annual diversity report pursuant to this chapter of the Charter. You will find in the succeeding pages a comparison from year to year of the diversity reporting since we started in 2008. So you have 5 years here. I think we report a little differently because we report the Community Advisory Board as a separate entity compared to compiling the information jointly for all the other Boards and Commission's and that's because we have some requirements for some geographic representation as well. It's a little bit different than the other Boards and Commission's. They're not required but we are scoring that as well. And so I think it's the report is self-explanatory. There's been only modest progress I would have to say. I think our challenge, particularly on the Community Advisory Board as you know, has been getting that Board full in the last two years and so I think some of the recent change that the Council made in terms of complementing both the geographic placement as well as some large placement will certainly assist in keeping that Board full, which we would like to do. It's one of the larger Boards we have here at the City. So with that I would submit the report for the Council's consideration and posting. I would also note that as we looked into this a little bit further, we recognize that the Charter actually says that we should be providing not only the diversity data on those who are appointed but also applications and so we're going to have to change our procedure a little because it's still voluntary. We don't always get our appointees to declare we certainly are going to be tracking that also with the applications including those who may not reach appointment in any one year. So we'll have a more complete report going forward. Thank you. Questions from Council. Council Member Gordon? Just a comment. Actually I think you are very generous in characterizing this as moderate progress. I see this as some major backsliding because you're talking about the other boards and the geographical distribution in 2008 11 members were from the Northeast and in 2012 23 members were from the Northeast and the Caucasian representation was 36 so perhaps district elections may help with this. I'm not sure but I just think we need to be far more aggressive in looking at diversity for appointments for all of our boards and commissions and I still have a vacancy. I'm seriously remiss on that for the community advisory board. If we've had applications turned in for that could they be for me and perhaps other council members who have vacancies on that board? Yes and I think that that's one area where I think we should really take a look at how we might better assist the council in that respect because the city clerk can be and now with our community engagement program we have better opportunities for helping to both inform and recruit individuals to make those applications and so we might use that as a supplementary process to the council's own search for individuals for these positions but yes the current applications we have we can share those certainly. Great thank you. Yes I just wanted to compliment the inclusionary council has been working really closely with our city clerk manager and the staff in trying to think of ways to help the city council in their board and commission appointments as far as the announcement opportunity to various groups that would target ethnicities etc etc so that we would have a more rich opportunity from which to select future board and commission members so hopefully this will reflect our community better in the next report. Thank you. Other questions, comments? Mr. Bartley. Yeah comment I think I think it is something that we all have responsibility for everyone here in terms of assuring the representation of the diversity of our community I think no one is to blame I think everyone is to blame and that's just the reality of it and we need to work harder. Question I held back I have two vacancies now on CAB I held back because I wanted to wait for the CAB resolution to come through which now has now my next question is something for staff to help us with we now have an appointment from one area and one at large but I don't know what area is the one area I have and someone needs to tell me before I appoint somebody. So Stephanie can help you with that. She would have that information. I don't know I don't know she know I don't know I don't know that Stephanie would know which one I think this is going to be new information. This is new I think one of them we're each going to lose one and and so you know I can't pick we've got to figure out who ends up with one so I think it's going to come back to us as I think the assistant city manager was going to start looking at how to make that happen to make it equitable and make it work for us. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Shawasaki Yes, thank you. I just have a comment I've never had staff will help place advertisement when you are seeking applications for staff and I've always gotten plenty of responses when I solicit applications for my appointments and the geographical location on these years it is quite telling that in many years it's either at 50% or just below 50% for the northeast representation so that's it's quite an indictment against retaining the status quo in terms of spreading out representation throughout the city. Thank you. Other questions or comments? So I think we're taking action on this by accepting the report. Is that correct? That's correct I have it. Motion to issue the annual report on diversity of council appointments to city boards, commissions and committees. Second. We have seven ayes. Thank you very much. We'll move on to item 12.2. Our next item is public hearing Project J winery and tasting room zoning policy review. Good evening mayor Oliveris members of the council. Before you denied as a proposal to revise city's zoning policies and regulations to achieve certain goals with regards to winery and tasting room land uses throughout the city. This is resulting from the city council's economic development priorities initiated by the tier two level of those. Essentially the changes proposed tonight are intended to create new land use classifications specifically winery tasting room and brewery reduce barriers to winery land uses with emphasis paid downtown as well as all the industrial zoning districts and then also to coordinate similar changes for breweries. We got some of these ideas through public interest demonstrated by pre-application meetings inquiries for new businesses also just staff's identification that the current zoning code doesn't identify wineries or tasting rooms as land uses wineries and breweries are a growing industry in Santa Rosa and also the current zoning code only allows tasting rooms within existing wineries. So to determine the appropriate changes staff spent a lot of time doing outreach with the industry chamber of commerce Santa Rosa police department number of specific wineries and wine associated businesses we notified all downtown property owners we notified the cab groups as well as the old main street list of businesses and all the residential properties that were adjacent to downtown so we did a lot of outreach and notification to make sure that everyone was informed of the proposal. The council direction was essentially to increase uses as permitted to help create jobs and expedite reoccupies of existing structures some of the issues as I mentioned are with the current zoning regulations are lack of definitions most winery uses require planning approval so there's a cost and a time frame associated with the start up of a new winery related business and the code or our interpretation of these relied on or our use relied on interpretations of the zoning code so it wasn't clear so I'm just going to go over some of the new changes that we're proposing there's analysis in the staff report as to how we've gotten there and further discussion and I'll be able to answer any questions after. We're proposing to define wineries specifically with two different levels of production boutique wineries and production wineries based on a 10,000 case maximum annual production limit they're allowed to have events four times a year as that's a typical part of winery businesses if they wanted to go beyond that they would use a special use permit process or temporary use permit we're proposing to define tasting rooms to allow beer and wine tasting on site with offsite retail sales and it must be directly associated with a winery brewery so that's the difference between a tasting room and a wine bar we're proposing to define breweries similarly with a brew pub level and a production level the difference in the production level is 15,000 barrels versus 10,000 cases comes from there's an established industry standard for breweries for micro brew versus large brewery and there isn't as much of one for winery so we kind of landed on the 10,000 case limit and also winery production is different than breweries it's once a year very much more intense than a brewery production which is spread out over the year we're proposing to allow tasting rooms by right in the cd and transit village zoning districts boutique wineries with minor use permits and production wineries with conditional use permits in the general commercial and shopping center zoning districts we're proposing to allow tasting rooms with minor use permits boutique wineries with minor use permits and production wineries with conditional use permits in the neighborhood zoning district we're proposing to allow tasting rooms and brew pubs with minor use permits industrial districts throughout the city we would like to allow all wineries and breweries with tasting rooms by right as well as a brew pub in the business park and a conditional use permit required in the light industrial district for a brew pub these changes are also coordinated for the LIL combining district as that's essentially a temporary holding district for light industrial in the Maxwell court area we referred the project to the center as a police department as I identified they had no comments or concerns on the proposal all public comment which there was a fair amount was all positive and supportive there was no negative comments on the project and of course the largest land use issue was compatibility between wineries and breweries in the downtown and transit village zoning designation just because there are production oriented use but we thought that the minor use permit and conditional use permit requirements would allow us to address some of the impacts associated with their production there's also some other limitations such as requiring production to be indoors or at least within the building footprint and other things like that that we felt would be adequate to address the potential impacts from these uses in these cd and transit village districts which tend to be smaller parcels so with that it's recommended by the community development department and the planning commission that the city council by ordinance approve the proposed zoning code text amendments for winery tasting room and brewery land uses and available for any questions thank you council member this is exciting I know that Hildsburg and Sonoma are bristling with over concentration we would like to have that problem in Santa Rosa but it does raise an issue of a number of the I don't think I'll worry about over concentration yet but we would welcome that problem but there is some concern about first of all will the neighbors be notified that there is going to be a tasting room I don't think that there's a problem it's usually not a incompatibility of use events perhaps is another issue and the hours of operation is another issue because if it's spectacularly successful as the Russian river brewery it does have spillover effects to neighborhoods neighbors I'm sure Mr. Sawyer can attest to that and so the notification for a minor use permit is what? when a minor use permit comes in the planner has a discretion to file a notice of application so just let everyone know application has come in but prior to any decision notification goes out to all property owners within 400 feet of the property and events is that part of the minor use permit or is that permitted by right? so the winery uses that are permitted by right such as in industrial districts would be allowed to have 4 events per year events are defined as involving other wineries so like the wine road event when multiple wineries join together to try to drive tourism those would not be notified if a winery was having an event like that within that 4 times a year allowance because the use is allowed by right if they want to do increase beyond that then they would be required to go through a use permit process a temporary use permit process where we would notify the surrounding property owner and does that include amplified music? the events all events would be required to meet the city's noise ordinance the definition of event didn't get into whether they're going to have music or not the winery events that I've been to in the past have some have had some have not so I would guess that would depend on the individual wineries in their setting well I think what we're proposing right here is not exactly compatible or the same scale as for example, Lagunitas Brewery down in Petaluma and we see what an incredible facility that is to enliven a business park or a light industrial park and parking is everywhere events happen on a regular basis and people come from miles to attend Lagunitas Brewery so we don't anticipate so far that kind of scale Lagunitas Brewery is not only a brewery in a tasting room but also a music venue so I would say that's definitely beyond the scope of any allowances within this project and one more question we know that water always is a consideration in production facilities especially with breweries specifically and wineries to a certain extent and we know that perhaps in downtown we might have a capacity issue or replacing water and sewer lines to meet the additional demand and capacity have we had conversations with our utilities department about whether or not that's a concern in various parts of San Rosa definitely not specific to what areas of Santa Rosa may have capacity issues with regards to pipe size but one of the influences in this project was the fact that industrial waste requires all wineries to install a grate that they filter all of their rinse down and wash down of their equipment and all of that that grate must be stored indoors out of rain because obviously you don't want rain water going into the sewer system that restriction by itself helped to allow current community development staff to feel comfortable allowing wineries because essentially it allows or it focuses most of the intensity of the uses indoors or at least within a cover in an area that would be over that grate. Thank you and I'm pretty sure that our utilities department will be working closely with any winery or brew pop to make sure that they have the most water conserving technology as possible because obviously that's where we're going it's exciting and I'm glad that you're working on this I expect that we might have a few ripples along the way but move forward thank you. Thank you Mr. Bartley. Yeah a couple questions Mr. House on the I'll save comments for later but on the small wineries I emailed you regarding the 15,000 barrels and I understand that should come out of it's not in the zone. My apologies there was a typo in the definitions that were in your staff report I should have addressed that in my presentation. Some of the language from the brewery definition carried over into the winery definition in the ordinance it's clear and it's specific to the 10,000 case limit. And also I did note in the wording of the order in the winery definition you refer to annually but in the winery I assume we should be adding if it does in your highlighted thing it does not refer to annually but that would be an annual production. 100% Also on that from the staff report the last line is you've allowed for I guess I'm not sure still what that lasts under the winery production you say in addition users are produced less than 10,000 cases of beverage or less but do not meet one or more of the additional requirements considered boutique winery isn't the only other quote boutique definition the fact it's all happening indoors that's correct that is the trigger so then I would question do you need to put that line in there if it has to be indoors or I was imagining I'd have to look at the specific language but I was imagining essentially a winery coming in at less than 10,000 cases but operating in an industrial area so I did not want them to have to okay thank you councilmember buster pray yes thank you very much and I thank you for this excellent research that you've done Mr. House I was wondering if Kevin Brown is also going to speak to this as one of our long time retailers and the experience that he's been through with this I would like to hear from the public if that's alright with you Mr. Brown I would like to hear how this is I will be taking public comment at a later time but I'm not sure that he's signed up he is thank you thank you thank you know for the report who monitors the four events being that there's a potential for production winery or boutique winery to be principally permitted there would be no check-in process so to speak built into any it would be resolved through code enforcement issues it would be through complaints coming from the neighbors that's basically how if there's a discretionary permit required for a winery minor or conditional use permit then we would specify that as a condition of approval when a use is principally permitted meaning there's no discretionary planning approvals they would come in to get a zoning clearance at the front counter they would be told that that's a restriction on their use so that's correct other questions from council this time I will be opening the public hearing this says the public hearing I do have a number of cards here we'll call those first Ken Mulholt Siebert hi my name is Ken Mulholt Siebert my wife Melissa and I are owned a business called ancient oak sellers we're a winery and we're hoping to open a tasting room in Corex we may be the first to take advantage of this new code language and we're very much looking forward to joining the community in Santa Rosa if there are any questions of me I could answer them thank you Kevin Brown thank you very much council members mayor I really appreciate the city's work on this they've worked diligently we've been using job we've been working on this since mark 6th we're very excited to be able to be the first to take advantage of this but certainly not the last I think that our downtown is a wonderful gem and I think that this is something that will make it much more apparent to all of those people who are starting to come and discover Sonoma County and I think it will benefit the city greatly it will benefit us as well and I think it will make this community much more alive and hopefully help your coffers as well so thank you very much thank you Mr. Brown Peter Chirna you all looked tan and refreshed from your vacation welcome back more alcohol outlets that's a capital idea more money for the city via purchasers and be a great idea that the DUIs should have their fines tripled on behalf of the city but there's something else we should consider that there seems to be way too much wine as evidenced by the tonnage of grapes in California that are often left to rot because they're not used and of course the burgeoning warehousing of excess wines of which some people have taken advantage of by arson and of course they got caught but so I suggest to you that you would consider to pass an ordinance that 50% of all the grapes from these wineries be turned into grape juice for kids and have some tasting rooms for kids with these different types of grape juice what a wonderful