 Hello everybody. Hello. Hi, Annie. Like your mug. Thank you. I miss you so much. I think I'd like to be with a vet walking down her cherry blossom lane. Quite an image. Yeah, I could do that. I could do the Michelle's waterfall. I think I'll follow Gary's lead and have a glass of red. No, that's water. I'm hydrating. Sorry. Don't get the wrong idea. This is not the Carson show where you don't know what's in the coffee cups. And the interesting your name, Y-O-S-O-C-K-Y, the best man in my wedding from, I met in kindergarten. We go fishing every year was Y-S-O-N-G. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, everybody. It's 6 p.m. and I like to call to order the second meeting of the general plan community advisory committee. My name is Andy Gustafson. I work with the city of Santa Rosa. I'm project manager for this project. And today we have a number of other staff members, team members and participation. Thank you to all of you who are joining us on the CAC and also to the public. It's very important as we move through this process that we're have these open meetings and discussions as a way to be able to build the general plan that represents the input from all of the community members. Tonight we have a agenda that we're going to go through and it's really one item on the agenda. We'll be taking public comment as we move through each of the sub items. So those of you who are listening or watching here tonight. Please realize as the CAC members go through the discussion, you too will have opportunity to comment. I'm going to go further. I do want to have our hearing secretary take roll call of the CAC members. And if we do that now, please. Yes, so I am going to say your name if you could please unmute yourself and just to say here. My name is Erin Schreiber Stainthrop, Ali Soto, Andreas Vigil. Actually, I received an email from Andreas he is running a few minutes behind but does plan to attend. Annette Arnold. Erin. De La Che, Carmona Benson, Erica Meekish. One moment. Michelle, I see that De La Che does appear to be in the meeting, but maybe was on mute. Okay. Yeah, present. Perfect. And then I believe I just promoted Erica. Mike ish. Yeah, present. Erica Mckash. Mckash. Perfect. Event minor. Here. Jen close. Here. Lee Pierce. Here. Lisa Jocelyn. Here. Melanie Ailers. Here. Michael Cook. Here. Omar Lopez. Here. Patricia Thompson. Here. Um, Retusia Bomeek. Here. Thank you. Ryan Tracy. Here. Here. Stephanie Menieri. Steven Spillman. Here. Hugh Helm. Gary was sake. Yeah. Anna Stevens. Ann Barber. Here. Okay. Let the record reflect that all committee members are present. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so. Hugh Helm. Anna Stevens. And we also have three vacancies remaining. Thank you very much. Just really quick. Allie Soto is here. Oh. Perfect. That's right. I'm sorry, Ali. I was in the middle of roll call when I promoted you and I was in the middle of roll call. I was in the middle of a wave fling difficulty. So sometimes it's best if I turn off the camera, but I am here. Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you guys. And, uh, so. This is a public meeting. And, uh, as you'll hear later, it is subject to the Brown act. And one of the things we do is allow. For public comments on matters that are not on the agenda, but related to what the. Community advisory committee. So if you have a question or a statement you wish to make. On a matter not on the agenda. Please raise your hand. Or press star nine if you're on the telephone. And you'll be recognized and you'll have three minutes to make a comment. Okay. It looks like we do have some public comment. Let me get the timer ready for you, Andy. Thank you. Okay. We have, um, our first. Member. Um, is. Um, phone number ending in five, five, four, nine. Please unmute yourself. Hi there. Yes, we can. Can you see the timer on my screen? I'm on a phone. Oh, I'm sorry. We'll go with that. Oh, my name is Dwayne. I'm from a place that's the most disadvantaged. And underserved. Yet unfortunately overburdened community in all of Santa Rosa. It's called Rosalind. A lot of folks in the city. Don't know about it. But I think it would be very helpful. If all of the folks who are hoping to. Uh, predict the future and project ideas into the future. Would come over and go through Rosalind and see what it's like. Especially how it's become worse. The areas that have been recently annexed. By the city. General plans are typically aspirational documents. And they actually don't have any. They don't have anything to account. To hold anything in which you're talking about. So I understand it's. It's a nice exercise to look to the future and make some ideas of what might occur. I'm hoping that as you folks go forward. That you'll take the time. To better publicize what you're doing. And make it available to folks who are not online. So I'm hoping that as you folks go forward. There are a number of people who don't necessarily have 24 seven access to computers. Some of us can get to computers, but typically it might not be at the time in which the government is holding a meeting. So essentially what's been happening for at least a year now. Is virtual exclusion. Due to these types of meetings that you're holding. And they're not just for the public. They're not just for the public. They're actually for a number of people. And. Local government could make the effort to. Print up things and get things into old fashioned type of approaches like newspapers. That older residents of the community would then be able to. Understand what you're up to. It would be an excellent opportunity during the things that we've been doing. We've attended some meetings in the past and. The example of the downtown specific plan. It also became exclusion area. Kept out a lot of Roseland residents. Even though a good portion. Of its. Activities. Involved. A section of Roseland. Along Sebastian pool road. At Dutton Avenue. Moving to the east. To the east. Neighborhood. Which used to be in Roseland before freeways divided us out. Man made breaks. And actually a lot of our disadvantages. And our over burdens. Are due to man made decisions. So please help us. Rather than hurt us. In your aspirations for the future. And what you're going to. Predict. Thank you kindly for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have three minutes. The other members of the public who wish to comment at this point. If so, please raise your hand or press star nine. And you'll be recognized. Okay. It looks like we do have one other. Member. Steve. Bertle. You should have a prompt and be able to. Unmute yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Members of the advisory committee. I'm Steve Bertle by and with the transportation and land use coalition. And we pay close attention to the relationship between. Our streets and. And the community that the streets serve. The, the issue I want to talk about a bit tonight is. I want to talk a little bit more about the relationship between the city and the city. And I want to talk a little bit more about the number of reducing vehicle miles traveled. The state is looking at a need to reduce vehicle miles traveled by about a third. And there are two things that I think we ought to be aware of as we. Think about that. The first is that most trips that people make by car. They are less than three miles. They could be made by bicycle, especially with electric bicycles. Many of them could be made on foot. The community needs to be. A minimal. And inviting. For people that want to ride their bikes or walk. Sidewalks need to be a good repair. Sidewalks need to be wide and shady. And then. Bicycle lanes need to be protected from traffic. And then. People need to have food with an easy walking distance. And it would be nice if every neighborhood had a corner store. Every three blocks. And then the single family zoning that we have. Has tended to exclude duplexes, and make it. Easier to run bus routes that served a lot of people. So I think it's those kind of changes that we need to think about. As we think about reducing the amount of driving. By about a third. Over the next nine years. Thank you for this opportunity to comment. I hope that you'll keep these ideas in mind. Thank you, Mr. Burtleball. Do we have any other members of the public? Which is the comment at this point on a matter that's not on the agenda. We're looking at our attendee list here. I'm not seeing any other hands. All right. So. Seeing none, we'll move on to the first or the next item on the agenda, which is. Project team updates and reports. I think we have a number of items we want to quickly run you through for updates. And I will now. Turn it over to the project team. I think I'll introduce Dan instead with. MIG. And Dan, why don't you lead us through this? And I think I have the first item to report on. We'll, we'll talk to him a little bit, Andy. That sounds good. Well, good evening, everyone. It's nice to see. Virtually all of our CAC members again here this evening. So this is great. We're excited to jump into the second CAC meeting here. And as any mentioned, we, we changed up the agenda a little bit. We're going to do a project team updates. We're calling a sort of starting point. One is a little bit of an update on where we are on the project, but it's a little bit of an update on where we are on the project. And then we're going to have a little bit of an update on where we are on the project. And then once the advisory committee asked us, the last meeting that we have some updated information on as well. So it's a little bit of a feedback and update before we get into the discussion. Portion of the evening. So let me share my screen here. And if everyone can see that, I think we are good to. To jump in. So we're on the, the second piece of this. So we're going to be working on where we are in this process is our, our last meeting here. Early February. We are jumping into what we're calling the community engagement event set number one, essentially. And this meeting tonight is kind of a starting point to that, but we're going to be working with city staff. All of you Latino service providers and many others. To launch many different workshops, focus groups, events. We're going to have a workshop toolkit. I'll explain a little bit so you hand out to everyone, but we're really starting this first visioning piece of the project. So a nice milestone to kind of kick off this meeting as well. And as a reminder to the CAC members, but also the members of the community who are watching this session as well. This is the overall project schedule for general plan update. It's about a three year process. And we're going to get involved in a lot of different aspects of, of policy and alternatives and analysis as we build this overarching public policy document for the city of this general plan. And also reminder for the community members who are viewing tonight, all this material is available on the project website as well. So the first thing we wanted to wrap back around, we asked some questions about the Brown act, but also just kind of the requirements of CAC members. So we want to provide an update on that. And this is where I will hand it back to Andy for a quick update on the Brown act. Okay. Thank you, Dan. So when we sent out the save the date notice to the CAC members back to February 23rd in that email, we had a little attachment. And I'm not sure you're going to actually see this, but it was, we called it the word page, or which was actually a one and a half pager summary of the Brown act. And I'm not sure you're going to see this, but I'm not sure you're going to see this. The reason we set that out there was just for you to all to have a general understanding of the purpose of, well, the Brown act intent that they, these are open public meetings and that they are conducted in a very specific. Deliberate way to help to ensure that as you work through issues that you do so in a way with information that everybody has in mind. So that's the first slide. This first slide here you see are things that we need to do to make sure these meetings are structured so that the public can participate to understand, to observe what we're talking about and to, to comment. And these are things that when you see our agendas be issued in advance of the meetings, we're striving to meet the deadline so that there's adequate notification time and that