 to each individual parcel owner? Right now, we're looking at a annual registration fee of just over $1,000. Okay. And again, I'd like to emphasize with that that our hope is that no one registers. Right. That would be the ideal. And if we can get that number lower, we certainly will. Okay. Would we still need a weed abatement program? Yes, okay. Yeah, that's a separate program. It accomplishes separate things. The ordinance touches on the weed abatement program because if there's a vacant property that is on the weed abatement role for annual attention from the fire department, that would be exempted from the provisions of this ordinance provided that weed abatement was the only issue. Now, if it's weed abatement and graffiti and dumped vehicles and other problems, then they could be subject to this and they would be subject to both programs. But we've tried to be very careful not to intrude on the fire department space. And actually, there's no stick. There might not be a way to celebrate. After all, it's really the upkeep of, and I want to thank you for the theory, the broken window. One of the things that are echoed in the neighborhood is we are proud of our environment. So that definitely speaks to the theory itself. The one concern that I do have is graffiti. As graffiti, it really isn't self-induced or self-inflicted. And what I do notice is that there are certain parts of the city of San Rosa where there's programs where there's no cost to the property owners such as in downtown. We do have a team that helps remove graffiti. And I'm wondering the cost association between downtown and more of a rural area where the thousand dollars might be imposed on the property owner. So it's just a concern that I have. No, and that's well taken. It's interesting because there's a separate pilot program that's being considered right now. The council will be seeing that in the coming meetings where we're looking at having the ability to sort of figure out where we wanna be with graffiti enforcement. And again, having that education or resource-based perspective using a lot of interdepartmental members and trying to figure out what we want in a permanent program in the future. But as a separate issue, the maintenance of graffiti is considered a new success in our code now. And again, this borrows from a lot of the existing regulation. I'd also like to point out that the way I see this most of these properties are going to be commercial properties. So it's got a different consideration than a vacant residential lot, which is smaller and easier to maintain. And again, we will have other resources to bring forth for people in those situations who just have no ability to stay on top of the graffiti. The idea with graffiti is to remove it and I'm sure I'm speaking to the choir here is to remove it as quickly as possible every time. And when that happens, those persons that are spraying their graffiti will find better hunting grounds because their effort is not resulting at any length of time that it's up. So again, by having those regular inspections, twice a month by code staff, and also there's requirements for the property owner or their agent to inspect. And we can increase that frequency if needed just to stay on top of those recurrent issues, knock them down, keep them down. And they will actually have to invest less time in their property in the future because the graffiti is just not gonna become as prevalent. Well, I do appreciate that that's part of the educational component or component of the program. Absolutely. We definitely don't want to be the hammer here. We want to enable people to maintain their properties, educate them about the benefits of doing so. In a lot of cases, these properties are the single largest investment an individual may have. And we're helping them make that investment better. And again, the idea is that they bring in clients, they bring in businesses, they bring in customers for the betterment of the entire community. And I am aware that the city center is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, there is paint available to the community where they can actually pick up the paint and cover the graffiti. I'm not personally aware of that, but it's something I'd be happy to look into for you. Very well, thank you. Yeah, I'm assuming we're not the first municipality to think about instituting this kind of a policy. I'm assuming that that is correct. I admit that I haven't done a lot of research into what other cities have been doing. We had a really good starting point that our city attorney had provided for us. I took that when I received the assignment and ran with it. And I didn't want to model this after something that someone else had done. I really wanted to try to capture the essence of what we needed in Santa Rosa. So this is a pretty specific ordinance, but we could certainly look at those other cities and try to determine what they may have done. Yeah, I'm not saying that we need to copy anybody or plagiarize or anything like that. My biggest concern is something that we've talked about before is I don't want Santa Rosa to be the first one in this area to do it and be tagged again with Santa Rosa's not business friendly. Look at what they're doing to us kind of a attitude. So I mean, it doesn't have to be like run or park, but if other municipalities within the Bay Area are doing something similar. I could certainly get a summary of those. And again, in defense of somebody who might say we're not business friendly, I would point out that this ordinance truly bends over backwards to give business owners and property owners every opportunity to avoid being subject to these requirements. That's really the foundation of what we're trying to do here. And for what it's worth council member, our downtown action organization has been aware and it's been in conversations for several with these drafts. And so we have heard at least from that respect and I'm in a chamber, their sentiments on disordnance that's before you and we've heard nothing but good things in support for it. Yeah, it's just a matter of those that take the time to be involved know the story and those that don't tend to yell the loudest. So hypothetically, I know that there's a lot of these properties that we're dealing with are people who don't live in the city. We have a hard time contacting them. I like the idea of having a local contact for a number of reasons, not just for nuisance but then makes it easier for the city to operate if we have a way to get a hold of the property owners. Is the idea then that for people who are unresponsive people that we have a hard time reaching that this would be a property lien on their property? How would we enforce on those individuals? Well, if their properties in violation of the ordinance they're required by the ordinance to register and a failure to do that is in and of itself a violation. So we would try conventional code enforcement to encourage them to get with the program and get on board with it. And hopefully not even need to register. Again, if we send someone a notice that their property is not being maintained they've got 60 days to fix it and not be subject to this ordinance. We really do try to bend over backwards. I'm gonna keep hammering that point because I think it's important. But in answer to your question it would be standard code enforcement notices of violation citations possibly if we needed to go another way and conduct an abatement of the conditions that were on the property because we can't find anyone then we could certainly go down that path. It has its own noticing and hearing requirements but it would allow us to enter onto a property after following judicial procedure and doing whatever needs to be done to safe the property. And then at that point in time those costs would be assessed as a lien and special tax assessment. And if I might add there's another suite of ordinances that'll be coming to the city and before the council early 2024 that touches on several ordinances that I actually hope to embed a more robust ability for the city, especially in instance like I believe you're trying to get to is those properties that we just can't