idea it's better than wasting it on the vines or sitting in warehouses that people never drink and then maybe these new tasting rooms could have special nights for people in foreclosure to drink away their sorrows good news I understand that a city ordinance resolution so to speak to designate foreclosed homes as historic sites and then claimed by imminent domain and the reason it would be historic is because well we'd all be middle fingering the bankers and the bush regime that were nice enough to give us 9-11 an X amount of years ago so we have every reason to raise up our glass and toast to the teachers general strike over there in Chicago and we have every reason to join that general strike on behalf of freedom for our kids these grape juice drinkers and these adults the wine drinkers how exciting you know I really want to see this strike because about 10-12 years ago I promised I wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol until Leonard Peltier walked out of prison and let me tell you what it's been a strain for 12 years to not have one drop of alcohol so I need your help with this general strike which would shut down these bankers and the bush regime of course that owns both Romney and Obama both so it doesn't matter which way we go on this one but with this general strike we could pick anybody we want for president and I kind of like Marcia Dupre for president that'd be nice or maybe even our mayor Ernesto Oliveira I think he's a serious person he would be able to handle the job and he's not owned by the bankers you know I think the law enforcement ought to arrest these guys but they can't do it because of all this complicated conspiracy stuff so yes let's go ahead and pass an ordinance with the vineyards so that 50% of the grape juice goes to grape juice for kids for free and let's go ahead and start talking to our friends on the e-mail and telephones to join this teachers general strike maybe we could educate this nation to a higher station we're all tired of this and believe me I would love to have a nice glass of port sometime soon with my dinner but I can't do it until the guy who's got the US Constitution sitting in his cell by virtue of the fact that he represents the 500 year indigenous resistance has got the Constitution sitting in his cell in her Peltier it was the Iroquois that gave us this Constitution go ahead and have some wine and talk about this with your friends and let's go ahead and get revved up like Efren Carrillo that's what I want to see you guys you know I heard that he was in Russia with a sound box in an entourage playing the Rocky scene Rocky music to it I'm just about done I got 19 seconds well actually we started a timer a little bit late the last 10 seconds and I appreciate that so let's talk about this general strike let's get on board and shut down this corruption in service to the living lord thank you very much mayor thank you Aaron members of the council thanks for the opportunity to speak to you on this proposed ordinance and at the risk of being a little too rational I want to speak in support thereof as we continue to work our way out of this after effects of the great recession it's absolutely critical that governments city governments do whatever you can to help facilitate re-tenanting the space and the growth of businesses I really want to commend the community development staff Chuck Rogali and his team for bringing forth this particular ordinance and some of the ones that will follow later this evening as means for doing that it's a real critical role the city plays in terms of helping the development of business and with that the creation of jobs in this particular instance I think it's also important because it reflects the change in our economy the trend towards visitors coming here as you all know the chamber working with the city's economic development department spent a lot of time trying to bring visitors to our community and the more we have for the things for them to do for opportunities for them to enjoy wine tastings having them enjoy their stays so I urge you to vote in favor of this particular ordinance amendment and also as we go forward to continue to do those kinds of things that make it easier for businesses to grow, expand and put people back to work thank you very much this is a public hearing those are all the cards that I have on this item but you do not have to let a car to speak on this item if you wish to speak step forward please that was your cue Mr. Osborne Jack Osborne 5 6 3 6 Dale Monicourt I wouldn't come speak on this because I don't care I drink wine and beer and most everything else but what I was concerned a little about was kind of exposing it to the city for the first time I hadn't seen anything about this so here you are and you're going to make a resolution approval but then I say and you're watching this stuff up there and it says public input all favorable so ask yourself what public input all he said was they asked the people who wanted to do it how can you have public input when the public input doesn't know it's going I don't care about that it's just one of those things about the city you say they say public input all favorable people say yes and no so they're only listening to certain people okay as I'll switch my voice a little bit and what's concerned me even more was police no comment or referral what you propose to have 10, 20, maybe 30 more bars and breweries and wineries and the police don't care they don't they're always complaining I mean everybody's always complaining about a bar okay so I'll switch away from that okay the next thing is and then you say it's a right to have it a right what happens if they don't really want to follow your procedures what happens it's a right to have it you can't take my right away without paying me for it that's the constitution and then I watched the last one there and I said well, more than 10,000 barrels I think that's what I read 10,000 I never said 10,000 cases of beer or wine 10,000 barrels of brew 50,000 500,000 gallons of brew in a small brewery sounds like a pretty big one too kind of have to have big tanks but that's all to be worked out in the future anyway I hope they all make money I hope they all have fun and drink lots of wine and beer but for heaven's sakes please don't spring this on the public and then say well we didn't get any negative comment thank you very much thank you Mr. Osborn Ray D'Argenzio thank you for having me Mr. Mayor and City Council I've been in the wine business here for about 20 years in Santa Rosa probably one of the first wineries the Argenzio winery and also Paradise Ridge and probably in the last 5 years there's probably been at least 10 more wineries that have moved to Santa Rosa and probably at least 100 more jobs maybe even 200 more jobs within the city of Santa Rosa there's probably 20 or 30 more wineries that want to move within the city limits creating probably a couple hundred more jobs for the community for its citizens including housing the increase in tourism is going to be great is great for the cyclist the cyclist community are traveling from all the area love to have the experience of the wine industry the hotels I was actually checking with some of the hotels this past weekend this coming weekend for Harvest Fair weekend they said that almost every hotel in the whole city is completely booked which is obviously very good for the restaurants the hotels and the local wineries so I commend you on your accomplishment here and also the staff and the staff here and I think this is going to be fantastic for the city of Santa Rosa and the community the issue about the water issue with the wine waste the wineries are actually very cautious of the wine waste they want to minimize as much water usage as possible so that's something that the wineries have always been very concerned about as far as turning grapes into as far as the shortage of grapes there actually is a shortage of grapes there's not over a bunch of grapes right now the last two or three years have been hard for the vineyards people so now the grapes are coming back I commend you on what you're doing and I think it's going to be very good for Santa Rosa thank you Ray again this is a public hearing you do not have to fill out a card to speak on this item so if you want to speak please step forward I'm sorry, what are you going to speak I'm sorry hold on Mr. Hilton go ahead my name is Rue Furch and I live in the unincorporated area and I like to suggest that agricultural processing in the incorporated areas the infrastructure issues and traffic impacts are managed is optimal for increasing the use and access to all of our tourism drivers in Sonoma County and so I'd like to thank you for considering this and hope that you'll find a way to support the ag processing in the city of Santa Rosa, thank you thank you Mr. Hilton some of your city council members Terry Hilton, Southwest Area Business Association and the Redwood Empire Business Association I want to commend Chuck Regalia and his staff for putting together something that I think is going in long ways and my board thinks turning the public that we've been exposed to have a negative thought about Santa Rosa being anti-business this does tons of what's on the agenda tonight I can't stay for everything so I want to say this now that this is going to really take us and put us back into an area that will make us comparable to Sonoma all other areas excuse me for a moment I'm a little ill the the Southwest Area Business Association does want to point out that Chuck Regalia has been doing some wonderful things in the last 25 years that I've been coming up here most of that time Chuck has been in there in the in the pits in the front line so when it comes to time to give him a raise take care of him thank you very much thank you Mr. Hilton okay seeing who else rise for a public comment I will close the public hearing and bring it back to council any questions based on comments well Ms. Verge raises the question of agricultural processing in the city does this fall under is it a subset of agricultural processing or what else would be encompassed by agricultural processing and where is that allowed currently wineries were not even mentioned in the zoning code so that's part of the things that we were trying to address here breweries were mentioned in a light industrial mentality bottling plants bakeries are in the same category so it's the zoning code definitions kind of anticipated large scale industrial production facilities for bottling plants processing of grapes which at that time would have been interpreted it's one of the zoning code interpretations we had to make as agricultural processing a light manufacturing process so this is a subset but in general agricultural processing is much broader than just what we're talking about and did I hear you say that agricultural processing could be accomplished in an industrial area perhaps Amy's kitchen that's food production so currently those types of uses are defined as a light industrial process the light industrial definition does capture agricultural processing yes is there a need for us to consider at some point in the future expanding where agricultural processing could be located that's not a question from we don't get folks interested in starting other types of agricultural processing businesses like we get people interested in starting wineries as far as I want to do this use where can I do it so maybe at some point in the future if we do have inquiries we need to revisit the issue but for right now this seems to work that's correct and also I could speak to the to the Jack Osborne seemed to be under a misconception that there was minimal public outreach please we sent over 1100 direct mailings just to the residential properties around downtown that doesn't include the notification to the cab groups or the notification to the business community in downtown that was my primary concern with taking moving this ordinance forward was public notification and trying to ensure that the folks who live around downtown had a chance to chime in on the process and that would include the people who live on the second or third floors of the downtown my goal was to get residential properties surrounding downtown and then the property owners of downtown buildings most of those are not condominiums so I'm not sure that individual tenants living above say the four street market would have got a notification okay thank you know and now when we do talk about public notification we don't talk about the entire city we're looking at the impact of the area typically thank you that's correct Mr. Bartley or were you moving on comments I did just based on that last answer the notification for the industrial users since there may be an issue with events sure so I did not specifically notify all industrial property owners I went to the Pine Creek business park and interviewed about five of those winery owners got their contact information then asked them to speak with the surrounding property owners and then we put a one-eighth page ad in the newspaper as well that would be the only industrial area in the city that could be affected by this or are there others all industrial areas in the city could be affected by this those are the ones that are currently the primary consultation of wineries that is a bit of a subject for concern I generally support this ordinance but I'm a little concerned now that some of our commercial tenants are unaware that they could be affected by this industrial areas would allow an auto shop to move in without any discretionary action similarly to a winery and their zone the events oh the events that's a valid concern but I would characterize most events is operating in the evenings and weekends off business hours questions yeah well respond to that one I think we have a perfect example right now with Virginia Rio and an industrial area and it works out perfectly because when the events are happening no one's working and there's tons of parking so it's never an issue I want to thank staff for really working hard on this I do know something I know a lot about wineries I think this thing is very comprehensive I think it's very optimistic going to be a problem. But I think most everything we do in 20 years is a problem and so if that's going to be our controller we might as well do nothing. I think what we're doing right now this is perfect it will help energize we're seeing bits and pieces of it. Dargenzio I wish one correction I wish we could claim credit for Paradise Ridge but it's actually in the county it's their entrance it's in the city. But I know we'd love to claim credit for that too. I think it works really well. I think the controller and I think Mr. Stanley on the planning question knowing what 10,000 cases what's required to produce 10,000 cases of wine that is not going to be happening in very many places and anything beyond that is not going to happen in any type of ag production this version she's got her former county planning commissioner had on the controlling thing is going to govern big production in our city is the cost of dispose of the water because at 10,000 cases and actually probably about 12,000 cases you could not pencil out our sewer rates to what somebody could get a piece of land in the county and dispose of it on site would do. So that'll be the controller for the bigger facility. I think it's great and I'm really happy to see it move forward and I can't wait to see what happens inside corks. Mr. Owars? Excuse me. The economic competitiveness task force was very much in favor of this type of thing but what we're really talking about here is one of the main things is giving our business owners and our property owners in our downtown a new set of weapons to continue their businesses. Corks was on the ropes and it's the stuff that we're doing here that will allow them to maintain and to continue the traditions that are you know have gone forever but they have if we give them the chance they can adapt and that's what business does. So this is very important because we are giving businesses a chance to change and adapt to new conditions and I couldn't be happier about this and it's important to me it's important to our city and it's going to be probably the future of our city because there's going to be a lot of people are going to say wow I didn't know that Santa Rosa allowed that and that brings up the next point that I really want to get to at some point is we have to tell everybody out there that this is happening and I see Dave Gwine up there and I know this is something that he wants to do but it's very very important that we get the information out to the public to to trade groups and other people that they have an opportunity to do something in Santa Rosa that they couldn't do before and that we are the heart of wine country and we're the biggest city and this is where they should be so I'm of course in favor of this and and I really am glad that we're doing it. Thank you mayor well this is very exciting and I I remember the days in prior councils were ringing their hands about the ability for a restaurant downtown to serve wine outside their front doors at a table and this was in the not too distant past it would take Santa Rosa sometimes a long time to to come of age in this case perhaps decades so the time the time has come and I want I do want to thank Kevin and his wife Jerry and and Ken and his wife Melissa for taking a risk taking a risk in downtown taking a risk in Santa Rosa stepping up to the plate and going through the process which was not an easy one and it took it took a long time and I want to thank staff and Chuck Regalia and Noah and everyone who worked on this it was a lot of work the the discussions we had at the economic competitiveness task force you know helped to to push it forward it's the timing was a little off for quarks I mean they were they were thinking of the ID at the same time just just about the same time that staff was looking to make these changes so it it almost meshed time-wise where they would have been able to have their tasting room open before they had to deal with their with their harvest and then crush but you know sometimes it just doesn't work out the way we want but I but I think it it is a wonderful facet to that gem that Kevin talked about in the downtown so congratulations good luck it is like a council member ours mentioned exactly that what we need in Santa Rosa better late than never and I look forward to the problems that although the councils may not that the to the problems that council member Bartley mentioned we should be so lucky to have those kinds of problems so good luck and I'm really happy to be moving this forward tonight thank you Mr. Westlock councilor gory well I want to add my note of thanks as well this council the previous council and other previous councils have talked about how we enliven our downtown and we thought that the way to do that was to get housing downtown that has not been entirely successful yet we will get there but this may be the mechanism to do exactly that we've seen some of the success in railroad square with some of the tasting rooms there D'Argentio winery thank you for taking that risk up there because different spots around the city are emerging as those kind of hubs and I know that it will happen you are helping to make that happen bring the folks downtown after five o'clock and we can it's not just the bar scene anymore it's a very sophisticated enlivening presence and I look forward to it it's going to be exciting and it's a welcome change and thank you everybody for your efforts in making this happen thank you this this is a very exciting time for San Rosa I think it's about adapting I remember when corks was a place to go get stationary and things like that and it's changed or adapting to changing times same thing with our community we've been hit really hard with an economy and as we as we crawl out of this thing we also see a rise in the popularity of our