we've provided. So that's the first slide here. And then there was a comment and there was a question on our chat channel earlier with the public have opportunity to comment tonight and they will. You will. Those of you in attendance. And, and then. And that the packet that we're sending out is available for everyone that provides a baseline information for us all to. So that's the first slide here. And then the next slide. So as CAC members, you do have a duty to come to the meetings prepared and, and come with your own opinions and, as such, and there are a series of, of sort of rules of conduct. That revolve around. Potential communication between. Individual CAC members. You know, you know, you know, you know, essentially outside of these meetings, you really cannot come together to discuss matters that are, will be. Subject for discussion at an upcoming meeting. Either by email or. In a variety of ways. And here are enlisted a number of. Sort of different types of meetings that have been come to known under the Brown act that are. Included in the meeting. Or in advance of a meeting that really you should come to the meeting with your own ideas. So that when you express them, it's, it's not based on an opinion or, or formulated ideas through conferring with other members of the CAC. The biggest takeaway that I want you to have this evening is, you know, that you can talk to us and we can advise you. Many of you are already out there in the community speaking to people. We applaud that. And we encourage it. This. Brown act doesn't prevent you from doing that. It's just be cautious about talking amongst yourselves. As CAC members on CAC topics. I think that covers it. And again, please. Reach out to the project team if you have questions. Thank you. So a few other updates. That we wanted just to present to the, to the committee as well. And again, this is in the, the agenda packet or the homework packet that we sent out also. We do have the project website up and running. It went live last December, as we mentioned the last meeting, but we are continuously updating with a lot of project information, documents, all the agenda materials for CAC meetings. And we also have a lot of work. And the first one is a comment form for the community to provide comments as well. The web address is Santa Rosa forward. It's in the lower right of the screen here on the presentation as well. So we started to get a lot of activity from the community and some input as well through the website, which has been fantastic. We also launched last February. What we're calling community survey number one. We have a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of different purposes for this survey. One, we wanted to have an opportunity to do a lot of press releases, newspaper releases as well as radio and other media to get the word out about the project and. Being bringing people to the new website and the survey. The questions in the survey and hopefully most CAC members actually taking the survey. Include ways that the community like to be engaged as we go forward. So we're going to talk a little bit about what we're calling on, what we're calling sort of the mapping your neighborhood and how you define it. And what some of the key features are of your neighborhood. And so to date, this is still an active survey. We're going to have it open for a while. And actually turning this into a hard copy as well. They'll talk about it a little later. But this is a quick snapshot of. All the participants so far, we've had nearly 1200 participants in the survey. So we're going to talk a little bit about what we're calling on, what we're defining for themselves. What's the heart of their neighborhood. And why is the heart of the neighborhood. But also boundaries for their neighborhood as well. And it's a little bit of a. A spaghetti thing here, but the takeaway is. We're getting a tremendous wealth of insights from the community and information about what makes their neighborhood special. What some of the issues are or concerns. We're really taking a bit of a unique approach on this general plan update project. We really want to start with the neighborhoods as the core sort of foundational piece. And this exercise is quantitative, but also highly qualitative. And the field, the characteristics, what makes it special? Is it the parks, the schools, the access to areas? So we're getting a lot of information out of this. We're going to start pulling together. Some summary details as well before moving to the first community workshop. So we kind of see where all this community input and ideas is leading. We've also prepared as a team, the briefing book, which hopefully all of you had a chance to review. I'll go through a few slides and talk through some of the key takeaways. This comes from the very detailed existing conditions. Analysis, which was the first big. The general plan update. The briefing book is again, also available on the website for the public in both English and Spanish versions. And it's organized around these, these big sort of topical areas. Again, it's summarizing the existing conditions reports. So a lot of it is data or quantitative. A good starting point. But as we'll discuss tonight, there's also the qualitative side of it. And then the community concerns and ideas. One quick pause here. I just got reminded by staff. I'm going to ask on a Pidea who's also our team to do a quick overview. Welcome in Spanish just to see if we have any Spanish language. Participants here from the community. I apologize. We should have done that earlier in this process. But I'm asked Anna to jump on here real quick. If she can. Thank you, Dan. Hola. Buenas tardes. If there's any person that needs translation, please raise your hand. There's an icon below the screen to raise your hand. If there's anyone who needs translation. Thank you. And if there are Spanish language participants on us here to help translate these materials as well. So another key component of the project is the language. I'm going to talk about the language. So if there's anyone that needs translation, please raise your hand. There's an icon below the screen to raise your hand. If there's anyone who needs translation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Anna. And if there are Spanish language participants on us here to help translate these materials as well. So another key component of the, the CAC packet, but this really came from our last discussion, some of the questions that all of you have asked is what is the CAC's role in this first community engagement event set or getting information out and reaching out to the community. So we put together this checklist. You know, by no means we don't want to overburden the committee members. We know you're all busy. We're all busy. We don't want to get into your conversations. The groups you're involved in, especially around the website and the survey, just to get more exposure in addition to. Newspaper articles and, and radio spots. And digital email blast. We've already done. That would be fantastic. Again, we're really just starting the discussion on the general plan. So as much as we can get exposure and. Awareness of this project is really key right now. We're working on building a committee. The first community workshop or sort of an event on this project. We're working on nailing down the date, but it'll be mid April, mid to late April. We'll let every CAC member of course know the date and heavily publicize it to the community as well. But once we get the save the date ready and. We'll send out, we'll send an email to all the CAC members to again, help us push that information and get a lot of people at this first community community meeting. But in addition to the first community meeting, which will be a zoom virtual session, kind of like this. We're also planning to do working with city staff, a series of focus groups or smaller group meetings. And these can be topically, topical based or with different community groups. We're also going to translate all the materials from the first workshop into what we're calling an engagement toolkit. And. These have been very successful on other general plan projects, just to get a greater reach and more engagement from the community. This will be a combination of digital and physical materials, but essentially it will be a portable workshop similar to this first community workshop. You'll have the presentation materials in the background, but also survey forms. So for city staff, for other partners or CAC members, if you want to have additional meetings during this first community event set with your HOA or with other community organizations you're involved in. This toolkit will let you easily do that. And then we get just more comments and information back to the community as well. So we're working on all of these products right now. And we'll provide all of them to the, to the CAC. At the end of this engagement process. And again, a lot of different events, but kind of the same discussion at each of the events. We will also be meeting with planning commission and city council. Not for any decisions or actions. It's really just an update to them. So each time we go through one of these big community event sets, we want to wrap back around with the planning commission and city council. What did we hear? What was the community's ideas or concerns? So we have these regularly check-ins with them as well. And this gets us to another question as raised last time of a little more definition around CAC member roles. In addition to these meetings and just as kind of a reminder, but also thinking about as we're jumping into this first engagement event set, you're really liaisons to the community and the different groups that you represent. And I think that's a great question. I think that the city has done a fantastic job. Forming this committee with a great geographical distribution and different ideas and ages and genders. And races. And we really want. You to leverage all of your different constituent groups and connections to get the word out on the project. But also through these engagement materials, like the toolkit, we're going to be able to work with the city staff and the city staff as well. And to that end, participation, always events, you know, is really key working with the project team, which is city staff and consultants. You know, there's things we can do to help as well. Let us know and we can work with staff to, to figure out those resources as well. But it's also providing ideas into this process as well. So we're going to talk through it in a few minutes here. We get to the interactive discussion. We're going to have a sort of a starting point of this community workshop exercise tonight with all of you to get your ideas and to get a starting point as we start framing a little bit of an initial vision here that we'll take to the community. So with that major quick pause, there's a lot of updates there, but any questions from CAC members on any of the updates before we jump into the main exercise for this evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I was wondering if members of the CAC will be. Invited to. Participate or at least observe the workshops and focus groups so that we could. Get our first hand impressions. Absolutely. The workshop. The focus groups may be a bit more of a challenge just with the Brown act and having multiple CAC members. But one of the advantages of this digital world is all of these sessions will be recorded. Whether it's the big workshop or focus groups as well. So I think we, it's a good question. I think we'll wrap back on our staff around the Brown act of just how many CAC members are in one event. And let folks know, but I would say for the community workshop. I think we'll have more participation is always better. So that would be definitely one where we want everyone to be involved. It's somewhat connected to that. One of the public comments. Was regarding this. Specific. Areas and neighborhoods of the city. And I was wondering if there is, if we would have access to. Visiting those areas. I don't think we would have access to those areas. I'm not a little bit of a disadvantage because I'm somewhat of a newcomer, but I have found that even if folks who live in the area for 10 or 20 years, maybe don't really have a strong connection to various neighborhoods or have insights