 Do a quick mic and a camera check. We are broadcasting currently live to the public. Hi, this is Diana. Can you hear me okay? Council Member McDonald, I see you clear, but I do not hear you. Anna. Can you hear me now? Yes, loud and clear. Thank you very much. I probably had my volume down. At least I wasn't on mute. Can you hear me, Dana? Can you hear me? I can audio check. I can hear you, John. And you should be able to see me now. Yep. All right. And I just started promoting Victoria. Likewise, Stephanie, I think she might be... Stepped away. Yeah, focused on something else, but she'll get transferred over here momentarily. Okay, thanks. Good afternoon, Council Member Schwedhelm. Do you wanna do a quick camera and mic check? Ooh, camera and mic check. Here we go. Welcome back to All Virtual for a short time. We are broadcasting live to the public via YouTube and Zoom. And I hope you loud and clear and see you loud and clear. Great. This is what it looks like to be loud and clear. Thank you. Yes. All right, Madam City Clerk, it's two o'clock and I recognize a quorum of Council Members. I see Council Member Rogers and Council Member Alvarez also in the attendees if we can get them promoted. And then once they're up, let's call the roll. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm? Council Member Schwedhelm? He's having a hard time unmuting. He's never done this before. Oh, you want me to call him? I'm trying to get it up, I'm here. Okay. Council Member Sawyer? Here. Council Member Rogers? Present. Council Member McDonald? Here. Council Member Fleming? Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez? Present. Mayor Rogers? Here. Let the record show that all Council Members are present. All right. Well, we're back in Zoomland. So my apologies to the public. We're going to start today with our closed session. That's item 2.1. I'll make this announcement periodically through tonight's meeting, but we have pulled one item off of our agenda. That's item 15.1. So we will hear that at a different time. I have different discussion on it at that point. With that, let's see if there's any hands for our closed session item 2.1. Mayor, I see no hands via Zoom and we received no voice message public comments for item two closed session items. Okay. We'll recess into closed session then. Council Members, that's the separate Zoom link that you have for the closed session item and we'll come back. Looks like it's after our interviews as well. So later in the day. Thank you, everybody. Good afternoon, Charles. Good afternoon, Pablo. Hey, good afternoon, Dina. Good afternoon, Dina. Hey, Charles. Hey, Pablo. We are broadcasting live and I just wanted to let you know I'm going to go ahead and put Charles over into the Spanish channel and then I'll make the announcement of how to participate from the Spanish channel and for those wanting to listen in Spanish. Understood. I'll be ready. Thank you both. For those of you just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in your Zoom toolbar. It may look like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Pablo, can you please restate this in Spanish? Well, for those who just joined the meeting, live interpretation is available and members or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the channel. To join, click on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar that looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. All right, Madam City Clerk, let's go ahead and get Council Member Rogers promoted and then let's call the roll and re-establish our quorum. We'll promote her now. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Present. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. All right, thank you. We'll go on to item number three on our agenda for today. That's the interviews for the personnel board. For folks watching at home, we have two openings on the personnel board. One is for an at-large position and one is our labor representative position. We have four folks who have applied, three for the at-large position, one for the labor representative position. And so we'll do three interviews here this afternoon. Three out of the four could make it here. We'll do the interviews at three o'clock. They're pretty quick. They're a little bit like speed dating. Give council members a chance to ask some questions of the folks who are applying and then later in tonight's meeting, we have on the agenda appointment of the two positions as well. So, Madam City Clerk, our first up is going to be Sandy. Thank you, Mayor. I've just promoted Ms. Lettsy and her camera and audio will be turned on momentarily. Hi, Sandy, can we do a brief mic check? Mayor, did you hear me for the request for the mic check? Yeah, I did and I'm not hearing anything from Sandy. So, let's go ahead, Sandy, if you can unmute, try one more time. Otherwise, we can start with Luana while staff tries to get ahold of Sandy to figure out a way to do the interview. All right, Mayor, I went on and promoted Luana as well. And we'll see if she comes over to the panelist side and can get her audio and video working as well. Perfect. Additionally, Mayor, I went ahead and promoted Mr. Altman in case Luana is having some connectivity issues. Maybe, Luana, are you able to unmute or do we have to deploy John to help folks out? Well, I was going to suggest some cans and a string, but I admit that may not be long enough. Hi, I was able to unmute, but I am not sure. I think the connectivity issues are just now going to be global. I apologize for that. No, it's all good. We can hear you now. Sorry, are you in a position, are you good for us to ask you a couple of questions? Sure, absolutely. I am trying to get my camera on as well, but yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, we do all have the applications in front of us and I do want to just give you a chance to introduce yourself to Council, to the public, and then I'll have Council members ask any specific questions that they might have. Each person, we're giving about 10 minutes or so just to have a conversation before we vote later tonight. Do we lose you, Luana? It looks like we're having some trouble on them back in. Give us a second. Okay, and I do see that there's another Luana with a hand raised. Sorry, I got kicked off. Yes, sorry, I got kicked off knowing back. Now I feel like I've interrupted a party. So here I am. Well, good to see you. So all I was saying is let's go ahead and have you first and foremost, go ahead and introduce yourself to the Council and to the public and talk a little bit about your background and your experience and why you're interested in the personnel board. Awesome, sure. Luana Vaitoy, Chief Executive Officer with Becoming Independent. We are a social impact organization that supports adults with developmental disabilities in Sonoma and Marin County. About 700 service recipients, a staff of 140. My background is in human resources. So I've been in my current role for about 10 years. Prior to this, I was the Director of Human Resources at Becoming Independent for about four. And prior to my role at Becoming Independent, I was with Safeway Corporations, worked in several leadership capacities for them, both on the both sides of the bargaining table out of Pleasanton, their corporate headquarters in their Portland division for several hundred employees, several stores across a large geographic span. My interest in joining the personnel board would be to offer employee relations support to the city and those stakeholders that find themselves engaging in the employee relations process. Any additional information I could provide? That's a good start. I'll see if council members have any questions for you. Okay, great. Looking for a hand. Start with Eddie and then we'll go to Tom. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for your application and for one of the services to you, Santa Rosa. Well, I do greatly appreciate it. I see that you're on your application. You speak of inclusiveness. What is inclusiveness or inclusivity mean to you? Yeah, inclusiveness means to me that everyone has an opportunity to have their voices heard in an environment that encourages participation. And it ranges from inclusiveness of, diversifying your inclusiveness at all levels of the business and allowing stakeholders to feel empowered to have a voice in the workplace and to offer insight on how their workplace can benefit their personal, professional development and growth. Thank you. Absolutely. Good afternoon, Luana. Thank you for all your service with the County Independent. It's great to see you here. Hi, Tom. Can you tell us what's the most important attribute you will be bringing into the personnel board were you to be selected this afternoon? Yeah, I think that, I think perspective would be a really good attribute to use. Perspective from a variety of vantage points, not just the employer perspective, but the employee perspective working on the human resources side in a couple of different capacities through. We were always so close. Yeah. Mayor, it looks like we have Mr. Altman on, but I don't know if you want to give a moment to Ms. Vaitou to reconnect. Yeah, let's go ahead and give it one quick moment and then we'll come back. I see that Sandy also has her hand up, so presumably it's about ready to go as well. Let's see if Luana gets back on and let's go from there. We'll come back to you, Sandy. Boy, it is like a game of peek-a-boo. I am so sorry. I was like on a roll there on my perspective launch. Do you want me just to pick up where I left off or? Go for it. Okay, so I think the attribute would be perspective, Tom, as I was saying, being on both sides of the conversation, both as the employee and the employer. I think it's really important to have the perspective of building relationships between the two and really highlighting the benefits that both parties bring into the relationship. Great, thank you. Absolutely. Any other questions from council members? Diana? Hi, thank you so much for your application. I wanted to know if you've ever been part of a grievance committee or involved in the process of grievances in the past? Yes, I have. Grievances and the complaint process have kind of overlapped in some of the different workplace environments that I've participated in. And so I have been part of the process of investigations and clarifying information contributed. And I've also been a part of the process where the outcome of the grievance is decided. So different layers, different levels of participation, but from start to finish, I have been part of that before, yes. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay, anything else, council? All right, well, we really appreciate it. And I appreciate you sticking with it and jumping back in. As I mentioned, council has on our agenda later tonight the discussion and the vote on the position. I really just wanna thank you for applying and we'll be in touch soon. Awesome, thank you so much. Thank you. All right, Madam City Clerk, we'll see if Sandy is ready to go. Sandy, I'm gonna ask you to unmute your microphone and see if you can turn on your camera as well as you may receive a prompt via Zoom. We see you, Sandy, but we can't hear you. Yeah, we gotta get you to unmute, but we can see you. Yeah, still nothing. Sandy, are you also participating via telephone? I can also enable your telephone permission so we can see you and hear you if that's your phone number. All right, Sandy, I see you. Is it the phone number ending in seven three? If you can give me a head nod. Okay, Sandy, I've enabled your speaking permissions on your telephone. You may need to dial star six to unmute yourself from your telephone. We did it. We can hear you. Sorry about that. My computer says I'm all enabled, so I don't know. All good, Sandy. We really appreciate you muddling through with us. I think we're all, we were excited to be back in person and, you know, here we are again. So, let's go ahead and get you to introduce yourself to us and to the public. And if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself and why you're interested in being on the personnel board. Sure, my name is Sandy. Sandy, let's see. Oh, I'm getting a lot of feedback here. So I'll just have to ignore that. Just mute your computer and stop it. I'm sorry, what? Just mute your computer and it'll make it stop. It's like the sound on your computer. I don't know, I'm still getting feedback. I'm not applying for an IT job. There's a reason for that. So we'll just muddle through. So my background is a couple of decades of experience working with the city of Irvine, which you may know is a premier modeled city in the state and the country. And so I was fortunate enough to hold a number of management positions there and have a pretty broad experience with employees at a variety of levels and in a variety of career choices. I was in community services and that encompassed a lot of areas in parks and rec and facilities management and senior services and fine arts and lots of programs, lots of different employees with ages from 18 all the way to retirement and a lot of different perspectives on what they expect from their employers. So I also spent time as the president of the union of one of those associations and the flip side spent time as management and dealing with issues from that perspective. So I think I bring a broad perspective having served sort of on both sides of the aisle. I've also served quite a lot in the nonprofit sector as a president of board of directors of a couple of organizations. Also as starting up the nonprofit 180 studios makerspace you may have been familiar with that. I wasn't the funder, but I was the administrator. So lots of nonprofit experience again bringing different personal type perspectives in terms of softer skills. I think communication is really important. The ability to be a critical thinker and most importantly a consensus builder when you're dealing with employee grievances there's a lot of us them sort of attitude. And I really especially having been on both sides of the aisle so to speak, I really think that the main goal is to say it's not an us them, it's a we. And so when somebody has a grievance how do we get to the fair consensus? So everybody says I was treated properly and I have a good path going forward and we can get past this grievance process. So I think that's a main strength is in how you go into that process and what you think the outcome should be. And trying to make sure that everybody sees that a win. I appreciate that Sandy. Let me see if there are any questions from council members. I think I see one from John. Thank you Mayor. Actually I don't have any questions Sandy. I just wanna appreciate your answers in your application was very complete and gave a good indication of your experience and I appreciate the way it was written. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I'll go to Tom. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Thank you Sandy for your application. Speaking of experience, can you share with us the experience that you had with Personnel Board in Irvine? We also enjoyed the not having a lot of grievances. So as I understand is the situation there in Santa Rosa, which is nice. So one of the experiences was somebody who was not using work time properly and when you have a full time employee, actually labor law is they don't necessarily have to work eight hours a day and so where was the line for that? So that was one of the processes. Another one we had some facility services folks who are left on their own to travel through the city and there were some issues about whether work was being done the whole day. So we looked at that and another one was a hiring issue of how did this person get hired basically and what were the conditions under that? So a variety of opportunities, fortunately not terribly frequently and we had a process there of working through. For some of those, I was the union rep. So my role there was not to fight the person's battle for them, but to make sure that they were treated properly in the process as the process was defined. And then when I was on the other side as representing the management, I also had that obligation to make sure that the processes were followed properly and that we acted in a dissensible manner with those people. Great, thank you. I think with a thank you from Tom, right? Let's go to Eddie. Yes, thank you, Mayor. You just spoke of work with cyber expectations when you touched on it in regards to those that were left to complete their tasks. What ideas do you have to one-hold a policy accountable or improve the system of expectations? I think a lot to do with consistency, but what I found is a lot of employee complaints have to do with the way they are treated or perceived that they're traded versus the way they perceive other employees are being treated. So I think it behooves management to make sure that their treatment is consistent with all the employees. Naturally, it's different from employee group or job level or whatever, but that all the employees can believe that they're being treated consistently and fairly. I think that's a major bottom line. Another thing is how they're being reviewed. A lot of issues come about from employees who say, well, this person's not performing and they get an exceeds expectations on their review, but I'm just working doubly hard and I don't get reviewed that way. So you have to train all the supervisors to make sure that everybody has the same expectations of similar level staff and that everybody's performance reviews, that's the same criteria or review used for reviewing employees. And then another area, I think, is effective hiring and training because if you are hiring the appropriate employees and training them properly and treating them consistently, you're not gonna have so many grievances. Thank you. So that consistency is very high on your list. Absolutely, absolutely. That was by far the most of the arguments that people would have is I was not treated fairly and fairly to me means consistently with everyone else that I see. Thank you, Sandy. Diana? Thank you, Sandy, for your application. You mentioned that you've been involved in a lot of nonprofits. Do you mind just letting some of us know what a couple of those are? So we can answer those fast. Sure, 180 studios was my most recent hero, among my most recent here, which is a nonprofit makerspace. I also participated with the PTA at Madrone Elementary School. I'm not on their board, but I do their audits of their financials. In Irvine, I was involved with the Irvine Child Care Project. I was the president at their board for a while and I was on their board for many years. And that is a program where nonprofits are located at each of the elementary school sites. And this was an umbrella organization that coordinated those nonprofits in terms of who got those sites and how they were operated and evaluated. And there also in Irvine was the Irvine Children's Fund, which was a scholarship funding program. And they provided scholarships for low-income families and also was associated with the state's funding program for childcare, which I actually administered as an employee as well. So I was involved in that. And then through the years other organizations that were affiliated with the City of Irvine Community Services Department, various fine arts or different things, but those were the major ones that I was involved with. Thank you so much. All right, Sandy, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with us today. We'll be checking back in with you after tonight's meeting. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Nice meeting you all. Okay, bye-bye. Thanks for being here. All right, Madam Clerk, let's go ahead and promote Roger. I'm promoting Mr. Altman and he will be rejoining the meeting as a panelist hopefully fingers crossed tonight. There he is. Roger Altman, if you can unmute your mic and turn on your camera. There you are. Good day. Hi, everybody. I just wanted to say before I start that I'm very impressed by the applicants that preceded me. I think my experience is a little bit different. In three categories, one is I work well with others. And an example of that is I've served on the Ethics Committee for my professional association, which is marriage and family therapists. And working out some difficulties there, I was the main part of trying to focus the group on what we're supposed to be doing, which is to see if a complaint was valid and if it was what particular part of the Ethics Code had been violated. So to explain what I tried to help straighten out is that therapists, as we all know, are into feelings and which is great as a therapist. But our job was to focus on whether this person, this therapist had violated the Ethics Code. So that was an example of me working with this group of varied experience and understanding. So I worked with the lawyer in the group to do that. I think it was very effective and people, the Ethics Code, I was on the Ethics Committee for nine years. And so every new group that came in, the lawyer and I would sort of, I don't know what you call it, train them in how to focus on what our job is. And then another example of working with, well, with other people, with four other people, I helped, I created a community volunteer board in Fairfax, California. This was a new committee. And I think it was really quite an upbeat creation for the whole community in that what we did was we came up with projects that would help the city and then tried to get input from various citizens and then put the project into motion. And several examples of that, I don't know if you are aware, but Fairfax has a problem with flooding for a number of years. And one of the things we did was to have a meeting and then a meeting of maybe 30 people. And then what we did was to go on a Saturday morning all day and we cleared the creeks of the debris and some of the trees were even growing there. And then from then on, they weren't flooding. Now, if we were a total reason, I don't know, but I know it was part of it. Okay, so one other thing is I work well with government agencies. And one example was that I found out that the union positions on the board were actually recommended by the union. And so I wondered, talking to the clerk's office, I wondered whether that could be made more clear in the instructions for the application. So that led to several discussions with the clerk's office. And they agreed that some improvements would be made and they are working on that at the present time. The other thing that I was a union organizer for a number of years and my several jobs, one of which was a grievance coordinator. And many unions have grievance person and one of the things that really shown out with my work on the ethics committee was that what I tried to do was get the supervisor and the employee to come to an agreement that was okay with both of them. And this was not, I mean, it wasn't the only way I did grievances, but it was at least for this particular, this particular grievance usefulness. So that was a great part of it. However, I also helped defend employees that had been reprimanded or disfired. And I think that what we adopted in the grievance committee was the similar system to what a defense lawyer does, which is to defend anyone that requested a defense. And we felt that that was important because in a administration like the welfare department where this was working, there's all sorts of ways of looking at the complex regulations. And every employee there was overworked. And so this came up fairly quickly. This came up fairly often. And either by mediation or actual defense of a employee during a period of five years, I'm proud to say that only one person that asked for our help was actually fired. And the rest were even conditionally let back to their jobs or a full return to their jobs. So as a union organizer, also I made presentations before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. And these were issues like personnel issues and issues regarding new regulations. And the other thing I did was instead of just making the presentation, I met with each supervisor to try and help make our presentation clear. And I think it really helped instead of just a presentation, but a real personal approach. And I think the Board of Supervisors really appreciated that because sometimes they can be distant from the presentation if it's not explained and what the reason was for it. Also, I have the ability to understand complex regulations. And this was a skill that I learned in the welfare department, which at that time, it was just really difficult to understand the regulations. Now that has been changed with the new system SSI, which you may be familiar with. But at that time, it was really helpful to my clients that I could help give them the help that they were entitled to. And I think that was successful within the limits of what the organization could do. Roger, I appreciate the very thorough introduction, but I do wanna check and give council members a chance to ask a couple of questions that they might have about your application. If you don't mind, I'll start with John. Thank you for your application, Mr. Rollman. And I'm curious, you actually may have just answered the question, but what attribute do you possess that you think that the most important attribute that you possess that you feel would make your service on the personal board most effective? I think it's my ability to work with others, to come to a reasonable solution to whatever the problem is. And I've had that opportunity to do that, like I said on the ethics committee, where there were some of the complaints were really difficult to even read. And so that was a very charged situation. And I was really one of the primary people that helped the committee focus on that and come to mostly unanimous decisions. Thank you. Diana. I'm sorry, Chris, I think you froze for a moment. I apologize. Thank you for your application. I just have a clarifying question. On your application, you marked that you were interested in applying for the labor representative position. Did you mean to mark that at large position just so I'm clear on what you're applying for? Yes, I would like to go with it at large. And I explained to you what the problem was with the union position. Thank you. Any other questions from county members? Roger, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for your interest and for being willing to talk with us. We'll make the decision later tonight. We'll circle back with you shortly after that. Great, thank you very much. All right, thank you. All right, council, we're gonna take a brief recess. We'll come back at four o'clock for our regular council meeting. All right, Madam City Clerk, it's four o'clock and I recognize a quorum of the council. Let's go ahead and call the roll and reestablish. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm. Mayor. Council Member Sawyer. Council Member Rogers. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let me circle back. Council Member Sawyer, have you joined us? I have, thank you. Thank you. Council Member Rogers, have you joined us? Council Member Rogers is being promoted right now. President. Thank you. The record showed that all council members are present. Great. Thank you so much. Council, let's go on to our report out from our closed session earlier today. Madam City Attorney. Yes, good afternoon, Mr. Mayor. Council met in closed session on item 2.1 on the agenda. A anticipated litigation concerning a claim of Jumanje as conservative for Daryl Titus. The council did give direction to legal counsel and took no final action. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you. We have no proclamations today, council. And then for the public, in case you missed our announcement earlier today, we will be pulling item 15.1 off of tonight's agenda for further work from staff and further discussions. We'll keep moving and go to our staff briefings from the city manager. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers and members of council. On COVID update, we have on April the 1st, the Department of Public Health issued new guidelines to assist businesses, municipalities, and communities that run regular events on how to best prepare those events for the new stage of living with COVID. Today, the CDPH encourages event organizers to limit the spread of COVID by adding a vaccine verification program, testing attendees two days prior to the event, wearing masks in poorly ventilated areas, tracking employee location, and remaining vigilant of the status of COVID in their communities. These guidelines apply mainly to smaller community events, as those hosting mega events of 1,000 or more people are 10, that's excuse me, 1,000 or more people indoors or 10,000 outdoors will require a vaccination status or a negative test. The state continues to encourage schools to limit events to outdoor setting and keep smaller cohorts of attendees. These recommendations for events, marks an overall shift in thinking about COVID. Now that the vaccine is more prevalent and widely available, the current and next phases will be about how we manage COVID-19 much like we do the COVID flu season. More information about this event guide is available in the smart and safe event playbook by going to the California Department of Health website, cdph.ca.gov. And more information about the status of COVID in our community is available at socoemergency.org. Thank you so much. Really bad. Council members, do you have any questions? All right, let's go on to our next one. Do we have Magali? Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor, Alvarez, members of council. Magali Day is here with a quick report on the community empowerment plan. Saturday, March 26th, the Mary Lou low-rider patrol car reveal brought over 500 community members, youth, city staff, and community partners to the City Hall campus to participate and engage in the reveal of the Mary Lou low-rider patrol car. And anecdotally, we can share that this was the first time for many of the community members who attended on March 26th to be on campus, holding the event on campus met several goals, but one of the most important was an invitation to become more comfortable and familiar with the campus, as well as the departments who are housed here, in addition, as well as services, in addition to connecting community to our staff so that when they call or email, they have an idea of who they're connecting with. We'd like to thank Joe Salinas and a group of dancers who opened the event with a pomo blessing, as well as for providing the community an opportunity to learn more about the original people of this land, the rich cultural roots and traditions through song and dance. Thank you to the youth of Bilejo-Coboico, Netsawat, Netsai Yolukowat, and Mariachi Cantares de Mityera from the LBC for your beautiful performances. Thank you to our now-profit partners and city service providers who attended and delivered resources and information to our youth and families in attendance. A big thank you, of course, to the Sonoma County Lowrider Council Clubs for all of their work, thought partnership and bringing this forward, which we felt was a very successful event in celebrating Chicano culture, lowriding as an art and healing form, community voices and collaboration to impact change in our communities. This could not have taken place without all of you. The Office of Community Engagement would not only like to thank the community for uplifting this event and project, we'd like to express our deep gratitude to Mayor Rogers and City Council members, City Manager Smith for the support and opportunity to celebrate and uplift cultural wealth in a way that was very meaningful to the community that we served and attended and in line with what was asked for in the Community Empowerment Plan Report. So for the Multicultural Roots Project, April stories will feature lowrider culture as a form of healing and a vehicle for community engagement. The history of the Mary Lou Lowrider Patrol Car will be one of our stories. The Sonoma County Lowrider Council and how that came about. Thank you to Nico Quiroz. Thank you to René Urenas' family. Raquel Sanchez will be featured and we will be talking about women in lowriding. In May, you can look forward to us highlighting the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. We will talk about the rich history and cultural, you know, local history that we have here. Speak to Melvin, Incarnacion, Wendy Kernow and many others. So we'll have more information to come from our participants. And lastly, on May 21st, a number of our emergency response departments will be coming together to bring wildfire ready. This event will take place in Courthouse Square and we'll be covering a wide range of topics and opportunities for community to come out and learn more about the city services as they pertain to emergency preparedness. For example, we'll be talking a little bit more about weed abatement, burn ordinances, home hardening information, how to sign up for emergency alerts. In addition, there'll be a number of partner agencies who can provide various resources. Many of who have partnered with us throughout the various incidents and can provide tools for use in families. We'll also have a lot of our mental health provider agencies who can give us sort of some quick methods on how to navigate difficult emotions that are triggered by various weather events. So more to come on this and that is the end of my report. Thank you. Thank you so much. Councilor, do we have any questions? Mr. Weitzmaier? Thank you, we're not really a question for more of a comment. I've been over at, I mean, the event that was held at the city hall was exceptional. My God, you stated it correctly. For a lot of these folks, this was the first time that they ever stepped foot on the city hall. So it was absolutely great to see the interaction with a lot of our city officials and the community that we serve. Very new car, beautiful. And really just a smile and just a smile. I believe that the smiles that was produced by a vehicle it definitely speaks our language. And I also want to thank Councilman Swalhem from those days that we were underneath that carport having that great conversation with some of my kind of low riders. And you said it, you know, how do we get to a yes? And not only do we get to a yes, but we went much further in having a great day out in the parking lot. So thank you, sir. And Mayor and to all the community members who made it possible, thank you. Okay, let's go on to our third report. Item 8.3 is a report 2022 Earth Day event in Courthouse Square. It's going to be delivered by Sustainability Coordinator Wright. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers and Councilmembers. My name is Tasha Wright and I am the Energy and Sustainability Coordinator in Santa Rosa Water. And I'm very excited to be here today to let you know about our Earth Day event and formally invite you to Santa Rosa's annual Earth Day event. We're finally getting it back on board. So we're really looking forward to this. I'm very excited about it. So this year the event, oh, next slide please. So this year's event will be held back in Courthouse Square and it's going to be on Saturday, April 23rd and it'll be from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event is free again and Family Friendly Festival that brings our community together through fun activities, as always, live entertainment and inspiring exhibits that will raise awareness about our environmental concerns. So next slide. So this year we are proud to host a variety of city departments and community agencies as well. We'll have City of Santa Rosa's water, police, fire and community engagement as well as others, as well as also community agencies such as Sonoma County Transit Authority, Sonoma Water and also Luther Burbank Gardens. Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition will be there again and provide valet bicycle parking and Zoom Zoom will be providing the entertainment this year. And something very exciting is that we will be unveiling, I guess you could say, the new EV bus and that will be, I think it's going to be a really amazing thing for everyone to see. And next slide. So in addition to these great offerings, there will also be eco-friendly activities for all information on how to go green and the always popular kids section brought to you by the recreation department that will feature many games and arts and crafts. So you can pick up your smart water, water smart toolkit as well. And this will help you save water during the serious critical drought. So we hope that you can attend and enjoy this fun filled day with us. And you can walk, bike or roll to our Earth Day event. Again, that's Saturday, April 23rd in courthouse square from 11 to two. And we have our website up there, SantaRosaCity.org slash Earth Day. And there is more information there at the site. Thanks very much. All right, thank you so much, Tasha. And we're really looking forward to seeing this event back in courthouse square and then back in person. It's a really good one each year. Council, do we have any questions? All right, seeing none, we will go to public comment for our staff reports for tonight. So if you have a comment on any of the three reports that you just heard, the community empowerment plan, the Earth Day event and our COVID update, go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. And Madam City Clerk, I'm not seeing any hands. Do we have the pre-recorded voice mails? You're not mayor. Great, we'll move on then to our city manager and city attorney reports. Let's go ahead and start with our city attorney today. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And tonight we have our litigation air quarterly litigation report. This is from matters up through the end of March. And as my update will be including also whatever has happened thus far in April. So we have, again, I'll do it by subject area. We have four receiverships still in the works. Remediation is underway on three of the properties. One of the properties is getting ready for remediation. And we have at least one new case, receivership case that we are expecting to file shortly. We have eight general litigation matters. And just as in our last report, this case does include some contract disputes, an ADA claim, a civil rights claim, a wage claim and several others. One of the cases that's been on our list for quite a while for several years is a Kessner versus city of Santa Rosa case. It's a proposition 218 case that concerns water rates. We have reported out previously. That case was dismissed in February. It's on our list simply to close the loop. And after this report, it will be taken off of the list. So that was very good news, dismissed entirely. Second case, case under the Public Records Act, that is also close to resolution. We are hoping to be able to report a complete resolution on that case in our next quarterly report. Third case, polio versus Santa Rosa, which concerns payment of prevailing wages that's set for trial in late May. So we'll see how that goes. And then the other five matters are at various stages of litigation, many of them in the discovery phase. We currently have 10 personal injury cases. And those include allegations of dangerous condition of public property and a variety of other issues involving personal injury. Three of those cases are set for trial in the next few months. Four in the discovery phase and the remaining three are at various stages of litigation. We have four cases concerning police actions. That number is down. One of those cases has been settled and reported out previously. And we are just awaiting the final paperwork on that one. And then the remaining three again are at various stages of litigation. So we're working through that. The one that has been settled and we're waiting for paperwork is the Robert Casey versus City of Santa Rosa case. We have four writ of mandate cases. Two have been set for trial. One during this upcoming summer, one in the fall. We are also have just had a hearing on our motion for summary judgment in the matter of Western manufactured Housing Communities Association versus City of Santa Rosa that concerns our rent control, our Mobile Home Park rent control ordinance. We have not received a final order, but we do, the tentative was in the city's favor and we anticipate that that will stay the same and will be finalized. So that is good news as well. We also have three new claims that were filed in the last few months. And those include they are all personal injury cases of varying significance and seriousness. And as I have, as I've said before, and I'll repeat each time, this is just a piece of the work that our litigation team does. There are many other cases and proceedings that they're involved in, including a weapons retention cases, pitches motions, code enforcement, administrative hearings, or vicious animal cases and others. So, but this is a good segment of what our litigation team is involved in. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much, Madam City Attorney. Council, do we have any questions? Let's move on to, oh, go ahead, Sue. I was just going to mention, I have nothing else to report this evening other than the litigation report. So thank you. We'll go on to our city manager report then. Thank you. I have two updates tonight. So the economic development division has redesigned, updated, and relaunched the website component of our Out There SR program. So outtheresr.org, and this program is paid for using tourism at assessment funds. And the site is a tool of our Santa Rosa Tourism Business Development Area. While also serving as a key lifestyle and cultural tour for our business and workforce attraction efforts. Our Housing and Community Development, the Safe Parking Pilot Program completed its first month of operations. Catholic Charities Report operations are running smoothly. Current occupancy is 42 participants and 27 vehicles. Two individuals have exited the program into housing and additionally, Providence Health is on site twice a week to provide medical services to our participants. Thank you. Excellent, thank you so much, Madam City Manager. And if we could get those numbers circulated to council members via email as well, that'd be helpful. Council, do we have any questions for the city manager? Okay, let's go to public comment on this item. If you have a comment, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your ZIM. I see none. Madam City Clerk, do we have any voicemails? You're not mayor. Okay. Council, do we have any statements of abstention from tonight's meeting? All right, seeing none. Let's go to our mayors and council member reports. Who wants to start with their report? Council member McDonald. Thank you so much, Mayor. I just had a few things that I'd like to report out on. One last Friday, I was able to go and attend the Roseland groundbreaking event that was for the Boys and Girls Club over in Vice Mayor Alvarez's district. And so that was really amazing. They had all kinds of handouts and it's very exciting to see not only the size of the actual building, but how many children and families are going to be able to serve and how many kids have been waiting on a wait list to be able to go to the Boys and Girls Club. So just a fantastic job from their staff. And we were very fortunate to see the dancers and to have a taco truck there. And so it was great to be able to be at that event on Friday. Yesterday, I met with Project Greenway and just wanted to give a shout out to them as well. They've persevered for a really long time on that project. They said that they've been working on this for 13 years. So I think that's a phenomenal opportunity for us to add some bike safety lanes and pedestrian walking ways in the center of Santa Rosa that could connect us to the parks. So I just wanna thank them for all of their advocacy and how long they've been working on that. And then on Saturday, I was able to go to the Rex and Parks Park a month event at Coffee Park. And they had 119 volunteers sign up for this event. It was the most volunteers they've had for the parks events thus far. And 71 of them were students under the age of 18 because they reached out to all of the schools. So they were really encouraged by that number. And next month on May 14th, they'll be in Howard Park. And so I would not only encourage all of us to try to attend, that's a very big park to be able to undertake in a day, but also to really encourage students that need community service hours. A lot of schools look for those hours to complete by the end of the school year. And this could meet that requirement of your school. So to talk to principals that might have students that wanna participate, that was great. And then to see all the staff there and that connection to the community was also fantastic. And then last, I was able to go with Mayor Rogers as well as Vice Mayor Averrez to Beretta Dairy on Sunday to see how the city has distributed wastewater to our dairies to help them grow grass and to see the process of that and how that all works. And we got to see the cows coming in and baby cows also, which was just a total plus for me. So thank you to Doug Beretta for sharing that history with us and to show us how that works within the city and how that we can maybe work together in the future. So I think that just about does it for me. Okay. Any other council member reports? Council Member Rogers. Thank you, Mayor. So I would like to appoint Dylan Rendell to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Board and also on April 4th, the wider Water Advisory Committee met and we unanimously recommended approval of the Sonoma Water Fiscal Year 2022-23 water transmission budget with a rate increase of 6.06% to $1,061.04 per acre foot for the City of Santa Rosa's water purchase in the upcoming fiscal year. And the Sonoma Water Staff provided updates on the current, move, hold on a second, sorry. Provided updates on the current water supply conditions, the ongoing drought response and the launch of the spring and summer public outreach water conservation campaign, which will be the drought is still here, which it is definitely still here and has not gone anywhere. And it is critically important for all customers to continue to eliminate water wastes, reduce water use and improve water use efficiency. And they can visit the Santa Rosa water site to find out ways to do that and the resources that the city has to assist in doing that. Also on April 22nd, the Litterbug Cleanup Crew is teaming up with the parks team and they will be going out to Bellevue Ranch Park and the Santa Rosa Creek Trail to Bellevue Ranch Park will be from nine to 11 a.m. They'll be spreading mulch and pulling weeds because we all love to do that, but it is something that needs to be done. So they'll be teaming up and doing that to beautify our parks. And