own city and county as far as tourism and we're adapting to that so there's this is good stuff I'm really excited about it and continue on to move to the next levels next level with all the good things that we're doing to get our economy back in shape so with that I'll move over to Councilor Vostoprey who actually has this item yes yes I do and I'm probably one of the few who even knows what the acronym WCTU stands for I find it very interesting that I'm the one to introduce this for those of you who are on the edge of your chairs that's women's Christians temperance union but I know that because of the research that's been done and our whole policy of conditional use permit and the fact that the string quartets that may be playing or other musicians I'm sure it will all be done in very good taste but that's why we have our use permits in place that if something does go awry and and the police do become affected negatively and whatever it I have a feeling that it will be properly taken care of ordinance of the council the city of santa rosa amending zoning code section 20-23.030 table 2-6 allowable land uses and permit requirements for commercial zoning district section 20-24.030 table 2-10 allowable land uses and permit requirements for industrial districts and then the same section 20-28.070 table 2-20 allow land uses and permit requirements for limited light industrial district section 20-42.034 alcoholic beverage sales and section 20-70.020 definitions of specialized terms and phrases file number rez 12-004 and wait for the reading of the text we have seven eyes thank you okay council do you want to get to the next public hearing before taking a break that's fine okay we'll move on to the next public hearing please you would rather take a break okay we'll go ahead and take a break I think we have something to snack on upstairs 20 minutes sound good okay let's go ahead and reconvene and we'll move on to item 12.3 our next public hearing is item 12.3 the zoning code text amendments for the southeast santa rosa food desert and erin morris represent thank you mayor olivaris and members of council this project is a change to the city's zoning code to allow large grocery stores as a permitted use within existing buildings in census tract 1514.02 which is an area of southeast santa rosa designated as a food desert by the united states department of agriculture brief background on this there is an overall change to the city's policies and zoning regulations related to grocery stores and food outlets that you approve back on june 19th of this year following your action on that you directed that staff bring back an additional change of the zoning code specifically to address the need for a large grocery store in the food desert and then we developed that zoning code text amendment package and took that to the planning commission on july 26th and they held a public hearing discussed it and ultimately unanimously recommended approval of this zoning code text amendment i have two maps uh the first one shows the north half of the food desert and the second half shows this we'll look at the south so the food desert um census tract 1514.02 is bounded by highway 12 on the north um highway 101 on the west and petaluma hill road on the east so just to get your bearings this is the santa rosa marketplace here and then traveling south this is belview avenue so the marketplace is probably up here somewhere um the food desert goes all the way down to mountain view avenue the south side of mountain view avenue and comes back around petaluma hill road and one of the questions i've gotten that i kind of want to maybe go over this a little bit more at length but still briefly is sort of kind of why food deserts and what why is there a definition for this and sort of what's the point of this project and so from the federal government standpoint since this was a federal study uh congress initiated the food conservation and energy act of 2008 and they basically asked the usda to do a study to look at improving access to affordable nutritious food particularly as it relates to disease and obesity prevention so the usda did a lot of studies out of that came this term uh food desert which is defined by the federal government as an area with low income residents who have low access to a supermarket or large grocery store unlike the city zoning code definitions the usda does not define supermarket or grocery store the same way we do it's a national thing basically they define supermarket grocery store as a sort of full service store that has at least two million dollars in annual sales that provides a full product line essentially meats fresh meat vegetables anything you'd find a kind of a typical santa rosa supermarket but the key thing is there it's not a specialty store with a limited range and it is not a membership store it's a full service store that's accessible to everyone and part of their study shows why they believe those are important to address a food affordability and also being able to get a full range of grocery products so our food desert which is the only one in sinoma county our census tract 15-1402 is approximately 3.4 square miles most of it is still in the unincorporated county we have 576 acres or just a little less than one square mile in the city of santa rosa and per the usda and and all their national data actually goes back to 2010 so that's just important to note these are 2010 numbers at that time there were almost 8,000 people living in the census tract of which 2,626 had low access to a large grocery store and that was 33 percent of the total population which is a basically the trigger for determining that this is a food desert additionally they noted that 431 of the low-income people also had low access to vehicles so therefore low access to the kind of mobility that would get them to a large grocery store out of the area so going back to our food desert most of it that's in the city as shown here there's a little bit north of here and this is again the marketplace is right around here and this is koana spring actually it's right here this is koana springs road most of our zoned area is cg so this part of the city is where and the general plan is retail and business services this is where we expect to see sort of the broadest range of commercial uses everything from the low-key commercial uses to the more busy ones and so essentially what the zoning of text amendment would do would be sort of going one step further than the changes you approved in june in june we the city removed the prohibition on large grocery stores in this part of the city and also city-wide we said you can do a large grocery store through a conditional use permit process what is before you is the proposal to eliminate the conditional use permit requirement just in the food desert within existing buildings for as long as that area remains a federally designated food desert so that's sort of that this is the next step that you asked us to go bring back to you and well this is a lot of text it's really big on this new screen but we'd accomplish this by adding a keynote to our land use table and basically would say that large grocery stores are a permitted use within existing buildings in census tract 1514.02 because this area has been designated as a food desert by the united states department of agriculture once the area is no longer a designated food desert this note is no longer applicable and proposed large grocery stores are subject to the land use regulations of this table so essentially when the food desert goes away then this area would be regulated like everybody else city-wide. Just touching on a few points that we always look at with rezonings we looked at the city's general plan policies and found that on a whole this rezoning is consistent with those policies. For environmental review we found that this project was covered within the general plan 2035 EIR and was a specifically exempt from further environmental review by section 15183 I can provide a more technical explanation if you have questions about that but that was the environmental review determination for the project and I didn't I did want to mention one other thing we did receive a lot of public participation through the first project getting us to June but haven't had a lot of public participation in this phase we did publish an eighth of a page ad in the press democrat and people do read those because they call us about them a lot there's one letter I received today from the living wage coalition otherwise I haven't heard from any other members of the public pretty much so I'm happy to answer questions that you have but I wanted to let you know the planning commission and my department recommend that you introduce this ordinance and approve this zoning code text amendment for the food desert. Sorry councilmember Weislach. Thank you so I appreciate the report thank you very much Erin so San Rosa marketplace is included within this desert and there are three establishments that sell food there now I noticed that one's a membership store that's Costco so that would exclude them how does Target and Trader Joe's get excluded from that. Trader Joe's is considered a specialty market and I had to read this is not even I don't know an eighth of the study that supports the food desert project but they categorize stores under a certain size as specialty and that's kind of store according to both the county health staff that have been assisting me with this project as well as it's based on their conversations with the USDA Trader Joe's is a specialty store so it does not qualify. Interesting because I bet they qualify on the sales requirement. They probably do one of the things to kind of keep in mind with regard to the USDA's interest about affordable and healthy food is that they're looking for the stores that provide the full array like down from dried beans which is something for example you can maybe get a Trader Joe's at least you can get something kind of approximating that all the way to you know the other more fancy stuff so I don't know how they did it but they Trader Joe's is not counted in their eyes. And and Lola's that's across the street on Petaluma Hill is that considered outside the food desert? It's actually outside the food desert it's east of the eastern boundary of the food desert. Just by nature of the street? It's the census tract the census tract 1514.02 is divided at Petaluma Hill Road. So just if someone's across the street from Lola's in the food desert in that tract they're in the desert even though the Oasis is right across the street. I don't believe it's looked out that way but we're getting into really you know technical detail I think that they do acknowledge stores that are nearby but you have to kind of also keep in mind that they're looking at where are the people the low-income people particularly those with low access living how can they get to these stores wherever they're located without you know the mile track I appreciate your answer and I do I just it just kind of boggles the mind that the emperor in Washington DC is giving you know giving us the definitions as to what's walkable or not walkable and it's right across the street. I did note that low income was 33.1 percent and the floor is 33.0 percent yes we're just kind of squeaking in there are these 2010 census numbers. These are 20 2000 census numbers 2000 they have not done any updates to the food desert designation. So we've had a census since then but we're relying on 12 year old numbers. We are relying on the USDA's determinations about where the food deserts are located. I'm trying to find the analogy about life in Shanghai very good and the emperor is very very far away in Beijing and that just I'm really skeptical calling us a food desert when we have all these establishments that sell food that's how about could we could we allow a farmers market for fresh fresh us supposed to set up with in some of these would that help with the food desert as opposed to changing this with that change I'm just curious just a thought because we had the food trucks downtown I think why not have a farmers market in this area to facilitate that what would that do to us the USDA acknowledges that they call it a community food environment or a food environment and that's actually something the county of Sonoma will be studying in this part of Santa Rosa actually starting this fall but they acknowledge that a food environment isn't just a large grocery stores it's also the you know liquor stores convenience stores drug stores that sell food and you know farmers markets they call them kind of community based food initiatives so they acknowledge that those efforts are positive and can have positive effects on public health which is sort of their lens but they specifically relate the food desert definition to large grocery stores low income people with low access so just one final question then there is a farmers market irregularly or regularly at the veterans building isn't that walkable the to some of the members in this food desert possibly some folks in the north it's not a easy walk probably but it is just just a thought okay I appreciate it thank you Mr. Barley just a point of clarification didn't we about what six weeks ago already acknowledge this is a food desert and instituted the zoning code changes to allow supermarkets in this area which was your direction that was our and and so really what we're talking about is this is specifically regarding re-tenant in the existing building not whether the supermarkets can be allowed in this area it's just specifically being able to return to existing buildings correct this is under the council's guidance on all these economic development projects about returning existing buildings creating jobs increasing for me yeah but I mean we did go through the discussion six weeks ago about food desert and I thought we were unanimous in saying yes it was a food desert and we changed the zoning code appropriately and then gave additional direction yes thank you customer or well I do remember that conversation vividly I think it occurred about 11 o'clock at night and all of us were just really anxious to agree to something and move on but never in my imagination would I did I think about what this really means and so it generates a number of questions um we have a number of designated community shopping centers and I think I served with Mr. Barley when we actually did have a discussion about a wonderfully designed mixed use project with a shopping center on Petaluma Hill Road but it looks as though Petaluma Hill Road and I think Kiwana Springs is if that's where it was maybe outside the food desert or at least the designation here that site is designated on the general plan as a community shopping center but it is east of the boundary of the food desert so the um who designated the boundary of the food desert it's the federal government uh through the census they have census tract boundaries and some of them are very logical seeming and some of them that literally zigzag like a jigsaw puzzle through town but um it all comes from the federal census okay and and that maybe I agree with Mr. Waissaki that's somewhat arbitrary because in fact all of the people on the east side of this boundary east of Petaluma Hill Road do not have access to a supermarket over there and um probably a number of them would qualify for the income uh categorization here so I know I'm asking some speculation but if in fact we had a large supermarket uh inhabiting an a an existing building the circuit city building for example um and I don't even know what that large supermarket would be but what would that do to the demographics and the market share and the economics of any other grocery store wanting to locate anywhere in that southeast area that is not something that I know we did not study the impacts of retenanting vacant buildings on other similar uses but I would speculate that in fact if we did have a grocery store on along Santa Rosa avenue that um unless the city grew dramatically on in the southeast area that the likelihood of having another grocery store come in along Petaluma Hill Road would not happen for a long long time that's my speculation with uh with a little economics minor here um if we allow this to move into an existing building uh the infrastructure is already built and um and we're sort of granting a benefit for an existing property owner are we prepared to give the same kind of concessions to another grocery store somewhere else I mean are we going to pave the way with a rezoning or or anything else uh what part of staff's analysis albeit it was only about six weeks ago that we're all here at 11 o'clock at night we looked at are there other sites like are there many sites in the food desert where there's existing buildings that could be retentative with grocery and I have to conclude there's at least three or four different sites where either existing grocery that could expand or there's vacant buildings at present or there's some cases where there's buildings that are occupied now but could be vacant six months from now or a year from now so this zoning code change would not benefit just one site it would benefit any sites within the food desert where there's existing buildings in need of attendance in the food desert not just on the other side of the boundaries within the food desert only do we have access to any kind of economics information that would talk about the economics of grocery stores because I think we've had this discussion before um a number of years ago because we were speculating as to why a grocery store was not constructed in in southeast or southwest Santa Rosa the the federal the USDA has a lot of information actually about the economics of grocery stores it's a little bit outside of the scope of the work that we were asked to do to get this item back to you kind of quickly relative to the economic development initiatives but there's a lot of information about how how grocery stores end up where they are what kinds of customers they serve how far people will drive if they don't have cars kind of what the substitutes are if they don't have a grocery store nearby there's extensive research available on that most of it within the last um four years because it was initiated in 2008 and then the county actually has a ton of data about this because they've had the southwest Santa Rosa food access project and they're now swinging over to southeast Santa Rosa so they're another resource to the city on that topic so absent that information are we a little premature in taking this action tonight because it may preempt any other kind of projects food projects in the southeast or perhaps even the southwest I believe that this project implements the council direction that community development was given on June 19th and that ultimately it's attempting to kind to unite economic development with a public health concern but ultimately it's an economic development project so I don't know what else to say all right if we took this action what would be the process if a grocery store wanted to tenant an existing building what what would they have to do well at minimum they would probably need to do building permits and comply with building and fire code because even with an existing building that's been built for general mercantile there'll be some building changes that they'll want to do and there'll be some building changes the building code will require to the extent that it's interior ti with tenant improvement without a lot of exterior changes it could be just building and fire code related changes and permits if they decide and sometimes grocery stores have different features like outdoor changes or they want to make exterior improvements then they would come through the design review process and that would be probably the main way that we would interface with them with permits and did I hear you say that they would have to take out a conditional or a minor use permit if this is approved