into the issues. And I was wondering. Do we have an opportunity to visit those neighborhoods as a community? I think that's a great question. I think it's a great opportunity to coordinate this. In some manner with the city and the community activists in the area. That's a great question. We do have COVID pandemic protocols from just some in-person stuff. That's hopefully we'll go away in the next several months. And we can start having bigger events as groups. I love the idea. We have a few CAC meetings here as we go through the next. A couple of years. So that's a, it's a really interesting idea. And Gary, I see you have your hand up as well. I do. And I do appreciate Steve's enthusiasm. To participate more. So. On the Brown act discussion. And having endured that for eight years as we have. Oh, I agree with you. Isn't because don't we need a majority? And this is a rather large committee. I appreciate the advice given. I strongly doubt that would be an issue. Should a majority of this committee show up to a community event or focus group of that. A and B is an advisory group. We're not taking any votes. I wonder if it even applies and I'm sorry to. I want to, when Steve says he wants to go, I want to give him a yes. I do as well. I just want to double check with staff. So I think we're moving towards a yes. You know, for instance, we have in our project a double-decker bus tour of the city with the CAC. And that's something we still have in the project at some point, but we've had to push off because of the pandemic. So I think there's creative ways, many creative ways we can do this and also with the focus groups as well. Just a kind of piece of nice discussion, comment noted, we're going to wrap back around staff and think through some ways to make this work. That's a great idea. Thank you. Yes, Ryan, questions on the report backs? Yeah, I had a question about sharing ideas. So obviously we're a really large group and meeting time is only so limited. So I was curious, are meetings the only forum for sharing ideas and questions with the project team? Or is some of that, can that be done offline or what's the mechanism for that? Can I jump in here and respond to that question? So as CAC members, you are invited to communicate with us, the project team, any time, all the time. This has come up, some of you have been out and working to make your constituent groups or your circle of influence aware of the general plan update. You've helped us with getting the press release out and in doing so, you receive comments. So how the question has been, how do we receive those comments? Should you carry those back or is there another method to do so? And you can always encourage people to reply by SR forward at srcity.org, that's the email. If people can write to us directly, you can call us, me. My number is published on all the project email. And that's gonna be continuous throughout the project. We realize, we get the benefit of your participation and insight in these meetings, but a huge value that you add is as liaisons to contacts you meet and the questions and issues and comments you hear, you can bring those back to us. But the idea is definitely noted. I think there are some ways we can make all this work. Mike, you have your hand up as well. Yeah, I just wanted to bring up another way to potentially get out to neighborhoods and that's by council districts. Since now we're all broken up by district and actually having the council members lead and help and attend those meetings. And I'm getting creative texts from our team as we talk of self-guided tours and other methods as well. So I think this is getting a lot of ideas going. And if there's additional ideas as well, like Andy said, please feel free to shoot him an email. And yeah, we definitely, our goal on our side is to find ways to do this creatively throughout the project, especially in the pandemic as well. Michelle. I just wanted to point out a comment on the chat which had to do with whether or not and if so, how would community members contact members of the CAC to share ideas and was in particular looking for areas of shared interest. And I wanted to go, have it check in about being contacted by members of the public, number one. And then number two, just to remind people that there was this handy, oh, I don't know if you can see it here, worksheet that was done as the notes from the first meeting which was kind of a wheel of interest of all the CAC members and what they shared publicly about their passions and expertise and connections and so forth. And that might be a tool that the public could enjoy in terms of knowing how they might relate with different members. Yeah, that's a great point. And when I get to that, I do want to mention, as an open public process, we would like everyone to reach out through email or comment forms of the websites to staff first and then we can help kind of organize different topics or focus groups as well. It just makes sure that we're collecting all the comments and questions which is really key throughout this process. So we're hearing from everyone. So staff is playing a little bit of a logistical support role in that sense as well. So if there are ideas, thoughts about all of this, for members of the community watching, please email us your comments and ideas if you can throw it in chat tonight, we're recording that as well, that'd be great. But you have your hand up. And for those that don't have access to technology, is there, I know Andy did mention, they can give them a call. So let's say they wanted to have a more in-depth, like they wanted to do the survey, but they wanted to do it with a person. There's something like that available. And then also we have some people with disabilities. I've worked with people in the past that need a teletype machine. I would you incorporate that or do you need a resource for somebody that can do that portion for people that are hearing impaired? Great, great point. One of the very intentional reasons of doing the workshop toolkit is to get physical versions of the digital community workshop survey materials developed. So staff is gonna help with some of that. We have a new city as a new planner for health and community and inclusive community engagement Beatrice, who's online tonight. She's gonna be helping us organize some of that as well. We'll have physical materials for CAC members. I think great idea about hearing or visual impaired or other folks who need special help to be reached out to as well. I think we wanna coordinate closely with the city's community engagement team on that. Cause I think there's already some things in play, but it's a great idea for us to have that on our radar as well. It's a really good point. Mike, additional question, comment. Dan, sorry, just to respond to a vet's comment. Hi, vet, my name is Beatrice. I am the equity and public health planner. So if you wanna discuss this further, we have had conversations not only about people with disabilities, but people who speak other languages that are not being covered by the communications that we have right now through the city staff. And so we can talk further about this if you're interested and I'm happy to contact you to talk more about this topic because I think it's a really relevant topic and we have been discussing it. So sorry for the interruption, Dan. And sorry. That was perfect. And introducing Beatrice here as a great new team member and fantastic resource in the city as well. Nice to meet you. Thank you, Dan. All right, so I just had a question. So if all the public ideas and comments are going to SR4 to SRCity.org, does this committee get all those comments, ideas? Dan, a comment. We should somehow figure out a way to include the youth. I'm on the elementary school board in East Santa Rosa and it's their future. It's their city, hopefully, if they can afford to live here. Absolutely, yes. These are all components of the engagement process and we do have youth specific activities working with different school classes and also the different ages, higher engaging with different age groups, elementary, high school, college as well. So part of this is going into a more detailed sort of strategy for this near term. I do want to mention this is also all included in the community involvement strategy, which is the document we worked with the city to prepare last fall, which is on the website as well. But it has a lot of detail around youth engagements and other community engagement activities. So for members of the public here tonight as well, I do want to mention that the CIS or community involvement strategy is also on the website. Okay, that's a perfect segue to this diagram as well because I think it may explain some of the process. We are, again, in this community events at number one, we're just thinking about visioning or really this big initial discussion about the future of Santa Rosa. We'll eventually go into focus discussions on opportunities and alternatives and draft policies. But this is really the first big engagement event set of this project. This diagram here is kind of showing the general stage of working through community ideas for each one of the phases of the project. The TAC is the Technical Advisory Committee, which is really city staff on a very broad level. We actually are around 50 members on that. The TAC's role is really confirming data is accurate. We have all the up-to-date information, things they're hearing as well. Then, and this is not a rigid structure by any means, but then is going to the CAC and having a discussion we're gonna have tonight, but both the TAC and the CAC discussion helps set up this first round of community workshop materials essentially. And like I mentioned, we've had a lot of different events over a couple months to get a lot of community ideas, input and feedback. We'll then report back to the Planning Commission and Council what we're hearing, but then the next CAC meeting we're also reporting back to all of you as well. So one of the challenges or the fun challenge on our side is taking all of these ideas and one, making sure we're gathering and just logistically capturing all the ideas, but also the major takeaways, points of consensus that we're hearing from the community. So to Mike's question, this does come back to the CAC in the next round. This is what we heard from two months of engagement, for instance, and we'll be doing this as we move through this process to make sure the CAC is well-informed what we're hearing, but also Planning Commission, City Council as well. And so to start tonight's discussion and we're gonna do a little bit of a round robin here and take notes and kind of talk through this. But again, this is high level. This is the first time thinking about this. We had a homework assignment for each CAC member to review the briefing book. And this is again kind of executive summary of facts and findings from the existing conditions report and the initial analysis done by the consultant team. It's organized again around land use of community character, social and environmental justice, fire related hazards, housing, economic development, mobility and travel patterns, parks and public services. These are pretty broad baskets of topics, but we wanted to create this summary of really what are the key takeaways or things from the more research side of this project and the existing conditions analysis. So with land use and community character, the key sort of takeaways is Santa Rosa is a relatively built out community with very well established neighborhoods. As I think all of us know, there's a lot of low density single family homes. That is the largest land use and covers around 52% of the city limits as well. So we're suburban community, but there's key commercial corridors and downtown is a more intense kind of a place. Social and environmental justice, definitely front and center with the community discussions and input we've heard so far probably on everyone's mind here as well. And really that falls into several key categories, but one is environmental justice, which is a big component of any general plan and the required component of any general plan, but thinking about health and equity impacts and how they affect all members of our community. And so some key takeaways from this analysis and looking at the data side again to it is parts of the Northwest and Southwest and