get a hold of but they're not responsive, they won't do it that we can literally mirror the weed abatement program. They have a fund that is set up every year and if property owners don't do it they're supposed to buy X date. They have a contract to come in and debate the issue. The suite of ordinances coming forward next year is literally we're trying to call it the nuisance slash citation ordinance too. We want to find a way and we're going to be working with Allen's team to see and the city attorney's team to see what it looks like to get us to have a fund that helps us with these abatements that we've been handcuffed with for as long as I know not being able to have that resource. So that's the target is this is another kind of a piece in that chain to lead to those the real ability for us to literally go and do something to a property where they don't meet that marks. That's the hope. Big dreams and we've uncovered some really good information that may even help us more. Cool. Okay. Let's see if there's any public comment on this. Is there anybody in the room would like to provide comment? How about online? If you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute once called upon. There are no members of the public with hands raised. All right. I'll bring it back. So what direction would be helpful from the subcommittee? Is it just thumbs up? Keep working on it. Keep talking with people who might be impacted and bring something ultimately to council or is there something a little bit more in the weeds so to speak? Unless you have any overt objections or concerns about anything you've heard I think that would be ideal direction not to put words in your mouth. Team forward. Yeah, gotta go. Yep. Good on my end too. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Move on then to item 5.2. Zahraisa. Hey, Kaya, do you have any presentation? I can get it. I should have talked to you about that earlier and checked in on that but hopefully you were able to look at the presentation so I'll just talk through it and then we can jam through the slides when we get there. Because I really only need the last ones when we start talking about direction. But first of all, I wanna just state this is, as you know, a continuation of our May meeting where we introduced the need for a new economic development strategic plan. And I just wanna give you a reminder that what we'll be presenting to you today. There we go. Can you go to the next slide? Is predicated on input. Thank you so much, Kaya. I know you're working under pressure and I really appreciate it. What I wanna just point out today is that what we're gonna be presenting to you is really based off of the feedback that you gave us but also we have some relatively recent input that we've received from the community. We took that into consideration. We are, as you know, in the process of going through the general plan update. So we have current plans. That's the biggest plan that we have but we staff participates in anything that's happening, like the water efforts, et cetera, et cetera. We've also participated in, directly in some of our regional economic development strategic plan development. Namely the Soma County Economic Development Board's plan. And then of course they're the only chamber right now that has a published strategic plan is the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber. Almost forgot their name. So we took into consideration all of those types of things as well as, you know, other, yeah, what like Moraine County, Oakland, San Francisco, other city examples. But the crux of what is informing our strategic plan development moving forward is truly the Economic Development Subcommittee and the direction we receive from council through the work plan and your priority setting. So that's what is informing this. Next slide, please. And to that, and just a quick recap from last time, we received, we have two slides of input that we received with, I'm not gonna go over those though they're in the next ones. I can highlight a few, but really I wanna just let you know that what you, the input you gave us last time is in alignment with the types of information, the information inputs that we've been receiving over the past couple of years and more recently, especially from the community perspective. So in 2021 we did do, we had a series of steering committees and focus groups and we did do a community survey. And because you hear the same things that we do, you see it in your council work plans, housing, cost of living, the need for an inclusive approach to economic development and infrastructure needs. So all of those align with what you have in your work plan as it is in your state of priorities. Next slide. Again, this and the slide that follows are the statements that we took directly from you last time. We need a North Star. We wanna know how we're gonna quantify and measure success. You can go to the next slide as well. You want a holistic approach. You, we know that retention is the key, but we can't leave behind small amount of pops and we need to figure a way to address emerging markets. Hopefully you had a chance to look at these. I'm gonna move on from it, but if there's anything in particular we're missing, you can certainly let us know. Next slide. So starting with the vision statement, because we heard that you want a North Star, we feel that you gave us a North Star. And so with your permission, we're gonna use the council goals statement for the economic and community vibrancy section, which is sustain and develop a diverse and thriving economy that benefits Santa Rosa residents and businesses and contributes to the community's economic health while preserving historical and cultural integrity. We also have the council's vision and mission and that with your permission will be our guiding statements for the economic development strategy. Next slide. The other thing that we took from the council work plan goals, et cetera, is the hierarchy of language. And this doesn't seem like it would be important, but it is so important because we all call things differently and we wanna make sure that we're all speaking the same language. So the hierarchy of language that we're looking at as we build up the plan is gonna be goals, we're gonna have performance measures associated with them, then we'll have objectives and then we'll have tactics. So unless you have a issue with that, we're sticking with what you already have. Next slide. So this is where we get into the discussion. I have in a couple of slides, I'm gonna go over timeline and then a series of questions that I wanna go over with you, but taking all of that input, the council goals, the feedback from May, the community input that's in true alignment with what you already know, we came up with three goals, gold buckets, essentially. And so one of the core things that we wanna know are these the right areas that you wanna to address? Are they enough? Is three enough? And what we're considering to fall into the buckets. We can talk about language and words that you wanna use, but in essence, what we're looking at based on the input thus far is climate culture and communication, which really means how is Santa Rosa to do business with? What is the climate in which people come to us and we provide a business climate? It's business satisfaction, it's how are we communicating and marketing what we have and then processes. The second is economic vibrancy. Business is really the crux of economic development, it is business retention, expansion and attraction, it's community partnerships, and it's economic accelerators. And by that I just mean, do we have incentives? Thank you, I was like, what's the word? And it is incentives. And in addition to incentives, it could be processes that are streamlined or special initiatives to accelerate, say, development, that type of thing. And then the third bucket is resiliency and community investment. This could be human capital, however you wanna talk about it, but it's really those upstream investment type of things that we've put into place through ARPA in particular, but through many other one-time fund sources, it's physical infrastructure, it's