 here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Member of the subcommittee are present. Very well. We'll go ahead and go to item number two public comments. If you can open up our public comments. Those on zoom. We need the advisement. You know what, I will go ahead and read that for you. Please. Pursuant to government code section. Number five four nine. And the recommendation of the health officer of the County of Sonoma. The downtown subcommittee members will be participating in this meeting via zoom webinar. Members of the public can participate in the meeting via zoom. By visiting. Members of the public can participate in public comment by utilizing the raised hand feature, or if calling in by pressing star nine to be recognized to see. Thank you. Thank you. And do we have any public comments this morning? We do not know any recorded messages. We have no recorded messages or emails for this meeting. Perfect. Perfect. I'll go ahead and close public comment. And item number three parking program, if you'd like to take this matter forward. Oh yeah, sure. Thank you, Vice Mayor item 3.1 we have the report from the park report, the parking program report I apologize. Alan Alton our chief financial officer. One moment, and I will go ahead and promote Alan and presentation. Thank you. And I believe Alan will also be introducing our new parking manager. Morning. Good morning, sir. How are you? I'm well. How are you. I'll get sir. All right. So, I have a hopefully quick parking update today. I think what I'm going to do is. Before I begin my comments. We have hired a new parking manager. His name is. Chad hedge. He comes to us from the rain water district. So we actually take somebody back from the water district instead of giving them all away. I, I view that as a, as a great victory on our part. It's about time, right. Anyway, Chad started on Monday, or last Monday. So he is getting his feet wet. And a lot of stuff thrown at him. Going forward, he'll be the one giving this update. He's got a very diverse background. He was a crew chief working on helicopters in the army. He was a firefighter with Cal fire. He worked for the. The conservation core in Sonoma County. And, and then was a pre supervisor with marine water district. The, the one thing that really sold me on him would get very solid. Team building and management skills and those in those ways. So, while admittedly, not a lot of parking experience. We can teach that I'm reminded that Tim Nado started without a lot of parking experience and became a very good parking manager. I have high expectations for Chad. And, and you'll get to see a lot of them going forward. So with that, I will start my presentation. We can. You can start that I read. Absolutely. Thank you. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to cover. For items in this update. So the first. We'll kind of tie a bow on the EV charging. Part of it. I believe at the last minute we were asked to provide updates on revenues and fee waivers. So I'll do that. But in addition to just the, the few waivers, I want to provide some context on what we're seeing in terms of parking trends. And then provide just a really quick financial summary of the parking fund as we are developing our budgets. So we had a, I have some budgeted information there to be able to share with the group. Going in. So that's what it was. So in the, at the last minute, we mentioned the signs and the stenciling going up. I didn't know exactly when they were going to go up. They actually went up, I think that day. Here is, here is what you can see out in courthouse square. So on the, on the large picture I have the square and the arrows are pointing to the two locations. There are two spaces at each charging station that not only has the, the signs with the brightly displayed with, with red background, and also the stenciling on the ground. Early on, we were finding that we weren't needing to issue a lot of warnings. So it seems that the timings is doing its, its job. Obviously as time goes on, we'll be able to have a little bit more information on how those spaces are being utilized. Next slide please. And the next slide. So this is just to go over real briefly the, the fee waivers. I think you all have heard this enough that this just provides a timeline of where we are with it. We began our fee reductions in July of 2020 we had, we actually authorized free parking or the council authorized free parking at the, the initial part of the, of the pandemic, and then we went into a fee reduction program beginning in July of 2020, and we've extended that several times. And then the end date for this is set for June 20 or June 30 of 2022. So, next slide, please. So today, and, and looking forward for the last or for the final quarter of this year. We're estimating about a million dollars a little over a million dollars of parking price drops that we've, we've hopefully have helped the businesses in the downtown be able to incentivize people coming to the downtown to park. However, I will get into in the next couple of slides where we're seeing the trends. Which is a little interesting. I think we want to look at it a little bit closer but it's, but it's an interesting thing. So let's move on to that to the next, next slide and then the one after that. So we, we looked at where we were at a point in time pre coded. So we looked at February 2020. And then in the middle of, of the pandemic and then hopefully towards the end of the pandemic and what we're seeing is that where people park are pretty much where they were pre pandemic or there's the parking changes have it or the, the theory that haven't really changed the trends and where, where people park. So, I, I don't know why that is we haven't really interviewed anyone or any further research pulling type of research. This is just the raw data where we are and what we're seeing. We can infer what we want from it, but I thought it was interesting and, and wanted to share that I know in the past week, we've talked about, about these trends and where people park, but, but to look at it at pre middle and hopefully post pandemic to see relatively the same parking preferences was, I guess that says a lot about the demand in, in the parking area. So then in the next slide, we actually are are seeing where we're our transactional trends are. So, you can see that we were trending up and trending to a higher number of transactions, and then really started trending up around December, and then on the primary and hit, and we went to a higher number of transactions on the left hand side and moves forward, you can see that we were trending up and trending to a higher number of transactions, and then really started trending up around December, and then on the primary and hit, and we went down again, but hopefully we'll start trending back up. And then obviously what we're what we're really hoping for is that we start hitting that pre covered average. That is, that's, that will mean a lot to the fund. And I will say we, we don't have our March revenue numbers yet. That's just due to the delay in the revenue posting later this month. We'll have all that and so for the next meeting to going forward, you know, we can, we can look at things on a more quarterly basis, but these are all ending in February of this year. So next slide please. And then on some goodness. Again, looking at transactions but meter transaction. The one thing I consider this is that the road road square where we are seeing us getting closer to the pre pandemic levels of parking set that shows that that in that area. Going up, and that's great. In the, the rest of the district, it's still lagging behind. But again, we're, we're hopeful as things start opening up and we're able to have more events in the downtown that that we can start seeing our numbers tick up. So next slide please. And one more. So, like I said, we are developing our budget. We've just gone through city manager budget reviews for most of the city's budget. So this is coming from from that. This is just a quick parking fund summary. As you know, this, this is an enterprise fund. So there are revenues and expenditures that go along with it. So the telephone story. We like to look at both of those and this is comparing budget to budget. Obviously we don't have the current fiscal year actuals yet. I felt that it would be best to just go on a budget budget basis. So what we're seeing is our operating revenue and when I mentioned operating revenue that's our charges for services and permit fees and any licensing fees anything like