downtown. Rosalind, as was mentioned earlier by one of the public comments are facing environmental justice issues. And what do we mean by that in a general plan public policy framework? Well, that's proximity of unhealthy land uses, limited infrastructure like sidewalks, parks, other amenities, limited access to fresh and healthy food, historically lower influencing the decision-making process and political process, and also locations of recognized disadvantaged communities based on state recognition of it, but also just the distribution of where they are and those communities and lower life expectancy in these areas, which makes city-wide average lower than county and state averages. I have a question. Yes. It was in regards to the unhealthy land issues. There are certain areas of Santa Rosa that is boxed in by the freeways. And so there's a California Healthy Index, I believe that shows those numbers. And that's something that should be, I think it should be put into the book as well as we're moving forward because what we do with the land use in those areas would continue to either make the situation worse. So as we're moving forward as a city, we need to be able to look at that healthy index and say, okay, maybe we shouldn't put too many housing in this area because it's already impacted because of the environmental issue. So I didn't really see, I just saw a statement. I didn't really see information in regards to the numbers in relation to that. So is that something that can be put into the book or how could we tackle that? Great, great points. Well, we can tackle it by adding into the book. I think that's a clear way to address it. We do have the detailed existing conditions report itself that has a ton of additional data and metrics. So this book is just kind of a high level summary, but to your point, how we're doing that high level summary, we can refine and adjust that as well. It would be good to also take a look though at the full existing conditions report, because I think there's a lot of information there that would be additionally helpful as part of this discussion and just understanding the metrics and information that we have the ability to. Yes, Steve, you have your hand raised. Yes, those of us who are not familiar with these statistics that are in front of us should be jolted. I mean, we should all keep this in mind and focus on this over the next year. Absolutely. And that's why this is first and foremost the first step of this project is, let's understand this data, get familiar with it, but the land use and other policy decisions and changes that are part of this plan, build from this, like Steve said, any of that as well. So another topic that is front and center is fire and other related hazards. Obviously this has massively impacted the city over the last several years and without changes can continue to massively impact the city as we go through climate change. So through the analysis and mapping, again, the detail of this very large existing conditions report, there are probably unsurprisingly areas throughout Santa Rosa that are vulnerable to intense and uncontrollable wildfires and climate change is increasing at risk. There's a likelihood of 72% probability that Santa Rosa will experience a damaging earthquake in the next 30 years. And that's predictable data, so to speak, but when we think about hazards, it's always gonna keep in mind, it's more than just fires. Those have been front and center, no doubt, but floods, earthquakes, other natural disasters are all factors and probabilities in the future as well that we need to just think about and address. Another big basket, housing, employment and economic development. So some of the, again, very high level takeaways but important ones, seniors and other households without children account for the most recent household growth in Santa Rosa. So a large senior just proportionally growth in the city, which is an interesting takeaway. The median household income and higher educational attainment levels have increased since 2010, but are lower still than county-wide. So there are some changes around increasing income and educational attainment, but it's still not the same on a county-wide level as well. So travel and commute patterns, how we get around the city. It's always not always, because this is the first one, but it's interesting to do a general plan project during the pandemic, because traffic obviously is dramatically down because we're all staying at home. But based on recent data up until lockdown and stay-at-home orders, 37% of employed residents work in the city, which is pretty good, but allows the ability to reduce potential vehicle miles traveled, because 89% of them drive to work, even though it's drives within the city of Santa Rosa. So improved transit and other modes of mobility can really help reduce traffic, reduce conduction, and reduce pollution. Smart commuter rail and city investment and transit bike and pedestrian facilities have encouraged less single occupancy driving and there's some data around that as well. So that's encouraging, the investments in multi-modal and transit is improving some of the traffic and congestion concerns. And our last category here is around parks and public services as well. And you can see this is a detailed map inventory with buffers of walking distances, the parks and open space. Again, for folks on the CAC or in the community who want more detail and more data behind this, the existing conditions report, which is posted on the website, has pages and pages on each of these topics. This is just the high level summary. But the general plan, what's really important to think about in this process can support staffing levels and resources needed to deliver these high quality city services. So as the overarching public policy document for the city, the amount of parkland per capita or different staffing ratios can be included and often are as part of general plan policy as well. So this talks a lot about the issues and challenges but there are also opportunities for thinking about how we address this differently going forward. Can I have a question? Yes, yeah. In relation to, I can't remember exactly who made the comment about us utilizing our bikes and things of that nature. One of the problems that we hear a lot about is about safety. And so being able to ride on the bypass and utilize what we have available to us is just unsafe in some areas. And so is that something that will be addressed in the book? I think it's important that if we're gonna try to promote utilizing other forms of transportation, safety needs to be addressed as well. Absolutely, and that is, you read my mind that's a great transition to our discussion because the book is the existing data. Now it goes to what do we do relative to the existing data? So it's kind of a primer for tonight's discussion which I do want us to jump into here because we're getting up almost at seven o'clock but real, but first, Gary you had your hand up so I wanna take your question before we jump into discussion. Well, it's more of a statement and I'm glad of that said what she just said because I couldn't agree more. People won't ride, we won't change our habits, we won't walk unless we create safe spaces. And the general plan in my mind is aspirational as Mr. Dewitt said earlier. And to me, my aspiration to join this process is to create safe spaces in our town, in our neighborhoods. So we have safe spaces to walk and to ride bicycles and therefore reduce vehicle miles travel and therefore reduce the nasty negative spiral of higher global emissions and global warming. So I would love us to focus on that. It is aspirational, but we can drill down and make it easier for increased density so people can have less distances to go. So it's not a question, it's a statement and I don't mean to be a grandstander on that but that's why I said yes to signing up here because I would love, this town's made for that with all the creeks and with the volunteerism and the people wanting to be outside. I just would love to see it happen. Absolutely and Gary, you just volunteered to go first because you just went first. That is exactly the question we wanna ask right now. So I'm gonna introduce Michelle Gervais and Steve will get to you in a second here but the question and discussion right now we wanna go through and I'm gonna call on folks based on how my Brady Bunch tiles are sort of framed here but we wanna go through just like Gary did. Okay, we have data, we have information. We also, all of you have extensive background understanding on Santa Rosa and in a year and a half when we have the directional plan, we'll have specifics but here it is a starting point. What are these aspirational thoughts around the vision? And really the goal tonight is we wanna frame some vision elements and some vision ideas. And so we're gonna go around, spend about two minutes with each person here on the CAC because we have about an hour here and I like folks to describe two or three key things that frame a vision for the future. So Gary, you just did that. You just framed one of them of having mobility and safety around ability and transportation. I'll call you in again, is there another key piece of a vision element that you want us to be thinking about as well. Tonight's a brainstorming discussion. We just wanna sort of call us and capture these ideas but that is exactly the kind of detail of we've seen this data. Now, what do we do with it? What's kind of big picture? So Gary, I'll go back to you before we jump to others. Anything in addition to mobility that would frame your big vision for where the future of Santa Rosa is 15, 20 years. Can I ponder that and summon up later because I didn't know I was the lead-off guy. I didn't warn you first. All right, we can come back. Okay, thank you. But with that in mind and with a hand raise, I'll go to Steve next. So a couple of thoughts on big picture vision, things we wanna make sure are captured at an aspirational level in the general plan as we start. Yes, the idea of safety is paramount and that is one of our local governments and citizens alike need to focus on. One thing that I've observed around the United States and around the world is that streets become safer when there's more people on the streets. When there's a few, just a couple of people on the streets then it's maybe not so safe but when you have hundreds of people on the streets, walking around, safety is enhanced. And therefore, how do you do that? Well, you do that with creating land use policies that increase densities in some places but you don't increase it all around. You have plenty of open space. So instead of having 10 blocks of three-story buildings, you have a couple of blocks of a-story buildings with public parks but you're really activating the street. You're activating the sidewalks. And when there's a lot of people on the sidewalks, there's less opportunity or less incentive for people to commit crimes or do things that are going to impact the safety of people. Right, so more activations, more activity, maybe some higher densities but it's creating that more dynamic. It was the same thing along with, similar to the transportation systems. If someone is going to, people are willing to walk two, three, four, five blocks to public transportation. They're not willing to walk a mile to public transportation. So if you increase the densities in some places and you allow people to walk two or three blocks of public transportation from their home, get on the public transportation, they get off the public transportation and they walk two or three blocks, four blocks to their work, they're willing to do that. They won't walk a mile or two to get on the bus or the train or the smart and then have to walk another mile to get to their job. So increasing some density and increasing the open spaces around these higher densities has been proven to be one possible solution to increasing safety and increasing the access to an efficiency of public transportation. That's good, thank you, Steve. And we have Anna recording comments, ideas here as well. I see Dela Shay has her hand up and she's also the next one on my screen here. So Dela Shay, why don't you go next? We started with some mobility ideas around the vision. Thoughts on key things to be thinking about it for our vision of Santa Rosa moving forward. Thank you. I'm