economic access and opportunities. So it really captures sort of those looser social investments, but also infrastructure investments moving forward. Next slide. We're proposing a very aggressive timeline to get this done and we feel that we can do it, not only because we have really clear and great input from multiple sources, but because we can and we would like to use the Economic Development Subcommittee, market it more as where people can come so that you can hear the input at the same time we do, additional outreach and engagement. So we're almost in August. And so at this time, we wanna make sure that we have the vision goals, vision goal value statements in place and prepare for the next subcommittee meeting. We're gonna continue internal engagement as well as external engagement. However, again, we would like given the timeline to be able to use this meeting, have special meetings, perhaps not every other month, but perhaps every month to be able to address some of the things that we wanna get feedback we need. September, we'd like to get a draft review in front of the city manager and executive staff as well as the Economic Development Subcommittees that we have time to incorporate changes. October, we'd like to get a final draft, emphasis on draft, but final to both of the same groups. And so that we can get to November study session with the full council. We would not anticipate having a full blown discussion or presentation to the council. And I'm assuming that it would be maybe sort of, it might be resolution or something if there's an action appointed to it, but the presentation would be in December so that we could actually release the document in January. And it would give us sort of a clean entree into 2024. Next slide. So the very quick overview, the things that we want to know from you is are there additional engagements that you'd like to see? Are we hitting the mark and capturing what your intention was? Are there additional special reports or studies that are needed that you would like to see in advance or can we bake those into a plan? Our internal and external engagement is obviously going to continue throughout the whole process. It should be iterative. And even after we have a plan, things happen and we'd like to be able to be responsive. In terms of the plan elements and timelines, I just want to make sure again that the buckets are correct. Do we need more? Are we missing something? Are we in track with the elements and then just confirming that you're okay with the timeline? And that's it. All right, Eddie? Yes, thank you. In regards to the climate culture communication and we're looking at communications and marketing, I'm wondering how old are some of our codes? For example, signage or from what I'm hearing, it's about 19 years old. And maybe one of the things that we can do to create a better climate for emerging businesses is to take a look at those codes to see what the new technology is going to look like and maybe have that conversation. So that is definitely something that comes under that bucket. I think it's a continuation of the review that we have to do with all of our policies. We started it with some of the development stuff, but it also would be inclusive of like say one sheet so that, so not to say the sign ordinance doesn't need updating, it does. But sometimes our processes seem complicated because we don't lay, we don't have a map for it. So in that process, it allows us to identify some of the things that probably could be streamlined. So we'll capture that there. And I heard signage because I think that's a constant conversation in our department. Yeah, I would just add, yeah, as we work through these, there's definitely the sort of, this is strategic plan. So looking at the life of this, this is like the next three to five years, like immediate objectives. And then there's long term, but even in the three to five years, you could do something tomorrow, and really trying to be deliberate about what we wanna do within 90 days, what do we wanna do within two years and then ultimately, confidence of bigger, bigger moves like you need to do a code update. But we don't wanna wait two and a half years to do the code update. We wanna do something in 90 days, we wanna do something in a year. Well, especially with technology advancing so quickly, it's sort of ever evolving, right? I mean, these things here, yeah. Yeah, but I think the intent of your question is captured and that is, if it's not the sign ordinance, it's something else and the process of identifying those things has to be baked into the plan. Yeah, and then after COVID, the way that business has conducted, the new strategies now they've adapted exactly to the post COVID, I mean, even the partner programs, which I really appreciate. Yeah. And that's just another example. Mm-hmm. Yeah, for your community outreach, I saw that there was the Steering Committee focus groups in 2021. When was the community survey done? That was done in 2021 as well. So all of that was in advance of, it just got stalled is what it did, but it was in 2021. But I will say what is interesting looking back at some of our SWOT analysis is that things haven't changed dramatically in terms of what the outcomes of these are. And again, I think it's reflective in the goal setting sessions that you guys had where housing still comes up, cost of living still comes up. So that has not changed dramatically. I will add to that that there was, we were able to break out between business owners and non-business owners in that survey. And what was interesting is development projects listed high on both of them. But the difference between the two in terms of areas of importance, obviously business owners wanted business assistants and non-business owners were a little bit more concerned about neighborhood programs, civic pride and engagement. But otherwise, we have not seen a dramatic move and opinions of areas of importance related to surveys. And I can say that both in terms of those community surveys as well as when we look at sort of studies for assets and red flags within our community, those haven't moved dramatically either over time from pre-2021, even including 2021 to now when we did this initial survey stuff. Okay, yeah, cause that was gonna be my next question was, I mean, 2021 to 2023 is only two years, but it's about 10 years lived in development of- COVID, yeah. So, and there's been a lot of turnover in leadership and the various chambers and industry organizations and stuff like that. So that was my, that was the one thing in terms of concerns or questions that stuck out to me was would it be worthwhile going back to some of those, all of those? I don't know what that kind of lift is. I don't wanna put too much on you if you think you have enough, but because of the change in leadership is, I mean, there's even a change in leadership at the city. Right. So I'm- Only a little. Yeah. So I'm just wondering if it may be worthwhile to revisit those. Yeah. I mean, we can definitely do another survey because that was, we had a very good response and we used our business tax certificate process to do that and had a very good response to that. And then I think on the, that's sort of the community engagement or feedback piece of it. And then certainly we continue to look at the, sort of economic asset red flags and can provide or anticipating, providing in the actual document what some of those things are. And by that, I mean, where the community might say, oh, housing and affordability is our top from an economic standpoint, that would look like we have, we've accelerated our policies on enabling housing. We're seeing a transformation, but regionally housing is still an issue. It could be education. So looking at that last bucket, we have a highly educated demographic, but we have perceptions of inequality in our education system. It could be we're looking at changing in, like our growth projections are sort of stagnant right now, but are we seeing a bigger influx in people traveling into our area for jobs? I mean, those are the kinds of things that we get that I think are a little bit easier to drill down to to give the data behind