 All right. Are we, are we on now? More attendees are popping up. So we should wait until sort of it fills up, but, but it does look like people are being admitted. Great. And can you see the presentation? All right. Well, I think, I think we'll go, go ahead and get started. So welcome everyone. You have arrived at our community meeting. This meeting is about safe parking pilot program with the city of Santa Rosa. Before we get into the meeting itself. Shannon, if you can provide some. Information about our translation services. Yes, thank you and welcome everyone. I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to go ahead and commence translation of the meeting. For our guests joining us this evening, live translation can be heard on the Spanish channel. To join the Spanish channel, click the interpretation icon on your zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you clearly hear the Spanish translation. I believe I have Pablo on to translate what I just said, please. Welcome to this night. The meeting of this night of safe parking. Live interpretation will be available tonight for the meeting. To join the interpretation channel, you can click on the icon on the zoom toolbar that looks like a globe. When you join the Spanish channel, you will be able to mute the primary audio so that you can only hear the interpretation clearly. Thank you. My name is Claire Hartman. I'm the interim assistant city manager. I work with the city's homeless services program team. I'm going to serve as facilitator tonight. What this meeting is all about is our safe parking pilot program. As you know, the city has declared an emergency on homelessness. In response to that, we have many different programs in place, but one of them is going to be looking at safe parking as a pilot. And this program is going to be operated by Catholic Charities. As a provider. And it's going to address Trinity members who are experiencing homelessness and provide them a safe place to park while we wrap services. And provide support. To, to get them into housing. So one of the key attributes to all of our programs is that they're housing first. So this is not a destination. It's a path to housing. So you'll see that we spent quite a bit of time. Looking at this program with that lens. So in a few minutes, we'll hear from Mayor Rogers. He was here tonight. Thank you. And, but first I'd like to go over our agenda. So you kind of get a feel for what we're going to cover tonight. So we're going to hear from Mayor Rogers. We'll also have an opportunity to hear from council member. Council member Natalie Rogers and she'll be here tonight as well. Tom Swell home has also joined us. Thank you. And then we're going to go over a presentation about what this program will entail, how it's been designed. What we, what we intend to support it with. And all the thought that's gone into, you know, what we're going to do is we're going to open up to questions. And then we'll actually the wraparound services. And making this a, a good fit for not only those that will be using the services, but, but how it fits into the, into the site. And then we will open it up to questions. So really the, the whole purpose of this meeting is to answer your questions. So we really want to hear from you. We want to put the most time into that. The meeting until seven o'clock. So again, we know if you have comments, we'd like to hear those as well. But if we can get to as many questions tonight as possible, that would be fantastic. So before we hear from Mayor Rogers, Shannon, I think there's some instructions on how our participants will be able to participate later in the, in the session. Can you provide us that. Yes, thank you. So for as the, as members of the public join our meeting, you will be joining as an attendee in zoom. Your, I'm sorry, can you hear me? I just had a weird glitch. Yes, we can. Okay. Your microphone and camera will be muted when you join only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. If you are calling in from a telephone for privacy concerns. The host will be renaming your viewable phone. To resident the viewable phone number to resident in the last four digits of your phone number. Once the panel has completed their presentation, we will move on to item three on the agenda and the community feedback session. At that time, the moderator will ask that you raise your hand and zoom if you have a question. The zoom host will move one by one down the list with. Of attendees with their hands raised. Once you have asked your question, the zoom host will lower your hand. Each guest wishing to speak will have three minutes on the timer. If you do hear your question asked and answered prior to your turn, we ask that you lower your hand so we can move through as many questions as possible. One last note. This meeting is being recorded and a copy of the recording will be available to the public on the safe parking web page at srcity.org. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And I would like to introduce also all of the. Panelists that we'll have tonight. I want to do that here at the front end. So you know who's here. To answer your questions tonight. We have Kelly Kaikendall. She is our program manager for homeless services for the city. We have Jenny Lynn Holmes. She is our chief program officer representing Catholic charities are provider for this program. We're also here from our public safety representatives. We have a battalion chief. John Avers as well as Captain John Cregan from there. I'm sorry. John Avers from our fire department. Captain Cregan from our police department. And in addition, we'll also have Jason that. He's our assistant city manager. So with that, mayor. No, I really appreciate that Claire. And I want to thank everybody for being here today to talk about this. I'll say our team has been working really hard. Not just on this project, but across the city, trying to figure out how we both balance the needs of our community. As well as how do we help lift folks out of homelessness. And one thing that's become very apparent in the last couple of years as we've done this is that we need a broad diversity of types of services in Santa Rosa to be able to get the most people into the services that they need to ultimately end homelessness. And the city of Santa Rosa does have a goal of functional zero homelessness, where we do have opportunities for all to be able to address the specific needs that they have to help get them off the street. And we also understand that it can be a little bit scary for neighbors as well. And we've had a couple of these community meetings as we've rolled out services where what we're really looking for is to make sure that nobody has any questions about how it'll operate. And I think that's one of the things that we're going to be looking for. First and foremost, let's make sure we get all of the questions on the table for discussion. And then second, let us know what your concerns are. And our team really does try to go out of their way to address any of those concerns and craft a program that's going to be beneficial for our entire community. And that really helps move progress forward. So I want to thank you for being here and taking the time on a Wednesday night. And with that, I'm going to turn it over and actually give council member sweat helm an opportunity to say a couple of words as well. Thank you, Mayor Rogers. And I also want to extend my gratitude for everyone who's joined this webinar to learn a little bit about this project. My role both tonight and for the city is on the continue of care board. The city of Santa Rosa is one of the three entitled jurisdictions in Sonoma County. That means we receive direct funding from HUD to address those concerns. And one of the things that you will see tonight is the collaboration with our community partner and department partners in my role on the continue of care. We're trying to be consistent with that. So I really look forward to answering any questions that everyone who is listening in can understand the goals that we're trying to achieve and how we're collaborating with everyone to reduce homelessness in Santa Rosa. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. And now we'll hear from Kelly and Jenny Lynn and they have a couple of questions. Thank you for putting that up. Good evening, everyone. Thank you, Claire and Mayor Rogers and Council member for kicking us off. And I just want to extend my gratitude to all the community members that are joining us this. It is evening. It's getting dark out there. So Jenny Lynn Holmes with capitarities and myself will be doing a brief presentation on the same parking program. Next slide, please. This slide is an overview of the presentation. I'm going to touch briefly on the city's homeless services programs and the scale of. The issue of homelessness in, in Sonoma County and Santa Rosa, specifically focusing on. Individuals living in, in vehicles and RVs. I'll touch on city council direction in terms of how we. We're going to talk a little bit about where we are today and how we've arrived where we are today and implementation of the program. We'll cover the pilot program, both the purpose and design. I'm going to touch on. Some of the frequently asked questions that we receive to date. General themes. I'll cover resources. We'll also be hearing from. Captain Cregan from the police department. And then we're going to hand it over to the community feedback department. So for homeless services programs, I won't spend a whole lot of time here. I do want to just point out that the city is supporting and funding homeless services in five key areas. That includes day services. Emergency shelter. Street outreach and encampment resolution. Housing support. So those are resources and programs available to help people move, help persons experiencing homelessness and community-based housing. And then community-based solutions. So we have provided grant funds to our faith-based partners who are serving homeless community members. We've also stood up a number of programs in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Those efforts continue. So that we can try to serve our. Our community members that are experiencing homelessness as well as the community at large during the pandemic. We're also very excited to launch in response, which has been led by the police department and several community partners. And Captain Cregan will touch on that at the close of the presentation. Next slide please. For the scale of the issue, I have some data here from our homeless count and then also from surveys that we've done. So based on the most recent homeless point in time count and survey that was conducted in January of 2020. That survey found approximately 800 individuals living in vehicles and RVs in cinema County. If you drill down into that data, there are approximately 500 individuals living in vehicles and RVs. And our team, our encampment team did a windshield survey over the summer. This is an undercount, not everybody, but we estimated approximately 