by the council a grocery store wishing to occupy an existing building in the food desert would not need a use permit they would need design review if they wanted to make exterior changes and how would the community or the neighbors know of a particular grocery store or for example a walmart might move into that building i believe we might have talked about this on june in june but they will know when there's grand opening or they start to see activity as the store's gearing up to be opened they're the building permit process is a ministerial one and there's not public notification now if design review is required then owners within 400 feet would receive notice of that and depending on the level of design review there may be blue signs or not to alert more people about that propose proposal okay thank you council other questions we'll go to public comment thank you erin i'll go ahead and open the public hearing uh we'll begin with judy kennedy before i start i would like to figure out how to work this overhead projector now that everything is new here so maybe i could have a go ahead and set your paper down and we're good to go i wanted to zoom in to something do i what i don't want to touch anything until i know for sure i'm not gonna break the dance okay good afternoon city council mayor olivares and people judy kennedy 620 oak street erin morris knowing that the neighborhood alliance has been advocating for grocery stores in within walking distance of every resident of santa rosa she knew that it would be important for her to get in touch with us about the grocery store in general and we met with her jenny bard and i met with her sometime before june 19th and we're thrilled that you did pass the the grocery store amendment in june that makes it possible for small and large grocery stores to come into the downtown area and also to come into neighborhoods while we were discussing the grocery stores we talked to her about the circuit city site and um one of the things that we noticed or that i noticed the black x right there is the site of the circuit city now right across the street across santa rosa avenue near this site are three separate mobile home parks the first one there if you live in that mobile home park you have to walk five tenths of a mile to get to that grocery store because there's no easy access to cross santa rosa avenue the mobile home park that is just below it your walking distance is now six tenths of a mile one way there's a third mobile home park just below that one and you are now walking eight tenths of a mile to get to that grocery store so it's obvious that this is not a grocery store that's going to be easily walked to and i dare say um a lot of people are not going to walk there they're going to continue to use the little stores around them um one of the things that i asked erin at that time was why doesn't council consider a farmers market or a mobile farm produce truck that would go into these areas on a weekly or twice weekly or three times weekly basis so that these people could have access to fresh fruits and vegetables fresh eggs bread you know the staff of life and i think it's interesting to note that there are cities all over the united states that are now doing this mobile food trucks carrying produce from local community gardens to their food deserts and this is happening in new mexico cleveland pittsburgh pennsylvania and even east oakland now i don't have a lot of time but i wanted to ask that you not only look at changing the zoning code for bringing in these large-scale grocery stores but also change the zoning code so that farmers trucks and produce stands can come into these areas um with the same openness that you're giving the developer and the property owner for the large-scale grocery stores thank you very much thank you martin benett martin benett i'm marty benett co-chair of the living wage coalition of sinoma county and uh we have submitted a letter to the council on this issue um i am going to just excerpt from that letter and there is one correction i'll make in it the living wage coalition um disagree with city planning staff that the proposed amendment to the city zoning code within census tract 1514.02 in southeast santa rosa qualifies for the designation as a food desert despite what the staff report says the area is not a quote food desert as described in the staff report to qualify as a food desert an urban census tract must either have a substantial number of low income residents 20 or have quote low access to a large grocery store defined as more than 33 living more than one mile from a large grocery store the staff report claims that 33.1 live beyond one mile of a large grocery store this makes no sense for the following reasons one in the middle of the census tract are a cost code target and trader joe's all selling food if these stores are and please correct if these stores are not excluded as large grocery stores over 20 thousand square feet then almost the entire population would be more than one mile from a grocery store in other words their interpretation of access to a large grocery store is incorrect second census tract 1514.02 has a 2010 population of 9177 the 7934 figure identified in the staff report is from the 2000 census thus the finding that this area is a food desert is based upon false assumptions and not the current 2010 census it appears to be little more than a means to enable a developer to bypass the conditional use permit requirements for large grocery stores otherwise included in the current general plan and zoning code at a minimum the city council should direct staff to return with an updated analysis documenting whether in fact the census tract is a quote food desert if it is not then this zone taxed amendment should be discarded and any person seeking to locate a large grocery store in the area should be required to follow the same rules as anyone else third even if this track were truly a food desert the statement in the staff report that the tax amendment is exempt from CEQA under section 15183 is incorrect there is no evidence the general plan 2035 EIR evaluated and mitigated any of the environmental impacts on traffic air quality urban decay etc that might result from locating a large grocery store in this area furthermore as we explained this appears to be a misinterpretation of section 15183 section 15183 exemption from additional environmental review was not intended to apply to zoning changes the history of 15183 makes it clear it was intended to apply to actual development projects proposed to be built out and consistent with the adopted general plan thank you thank you Scott Stegman thank you members of the council my concerns are fairly specific I have historically been very supportive of re-tenanting and spoken both to the commission and the council in favor of such efforts I have several concerns about this particular proposal one the food desert is an artifact created by a federal agency that has given you a conclusion that relies on 10-year-old data the data is available they simply haven't gotten around to crunching it so by the time they crunch it you might have exercised this provision and find out that in fact the issue no longer even exists secondly there is no consideration of allowing as a permitted use relocation or re-tenanting without considering the impacts on the general plan provisions for a community shopping center and a neighborhood shopping center both in that immediate vicinity I am concerned that there is no consideration of the fact that with a the degree of market share available you may in fact be getting a via permitted use a supermarket that then dams or reduces the capacity to get the supermarket where you want it in the community shopping center in the neighborhood shopping center I think you need more supermarkets there no doubt one maybe two my concern is you're allowing the market to determine that for you but you pretend saying that that's a solution to a societal problem if it's a societal problem of wanting to make sure everyone has access then exercise your powers to accomplish that if you just want to open it up then fine take out the community shopping center designation the neighborhood shopping center designation that's I would disagree but that would make sense but to grab on a social issue of this food desert and then turn around say let the market solve that for us while we sit back and cross our fingers I think it's a bad idea I think the market share will not support all the amount of activity and I think that the two places where you want them to happen won't happen right away because development needs to get there first my suggestion is I think a reasonable compromise and that is require a minor use permit if it's in a neighborhood where the people want it where they're literally hungry for it they'll support it but if it's a bad show if it's in a bad spot if it's going to cut off the use as you want already as specified in your general plan then you have some leverage and that's all I'm recommending I'm not saying I'm opposed to this broad swath at all I'm saying the concerns I'm raising can be accomplished and addressed simply by having that one slightly larger bit of control design review will not say save a community shopping center designation a minor use permit as a control for siting of a supermarket could do just that thank you thank you Tom Lajero mayor council my name is Tom Lajero I'm a commercial real estate with Keegan coping I've specialized in shopping center and retail real estate for the last 25 years the zoning text amendment for you I think is in the best interest of the community the retail property owners the existing tenants and future tenants that come into our area or this area it makes sense economically socially and and from a community health aspect it makes sense also the area there is underserved by grocery and fresh foods and this is an opportunity to serve the underserved I strongly recommend that you follow your staff's recommendation as well as your planning commission's recommendation and adopt the zoning text amendment thank you thank you Tom those are all the cars that I have this is the public hearing you do not have to fill out a car to speak on this item so I wish to speak speak please come forward good evening name is David Grable I'm speaking on my own on this this issue a couple years ago there was a proposal to put a Walmart at Sebastopol road and stony point a lot of community opposition opposition from the neighborhood whatever this council basically turned them down said that environmental review was inadequate what this proposal would do is basically open the door to a Walmart or some some similar kind of store on on Santa Rosa Avenue maybe that's what this pro business council has in mind but I think the public deserves an opportunity to weigh in on that like they wave in at the project on Sebastopol road we need to look at the the impacts the the the traffic the parking the light that something like Walmart brings when they come to a neighborhood I tend to agree with Mr. Stegman that we don't necessarily want to have a full conditional use permit process but we do need to have an opportunity for real public input a minor conditional use permit process I'm sorry a yeah minor process would probably fulfill that that wish and what is the downside why don't you want to let the public weigh in on something as significant as having a Walmart down there it might work might not work let's see what comes forward let's give the public a chance to speak on it thank you very much thank you anybody else wishing to speak on this item you want to come up to the microphone please I think you guys should open up a safeway down there and Yolanda Santa Santa Rosa Avenue I think that would be good you know it's union jobs you guys are all funded by unions you should support unionized business you know because it's such a small minority so I really think you guys should do that that'd probably be good thanks thank you anybody else wishing to speak on this item see nobody rise I'll close the public hearing and bring it back to council mr hours the mention was made about food food trucks in the mobile home parks is there some prohibition against that I just don't know my my understanding is that mobile food vendors have to keep moving every 30 minutes which is a sort of a citywide rule which is why they can't you know stop somewhere for more than 30 and then with regard to farmers market and other outdoor activities the zoning code allows those but on a very limited basis through a temporary use permit process I think it's a it's a really great idea thank you for bringing it up that that is a way to you know provide another service for the year that's underserved so maybe that's something we're going to look at in the future okay thank you other questions council member Gordon question well I you probably saw me going over because I wanted to review the information from the USDA I really want to understand how they develop the census tract the information and more importantly I'd like to understand the economics of grocery stores how many thousands of people they need to have surrounding them what income level they look at I am concerned about moving forward on this area or this proposal without this information and what mr regalia suggested was that I don't have I can't have access to the that particular document right here because the rest of you don't have access to that particular information so I'm not I have so many questions about this it may be a good thing I don't know but I'm really concerned about how this proposal might interfere with the positioning of a future supermarket just over the boundary because we know we've had that proposal before and a couple of other community shopping center designations so I would I move that we table this item until we are able to get more information to make a well reasoned analysis moving forward second that okay we have we have a motion on the floor for discussion please the discussion I'm sorry I think your mic is sorry let's say let's take action on the motion table no discussion I'm just far away well I mean let's take action I'm what no discussion well you have discussion after you vote on it okay I wasn't I wasn't clearing your comments I apologize I would I suggest my discussion point is let's just take action on that motion on this current motion on the current motion on tabling the item right okay yes okay we have three eyes what councilmember wasaki wasafrey and goren I voted no councilmember Bartley saw your all of errors in hours good motion fails bring it back to council are we in discussion yes okay I don't think there were any other questions besides I'm gonna go ahead to two discussions I uh the discussion we had I know it was late and we're all tired and I but I don't think saying we're we were confused and didn't know what we were voting on is is acceptable um because we did know we voted on we voted on allowing grocery stores supermarkets in this area already we said that is what we want to do and we all voted for that the only thing that's coming back to us is a discussion of the land use issue of whether we allow them to retenant an existing building a conditional use permit is meant to impact to study the impacts the physical impacts of a project if the building's already there the physical impact has already been analyzed or the building wouldn't be there and that's really all we're talking about tonight anything beyond that I think is is stepping down the road to um and I think if you look at the people that are commenting um it goes to living wage it goes to the global issues it goes to community impact reports I don't think we want to go down that road I don't think we have to date um I think it's a bad idea the living wage issue I'm going to be honest some of you heard this the idea that somehow um part-time minimum wage jobs don't have any value I started my life with a part-time minimum wage job working for a large company and I was able to as an employee to mass I think 90 shares of stock while I was working there because the stock purchase process um I put that money aside one way to college when I was out of college a few years in 10 years I had enough money that I was able to leverage it to buy my business um within another three years I had enough money that I was able to get a down payment for the house I live in today so when people say those are dead-end jobs I say bull they aren't their jobs and that's really what we talk about when we oppose this thing this was really just a simple land use issue do we want people to have access to a supermarket in this area do we want people to have access to the jobs it'll produce and the simple answer is yes thank you mr. hours I think one of the things that gets kind of lost in the discussion here is that we're trying to solve a problem we have a place where people can't buy groceries you can't buy what they should be able to buy and we're looking for solutions to that problem if we wait for some other market to be built some other place we could be sitting here I know I won't be about 20 years from now talking about maybe we should approve this market what we're trying to do is retain an existing building that's not a big deal it is a big deal that if that retentating provides the services that are lacking in the area then we have accomplished something there's a limit on how many of these can happen if we get if we're lucky enough to have that designation removed then it's back to the original game plan right now we have a big problem we have a lot of people that can't get to the services they need to get to I think what we're doing is just trying to improve the living conditions of people and anybody who's against that I don't understand it's a basic issue and this is a way that we can look at solving that that problem so I'm again this is this is something that is to me simple let's get let's get somebody in there that will prove what's needed in the area this is an improvement for our city thank you mr. waissaki thank you uh boy uh some of my colleagues the preamble it was late we were all tired that gives it away right there it tells you right now that we didn't consider we didn't have time to consider what I learned tonight is this is somewhat of an arbitrary decision our arbitrary definition of a food desert based on 12 year old data so it was late and we were all tired yeah we want to see if we can move forward sure we want to retent it everyone on this dais wants to retent it but there's also another basic principle we want do we want to have neighborhood input into what goes into that neighborhood or do we not do we want to be like houston texas or do we want to be like san rosa california because what i see here i see a very councilwoman goren hit right on the head it's an arbitrary definition of a food desert trader joe sells food doesn't it been a trader joe's it's food target sells food lola's just over the line sells food so it's not like there's no access and if you look at some of these projects it's right next to the freeway that's not easy access either once they're in the car they can drive a quarter mile they can drive three miles so it's a question of do we want to allow the community to have input and the proposal that there be a minor use permit is not onerous at all or do we just want to speed it through because it was 11 o'clock at night no that's the way we did it that sounds awful like oh you know i don't know it sounds way too elementary the community deserves a stake in this there's nothing wrong with allowing access to more supermarkets but on an arbitrary definition from the federal government based on 12-year-old data please this is not our job we're not doing our job we're just waving them on through so if you want to go to houston and see how it's done because that's what you get so i would i think the motion to table was well advised let's get more current data let's make the right call that's where i'm at