speaking on behalf of SRJC. I deal with a lot of the students there and one of the main issues that we found with transportation was it being cut off so early. Our classes end around nine at night. And so there are students that work during the day and was trying to take night classes and were unable to take night classes because there wasn't any transportation at night for them. One and two, the disability students that need the bus for wheelchair capacities to get to and from school also had that problem because the buses that go by SRJC cut off around 730. Well, that's kind of doesn't work for them if the class goes all the way to 930. Well, it ends at nine, 930, and then you gotta give them time to get to the bus stop. So that was a real big issue and has been brought up in the past year. Of course, not so much with COVID, but the year before last that transportation was a huge issue as far as nighttime goes. Great, thank you. And the equity around access to transportation and how everyone's getting served and benefited from that as well is very key. And again, we should be thinking about more than just transit. I love mobility transit, don't get me wrong, but we're brainstorming ideas here around the vision of the future and how we kind of want to set up some ideas as we go to the community. Next, I'll call on Jen Close, you're next. Can I weigh in real fast, Dan? Sorry, Michelle, just a quick housekeeping mechanism so that we aren't having breakfast together. I think maybe if everybody could keep just a headliner, I think we'll start to hear some familiar notes. You can second that emotion, you can weigh in deeper with comments as you wish, but I just wanna be respectful of everybody's time. So I love that these early ones have kind of more to say and then as we go through, people can tag team. Thank you. And to that end, it's hard not to think specifically of solutions, but let's keep this very high level. We wanna be a healthy community or a sustainable community or resilient because that's gonna help us think through or recovering all the topics that are important as well as we start framing these different vision ideas or vision components. So with that, and if he was on time, I will talk less. So Jen, why don't you go next? Additional ideas or things to add to this discussion? Okay, thanks. All right, so I wrote a few things down here and I'll try to go quickly. So I'd like to see healthy and diverse neighborhoods, which really requires that we have a diversity of housing scattered throughout the city and that is also affordable and diversity of housing at various income levels. And I think healthy and diverse neighborhood gets to a lot. We will unpack that, but so you want to keep a high level. So I'll just say that. A really vibrant city center that sort of highlights and supports our local business and our local artists is walkable, something that is engaging to the public. I wanna put a plus one on safe and practical options to automobile transportation. It's gotta be practical. The bus that comes every hour is just not for lots of people. And then I also, I like to see a city that really protects and showcases our natural environment, which is amazing and gives access, actual equitable access to our park system. Oh, okay. Thanks a ton. It's the equitable access to parks as well. Great. Thank you, Jen. Why don't we go to Lee, your physical hand is up and you're next to me as well. Lee, why don't you go next? I think you're muted, Lee. Oh, you're so muted. I can't hear you. I think you need to unmute. Do you see it, Lee? Do you see an icon in the left hand of your screen that shows the microphone crossed out in red? If you click that once, Michelle, if you are the administrator, can you ask Lee to unmute and that'll give him a pop-up option? I did hit the ask to unmute. There we go. There we go, now you can hear me. Yeah, just give me a minute and I get it. I want to kind of pick up on Jen's closest comments because she stole all of my things out of my head, basically. You know, back when I sat on the council and the planning commission and all, the things that we talked a lot about are still relevant today. And that was transit-oriented development, certainly protecting our green borders around the city and the process. But another element since I've been on the black chamber of commerce that I'd like to talk about because I serve on some Bay Area groups of that chamber, what's called the Northern California Black President's Chamber of Commerce. And a lot of our concerns are very similar. Apparently we lost like 440 black businesses with the pandemic and the whole thing. We know it hit us really hard here in Sonoma County for all small businesses and that 11% on the graph you had earlier that showed, I think it was talking about the white population was like the top 60-something or then you had 35% Latino, Latinx. And 11% was like all the smaller communities of color, including African-Americans, Asian, Pacific, Asian, et cetera. I want to make sure that those groups when we went through the tourism mechanism talks about Santa Rosa in the North Bay that it's attractive to come here for those groups. Because we know numbers make a difference. And when we see those kind of small numbers and it affects employment, it affects education, affects all of those important items. And I used to work in the private sector and the public sector. And I would hear all the time during recruitment, they say we're looking for more minorities and they'd be even specific about that. And those who like Hewlett Packard for example would say we went out on the campus and we found a few people, we brought them up but they didn't wanna live here. They just didn't think it was gonna be a comfortable place. That's not my experience. And so we're gonna try to do the best we can and groups like the chamber, black chambers throughout Northern California and beyond. But I think as cities and counties, we really need to understand that wages matter so people can move up in this area. Housing really matters so they don't have to spend time commuting. These are not strangest to any other to white people or anybody else. These are issues that we all are concerned about. But when there's some systemic racism issues that we're dealing with even in healthcare, I was shocked. I went to some healthcare discussions by some African-American female doctors talking about why black people aren't getting into the COVID vaccination situation early. I just got mine completed as a matter of fact on the 29th, my second shot. But there's things that would bring more parity. And I think that's in your list of making sure that there's opportunities for all not just the same old thing. These 11%, yeah, they're not enough to make a noise. So that's kind of my passion. No, that's fantastic. Thank you, Leigh Ann. That's a very, very good point, opportunities for all. I do wanna make sure everyone has a chance here to talk. And I see Steve, you have your hand raised and probably things to add. I'm gonna pace through the room a little bit, but if anyone wants to add to chat, additional comments as well, I just wanna make sure everyone gets a chance to provide some vision thoughts here as well. So I wanna head to you, I'm just going through this. Lisa next, and then to Yvette, because you may have some comments where we didn't get to your vision statements here. So Lisa next, and then we'll go to Yvette. This is Charlie from the general plan team. Can I just jump in for a second? So what you guys are illustrating, which is super important is the general plan touches every aspect of life in Santa Rosa. And what we really need from you, especially with this many people in the short time is when you look out 20, 30 years, or even five or 10 years, or even next year in Santa Rosa, what are your priorities? What's your vision? What do you think are the things that we need to work on the most? Because the general plan can't do everything, but it can do a lot. And as someone said at the beginning, it's not exactly where the law sits, the law comes through zoning and other ordinances, but as you look out in the future, what's most important to you? So what I just heard Lisa was, it's not just about equity in how the city behaves, but it's creating equity and choices for people. And you guys have all said transportation, housing, and now we're hearing wages and jobs. So these are really important ideas, but, and I'm gonna stop talking so we can, so you guys can, but just think about, how do you tell us what are the most important things that you think we can do through the general plan update? And really this guy's the limit, that the general plan deals with everything we do every day in our daily lives. Yeah, thank you, Charlie. Lisa. Okay, first of all, I wanna say thank you. I'm appreciating the perspective of each one of you who's sharing, you are educating me and each of them might understand they are all aspects of it. Things that are important to me that I would like to see evolve and work on in the city are climate change and the fire prevention and protection. Just even last night when the winds picked up and the temperature was increasing at night, I had a nervous reaction to that like, thank goodness this isn't August. So I think that is a very important aspect. Secondly, land use planning issues around vineyards and the upcoming and growing cannabis industry. I've had some people share their thoughts with me about the ordinance that's going on in Sonoma County that's being developed and how those kinds of things and how it's voted on could affect Santa Rosa's development. I'm also interested in balancing housing needs with open space and green belts and that any housing that is higher density housing that is done, that does infill or whatever, also take into consideration the existing neighborhoods so that there would be transition areas in balance. Last but definitely not least, homelessness. I read this door in many other places is such a huge issue and with the pandemic and with fires, et cetera, we have so many more homeless and I don't have any solutions but in terms of visioning, I would like to see these people taking care of it. Housing for all, those are great additions as well. Thank you Lisa. Let's go to Vett and then I'll call on Mike to go next. And this is, I'm going to just interrupt and I apologize. I just really want everybody to get a turn to talk. So I sent a post, it would be helpful, I can be a timer and I'll wave when it's 90 seconds, minute and a half. And then, and it's not a cut you off but I'll just give you an indication, okay? Great, thank you. Thank you Michelle. Yvette. Yes, one of the things that's very important is that we need to know the Senate, the demographic of Santa Rosa as we're moving forward. So if somebody can get that information for us as we're moving forward. So my key thing that I would like to see in Santa Rosa is income-based housing, which is different than affordable. Pedestrian bridges to help with safety. As people are coming in to build in our city we should be taxing them a little bit to have those pedestrian bridges. And then also how many of us have used public transportation? Question we should all ask to see how many of us have done that? And then also re-imagining the green spaces like rooftop gardens is something that we might need to consider because we're very limited in Santa Rosa green space. That would be great. Great, great points. Thank you, thank you. Mike and then Omar will follow Mike. Thanks Mike. Thank you. So for me, my passion is housing and getting housing of all types for our youth, for our less fortunate, for our most fortunate. I believe we need housing for all at every level. And when I'm a landscape architect, when I work on projects for developers going through our current general plan, it's a nightmare. And it's not a nightmare because it's a bad plan. It's a nightmare because there's so much interpretation that can be done on staff side, on the applicant side, and on the NIMBYism or neighborhood or attorney side. I would love to see more specific guidelines, more specific, like basically a more specific layout of what you can and can't do in each of the areas in Santa Rosa. I'd also like to see more housing and higher buildings in Santa Rosa so that they are more affordable. And then moving on to another topic, neighborhood engagement, which