some of the policies that might take a little bit longer. Some of those things might need specific studies, but for the most part we have, we have those two areas of data, one which we can get and one which is sort of accessible. And if I may, Council Member Ocracri really appreciate that feedback. Are there any organizations, neighborhood groups, businesses, any of you specifically would like us to reach out to maybe get some updated feedback from them? Obviously Downtown Action Organization and Railroad Squares Association, the Chamber. I'd say the various chambers, the Black Chamber, Hispanic Chamber, I know leadership at like the North Coast Builders Exchange is turned over, same with the Alliance, I don't know if my fellow council members couldn't think of anybody else. I mean, the list is emerging. I know that Rafa Rehmero is working with many community groups as well to create new ones for the benefit and organization of themselves. So they're emerging. So we may follow up for some targeted outreach. Okay, there, thank you. Have a good day. So for me, the two most critical parts of the plan that we're developing, we talked about it a little bit last time. One is the business recruitment side of things. How do we attract businesses that are existing businesses into the community? And one of the examples that I can think of was when we did our cannabis policies, we set our tax rates specifically to attract certain types of jobs that we knew were higher paid jobs for our community. So what are those opportunities? How do we look around at what we're missing in our city and attract that in? And yes, absolutely support mom and pops and startups and look for emerging industries and whatnot. But how do we also get some of that established business acumen here as well? So that's a big one. I talked a little bit last time about sort of the concept of a virtual city where somebody can go on and if they've got a business and they're looking to expand or start or whatever have you, they can go on and actually see like what spaces are available or what resources are available for that individual. And it seems like that kind of a concept would tie in really well with our previous discussion where we're looking at vacant or underutilized properties. And perhaps there's a partnership that's there between our economic goals and those development goals. And then I also think that there's a space here for us to look at how we're planning our general plan with sort of that 15 minute city concept to look at what parts of our area needs certain types of businesses or amenities to be attracted into it. Big one, and obviously we've been working on it a lot is something like a grocery store downtown. Like how do we do a targeted approach to make sure that when we identify, for instance, that there's a food desert, which Fountain Grove is becoming one, Burbank Gardens is one, right? How do we take those areas and create incentive programs that not just create jobs, but also mirror with our goals for our entire city. And so I'm not entirely sure how, which category that fits into, I think it's mostly captured in it. But I think that it's good for us to focus on that and actually call that out when we do presentations and when we talk to people about it. Yeah, I was gonna try to find something, but yeah, I would put that in all three categories, but highlighting the elements of what you are seeking to achieve in those. Yeah, like my district probably doesn't need a lot of incentives to attract more bars. We've got plenty of good beer, but other amenities that we can come up with sort of a plan for how do we attract them into specific spots. So. Plenty is relative. Plenty is relative. They're all within walking distance. That's what we're not got. People are wanting clubs. I do hear that from a lot of people. I know, it's funny. So we're trying to affect an entertainment district, that's for sure. Yeah, for sure. Well, anything else to add? No, sir. I'm just wondering, didn't this just came to me and you can shut it down if you want to, I don't care. But and is it worth, is it worth pursuing or is it worth even thinking about? So like when we, like during the rebuild, right? So if we're doing certain things construction wise, we really streamlined the process for things that we wanted to get done. So if someone came in with a supermarket or a market for downtown and these are things that we prioritize say, okay, normally if you want to put this in another neighborhood that's already got a safe way and a CVS and that you would do this, but because this is a targeted area, how can we streamline, it's this situation. We're gonna help you get to the end point quicker because it is severely wanted by the community. I don't know if you guys are on board or something like that. Oh yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Not just targeting an area, but like actually, I would say it's absolutely worth exploring. And we should absolutely continue to conversation. And we would need certain explicit policy direction you all because it may become an equity issue, right? Where for the sake of this conversation, somebody wants to hold foods in their community, right? To your point, there's already a safe way and a CVS. And if we create this structure where there's a say streamlined approach to get that whole foods downtown, maybe somebody in that community where they needed to jump through more hurdles says, well, A, who made the determination that under these sets of circumstances, there's a streamline effort versus over here, there's another door, right? And we would be able, we need to be able to say either this was how a certain area was designated to be prioritized or the city council has prioritized these specific areas for exactly, and I can understand that too well. And, but to be fair, we do that with housing, right? If you're gonna put the type of housing in the location we want, we provide different incentives and different types of streamlining because we recognize that there are certain things in our community that fit better in certain areas than elsewhere. So what I'm talking about is actually mirroring this with your community assessment, whether it's grocery stores, whether it's childcare, whether it's whatever the amenity is, parks, open space, right? Where you're looking at what is lacking from certain areas in your community and you're not telling somebody that they have to go there, you're creating a path of least resistance for them to be able to operate in that area to the benefit of the community. So I wanted to be real clear, we have been super involved and super aware of incorporating the general plan update because a lot of what you're talking about is enabled through the new general plan update in ways that it may not have been before. So the general plan update is looking at neighborhood centric, is looking at access to jobs at the neighborhood level. I think where it becomes very important to what Assistant City Manager Dunstan is saying is identifying, because the issues aren't gonna be childcare, it's enabled, it's allowed by right anywhere. And it's needed everywhere. And it's needed everywhere grocery stores similarly, but where it becomes a thing, so one, there's an enabling policy in the documents. And then the second is additional effort. So what we did with housing is looked at policy, we've taken care of that through the general plan update, but it is the things like the surplus land act and deciding that we're gonna go through that or what does public private partners, that is where I think the Assistant City Manager is saying, this is where we need to start. That's that policy level piece of it where then it takes an extra effort and it may not, it may be enabled, but how is it incentivized? And I think those are two slightly different conversations and I think that's what we'll be looking at probably as you look at the, of how we implement through a three year period. Yeah, I was just gonna say, I was looking at the economic vibrancy bucket, the economic accelerators and thinking of like you said, housing, my apologies, I thought you were just talking about like making it clearer and- Oh