on this councilmember buster pray um yes thank you i i think that um uh you're right we are in agreement that we want to have vacant stores retenanted but i i think that we also all of us would agree that we want more public involvement rather than less and um to me the minor use permit is is in place for very good reason i don't think it's because we want people to go hungry or anything like that to me it just smacks of greasing the skids for um a developer to come in now if they're willing to come in and they're willing to follow our general plan which to me has always meant a minor use permit for something like that's not just a facelift on the front and i don't think that that should label you know me as a non-business friendly person i i think that it it should be something that we judiciously do and i think the um labeling of this as an artifact a food desert a catchy phrase however you want to label it um you know i think we've got to look at current data and and i think we owe it to the public to follow the procedures that we have and that's the minor use permit conditional use permit i i do not want to be a part of any signatory on um grazing the skids for any reason that isn't done uh other than a very judicious careful way of looking at a building that would either be retentative or a brand new building that there might be an opportunity and in a location that would be more advantageous but looking at data that is that old i just don't think that you know we have to grease the skids and move quickly on based on that council member gory well i'm sorry it's it's appalling to me that for council members have absolutely no interest in understanding the market economics of siting grocery stores i'm very concerned that in our zeal to retent a vacant space that we would be throwing out years of planning and potentially damaging a general plan that has been through a couple of iterations i it if we took the time to really understand what it was that we were doing for a market for a large market store large grocery store it may change our thinking if we knew that it would imperil a location of another grocery store in a different location that might be better placed to meet the needs of the people the residents in southeast santa rosa this is the tail wagging the dog and i understand retentating vacant buildings because as mayor i started that process and we've made some significant strides in moving forward on that and this may be a very good strategy to get there but i don't have the information to make sure that in fact this is where we want to go right now why couldn't we just table the item have an opportunity to really understand what we're doing in the future and then make a more intelligent decision but beyond that i'm very concerned that we are going to be placing a major grocery store slash big box store in this location without having a proper analysis of any traffic impacts now it may be totally the same that's what's being generated by the previous tenant circuit city or any other vacant building but i don't know that if it's a walmart it's going to be a lot more impacts if it is a safe way safe way then probably might be the same or some smaller version but the public would have absolutely no information about the tenant moving in there until the ribbon cutting or design review and that's concerning to me i think this community has weighed in on a number of these kind of issues time and time again they want to know what kind of businesses are moving into our community i'm not asking that we delay this decision for years or never i'm asking that we get the information to make a well reasoned judgment in moving forward so i'm i'm disappointed of course and i'm disappointed that i was denied the information to review just even skimming through it to give me some better information but that's the way it is we have four council members who want to move this through in a very zippy process so i will not be supporting this is rice mayor thank you mayor well in my eight years on the council i've never heard the that being um late in a meeting was a reason not to move forward or or after we had moved forward that it was a reason to reconsider i think that if people wanted to not make a decision that evening we should not have made the decision that we've made and it would not have been a seven oh vote um i i think that that how soon we forget the financial condition of the city and how soon we we forget that people need jobs and how soon we forget that not everyone can afford trader joes or whole foods and how soon we forget that a lot of families in this in this town might want a grocery store in that area that's a little more affordable i think we owe it to the public to move forward with this project we owe it to the to the to the business person who's willing to stand up and take a risk and put a business on in that in that vacant spot and and not put a process for process sake and what i heard of one of the speakers say tonight was what's wrong with another process what what does this other process hurt well it's a process it's expensive and that's what santa rosa needs to start looking at and being a little more cognizant of is when we make decisions about the process that we make it fair and predictable and that we don't just put it process process in place under the under the guise of public participation when indeed it isn't it is merely a way to delay if this if there people were concerned about this about this project these these chambers would be filled this evening this is it is not as though we hid this from anyone and i'm going to support it thank you yes it truly was not hidden i think we had a quite large article in the paper about this recently as well has been a lot of talk about this we work within the rules that we have we have rules we have guidelines we have a food desert that's been designated under a certain guidelines if we don't like the guidelines we change the guidelines and work to do that but we have a guidance that we have available to us at this point it too concerns me that we're making excuses about the lateness of an hour in making decisions and i think the public should be concerned that they would have council members who are making decisions that they don't recall or because it was late that they're now having to regress about something they agreed to that's not a good thing it does concern me this is a simple matter it's a simple matter before us as just as the recommendation states now we'll be supporting this i would like a chance to respond mr. mayor since since my comments have been referenced to a number of times about the lateness of the hour i don't believe this is a specific project in front of us that's the whole point that is the whole point there is no project here it was also when when you learn new data after you you've considered the item are you telling me you don't have an obligation to consider that data i think you do you know we're here representing the community we should make the best judgment based upon the best information and we haven't gotten that so uh business to me wants consistency i hear it time and time again we are being inconsistent by doing this and we need to recognize the impact on the existing big businesses that played by the rules that will be affected by another grocery store going in there when they complied with the general plan i'm talking about the expensive trader joes which to me is i've never heard of trader joes be called unaffordable and the other grocery stores down there lola included as well as the site on yolana that's in our general plan so we're being inconsistent and to me that's about as anti-business as you can get they want consistency that's what we need to do that's what we owe our constituents it's about looking for more and more hoops to throw out there and i'm not going to be doing that mr boys i just i'm not sure what i'm not sure what information was new i mean we had all this six weeks ago i don't think anything that was presented today was distinctly different it's more detail but it wasn't distinctly different from what we had six weeks ago i was unaware that the census data was 12 years old sir you don't think that matters was there a difference between 2000 and 2010 in our country customer was it the same well in response to that question the concept of a food desert was first raised six weeks ago i had no concept of what that meant other than i knew that there were no grocery stores i didn't know that it was defined by a census tract and certainly the census tract is extremely arbitrary because you and i both reviewed a proposal just a hop skip and a jump beyond that census tract so indeed i think there's a lot of new information and as i just said i wanted even more information and i was denied reviewing that so in that was my whole point there is additional information out there i would like to review it until we and so then i can have reasonable information to make this this decision but apparently we're not doing that thank you mr. hours uh yeah the the one piece of information that we did get is that there's 2 000 more hungry people out there in that census tract and they were in 2000 so i don't quite see what the problem is we're gonna we have more people that we want to take care of in ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending section 20 23 0 3 0 table 2-6 allow the land uses and permit requirements for commercial zoning districts to allow large grocery stores as a permitted use within existing buildings in census tract 15 14 that point 02 designated as food desert by the united states department of agriculture file number re z 1 2-003 and wave reading of the text second thank you motion passes with councillor bartley so you're all various and ours voting yes councillors waisaki of us to pray and gorn what do you know we'll move on to item 12 point port our next public hearing is yolanda avenue general plan amendment project and final supplemental environmental impact report and bill rose is the presenter mr mayor members of the council thank you before i begin i'd like to make a couple of introductions joining me tonight are members from michael bramman and associates that's the environmental consulting firm that's assisted us with the uh secret review of this project at the staff table is jason haid he's actually going to give the secret presentation tonight and uh in the stands here is randy chaff and jason bramman could not attend but he was instrumental in the secret review as well first off i'd like to give a quick overview of our presentation i will begin with a project summary and then describe the required discretionary approvals that are before the council tonight then i will as i mentioned hand off to jason and he will describe the sequa review in this case we prepared a supplemental environmental impact report for this project then i will discuss the issues that we've identified and then lastly the staff recommendation so as the council may recall uh back in august of last year the city council directed staff to pursue a general plan amendment for just over eight acres of land located at 325 yolanda avenue and 2532 santa rosa avenue and the proposal was to change just under three acres of medium density residential land and just over five acres of light industrial land collectively to retail and business services so at the outset of the project staff developed a number of objectives to inform our analysis going forward as an economic development project the primary objective is to stimulate new capital investment by removing a potential obstacle to new commercial development on the yolanda avenue site essentially we're preparing that site for future commercial development in addition the proposal is intended to promote the development of the highest and best land uses on a currently quite underutilized site and lastly we intend to establish a uniform commercial general plan land use designation on this site it's a site that's actually currently zoned for commercial uses and we believe it's well suited to support those uses the other component of this project is the transfer of development potential of a minimum of 35 dwelling units from the yolanda avenue site to a site or sites better suited for such uses and i'll describe this component in more detail in just a moment with that we believe that the project will maximize the efficient use of residentially designated land by increasing density on an appropriately located lower density site or sites and this will also further the goals and objectives of the city's housing element and lastly we believe that this project will ensure that adequate sites are available for development of a variety of housing types so with regard to the existing conditions of the yolanda avenue site it consists of two parcels they're adjacent to one another they total just over 10 acres 325 yolanda avenue is currently designated light industrial and it's zoned as i mentioned general commercial and 2532 san rosa avenue it's five acres it has a split designation a portion of the site is retail and business services that is not proposed to be changed and 2.7 acres is designated medium density residential and as i said it's zoned general commercial so this is an aerial photo of the site you can see it's roughly at the northeast intersection of the yolanda avenue and san rosa avenue intersection this area here is where the current mcdonald's restaurant is this is the san rosa avenue site this portion here that front san rosa avenue is currently designated retail and business services it's this portion back here that's designated residential and the site that fronts yolanda avenue is the industrially designated site so now we move on to the what we term the housing replacement sites we've selected three that we feel are viable and can sustain additional residential development the first is 3015 petaluma hill road it's just about seven and three-quarters acres it's currently low density residential and accordingly it's zoned r16 which is single-family residential the next site is on meda avenue 1865 it's just over four and a half acres it's currently designated medium low and zoned single family and then the last housing replacement site is the monoceto shopping center it's approximately 18 acres and it has a mixed-use designation it's currently retail and business services and medium density residential and the zoning is community shopping center these are the aerial photos of those three sites starting on the left of your frame you can see the property on petaluma hill road it's just to the south of the intersection of yolanda and petaluma hill road and then in the middle of the frame is the monoceto center and i'm sure most of you are familiar with this site it's mostly vacant the existing commercial development is located primarily primarily in this area near the intersection of monoceto and middle rincoln and then on the right side of your frame is the meda avenue site and there are a mix of land uses around this property to the south is single family residential to the north is a medium density development and there's a school to the west so this general plan amendment would establish a uniform retail and business services designation for the roughly 10 and a half acres on the yolanda avenue site but when you take this into consideration with the surrounding properties what would result is roughly 12 and a half acres an assemblage of parcels that would create 12 and a half acres of commercially designated land the 2.7 acres designated for medium density residential on the yolanda site is identified as potentially supporting 35 dwelling units so when we develop a medium density site we encourage development at the midpoint of the density range and that's 13 units an acre so that's how we came up with 35 units so essentially the proposal is to take 35 dwelling units off of the yolanda site and replace those and put them on a site that's better suited for residential development as i've mentioned we've selected three sites that we think are better suited for that type of development the petaluma hill road site would be redesignated to medium density and the companion rezoning to r318 and the result is a 48 unit residential dwelling increase the site currently can sustain 52 units and that would go to 100 units media avenue would have a similar change it would go to medium density in the general plan in r318 zoning and the unit increase would be a 13 unit net increase from 46 to 59 and then lastly is monoceto center the proposal here is to take three acres of that site roughly three acres and redesignate that to medium high density residential the existing zoning would remain unchanged and this would result in 35 unit a 35 unit dwelling increase on that site so it gives us exactly what we need to replace that from the yolanda site with monoceto center we've added one other proposal for the council to consider and that's a policy and the policy states this the monoceto center mixed use site shall be developed with a minimum of 180 residential units the units may be distributed throughout the approximately 18 acre site as determined through the development review process so the purpose of that was two fold one we wanted to ensure that the 180 units would be memorialized clearly and explicitly in the general plan we also wanted to make sure that a flexible development would occur we know that mixed use sites can be challenging and we wanted the designers the architects as well as the city staff through the development review process to have some flexibility that those housing units could go where are most appropriately where they would be most appropriately located on the site the council should note that none of the actions tonight confer development rights there are no physical development or ground disturbing activities associated with this proposal it is a land use in zoning change there is no development project tonight so the first action before the council tonight will be the CEQA action in this case as I said it's a supplemental environmental impact report also the general plan amendment and the rezoning actions so at this point i'm going to turn the podium over to jason haid to discuss the CEQA process may i just ask a question mr roe certainly thank you i'm i'm confused because when you just spoke about the monoceto center and then as i'm looking unless something's been left off as um the recommendation part it um it stops with me to avenue it doesn't say anything more about action on monoceto what page in the staff report well on your slides um there's reference to the monoceto shopping center and what you just read about the lul dash h dash three uh-huh but on what i have as far as the recommendation that we're going to be voting on it stops short of any mention of monoceto so are we or are we not considering anything with monoceto you you are so the recommendation i'm not sure exactly what you're looking at this is the agenda it is because it's he's referring it to the it's the corresponding general plan amendments which are the other three sites that's correct so the general plan amendment package that we're proposing to the council is for all of the sites yolanda petaluma hill road mida and monoceto center i understand that but i'm just saying what the public is reading there's no mention under recommendations so i think that would be difficult if we say that we're doing you know the job of informing the public as to what we're going to be discussing maybe it was just a sentence or part of the sentence that was left off it is mentioned in the background i understand that i understand that i'm at one of the general plan right yeah so i just think we need to you know cross all the t's and dot the i's and i think it was just probably an oversight was left off is that what we're that's a conclusion i'd have to look at the agenda i just clearly can state to the council that the proposal is for all of the sites that we referenced for general plan amendments i think