300 RVs and vehicles that are occupied by people living out of them in Santa Rosa. We also do a weekly survey of encampments and areas of a concern. And the current estimates show about 200 to 300. RVs and vehicles that are, that are occupied. I do want to share with you all that the, the pilot program that we're pitching tonight and preparing to implement is not a cure all. We want to recognize that this program does not meet the scale of the issue or the need in the community. It will however be a tool to help us with our encampment response. It will also be a tool to help engage individuals into services shelter and ultimately housing. We'll continue to have to prioritize encampments available to relevant to available resources and encampments will continue to be an issue in our community, but this program is the first step in trying to address vehicle encampments. Next slide, please. I think the mayor touched on this a little bit, but safe parking has been the subject of several city council meetings over the past few years. Back in our most recently back in June, staff presented a study session to council members and presented a number of different program models, including an overnight model. And a 24 seven model. We also looked at sites in each of the seven council districts. And we're going to start with one since we haven't done this before. This is a pilot program and it was staff, staff's recommendation to council that we start with one site. I'll go more into why we selected this particular site when we get into the, I have a few slides on the, the FAQs. The direction that staff received from council in June was that we should implement a one year pilot program. It should be 24 seven versus just overnight. That it should include wraparound services targeted at helping people transition from homelessness into housing. That this, the site should provide up to 50 spots and that it would be located at 55 stone point road. We also received directions to, direction to go out for requests for proposals, which we did in September. And then staff went back to council in December. And recommended Catholic Charities is the operator. And they were selected by the council to be the operator. Next slide, please. So in terms of purpose. There's three key. You know, purpose for the program. It's to address immediate shelter needs. Reduce community impact and connect individuals experiencing homelessness and services with services and housing. And again, I will reiterate. We're not pitching this as a cure all for, for homelessness or to solve our encampments in Santa Rosa. Next slide. So this is a, this is a, this is a, a site plan for the pilot program. I understand this probably isn't super easy to see, but we did want to share a visual with you. You can see that the proposed site plan takes up the first two rows of the parking lot at 55 stone, stone point road. This particular. Plan provides for 43 total. That includes 13 RVs and 30 vehicles. And there's going to be some flexibility in that. Once we open the program, depending on the community need. So long as we don't go outside of the footprint. This is the footprint that we have to work with. This site plan includes perimeter fencing and sanitary facilities. So portable toilets and hand washing stations. There'll be a bathroom shower trailer. As well as a refuse containers and recycle containers. There's a designated pet and smoking area. And also a tent for staff. With that, I'll turn it over to Jenny Lynn Holmes and she's going to touch on the program design. Next slide, please. Great. Thank you, Kelly. So I want to talk a little bit about the safe parking program here. We're excited to be able to work with the city of Santa Rosa on this kind of new option for individuals who are unsheltered in our community. Just as a little bit of background. This isn't the first time we've operated a safe parking program in our community. We've actually, we're able to operate one several years ago. That was at multiple sites throughout the city and the county. So we have some great experience from that, as well as the operations of the Finley safe social distancing program. We operated earlier in the pandemic times. To help individuals with accessing services and to be able to safely social distance. While we were working through our ongoing COVID safety protocols. So there's some, lots of lessons learned in all of those different programs of operating in the past. And we're excited to be able to. Offer this new opportunity of a kind of different way for it to engage individuals who are living in their vehicles. So you'll see a few bullet points here, but just so you know, cavities will be managing this site. It will be 24 seven staff and or security. And oftentimes both at the location. We'll be working with kind of the existing infrastructure. We've been able to work with the city on with regards to our outreach teams and our shelter programs to get the, to kind of screen and work with people out in the community and find the right fits for individuals for them. And then we'll be working with the city. And then we'll be working with the city. And then we'll be working with the city. And then we'll be working with the city. And then we'll be working with the city. To work with people out in the community and find the right fits for individuals for them as well as for the program. In particular, we'll be looking at individuals who have been living in our community for an extended period of time. In their vehicles, whether it's an RV or their car. And working with them to get ready to possibly be in this location. Our goal of the program as was mentioned, we do hope that this can be a model moving forward. And our hope is when we are able to get individuals into the program is that our kind of wraparound support team will be able to work with them on long-term housing opportunities. Our goal is to use this as an engagement opportunity and not necessarily a long-term solution. Really, we want to be getting people into housing and getting them out of their vehicles and into safe housing. So that is the ultimate overarching goal of this program is to find the individuals housing in a much more sustainable fashion. We've had a lot of success doing that over the years and a variety of our different programs. Some of the services we'll be offering as Kelly kind of mentioned is shower, sanitary facilities, recuse containers, laundry services, meals. And then what's really most important and hardest to kind of point to the physical option of is we'll be having our case management team working with the individuals living in this house and the community. And that's what we're doing right now. That was something we didn't have in the first version of safe parking we operated many years ago. And so this is really the way we think we're going to resolve homelessness for these individuals by connecting them to community referrals, growing their income and coming up with the long-term sustainable housing plans. We'll also be working with our behavioral health support partners as well as our medical health partners. We have had created some very strong connections with our community and we'll continue to offer that service at this location as well. Next slide. Just to kind of talk about our COVID-19 safety protocols, we have been working for extended period of time through the pandemic in all of our sites. We have not had to close any of our sites down because of the enhanced protocols we've been able to take. This includes screening measures where we actually do screening of individuals coming in. That includes testing as well as symptom checks and so on. And we also hold a lot of prevention measures. Our site is one of the sites that is allowed to actually do enhanced level of testing. We have protective equipment that will be available for our staff as well as enhanced sanitation options and masking options for the individuals that will be living with us. You have gotten very good over the last two years of being able to really know what works with the safety protocols right now. And currently our transmission rate is at about 5% in one of our shelters, which is much lower than the community transmission rate of 18%. So that is a really good note that our prevention measures are working and we plan to replicate that at this site as well. Another important part of our operations is what we call our good neighbor agreement for individuals who are living in any of the programs that we operate at whatever site it might be. We do ask that while they're there, they are a good neighbor as a part of the community that they're residing in at that moment. That includes, you know, helping to keep the a proactive kind of member of that community, helping to ensure that behavior is appropriate not only to the program that they are living in, but also to the surrounding neighborhood. And if behavior is such that it does not conducive to kind of this, this program living area or the community that surrounds it, there could be options that that person will no longer be able to maintain residency in that program. So that is something that is important to us as a commitment to the neighborhood and the communities that we work in. Couple of other quick guidelines and we'll get more in depth as we go through the frequently asked questions in here from the public, but we do have a pets and service animals policy. We are trying to work with individuals and rather than set up barriers that make it hard for them to access services, we want to be able to engage the individuals to work with us. And that sometimes means working with their pets and working with their service animals, which we service animals, we are required to do, but oftentimes they come together and we've actually found that is an enhanced form of care for individuals will be setting up. We do programs. We have kind of specialized pet programming areas. We have partnerships with vets and so on. So for us to be able to make sure that the animals that are living with us at the same time are also receiving good care with, while they're in the program. We will have a curfew. That's for a lot of different reasons, but one of them is to make sure we're maintaining up to date census and that we're ensuring that we know where people are so that we can hold safety for them and themselves. And that is something we do at a lot of our different programs. And we won't necessarily be inviting, allowing visitors or guests at the site, mostly because it is a consolidated area. And it's also part of our COVID-19 safety protocols. We are trying to minimize the traffic of people coming in and out again to maintain the safety of the site as well as to make sure everyone is still staying safe, especially during this surgeon cases. So those are some of the very high level. There's a lot more detail around the programming that we could talk about. We're happy to do so, but I'll turn it back over to Kelly and probably help her out here and there with the frequently asked questions. Thank you, Jenny Lynn. Next slide. I