no, oh no. Okay, so I know we're at question time not giving comments, but that's what I just want to clarify. Comments are helpful. No, but I'll have to be a public comment woman. Oh, okay. Yeah. Blurred. Yeah. All right, let's see if there's any public comment. Go ahead. Thank you. So I'm Jake Hyde-El. I'm a residential resident, homeowner, business owner and part-time city staff. Now, so this is with regard to the plan for the external engagement. So I'm suggesting that you contact instructors of business courses at Santa Rosa Junior College and send them the meeting notes and the attachments for the subcommittee meetings and ask them to review them and provide their input in writing and invite them to attend the next meetings in the September 12th, November 14th. Yeah, invite them to the meetings. And there are actually 52 business course instructors who teach at SRJC. And all their email addresses are listed on the JC website. However, only eight of them are actually teaching courses for this fall semester, which starts August 14th. So you could ask these eight instructors to pass along the information to the meeting dates to their students when they start the courses on August 14th and invite the students to provide input and attend these meetings. And as you probably know, SRJC students represent a wide range of people of all ages and levels of experience. So this would broaden the pool of engagement with people whose interests are focused on business and the local economy. Now, for my own suggestion about stimulating economic development in Santa Rosa, try inviting new business ventures to come to Santa Rosa in the areas of artificial intelligence, hydrogen fuel engines, and space technologies. And yeah, ask them to visit Santa Rosa, pay for their local hotel visits, give them the tour, you know, and, you know, talk to the executives and the board of directors who whoever accepts your invitations. So, if you just include some of these suggestions in the plan, then these things can happen. And I'm gonna just mail this to Ms. De La Rosa as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Keigh. Do we have anybody online? If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute once called upon. There are no, but do you want to raise hands online? All right, I'll bring it back. So I absolutely love that idea of working with the professors and the students and whatnot. And also it reminded me of when we had developers come and take a tour of the downtown and show them the assets. I don't know if there's an opportunity to do that with business development folks for some of the businesses that we might look at holistically sort of what we want to target and go after that we think we could try to recruit to Santa Rosa, but that would be, I think a really worthwhile endeavor as well to actually get those folks to come here, to see what's here and to talk through with them. If nothing else, what are the barriers? What are they looking for? And I do know kind of the history of the development is what typically happens is these larger businesses tend to look at a region. They narrow down to a region that they need to be in. And then when they choose where in the region they're going to specifically locate, we can't do much to impact them looking at our region. But for those who are willing to come to our region having a conversation with them about why not Santa Rosa? Like why would you locate in Windsor as opposed to Santa Rosa, for instance, right? Not to say that we don't love our neighbors to the North, but there's no reason that we shouldn't be having those conversations with folks to figure out how to bring them here instead. I think one of the questions that I have on that because we do love our neighbors and we do benefit when larger businesses locate even if it's outside of city limits. So just specific to that, for example, testing your tolerance on, we have a problem with land availability and we have a problem with Tiger Salamander and we have a problem with some of the things like that we try to respond to in terms of, they need access to a rail track or some of the things were just not eligible for certain parts of it. But our neighbors are, what is your tolerance for regionalism in terms of our attraction? We do tend to, we are currently working with both the Chamber and the Economic Development Board in particular, for example, for our regional responses because between the county and the city we offer the most and have the most to provide in terms of sort of the soft things that people look for, businesses look for. But is this something that you want baked into the plan from a regional perspective? So I think speaking for myself, I am good for us to attract people to our region but then would want to know what are they looking for to locate in our jurisdiction once they're in the region? What are the barriers, right? So I think it's digging deeper into the barriers and I think that goes back to, I can't remember if you said or you said it but it goes back to then how do we respond and then incentivize them to locate here? And I think that's where it begins to look into not just what is in the general plan but it gets into parcel specifics of or area specifics in terms of how we can enable it because it's a yes to everything but it then becomes a policy discussion when you get down to industry and industry needs. And I think that then addresses it. Yeah, okay, thank you. Yeah, and I'm wondering a lot of the things that were brought up, AI, space, all of those, those are on the emerging side. How do we also create opportunity for the next thing that's going to emerge that I don't even know what that is, five, 10 years. Venture capitalists. Venture capitalists. Air taxis. And how did we get more venture capitalism? Capitalist money here, yes. I wanna just add, the more specific we are in targeting the type of industry or industry side that the more specific we can get in our tactics because we just support housing, it has, it does have some value but when we really strategically placed it someplace and we had some criteria and then if you go here and you meet this criteria, it was very clear that we had the policy direction from the council to really, well, to treat it differently, frankly. And so that really helps. So the more specific we can get with the industry types and again, it's connecting with original partners about what those types might be in general but what Santa Rosa specific come from us. Yeah, I think I'm interested kind of seeing what's out there but also recognizing that it's not just about generating additional sales tax but it's about creating industry. Yeah, I would say that sales tax will come because if we have the industry, we have the people and that's the easiest thing to get the hardest thing where I feel that I've heard you guys say this, it's that higher level shift on what our funding revenue begins to look like. And an understanding of how it impacts the rest of the business climate because I'm not talking like a big box store that comes in and puts everybody out, right? Like that's not what I'm talking about but I am looking at emerging industries or what's the next key site? What's the next metronic, et cetera, et cetera. So generally I've understood just going forward just to make this very clear is we're not talking about retail in general. That is just a market driven revenue drive. I definitely hear you. And I think that would be reflected. Cool. Yeah, so to your last slide I think we kind of covered the engagement portion of it. If you wanna offline like pinpoint some, like, hey, these organizations, that's fine. I don't think I need to see any specific studies reports. Maybe that study updated two years later. Sure. You said that was fairly easy to do. Yeah, I can do the economic sort of SWAT, yes. Yeah. And then I'm good with the buckets, the timeline. If you say you can get it done that quickly, I'm all for it. I'll believe in you. It's ambitious, we know. But other than that, I think with the understanding it would be a final council decision what Chris and I were both discussing sort of like that economic resiliency ordinance of in this area we