it was way it was put together there's not a rezoning on that particular site so the way that the language was written was general plan amendments and rezoning on those other two sites other two residential sites i think would have rezoning change would have zoning changes going forward so one's just a general plan amendment the other two are rezoning so there's a difference between the actions that are actually fine i just i'm wondering thank you good evening mayor alvaro some members of the city council as bill mentioned i'm jason haid with a michael bram associates we prepare the supplemental eir for the project just to start like to walk you through a brief sequel overview as you probably know the california environmental quality act sequel requires lead agencies to identify evaluate disclose to the public and mitigate to the extent possible the environmental impacts of proposed land use activities uh for this project in this case the city of santa rosa is the lead agency a supplemental eir must be certified before the project is approved as bill briefly touched on we prepared a supplemental eir for the project this was to essentially augment the analysis prepared for the previous lows home improvement warehouse eir so together with the lows eir the document before you this evening constitutes the complete environmental analysis for the overall project it's important to note that although no specific developments proposed at this time the project previously evaluated within the lows eir is a reasonably profitable use at the yulandu avenue site so this eir reviews the general plan amendment for the yulanda avenue site as well as the three housing replacement sites that we've discussed thus far the supplemental eir revises the previously certified lows eir through supplementation of that previously complete analysis it handles the yulanda site and the housing replacement sites in different ways for the yulanda avenue site it supplements the analysis contained within the lows eir it identifies and analyzes impacts differences between the proposed project and the lows project and lastly it does that at a project level whereas with the housing replacement sites it provides a new analysis of those potential impacts because they were not included as part of the lows project it analyzes the difference between the potential impact of the development under the existing general plan legislation versus the new destinations that are in the staff report for each of the housing sites lastly provides a program level analysis of that part of the project just to touch on a few of the sequel milestones for the project I noticed a preparation was released on february 28th of this year that was followed by a scoping meeting held on march 15th that provided an opportunity for public input and comments the draft eir was released on may 16th there was a comment session held the planning commission back on june 28th just before the close of the public review period which occurred on june 29th one more to note there too the planning commission considered a recommended certification of this eir on july 26th after hearing to summarize the draft supplemental eir it includes a project description five topical sections these include air quality greenhouse gas emissions land use noise public services utilities and lastly transportation other topics were scoped out during the nop scoping process so you'll notice they don't appear within that eir the alternative analysis includes three separate alternatives that were looked at this also features the environmentally superior alternative the last two topics discussed in the eir include a cumulative effects and the technical appendices which serve as the backup material for the document within the appendices there's the nop as well as the responses that were submitted by the public and other agencies during that time period and the traffic study as far as conclusions of the draft supplemental eir it found that the project is consistent with all applicable provisions of the city's general plan and municipal code it found the project would not expose people to excessive noise levels the eir also concluded that nearby sensitive receptors would not be exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution as a result of the proposed project as far as traffic the project analyzed in the Lowe's eir would result in significant unavoidable traffic related impacts whereas this project would actually result in less significant traffic impacts just to note too that the eir concluded that they were adequate public services available to serve the various parts of the proposed project several key mitigation measures just to discuss briefly include air emissions reduction measures greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures and public safety services funding measures for future residential development i should point out that no additional mitigation measures were required or identify as needed for noise or traffic issues so the eir concluded that all impacts can be mitigated to a level less insignificant with the exception of the three I'll touch on now which were included in the previously certified Lowe's eir these relate to traffic they are near term arterial operations long-term arterial operations and freeway mainline operations as some of you may recall the Lowe's project was actually not approved although the eir was certified for this reason a statement of order registrations will be necessary to supplement the previous we certified eir this evening moving on to the final eir I'll briefly go over the contents of that document it includes an introduction also includes all the public comments received during the 45 day public review period these include comments from Caltrans the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Mark Wolfe on behalf of the California Healthy Communities Network and Sonoma County Living Wage Coalition and finally they also addressed the planning commission comments received at both of those hearings continuing on with the final supplemental eir it includes a response to those comments I just identified it includes an errata which basically just includes minor clarifications or corrections to any outstanding issues and lastly it includes a mitigation monitoring and reporting program I'd like to note that no comments received during that public review period changed any of the eir conclusions or findings and with that I will pass it back over to Bill so as Jason mentioned this item has been before the planning commission on two occasions in June the commission held a public hearing on this item they did so on the environmental impact report as well as the project and then they actually took action in July and the commission recommended that the city council certify the supplemental impact report and approve the general plan amendment amendments and rezoning actions associated with this proposal with regard to issues staff has identified one issue in particular it's related to the site on Mida Avenue that site does not independently satisfy the housing replacement that we need it only offers 13 units whereby we need 35 units however in completing the analysis staff believes that is a viable site for increased residential density we did the land use analysis we did the environmental analysis it's in proximity to other medium density developments and we think that it would provide a welcome mix of housing in this area so in conclusion the planning commission as well as planning staff recommend that the city council certify the final environmental impact report approve the general plan amendments and approve the rezoning act actions associated with the Yolanda Avenue general plan amendment project. Thank you for your question. Mr. Barton. Yeah just one on the Petaluma Hill Road site did you look at um obviously you were you were set off with a goal of finding replacements so you want medium density because it's satisfied. I guess the question is did you consider medium low density as a change and and I'm getting fuzzy on what what that would mean in terms of additional units I would recall. Well the the exercise was it was it started out essentially a mapping exercise to look at the general plan and look for sites that were of adequate size that were in good locations that could take the additional units so really everything was a possibility uh it's just that we identified these sites and so we took the designations that we selected because they seemed like the sites could sustain those additional units. Okay is and on that again on that site in your staff report you talk about that um access probably would not come off of Petaluma Hill Road um rather than being very busy is there another reason or is that the reason why it would it would probably be problematic to do that. Yeah it was based on traffic analysis and it was somewhat of a cursory review the uh this project didn't include a detailed site analysis so we really have to leave that to a development proposal when that comes in. Okay okay but it would hit that point because I'm just trying to get a handle on trying to get relative distances whether a traffic light or something else could be part of a project that happened there and gain access on the Petaluma Hill Road. Certainly those could be options yeah. Um and then just one point of clarification the statement overwriting considerations is contained inside the resolution. Correct. Okay thank you. Councilman McCoy. I have uh two questions um the um the one the site on Petaluma Hill Road it looks like the uh surrounding at least to the the west and the south do you know what density that is single family attached homes but I don't know what density that is is that 68? So I believe this here this is a single family residential density this uh this doesn't go out wide enough but there is on Birch Street uh to the southwest a medium density developments an apartment complex there's a park in the vicinity and so all of those things in addition to proximity to transportation commercial uses is what led us to believe this was a viable site. Okay now I do have a question regarding the Mita Avenue the um one uh the complex just north of there actually is a fairly dense project affordable housing project and and I know that the particular site is a a but some community gardens and a small strip park is there any other park that's designated well of course that may be part of the consideration if this were developed as to whether any part of this particular parcel would be connected with the community garden site and the community park and so that would be a discussion but aside from the lineal park further south is there any other park that might be designated around there? I think again in a wider view there is some to the south uh shown on the general plan maps and certainly the the small park that you mentioned would be a consideration but when a project comes in so we didn't have the ability with the scope of this proposal to have that kind of analysis. I also know that there is um a drainage well that's pretty significant on the property to the east of this and I think it continues on through this property which would limit it its usability for housing production. Yeah actually the site to the east is a companion site it's a similar size similar designation and we chose not to select that because those reasons could further impact development as well as it's much more tree covered so. Yes we've attempted to come up with some projects for that nothing has ever been terribly successful so uh the the project just to the north is that medium density also? Yes. So it'd be consistent with the south. Yep. Thank you. Councilmember Bustafrey. Yes thank you um you know there are not um a highly visible number of people here in the audience it looks like to object to this um but in our packet we've got um petitions from people who um uh they say we understand that another a suitable site has been selected for the purpose of this project that is the Montecito Avenue site. This site appears much more suited to handle the housing offset the city seeks in order to develop the Elanda site. We strongly urge the commission to consider the Montecito site for the purposes of this project and deny the zoning change for the Petalamy Hill road site. So that leads me to believe that these people think that there's not even any consideration of the Petalamy Hill road site. I think their opposition to me shows that they know we're considering it so you're correct the Montecito center site it does give the 35 units exactly that we're seeking to replace. I did receive the most opposition uh on the Petalamy Hill road site but we as I've mentioned think that that is a good site for increased density. Okay thank you. Any questions? Thank you Bill for the report appreciate your efforts and Chuck you too. Right now on the Elanda Avenue site it's it's part of its own light industrial right? Correct. Do we have I see that we have an available inventory of a in the city of I don't want to say 60 acres it's in the report somewhere. It's in the report I don't know it off top of my head. But it as we saw with the with the boating plant isn't there generally to the opposition whenever we try and zone two industrial light industrial isn't that somewhat problematic? I would say it really depends on the site. Right but here we have an existing to me from what I've seen in my short tenure as a council member is industrial site with sites within the city are somewhat limited they're hard to come by. We analyzed it and we think that the to change this to remove the general or the light industrial designation is a negligible negligible decrease citywide and so that's why we support this change. But it's right next to a industrial site which is the petroleum farm right the facility. So it does seem to me that it's proper that industrial and light industrial belong together. I mean I understand that you feel apparently with your professional judgment we have plenty but to me you want to put industrial with industrial. That's just an opinion. I guess what's most troubling to me is well let's move on. We don't have a specific project for the Yolanda Avenue site we just have a concept of what a project might be correct. There's no specific project correct. That's the concept. How can we have then how can we find as a council the statement of overriding considerations when we have no idea what a project what the project is that's highly speculative. Well we're tearing off the certified EIR for the Lowe's project so we're taking that as our foundational document. We're doing additional analysis related to this specific project and those are the conclusions that we've come up with based on the certified EIR and our additional analyses. So basically if Lowe's comes back we've already accommodated them. I think that it would be the job of the council to to make findings and to make determinations that the benefits of the project as proposed tonight would outweigh the significant impacts that are that have been analyzed in the original EIR. I appreciate that that would be significant impacts from a future project so if something were to come back in a year to two years we've already said hey we've already analyzed that with our in our infinite wisdom tonight. Okay that's that's quite the statement of I'd like a little break. That one kind of seizes me as being putting a cart before the horse but it's troubling. Thank you. Councilor McGowan. Ms. Dillon I'm sorry I between your little croaky voice and and the new microphone system I couldn't hear exactly what you said regarding that. The the EIR for the Lowe's project the that that which is the original document that did a substantial amount of analysis on that site and is supplemented by the additional analysis in the supplemental EIR has identified potentially significant impacts that would require a finding of a statement of overriding consideration for certification and we need to bring those forward through the supplemental EIR process. It's the job of the council to make a determination that the benefits identified by the particular project that's in front of you tonight would outweigh the potentially significant impacts that were identified. Okay but I want to follow up on that. We do have we do have a project we do not have a development proposal we we have a project that's that's been identified in the supplemental EIR it's a different from the one that was in it was originally analyzed in the in the original EIR. If a specific project would come forward in six months eight months whatever it is that would fit within this evaluation does it have to come back before the city council again? I think it would depend on the specific development proposal that that we would be considering. Okay so hypothetically if it were a Lowe's store or a Walmart store would it have to come back before the city council again and would it have to do any more supplementary EIR? I mean again I think it would depend on the specific project there are criteria that would trigger some additional discretionary review staff would have to do an analysis of the particular development project to determine whether or not it was within the scope of the existing environmental analysis to determine whether it was appropriate to do any further environmental analysis. We really can't say for sure. And if the if the staff determined that it fit with whatever action we might take tonight then it any discretion that the council might have has been removed we would not have any more it's already been rezoned the EIR has been approved and it really goes right to design review. It's possible yes because the job of CEQA is to make sure that the decision making bodies have done the environmental analysis between the original EIR and the supplemental EIR there's an extensive amount of environmental analysis so it's possible. If I may just add a little point of clarification if a project comes in like Lowe's we know that it's going to trigger design review that's a discretionary action we have to do CEQA on that so much like this project if we have a certified EIR that we can look to we will but if we have to do additional analysis we will do that as well and it is a discretionary action so it would go to the design review board for design review retail over 50,000 square feet requires a full conditional use permit that goes to the planning commission just the same it would still need CEQA analysis. And and it could be appealed then to the City Council but it would not automatically come before the City Council. As I've just described it would not but we don't know what the project would be and if any other entitlements would be required. And one more question well I do recall obviously it's located next to Redwood petroleum and I recall from the Lowe's EIR that it had some plumes partially on this site and partially across Yolanda and further south. Would there be any requirement that it would be monitoring wells or anything to really analyze where those plumes are going? Because we don't know what the project is I can't really answer that. All I can really say is if there's a discretionary permit needed we have to review it against CEQA. Okay. You're not helpful at all. I'm trying. Thank you. Mr. Bartlett. Don't go anywhere. Well tonight isn't it true that virtually any any just any land use decision we make south of highway 12 that has any significant traffic impact isn't that I'm pretty typically we've always had to make a make a find a statement of overriding condition or whatever to to approve any project because everything impacts the Herna Avenue interchange. Correct? I mean I can't recall that. I'll look at Chuck because I think that's I know that's the case. And and then just one other thing this this this piece this 2.7 acres of residential property isn't it leftover I believe since I was on the planning commission when it happened that when two general plans ago we rezoned the Redwood oil property and this 