that, that, that are, are more recurring revenues are non operating revenues are things like interesting kind of comes in. So, you know, whatever we get more from that, that's just it goes and helps replenish our reserves that it's not something that I would want to build a budget on. Operating expenses are all of our regular on end and salary and benefits costs. And then we have projects that help maintain all of our blocks and structures, and then more major projects, such as the ones that we're showing here, we have there's an elevator repair that we're doing in garage 12, which is the one right by the Roxy Theater, as you don't know where I'm pointing to but I was pointing to the Roxy Theater, and and then another one is our is some additional funds going toward our lot 10 resurfacing project. So our revenues are going slightly up and that is anticipating the, the fee waivers going away at the end of the year and really seeing a, the one thing that we can count on going up in revenue is our, our garage revenue. And so we were able to add that back in. Obviously, we'll be looking at trends and hopefully being able to adjust our revenue up significantly higher than that in the years to come, as parking returns more to normal, and we're able to get closer to our, our more annual averages of revenue. The transfer is in I should mention what that is. And so that is funding that comes in from the general fund pays for our parking enforcement. And this works as the general fund pays for the parking enforcement officers in that operation, but the general fund keeps the parking fine revenue. It generally comes out to about a one for one. Right now, actually, it's, it's, I think the revenue on the general fund side is a little bit less than the transfer but generally, it's either a little bit to the good to the general fund or about a break even point. And then I've gone over the operating expenses like I said that it involves salary and benefit. Those include our MOU costs for the labor agreements that were recently signed. So there's that's basically what makes up all of that 6% increase. And the most everything relatively flat in the, in the fund and as you can see why is because we are currently running a deficit. And that's something that we need to look at going forward. Next slide please. This is a an enterprise fund that does have reserves, just like any other funds would. We began our fiscal year audited reserves for communities with about $7.6 million. The current fiscal year deficit for budgeted for fiscal year 22 the current fiscal year. So we we subtract that $1.7 million deficit from that amount. But then we received the revenue from the sale of lot two, which was about $1.3 million. So you add that that in. So our estimated reserves and again nothing is that's on a budgetary basis. So that's assuming that we are going to receive all the revenue that we estimated and spend all of our budget fully including these changes. And then we anticipate our reserves at the end of this year to be about 5.9 million. We will know the actual number in the fall of 22. So that's significant. The reserves again, additional revenue will will help bring that up. And that's what we're looking for. We also need to be strategic in how we do our maintenance, our large maintenance projects. Right now we currently, we have an asset management plan that's what the ANP is. And so I just looked out a few years we're still doing some assessments to see which projects we can continue to defer. Which one's not but according to where we are with the plan now, looking at the 2324 fiscal year 2425 and 2526 those three, those are what we have planned that we would need to do some maintenance on our assets, garages, etc. Those in itself total about $10 million you can do the math that that's going to be a challenge. So we will be working on a couple of different things. If there is one of the things that I'm looking at is if there's a way to finance any of that to create some cash flow to be able to deal with that. If that might be able to help us. We'll need to look at, you know, how we can, you know, augment revenue as possible, things like that there's a and what what we can just frankly defer off to upcoming years and what are the truly essential things we need to move forward with. So there'll be a lot of that going into the next fiscal year. So the next budget cycle through, we should have a lot of that nailed down and we'll have a better sense of where we're going with with that fund. And hopefully the revenues will be back and that will that will solve some of our problems. That's where we are. That's a little bit much for this committee but I thought that the context that goes along with a lot of what we talked about here is, you know, we had this information and we thought that it would be good to share the more budget and and reserve information that normally goes to the finance. And that's the end of my presentation. If you have any questions, I will do my best answer. Thank you much Ellen. Council member so I see you have your hands. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. For years, as long as I can remember there, we have our those that have been critical of our park and parking program and our meters and charging for parking in general downtown, have a suggested a correlation between charging for parking and our ability to attract and retain retail or and restaurants etc in the downtown. If we were to eliminate parking meters, etc, the, the, it would be made up by sales tax. And I'm wondering, this is perhaps a bad time to do it because we have because of coven and the challenges on retail, not only in the downtown but but citywide. When we start to resume charging at on the surface lots and the garages and and and our meters on street parking, whether or not we would actually be able to come up with a way to see if there is a correlation between parking fee reductions and general fund increase from sales tax. So I know that the, the ticket revenue is goes to the general fund and you just mentioned that it's pretty much of a kind of a wash, if you will. So I'm wondering if this, I'm not sure if this is really the best time, but it would be interesting to somehow tackle that question. As far as the, the, the meters and charging people for parking. I don't, you know, it all depends on the vitality of the downtown as well I mean if we were, you know, incredibly vital downtown which were, we are, you know, as a group and our organizations are working to vitalize the downtown and make it sustainable. You know, it would be easier to suggest that we could we either reduce or eliminate some of our parking charges, but I'm wondering if we have the ability at this point to start looking at when we start to resume our charges for parking if we see a decrease in sales taxes. So I'm just throwing it out there because it would be interesting to be able to show the numbers and how once, once the parking was, once the fees were resumed, if we saw a drop in sales taxes, both from restaurants and just general retail, that that might prompt a conversation and some strategies to counter that decrease in our parking revenue, or, you know, in our sales taxes. So, are, is there a correlation if you raise the parking rates, does retail go down, I guess is really kind of a question and I don't know how difficult it would be to track that. But this might not be a bad time to start thinking about a way to put that argument to rest. If nothing else just to know in our, in our ourselves, what the realities are and what the correlation is between charging for parking and our revenues from sales taxes. So I'm just throwing it out there. It's something to be considering in the, in the future. We are the only city. As far as I know, still in the county that that has parking meters. And Petaluma. I don't remember if they have any meters but in any of their, you know, their parking areas but it's something that we are, it's always thrown in our faces and I think it would be, it would be valuable to be able to, to either prove it, or disprove it at some point in the in the near future, because it does have an impact on our downtown and courthouse square, or railroad square. And yeah, so these are all questions that that that we asked and we discussed I mean there is the worry that that if you, you know, who would be parking and how that the turnover of parking would be those are that that's typically the argument for having the parking meters out there is that it allows for the turnover of customers able to come in employees