have just a few slides here. There's three slides dedicated to FAQs, just some of the general themes I'm seeing and the questions that are coming in. So I'll cover those briefly and I'll have Jenny Lynn and Captain Corrigan help me out as well. But the first one is site selection. One of the questions I get frequently from staff, city staff, because this is a city owned parking lot and it's used by employees as well as the public is, how did you decide on the site? And I'll tell you, it wasn't an easy process. We, we started with city property. So those that are, you know, under our purview. So we evaluated more than a hundred sites that are owned by the city. We did select a site in our preferred site in each of the seven council districts. I did mention that. We recommended starting with one site, one pilot program since the city has not done this before. And for this particular site, the 55 starting point road. This one was selected because of all the ones we looked at. It presented the least impact to the public. It's not directly adjacent to a school or a neighborhood. And I do recognize that it's right across the street from the family community. Center in part, however, it's not a directly adjacent to that. So it wasn't an easy choice for us to arrive at this decision. And we did a very thorough evaluation for, for selecting the site in terms of outreach. For both of the council meetings I mentioned in June and also in December. Information went out about. Those council meetings on the city's website. And also via our newsletter, city connections and on our social media outlet. For today's meeting. We did the same. Plus we did push out information via next door. And a postcard mailing went out with a, within a quarter radius of the site. So there has been extensive community outreach to make, you know, the public aware of this program. In terms of timeline. We're aiming towards opening this program next month. Another question I get is when is it going to close? How long is it going to be running for? So it's a one year pilot program to start. We have identified funds to run the program for two years, but we will be evaluating whether or not we're going to continue the program. Prior to completion of this one year pilot. And then manage site versus encampment. I get that question a lot from the community. How is this going to be different than what we're seeing in terms of encampments all throughout Santa Rosa and Sonoma County. And so this is going to be managed versus unmanaged. And so there will be. Many facilities in place in the program that will. Prevent a lot of the things that we're seeing in the city. In terms of public health and safety issues. I mentioned having. Refuse containers available and portable toilets and hand washing stations. It's also going to be managed with staff and security. So it's going to look very different than what we're all used to seeing in the community. And another question is city and county partners. How are we working with our county? Parts on this and the staff we meet with. County staff and staff from other cities throughout Sonoma County on a regular basis. Council member Schwethelm mentioned that he's on the board of the continuum of care. And that's our regional. Planning body for ending homelessness. And I do want to give a shout out to the county. They are the board of supervisors approved. $500,000 for this program. Last question on this slide in terms of how can I help, which is one of my favorite questions. We're not looking for volunteers at this point in time, just because of COVID. But we will be pushing out information on ways to help. It'll probably largely be looking for donations and that information will go out on our website. Prior to the program opening. Next slide, please. So for FAQs in terms of site and program operations. And I know Jen and Lynn and I already touched on some of these, but there were a few things I did want to cover. In terms of cost and budget. So I mentioned that we've identified funds for, for two years. We've identified. $2.8 million. And that's a mix of city resources. And I mentioned the county funding that's contributing to the program as well. In our contract with Catholic Charities for the first year of program operations is $1.3 million. With vehicle compliance and towing. Vehicles will have to be running. And operable in order to come into the program. Should they have issues once they come in, we'll be addressing those and working with the participants. To see that the vehicle is either repaired or towed. So those are some contingencies that we do anticipate in the program. Length of stay. The typical length of stay for emergency shelter is six months. However, we will be evaluating. Length of stay for the participants on a individual case by case basis. And then reporting and evaluation as part of the contract we have with Catholic Charities. They will have to submit monthly reports to the city. We're going to be meeting with them. We have already been meeting with them a lot, but we're going to be meeting with them on a regular basis as we work towards launching the program and then within the first couple of months. So ongoing communication. Meetings and then regular reports. And then a really important component of this program is housing strategy. I know Jenny Lynn touched on that. I will say at the moment we're focused on getting this program, the site set up. And the program ready to welcome participants. At the same time, we're also looking at housing strategy. To move people from homelessness into housing, but our focus right now is getting the program up and running. Next slide. This is the last slide on FAQs. And then there's only a couple more as part of the presentation. And I've done plenty of talking here. So I'm going to ask Jenny Lynn and captain. Cregan to jump in. Jenny Lynn, if you can talk about security. And scaling that up or down. And then. Drugs and alcohol in terms of our behavior based model. And then captain Cregan, I would love to hear from you on searches and background chats. And then also police presence and response. And then of course, let's wrap it up. This slide with in response. Thank you. Great. I'll start off really quick. So security. So we do. How we will have a security company at the site. We project that we'll start that for the first three months. And then we'll take that time to evaluate if you really do need. A 24 seven security response. When we have operated. These programs in the past and we operate a safe parking in the past. It was clear that once the operations got up and running and things where the logistics were worked out. It ended up becoming. Not a necessity. And it is a very expensive endeavor. We want to make sure, but we, that we keep everyone safe, both the participants and the community. And that will be something we'll continue to evaluate with the city as we see how the operations continue. With regards to drugs and alcohol, we operate in the past. And so we have been working with the city. We have been working with the city. We have been working with the city to see how the operations continue. With regards to drugs and alcohol, we are a behavior based program. And for those that are not familiar with that is that we will be dealing with a behavior, whether it's related to drugs or alcohol, or whether it's not related to drugs or alcohol, we have seen it on all different avenues. And we know that just because someone is under the influence, doesn't mean that their behavior is necessarily not conducive to the current situation. And we know that we have a lot of people who are under the influence of drug and alcohol. We have a lot of people who also have at times created behavioral issues in our community and things in law enforcement. For example, sometimes has to step in. But we are a behavior based model. We want to engage and bring people in. We know that not by screening people out of our programs, we're not giving them the access they need and deserve. And it ultimately doesn't resolve the long-term issues of mental health, substance abuse, addiction, and other things. And so we can work with them and help them deal with the root cause of what brought them to homelessness in the first place. So that's the model we'll be employing here. We've had a lot of a success at all of our sites with that. And we'll continue to do so and work with individuals. And again, if behavior is not conducive to the community, we are working in and or the other participants in the program. That is where our staff comes in and is able to mitigate those concerns. So with that, I'll turn it over to Captain Cregan and mention we do have a close working relationship with Santa Rosa police department. Our outreach team, which is doing daily work with this population, knows these individuals very, very well. So we can usually de-escalate pretty quickly when issues do arise because of the trust and the relationship we built with them. And again, we do work very closely with the Santa Rosa police department. Should the need arise during these program operations. So I'll let Captain Cregan finish out this slide. Thank you, General Landon. And that was one of the things that I was going to lead with is this, that close relationship, not only with Catholic Charities and General Landon and their staff, but also with Kelly and the rest of the city team that we're, we're literally talking daily and working through some of these issues. So I know there's going to be community concerns and even from our city employees who work in that area, that concerns can come up and that's important. Just that constant communication with our team of addressing these and immediately taking steps from the police department. So one of the things that comes up from the community is asking like, Hey, are you going to be doing random searches of the vehicles or the RVs or checking bags and things like when you walk into an airport, but it's important to understand that both our house community or our own house community have the same constitutional rights under the fourth amendment. So the police department doesn't have the legal authority to go in and do random searches of vehicles of RVs. So we're not going to be able to do that, but they will have the site rules on there from Catholic Charity staff and the security staff that's working through the area. If we were to receive a report of a weapon or any type of illegal contraband, then the police department would follow the legal steps to be able to investigate that incident, but there aren't going to be like random searches or checks and make sure that those individuals that are there have their own sanctity of their privacy and their legal rights to be able to stay there in the encampment. But if a report of a weapon, drugs, any type of other offense, then the police department will step in and investigate just like we would any other complaint around the city. Another important question that comes in is with the background checks. So that's a complex issue because the California and federal law doesn't