2.7 acres to medium density residential subsequently it was the Redwood oil was removed and turned back into light industrial wet because when we do general plan updates we don't tell everybody what we're doing they get to find out on their own. And this piece of property was just it's just sort of an island that was left that nobody thought about because we were focused on Redwood oil. I know when I was on planning commission we didn't think about anything other than the specific project before us. Is that not right? I believe you're correct. Any questions from council before I go to comments? We're talking. I do have a follow-up. If if we had a specific development proposal in front of us for this who would bear the cost of of this EIR and all this analysis? Typically the applicant would would pay the entitlement fees and bear the costs. How much would that be? It depends on what the applications are. How much do we have into this here? The city. This particular project is about 200 hours of staff time. About $20,000 we have fees. I mean not fees public hearing notices at about four or five thousand and then the the cost of the supplemental EIR was a hundred thousand dollars the city paid half of that and and the property under pay gap. So we have $60,000, $70,000 and I appreciate that. I'm not that that's the ballpark. So if there was a development proposal that would be borne by the applicant or the property owner not the city. Yes. Thank you. Well just to clarify are they going to reimburse us for the cost that we have sunk into this? Will the by they do mean the property owners or the project developer? Well there isn't a project. I know but but a future project. We've already been reimbursed for half of the cost of the EIR of this EIR of the supplemental EIR that you're considering tonight. There's no plan to get reimbursed further that I'm aware of. We we achieve the reimbursement when the when the property owner agreed to pay half of the EIR cost. Thank you. This time I will go to public comment and open public hearing. I have two cards. Jan Vasquez. We'll put you over for you right now. Good evening. I'm Mr. Mayor and members of the council. My name is Jan Vasquez. My name is Jan Vasquez. I'm the property owner at 2431 Summer Creek Drive. This is the property that is at the end of the street immediately adjacent to the Petaluma Hill property that is under consideration tonight for rezoning. I wrote a letter to Mr. Rose in March hoping that this would be passed on to your environmental consultants. I raised four general plan policy issues. I know that in an EIR they have to address consistency with the general plan and I felt that these four policies in fact weren't in conflict as it related to the rezoning of the Petaluma Hill property. To reiterate and there is a copy of my letter in your packet one of the policies is to promote creation of neighborhoods not subdivisions in areas of new development and this is further under pursuit pursue the goal of meeting Santa Rosa's housing needs through increased densities when consistent with preservation of the existing neighborhoods. I'd like to point out to you what your current general plan does and how this would impact the the pattern of existing development in the general plan and specifically how it affects the harvest subdivision. You have a pattern of business and services along Santa Rosa Avenue interspersed with it and immediately behind it are mobile home parks and medium density residential. It transitions into low density and medium density residential as you move away from Santa Rosa Avenue and toward Petaluma Hill road up here is Taylor Mountain Ridge line which provides a scenic backdrop. If you take a look at the Petaluma Hill road property and now flip over the attachment that I've provided you'll see that there is suddenly an isolation of a portion of the harvest subdivision. What happens is on this northern portion it has industrial zoning along the back medium density at the side and now a proposal for medium density. This does not support the the neighborhood. I can't believe my three minutes are already gone. Your three minutes are up yes. May I make a few more comments or just oh yeah you're pretty much done thank you. Megan sweetie do you have a draft ma'am of what else you're going to say? I have speaking notes. Megan sweetie. My name is Megan sweetie. I am a resident 2419 summer creek which sorry I reside at 2419 summer creek. My husband and I purchased a home there six months ago seven months ago. So we are almost neighbors and I'm going to speak more on the fact that as a mom in our neighborhood being truly a little gem in the middle of Santa Rosa as far as being very neighborhood friendly our children play out in the front yards that was one of our greatest considerations when looking at neighborhoods and if you were to put 100 multifamily homes at the end of our street it would destroy our neighborhood and the whole integrity of it. You know the EIR says that access to this that the Petaluma Hill site via Petaluma Hill Road is not an option which means the only other option is coming through our subdivision and I don't want you know I mean there's just no way that that means Burt Street Summer Creek all those through streets you know Burt Street you just opened up a beautiful park less than a year ago the community park I mean to have having all that additional traffic all the additional crime it would bring um we'd just be devastating to the whole the whole aura of our neighborhood you know our neighborhood did write a letter in opposition we had 25 I think signatures from my immediate neighbors we didn't go farther into the subdivision we did it rather on spur of the moment we thought we should get something on before the planning commission hearing you know I just would draw your attention to that I pretty much have said everything as my neighbors did on that and I would just ask you to reconsider putting 100 multifamily units at the end of our street which would pretty much mean that everything would go through our subdivision that's all so thank you very much for your time thank you David Grable good evening David Grable with the Housing Advocacy Group we like the designation of additional sites for multifamily housing keep that there are some issues with the 2.7 acres in the Yolanda Avenue site with the designation for multifamily housing on that on that site kind of agree with council member Bartley that that was not a good site given that it's got some plume issues and other stuff but we don't like this Lowe's 2 proposal this is a clearly a backdoor way of getting a big box into that Yolanda Avenue site you remember a couple years ago you saw Friedman brothers say a Lowe's there would put him out of business Mead Clark was here exchange bank urging this council not to approve a Lowe's at that site and now what you're doing is essentially giving them free rein to come in and they won't have to do any environmental review it's all done you know the city needs money yeah but you don't need to put Friedman's and Mead Clark and other good solid long-term local businesses out of business in the process it taking the the residential 2.7 acres out of residential making it commercial you're rezoning you're changing the general plan land use element but you're not changing the housing element which is a big problem your general plan's got to be consistent throughout all the elements have to be consistent you're saying in your land use oh that's that's going to be commercial site your housing element still identifies that site as multifamily residential you got to go through a housing element amendment process in order to make this switch and that requires going to hcd first with a draft getting okay from hcd coming back and amending your housing element you haven't done that and that's a fundamental flaw in this you can't can't yank sites out of your multifamily inventory without going through that housing element process so I'd urge you to put off any any approval of this particular project until that's done thank you very much thank you mr. Grable Fred Vetter good evening mr. Mayor and council members my name is Fred Vetter I'm a resident in the harvest park neighborhood I own a house on summer summer creek about a block from the proposed site on your on petalume hill road I'm a full-time teacher at rosalind university prep I love my school I love my community especially my neighborhood where I live um I bought here four years ago and I carefully researched all the places I was looking at all single family homes in the area where I live and then the the empty site we knew could be built on some day and the deal was that is going to be low density more single family homes that was part of the reason that I bought I'm a teacher I don't make a lot of money I put everything I had into this house and now I find out that we are literally going to be sandwiched between a hundred unit apartment building it's probably going to be an apartment building and santa rosa avenue which is extremely busy um that that's a that's a big problem for our neighborhood and council member vastu pray I'm sorry that there aren't more people from the neighborhood represented here tonight but there is a lot of concern and you can see that in the 25 signatures again this was just in our small area there's there's a lot of concern in the neighborhood and it's unfortunate that people haven't gotten a little more fueled up about it but people are living their lives and they're busy there's a lot of kids in our neighborhood and there's always orange cones up to keep the cars slowing down through our neighborhood and again I I think that the woman who put up the map that showed that there's kind of an area where the medium density housing is and we're now literally going to be sandwiched low density between medium density more medium density in santa rosa avenue I think that really shows the situation that we find pretty unfortunate um I think that kind of sums up my concern again my I would ask the council not to approve the rezoning of that petaluma hill road site for medium density because no one who bought in that area understood when they bought that that was going to become a huge apartment complex and frankly I feel a little bit deceived by that because again all my investments are now in this one house and it's it's a big bummer for me as a homeowner resident and person who really really believes in our community especially in rosalind so thank you very much thank you mr. better those are all the cards that I have you do not have to fill out a card to speak on this item if you wish to speak that step forward mr. Bennett once again for the benefit of these poor folks that don't understand where the motivation is to have a resolve to follow through with planning that doesn't feel organic to the community that they bought into they bought into a rural almost semi-country landscape and now they're going to be inundated with smart growth and the thing that they need to understand is that unfortunately their public servants allegiance has been subverted by globalist interests that wish to install a hardscape that lends itself better to our containment and oppression through being incentivized for grant money through a mechanism that we're not fully privy to your public servants instead of leaving the options open so that the free market landscape and capitalism can dictate what happens with that area that is largely rural and instead of allowing it to grow in the organic manner that is indigenous to the way real estate investment has always gone on here in america instead this unnatural smart growth landscape is going next to them and it doesn't make sense unless you happen to be one of the activists or the people that are awake and understand what motivates the hardscape and the design of our city it is about being close and within the transportation corridor to the smart train and metamorphosizing our way of life from one that is a free market with the freedom that the automobile lends with the privacy that a single family home lends with the abundance independence that the single family home lends which are the foundation of what the landscape of our country is supposed to be about and we have all failed us as activists we have not been able to impart on you the importance of this allegiance that you've gone along with and adopted and you guys have failed because you haven't been able to employ the discernment to recognize the importance and what it really represents to allow yourself to catch go along itis that's what you got go along itis i wish there was a pill for it anybody else wishing to speak on this item i'm going to build residential units there a hundred units on the yelanda corner there or petaluma excuse me petaluma hill road i recommend like 50 units and then 50 the other unit set aside for a supermarket like safeway preferably unionized operation or trader does are they unionized you guys know they're unionized labor because they pay better wages and it's better quality food walmart is the evil empire they're the largest private employer in america and they pay the lowest wages in the industry they are anti-communist be at their number one suppliers communist china has slave labor camps so walmart is bad we don't want walmart and center roads that can stay on rodent puke if they you know that's that's the better path and uh yeah i i think you should put it like a safeway like a petaluma hill road or something like a railies or something you know or or trader does yeah that'll work my brother lives out there you just move from san francisco is calvin vasolo chan yeah he's an AT&T operator have a nice day thank you anybody else wishing to speak on this item public hearing is closed bring back the council for any other question mr. Bartley just a question following up on mr. graybull's comment about we can't just arbitrarily transfer the action you're recommending yeah we did consider the housing element with this proposal we don't agree that the housing element needs to be amended at this time the the changes are not medium high density and that is the trigger for a housing element update and in addition we feel that it is consistent because where we are removing 35 units we are replacing those on other sites mr. rose we talked a bit more about the petaluma hill numbers i think i read one of the letters we received about a potential five-story building i don't think we're looking at that it's almost doubled in size and in your assessment that's doable for that site yeah so the zoning would increase the height limit it would go up to 45 feet versus 35 feet now however we don't have a project and we know that that project would have to be sensitively designed for purposes of this proposal we looked at it relative to the things that i mentioned earlier proximity to transportation other commercial development there is a park nearby there is an apartment complex that appears to interact effectively with this single family development so those are the reasons why we selected this site i would like to advise the council however that the petaluma hill road site is not necessary to achieve the goals of this project if the monocidal site were selected by itself or in combination with the meat avenue site it would achieve our objective short talking thank you bill uh that petaluma hill road site is there a w-trans analysis that says that the additional traffic can't cannot access petaluma hill road because of the speed of petaluma hill road i'd like to look at the exact language to be specific about that i just saw that in our citizens comment i wanted to be clear on that yeah we can look i appreciate that but to uh to restate that seven point seven acre site next to harvest park neighborhood that's not essential for this correct council comments i'd like to hear that if you're looking for information any other questions from council we'll look at that response so i'll just go ahead and read this is from the w-trans report dated april third 2012 it's regarding 3015 petaluma hill road and it says given the volume and speed of traffic on petaluma hill road it is unlikely that future development could gain access directly to petaluma hill road access to the housing replacement site would have to be provided either via an access easement through the property to the north connecting to yolanda avenue or through the existing subdivision to the south and west which leads through birch street to connect with santa rosa avenue so okay i appreciate that so that it sounds to me that there's a high probability that the neighborhood would suffer increased traffic it's saying that that would likely be the access yes okay thank you i appreciate that i'd like to uh could offer to my colleague's consideration that we take the petaluma hill road parcel and take that out of this proposal this rezoning i'd like to make a motion to do that okay yeah thank you for the motion a second i want to get some clarification when we talk about dwelling unit potential that's the potential that you're looking at this increase of 48 doesn't mean we would go to it doesn't mean we would go to a dip to the actual 100 is that what you're saying so for example just taking the petaluma hill road for the example currently the potential was 52 so you're increasing that to 100 right that's that's correct and that's just the potential doesn't mean that they're going to build that's correct mr martin well i have the resolution i just um discussion on this motion because it's a little i agree that um we don't need the petaluma hill site and um and i was saying that we have our comments and to carry it through because it's one of the resolutions at the end um i guess we can pull it out as a separate one i agree i don't think it is um there there are issues with that site i think ultimately um to the people that live there ultimately we're going to do another general plan update and we're going to be looking for parcels that need to be up zoned so you know hopefully the economy turns around and the rest of those single family residents get built really fast um i look at the layout and the planning on it and and they're to my mind there just wasn't enough there isn't enough single family in that little block and you can look at the way the streets are laid out as if it's going to continue um i think just from a planning standpoint i'm a little was a little concerned about bracketing that little cluster of single family with medium density on either side because they have a fairly large concentration of medium density to the west before your transition though i had a i i was thinking and since we don't need it while i think someday we're going to be we're going to revisit we won't some council be revisiting the issue i didn't think it was appropriate this time um i guess i would look to the we've got a motion i look to the city attorney and maybe more discussion but instead of doing this action right now couldn't we just finish our discussion about the whole thing and the third resolution which is the one doing the rezone bring it have it come back on consent taking out that one parcel or does it make any difference did you have a comment i i mean i think you could do it either way yes why not be consistent with how we were earlier tonight well i it's either way it's just we're gonna bring the other resolution back well i think it it's i would probably be a good idea to bring it back because we'd want to make sure that we're absolutely no i'm saying either way we take this action now we're still going to have to take an action yes at the end of this thing pulling if everybody agrees pulling that parcel out and bringing it back anyway so i mean if we want to take an extra action was there a second on it yes i really don't mr mr i just wanted to say that i i think i agree with your logic on that and it looks to me like this is a bit of overkill we can get what we wanted to get without including this site and it does look problematic every