or or folks that aren't that are parking there but aren't visiting the shops are there. We can look at and and I've actually have already started talking with our sales tax consultants. We, we look at and can isolate certain geographic areas and determine the sales tax is generated in those areas. And we, a long time ago, looked at the downtown. I've asked them to start that we want to start analyzing that again. To revise our boundaries or make sure that our boundaries are connected goes by, by track information so that's that stuff that we're working on right now to be able to provide that in the in the future. It's one of the things I want to do is all the major sectors of activity that whether we're having a lot of development or whatever I want to be able to isolate and analyze the tax growth in in those areas. It's, we know it's there we just want to be able to actually put a fine point on it. Obviously, we a more vibrant downtown we think it's going to be good for everyone, not only the parking district be able to provide the parking for folks, but but for the community that is there. So it's that that we are, we will look at and I know I have Chad already talked to me a few times mentioning that. And, and so I think he and Raphael and right. Those are, those are questions to look at that correlation and where we are because I'm, I, your, your point is, is very well taken there's a lot of anecdotal box on what would happen and be able to quantify that would be, I think, a very good thing. I appreciate that thanks Alan and what, but people have always said is well you know Heelsburg doesn't have. And I don't want to compare our downtown to Heelsburg and you know we are, we are never going to be chic like Heelsburg and nor are we patently dependent on visitors, as opposed to our residents. I believe Heelsburg is into some degree Sonoma as well. I mean they have limits on how long you can park without getting a ticket and I'm wondering if we might be able to employ hybrid, where there are some areas where we put a time limit, and then you get a ticket other and other areas where you would get a, where there is a meter, there may be a blending of the two. Because the argument that the employees are using up all the parking is potentially valid. It's a little hard to track that I understand that, but, and that's mainly anecdotal, and it's usually come from from our from the parking department that that they were always in, you know, historically talking about employees taking up the parking from the, from the customers. So, it's just, you know, being able to put some reality into that conversation would be would be benefit in time when it seems appropriate, and we have the ability to dedicate the time to do that kind of might be kind of interesting, because we have, you know, we have garages that need to be maintained and operated and our meters subsidize the garages so we have a unique situation that the other cities in the county do not have and it's hard to get the word out to our downtown users, the reason why we have meters. And so anyway, I'll leave it at that I just, you know, I look one of these days I've looked forward to seeing some, some truth placed on that anecdotal, those anecdotal suggestions. Thank you, members, sorry, and to echo your comments, I have seen the comments from from business owners, just with the subtle change of the extra hour that they receive on the daily. I believe it was from, from an extra hour from 76. I believe it was a small change about two years ago that they did appreciate. Mayor Rogers, I see that you have your hands. Yeah, and I agree with with john I think that this gives us an opportunity to collect some data and work at how look at how it actually works I will point out though that you know one of the things that I hear the most from people is that it's not the meters themselves it's the inhospitability of getting a parking ticket when the meter expires. And so even going to a time limit doesn't solve that problem if somebody stays longer than there a lot of time and they get the parking ticket. And we'll still hear from people that that makes that person never likely to come back downtown again whether that's true or not. I was struck Alan and I wanted to ask you about the specific comparison of February. You know, because typically in February, your last two weeks of February are plenty the younger, which I imagine is one of the drivers of parking in the garage is because you've got three hours at your table and then you also have however long line for, which means pretty much the only place for you to park and not get a ticket is in the parking garages. And so I am struck that your before data at the 19% for the garages is in a year that has plenty the younger in February, and then your after data which was I think was at 22% is still an increase, even without potentially the largest driver of people parking in the garage. So, I just want to make sure I pointed that out because I do think you're going to see an impact with your numbers in March because now you do have it in March, instead, in early April. But I don't think it's going to be a pretty fair apples apples comparison from from 2020 to 2022. And obviously there's no 2021 data that you can compare to as well. So I just wanted to flag that for you. But with john I'm looking for data options for us I'm looking for finding that compromise. How do we, even if it's the perception. And I think that that's what you hear from businesses a lot, even if it doesn't actually make a difference in terms of the exes and those but it's the perception of having a welcoming downtown. I think that I'm definitely open to different options or different ways that we can change how we do things. Thank you, Mayor. Alan, I do see chat is online. I want to give him an opportunity to to say hello chat sorry if I put you in an awkward moment here. No, not at all. Good morning everybody my name is Chad it's nice to meet you all. I'm not sure if there's much more I can add to this. No, no, no, no. Hello, and welcome aboard it and looking forward to working with you. Thank you. Nice to meet you all. Absolutely. Absolutely. I will add a question in regards to the total revenue of 4% that we've seen for years. 22 and ending 23. Historically as is a 4% a normal increase or change that you've seen. I would say, give it to where we are. Normal is kind of out the window. Absolutely. So, you know, I was looking for it. I don't have it right in front of me. I was looking at what our five year averages are pre coded in that and even with that there were some you mentioned the increase in in in parking hours that influence that influence revenue. But there were, I was trying to look at what the average. That's what we're doing that period. That's fine. I figured I asked you the questions before we opened up a public comment. Yeah, give you an opportunity to research that number if you didn't have a little bit. Absolutely. So we'll hold off on that question. We will go to public comment if that's okay with you. We'll go to public comment for this. The first individual is Adrian covert and share the screen. Adrian, you have permission to speak if you would confirm your ability to see the timer that would be wonderful. Great, I can can you all hear me. Yeah. Okay, good morning everyone. Thanks for hosting this discussion. I want to say, I want to say a couple things. I'm a Adrian covert and I'm resident of the West End neighborhood near railroad square right downtown. I believe there's probably an existing study on the correlation between sales tax and the cost of parking. I'd be surprised if that didn't exist for a town similarly size to Santa Rosa. I heard that question before today so I'm not aware of one but I'll look for one if I can find one I'll forward it along to staff and the second though as a downtown resident. I'm really opposed to the idea of free parking. No, especially in the name of making downtown more vibrant. Downtown has ever been made more vibrant by adding more cars. I mean currently 47% of the entire land mass of the downtown area is just car infrastructure and the bigger biggest part of that is parking it's almost half the downtown area. I think if the goal is to make downtown more vibrant. The reason for that is we need more people living downtown who can support downtown businesses and work downtown without driving there. I understand building, you know homes makes takes time and the city's looking at converting parking infrastructure into housing and that's great. But just long term, if the goal is to make downtown more vibrant. That's done with more people living downtown, not more cars downtown. Thank you. Do we have any additional comments as well. We do the next speaker will be Steve, see if you would please confirm your ability to see the timer. Yes. Welcome Chad, you have some big shoes to fill. I'm Steve Bertelbaugh with the transportation land use coalition. And I concur with the comments that you just heard. I think we need to go back and look at Donald shoots book the high cost of free parking and extend the cost of parking outside downtown, perhaps extended to other shopping areas. The, the long term trend is to reduce vehicle miles traveled and getting people are driving 30 or $40,000 automobiles to pay a dollar or so an hour to to park is is not a big deal. So, welcome Chad, we'll invite you to one of our meetings shortly. And we hope that we can talk about the future of parking in the city. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. I see that we do not have any email. Is that correct. That is correct we have no voicemail for emails for this meeting and we have no additional raise hands at this time. We will go ahead and close the public comment and bring it back. Are there any additional questions for for our presenter Allen, or even Chad this one. Well, if you wanted me to follow up on the. Yes, sir. Yeah. We looked at four years pre coded revenue and looking at our more recurring revenue so pulling out the white swings and you know non recurring revenue. So, we, we had an average pre coded revenue of about $4.8 million. So, I think we're budgeting 3.8 million. So we're about a million dollars off of where we would hope to be. And really, the, the actual revenue, the increases in actual revenue over time. They, you know, they go up by, you know, there was a 3% increase than a 9% increase than a 8% increase. There's a lot of different factors to go into that. And it's, it's, we've done so many different things at different times that affects the amount of revenue coming in to go find that, that, that kind of really good baseline to be able to work from is somewhat challenging. But the way I would look at it is, is if we could get to that recurring revenue at about the 4.8 million. That's going to get us closer to being able to cover our operating expenses. And then, and then we deal with the challenge of when we have larger CIP expenses, larger project expenses that pop up along the way and that's going to take time of looking at our planning and doing being very strategic on when we can do those projects, we're going to be able to do it and quite, quite frankly, maybe deferring off to where we can build up our reserves to be able to cover those costs a little bit better going. These are all things that we're going to be talking about going forward, but right right now, my hope is and Chad's hope is that we, we can start getting up to pre coded revenue levels. And that will, that will put some more stability into it. Well, and the comments made in regards to infilling in and promoting developments downtown are, are duly noted. Just want to make that note to our to our citizens. I want to thank you very much for the presentation. Chattel is very nice to meet you today sir hope to see you again soon. Any additional questions or comments from from either members soil or very well. 3.2, we have Robert Square Association community district. That is correct and reporting is Chris Wilson the executive director for the historic railroads where association. Welcome Chris. Thank you Rafael, am I am I can you hear me. We can hear you. We can. We can hear you well and good morning. Mayor Rogers and council members Alvarez and Sawyer it's great to see you. I guess I, I usually start with the not so pleasant, the graffiti in railroad square. We have a number of reports from our security every morning and the last few weeks at least seems to be such an increase in graffiti on our buildings or on anything that can possibly be tagged. And the transience and the number of transients found sleeping. Sadly on the streets and indoor ways and parking areas. It breaks my heart but at the same time it's very bad for our, our merchants and especially our hotels when we're greeting people to Santa Rosa and that's what they're seeing. So, I'm really hopeful that when carrot us opens that there's going to be another opportunity or another option for some of these people, a place for them to go. So very much looking forward to that and hoping that we can. Resolve some of this is whether it's nicer it's more, you know, I feel like there's going to be more of an increase in that. But on the good news we have a lot going on as usual I've been talking about the way finding pedestrian signage for some time and we now are moving on to the next step with a lot of help from the city staff and getting all of our nine locations identified throughout our city with way finding pedestrian signage so now we're on to the next step of starting our marketing and sales to our merchants. I think it's going to be visually very attractive and add to some vibrance that we're, we're strongly trying to create down there. We've got a couple events coming up on May 1 we're having a classic car display it's on Sunday May 1. We were going to block four street but in looking at fees and permitting for blocking the street we're going to be doing it in Depot Park. And I think it's going to be great and they'll be music out there and some family activities so 11 to three on Sunday May 1 come down and visit us. And on Sunday May 22, the Western Hotel, the branch line which is one of our new businesses and La Coupe Sauvage another new business in the Western Hotel is hosting an open house and so it's going to be an opportunity to tour the western hotel and learn some history about the building will be music and food and so just a really great thing that our merchants are doing. We're working on getting Depot Park cleaned up really trying to focus on that as it is the centerpiece of our area and wanting it to look more welcoming. I really want to really appreciate the help that James Castro has been giving us to we're planning a spring cleanup day with volunteers and merchants on the 27th of April is tentative right now to clean up Depot Park we're looking at getting that sign fixed currently and also the doggy station that I've been grumbling about for some time about the park being used as a doggy waste station we are now going to have an actual doggy station so hopefully the puppy owners or dog owners will be utilizing that. We're still working on replacing the bulbs on the lighting in Depot Park that are wrapping the trees the bulbs are being replaced with smaller ones, and we're looking now is looking at a proposal we just got to, to extend our lighting down the street to outline the buildings to possibly crisscross the street. Anyway, we're looking at our budget and seeing what we can do to, again as we really are trying to create a safe, welcoming ambiance down there. The tree trimming throughout our district is just about complete. This is a temporary sort of a bandaid because eventually those trees are going to be replaced but for now we're trimming and that project is just about complete. We're looking we've created ad hoc committee to look at the sidewalk repair there's some areas that are pretty treacherous and we probably will be looking to the city for some guidance and help on that too. I really want to thank Raphael for his support with some of these projects that help us get through through all the processes. And you'll be seeing a new website design we've hired a designer to redo and update and refresh the website so they'll be home new welcoming look that I'm very excited about so probably within the next couple of months you're going to see a real change on that so I think that's all I've got right now if anyone has any questions. Thank you Chris. Do we have any questions when I don't see that we do if anything thank you, and we'll see you on the first with the car show and all the good stuff. Coming to Robert Square. Let's go ahead and open up public comment do we have any comments for. We do. We do. Great great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mr Karen, if you would confirm your ability to see the time that would be wonderful. Yes, I can thank you very much mayor and council people I, I just wanted to comment on Chris's hope that once here it is is open that somehow there'll be fewer homeless in downtown. That's, that's wrong. I don't think that's going to happen at all. I think