from 12 to 130 going out to Santa Rosa Creek Trail near Pearson and 6th Street to do some litter cleanup. So I believe they'll be picking parks and places near the trails to do litter cleanup and doing some work that the parks team could use a couple of. And so if anyone would like to volunteer to assist doing that, they can reach out to myself by email and I can give them further information on that. And I think that was it, thank you so much. All right, thank you, Council Member. Let's go to the Vice Mayor. It sounds like summer's back and COVID's resided and we're all getting a chance to get out there and play and wear our Council Member hats, which I really do enjoy. It's been now over a year and finally I get to experience what being a Council Member is, being so involved with the community. And I love that we're all having the same opportunity to do just that. For myself, on April 1st, I was able to attend a groundbreaking event here at Spousable Road, 1885, where milestone housing broke ground with the potential of over 70 homes. I was very happy to meet them and see what they're doing in the community. I know that they're also finishing a project in Sonoma for seniors. On April 3rd, I attended an event at LC Allen High School in the Quad area, where a lot of our service providers made themselves available to the community. Then also we saw the presence of the Maryland vehicle being used for the first time out in the public as far as I know, which was very great to see, it was very well received. Friday on the 8th, along with Council Member MacDonald and Council Member Rogers, we did attend the Boys and Girls Club. And I have to tell you that I did not expect to see the concrete already poured in the floor plan that already visible. So you can start imagining what it was like or what it's gonna be like. That she wrote what each section was going to be on the concrete. So you could actually envision which each section, everything from, I believe it's gonna be a couple of stories. So I can only imagine the amount of great things that can be provided for the community. On April 6th, along with Supervisor Chris Coursy, we were able to sit with the South Park Neighborhood Coalition and discuss the many issues that they're facing. So they're definitely making their issues and concerns known. And I'm sure I'll be relating those to my colleagues to yourselves as well. Then last but not least, actually on Sunday, along with Council Member MacDonald and Mayor Chris Rogers, we did visit all those beautiful cows from the jerseys to the, and I see the smile on Council Member MacDonald. It was a great day to be out on the farm. I do miss those days and I see great things happening. And last but not least, on the 15th of this month, Council Member Rogers and myself will be at a safe place to play having an open meeting with our community. So hopefully you'll be able to reach out to Julie Guzzi if you wish to sit with either her or I to discuss whatever issue you wish to have out in the open and the beautiful setting of one of our city parks. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Council Member Fleming. Thank you. This is really great. I've been alluding to this for a couple of weeks and I finally got to go ahead to share with you guys that the Red Housing Fund Board has made preliminary lending recommendations in response to a funding application and received a review. I wanna be clear that the recommendations are preliminary and shared publicly earlier than is customary in the spirit of transparency and also that I'm pretty excited about it. The recommendations are subject to change and the fund proceeds as the fund proceeds due to diligence and underwriting and all kinds of boilerplate stuff that I was asked to say. So with that aside, the project recommendations are ACME family apartments located at 1885 Roseland Avenue featuring 77, one, two and three bedroom units affordable to households earning between 30 and 60% of AMI. Aviyara located at 1385 West College Avenue featuring 136 units of two and three bedroom affordable to households earning between 30 and 60 AMI. Casa Roseland located at 665 Sebastopol Road featuring 75, one, two and three bedroom units affordable to households earning between 30 and 60% of area median income. 420 Mendocino Avenue located at 420 Mendocino Avenue featuring 161 Studio, one bedroom and two bedroom workforce attainable units in the heart of downtown Santa Rosa. Pullman Lofts located at 701 Wilson Street featuring a total of 114 one and two bedroom workforce attainable units across three phases of development. South Park Commons located at 702 Bennett Valley Road featuring 62 Studio, one, two and three bedroom units affordable to households earning between 15 and 50% of AMI. This is 625 units of new climate smart equity focused disaster resilient housing where working families can live and thrive. Several of the projects are expected to break ground this year and as you heard from other council members some already have all are required to start within 18 months of successfully completing the red housing funds underwriting due diligence and loan closing process. Thank you council member. Any other reports? Okay, I'll be really brief as well. Wanted to give a quick shout out to Sutter. I had a chance to go and tour their new hospital expansion that they were able to just get finally they're waiting for final approval from the state so that they can start to actually utilize it. That was very cool to see as they're training their staff on each of the different components of it and a much needed new expansion of the facilities since they've obviously been impacted through COVID as well in terms of capacity and making the system work. So I wanted to thank Ed Sheffield for arranging that tour and for the invitation. We also had a couple of our monthly meetings over the last week and a half or so since we last met. We had Sonoma Clean Power this last Thursday where we went over our overall strategies for SCP and some of the innovative programs that Sonoma Clean Power is trying to do in particular. One of the ones that I like is a look at how we can use charging stations placed at businesses to not just increase the demand for vehicles but also to help regulate the grid particularly as it pertains to when solar and wind have been most created throughout our community and take advantage of that. That's pretty cool work that they're doing. We had the kickoff last night for Sonoma County Transportation Authority and the Regional Climate Protection Authority's Climate Mobilization Strategy workshops. They'll be doing these throughout the community to try to lead up to the conversation around funding for climate. If we're going to achieve a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the timeline that we have, how do we actually fund the programs that are going to get us there? So if you are interested in a presentation on that or know a group that is, feel free to reach out and we'll get that scheduled. But it was very well attended about 70 people in the audience and about 15 people including board members for RCPA that were able to attend. Finally, we also had our legislative committee meeting for the mayors and council members. It is the first one that we've had since the bill introduction deadline passed. So there were a couple hundred new bills or priority for us to discuss. I wanted to specifically flag for this group SB 833 that's a bill by Senator Bill Dodd who is one of our delegation representatives. It is specifically focused on requiring the identification of areas where micro gridding might make the most sense and pushing utilities in that direction. It's one that we've obviously talked a lot about as we've rebuilt from the 2017 fires. I think that that will be a particular interest to council members to see how that plays its way through the process. And we did end up unanimously supporting that as a region. So I've sent with my chair hat on for that board. We are sending a support letter to Sacramento for it as well. Now, after those lengthy, and I appreciate, thank you council members for the report outs. It's nice to see what everybody's doing. And I agree with the council, with the vice mayor that it's good to see people back out and about. Let's go ahead and go on to item 11.2 is, and we've got a couple of different things within here. We have the mayors and council member association selection committee that will be meeting on Thursday, this coming Thursday, the 14th. There are three different items that I'll be asked to weigh in on or the vice mayor if I'm unavailable, because we also do have our measure O meeting that night. But we have the airport land use commission. It was council member Tibbetts's term that has expired and obviously he's no longer there. Nobody has actually put in a letter of interest yet. We have Lafko, which was Pam Stafford is the only person who has put in and she'd like to retain her seat on Lafko. And then we have the remote access network, the RAN, which must be filled by a mayor, but we've received no letters of interest as well. So I'm looking forward direction from the council on how you would like me to proceed on these three items. I'll open it up, let's go to public comment first on our mayors and council member reports. If you're interested in providing comment on the reports that council members gave, or if you have an opinion on the mayors and council member appointment process, feel free to make your comments here now during public comment, and I'll bring it back for discussion and motion from council members. And I see no hands. Do we have any prerecorded voicemails? We do not, mayor. Okay, I'll start with council member Rogers. This is your item. Do you have a motion for us on the mayors and council member appointments? Yes, I would like to make a motion to support Pam Stafford from Ronup Park for the LAFCO commission and also a recommendation that if ones are received or if the city selection committee or mayors and council members board recommends all alternates that the city council authorized the mayor or his or her designee representative the authority to vote on the late nominations or recommendations at the city selection committee meeting and way furthering of the time. Second. We have a motion from council member Rogers and a second from council member Sawyer. Any additional discussion? All right, Madam clerk, can you please call the vote? Council member Schwedhelm. Hi. Council member Sawyer. Hi. Council member Rogers. Hi. Council member McDonald. Hi. Council member Fleming. Hi. Vice mayor Alvarez. Present. Aye. And mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Yeah, Mr. Vice Mayor, this isn't Congress. You can't just vote present. Oh, sorry. I was just trying to think, I'm trying to clear my throat like, oh, hopefully it's not too raspy. I meant to say aye. We appreciate it. Let's go. 11.3 earlier today around three o'clock, the council had interviews with the candidates interested in the personnel board. We heard from the candidates, but we will also open it up for public comment for folks who have an interest in giving us their opinion on who we should appoint to the at large and union representative positions for the personnel board. Go ahead, hit the raise hand feature if you are interested in providing comment. It's seeing none. Madam city clerk, do we have any voicemails? We did not, mayor. All right. Then I'm going to go to council member Fleming for a motion to put a motion on the table. Let's start with the at large and then we'll come back for the labor representative once we have that settled and put a motion on the table for discussion. Thank you, mayor. I'd like to, if it is okay with you, ask the council for a recommendation. I thought we got some good interviews and I'm not feeling like, you know, putting my thumb on it too strongly here. Is there any, what is it okay with you by solicit input from the council? Absolutely. Does anybody have a strong opinion or want to give their council member Sawyer? Thank you, mayor. I would like to see Mike Reynolds as the labor representative and Luana Vitoys as our at large representative. Okay, council member Schwedhelm. What he said. I think, so I think I just heard a motion from council member Sawyer with a second from council member Schwedhelm to appoint Luana to the at large and Mike Reynolds to the labor position. Is there any discussion on that? Okay. Madam C. Clerk, if you could please call the roll. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. That is okay. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. All right, thank you. I did want to express just gratitude to both Sandy and Roger as well for their interest. And I will say we've done a number of different interviews for personnel board in the past or at least over my last five and a half years on council. And this group of folks applying were extremely qualified, extremely interested. I really appreciate it. And so I'm hopeful that Sandy and Roger if you're interested still in the future when another seat opens up that you'll come forward because I think all of your experience would have been really valuable on the board. And congratulations and welcome to Luana our new representative who I think will do a fabulous job as well. Let's move on to our consent calendar. Madam city manager. Good afternoon, mayor. Jason, not assistant city manager for the consent. I'll be filling in for city manager Smith due to items further into the consent calendar. So if you're okay to proceed item 13.1 is resolution professional services agreement approval with MCK America's incorporated construction management and inspection services associated with six fire damaged parks recovery projects. Item 13.2 motion project work order approval Green Valley consulting engineers incorporated construction management and inspection services associated with Fulton Road widening project between Bernville Road and Tiner Road. Item 13.3 resolution professional services agreement approval Green Valley consulting engineers incorporated construction management and inspection services associated with fire damaged roadway landscaping. Item 13.4 resolution authorization to file applications for federal transit administration formula program and surface transportation program funds for fiscal year 2022 through 2024. Item 13.5 resolution approval of a blanket purchase order for emergency response vehicle equipment to Stomell Incorporated DBA layer using pricing from Placer County supplier contract SCN104242. Item 13.6 is a resolution certification of urgent need national objective for the community development block grant disaster recovery program. Item 13.7 resolution approval of purchase order under the Houston Galveston area council comma H dash GAC un comma cooperative agreement RA05-21 to motor road solutions incorporated to replace and modernize existing mobile radios. Item 13.8 resolution amendment professional services agreement number F002302 with Bureau Veritas North America incorporated for fire code plan review services. Item 13.9 resolution waiver of competitive bidding and approval of professional services agreement number F00235 with Haggerty consulting incorporated for ARPA administration. Item 13.10 resolution Santa Rosa tourism business improvement area advisory board appointments. Item 13.11 ordinance adoption ordinance of the council in the city of Santa Rosa increasing the compensation of the city manager to provide effective April 10th, 2022 a 2.5% cost of living, salary adjustment and $500 annually for wellness. Item 13.12 ordinance adoption ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa amending chapter one dash 12 of the Santa Rosa city code adopting the final map of district boundaries for district based elections of council members in accordance with the redistricting process for the federal 2021 decennial census California elections code section 21620 dash 21630 and the Fair Maps Act. And that concludes the consent items for today. Thank you so much, Mr. Assistant City Manager. Council, do we have any questions on the consent calendar items? Good thing done. Let's go to public comment. If you're interested in providing comment hit the raise hand feature on your zoom. Okay, seeing none. Do we have any voicemail? You do not, Mayor. All right, Mr. Vice Mayor, I'm coming back to you for a motion. Thank you, Mayor. I move items 13.1 through item 13.12 and wait for the reading of the text. I got it. We have a motion from the vice mayor and a second from council member Schwedhelm. Madam Court, can you please call the roll? Yes, thank you. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay, it's not yet five o'clock, so we will skip our public comment for non-agenda matters and come back. We'll go to our report items. As was previously announced a couple of times, we have polled item 15.1 off of today's agenda. So we'll go to item 15.2. I believe Mr. Kibbutz will be presenting. Mayor, item 15.2 is a report, a license agreement with Pacos League of Professional Baseball Clubs, LLC, to use Doyle Park Baseball Field and I'll hand it back over to city manager Smith for the remainder of the meeting. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers, members of the council. I didn't hear the announcement earlier, so you caught me a little off guard, jumping right to my item here, but fortunately mine's a pretty easy one and an exciting one. I'm really happy to be here to present this to you guys this evening. As I think we've got a unique opportunity here in Santa Rosa to do something pretty cool, bring something into Santa Rosa. So we are presenting an agreement with the Pacos Baseball League for Doyle Park as the home field for their independent professional baseball team. Next, I didn't introduce myself, Jeff Tivitz, Deputy Director for Recreation. Next slide, please. So the Pacos League of Professional Baseball, this is a league that has been around for about 12 years now. They formed in New Mexico and Texas is where it started, as you can see by the map below. They have been expanding over the last 12 years and are looking at this point as being the only independent professional baseball league in California. They're looking to add another Northern California team and that is why they have reached out to Santa Rosa. When I spoke with the Pacos League, one of the reasons that they're looking here is a member of the Major League Baseball, Baltimore Orioles organization, actually recommended, he used to run minor leagues in California and he recommended that if you have the chance to get into Santa Rosa, that's where you need to go. Santa Rosa has a great baseball community and that's where you can have success. So that's how Pacos reached out to us and put forward the proposal to come here. The team name for Santa Rosa would be the Santa Rosa scuba divers. To some that may seem a little odd, why would we be the Santa Rosa scuba divers? It actually has historical relevance to the league, the Pacos League. So when they started in New Mexico and Texas, one of the original cities that was looking for a team was Santa Rosa, New Mexico and got far enough in the process that they had developed the team, the Santa Rosa scuba divers, they had a website, they had merchandising gear, everything and that unfortunately for us maybe did not work out for them at that time. And so 12 years later and 1,250 miles Northwest later, they are finally going full circle and looking to add the Santa Rosa scuba divers here in Santa Rosa, California. Next slide, please. I'll be perfectly honest when this first was presented to me, I was not very optimistic that we would be able to make it work. As I mentioned in the last slide, we do have a great baseball community here in Santa Rosa. That means we have a lot of baseball groups and users and Doyle Park is certainly one of those fields that we accommodate a lot of that need. And so to try to squeeze something else in seemed like a daunting and maybe not feasible task. So that was the first thing that we had to do is have that communication, not just with Pacos but with all of our historical groups. Fortunately they reached out to us before we had started our sports field allocation for this year. And so the other thing that worked out really well is the time of the season and the summer that they're running. We had a little bit more flexibility than some of the other times of the year. So fortunately as we reached out to other groups, again, everyone was really excited about this opportunity. They were willing to do what they could and that includes Pacos. So Pacos originally came to us and they were proposing to have a Sunday program. We explained to Empire Baseball League as a group that we have had on Sundays in this field for several, several, several years, decades. And as soon as we mentioned who the group was, Pacos actually knew some of the people involved with the group and was like, hey, absolutely not. We don't want you to move anything. So everyone involved Pacos and our traditional groups that were here were absolutely on board with making this work and respecting each other and not creating a situation where anybody felt left out in our allocation of field space. So Pacos was flexible. They were willing to go with the Thursday and Friday which fit in with what our other proposals for field use were for the months that they're looking for. So that was the first and biggest hurdle and we were really excited that we were able to get past that and present something that we think is feasible to manage here in Santa Rosa. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned, we have a lot of user groups. Obviously we don't bring all those as agreements forward to council. So why is Pacos being treated a little bit differently and we have a license agreement here and not just utilizing our field allocation. And that's because there are a couple of components here that go beyond what our normal field allocation or our field allocations cover. The first one and most kind of important one is the city is agreeing in this to provide temporary fencing that will go around the bleachers and we will be meeting with park maintenance staff and with Pacos to really dial in exactly what that mapping will be but you see a rough idea of where that fencing will be making sure that we still accommodate access to pathways that are in the park while also giving enough space for the operation of the league for them to be able to charge admission into the games as well as the next bullet point there covers having the fencing that is required for them to be able to sell alcohol. Our agreement covers that point but obviously as the city we're not the ones that is overseeing or authorizing their alcohol sales permit that will be going through ABC license like anybody else to acquire the permission for that. And then the other thing that we're doing here is this agreement exhibit B is the schedule of dates for this year. That exhibit is our field permit allocation. That's the permit that is exhibit B and that's what we'll be looking at every single year. So we're not making any guarantees beyond this season and Pacos is aware of that and Pacos understands that they'll be participating with us each year in our field allocation process. Again, the timing of it, it works out well. We're confident that we'll be able to meet the needs of the community and we'll be able to continue to with Pacos League but that is something that will be negotiated through our field allocation process each year and be updated as exhibit B in the contract and the agreement. And next slide please. Oh, don't know if that got updated. Is there supposed to be a slide for the recommendation? Sorry, am I supposed to go over the recommendation before I take questions? Mayor, can you go ahead? Yeah, I can help you out here. So the recommendation is, and you are just missing the one slide but it's publicly available. It is recommended by the recreation division that the council by resolution approve and authorize the city manager or designee to negotiate, execute and administer subject to approval as to form by the city attorney a license agreement with the Pacos League of Professional Baseball Clubs, LLC for the use of the Doyle Park Baseball field for Professional Independent League Baseball. Thank you, Mayor Rogers. My recommendation was going to be play ball but apparently that's not sufficient for a council meeting. So instead we got that paragraph. So with that, I'll take any questions you may have. I think that that one's actually a sufficient recommendation for me, Jeff. I ordered my Santa Rosa scuba divers hat already. I'm just waiting for it to arrive for that first game. Let's go to council member Spudhelm for questions. Thank you, thank you for this presentation, Jeff. I'm with you, it's very exciting. Our eight question that I have is the amount of parking and traffic impacts. Again, I'm thinking back to when we had a remote park had the crushers. A lot of times there were a couple of hundred people showing up there. What's our capacity with Doyle Park? And like the mayor said, I also visited the scuba divers website but had a hard time seeing how many people usually attend those type of games. Any info on that? Yeah, so I know the league organizers would love for that to become a problem for them. Obviously, and I think all of us, we wanna see people go out and enjoy this. So a couple of things that we have out there at Doyle Park right now, we still have the one parking lot that is closed. So that is something that we are evaluating and a possibility still in our security contract that we can have them close that each evening. So as the league picks up, that would be step one is we could start having that open either by staff or putting a lock that the league would have access to to open it Thursday and Friday afternoons for the games and then put it back with, negotiate back with our, or not negotiate it's in the contract but reestablish with our security contract that they would go out there Thursday and Friday evenings and clear the parking lot and lock the parking lot back up. So that would be step one and then step two, certainly recreation and parks is willing to look are there any other, you know, partners around there and parking lots that are successful that we can go into an agreement I had a conversation with legal they'd be willing to look into that as well and help negotiate that. So we don't have all of that laid out in front of you at this time, but it's certainly something that we're looking as a possible conflict down the road and in some ways hoping that it becomes a conflict and so those are some of the solutions that we'd be looking to address any parking issues that they come up down the road. Great night. I really hope this is a problem we're gonna have to deal with and I just offer maybe contact in center of city schools because they do have a elementary school across from Vallejo which may be able to assist should we need over full parking. So thanks for bringing this forward, Jeff. Thank you. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I'm curious whether or not the congratulations and this is a great move for Doyle Park. It is a well-loved park and well used and I'm curious whether or not the contract will help with preserving or creating revenue or resources of any kind, whether it be labor or money to help with the maintenance and any any refurbishment necessary at the park at the ball field. Yeah, so the fiscal impact as reported is pretty minor. You know, what we're paying to bring them in, you know, the fees that we're charging will cover that. There'll be a small increase in revenue but that revenue is right, general funds supported. So it's not gonna go directly back to the field. So the impact that you're gonna see is again, just the added use and a high level use where they are gonna wanna come in and they are gonna wanna do some under this current agreement, it's just right. I mean, basic field preparation and those types of things. So the field is just getting general maintenance on a more regular basis. I am hopeful that this, along with some of the other user groups, conversations I've had with user groups, I know some grassroots movements to try to really invest in this ball field and do some things in the future. I'm optimistic and hopeful that this is another step to build more momentum towards that and to do something on a larger scale but that certainly, you know, renovations in the field, bringing in all weather, turf, any of those types of things down the road would obviously be a much, much larger commitment that would be coming back before council is a separate item. And that's not something that we're asking of PECOS or a commitment that they're making to do on their own. But hopefully it's just again, builds that momentum for Doyle baseball field and for what we could do in the future with the groups that are out there. But all those groups, I need to give them kudos. They have all stepped up as our ability to maintain that field because of shortages and park maintenance have not been maybe what they were in the past. All those groups have stepped up and taken on more of that field prep. So this is another group coming in and doing that and every day that you're doing that, the condition of the field is gonna be better for it. I appreciate that. I think we've probably heard from some of the same individuals that are looking to in a sense, adopt the field and for lack of a better term and anything in that direction would be, not only a benefit to the field and save the city money, but an increase in the quality of the play, especially if we were able to ultimately get an all weather turf on that site. So I think we're on the same page and I appreciate your work. Yeah. The one thing I'll say is those different user groups, historically already have established that they work well together and that they're doing these. And I'm very confident that PECOS wants to come in and be part of that community and contribute to those efforts. So it is exciting on that front. Great, thank you. Go to public comment on the item. If you're interested in providing comment, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature. Okay, Madam Clerk, could we have any prerecorded voicemails? We did not, Mayor. All right, I'll bring it back. Council Member McDonald, can you please put a motion on the table? Yes, I move the adoption of resolution at the council of the city of Santa Rosa, approving and authorizing the city manager to negotiate, execute and administer a license agreement with the PECOS League of the Professional Baseball Clubs, LLC for use of the Doyle Park baseball field and waive for the reading of the text. Second. Motion by Council Member McDonald and a second from Council Member Sawyer. Is there any discussion or comments from Council? I just want to say a couple of thank yous. Jeff, great work. Jason, I know you've been working on this as well. So I want to say thank you to Jason. Thank you to the PECOS League for looking at Santa Rosa and deciding that this is a place that you want to come. And I'm really excited. I was looking at the tickets when I first heard that this was a possibility. It's $10 a ticket to be able to go and enjoy community together. It's really affordable for folks within our community. And I think it really will help to amplify what we're trying to do in terms of getting people out and about and building. So with that, let's go ahead and call the vote. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Aye. And can you send us a schedule of the games? Council Member Fleming. Yes. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Great, thank you so much, Jeff. Look forward to seeing you out there on the mound. We can throw the ball around. There you go, you got it. Thank you. Let's jump back to item 14. That's our public comment for non-agenda item. If you have a comment on an item that is not on tonight's agenda, but still falls within the city's jurisdiction, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. All right, we'll start with Andrew. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, I hit just pushing the right buttons and everything. I'm talking about housing. I recently attended a city meeting last month on the future for housing in our city, a potential plan for 36,000 more housing units, representing about 75,000 more residents, plus Santa Rosa willing to take on more housing from other cities. City council approves all affordable housing projects and definitely needed, although sometimes not at the best locations for the city's infrastructure built out. But then you approve the policy last December that takes residential properties off the market called the short-term vacation rental policy. And they give the city council credit for tracking these, where they are, how many they're hosted or non-hosted. I believe it's about 400. So why does the city council, your four more housing allow residential properties to be taken out when we need it and used for vacation rentals in residential neighborhoods. Today there are 400, I believe, maybe next year a thousand and they sit there empty 90% of the time. So they're not being used, people not contributing to the city, paying sales taxes. In essence, this is a luxury market. I have a couple right down the block from me and they are right across from each other which violates the current 1,000 feet minimum. But because they got, second one got their permit fees in before the final, everything was finalized, the city looked the other way to take the money in and I have problems with that. Since this is a luxury market for short-term vacation rentals, which are usually weekends, perhaps you should contact the owners of the Fountain Grove Hotel, Hilton Hotel both burnt down in the Tubbs Fire, sitting empty, why not tell them to build a boutique luxury hotel and you'll approve it. Vacation rentals really don't belong in residential neighborhoods, especially with the housing very tight. This is a zoning issue, just issue new zoning rules to prohibit short-term vacation rentals for both hosted and non-hosted residential properties. The only other solution to do this would be to go to the ballot box and give residents an opportunity to vote on prohibiting short-term vacation rentals on the name of preserving our residential communities. Thank you. Thank you, Spence Andrew. Madam City Clerk, do we have any pre-recorded voicemails for public comment? We do, Mayor, coming right up. Diane Test, Agenda Item 14. Hello, I am Diane Test from the Santa Rosa Merit Awards Committee. Dating back to 1978, accepting year 2020, the Santa Rosa City Council has presented Merit Awards to individuals, organizations, and businesses who volunteer their time and talents to benefit the city of Santa Rosa. To learn more about the Merit Awards and to submit a nomination form for 2022, please visit srcity.org forward slash merit awards. Printed material is also available at Finlay Community Center Front Desk, 2060 West College Avenue, Santa Rosa. The deadline to submit nominations is July 10th, 2022. The award winners will be recognized at a ceremony on Monday, September 19th, 2022 in the City Hall Council Chambers. Our appreciation to the council members who attended last year's modified ceremony. Thank you, you made it special. Thanks again. Right, Mayor, that concludes public comment for non-agenda matters under Item 14. All right, thank you so much. So under the city's open government ordinance, we do jump now to our public hearing. Now it's close to five o'clock as we can. So we'll move to Item 16.1, Madam City Manager. Thank you. Item 16.1 is the public hearing, appeal of zoning code appeal deadline determination. Jessica Jones, supervising planner will deliver the report. Great, and council, just as a reminder, we'll start by disclosing our ex parte communications. We'll do our staff presentation, and then we'll have the appellant presentation as well. Then we'll bring it back for discussion and emotion. So I'll start with council member Schwethelm. Do you have any ex parte communications to disclose? Yes, I do, Mr. Mayor. I did have a brief conversation on this item with the chair of the planning commission and also spoke to a community member, a business community member who was also engaged in the project, but all the information is containing what's available in the public record. Okay, council member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I did have a brief conversation with my appointee to the planning commission. I had a conversation with a call from the appellant and a conversation with the applicant, but learned nothing more than what was in the staff report and the synopsis in our agenda. Okay, council member Fleming. No contact outside of what's in the public record. Okay, council member Rogers. No, council member McDonnell. All right, council member McDonald. No contact, Mayor. Okay, Mr. Vice Mayor. Nothing to disclose, Mayor. Okay, and I have no ex parte communications that need disclosing either. Go on to our presentation from staff. Welcome, Jessica. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you, Mayor Rogers and members of the council. I am Jessica Jones, the supervising planner for our current development team here in the Planning and Economic Development Department. The request before you is an appeal of the zoning code appeal deadline for the Planning Commission's action on the Penstemon Place residential project. Next slide, please. So for background, on January 27th of this year, the Planning Commission unanimously adopted a mitigated negative declaration and approved a hillside development permit, conditional use permit and tentative map for the Penstemon Place project, which is located in Southeast Santa Rosa on Linwood Avenue. The zoning code requires the appeals of a decision by the Planning Commission be filed within 10 calendar days after the date of the decision. On February 9th, an appeal of the Planning Commission's decision was received by the city, which was two days after the appeal deadline. On February 10th, a letter was sent to the appellant notifying him that the appeal was untimely and could not be accepted. And then on February 17th, an appeal of the appeal deadline determination was received and accepted. Next slide, please. So the appellant has provided two grounds for appeal. The first is that no information about the deadline for appeals was included in the neighborhood signs notifying the public of the Planning Commission hearing on the 27th. And the second, that planning staff gave the appellant incorrect information about the appeals process before he filed the appeal on February 9th. Next slide, please. So these next two slides will be going over staff's response to those grounds for appeal that I just mentioned. As noted, the Planning Commission approved the Pensaman Place project, which is a 59 unit single family residential project on January 27th. The zoning code states that appeals shall be filed within 10 calendar days and that time extends to the following business day if the last day of the appeal falls on a day that the city has closed. The final day to appeal decisions made by the Planning Commission on January 27th was February 7th. And the appellant submitted the appeal form on February 9th, which as mentioned was two days after the deadline. Next slide, please. While information on the appeal period was not included on the public hearing sign that was posted on the project site, it was included on the public hearing notice which was mailed to property owners and occupants of properties within 600 feet of the project site. Staff has confirmed that the notice was mailed to the appellant's residence. Information regarding the appeal process and deadlines was provided to the appellant by staff prior to his appeal, submittal on February 9th. I also do wanna note that the zoning code specifies that appeals must be filed on a city application form. However, the form that was submitted by the appellant is actually not a city form. The correct city appeal form, a copy of which was provided in your packet includes a statement regarding the appeal deadline requirements and deadlines. The statement was omitted from the form that the applicant submitted. Next slide, please. So with that, it is recommended by the Planning and Economic Development Department and the city clerk's office that the city council by resolution uphold the Planning and Economic Development Department and Department of City Clerk's determinations to not accept an untimely appeal form and deny an appeal of the zoning code appeal deadline determination following the Planning Commission's action on the Penstemon Place residential project. So with that, I am happy to answer any questions that you might have. The appellant is also here and would like to give a presentation. And we also have Susie Murray, a senior planner here who was the project planner and is available to also help with any questions that you might have. All right, thank you so much, Jessica. We'll start with questions for you and then we'll move on to the appellant's presentation. Councilor, do you have any questions? Council Member Rogers. Hi, so Jessica, my question is this sounds slightly familiar, but to me, the point of having multiple ways of communicating with the public, whether it be by sending out letters to their residents or notifying them by posting is to have all the information available. So if we don't have all the information on the neighborhood signs, even though we did have another form of communication, we failed to have all the information on one of the forms of communication, right? Yes, so yeah, as mentioned, the public hearing sign that was posted on site did not include a statement about the appeal deadline, but again, it was included on the mailed notice, which a copy of which was included in your pocket. Yes, and didn't this occur on another, can I ask that question, Sue? But has this been an issue before with our noticing? So we did have a late appeal on the Hearn Veterans Village Project that recently came before the council. However, it was determined because their appeal was primarily based on the environmental analysis and the appeal deadline for actions on environmental is different than that was a timely submittal. But wasn't this a concern about posting and whether or not we were providing all the information or is it just me? There was some concern and confusion about where the information is located on the deadlines for appeals. Okay, I'm just trying to clarify for myself. All right, thank you very much. Any other questions from council? Okay, we'll go to the applicant's presentation or give me the appellant application presentation. Hello, my name is Steve Osborne and I would like to thank the city council for listening carefully to my appeal. Just to be clear, this hearing is about the city clerk's denial of my original appeal of the planning commission's approval of Penstem and Place. The clerk denied that appeal because it was submitted two days after the deadline. This hearing is only about the appeals deadline, not Penstem and Place. I'm filing this appeal for two reasons. The first reason is that the neighborhood sign about the Penstem and Place hearing on January 27th did not contain any information about the appeals deadline. The second reason for my appeal is that I received incorrect information from city staff about the deadline before I filed my original appeal on February 9th. I'm hereby asking the city council to let me resubmit my original appeal based on the following narrative. The narrative begins when the planning commission approved Penstem and Place on January 27th. I believed at that time that the planning commission's decision was the end of the process. So I wrote an email to city staff the next day thanking them for their help. Next slide please. This email is included in your agenda packet so I won't reread it. About a week and a half after writing this email I realized that the planning commission's decision was flawed because they hadn't considered important information about traffic circulation and because one of the commissioners didn't seem to be paying attention during the hearing. Finally, on the evening of February 8th I wondered if planning commission decisions could be appealed to the city council. The next morning, February 9th I wrote to city staff asking for information about appeals. Next slide please. This email testifies to my ignorance about the appeals process at that time. You can see my questions. Where the rules for making appeal does it have to be made within a certain number of days? Is there an application form and so forth? I knew nothing about it. After sending this email I found 1,192 results for the search term appeals on the city's website only one of which was the appeals form. The form said that the deadline for appeals is within 10 calendar dates after the days of the decision. Meaning that the deadline for Penciman Place was February 7th. I wrote back to city staff wondering if the deadline could be extended to that day, February 9th. Next slide please. That's my request. And so a city staffer responded by phone and informed me that I should have known about the appeals deadline because information about the deadline was included in all the public hearing notifications. Despite the staffer's comments I filed an appeal at the city clerk's office later that day, February 9th. Next slide please. The next day, February 10th, I took a photo of the neighborhood sign on Linwood Avenue which was my only source of information about the public hearing. The sign does not mention the appeals deadline meaning that city staff statement about the deadline being included in all public notices was incorrect. Excuse me. The city staff statement about all public notices maybe wonder if they had issued public notices other than the neighborhood signs. On February 23rd, I asked staff if they had sent any mailings about Penciman Place to local residents. They said that a postcard had been mailed before the hearing but I had never seen one. My next door neighbor hadn't seen one either but another neighbor recalled receiving a postcard and kindly dug it out of the trash for me, coffee stains and all. Next slide please. As you can see, the front side is a postcard is a copy of the neighborhood sign without any mention of the appeals deadline. Only when you turn the postcard over can you discover the deadline in an unexpected location and in barely readable type. See if you can spot the deadline when I turn the postcard over. Next slide please. Did you spot the deadline under the address? It's so tiny that I'll have to read it for you with blanks for the missing words. Action taken by the blank on this project will be posted to our website at srcity.org slash pc. In compliance with zoning code section 2062 the decision of the blank is final unless an appeal is filed within 10 calendar days of the action. When I showed my wife the neighbor's postcard