I think would help with the NIMBYism. There's a lot of active neighborhoods in our community and actually getting them involved in this whole process through meeting with them, through finding ways to engage with them, and then actually building neighborhoods to be able to organize and to be able to work on neighborhood districts. And they won, so thank you. The show was waving their hand, those are great. I'm sorry, thank you. And the diversity of housing as well, the types, but also affordabilities, really great points. Let's go to Omar and then Melanie will follow Omar. Awesome. So I definitely want to second and improve housing market, I think just across the board, we need to improve it, make it way more accessible to so many people. Another thing I want to second, I don't even know at this point what I'm doing, but a much greener town, more accessible green spaces and ensuring that there's more trees, more plants everywhere. And then one that I haven't really heard of, but I think we all kind of want, is just more modern infrastructure, from roads to our amenities, internet's not necessarily part of the city that much, but I'm sure we all wish we would have better internet these days. So I think just working on modernizing our infrastructure to ensure that it is reliable and it'll last the next 10, 15, 20 years. As far as technology moving in, that's great ideas, thanks Omar. Melanie and then Ryan will follow Melanie. Hey everyone. So not to be a broken record, but obviously housing in this city, in this county is a huge issue. And to sort of take a different look at it, it needs to obviously consider fire safety. I know that from friends of mine, getting out of Coffee Park was a huge issue because of how dense and narrow the streets are. So that is a piece of that that needs to be considered when planning for this affordable and diverse housing, especially diverse in terms of types as far as apartments and again, higher density need to make sure that it is obviously safe and that the infrastructure can handle it because chances are we are gonna have to evacuate. So keeping that in mind. And I just wanna also plus one to Jen's idea of a really vibrant city center and especially make that accessible for youth and to go back to our transportation ideas, keeping later hours available and making this a great place for young people and students. And that's all, that's all my notes. Thank you. Great, thanks Melanie, great question. I had Ryan next on the list but then I'd lost Ryan's picture. I'm here. Oh, there you are, there you are, thanks. Yeah, so I pretty much wanna plus one everything but I guess another lens, I kind of went to look at it through that surprising here I hadn't really thought of is the whole demographic of Santa Rosa's growth being through seniors and families without children. I like to see a general plan that specifically attracts youth, gets our kids to wanna stay here, makes it, I think Mike said, make it affordable for them to stay here. Well, the ideas that have been brought up like a vibrant city center, tracking industries for younger folk, those sorts of things I think need to be central just for the kind of longevity of our city. Great, great points. And a reminder is this is a long-term plan as we're visioning and thinking of this future in smart city technology like Omar mentioned and the kids inheriting all of this from us during the course of this is really key. Rituja, why don't you go next and we'll follow with Annette. Okay, so I think two important things just came up for me. One is like, I'd like to see more research on what modes of communication are like most effective for different demographics. I know that especially the first public comment like really hit home for me because a lot of seniors, they are in fact like technologically disconnected. And so maybe like doing more in-person outreach or canvassing would work for them and say for our minority groups like language access is a huge barrier when it comes to communication and alerts. And yeah, things like that. And having a strong communication system is really important also for like when there's a fire during fire season because so much of it relies on that. So yeah, another thing that I'd like to see is maybe us focusing on equity and resources in the education scene. I know that we all know like schools located in more in deep codes that have same more low income people have historically been like underfunded. And I know actually the school that I currently go to it doesn't have programs like AVID or Upward Bound. So it's a huge disadvantage for our first gen students who go there. So yeah, I'd like to see things like that as well as maybe career counseling or maybe ethnic studies programs in the schools as well. Just allowing the youth to find their power really. That's fantastic. No, great. Thank you. Annette, you're next. And then we will go to Erica after Annette. I would like to, my vision is to see that the lower end neighborhoods get raised up a little bit. There seems to be a lot of inequity between certain neighborhoods. I live in South Park and we have some really wretched potholes and things like that that don't happen in other neighborhoods. So I would like to see the bottom level get raised up a little bit. I would like to see if there is new housing come in that all the low end and high density housing doesn't get put into South Park or Roseland or other places that already have plenty going on that they need to deal with. I would like to see SRPD get more involved with the community. I just read about a program in LA where they were basing the police's pay and raises on how well they connected with their community and they assigned people to a beat that they had to stay on for five years so that they got to know the neighbors there. It would be really good to do something like that because I think it would encourage people to know their police officers and the officers to know their neighborhoods and help the relations that we have going there. And last but not least, I think we're desperate for some youth activities. Everything got shut down with COVID and during that time, gang activities in our neighborhood has increased probably a hundred percent. And so without anything for kids to do they're going to get in trouble. So I think we really need to be thinking about that and offering them either job training or after school programs. Everything that's been cut is stuff that they all need and then we don't have it right now. And I think that's causing problems in lower end neighborhoods. All right, thank you. My diversity and equity, that's great. Thank you, thank you. Erica, why don't you go next followed by Ali? Yeah, I would echo a lot of what people already said. I love the idea of a vibrant downtown. That sounds really great, affordable housing. For me, one of my big priorities is biking around town. I live in Northeast Santa Rosa and I bike my kid over to Roseland. He goes to Cesar Chavez and so we would always bike on the bike trail. And so we encountered a lot of the homelessness when the trail got taken over. And so figuring out how to address homelessness in general. One of the comments I got back when I sent out the survey to people was around the first, one of the first issues that's listed is creating housing for all. And I think that encompasses homelessness but being more specific in calling out homeless services because I think there's affordable housing and then there's also like the mental health issues around homelessness. And so like being more intentional about differentiating it to like, I don't personally know enough about it. But, last year biking, I guess he was in like six or seven years old son to school and explaining like why there are people living on the bike trail. That's a pretty like intense conversation to have. But my vision for him is that in a couple of years time he'll be able to ride his bike to school as well on his own or with friends. Cause that's something that I was fortunate to be able to do as a kid. So that's my vision. That's great. We're getting a lot of detail on housing and the equity and distribution of services and amenities as well. And these are all, these are all core to the general plan but core to the division moving forward. So this is great. Allie and then Erin after. Yeah. So some of the things that I also want to back up are something that Ratuja internet said was a lot about youth, I think housing and I think we need to take into consideration just how with COVID it's impossible to work on and reinforce our youth. But I think that we need to focus on how we're gonna keep them busy, give them something to look forward to goals. Because a lot of these areas, sometimes they are single parents, they are alone most of the time, most of the day they have to manage on their own transportation can be an issue if they want to go stay at a grandparents home or at an aunt's house to get taken care of. But I definitely think that we need to focus on investing in our youth so that when they become these young adults they know how to work themselves through the community can gear them up to getting an education and essentially also say, having their own part and what they'd like to see in their community. I think we definitely need to connect with the elderly as well because they are out of touch. Sometimes there's people who haven't seen their family members because of COVID. And so we need to find out a way that we can contact with them and also keep them up to date make them feel safe and comfortable as well in community and included. Great, great ideas. And the connections between all of us and it's hard not to be so impacted with COVID. It's a fact to all of us to say the least, but as we move out of this and in the future, how we're connected going through these planning and land use and mobility, all of these connections I think is really important. I think you also hit on another really important part of this process and future discussions is the economic development strategy and the tools and access to the kids today to be able to get the jobs in town and to grow within Santa Rosa is really key as we eventually start thinking about these land uses as well. So with that, I think we were at Erin next and then let's go to Tricia after Erin. Hi, everybody. I think I just wanted to start by thinking about what it was like to live in Santa Rosa during and right after the fires and as crazy and difficult as that was to live through. I also think it made me really recognize the community that we have here and all the reasons why I love Santa Rosa and love this area. When I think about the future and I hear some of the themes people are talking about, I think a vibrant downtown actually has the ability to really address a number of different needs, both with driving economic development. We can look at having affordable housing go downtown and actually make that into a very vibrant urban core. And I think doing that is also gonna probably open up some more mobility options where having more people in certain areas are gonna help us find alternative ways to do transportation with smart train, with bikes and then with other means. I think other key issues for me, I say sustainability and that to me means focusing on building green infrastructure, but it also means continuing to focus on access to nature and doing that in an equitable way. And then I think I'd also talk about healthy communities, which I think there's a lot of components to that, obviously affordable housing is part of it. But I think looking at the briefing book, to me it's kind of disappointing that Santa Rosa is actually behind the curve compared to other California communities. And it would be great if the general plan was saying, this is a beautiful community, this is the place we want people with, we should be leading the curve in California on all of these health metrics. So I think that that would be a way of having equity and thinking about healthy communities being part of our long-term vision. Great, those are great points, Aaron, thank you. Tricia next and then Stephanie after Tricia, I think I know this right, but I'm basically throwing my own cheat sheet here. So Tricia next and then Stephanie. All right, thank you. I have to take in a couple of notes throughout. And so piggybacking on a couple of people's comments, Jen mentioned