what carrot is is proposing as I understand in their family center in their medical component and in Burbank built housing. None of those are going to be available to people who are downtown. They got to be a lot richer than they are downtown they got to be a lot sicker than they are downtown and they got to have more family than they have downtown. I just think it's a foolhardy mission to think that somehow characters is going to solve the downtown homeless problem. Thanks a lot. And I'd love to hear Jenny Lynn say that it will. Thank you. Are there any additional comments this one. There are no additional hands raised at this time. Very well. We'll go ahead and close public comment. And if there are no further questions. Chris, thank you for the report this morning. And again, we'll see you on the first. Thank you. I have 3.3 downtown action organization. If you'd like to present. Our presenters presenting is Caden St. Cole, Allison, executive director of the Santa Rosa downtown district. Welcome cadence. Good morning everybody. Good morning vice mayor Alvarez mayor Rogers council member Sawyer nice to see you all. I'm going to start with just a general thanks to our city staff we've kicked off our season of events on courthouse square and I honestly am not sure if there's a department that hasn't been involved in supporting that so just really appreciative, for all the work Tara and Bryce are doing to help make the transition into us managing events on the square. Smooth we've had a couple of pickups but I think we're going in the right direction. Sergeant Luke he and his team have also been fantastic as well. I appreciate their attention and their efforts to just be more visible downtown that always comes back to me as something from our business owners, letting me know that they're, they're seeing the DET and they appreciate that presence, especially as we are seeing a new new homeless members of downtown so it's it's definitely increasing it's shifting. We continue our regular work with Catholic Charities to try to get some of the folks who've been here for a long time into housing they come through almost always once a week and we meet with them. An additional time to review and kind of strategize how we can support the homeless members of the public living downtown but we are seeing a lot of new faces as well. So I think Raisa and Jill Scott for coordinating and meeting regarding SLA and garage five, which we're going to be hosting this afternoon. I think it's really important that our excuse me our downtown property and business owners are able to win and provide feedback so appreciate being part of that process moving forward. Here's some quick updates down here. La Fondita finally open very excited about that bad times is almost there I think they're waiting on a few final permits but hopefully will be open soon took both of those quite a while to get up and running. Even though we really just started our event season we're getting a lot of positive feedback on all the activities that are going on and everything that's been planned so it's nice to see that that's generating a lot of optimism as the weather improves and as we head into summer. Our business owners, especially our specifically our restaurant owners are also very excited about the parklets. Another big thank you to Raisa and to Gabe for all the work that they've done on that program. Appreciate them taking the time to listen, collect feedback way in and really listen to what is going to make it feasible for our business owners to establish and I think we all, we all want to see the pallets that were very generously installed two years ago, removed, you know they were meant to last one summer and we're ready for a permanent program to come into place so I just want to reiterate my thanks to the city staff for really listening to what's going to make it feasible for our business owners to build and manage those permanent parklets so definitely appreciate all the time energy that's gone into that so far, and just remain committed to supporting some morning staff and our business owners as they go through that transition. The beautification side our design and improvement committee is going to be meeting next week so look forward to updating everyone on that. At our main meeting there's a number of projects that they'll be discussing some beautification projects the DAO will take on some things that we've been discussing with parks and public works that need to be weighed in on so there's something on there. I will echo Chris's thanks to James Castro in the park staff. The skate stoppers that have gone in. I think have been have been a huge help. It's, we're just very grateful for some small steps to protect the physical space of courthouse square. Obviously we are not anti skateboarder but we are anti the square being used in ways that it is not. It was not built to be used. I think we've seen just a lot of a lot of damage, especially to the concrete planters and our benches. So, in follow up to that you know it is it is too late for for almost all of our benches in fact they've all been pretty well destroyed so really grateful that we've got three new benches coming in. The complaints about the benches come to me, almost as regularly as as complaints about homeless and parking so I'm, I'm really grateful that that is being prioritized and move forward so that we can get some safer, cleaner, more durable benches into the square. I think that'll be a huge help. And just those those are going to match these are not, they're going to match the ones that the DAO installed around the crate Myrtle's and 2020 they're going to match the picnic tables so the look will very much be in line with everything else happening on the square which is great to maintain that palette. I really appreciate the new three section trash cans that we've got I think as as we are really doing as much as we can from between the Chamber and the DAO to support our events coming downtown. We are reminding everyone who has an event that if they have food vendors they need to be in compliance with the zero waste foodware ordinance and having those three section trash cans just helps a little bit. It takes a little bit off their plate to have to coordinate, depending on the size of their event we often ask them to bring an extra receptacles but really helps to have those there so appreciate James and his team, making that shift. On the left side our annual Easter egg hunt is running. We've got 29 businesses participating. We've had hundreds of families come through. I think they're all. They're all hoping to complete the passport and enter to win a trip to Disney. So we've got four tickets on Alaska Airlines, three nights in a hotel and for two day park hopper passes that we're giving away to the winning family. If you complete the passport and enter to win, you have a chance at winning that Disney trip. As I mentioned earlier though we are, we are already kicking off an extremely busy event season. And I know Tara will talk about the events that the city is permitting when she reports out. But it doesn't include the the 2022 23 events that we are supporting between now in October. We, I think I probably get a request every one or two a week for new events coming in. So people are eager to be out there eager to be planning they're eager to be connecting. And we're really excited that they're seeing courthouse square as a place to do that. So our goal in supporting these events is to drive economic activity downtown support the small businesses that participate and support the surrounding economy of downtown so it's really, it's really important that we continue to do this and make it as easy as possible for the events to be to be coming here. We did have our first two over the last two weekends. And I think moving forward we have at least one event a week between now and the end of summer, which is huge it's just a lot of a lot of activity being driven to the area. The Chamber is also coordinating a summer programming series so it's going to be every Thursday night in the square. First Thursdays of the month will be movies. There's one kicking off a pride weekend. We're doing a double feature with in collaboration with Sonoma County pride, and then the rest of the, the music is being coordinated by Josh windmiller, and our, our movies will hopefully be announced in the next week or so we've been collecting some some interesting, interesting feedback on social media. So working on kind of a little bit of a pilot program to do some family focused events