allow law enforcement to do random criminal history services. So I can't just say, oh, I want to look at so-and-so's criminal history and see that there has to be a legal and investigative means to do that. So just being present in a safe parking program is not enough of a legal means. Now, Catholic Charities does have a program in place for looking at some of the public source documents such as Megan's law, which looks at sex registrants and they have a process. They will be screening, looking for sex registrants, and that's going to be one of the disqualifying characteristics to have on there. But the same thing happens. If we are in there investigating some type of criminal behavior, then we will be able to run some of those checks. But the most important thing is our downtown enforcement team, our beat officers, they work very closely with Catholic Charities and with Kelly and her team. And contrary to popular belief, most of the homeless are from right here in Sonoma County. We've had contacts with over the years and we're very well aware and have, and really a lot of our downtown enforcement officers are on a first-name basis with some of our, of our homeless community. So it's going to be continuing to work. And if there's someone that has a mild class and that has a community concern, then we can work with the Catholic Charity staff and with Kelly's to make sure that that's recognized. And then we can take any steps to address that. The police presence is going to be an important one. So this is located. The city is designated the nine different police zones. This is zone five. So if you go to the police department website, it breaks down the different police zones or beats as they may be referred to. And beat five has a dedicated sergeant and a dedicated police lieutenant. And now a sergeant, Michael Clark is the sergeant who maintains the officers. And there's nine different officers who work that patrol zone are going to be very familiar with this city facility and be having an increased presence and Lieutenant Jeanine Cooker, who's the lieutenant in charge of that. So both of those are available. Their emails are on our website. And it says M Clark at srcity.org or J R Cooker at srcity.org and always feel free to email me. And I'm going to call you back to that. My name is J Kreegan at srcity.org. And I manage our field services division, which includes all uniform personnel. So there's community issues that are coming up concerns. If you're not happy with the police presence in that area, you can call me anytime, email me. And I will promise that I'm going to take some steps to make sure that we address it. But what we will be doing is working with the officers who work in that area, make sure they're parking patrol cars in the area responding, but at the same time, we will be giving our facility to our staff. And we will be providing the services to our community and our agency to our homeless individuals who are staying there, but they will have a presence and we will be responsive and working with security and with Catholic charities. If there are any criminal offenses or criminal behavior that occurs, not only in the state parking location, we're in the surrounding area. Find Lee Park or any of the neighboring businesses in that area. So the most important thing is we've done this successfully before and we we've seen some of the other, with our beat officers and we're really seeing this be successful from the police department's perspective in the past and haven't seen a big increase in crime and other issues in that area. So we're very optimistic that's gonna continue to see the same with this program, but we're gonna be evaluating it. We'll be working and we're willing to step in and take steps with any criminal behavior that does occur. I'll turn it back over to you, Kelly. Thanks, John. All right, so I think we're just about ready to wrap it up. Next slide, please. Oh, did you want to talk about in response, John? Briefly. How could I forget? Sorry. So the in response team and just yesterday we're so excited our city came together to be able to launch the new in response mental health support team. So this is a team designated of a licensed mental health clinician from the County of Sonoma behavioral health, a paramedic from the Santa Rosa fire department and a homeless outreach specialist from Catholic charities that are riding together in one vehicle as a multidisciplinary team that responds to working with mental health crisis, substance abuse and homeless in our community. So it's gonna be another key asset that our city and our team can use in this program. Not only available to provide support if there's any mental health or substance abuse issues and be able to provide some of the targeted support and assistance to get them the help that they need, but that'll be just another asset and they'll be stopping by, they'll be swinging by building relationships with those and making sure they're leading with some of the services that our team can be able to offer. We also have a host of system navigators that are gonna be embedded as part of this team. So that's gonna be another resource that they'll be making context, providing out some flyers and some of the resources and the same thing for our community members and whether it be business, city employees who work in that area are just neighboring businesses. That'll be another resource. If you are seeing any problems or especially any what may be considered suspicious behavior or anyone out there that in response team. So in response can be contacted by calling any number at the police department or we have a dedicated line of 575-HELP, which is 575-4357. So you can call that and that goes directly to a dispatcher which is answering calls to be able to dispatch that in response team. And that team went out to their first calls last night and I went and met with them this afternoon and they're out currently responding to calls as we speak. So that'll be another great resource that's gonna be able to assist the community members in this area and our community members which are staying at this facility. Thanks, John. We're all very excited about in response. I've got just two more slides and we'll wrap it up and turn it over to the community that are participating in the meeting. So next steps, I did mention that we're trying to get this open by next month. The Catholic Charities is currently hiring new staff for the program and we'll be doing some training I mentioned our focus right now is getting that site set up so we can welcome participants in. And then the goal is probably mid-March, I mean, sorry mid-February to late February to early March. We'd be doing a phased opening of the program. So not bringing in all the participants at once but phasing that in over the first month or so of the program. Next slide, please. And lastly, resources. We have a very robust FAQ that we put together for this program that's available on our dedicated webpage at srcity.org forward slash safe parking. I will say we'll be posting program updates there as well as information about ways to help prior to opening the program. We have an email homeless at srcity.org if you have any further questions or concerns after the meeting today, please send them our way and then we will have a dedicated phone number for the program and I don't have that this evening but it will be established prior to opening and we'll make that information available on our website. And it's gonna be a phone for line for the program not for all homeless related concerns throughout Santa Rosa. With that, I'm finished with the presentation and I wanna turn it back over to Claire to open it up to the community feedback session. Thank you very much. Great, thank you for that presentation. Having watched staff put this together it's been an evolving process. So first I wanna thank all the community members that took the time to send in their questions and concerns because it's a pilot program. It's iterative. We want to inform the program with what you are concerned about or what you think we should address in the program. So this is not the end of the conversation it's gonna continue. So as you can see, we've already informed the program with a lot of what you've provided. So we're gonna move into questions for the panel and I see that we do have some that were placed in the Q&A or the chat. What we're gonna do is we'd like to take live questions first and then I can review the written ones and we can make sure that those getting answered as well. But again, just to reiterate this is just a part of the journey if you will. So continue to monitor the website for the program. We are looking to engage you all along the process that's the whole purpose of a pilot is we're learning together with it and we can be adaptive to things that you raise that we can build into the program and also emailing homeless at srcity.org. If there's questions you think of after the meeting or things that you want us to share you continue the conversation is my emphasis. So with that, Shannon, if you can walk us through how our participants can participate and how we're gonna orchestrate that. Thank you. Yes, thank you. So basically what we'll do is I see we have some hands raised. I will go down the list of those who have their hands raised. I will allow you to speak. It's a function on my end. So I'll announce who the first speaker is and then I will also enable your speaker permissions and ask you to unmute yourself. And then I will bring up the timer. You'll have three minutes. And then I'll also, when I announced the speaker I'll announce who's going to be the next speaker as well. And please identify yourself at the beginning for our public record. Thank you. So sorry, the first speaker we have is Maggie Mounat. And I will go ahead and if you can unmute yourself you're ready to go. Hi there, thanks for being here and thanks for the in response. I think that's awesome. I have a homeless mentally ill brother and I had a couple of questions. He's not signed up yet. I wasn't sure, does that have to go through Catholic charities in order to sign up for this? And are there openings? Okay, I don't know if I'm gonna get that answered. So that's a question. And then it sounds like there has to be an attached vehicle. So does it need to have the, it can't be a trailer that doesn't have a vehicle to it or it has to be a movable vehicle, it sounds like. I just like clarification on that. And if there are any other safe parking planned for the future, that's all I have. Three questions. Thanks, Maggie. Claire, I know you're a facilitator. Do you want me to just jump in and get started on that? Yeah, maybe what we can do is, I think some of these questions I think, probably most of them will follow you Kelly or Jenny Lynn as the provider, but feel free. We have a full panel. I wanna remind everyone we have our representatives from Public Safety, from police as well as fire, as well as Jason that's joined us for, as our interim, I'm sorry, I'm in as the assistant city