would like to see these specific kinds of businesses and we won't do whatever we can within reason and law to get you in there. But food deserts and those kinds of things. I think that would be, I'd be, you say it's worth exploring, I'd like to see that explored. I mean, there's no need to reiterate what's been said prior. For myself, it's really the technology and really just supporting the businesses, the emerging markets especially. And as far as the timeline, move forward with it as best you can. And that's it. All right. Do you need any additional direction? Yeah, but I will go back and watch this, sorry. I hope you're equally as happy with the session as our last one. I am, this is, I think this is important and I think it's a good thing. And I think especially when you start to talk about the tie in with the general plan and with the other things that we're trying to do, it's critical, so. Well, I think we'll take a five minute recess while we locate the chief. He's late. John? Where John or Scott? John. John. Sitting here at three, it's through a one. I don't have to go. We dragged it on to three. I don't think he's joining us in person, but he's not online, is he? Roll call. Chair Rogers. Here. Board member Kruppke. Here. Board member Alvarez has recused himself, let the record reflect that all commissioners, all members and presidents, with the exception of Michelle Alvarez. Great. Let's go on to this last item and then 5.3. All right, so I'll introduce this item. We've added this item, cannabis business security, because there has been a recent uptick in conversation and activity around our cannabis businesses particularly related to some break-ins. And so I know there's been conversations that we've hosted through the police department, but we also have other staff members here that connect with the cannabis industry. And so it's really an opportunity to sort of recognize that there's an uptick in activity in this particular sector that, as we noted earlier in this meeting, is a sector that the city made great strides to support and it's still in its early days in terms of really becoming a rich part of our economy. And so it warrants this conversation to check in about the city's support for this industry and what we can do. We don't have a presentation, but we have staff here to be a resource for a conversation. We have Chief Cregan, thank you for joining us from the police department. We have Alan Alton and Scott from our finance department, Monet Chicali. She's our planning and cannabis program manager right now and Lyle has joined us from planning. Raiisa, obviously from my development and Raphael is listening, thank you Raphael. And so we're just here as a resource to help talk through the issues. Yeah, let's start with the Chief and just talk through like a little bit, like what are we actually seeing out there? What's the need? So the general thing I was working with our crime analyst team last week preparing for this and undeniably a significant uptick in the cannabis related burglaries and thefts. I was looking at a graph here like that in 2018 we had four burglaries associated specifically with like licensed cannabis dispensaries and businesses here, 2019, 4, 2025, 2021, 5, 2022, 6. So pretty steady really over that period. And then just in the first six months of 2023, we've had 14. So well more than doubled. I mean, we're almost going to three times that level. So seeing a significant, some of them were just by targeted groups. So just in January this year, we had seven of those 14 occurred just in the month of January. And that definitely concerned our cannabis business owners here and Santa Rosa and working with some of the key stakeholders. And we held like really like a cannabis, like industry meeting with the police department with planning was there as well in April and heard like an overwhelming amount of concerns from the businesses about some of the safety concerns, but also just some of the legitimate concerns of the burglaries of their businesses. We started diving deeper into the issue and looking for some of the trends or most of them are happening in the early morning hours between two and four in the morning. We saw one trend of the majority of them are occurring on Monday mornings. And that could I'm not sure anecdotally if that's because maybe there's more business over the weekends, I think there might be more cash or our cannabis on site. Also Friday nights was another peak night, but we're been sharing our property crimes team has been sharing with other detectives throughout the Bay Area. And most of what we're seeing it's not suspects here from the city of Santa Rosa, but coming from out the Bay Area and very organized like theft rings and they're coming from different areas and they're coming they're hitting multiple locations along the way and you'll see them hitting like whether it be in Vallejo or Petaluma, Katadi and then coming to Santa Rosa and hitting multiple. We had the ones just last Monday night where we saw an organized theft ring and they stole multiple vehicles out of the Bay Area drove here and those stolen vehicles rammed them into the businesses and we were able to get into a vehicle pursuit with one of the vehicles and we have some suspect leads that we're following up on right now. So the biggest data I have for you is just like seen the increase and most of the time it doesn't appear to be spur the moment of just someone walking by and throwing a rock through a window it's organized crews coming together in a group of three to sometimes eight of smashing in using either vehicles or tools that they pre-planned with and then going in there specifically usually targeting some of the product there with it. So we've been working with some of the cannabis buildings about our biggest recommendation is target hardening of the more that we do to be able to show that it's not an easy target then quite frankly these organized rings will stay out of the city of Santa Rosa and they just go these go to where the easiest target is so the more we can do whether it be putting ballards up or other other obstacles to be able to stop vehicles from ramming of putting of hardening whether we put cages or roll down doors or anything to be able to break so they can't easily access the glass alarm system private security there on the scene all these things are gonna be substantial steps. We're really working to educate our patrol officers. We're really proud that we have really quick response times. Now some of it quite frankly helps that they're occurring at two and four in the morning so our call volume is lower at that time. So we can have a faster response time but the ones last week one of the scenes we were in within 12 seconds that officers happened to be just down the street and that's how they were able to get into a pursuit with some of the vehicles fleeing the area. So we'll continue to monitor this my really strategy from the police department is like Intel sharing throughout the Bay Area since we know that these are organized rings throughout the Bay Area and our Santa Rosa specific and then working with our business community here about how we can support them in some of the education of hardening their facilities and making them less basically easy targets for those. So that's kind of like a snapshot of the data I don't know if there's other specific questions that you have and I can dive deeper into it with you. Yeah, do you have, are the businesses able to take advantage of some of your expertise on getting an assessment on how to harden their businesses or is it sort of as an officer's available or? That's the hard part for us that it's hard for us to do one-on-one with each business of sending someone there. What I would like to do is hold more of these at community meetings so we can get all the businesses at once and kind of like be able to be the best use to my staff's time who really get stretched then. So I think what we may end up doing is holding another type of community meeting similar to what we did and work with some of our other city departments which were key stakeholders in that and talk about what are some of these strategies and quite