smaller smaller events to just drive families here in the late afternoon during the summer so we'll be sharing more details on that once we're able to roll those out. And then, of course we're already working on fall fun fest we're already working on winter lights. We're planning to bring the synthetic rank back again and hopefully improve on some of the element, other elements of that event. So between all the external events we're supporting all of the seasonal events that the Chamber is taking on. We're really excited to be bringing on an event coordinator who will help oversee all of that activity. So I'm anticipating them to start some point in the next week. So I'll be thrilled to be introducing her to all of you and just very grateful to have that level of support for our event host and for all the activities that that the Chamber is taking on. I'm glad to hear Ellen kind of reiterate the current parking garage incentives. We know there's been a ton of confusion around them. It's been hard to promote because they've been temporary and just extended. We know it's not realistic for all of those incentives to be maintained but we definitely want to continue the discussion and figure out how we can help simplify garage parking how we can get our portion of the incentives extended so that we've got support for retailers and restaurants who utilize the garages. We've got a lot of folks who would like to take advantage of the validation program but kind of with all the back and forth it has not been a focus either of ours or of theirs. And I will say that most downtown businesses are not proponents of free parking. As it stands just free parking because it does create other challenges. But they want to be a part of the solution for consistency clear messaging and making it easy for people to park down here, kind of addressing that perception that parking isn't friendly. I don't think that parking is difficult, that parking is expensive. I don't think any of those things are true but the perception absolutely exists and so whatever we can do to support shifting that we want to be a part of that so we look forward to working with the parking district on that. I'm very excited to welcome Chad and appreciate Alan setting up a meeting for us I think later in this week so excited to have him on board and kind of keep that conversation going. The last thing I'll mention is that we've got the DAO has some a few committees that will be convening in the next few weeks just to support the priorities of the district this year so I'm excited to share more of the details with you as as it gets going and of course get your feedback on those items in the coming months as well. That is it for me. Thank you cadence. Welcome La Fondita, definitely a beautiful distance to downtown San Rosa. I remember sorry I see you have your hand raised your your your audience. I was curious. Bad times. Bad times is a, the, it's the tattoo and art gallery that's going in where Skeeters was. Okay, cool. If you haven't walked, if you haven't walked past, you should it looks really great inside and the art on the walls pretty cool. All right, thank you very much. Today is not much share with you. I was speaking with the gentleman from Willoughby's son, and he spoke very well of knowing the Metro but of you as well, and very appreciative of your efforts to, and what you do to support the downtown businesses so thank you. Of course. If there are no additional comments or questions, let's go ahead and open the item for public comment. Thank you. We have no raise hands at this time. Perfect, well, we're in close public comment. Any additional comments or questions. Councilman sorry. Very well cadence thank you very much, and hopefully we will be seeing you out there. I've definitely noticed the increase of traffic and activity in downtown San Rosa, which I'm very happy to see and seeing the Earth Day event that we have on the 23rd, and many others coming. I really am hopeful of downtown San Rosa being exactly what it's meant to be. And that's fiber. Yeah, I did sorry I want to do want to do a quick plug for our event this coming weekend. Absolutely. We have SR PD is doing a spring event on Saturday. I believe it's 11 to two, although it could be off on those hours in one way but we've got it up on our website. They're going to have candy coffee for for the adults Easter bunnies coming and just lots of spring fun for families so appreciate SR PD and some county parks putting that together and hope everyone will come down. And what is that website. Downtown Santa Rosa.org is where we have all of our, all of our events listed. Perfect. Thank you very much. With that being said, let's go ahead and move on to item 3.4 public safety. If you'd like to present our presenter. Yes, presenting is Sergeant lucky from Santa Rosa police department and also overseeing the downtown enforcement team. Welcome, Sergeant. Thanks for the introduction. Appreciate it. Been busy last month. I hope you all have seen some increased activity with us and presence in the downtown area. We've been spending a lot of time due to the increase of people from the plan to the younger release so we've made sure that we're spending a lot of time in the downtown area and in the downtown area or real road square area. I've had the opportunity to last month to meet with a number of organizations including Chris Wilson, real road square association, and cadence from downtown action organization, as well as some of our community or neighborhood groups, all of the community and Julie art park. So it's been really good engaging with those folks and getting to know some of them and getting to know and understand some of the problems going on downtown. Additionally, we've dedicated at least two times a week now, high visibility foot patrols in the downtown area, as well as railroad square, had the opportunity to meet and talk with a lot of a lot of you as well as some of the business owners and community partners. So I think it's been really successful with our, with our hopes to increase outreach and engagement with downtown railroad square. As I said before in our last meeting, we have a number of large scale encampment cleanups going on throughout the city. So for that reason also we're trying to increase the downtown presence and our patrols. To dealing with enforcement and quality of life issues we're also working really closely with our partners with in response, and our host team Catholic Charities also provide that outreach in conjunction with that enforcement downtown. We have the opportunity to attend a few events as event season is coming up. As Kate mentioned earlier, there's events almost every weekend on the square downtown and railroad square. So we've make sure that some of our DET talk DET officers are stopping by and checking in with folks so we're going to continue to do that and continue to be high visibility and and with our outreach. We have the opportunity to this last month to participate in our coffee with a cop program downtown. It's a program that we have been involved in for a few years now with the pandemic obviously that had gone away slightly but I'm happy to say that we're continuing that program and look forward to meeting more folks and go into some more businesses downtown with that program. Thank you sir. That's all I have to report thanks. Absolutely no thank you for for something by saying hello, they will have we'll grab a cup of coffee here soon enough. Council and sorry, any questions for sorry. No, just, just, I do want to make a comment in regards to a conversation we had in a prior meeting. I believe it might be to surveillance cameras, or closed caption, or what is called closed circuit, I believe it might be the cameras, and I have a conversation with our city attorneys to gather. And I also had a conversation with our police chief in regards to what we're doing with cameras in in our city streets for for traffic safety and others. I also had a conversation with our chief to remember downtown Santa Rosa as we implement technology and in a beautiful city, and how we can actually begin the conversation. And I know Councilman Sawyer, we spoke of the resistance that our community felt towards towards the big brother of fears, but in the conversation that I had with the city attorney is with the younger population that we all carry phones around. And maybe there won't be that such resistance from our community. So just want to throw it out there I've been having the conversation with multiple folks, and hopefully we can, we can dive even