way you look at it if you can't get to petalim hill road i think there's a problem with the site with the with the increased density so however we're going to do it if we're pulling out now you have a motion on the table to to can you take action on the motion you can either take action on the motion and if it passes then you would have to have discussion about the project with that revision or presumably um i already voted on it i would say that you would still want to clarify any at your final action on the final i have the resolutions on the final one you would have that change we're going to pull it out and bring it back correct that's correct we'll let you do this and we'll just do it we're going to repeat at the end pull the petalim hill road side so this pulls petalim hill road yeah we have seven eyes now now we bring it back to council i have just a comment yes you know over the these two terms in office on the council we are always struggling with finding places for our housing and i hope that in the future we will start to look at the center of our city in our downtown and start to use our airspace and and stop the spread i mean you know this is well you know it's already zoned for for single-family dwellings but we're always trying to find room for for high density housing when our downtown is sitting here waiting for high density housing in my opinion and i just wonder when we'll figure it out and start using that airspace and going up as opposed to um putting more uh difficulty into our indoor neighborhood so i i don't know when we're going to start doing it but i hope it's soon thank you are there final comments on this side uh we're talking yeah i i have a real issue with we're considering the whole proposal in front of us right now correct yes uh it just seems that a statement of overwriting considerations prior to a specific project is is truly the cart before the horse and when i hear the cost i wonder why are we why are we spending public funds for this one parcel and how does that square with the recent comments when we had the fish pantry in front of us that we had to take care and safeguard all of the city's assets and here we are just gifting it away if you will so to me there's a basic inconsistency and we wouldn't consider gifting that or letting that fish property go to those folks that were running that food pantry when we had improvements and upgrades exceeding its market value we heard all kinds of talk about how we have to safeguard the city's assets and here we are just writing a check basically to a private property owner so i have a problem with that consistency uh i do think that uh this is premature and i i look for persuasion from my colleagues to change my position on that but i don't i don't see the need to to go help bent into something that we've already considered that would harm an outstanding local business i don't believe that we've got a project before us that has specifics in it but what we're trying to do here is to entice a user who will generate sales tax earlier tonight we heard our transportation people telling us that they are cutting back and i know that's based on lack of sales tax we have to we have to be proactive we have to attract businesses and that's what we're trying to do here that's the whole purpose of economic development we're going to invest something and we're going to get something back more than we invested so this is what this is about and that's why i'm very much in favor of this we are developing a site that will attract a user who will be a money generator for the city council member of us to pray comments council member slayer vice mayor slayer thank you mayor well we heard a couple of years ago when we were still in the in the depths of our fiscal crisis and i think we're still there although we may be seeing a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel that we needed to be prepared and ready to take action when things started to turn around but those cities that were ready for for business to to come in would be the the chosen sites and i think that this is a perfect example of of our city working in a in the best interests of our citizens and by removing the obstacles that were discussed earlier by mr rose to the fiscal recovery of our city so i'm going to be supporting it thank you council member gory well we as we just heard in the last item we have any number of sites along santa rosa avenue and other places in santa rosa that are vacant ready to have tenants that would accommodate the exact same product mix of this project that might come forward in the future and we have no idea what this project would be we have no idea what kind of traffic impacts it would generate and we had this exact same conversation in around the proposed lows project before and the and the foreseeable future the financing of any improvements on the herne avenue overpass now is even further into the future because of the because of redevelopment and other things that have disappeared so i'm i wasn't in favor of expending public money to benefit a private landowner before and i'm distressed that we've now spent it and when we have vacant sites that we could retenant and i'm not going to be approving this any statement of overriding considerations without truly understanding what this site might be used for thank you i will be brief this this is a good investment and this is aggressive economic development and things that we need to be doing mr barger yeah well i um before we go we pulled out the the petaluma hillside i i'm comfortable with the meat of site i think that's an appropriate site to stay as medium density residential is that what i'm hearing from everybody okay just want to make sure that and and comments you know um it is economic development i was on the planning commission when the loads project came through um and i know it's not a question of big box because the council at that time gave the planning commission in fact myself i think chair dougan uh joel galbert from staff and orn h passman designer view they told us it wasn't a question of whether it's a large format retailer because this site is intended if you look at what we describe in our general plan we're looking for easy freeway access to sites that will adapt to large format retailers the council said specifically it was not an issue of large format retailers it was an issue of design and they directed us to come back with design guidelines that address that which we did present the council and the council unanimously passed it so it does come down to because of the action of the last council a question of design and in terms of the uh rezone and the difference between although i think the the the issue of fish doesn't really have anything to do with this um apples and oranges the fact is we rezoned this this this little piece of residential the city did that the owner was never informed because it came through as part of a general plan update it just happened and so i do think the city it is appropriate for us to expend some funds to correct that because through the economic development it's a much greater return and so with that i'm happy to move a resolution may i make a statement first sure why not since i actually did serve on the previous council and considered this project i want to clarify that the big box guidelines had nothing to do with the discussion of this particular site in fact there was a five to two vote against lows the particular project had not to do with design review it had to do with traffic and the significant impacts to local businesses so the record has been corrected i'd also like to add a comment as well since i also served on that council and the comment that north south congestion is always going to be with us and therefore we just have to live with it i find unacceptable we have a large format retailer right down the street that wants to come into the city it's a local business that has supported local activities for many many years if we are truly interested in sales tax and benefiting our local economy we should go talk to mr freedman who wants to come into the city there's our solution and and i think that's a that's a great point but that would probably require a statement over writing consideration because of the impact on her and avenues so if what i'm hearing is we can't approve anything until her and avenues built then we're really not approving anything so with that i'm moving a resolution i'm moving a resolution of the city santa rosa certifying the final supplemental environmental impact report for the alanda avenue general plan amendment project file number g p a m one two dash zero zero one and we're reading the text we have uh four eyes customer marty so you're all various hours voting yes customer wassaki boss of praying gordon voting no okay and i'll move resolution of the council of city santa rosa approving the general plan amendments for the properties associated with the alanda avenue general plan amendment project and making findings with regard to significant impacts identified in the final supplemental environmental impact report for the alanda avenue general plan amendment project file number g p a m one two dash zero zero one and we're reading the text second okay do we excuse me do we need to make a clarification on that one bill the general plan amendment to remove the petaluma hill roadside they buried in there too yeah if you would just make a distinction that the petaluma hill roadside will be removed well i was just going to give direction with the third resolution okay i was just going to get can i just direct can we just the third the third item is an ordinance for rezoning that will be introduced tonight and come back so the second item is the resolution general making okay so that that's a final action specifically pulling out the resolution is a final action and the ordinance is not okay so we're going to pull out the petaluma hill roadside yes yes yes absolutely second and this motion motion also passes councilmember Bartley so you're all various hours voting yes councilmember wassaki boss of praying gordon voting no okay and the third one we can direct staff to bring back a resolution with about the rezoning so that that's an rezoning ordinance and so we could introduce the ordinance with direction to bring it back the second right reading with that correction okay so i will move ordinance of the city council the city of santa rosa mending title 20 of the santa rosa city code reclassifying approximately 7.7 acres at 3015 petaluma hill road from r16 single family residential to r3 18 i'm sorry i'm just spacing out here multi-family residential and reclassification of approximately 4.6 acres no wait a second i am spacing out i don't want to do petaluma hill road right yeah i know it is maybe it is okay let me try this one more time i'm going to move an ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa mending title 20 of the santa rosa city code reclassifying i gotta go down with my bad eyes approximately 4.6 acres at 1845 meter avenue from r16 single family residential to r1 to r3 18 multi-family residential and directing staff to bring back the final what's it's an introduction of the ordinance so staff would bring back the final but with the clarification that we're removing the petaluma hill road side and so then the next the second reading will have that correction okay please second thank you here we have four eyes uh councilor martley soyer oliverson ours voting yes councilor wasaki lots of praying gore and bloody no okay thank you to staff and now we'll move on i think we have a series of correspondence here uh madam city manager if you wanted to summarize those please right let me let me run down these pieces of correspondence the first three are letters that were submitted to various well legislature of the state agency the first one was on our discharge permit the second one was regarding a land use and housing element amendment i i unfortunately i i wasn't able to have time to check on the outcome of that one i don't know if that passed or not i do know that on the um abe 685 the next item a letter of opposition on the state water policy definition that did pass through the legislature with a letter from the um author clarifying that it was not as intent to create new definitions which would inspire all this litigation um i don't know whether the governor is actually going to sign this one or not um so well it's likely we're going to be coming back to the council with a list of other um uh letters that need to go on to the governor and we'll take a look at that this week the next two items the first one is a notice on changes due to the construction cost index of changing the threshold for minor construction contracts under our rules and the last item is a minor contract award for the brush creek bike and pedestrian path rehabilitation between monoceno boulevard and highway 12 thank you very much we'll move on to uh public comment i i do have one question yes on these letters the one uh i understand we had a hiatus and time was of the essence but there's one correspondence dated july 23rd i know we had a couple of meetings after that why are we just seeing that now probably because the bill was being acted on at that time in between meetings that's probably why that would be the otherwise we get in front of the council mr wheat greetings Santa Rosa city council members i'm speaking before you today about a general malfeasance specific government conducted by your former mayor jane bender in 2005 a mayor bender closed down the homeless shelter at the national guard armory then she wasted 1.5 million dollars uh uh when the army was costing nothing and had the city build the sam jones shelter which has half the bed space of the national guard armory this was a heartless maneuver and at the same time her act wasn't even physically sound when it came to saving the taxpayers any money the sam jones shelter is located on right road near sabastopol the central location of the army would definitely mitigate and facilitate the ease of transportation issues involved in job searches it also makes it more convenient for them to access county services like food stamps and cmsp especially if they have families also the army is located practically next door to the center of the junior college district police so there can be no worries of an outbreak in crime in the junior college neighborhood i think it is cruel to force the homeless to live in an effect in a shanty town on the outskirts of west santa rosa all poverty is a function of some failure in domestic policy along with individuals poor choices are through no fault of their own the economy is in shambles we have wasted millions of dollars in useless paperwork studies regarding smart the bureaucracy must be accountable to the individual and they must have faith that it can be solved and dispense civic justice you lose that faith and you're out of a job search your conscience the national guard army homeless shelter would demonstrate that this council is a commitment to progressive and populist ideas no longer do the homeless have to die at age 5500 a freeway overpass perhaps now they can get help you have the power to improve people's lives for pennies on the dollar do not turn away the actor charity to your fellow man he would often is powerless to change his own station in life thank you very much for your time restore the national guard army as the homeless shelter thank you sorry uh fade drug uh good hello again mayor vice mayor city council members you know i have something prepared to say but i just noticed how fast he was reading his document we need to have our open comment at the beginning of the meeting and we need to have five minutes not three this is ridiculous okay as you already know a couple weeks ago i found out that the funding for the brown act has been suspended as part of our state budget cuts i found this out in an editorial in ij called moran supervisors right to vote vote following the brown act i will leave you a copy of this editorial but please allow me a moment to quote three paragraphs from that editorial the first paragraph says in a show of leadership and commitment to open government the moran board of supervisors has gone on record that it will allow brown act even though state lawmakers have put it in legal limbo limbo it also states that the brown act is crucial to citizens knowing what our government is doing the legislature's decision to halt funding of the brown act is a travesty but it has helped raise awareness of the importance of the brown act and lastly the final paragraph says we applaud moran's five supervisors for publicly expressing their commitment to abide by open meeting rules even while sacramental lawmakers play political games with them shortly after reading this i sent the council an email requesting that they go on record that the city will continue to abide by the requirements of the brown act regardless of the cut this cut in funding thank you mayor oliveras and councilwoman susan goren for responding to my email i was relieved to hear that you will continue to abide by the brown act requirements however i would like to respectfully request that you make this official by making a public statement to this effect or by holding an up or down boat whichever follows your city policy policy in this regard thank you again for helping to ensure an open and transparent city of santa rosa good evening thank you seven or eight years ago or so when we bought our little dealership site on santa rosa avenue there that was an awfully nifty piece for people of our means to have ended up with i searched the owner through tax records and even though it wasn't on the market he let me know that i wasn't the only one looking to buy it and for people of our means it was a pretty nifty piece to get at the time after the sun went down santa rosa avenue looked like night of the living dead the ponderosa was in full swing the back of our place was like a drive through for scoring a dime bag and we with our humble means tried to make it look as nice as we could i had an idea of making it look more like a place to taste wine than by a car we were going to make it nicer but we didn't have the check we didn't have the uh a big enough wallet to wait through all the design review convening every two weeks so we did what we could and got it going this um almost precedent setting move wherein you took a public street and reduced our access to an easement held by our competitor might be a lofty word but i guess you could say competitor we are already being damaged by it today no exaggeration six times before lunch we couldn't get in or out of our dealership we had somebody from new york honor us with buying a 50 000 black jaguar from us we detailed it and in two two and a half hours later when the his representative came to pick it up his comment to me was god you couldn't even clean the car when my guy had just done a two hour and a half hour detail on it i'm trying to find a way to tell you that we're already being damaged by this project next door i got the photographs to prove it you wouldn't believe your eyes i had a customer call us and said that he couldn't get into the place and that he'd when he had time he'd come back we can't get in we can't get out the place is a mess our merchandise is all dusty and dirty who could quantify how many people would be coming to our place today because i i don't get a chance to talk to them when you're driving by and you look at the place one side is completely blockaded and the other side no exaggeration now i left it 1145 we opened at 10 six times i couldn't get in or out i would you've already kind of skirted your fiduciary fiduciary responsibility to us and i would thank you one of the planners to do the right thing make a phone call in this little public private partnership that you're engaging in with kia and see to it that we have access to our own property we have service to us thank you thank you mr benett