the vibrant city center. And I think that would be amazing. I also think that having something similar maybe scaled down for different neighborhoods, like if South Park and like I live in like mountain view area off of Santa Rosa Avenue, if we had these like smaller city centers where we have access to public parks and local businesses and things that are a little more tailored to our smaller community within the community that we could also visit throughout the city of Santa Rosa so that we could get to know the pockets of the city a little bit better. And then what Yvette mentioned on income-based housing, I was living in Northeast Santa Rosa in a community that had mixed income housing where we were a plan development that had everything from 3,000 square foot houses to duplexes and apartments above garages that were all owner occupied and or rented out within different pricing structures. So that in theory, that community, those children all went to school together at various incomes that school collected income tax yeah, I get property taxes from various income levels. And as a mother of two very young children, that's important to me. I want my girls to go to school with a varied group of people. And I'd like now living in an area where our school district elementary schools are so underfunded compared to some other areas within Santa Rosa, seeing some of that be a little more equitable throughout the city as a whole, those are kind of mine. And then of course, green and sustainable I think environmentalism is a really important topic. Great, thank you Dresden, that was great. Stephanie and then Annie following Stephanie. Everyone, so I think some of the things that I'm gonna mention have also been talked about. I want to bring up three points, the first being diverse and equitable housing. So I live in Southwest Santa Rosa and there's a lot of development happening here. And it seems, it feels really unequitable compared to the developments that we know that are going up in other parts of the city. So when I think about 20 years down the future, I would like to see our quadrant of Southwest Santa Rosa not feel so dense and packed with housing and people when we don't have the infrastructure for it. And that brings me to my second point about resilient and sustainable infrastructure. I think that as we need housing, we definitely need housing, we need more diverse and equitable housing. And we also have to think about our infrastructure when we do that. Our roads, especially here in Southwest Santa Rosa are not equipped for the amount of homes that are going up. So I would like to see that be a little bit more, to be addressed a little bit more equitably as well. And then I kind of wrote down in my notes, policies that say like you can't build here unless you build here. And I know that we have a lot of nimbyism in Santa Rosa but I think there are great agencies that can tackle that on. And then the last point, I think it was Erin who mentioned about data, the data in the briefings, that was also really alarming for me. And so I would like to see a city or a community that really values health equity. And so that means taking a whole person approach to our policies and to the way that the general plan is created. And so for me, that means access to services, access to resources, to parks, to open space and safe places for people to gather. So thinking about the whole person. Great, thanks, Dominique. That was really really good. Annie, let's go next. I think we have a couple more. We're gonna get to Andreas and then actually wrap background with Gary as well because he kind of started with them kind of, give you comments there also. Now he left. Now he left as a chair but let's go to Annie and then Andreas. So I think all of these issues I feel are really important. One of the issues that's very important to me is city hardening for fires, which kind of goes hand in hand with us having to work with the county on that. The fires are coming from outside to the inside. And that ends up, we have fires, we have less housing for people, we have more mental illness issues. So also if we deal with the fire issues, we start, that takes us right into the whole climate change which takes us into getting less transportation out there, more people on bikes, more walking. So that kind of goes hand in hand. I would love to see us dive into the mental health facilities again, to be able to have that resource. I think that's a huge issue in combating some of the homeless situations. And I would love to see more outreach to seniors. I think this pandemic has shown all of us that many seniors couldn't even get the shot because they didn't know how to navigate the system. And that's a big deal, that's a huge deal. And it just requires us to be a little bit more mindful of getting people out there and having people help people, which is really I think what we're talking about in all this. That's great, thank you Annie. Andreas, you are having a list but don't see in front of me now. No, never. I may have been a bit late, so I apologize for that. Oh, there you are, sorry, no worries. I'm right here. No, yeah, but to piggyback on what Annie said, yeah, there are a lot of elderly here that don't have kids. And I'm always constantly thinking about my parents, how I'm planning to take care of them. Not many people have that luxury in the near future. So I do believe that's something we need to be mindful of. But one thing that's been hitting home for me is diversity here in the city. And not just like diversity in housing and employment, but businesses. I think we need to be more supportive of the businesses that we have here and kind of spread them around a bit. Like I live here in Southwest Santa Rosa, Spousal Road, to be a little bit more exact. And yeah, they call it Little Mexico, which is great. I love that, but it doesn't have to be. We can have Hispanic businesses in downtown. We can have them all over the place. It doesn't have to be there. You don't have to concentrate it there. So for the next 20 years or so, yeah, I would like to see more diversified businesses all over the county even, you know? That's great. Yeah, thank you. No, that's great to add. I think Anna Stevens and Hugh Helm are not here, but I wanted to wrap back around with Gary because you kind of started, but then we jumped into it. I'll make sure he's still on the chance as well to add to the vision side of it. Thank you, and thank you all for the statements. I mean, it's wonderful to hear and it just reminds me. One of the best things about this community is people want to be involved. Shorkeling back though, because I have been involved as a council member, a general plan document is just a land use document at its core. So some of the aspirational statements that I heard here, which I agree with, I don't know if they're applicable to this process. A staff, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but to me, it's basically what are we gonna allow for land use? Well, it's a little bit of all-encompassing and yes, it is around land use decisions, but the general plan touches all different aspects of city services, amenities, staffing levels, priorities as well. I do want to emphasize that this is the vision for the plan, but it's the vision for the city and the discussions we're gonna have over the course's projects, you're gonna touch a lot of different aspects. With that, I want to do it just like quickly. If I may just wrap it up just really quickly. If it touches every area, which I'm playing with, everybody here stay involved politically. It's all about a council majority as to what you want for your vision for your city. And that's the best thing I can offer. And I'll just leave it at that. That is a good wrap up. We are here to bring everyone into the process on the CAC, but also bigger as well. We do need to reserve some time because we do have members of the public to provide comments as well. I do want to show though just real quick where we're going with this. So what Anna's been doing in the background is creating a lot of these ideas and coalescing some of these vision statements as well. And you can see her cursor. She's still doing it right now also. For CAC members though, additional thoughts, additional ideas, additional comments. This is the first kind of big discussion on visioning. Send thoughts and ideas to Andy. Add them into the chat here as well. I think we have one additional question or comment here from Delashe and then we'll need to do pause here for public comment as well. So Delashe, one last question I think you had. No, actually, I wasn't able to talk. I brought up- Oh, sorry, I thought you had it. I apologize. No. So my big concern is yes, with housing, but having housing for single people and even men in particular as well, I tend to find out that families, people who have children, of course we're gonna give them housing first, but that's kind of just leaving out a whole section of people who, if you don't have a child, then you literally, what I'm told is you have to wait till someone passes away for you to grab an apartment and be able to get into affordable housing. So I'd like to see some more housing for just individuals as much as with families. I would definitely like to see a community center that would go out for all people, all marginalized communities, just one nice community center to bring everyone together. I've yet to see that type of thing here. Also, I think bringing more entertainment to Santa Rosa for our youth, maybe we can boost up one of these swimming pools and actually make it where there's slides and more adventurous and nicer, I don't know, somewhere where we can have more concerts or something, bring some more entertainment value, give something for the youth to do, but some for all ages to do, particularly. I think with the community center would be great. I belong to a lot of organizations and we're always trying to find somewhere to meet up and have meetings and be good that we'd have a place we could go meet up. So yeah, just bringing more activities. A lot of people come here for wine tasting and they bring their family. Well, what are the kids doing? Just some more entertainment. I'll cut out a little bit there. Yes, those are great points as well. We're hearing community, community, community tonight, which is really fantastic. And apologies that I had barked you off, but I'm glad you raised your hand as well. Just to make sure I didn't miss any other CAC members. If I did, please raise your hand. But I think we got everyone who is on here. Looks good going once, going twice. Okay, one quick thing, just to show here of where we are heading before we go to public comment. So next steps, as we mentioned, getting the word out. We'll send materials to the CAC members, to all of you about the next steps for this workshop, community meetings, ways to engage folks as part of community events at number one. We haven't scheduled an exact day, but once we get through this big engagement set, we'll be meeting back with all of you here in July, as sort of tentatively the next CAC meeting, but expect a lot of emails and materials here from us in the near term and support as well from our team and staff. But if there's additional thoughts or ideas, send Andy emails. This was a great, great discussion tonight and it helps us kind of frame some big vision elements that will be, again, part of what we take to the community. So with that, I'll wrap up this part of the agenda and actually head back to Andy, because I know we do have to take public comments. I think we have around 10 or 11 members of the public who are also with us here tonight. And Dan, actually, maybe if we could do this, if we could ask any members of the public who would like to make a public comment and we'd love to hear it. If you would raise your hand, then the other Michelle, Michelle number one, can count it up and see how many we have. It's 745, for a council member, that would be a three-minute public comment. We might need to make it by two minutes each in order that everybody gets a chance to speak. So are you seeing any hands raised, Michelle? So far I am seeing two hands raised. Okay. Well, Lauren. Three, oh, well, we had three and then it went back down to two. Okay. Well, then maybe what we can, we can afford the full three minutes for each of those brave speakers. You don't