honestly like the police department doesn't know all these. Sometimes it was just those from the industry here in the room who have a lot more expertise and they're a wide range as you can imagine with any business owner that some have been in the business for years and have a lot more expertise. And so that was one thing that was good is kind of organically there were a lot of conversations in the room of people helping each other out because I think the industry wants to see each other succeed especially of minimizing those who are victims to theft there in the community. Just some basic questions for edification purposes. Are the ballards and guards, are those proven to be viable deterrence or are we estimating that they will be? Yeah, I can say some of that is more anecdotally over experience but what you're not gonna see is them being able to ram the vehicles into it. So that's been one of the trends that we're seeing because they just use these stolen vehicles and they just know of you having the brute power of ramming that car into it and the vehicle itself means nothing to them since they're stolen. So the ballards will certainly help with that and that's one of the trends that we've seen here but they're gonna adapt and overcome and one of the ways they adapt and overcome is bringing in sledge hammers or things like that to smash a glass but then that's why the second stage. What are we doing to harden the facility itself whether it be the roll down doors, the cages, things like that that we can do as some have secondary areas where they're putting their high value items inside this door so even if you do breach the front door you're not able to access those things so each one of those steps help and quite honestly I was talking to someone in the community this week it's in some ways similar to the side shows. Like if you put up lots of roadblocks that make it difficult to do that in this community they just move on to other communities and I think that if we come together with the cannabis industry, with the city, with the police department, if we come together to come up with creative solutions for this and some of us is gonna be that education some of it's gonna be sharing the intel throughout the area that we can make it an area where people just say let's avoid Santa Rosa and that's why I really wanna also work with our police officers of having that immediate response time so the more that we get and quite frankly some areas, larger agencies in the area they don't have the ability to respond that quickly to these so we can show like wow when Santa Rosa they respond immediately so let's stay out of Santa Rosa for doing these burglaries. Okay. Do these individuals tend to be armed? Basically being my concern would if we have a guard on duty does that risk is there a life safety issue for that guard? Because I know not all guards at cannabis businesses are armed and would there be a greater risk to the community if some sort of engagement happened? I do think to just having the guard there is the deterrent that they do like from my experience that there's spot check in the area before they don't just randomly come to a business they've done whether it be a couple of days before where they've driven by they do a site assessment themselves to kind of look at like okay how difficult is this place to break in? So they're not just like Googling and saying let's go hit this random place in Santa Rosa so I think having the guard is a real deterrent there is though a risk and we've talked before at some of the city council meetings I've in 24 years I've never seen so many guns on the streets of Santa Rosa and really that's throughout the Bay Area throughout California so there is a higher likelihood of these suspects being armed but most of the time they're not going there planning on an armed confrontation they're going there planning on an empty building that they can ram and quickly get in and out of there they don't see it as like from my experience that they're not looking for violent altercations but sometimes if they get confronted they will come armed and that is sometimes what happens during these recovery so it's certainly our risk and then one real quick shift this may be a question for Allen and your department but one of the proposals that's been brought up with some sort of tax relief what kind of tax revenue do we derive from cannabis businesses and if we gave some sort of tax credit or tax relief would it have a significant impact on our budget? So we bring in about $1.8 to $2 million annually we seem to plateaued around that amount two years ago I think we were $2 million we anticipated being there and then it dropped down to $1.8 it took back up a little bit so that's what I'm thinking we're pretty much right there it is we are at the lowest rate that we charge does it have an impact on the budget? Yes, absolutely we're at a stage right now where every bit of revenue that comes in we need we have a deficit that deficit is gonna keep going and get bigger and so, you know, it wouldn't be so there is no excess revenue And underscore our Chief Financial Officer's point where the lowest rate tax rate in the state? We're at the floor just for context Okay I just have to say for making that development standpoint not to counter that because we are and it matters but if you look at the stack of taxes we're in the middle like low to middle So is there an economic case that can be made that temporary program that helps people to make because what I'm worried about is if you're doing well you can afford these but I also know that there's a lot of cannabis operators that have barely gotten their doors open that still have a ton of debt that still aren't quite making it that have really tight margins and that if we're gonna ask them to do additional security measures one, does it make economic sense to the city to kind of help float them to get that done because then we'll see fewer attempts at break-ins and crime and then two have we had any discussions with folks in the industry to see what would be helpful to them to be able to address this issue and what types of tools would they be able to best utilize if we were to put together something even if it was a program for a couple of years? Yeah, I don't know if you want Claire to answer that about more globally working with the industry I can talk more specifically about the security conversations we've had. Yeah, and I don't know Monty you've been working with the industry through our program but I'm not sure if you've gleaned that type of information I can talk a little bit about that so we have minimum security requirements in our ordinance locally the state has regulations within the state regulations and between the two it doesn't require the amount of hard need that I think the chief has been talking about and we're starting to see businesses start to utilize a lot of those techniques for their buildings and so in talking to some of the businesses I think they are looking to see what's working and then if they're able to invest they're doing that but there could be some other things that we could provide on education as far as crime prevention through environmental design so those types of things but at the end of the day it's still a cash business there's still product on site and it's still a target so it's really about the structure itself and the security presence and beyond that there's not much I think is the business they could do but I think it's important to have the conversations and see how we can assist in other ways I mean part of it's information sharing so I mean I like the idea of continuing the discussion with the community and using the industry itself as a resource for other industries and maybe then being as a facilitator that type of work facilitate the information back out best practices, opportunities, resources but yeah I think short of financial resources I think that's where we will be looking for opportunities that we don't see right now Yeah Oh can I add one more thing? So one of the grants that Monet is working on is the cannabis equity grant and so we're just doing the assessment at this moment but the next