manager. So we have a full house here available to answer questions. So go ahead and take them as they come up. So in terms of sign up, Jenny Lynn, I know we're gonna be working with our homeless outreach services team, which is one of California's programs that the city funds. And they're very involved in our encampments, including with our city encampment team, the homeless encampment assistance program. So those two groups will work together to identify individuals for the program. Jenny Lynn, I don't know if you wanna touch a little bit about how you're gonna be identifying and prioritizing individuals beyond that. Yeah, I would say it'll, right now as we're kind of ramping up the site, we will be looking and working with the individuals that we know are experiencing homelessness in their vehicles in the community right now. I would say if anybody is ever in need of help, whether they're living in the vehicle or not, they can call our host hotline and that number is 707-978-8329. That will also be a great way if you know someone who needs a referral into safe parking, you can go ahead and use that as well. As Kelly mentioned, we will have a dedicated phone at the site, but that won't necessarily be to deal with community issues and concerns. The host hotline that I just mentioned is gonna be available for people to be able to use to get someone in need of services engaged, whether it's safe parking or any service that they need that catheterities or the community can offer. And I can put that number in the chat box as well in case you didn't catch my quick ramble of it. And then your other question about a trailer without a vehicle. These are all things that we're navigating right now and trying to figure out. I would say that we would take a trailer that doesn't have a vehicle as long as there's a way to get it to the site and that that trailer is in decent condition. And we're gonna be doing a training with catheterities and some of our other staff in the city to develop some basic threshold, basic criteria that the trailers, RV and vehicles need to meet to enter the program. I think the other question was if there's other safe parking sites. Thank you. I know there's a few, there's a couple, I know. I know that there's the city of Sabastopol is setting up one and the County of Sonoma is also looking at different options. I'm not as engaged on those, but I do know there are some safe parking programs popping up all over our County. And the city of Sabastopol, I think, has one that's gonna be similar to us. It'll be operated by SAVES. We do have a few safe-based partners that provide safe parking, but I know that all of those sites are full. And in terms of the city of Santa Rosa and future endeavors into safe parking, we're gonna start with this one site and see how it goes and then evaluate whether or not we would scale up. But right now we're starting with this one site. Okay, our next speaker is Arlie Haig, followed by Tracy. Arlie, go ahead and unmute yourself, please. And I think I will not pull up the timer. It doesn't seem like the questions will be three minutes long. So unless you guys think I should, I'll just let people ask their questions, okay? Yes, hi, my name, am I on? I'm Arlie Haig. I am on the board of SAVES and we're working hard in Sabastopol. I have about a number of questions. Do you have an operations manual that's available to the public for this site? Are there kids allowed? What are you gonna do about checking for sexual predators and our visitor, what about the visitor guidelines and those kinds of checks for visitors? And are the vehicles to be registered in addition to being functional? Those are my questions and good presentation, guys. Thanks. I can take a couple of them if you want me to start off, Kelly. So we have an operations manual for all of our programs at this point. This instance is a new program. We're still designing the program manual and some of that will be informed by the community and what we hear here tonight. So while we don't have one now, we will likely have one in the future and we're happy to share that and especially best practices with other operators like SAVES. In terms of individuals who are registered sex vendors, that is part of the check that we do, we are able to do and Captain Creek, you can speak more to that, but we do that in all of our programs where we do check for registered sex offenders and make sure that we are working with those restrictions in our guidelines and funding as well. A couple of other ones I wrote down, visitor guidelines, I think I mentioned earlier in the presentation, we're not going to be allowing visitors at the beginning. Primarily, that's kind of our existing protocol of all of our sites. This is to mitigate against potential COVID-19 exposure and trying to keep this site safe with the individuals that are living in our program or regularly testing and screening to make sure that they are safe for themselves and for the community they're living in and having visitors in the site makes that a little bit harder, at least at the onset and with what we're kind of starting out with here in the search that we're currently experiencing. And then vehicle registration, that's something that we are not requiring, but it is something we're going to be working with individuals on, as well as getting what we call document ready and getting their insurance and all of those things lined up. As I mentioned earlier, it's really important to us to make sure that we are screening people in rather than out and having people access the care that they need rather than not being able to enter the system. So we want to make it as low barrier as possible, but that also means that we have individuals who need to get these things documents in place for them to be eligible for housing and other sorts of income in our community. So that is part of our case management process once they are in the program. And then in terms of kids allowed right now, I believe we are currently can correct me, we are looking at this as a single adult program. We're not going to be looking at families at this point. The data shows that most of people experiencing homelessness or living in their vehicles are single adults. We do have other programs in the community for families. Our family support center is one of those and there's others across the county that we can work with to get individuals who are living in families access to care. So I think I caught them all, but if anyone else wants to chime in, please let me know. Did you touch on sexual predators early on a question about that? And I know, Captain Kriegen, you mentioned that Megan's law, the state database is a tool that's available to capitarities to screen any participants. So that's the key. That'll be the most important one. So that's a pretty common one with Megan's law. So everyone will be screened. So anyone who's convicted of a sexual offense that qualifies on the judge would order that either for a specified time or even up to life for serious offenses, they need to be ordered to register as a sex offender. So not only would they have to be coming into our domestic violence sexual assault detectives and registering whatever location they're at, but they'd be, and that's one of the disqualifying characteristics or offenses for not being part of that. So also the second part is just the strong working knowledge of our local officers and with working with the Catholic Charity staff of knowing someone in their past and if they did have any type of disqualifying offenses like that. But also our staff is gonna be working if there were any type of criminal behavior that gets reported, especially of any type of a sexual nature that we would immediately investigate that and make any arrests or any type of criminal behavior that may have existed. But the most important thing is kind of that evaluating that the Catholic Charity staff is gonna be doing and that's gonna be part of the application process. And the Megan's Law process is very easy to identify those names and be able to address that before it ever becomes a problem. Okay, our next speaker is Tracy followed by Bruce. Tracy, if you can go ahead and unmute yourself, you have the floor. Tracy, are you there? You look to be unmuted, but we don't hear you. You can take the next speaker and then return and see if the audio will work. Okay, Bruce, you are the next speaker. If you could go ahead and unmute yourself. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Yeah, I'm Bruce. I'm a long-term RVer. So a couple of concerns on this is there gonna be a portable dump truck where they will be able to hook up to the RVs or have the RVs have a tank and they can suck it out for the black and the gray water. The other thing is you're gonna be running on batteries or the truck or the RV or truck that tows the trailer is have to run to generate those batteries. That's gonna be a lot of smog and just a lot of noise and everything else. Is there gonna be electrical hookups for these people that they can just run off the electricity and be quiet and then that way they'll be fine. And then the third thing is gas, in other words, propane for the heating of the actual RV. Is there gonna be facilities for them or they just have to run and go and get and all that? Those are my three main concerns other than obviously trash and all that and the extra traffic and all that of you've already put the kibosh on that with the no visiting and all that. But that's my main concern and the RVs which you say is gonna be in good condition. So those three things would help both the city and also the people in the RV because they wanna wash their dishes or whatever and be able to cook on the RV and kind of be semi-normal and that would help them a lot. Thank you. Thanks Bruce. I really appreciate your insight as somebody who has experience with RVs and these are all things that we're thinking through and try to figure out before we get the program up and running. So your question about is there gonna be an option for a service or dumping of black and gray water tanks? If the RV has working facilities then I know Catholic Charities is in the process of identifying vendors that can provide that service. Otherwise we will have portable toilets and hand washing stations and portable water on the site for participants. And then a generator, that's an issue that's been raised with the group. And so we're not, this is not an RV park that will not be full hookups. We will have to be establishing some rules around generator use so that we can avoid some of the issues that you just raised. And then for propane again, if they have working facilities and propane tanks that are safe for use then that would be another service that we would be working with Catholic Charities to try and provide to people that are in our program. Okay, thank you. Our next speaker, we're gonna try Tracy again followed by Madonna Feather. Tracy, go ahead and unmute yourself. I did, can you guys hear me now? Yes, we can, thank you. Okay, so my name is Tracy Trazos and I live in the Marlowe Estate Homeowners Association area, which is Marlowe Little River, Albion, Navarro area. So I just have kind of a comment or concern or an annoyance. I feel like I'm surrounded by low income or there's been pilots of our area. We had the training station, the fire training station, they had homeless there at one point, they had people at Finley at one point. They're building the low income slash other mixed use at the city water there on West college. On Jennings, they have low income seniors as well as low income housing right over there by the Marlowe Safeway. And I just feel like we're over inundated our area. And I heard the comments about how long it's gonna be. I just wished it wasn't in our area to start because I feel like we've just had an over inundation. That's probably not even a real word, but whatever of low income homelessness. And I feel really bad for the county for all the homelessness people and whether they're intense or trailers and RVs or whatever. So it's just a comment and I would like you to look in your area where you guys live and tell me how many people are low income or homeless in your area to feel my frustration. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy, for your comments. Our next speaker is Madonna Feather followed by James Larkin. Madonna Feather, you have the floor. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. My name is Madonna Feather Cruz. I'm a project director, Native American Liaison and outreach coordinator for disability services and legal center downtown at 521 Mendocino Avenue. And we serve over 2000 low income persons with disabilities and I'm just here tonight to express our support and our gratitude for this pilot project. And many of my questions were answered tonight. One question not answered. So for me to come and do outreach at the site would that be something I can do? And then if it is, would I email the homeless at centersofcity.org? And then my other question, it was in the next steps, hiring would be January through February of 22. Would that be part-time jobs or a part-time and full-time? And would that be listed under Catholic Charities website or a city of Santa Rosa's website? And again, thank you and disability services and legal center definitely support everything you guys are doing to house our low income people. And just a side note, my first apartment that I got when I was 18 years old was a two bedroom, two bathroom for $500. And nowhere in the county can I see that. So, I always think back and they can't afford to live. And many of my clients can't afford to live here. And that's why they are homeless or they're sleeping on a couch. So again, my gratitude. And if I could have those two questions answered that would be great and thank you so much. Yeah, I can start out. I think there's mostly operational ones. So the first one is outreach at the site. You know, as I mentioned, we are kind of as part of our COVID-19 safety protocols we are limiting outside visitors. However, we do have a allow for third party service providers to come on site as long as they're willing to comply with our safety protocols to keep the site safe. So we can definitely partner on it. I know we work with disability services and legal center a tremendous amount with a lot of our different shared participants. So we would welcome that continued partnership with this program. I'll put my contact information in the chat box and people can reach out to me in that way and I can get you to the right person, get you to our program manager and our assistant director to help follow up with that. In terms of hiring, those positions are listed at Capuchery's website. We're doing the hiring for this on behalf of the city as our operator. We're looking for all sorts of things, not only for safe parking, but we're looking at for staff at all of our existing homeless service programs. We have opportunities for both full-time and part-time both in the area of operations to help with operating of our sites. Also in the areas of case management, we have our housing navigation team, our housing stabilization team, and our housing location team, all of which will be working with the participants at this site. So I will put my contact information and I will put our website in the chat box. So if you are interested and can help spread the word, we wanna get the best individuals who are really passionate about what we're trying to accomplish here and working with this population. We'd love to get them hired. So thank you for both of those questions. Thank you. Our next speaker is James Larkin, followed by Shirley and Bob Chill. And James Larkin, go ahead and unmute yourself. You have the floor. Okay, I should be, you're receiving me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, thank you very much. I'm calling because we have a residence on Valley Vista 3, which is right across Santa Rosa Creek from where you're proposing to put this RV parking facility. I have two questions. Number one, have the city attorneys looked at liability issues pertaining to lawsuits for falls and slips and whatever else might be brought against the city or for providing this like any landlord would have to be concerned about. And the second question is, we're talking about $4.3 million to fund this thing. I was just reading today that the governor, Nussan is proposing $14 billion to fund the same thing that you were attempting to do here throughout the state. Is there a linkage between what you're doing or is this a totally autonomous burden on the city of Santa Rosa and the Santa Rosa Police Department to enforce any legal issues that happen there and police departments have been defunded across this country, unfortunately. And so I'm wondering where is this connection with the governor Nussan and his proposed $14 billion funding. Thank you. Thank you, James. I'll take the liability question. I work in the city manager's office. I'm not representing the city attorney's office, but I can say that we're working very closely across the city with all of our departments and both our city attorney and risk management have been involved in discussions about this program and taking into consideration some of the issues that you just raised. So thank you for that. Government funding and governor, I said governor Nussan's funding that's coming down from the state to help with homelessness. I can say for this particular program we're not using any state funding, it's city funding and then the county is also contributing money for the program, but we are pursuing every opportunity that becomes available for funding outside of the city of Santa Rosa. Claire, do you want to touch briefly on some of that? Because I know we're looking at a number of programs. Yeah, thank you. We are not going to turn away any state dollars, right? So city of Santa Rosa cannot fund these programs alone. It's a pilot program. One of the things that state funding looks for is they look for especially proven programs that they can support for longer term. So this is kind of the first step to be quite eligible for state funding for something like this is to go ahead and put in your investment and test to see if this is actually a path to housing, which is really also the strategy of the state. So we are also leveraging all the activities from all the other jurisdictions in the county and the county itself. We need to do it together. It's extremely expensive ventures to address this issue and we have to address it in a lot of different ways because it's a complex issue. So we will continue to research and advocate for additional state funding. But this is one of the first steps is testing these new ideas. And so we will learn a lot from this and we'll look to seek additional funding just like other jurisdictions. Thank you. It looks like our last hand raised is Shirley and Bob Chiel. Shirley and Bob, go ahead and unmute yourself. You have the floor. Hi, everybody. Hey, in this case, it's Bob Chiel. I wanna say thank you so much for the work that you're doing. Obviously a lot of hard work is going into it, has gone into it. And I appreciate what you just said about. Sounds like you're really trying to think outside the box on how to put together a successful program. So I really hope for the good success here. I got one question for you. It is more of a legal type question. And that is if you're doing a 24-hour program and I suppose a person might think that they're living on the site, was there a concern or have you ever been concerned about the question of, are you creating a landlord-tenant relationship here where they have certain tenant rights? What can you say about that question? That's all I've got here today, but thank you. Appreciate your work. I can try to take it from our experience as an operator. So we operate what we call either mercy shelter or interim housing programs. And this is gonna be falling into that category. In that case, it is not considered long-term housing. And so the landlord-tenant relationship is different. Now we have a program operator, program participant agreement, and that we definitely wanna honor people on both parties on both sides. We actually, when people come into our programs, we have a set of responsibilities that we hold ourselves accountable with staff. We put it in writing of what we will do for the participants and what we ask the participants to do to be while they're in the program. It's a mutual agreement and it holds responsibility on both sides of the agreement to make sure we're both upholding our ends of the deal. But in this case, this would not qualify in any sense of a permanent housing. It doesn't meet the definition. And so that's where the landlord-tenant component comes in. And that's similar to our other shelters and other interim housing programs that we have operated. Thanks, Jenny Lynn. So Bob, that's an excellent question. I know that it's been raised with all these other things that have come up that we're trying to think through. And in the moment right now, I cannot remember what resolution we came to with that inner conversations with other staff on the city attorney's office. So I've been taking notes of the questions and the comments we're receiving this evening. I made note of that one and I'm gonna follow up on that one. I might even have an answer tonight before we wrap up. If not, I will respond to you and I'll be sure to update our FAQ with that information. So we have more hands. Claire, I just wanna check in with you if you wanna continue on with the live at this point or do you feel like you wanna switch to Q&A? And then back to the live. I'd like to do the live comments first and then I have been watching the chat and the Q&A. So I'll continue to look at that, see if there's questions that we're not verbalized, but if we can get to live comments first, I'll be great. Okay, great, thank you. So our next speaker is Brad Childs, followed by Gregory Fearon. Brad, go ahead. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi, good evening, folks. Thank you for being here. I'm interested in this entire program because I personally have worked with low income housing and transitional housing for people for 15 years. And I know from my own experience, some things that have happened, which prompt me to ask you these questions. First of all, I wanted to ask, are all of the services combined for this program? Are they free to the participants? That was one question. The second one is, are the participants original residents or the residents of Sonoma County or former residents that you're helping? The third question is animals, dogs in particular. Would you be making certain that you said you wanna make sure that the animals are healthy? Would they be vaccinated and licensed as well? And also, I guess my final question is, with the number of participants, possibly being 50, are they assigned a parking space? So if they leave the facility and they come back later, do they still have their space available to them? Or is this going to be a revolving thing for different people during the day, during the night, or is it just a set 50? I think that's about all I have. Thank you. Thank you. I can tell you I wanna take some of them and then follow up on that. I'll start with a couple of them and thank you, Brad. In terms of are the services free? Yes, they're free. The program certainly isn't free. I talked about our budget and contract of catheteries, but the services are free for the participants. In terms of residents of Sonoma County, we're gonna be focusing and targeting on encampments in Santa Rosa. And then Jenny Lynn, if you wanna talk about your requirements around animals and service, our specific pets and service animals, and then also how you treat individuals that leave a program and return in terms of reserving your space. Yeah, and I'll just add to that, just some data around individuals experiencing homelessness in Sonoma County. So 88% of people experiencing homelessness in Sonoma County lived in Sonoma County when they became homeless and of that 64% left here for 10 years or more. So majority of the people we're working with are people who were living in Sonoma County when they became homeless. So they are our kind of community members. I'll also mention that our outreach team is very well-versed with those who are living here and have been working with so many of these people for so many years and really has an intimate knowledge of their needs and how we can help them and where they have been coming from. And that also comes out of some of the work we do alongside of the city on some of the encampment efforts as well. So that there is a good knowledge about where people's histories and we'll continue to work with it to engage people as the needs arise and as we encounter new individuals in our community. I do want to just kind of add a couple of areas. So we will be allowing pets, and by pets we mean dogs. That is kind of our current policy and this majority of the need among the unsheltered population. I mentioned earlier in the presentation the reason we do that is, one, we're trying to lower as many barriers as possible for people that come into entry and we found that by not allowing them to come in with their animals, people would choose to live outside rather than leave their animals. So we wanted to be able to engage them into the program and allow that as an option. With our kind of pet policy, we do ask that any of the dogs are spayed or neutered and we can help provide that service. And other than that, that's not necessarily, we work with them to get their licensing and their vaccinations and everything for the end of animal care for the dog. And we treat the dog or the pet in this case, similar to what, as a participant, making sure they have food and access to care similar to the individual or the owner. Again, along the lines of the behavior, we do have a behavior-based program. And so if there is a situation that makes it unsafe for the animal to continue to stay or the owner to continue to stay, then we do deal with that on a case-by-case basis. And then with regards to the assigned parking space, we will be assigning individuals parking spaces so they will have their spot that they can come back to. Part of that is for consistency for the individual and part of it is because we have a tight space and we'll have a certain number of RVs that'll be allowed and a certain number of vehicles and we wanna make sure to fit as much as we can in while still holding the safety standards that we've set for ourselves. And so they will have an assigned place that they can come back to when they leave for the day to access services or if they leave for the day to go to work and so on and so forth. I will say a lot of the people when we ran the safe parking program in the past, a lot of the individuals worked and they left for work for the day and they came back or they worked an overnight shift and they needed a place to sleep during the day. That is a lot of who we saw in the previous versions of this program and we expect to see more of that here. Hopefully I caught everything when we know if I didn't. Thank you. Our next speaker is Gregory Furron followed by Madonna Feather. Gregory, go ahead and unmute yourself. Thank you very much. I wanna first of all, thank the city of Santa Rosa for taking the lead in stimulating the RFP and the process of making a selection. An agency I'm on the board of competed for the contract to be able to do this service. We're currently opening one in Sebastopol, much smaller. And I just wanna thank Jenny Lynn for competing against us and winning. She has, as it turned out and we probably could have predicted far more experience, far more capability and an excellent proposal that we hope to partner with because as someone said earlier, this is not something that any one agency can do by themselves. This is something that all of us have to work together because we're gonna be learning some of the same things and sharing the same sort of lessons and dealing somewhat with the same clients. So this is a partnership that Santa Rosa and Sebastopol at least are taking a bold move into and I just wanna appreciate that. We're very excited about it. And so, and it sounds like I got in on this late because I had an ARPA zoom before this from five to six but it sounds like you've gotten some excellent questions. Some of the same questions we got over in Sebastopol. And so like I said, we're all learning and we're all doing and I think we have every expectation of success. Thank you, Gregory. Our next speaker is Madonna Feather. Madonna Feather, go ahead and unmute yourself. Thank you, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, thank you. And so I just wanted to comment. I do live around the corner from Finley and Finley is my neighborhood park where I walk through every day and I am not one of those persons who, you know, not in my backyard. I wanna just say that there was not one single problem during the homeless encampment with the tents early on in COVID and I have an 18 year old daughter. So neither her or I ever had any interaction that was inappropriate, disrespectful or anything, you know, bad in that area. So I just wanted to say that as well. And then I have to jump off. I will put my email in there so you can hopefully put me in touch with that person. Okay, I thank you guys again and you guys have a nice night. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Thomas followed by Jeff and Sherry. Thomas, go ahead and unmute yourself. You have the floor. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Hi, great. I just wanted to respond to the gentleman's question about tenant rights. I think it was Bob Chiel asked about tenant rights, shelter, housing and the temporary housing does not arise to the level of tenant rights according to state law within the California code. I was thinking and hoping that you would be offering electricity to the safe parkers. It's very inexpensive. And one thing we found, I used to buy and get 12-volt replacement bulbs that are very low, you know, they're LED bulbs and you put them in and then you use almost no electricity at all. Even the batteries of the vehicles can last a much longer time and these LED bulbs are really, really cheap. And ultimately, you're looking at 20 cents a kilowatt hour. It's possible to run these for, you know, my goodness, maybe two, three kilowatt hours a day, maybe a dollar a day, you know, for each of these. So it's probably less, it's a lot cheaper than running generators and anything like that's a lot safer and better for the people if you were to do that. I'm hoping that the city can have additional safe parking like the talk to Kelly and the city about that. And I also want to point out to Captain Cregan and thank him for his diligence and everything on all of these. There was the county which had the safe parking site now some number of years ago on the county. First it was at the fairgrounds and then it was moved over to the county campus as it's called. And I happened to be, I had ranged for the food to be acquired at Oliver's and then delivered to the safe parking. I happened to be there in the evening and one of the police officers drove up and said, you can't be parked here to everyone who was parked there. And you know, this is this is county property and you can't park here. And we said it's safe parking. This is a safe parking facility made available by the county on the county's property. He said, I don't care about that. You can't park here. This is closed as the facility is closed. I said, well, wait a minute. Look here, these, every one of these people has a safe parking pass. They have a safe parking permit from Catholic Charities. And finally, eventually the guy kind of drove away. The point is, is that not all the officers are aware of the programs that the city has. And it would be really great if you can communicate to them that there is this thing. Now I know there's public, you know, this is a public meeting and it's public notice of meeting and those kinds of things. But again, they're not always aware and it's kind of problematic when somebody's in the middle of their meal in the evening meal and they're just getting ready to go to bed and up drives a police officer who says, oh, y'all got to get out of this parking lot because there's no parking here. And it's very shocking, especially the order by a police officer who believes he's making a lawful order. So I would ask you to please be careful to notify everyone about the specifics and Kelly as well if you can. That wasn't the county's project it was not your guys project and so it wasn't your responsibility but the city police were policing it and that did have a problem. So I would just mention that and thank you all for your effort. I'm so glad there's a safe parking program coming and look for more. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas for your comments. Thomas from the police department is respective on that. I'm actually sending out a department wide email tonight that's gonna have the frequently asked questions is gonna have the PowerPoint from tonight and we'll be following it up with our briefings to make sure that our staff members and that's an unfortunate incident the officer was obviously should have been aware of that. So we'll make sure our record staff or dispatchers are all be aware of this program and I don't think you'll see a repeat performance of that. Okay, our next speaker Jeff and Sherry. Jeff and Sherry, go ahead and unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. And sorry if you guys all heard my timer. Apologize. No worries. Being homeless, what are the homeless gonna do until the middle of February, March as far as finding a place to stay or a hotel for homeless? I don't know. Did you hear me? We did, Jeff, thank you. I just didn't know if you had further questions or comments. I can't think of any at the moment. And I think the RV parking was covered. I was trying to find RV spaces that would fit in the budget because being homeless and disabled makes it difficult. Jen, do you wanna start with what services are currently available? Yeah, I can mention, we wanna get this program up and running as quickly as we can. Obviously this has been a huge need for a long time and especially for people living in their vehicles. We certainly understand that sometimes that is a preferred alternative to other forms of shelter. And so that's what's so exciting about this project is to give people that alternative option for those that are living in their vehicles. Unfortunately, it does take some ramp up time to get a site prepared, especially for something at this magnitude. And so we're trying to go as quickly as we can, but in the interim, we do still have our existing shelter operations. We also have partner operations throughout the city and the county. Other organizations like Rebel Gospel Mission, Community Action Partnership, Committee on the Shelter List, and so many more that we work with day in and day out on this issue. If somebody is trying to access not even just a Catholic Charities shelter, but any shelter in the county, they can call our host hotline. I did put it in the chat box. I can do it as to put it in there again to make sure people have access as the chat has been continued to ongoing. And they can get access not only to, again, our existing services, but also other shelters in the community as well. It is a tough time right now. We do have some reduced shelter capacity given what's going on with COVID-19 and these extra safety protocols we have to take into place, but we are also very creative and when individuals need access, we do everything we can to get them the needs, to get the needs met that they have. So it's a lot of different things. We heard from Disability Service and Legal Center that they're a great partner as well. So we can definitely work to get people access and I'll put the host hotline in the chat box right now. And Jeff, I wanna thank you and just acknowledge that we know that the need is great and that there aren't enough options out there for people who are homeless right now. So I just wanna take a second to acknowledge that and we are trying to provide more options for this program but recognize it's not enough. So thank you. Okay, I do not see any more hands. Oh, wait, I think he has a follow-up. Let me go ahead and unmute Jeff. Yeah, I was wondering how soon would I be able to apply to get on the list for the safe parking program? Yeah, great question. We're able to take the individual's interest right now. Again, you can call that host hotline number. You can also directly contact me and I can make sure to get you to the right person as well. My contact address is in the chat and I'll update it again here. So yes, multiple ways to get going on that and as soon as we have the site up and running, we hope to fill it as quickly as we can and as safely as we can to make sure to meet this need in the community. Okay, I don't see any more hands raised. So Claire, would you like me to read the Q&A or do you have that kind of handled on your end? Yes, thank you. They might have already been answered but I'm gonna repeat the questions that I read in the Q&A just to make sure. So there's actually not that many. There was three, I'll just go one by one. Two came from one commenter. Who will qualify when the space, who will qualify for a space when the lot is full? So qualify when it's full? So who will qualify when it's, who will qualify for a space when the lot is full? So how will people, is there, who gets to come in if two people come at the same time? Yeah, great question. So we'll be filling the, we haven't come up with a total transition plan of how many we'll accept like in a week. We can't fill 50 spots one night, as much as we'll try, we'll do as many as we can but obviously that's a lot to do in one day when you're just starting operation. So we will be kind of ramping up to the full 50 allotment. In the meantime, what we have done in the past is we work with the city's heat team to see where the greatest need is in the community and which individuals have the greatest need. One of the things that's important to us is to make sure we're getting individuals, not just who can best self-advocate or navigate the system, but the people who need the space is the most. So we do go and look at an individual's vulnerability and their need for access to care to survive and stay alive. That is something that is always built into our screening protocol. So it will likely be a part of that here as well. And I think if we're gonna learn about this program and see what the demand is and if the demand far outweighs the capacity we have, that'll be further conversation about how we want to continue to partner or do more of these in the future. Great, thank you. Second question I read was from the same author was, won't this encourage people from out of the area to come to Santa Rosa and use this service? And I'll just preference perhaps further responses. As we discussed, we're not doing this alone. We can't do this alone. We don't want to do this alone. So we're doing our part. And as you saw from the numbers in the early slides, we have a big part. And so we're gonna do our part. We're gonna test this as an option. And learn from it. And then luckily we've had good communication with the county and other jurisdictions and they're gonna do the same. So we are gonna do it together. It's not just gonna be the only facility like this. None of others on the panel want to add to that. Yeah, I'll just kind of, you know, definitely agree with that. My hope is to see these kind of diverse services across the county and not just in the city or not just operated by one provider and see it all over. And providing more diverse options and choice options for people that are all linked to the long-term housing location process that we're all committed to doing, which is really where we're gonna start ending homelessness. I'll also just reiterate some of the data I shared earlier is that according to the data we get, which is conducted on a pretty regular basis, you know, 88% of the people who are experiencing homelessness in Sonoma County lived in Sonoma County when they became homeless and 64% lived here for 10 years or more. So these are our neighbors. These are our community members for the most part. These individuals are in need here in Sonoma County and they lived in Sonoma County when the need arose. There's a lot of reasons for that and that's a whole nother discussion about what we can have, how our community has, you know, so many individuals that are living here that have become homeless, but for the most part, these are our members and in our neighbors. So it's important we do what we can to take care of them and acknowledge the complexity of the issue. Great, and then the last question that came up through the Q and A, so I guess the last question of the night, how many participants are we looking at? I know you talked about up to 50 spaces. I'm not sure if it was clarified about potential number of participants. So it's up to 50, but that really depends on, and good question, thank you. It really depends on the ratio of large vehicles or RVs to small vehicles. And so, and, you know, oftentimes there are more, there's more than one individual living in a vehicle or RV. So we're doing a vast to try and meet Council's direction to provide up to 50 spaces while also making sure that the occupancy works for, you know, the site setup overall program design and trying to minimize any impacts to, you know, employees that are working out of facilities there using the parking lot and the surrounding community. So I don't have, you know, a maximum occupancy at this point in time. I can't say it's not going to be more than 75, but I will say that we're trying to keep it below the 50 spaces and it's likely going to be, I mean, 50 parking spots, it's likely going to be fewer than that, depending on the ratio of the mix of RVs and vehicles. But, you know, we will be looking at that closely just to make sure that we're keeping it to a manageable size while, you know, mitigating potential impacts. I was just seeing if there's any additional questions. All right, well, great job, panel and great job attendees. You had some excellent questions and we know you'll still have more. So again, this is a continued conversation. We're going to learn about this together. You can see how proactive we're trying to be and really address it holistically. So I want to thank all the attendees. I want to thank the staff that have put so much work into this and into this meeting to be prepared to answer your questions. I want to thank Mayor Rogers for joining us, Council Member Swell-Helm and also Council Member Rogers. And with that, I will leave it to the mayor to close out our community meeting tonight. No, and I'll be really brief and I want to thank everybody for your thoughtful question. It does take a village. It's going to take all of us working together, all of our departments from our nonprofit partners who are plugging in to our community engagement department that'll be working with the neighborhoods as well to make sure that your voices are heard. I would really encourage you to stay involved on the conversation. And there's been a number of different avenues that have been provided, email phone numbers for SRPD for our service provider from the city of Santa Rosa. My cell phone number is available on the city's website. And I know that other Council Members, Council Member Swell-Helm and Rogers in particular are very accessible as well. So please reach out if you see something that isn't working or if you have a suggestion on how we can do this better. This is a pilot project that is aimed at getting folks off the streets ultimately and ending homelessness for them. And it will take all of us working together. So thank you for taking the time tonight. Thank you to our staff for developing the project and just let us know as we move forward, this will continue to be updating the public as well. All right, thanks everyone and have a wonderful evening. Thank you.