further into it when that time comes. Appreciate you being here. Are there any recording this morning. For public comments. We do have an individual. One moment, please let me go ahead and thank you. Share the screen. Mr. One moment. If you would just confirm your ability to see the screen that would be wonderful. Yes, I see the screen. Thank you. So I just like to give you some feedback about the in response program. We, I'm a gig hideout with bourbon gardens neighborhood and I'm active leader in our neighborhood watch program. We watch bourbon gardens neighborhood Santa Rosa Avenue and Juilliard Park. And so on Friday, there was a man acting extremely strange like he was on drugs or something like that, or sick or just he was sad shape. I talked to him and he answered coherently that he was okay. So I kind of left him alone. Another one of our members was also concerned about him. And so after a while he was hanging around in Juilliard Park and so I approached him and I talked to him. And he wasn't causing any harm or threatening anybody or whatever but I don't know he was not in good shape. He was out in response and asked him if I if he wanted me to call them for him, and he very coherently said no thank you. So since he wasn't threatening anybody or doing any harm, or causing any crimes, I just left him alone. Well, I don't know if he stayed in the park at night I didn't see anybody sleeping in the park at night but anyway he was there the next day on Saturday, and apparently someone called police and so police came out. They went over and approached the police officers and asked if I could speak to them and the officer in charge said yes and so I told them what I knew. And so he said yeah well we're, you know we're going to get him some help. And I said yeah I agree. So, they did not call in response they called the fire department and a hook and ladder track showed up and then an ambulance showed up and then they strap them into the, into the stretcher and they took him away so I don't know what happened to him. What happened to him. But that's the end of that story but then the next on Monday just so happened that my wife and I are walking through walking downtown and we heard a woman at the transit mall the bus transit mall, sitting on a bench acting, you know, not hurting screaming at the top of our lungs, you know, in just craziness, probably another one of these meth users who's just too much and going through all the demons in their mind. They never hurt anybody at least I've never seen them do that but they act crazy. So someone did call in response and the and the in response showed up. She refused and she walking away yelling and screaming and refusing to deal with them. And, and, you know, I don't know what happened after that. So anyway, just some learning curves I think for our program which I support but it's not going to be that easy. And also love coffee with the cop. Thank you. Bye. Thank you for your call. Do we have any additional comments this morning. We have no additional way to answer this time. Perfect, well good and close public comment item 3.4 Sergeant, appreciate you being here this morning. Any additional comments or questions before we let the sergeant. Back to do some patrol downtown because I hear there is much more presence. Josh, thanks to thanks for your help and making things safer and making people feel safer downtown appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you for having me. Enjoy your day sir. So with that being said, let's go ahead and move on to item 3.5 maintenance of court house square. Yeah, reporting is Tim Finnegan on behalf of James Castro. Welcome Tim and Tim is the parks crew supervisors so welcome again. Good to see you. Good morning and thank you. Things have already been covered as far as, you know, the, the skate stoppers which started getting installed about two weeks ago. They are about two thirds of the way complete. We were able to get the skate stoppers for the south side of the square on three planters there. We're still waiting for material or for the stoppers for the south side. They require a little bit different paper to the edges. And so we are waiting to get those and then once those are received, we will get those installed and I'm pretty quick ordered. It's great to see them out there. They do look good. We will be monitoring those to see on the damage or vandalism of those. From what I understand, there's some are already been are missing so we will have to address those and hopefully get those secured better. So they don't end up missing because they are definitely a nice feature, but they also come at a price. So we will hopefully that we can get those secured nicely. One of the grants that were put in was from a grant that we got through ecology on supporting the zero waste program. And we thought it was fitting that that would be a great place to put those cans so to help support the effort of zero waste and to give options for the park users on this where something to use. And that was when in as well. The, the work on the greenway has been consistent. We've been having our crews down there. A couple times a week, doing cleanup and graffiti abatement. And that's been working well. Also been working with electricians on trying to keep the lights on down there as well. And that's the process that unfortunately it's a never ending process. They are working very hard on finding ways to secure the power outlets or the power connections, whether it's in the ground or in the pool itself or in the light. They are working on trying to get those lights secured so they can stay on for the use of the public down the greenway. They are working on securing some funds and on a new sign for Depot Park. That is something that was discussed during the meeting that he had with Chris. And we are looking at a different, not necessarily a different style, but in the same sort of fashion as the current one. We did find one that individual actually makes signs out of stone. And so he's able to carve out or basically sandblast stone with names and so forth. And actually it would be similar, similar to the one that's down there, but yet very, very fitting for the location of it. I believe that is everything. The communication with Ray Road Square and downtown has been great. James has definitely been able to spend the time at probably this area needs. So it's been a great relief off of the parks department that he's involved with the groups and being able to serve them down the downtown in a much better manner than what we have been in the past. So it's great to have that happen, as well as the volunteers of the businesses and helping us out and care of care of our park. So that's greatly appreciated. And if anybody has any questions. Thank you sir. Council, Council member so you have any questions this morning. No, thank you sir. And it sounds like those deterrents might just be too nice with the beautiful design and the acorn on them. We'll see how that works out right. Yeah. And we'll go ahead and open and thank you for the update. We'll get an open public comment on item 3.5 who have any, any comment this morning. We do not have any raised hands at this time. Well, we'll go ahead and bring it back to appreciate the update again and we'll be speaking soon. With that being said 3.6 permitted events and public art. Yes, I'm presenting we have Tara Thompson, arts and culture manager. Welcome Tara. Good morning everyone. Nice to see you all. I have a brief update on permitted events and the public art program attached to the agenda was the updated list of upcoming special event permit in downtown. And the ones that are highlighted on the screen are the ones that are new since the last report I provided. So you'll see that the blanket permit issued to the Metro Chamber is on this list, but it does not list all of their individual events. So I'm directing you to their website so you can see all of those events that cadence mentioned. So the rest of the items on this list are the events that we the city of Santa Rosa are permitting separately mainly because they don't fall within the blanket permit of the Metro Chamber and usually include extensive road closures not always but usually. So the new ones since last time are an Easter Sunday homeless outreach event put on by the Redwood gospel mission. And we have the classic car show that Chris Wilson mentioned in the Depot Park parking lot on May 1. And then if you scroll down Eileen, I think at the bottom there, there is just one more which is the railroad square music festival on