step if we choose to take it as a city is to do a grant program for applicants that would qualify under the equity guidelines and the county is starting to do this this year but that may open up opportunities for those that would be able to apply under the equity grant status to get funding to be able to make improvements so just want to provide that one avenue that may eventually be available Yeah, okay that's helpful I'd be really curious to continue the conversation and in particular see if I don't know if it's Raisa or the chief or whomever Monique can come forward with some form of a proposal for our discussion about if we were to create some criteria I don't know what it is for the operators who are struggling to have some form of tax deduction or relief to do specific types of identified hardening that the chief or somebody else can help navigate through one of these community meetings that what would that cost? What would the effectiveness be? What would the response be from the industry? Do we think that that would be helpful? And then of course, what would the impact be to our budget and what would that look like? That's what I'd be interested in seeing outside of that, outside of the tax relief I think it is a good idea for us to have more community meetings where we aggregate what else we can do or what else we can assist folks with or what best practices have they identified within the industry to help one another because it does sound like there's a particular need for some response to be done for us to at least be able to talk about doing something different going forward, but Don't get public comment Yeah, do you want to give some comments first or? I'm trying to give the public something to respond to also Just put a comment first. Okay, anybody want to provide public comment? Yeah? Okay, this is just in response to what I learned gig hide outside of Rosa. So I've been convinced over the years that prevention, crime prevention is always the best way to go. So I like the idea of the roll down doors and actually it should be any possible glass window door any glass anything on the outside of the building should be locked shut down for every night. So open on the day, customers come in, close at night doesn't hurt their business but stops people from ramming in. And it seems to me that since there's been this rapid uptick, just like we were talking about in the first item with the vacant lots how one bad thing creates attracts more bad things. If there was already a thing going on of organized crime to hit these businesses it's gonna happen again, right? So it's get it, prevent it now. So I'd say just create a loan program and get all the cannabis business to roll down doors, lock up shutters, no glass on the outside at all. And the ones who've got the money just pay it off for no interest. The ones who don't will have to earn the money to pay it off. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you for continuing this conversation. I know we've been now on three from goal setting and other things, talking about this now for several months and Nick Kaston, Santa Rosa. Excuse me, can you please say your name for the record? Nick Kaston, Santa Rosa. We are at a point where I think the education that the chief put together really resonated within the industry. The district training was there. There was a lot of conversations with the detectives about what happens after a crime happens. But once the crimes happens, the damage is done and a lot of companies can't recover from that. So the prevention measures are really key and having them be community wide to get the type of prevention that the chief was speaking to. So if we're not dealing with the crime in the first place or going somewhere else is also a quarter of that. And that comes out in the messaging, that comes out in the folks in risk of the barrier, knowing that Santa Rosa is inhospitable. And policy like this is really key to the businesses being able to actually enact that prevention site. The zone, those businesses to do the prevention. The concept of a tax deduction, which I very much favor, I think actually could end up boosting your tax collections if drafted correctly. So if you're a retailer, which we're not the lowest in the state for cannabis retail tax, we're at 3%, if you have Sacramento, you got two and a half, there's other places that are down below that. But if you're a retailer at a 3% gross receipts tax and you're staring down, having an overnight security guard and putting in some dollars and other types of improvements, you're looking at about a $300,000 bill for the year, for your security measures between that guard and those improvements. With most of that being the guard, that's about a quarter of a million dollars a year to have a guard just overnight. That's not during the day. At a 3% gross receipts tax, if you could write that off against your gross receipts for the city, that would be a tax savings of $9,000. $9,000, I would argue within the context of the city's budget is well spent there if it prevents the police call, preventing the staff up because those calls are impacting other aspects of the industry. And it can be very important to a cannabis business. Because of how taxation works in the cannabis industry, every dollar spent on security isn't treated as a cost of doing business. Very paying taxes as low that was profit to the federal government. All the states and local tax are based on gross receipts. There's no place where there's any incentive for businesses to invest in these areas. If Santa Rosa's offering that investment and then ties that tax benefit to on-type payment of your taxes, you'll be prioritized within cannabis businesses list of bills that they have to pay. There's a lot of bills that have to be paid and they're gonna pay the ones that give them the best economic benefit. So if you're saying, if you pay your taxes on time in the city of Santa Rosa, we're gonna have this tax deduction for you for security measures. You'll incentivize the security measures and you'll incentivize on-time tax payments to the city. And you'll do it all at the same time when the industry is not receiving a substantial amount of help or respect, quite honestly, at other levels of government with the trouble they're having in operating the businesses. So I think it's a win-win-win for what would ultimately be a relatively low cost and a potential financial benefit from the city. Do we have any public comments online? Sit here. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute yourself once called upon. There are no hands raised. All right, bring it back. I mean, obviously it's an issue that needs to be addressed in some way, shape, or form, is how we address it, right? So I'm interested in the tax deduction, but I would like to see with that an analysis by the CFO's office of what that could mean revenue-wise because we are, I mean, we're on a very thin line if we haven't already stepped over that line with our expenses this year. And I do want to incentivize businesses, especially to pay their taxes. So I'd be interested in hearing more about that and any other creative ways that you guys can get from your counterparts in other parts of the Bay Area that have worked well. I would also like to see that as well. So you comfortable with giving some direction to staff to essentially go and come up with a couple of proposals that they can bring back to us for discussion, including around the tax issue, something that doesn't cost the city money and something that's driven by the industry. Yes, okay, does that work for you all? Yeah, I think we'll put that, we will put something together as high level, obviously, and come back with some, just so we have something to brainstorm around. Perfect. And I can also add that I would like to do, I would like any of these proposals to not contemplate reopening the discussion on the cannabis ordinance itself, but something that can be added outside of that. Yeah, I would second that one. Cool, okay. Last item is department reports. Does anybody have a report that they'd like to give for today? All right, seeing none, we'll go ahead and adjourn. Thanks everybody.