have to use it, but you may. So Michelle, why don't you lead off with who's there? Okay, great. So we are going to have G. Farron, followed by Cecil. And... I don't see a timer, but my name is Gregory. Perfect. I just wanted to make sure that you could unmute. Let me get the timer up for you. Do you see it now? I see it now. Perfect. Your time begins now. Okay. I've got to minimize the screen so I can see my text. Can you, let's see, how do I do this? Oh. Your timer is now taking over my computer and so it's hard for me. Oh, here we, maybe I can do it this way. If you were to drag the timer out of the way, you know, the top bar? Yeah, no, I'm okay. I'm recording X, damn, this hasn't ever done it before. Okay, my wife just walked in with it so let me read it to you. First of all, thank you for your service and for your participation and for all that you've contributed right now. While it's not a regular front page newspaper issue, the general plan is an incredibly significant opportunity for our city to chart its path forward together. That's very important to us. While the content of the plan has long lasting implications, the process of making the plan also has an opportunity to impact the culture and patterns of how our government and residents interact with each other here in Santa Rosa. Santa Rosa together, of which I'm speaking for, urges you to reach out in meaningful neighborhood-based engagements to the true heart of this community for their thoughts and ambitions. We know it will be well worth your time and energy to do so. The general plan should be an opportunity to set policy that clearly describes the aspirations that we all share for the future of our city. When we get disconnected from a clear understanding of where we wanna go as a community, the general plan begins to feel more arbitrary and the implementation of it feels a lot of bureaucratic work. We would strongly encourage the council to hold this process to a higher standard, one that goes beyond simply fulfilling the implements of getting community input. Rather, use the process to inspire greater civic engagement. One example is the underdeveloped sense of neighborhoods that seems to characterize much of our city. A true sense of neighborhood is usually accompanied by a front yard culture where neighbors live in a common vicinity and interact with each other. Where this culture is present, a community is more likely to get community engagement. Where there's genuine community engagement, there's often initiative, creativity, effective problem solving. Instead, many of the areas in our community are more reflected by a backyard culture. People are more isolated and less engaged. Backyard culture is really only very good at saying no. Hence the acronym NIMBY, not in my backyard. We think one of the ways we can create the front yard culture that we desire for our city and to avoid NIMBYism is for the general plan process to ensure that every neighborhood has a voice in shaping the city of Santa Rosa. In an inclusive way, start with meaningful dialogues in each city council district. Provide for follow-up discussions in any neighborhood that wants to engage. The hard work of implementing your plan will depend on working relationships that live in our neighborhoods. Please utilize your process to build those relationships and that participation. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Okay, we're going to go to Cecil followed by Jorge. Cecil, can you see the timer? I can, it says 10 seconds. Yes, I'm going to update that for you now. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, oh, are we good to go? Okay, so my name is Cecil and I wrote something in the chat earlier, so I want to apologize. I'm not good at social media and it always comes off like very disconnected from what I'm thinking, but I resonated with a lot of what was said. I just want to put out there that more public transportation, I think we should get rid of the 101 going through the city. So I know we're so used to dividing that way, but I can't imagine why it's there, why it can't be sort of on the outskirts. I resonated with, I couldn't track who said what after a while, but I resonated with whole person and healthy neighborhoods, which means walkability and walkability to services. Even Mr. Bertelbo in the very beginning talked about being able to walk to a corner store. So not that we need everything that is in the downtown, but I think corner stores, whatever a neighborhood says they want as like community anchors. And I think that's it for now. I will send my remarks after that, but I am super impressed with the group and the diversity of what I heard tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you know where to send your notes to the, it was on the chat. Well, we'll repeat it. Okay. Now we're going to Jorge. Jorge, are you able to unmute yourself? Yes. Can you hear me? Great. And can you see the timer on the screen? Yes, I can. Okay. Great. Your time starts now. Great. So I just have a few comments I'd like to make. The first is, I guess I'd like to echo on the first commenters points about having deeper community involvement. I feel that this is very true. I myself live and grew up in Roseland and there's been lots of developments that sometimes the neighborhood groups oppose and there's really no avenue for them to, you know to have their voice heard. And then when the development gets passed, a lot of people don't realize that it's because it was approved in the general plan 20 years ago. You know, and so I think even though maybe it's discouraged to get into the details of the general plan of the land use policy, I think neighbors need to know and residents need to know because these things do eventually come to fruition. And if you're wondering why there's now a large department, you know, building next to you, a lot of times it's because it was approved in general plan years and years ago. So I think having a deeper sense of community involvement and not being afraid to go into the details is key when generating this plan. So I'd like to just point that out. I also think that we need to stress how important it is to hold the general plan accountable because in the current general plan we talk a lot about equity, we talk a lot about building out the infrastructure, particularly in Southwest and Southeast San Rosa. And again, that general plan has been around for quite some time, but yeah, it hasn't been, I know it's aspirational, but I think we can do more and we can do better to prioritize certain areas for development and for infrastructure improvement. I think that needs to be called out specifically in the general plan. And finally, on one aspirational note, I think a very important thing is for Santa Rosa to find kind of its soul, you know, like what makes Santa Rosa Santa Rosa? I think it's the trees. I think it's how beautiful the natural area is. And I think we need to highlight that and we need to keep that as a center of the city focus so that when people think about Santa Rosa, when outsiders think, hey, what's Santa Rosa? They think it's the city of trees, it's the city of roses, whatever we want, but I think that decision also needs to be made or at least thought about because I think that's ultimately what attracts people what makes it interesting. And one final thing, I do think we need to have funner activities for our youth. You know, I know a lot of friends who are moving out of the area because they think it's boring. I don't think it's boring, but I know a lot of people do think it's boring and there's kind of a lack of entertainment and activities for younger people. I mean, that's it. So thank you very much. Terrific. Thank you. And our kids, thank you. Okay. And I'm not seeing any other hands for public comment at this time. Great. Well, thanks everyone. Just sort of a quick wrap up and we're actually about four minutes left here, which is good. So we got through all this on time, a wealth of ideas and comments and I so really, really appreciate it to the community and also the CAC as more ideas come to us this weekend or next week, please feel free to send those through email or through the comment form on the website. In chat, Andy at the city put in the email and also the website address there as well. I didn't want to mention additional question by Steve on the CAC and that was related to materials and items we can provide CAC members to further reach out to the community. As I mentioned earlier on, but I want to write a little more detail, we are preparing engagement tool kits essentially and big collection of digital materials but also physical materials. So we have options on how we get out to folks and collect more ideas and information throughout this process. So we're developing those right now but we want to get a series of tools and materials out to CAC members to again reach all the neighborhoods, reach the community and really get as much input as we can. This is something we're going to continue throughout the process, not just during COVID time but it is a challenge with state home requirements and social distancing of how we're doing engagement early on. So just want to let everyone know that information is forthcoming. I think we have one more question maybe comment from Yvette before we close. I want to call on you and we'll close here shortly. I believe this is going to be a question for Andy. I know the city is repurposing and rezoning some of the properties here locally. So how would that affect what we're trying to do as we're moving forward and we're making a plan this for 25 years? If the city is making some changes in that capacity how would that affect our work and how would that affect our work? It's a good question. I'll let Andy start but I'll jump in. Yeah, yeah. So your question really is an opportunity for us to make the statement about the power of the general plan. We do, the general plan is big ideas and we're talking about aspirations but it also lays down the map of land use classifications. It says in these areas are appropriate land use as apartments, retail centers, job centers in the city. Zoning is the tool that makes those land uses happen. And while the general plan is being updated as we're doing now, there's certain business that has to happen within the city and there are rezonings that can occur but we're coming to a point close soon in our process where we may need to think about specific strategic spots where it's not in the public interest in the community interest to implement a zoning and it will be the city's council's determination whether rezoning can happen. And as we get closer with our general plan it may not be consistent with the general plan goals and objectives. So we may have rezonings. You'll see those. Those are ordinary business. They are rezoned consistent with the general plan land use categories and there may be legitimate public discussion whether certain rezoning should be performed or taken place because of contemplative change in this new general plan. That was perfect. Actually that was a well said Andy is intentionally the general plan update is a long process from a time stamp. We wanna address all the issues, discuss multiple rounds with the community as things change but there's still the business of the city that takes place during this. And so there's a balance there especially doing general plan update once every 15 or 20 years and if the vision changes has a balance that's something we'll work collectively with staff and city councils we go through this process. With that we are right at the eight o'clock hour. So again, I just wanna thank everyone this evening, great discussion. I wanna thank Anna for doing fantastic recording in the digital background of all of this as well and getting comments. Again for all of us in the community this video we posted on the website we'll be getting materials out here shortly as we get closer to really launching the community engagement process. So thank you again to all the CAC members and the community members for participating tonight. Great discussion, we really appreciate it and we'll keep the discussion going. We'll have a meeting here pretty soon but we wanna get all of you actively involved as well in this first round of community engagement around visioning. So again, thank you everyone and have a wonderful evening. Thank you. Thank you all. Everyone.