June 12. That's also in railroad square and includes Wilson fifth fourth streets and the Depot parking lot. I'm happy to answer any questions about upcoming permitted events. If there are any other ways I can go right into my other update. Tell us a number. No, thank you Tara. No questions. If you would like to proceed. Okay, great. Well, going into the public art program updates. And one fun event that is planned that is related to our public art program but it is the out there Santa Rosa campaign we have done a new branding and website for the out there Santa Rosa program and we will be launching the program and the website on Sunday in courthouse square so I invite you all to come down to courthouse where Sunday one to 3pm will have a crazy flash mob dance party down there to celebrate how out there Santa Rosa is. So that's that's something we've been working on and some of you may have seen a preview of that website but it will be launched on Sunday. So for other art updates, wanted to share that for the unum sculpture in courthouse square, due to all of the conflicts occurring the cost of stainless steel skyrocketed recently and has delayed some of the material procurement and shipping for the piece that has pushed back the installation by about a month so we're right now looking at August this August for the installation of that sculpture. The Fifth Street parking garage project, they help each other grow mural by MJ Linda lawyer and Joshua lawyer. We finally have an estimated installation start date for that mural which will be May 2. So we'll be starting to see that work take place and they should finish that up over the month of May. Those are really the only public art updates they have today we've been busy working on a lot of programs, happy to answer any questions though. Thank you. Thank you, through the chair. Tart. Where did you say this mural is going I'm sorry I missed that. That's okay it's the Fifth Street parking garage so it's actually garage three but on Fifth Street at orchard street and the mural is on the, let's see southwest corner of the parking garage at the intersection of Fifth Street and orchard street. Excellent thank you. So with that being said, I'll definitely have my two right shoes on for that dance party downtown. Let's go ahead and open up a public comment on on this item do we have anybody ready to speak this one. We have no way at this time. Perfect go ahead and close that up. Tara, thank you very much for the update. And again, we'll be seeing you soon. Thank you for the day. 3.7 community promotions funding update and impacts on upcoming events. And again, actually, did you actually do both of the reports I believe you might have. No, I have an additional item here to share with, please do, please do. Yeah, thank you. Okay, so hi me again. And this is really just a heads up for the subcommittee members and our downtown community to raise the issue that, as you know, the city has had a community promotions fund program to support events in San Rosa. And it really goes towards in kind services to support large scale events such as the police services, public works, road closures or fire staffing for large events. And that program is currently on hold, it has, it was suspended over the years of COVID, obviously events couldn't take place. And so the funding will not be available for event support again until next year. So there are some events that are going to be impacted by that that I wanted to just put on your radar you may be hearing from them today or in the future. And mainly the first one that I'm aware of that is greatly impacted is the Wednesday night market. It's a 16 week event that has always relied heavily on the city's in kind support through the community promotions fund and without that program. So, staff and the organization who puts on the event are working to try to find solutions to help support that event. There's no perfect answer yet to address that but we're looking into all the options that we can think of just wanted to make sure that the subcommittee and the council members were aware of that. And if you have any questions about other events that may be impacted I can share that in the future, there are a handful, some events that had traditionally received the support are not coming back yet this year. So, there are definitely a smaller number of events that are going to be in this kind of limbo zone this year because of the lack of that program, but again just wanted to bring this to your attention. No action is needed at this point it's just to raise the issue. Thank you. And I do appreciate you doing so, especially with such an important event that is the ones that I market for downtown corridor. Thank you very much. Being that it isn't a new item or an item. We should probably take public comment on that as well. Do we have anybody ready to speak on the item by chance. We do. We'll be the next week. I'll go ahead and share public comments. Thank you. If you would confirm your ability to see the screen please. Yes, I can. Thank you. Hello, my name is Tina Castelli and I'm representing the Wednesday night farmers market. Hello to the mayor. Hello to Rafael and Tara, who have been such a great help trying to get us started and helping us through. We are a board of brand new board the whole market was closed down for two years. We lost our website we lost a lot of things that are we're rebuilding again this is our rebuilding year, and we're a board of local leaders, most of them now are actually downtown businesses or vendors who want to get this event back. This would be our 30 30 year as a community gathering place as the place where people of all ages and all representations can come and enjoy the evening with their community. So we are just considering this a rebuilding year. I want to understand about the community grant that Tara mentioned, you know, and that's just one of those coven things right, and I wanted to thank cadence also because she put together a meeting with all the downtown businesses and me and we really had a great session. We got to all voice their opinions and they were really positive. Riley de Benedetti, who's a member of our board with former owner of Willie bird turkeys for many many years board member for 30 years. And it was as that this event was originally put together when the mall was built to and it was, it was originally produced by the downtown businesses to get public to get business back into the for old courthouse square area. So that is still our goal, and we care about the downtown businesses and we made arrangements not to put booze in front of their businesses if they're open. The public response has been amazing. We are our Facebook pages and my phone and my emails are just lighten up with everybody so excited for it to be back. So we literally feel like we can't not let it come back you know we have to make it happen and if we break even we'll be happy. And so we're we're looking for a new support from the community we've got some really great new relationships we're building with copy bank and the Russian River Valley wine growers believe it or not we may be serving Russian River Valley wines every week. And we're excited to partner with Columbia Distributing we're going to be handling all the beer pouring ourselves. We've got unbelievable bands. We spent another $10,000 on bands this year, because we want this to be a great opening. And we want to be back and we want to continue and we know next year, we will hopefully be on our way back to our 2019 strengths financially. And I believe it will be and thank you for the efforts that you're putting into to bring in the life back to downtown. Thank you, all of you for help your help and anything we can do in the future to partner and make it a great experience for our people. Thank you for your comment this morning. We'll go ahead and bring it back on item 3.7. Are there any additional action before we bring it back. Are there any additional comments this morning. There are no additional public comments for this item this morning. Very well. With that being said we've gone through our items of this morning I want to appreciate everyone who's who's who's given their input. Before we must go. Member Sawyer, anything that you'd like to say before we adjourn this meeting. No, thank you. Good job, Mr. Vice Mayor. I appreciate it sir. I'm settling into the saddle. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Perry. Thank you very much this morning. And the time is now 1001 and this meeting is now adjourned. Thank you everyone.