she recalled receiving a similar postcard shortly before the hearing but she had thought it was redundant information because the front of the card was simply a copy of the neighborhood sign. She threw away the card without looking at the back so I never got a chance to see the card before the appeals deadline. Given the preceding narrative I believe that the city clerk's refusal to accept my appeal because it missed the deadline by two days is unfair because I was unaware of the appeals deadline. I received no information about the deadline before or during the public hearing either from the city or from the commissioners themselves. It seems unreasonable to expect that I should have filed an appeal by the deadline when I could not reasonably have been aware of the deadline. In conclusion, I would like to suggest that the city include the appeals deadline in all notices of planning commission hearings including neighborhood signs and that planning commissioners explain during the hearing how their decisions can be appealed to the city council. Thank you for listening to my appeal. Do you have any questions? All right, council. Does anybody have any questions for the appellant? Okay, I'm not seeing any questions. Let's go ahead and let's go to public comment on this item. If you're interested in providing comment, please hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. Okay, I'm seeing no comments, no voice messages. All right, we'll bring it back. We'll start with a motion and then we'll discuss it from there. Council Member Schwedhelm, do you want to put something on the table? If we can just say clarification, was the public hearing open and closed? I just want to make sure we don't. It was, I appreciate that since we are Zoom a lot harder to see the gavel. All right, thank you. I would move a resolution of the council, the city of Santa Rosa upholding the city clerk's determination to not accept an untimely appeal form and denying an appeal of a zoning code appeal deadline determination, following the planning commission's action on the Pennstone Place residential project in the way further reading the text. Second. We have a motion from Council Member Schwedhelm. We have a second from Council Member Sawyer. Is there any discussion from Council Members, Council Member Rogers? So I just want to say, I really think it is up to, it's up to us to communicate effectively, whether that is in writing or verbally and a part of that is through our notices. So if we are doing something and it's coming up repeatedly or if we're not doing something, then we really need to listen and maybe make some changes about how we're sending out notices or how we're hosting things to make it easier for people within the community or it defeats the purpose to me doing what it is that we're trying to do. And that is to give the public the opportunity to have their say if we're things are done within the community. So that would be my take on the situation. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. And I feel for Mr. Osborn's situation, I've been doing this a really long time and I have never in my 16 years on the Council, coming on 16 years of the Council and I'm sorry to keep bringing that up but sometimes it's relevant. And in this case, it is relevant because I have never seen an appeal like this before which would suggest to me that in most cases our notifications are adequate. Could we make changes that might make it more clear? Could we add more information to the neighborhood signs? I mean, there are all sorts of information that one could ask be added to the signs and maybe a notice of what is acceptable for an appeal might be something that we could add. One can add too much to a sign and therefore make it confusing. But I think that processes can always be improved but I think that if we were to make an example of this particular one and suggest that it was that we did not notice it properly and that the time limit had passed that we would in this case, which is fairly rare set an unfortunate precedent, a precedent that could come back in the future and someone would say on this date you overturned a recommendation by our clerk and the Economic Development Department because someone missed a deadline. And I think that our deadlines are important. We need to stick by them. We can always improve how we communicate with the community but in this case, it was not the fault of our clerk or the Economic Development Department and I do not see that it was I think we need to stick to our guns lest we open up Pandora's box. And the fact that I've never seen this before would suggest that most of our noticing is adequate and has been for years. So I'll be voting to uphold the staff's recommendation. Council Member McDonald. Yes, I just wanna thank Mr. Osborn for his presentation and your honesty that your wife tossed out your card. So I actually really appreciate that you disclose that to us. And I agree that the sign should be consistent with the cards that have gone out and that we need to improve on the language that's on the cards that go to the residents that it wasn't quite as clear because there was some blanks. However, it has been notified. And so I do agree with staff's recommendations and this is an important project that I definitely do not wanna hold up the process for. But I do think that there's always room for improvement. You mentioned that our website resulted in over a thousand different connections to an appeals process. And that's something that we brought up in goal setting that our website had a lot of problematic, duplicative language when it comes to the search engines. And so I think that your feedback oftentimes doesn't always result in you maybe having the win but hopefully the improvement that we can do in city communication to our members of the community. And so I want you to take that with you that we are listening and that we do see some room for improvement on this particular communication. So thank you for that and that's all for me. All right, thank you council member. Are there any other comments from council members? Okay, Madam City Clerk, can you please call the vote on the motion? Thank you, council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay, thank you council. We'll move on to item 16.2. Item 16.2 is the shared scooter system pilot program ordinance amendment. And this report will be delivered by Nancy Adams, Nancy Adams Transportation Planner. Thank you. Good afternoon council members. Can you all hear me? I have my mask on. Yes we can. Thank you. So I'm excited to bring this back to the council. It's been I think four months since we presented the shared scooter system pilot program permit and condition report to you back in December. So we've done a lot of work and I'm here to present some minor ordinance changes to part of the city code chapter nine dash 22. So next slide please. So before I get into background, I just wanted to briefly remind the council and members of the public that we did do the proper notifications for the public hearing. It was posted at city hall on March 30th, 2022. We published an eighth of a page in the press democrat on April 1st, 2022 and was also posted on the city's website pursuant to the zoning code section 20 dash 66. So now moving into a little bit of the background. So as I mentioned in my initial remarks, the city council approved the shared scooter system pilot program in December of 2021. We did a little bit of a road show. We presented the item to the Historic Railroad Square Association and the downtown organization in March of 2021 prior to going to the council. And then prior to that, we also presented it to the downtown subcommittee in December of 2020. And then in November of 2020, the council gave us the initial direction to develop the one year pilot program. What's missing on the slide and I actually forgot to put it in here, we did reach out to our bicycle and pedestrian advisory board in November of 2021 with the same permit conditions that were eventually sent to the council in December. So next slide, please. So this, just in terms of the ordinance background, so the city council back in 1996 and 2001 adopted a couple ordinances related to specifically prohibiting skating activities and scooters on sidewalks and streets within the specified areas of the downtown and railroad square and then shopping centers and other areas of public property. Next slide, please. So what's before the council today is, like I said, a couple of minor adjustments to the safety and health code chapter nine dash 22 that would allow for the scooter system pilot program that the council approved in December to adjust to let that occur within the city in those particular areas. So the operations of the shared scooter system would be consistent with state law and in terms of how they would operate and the rules that the California vehicle code stipulate for scooter operations. So next slide, please. So the two minor amendments include adding a subsection which actually would exempt the scooters from prohibition during the pilot program so that they can operate on public streets, alleys and gutters. And these devices will still be prohibited on the sidewalks per the existing ordinance. So that will expand that exemption for the scooters and in that subsection. And then the other minor adjustment we need to broaden the scooter definition so that it would also include motorized scooters. Right now the term motorized isn't included in the language of the ordinance. So that's a minor adjustment that would need to be made. And next slide, I think this is gonna be very short. Yeah, so we're at the recommendation. So essentially we would like the city council to introduce an ordinance to amend the city code chapter nine dash 22 bicycle skateboard roller skates inline skates and similar devices to allow scooters to operate on public streets, alleys and gutters during the council approved shared scooter system pilot program. And I am happy to answer any questions and we'll bring it back to the mayor. All right, thank you so much, Nancy. Council, questions. Seeing none, we'll go to public comment on this item. You are interested hit the raise hand feature on your zoom. And yes, council member Sphedhelm, I am opening the public hearing. Seeing none, I'll see if there are any voicemail. There are not mayor. All right, then I'll close the public hearing and I'll bring it back. Council member Fleming, can you please put a motion on the table for us? Indeed mayor, thank you. I'd like to propose an ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa to amend Santa Rosa city code title nine health and safety code chapter nine dash 22, bicycles, skateboards, roller skates, inline skates and similar devices to allow scooters to operate on public streets, public alleys and public gutters during the city council approved shared scooter system pilot program and wave further reading of the text. Second. So motion from council member Fleming and a second from council member Sawyer. Any additional discussion? All right, just a big thanks, Nancy. We know that this is important for solving that first last mile issue. And I'm really curious to see how it plays out. But if I might. Oh, my mayor. We've actually, based on our advice from our legal department, we were able to actually advertise for some vendors. And we of course couldn't hire them until the council makes the final action on the ordinance. But we did, we have received three vendors and we're going to be evaluating those applications over the next month. So there is interest and we're looking forward to bringing this and launching it to within the city. So just an update. Excellent, excellent. Cause there was an article in the press Democrat about Windsor's program and I may have gotten a text from somebody saying, how did they beat Santa Rosa to it? So I'll be happy to see those on the street. With that, let's call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Hi. Council member Sawyer. Hi. Council member Rogers. Hi. Council member McDonald. Hi. Council member Fleming. Council member Fleming. Vice mayor Alvarez. Hi. Mayor Rogers. Hi. Council member Fleming. Hi. Thank you. That motion passes with seven eyes. Great. Thank you so much, Nancy. Welcome. All right, Madam City Manager, let's go to item 15.3. All right, thank you. Report item 15.3 is in opposition to initiative 21-0042A1, taxpayer protection and government accountability act. I'd like to introduce intergovernmental relations and legislative officer Alonso. Hi, good evening. Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Alvarez, members of the council and city manager Smith. I'm Scott Alonso, intergovernmental relations and legislative affairs officer. And we will have a short presentation and happy to answer questions. So this is regarding a California state ballot measure initiative called the Taxpayer Protection and Governments Accountability Act, illegally known as initiative 21-0042A1. Next slide, please. So the California League of Cities, their main advocacy initiative right now is actually against this measure that is under circulation. A consortium of business groups are gathering signatures to try to place this measure on the November 2022 ballot. And CalCities has asked members within our division, the North Bay Division to consider passing a formal city council resolution in opposition to the proposed statewide ballot measure. The proposed ballot measure would severely impact the city of Santa Rosa's finances and potential to raise future revenue. The measure would also impact citizens' efforts locally here in Santa Rosa and passing a voter initiated initiative. So meeting if a group of residents wanted to place a measure on the ballot by collecting their own signatures for a sales tax, this proposed statewide ballot measure would curtail that effort and prohibit that really around what's the voting threshold needed to pass a general sales tax. So right now, California courts have weighed in on that where a voter initiative would only require a simple majority to pass for a sales tax. If it's placed on the ballot by the voters, this statewide ballot measure under consideration would not allow that to happen. That they would need a two-thirds vote to pass a sales tax. Next slide, please. So just some brief background points for you this evening. Just overall, there has been, I wrote this a couple of weeks ago. There's been a few more initiatives that have qualified for the November ballot, but I believe it's only four. There are 37 potential initiatives under circulation gathering signatures. And a new change in state law a couple of years ago is that if an initiative qualifies for the state ballot, they can pull the measure by June 30th of the year that it would be eligible, meaning oftentimes there's negotiations with the state legislature if a measure makes it on the state ballot, which is related to this effort because in 2018 a similar measure was under circulation for that general election, but was ultimately pulled by the proponents. And back in 2018, CalCities was also opposed to this measure. And I just wanted to kind of highlight a few other key items for this measure. And there's quite a few components related to what taxing authority a city would have. So we could go to the next slide and then actually skip over that slide. Thank you. Yeah, I accidentally had a duplicate, so sorry about that, but, so the, and we'll get into that, sorry, I'll get into that in a second, but the lead just is more background that the lead proponent of this measure is the California Business Roundtable. And they again have a, there are essentially a consortium of businesses and large corporations. So we, in your agenda packet tonight, we've included a few different fiscal analyses, one by CalCities and then one by the legislative analyst's office, the LAO. The CalCities analysis found that if the voters did pass this statewide ballot measure that it would severely curtail a local government's ability to raise revenue and ultimately impact their finances. And one key component to this statewide ballot measure that certainly will impact the city as we consider our own measures potentially is that according to the statewide ballot measure, if any tax measure passed this year by the voters that doesn't meet the requirements set forth in this statewide ballot measure that would amend the state constitution, then that initiative would need to be readopted or it would be null and void within 12 months. So essentially, even if we vote in November on any local initiatives and this measure, if this statewide measure passes and our local initiatives don't meet their requirements, we would have to do it over again within a year or the measure would be lost. As I mentioned, this measure would change the requirement for an initiative placed on the ballot by citizens and would require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes even if they put it on the ballot themselves. Next slide, please. So the measure would expand the definition of taxes. It would prohibit any fees related to vehicle miles travel as a condition of a property development and potentially under this measure, fees, charges, assessments, fines and penalties would be considered taxes and thus subject to voter approval. So this would include any violations of state or local laws unless there's an adjudicory process, but the measure, the problem is the measure does not define what this process would be for a city to weigh disputes over a potential fee or what that fee would be described as and where that comes into play is under this next bullet point where the measure would also subject new fees for about a product or a service to an actual cost test and a reasonable standard. So essentially it would change how the meaning of how those services are delivered and how we can charge for them. And again, the challenge is there's not a process in place to kind of solve that if there is a dispute. Next slide, please. So CalCity's analysis also conveyed that the measure would require voter approval to expand an existing tax to new territory. So this would apply to future annexations, which certainly the council and the city and using Roseland as an example, if we had an existing tax that new Roseland residents back in 2017 would have to be applied to, this measure would actually have those residents voting on each and every sales tax measure that had previously been adopted, but those folks were not subject to you because they weren't in the city, right? But if this passed future annexations, they would then have to vote on all of these measures that may have already been in place within city limits. So in CalCity's view, this would deter cities from trying to annex new land and harm future development. The measure that we're discussing tonight would also prohibit an advisory ballot measure that accompanies a general sales tax measure. So oftentimes cities, when they go to the ballot and ask voters to approve a general sales tax, which only requires a simple majority, they may also have a separate ballot measure accompanying that tax that basically outlines a plan that what the voters could vote to say what they wanted essentially. This statewide ballot measure would prohibit that from occurring and you could no longer place an advisory ballot measure to go with that general sales tax. So the legislative analysts office also conducted their own independent review and they found that this statewide measure would lower state and local revenue based on the implications on taxing and what cities could do to raise revenue. Next slide, please. So in closing, the recommendation is that the council by resolution oppose initiative 21-0042A1, also known as the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act, which is a proposed statewide ballot measure. And I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much, Scott. Councilor, are there any questions? Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a comment, not a question. I think that the individual who came up with a title of this particular act deserves an Academy Award and a slap. It just amazes me that they came up with this that sounds so wonderful that you just gotta have it. And it could be so devastating to our cities. Just had to say it, thanks. I appreciate that, Council Member. Let's go to public comment and see if anybody has comments on this item as well. And I see Adina with a hand up. Hi, sorry, can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Okay, good evening, Council. I just wanted to first off say that the city of Santa Rosa has been doing a wonderful job and we really appreciate Ms. Payas and Mr. Alvarez taking the time to listen to the issues affecting people of color. So thank you very much for that. On a side note, I would just like to say that I want to ensure that any boards and councils and commissions, et cetera in our county are using full integrity when voting on these items. For example, our chairman for the County Board of Supervisors Supervisor Gore has not exactly been financially transparent. He attempted to rectify the transparency of his finances in a recent press Democrat article. However, he did not disclose that his wife has a corporation called Gore Country and that corporation actually has several outstanding tax liens. And within that corporation, Ms. Gore is receiving income from multiple, multiple- Adina, I appreciate it, but I need you to bring your comments back towards this item if you would. Okay, well, it is towards the item. It's regarding the taxpayers and the fraud that's taking place in our county. So anyways, yeah, I just have an issue that Supervisor Gore's wife was the president of Rebuild North Bay and that income was not disclosed publicly. And I don't understand how Mr. Darius Anderson who controls all of the media of our county is a lobbyist for PG&E and we are suing PG&E. It seems that there's a bit of fraud taking place. I'd be more than happy to fill you in on the rest of the illicit activities, but it's just odd that the Gore's also failed to disclose that Jennifer Siebel, the wife- All right, Ms. Farz, I need you to bring it back to the initiative that we're discussing whether the council should support or oppose. I appreciate it, but there's a time and a place to discuss those things. We're talking about this initiative. So if I can get you to come back to talk about the initiative, I'd appreciate that. Okay, well, I've been trying to address the people, our elected officials in this county for about a half a year. And nobody cares what I have to say. The district attorney refuses to respond to pertinent information relating to the PG&E settlement, which I would think she would absolutely respond to. So when you guys want to actually acknowledge the fraud taking place in the county, you know how to reach me. Thank you for your time. All right, thank you so much. Madam City Clerk, are there any voicemail public comments? They're not, Mayor. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and bring it back to the council, Council Member Rogers, if I can get you to put a motion on the table and then we'll see if there's any additional discussion or questions. Thank you, Mayor. I move the adoption of the resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa opposing initiative 21-0042A1, the Taxpayer Protection and Government Accountability Act in a way for the reading of the text. Okay. Okay, Council Member McDonald, did I see a question? I do just have a clarifying question for you. When you mentioned that all the initiatives, local initiatives as well, Scott, does that mean that local schools that would be putting a parcel tax on the ballot as well as bonds, would they have to be under this same act if it was to pass? It's not just something that affects the city or a city or countywide tax, pardon me, is it also as far like our local schools as well? Yes, I believe so. The statewide ballot measure amending the state constitution would apply to any tax measure, including bonds. So essentially any local entity would be impacted by this as well. The measure's proponents are really focused on cities, but certainly any government agency that's trying to issue or raise revenue this way would be impacted. I think that that's key. I mean, I'm in favor of our opposition on this. I think it's critical that we come out in opposition of this. There's a lot of initiatives that are coming forward that are to support our community members. I can remind members of the public of Proposition 13 and the unattended consequences of that actually reducing funding going to schools. And the only way they can actually raise those revenues now is buy a voter initiative and needing a two-thirds vote for a parcel tax, but only a 50 plus one for a bond. And so this would make it even harder for local schools to be able to get that money that's needed. And there's certainly some very worthy causes out there right now in our own county that would support our kids. So I really appreciate you flagging this for us and bringing it to council so that we can get on this and as well as spread the word to the public on the need to support an opposition of this. Any other comments from council members? Okay, Madam Clerk, if you could please call the vote. Just could I get clarification on who's seconded it? Was that council member Schwedhelm? Yeah, I believe so. Okay, thank you. Okay, council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Great, thank you. We'll move to item 17. That's our last, excuse me, no written communications. Item 18, our last public comment for non-agenda items. If there's anybody who has a comment for non-agenda item, now would be the time to make them. Let's go to Adina. Hi, can you hear me? Yep, there you go. All right, so since this is a non-agenda item, I'm gonna start where I left off. So yeah, I'll have a lot of issues with everything taking place in this county, primarily at the county level, but supervisor Gore has been completely non-transparent with his finances. His wife, Elizabeth Gore, has a corporation called Gore Country, which they have excluded from all of his statements of economic interests. And within that position, she started up several nonprofits. One is called Shot at Life, which is tied directly to the United Nations, where she was the first resident entrepreneur, and they are receiving monies from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who has partnered with Pfizer. So being that the Gores have been non-transparent in many avenues, I'm wondering if they are financially benefiting from the pharmaceutical companies that our county is invested in. I don't understand how it's not considered a conflict of interest when the counties in California who are invested in the pharmaceutical companies have mandates currently in place. The counties which are not invested have dropped their mandates. I don't think that these mandates have anything to do with science. They seem to be based entirely on profits. The Gores also failed to mention that Jennifer Siebel, the wife of Gavin Newsom, has founded a nonprofit with Elizabeth Gore. So Newsom also failed to disclose this on his statement of economic interests. And Gore has gone on to approve contracts that financially benefit the nonprofit Rebuild North Bay, which his wife was the president of, and contracts with their direct partner United Way. So it's just really odd that many of the same folks are sitting on these boards and applying for grants. And I don't know that the monies are going to benefit that the people that they say they are. It seems that they're going back into the pockets of these individuals. I actually love my community. And if I ever decide to start a nonprofit, it will be a legitimate nonprofit. None of the organizations in our county are actually representing what they say they do. For example, Locien held a debate for the county supervisors about racial justice and decided to exclude people of color who were not vaccinated with an entirely Caucasian panel. So no, this is not about equity or representing people of color. It's about continuing the wealth of the Caucasians who control our county. So again, I very much appreciate Ms. Teyes and Mr. Alvarez. And I hope that we can bring that genuine aspect for others. All right, thank you so much, Adina. We'll go to Shelby. Hey, can you guys hear me? Yep. Hi guys, thank you so much for your time. Mr. Adi Alvarez is doing such a great job with you guys. And I wish you guys would help to end the witch hunt for dealing with Mr. Alvarez. First and foremost, when we're talking about equity in this community, I don't see any type of equity whatsoever. When we continue to discuss about the things that minorities go through, you guys have already declared the fact that pretty much we are ill represented here. Ms. Mugale is a wonderful person. I had a great time having a conversation with her and she continues to reach out to me to go ahead and do the work that is so important in this community. I'm continually watching people like Mr. Gore and some of these other individuals benefit off the backs of minorities and people of color. This is very disturbing. Being that I'm not from this community originally and I came from one of the most diverse communities in the Bay Area, it concerns me that they are not in pace with the things that are going on in the world today. We continue to go ahead and strive towards the idea that we wanna go ahead and create equity and equality in our communities, but we don't actually exercise those rights. Being a biracial member of this community, I continue to go ahead and see the frivolous use of certain terms that are disgusting and actually disparaging to my community. I don't like the term Latinx. It goes ahead and degrades the value of what my people have gone through in this community. We continue to talk about how all these communities aren't represented and haven't received anything. Black members in this community have received zero, zero help whatsoever from individuals in this community in any kind of way and representation. Native Americans have representation, Mexican Americans have representation. We make up 2.7% of the population of Santa Rosa currently the press Democrat, which is an interesting piece of history, declared that we would never see over 3% of black people in this community in 1803. In 1814, they had a mass exodus of black people because of the lynching parties. From what I understand, Ms. McDonald who is sitting there currently, her family owned slaves. This continues to be disproportionate to what we are actually trying to achieve within this community. I don't have to sit here and continue to ask for freedoms when I continue to watch people enslave people in the current status of things that we have going on. It is disturbing to me that you guys can sit there day in and day out and not look the better truth in the face. You need to start incorporating people of color, stop excluding us based off of our vaccination status and get this under control immediately or you're gonna feel pushed back from the community. And I have no problem leading the charge. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Shelby. I don't see any other hands. So with that, counsel, appreciate it. We're going to go ahead and adjourn tonight's meeting. See you all soon.