 Let's go ahead and get started here. Welcome, everybody, to the City Council meeting. Just a little bit of quick housekeeping and announcements. You might notice we're a little light on councilmembers tonight, putting me a little bit on an island here. We have Mayor Schwethelm is recovering from shoulder surgery. So we're wishing him well. And then a little bit later in this meeting we're going to have councilwoman combs joining us as well by phone from Ecuador. So in the meantime you were stuck with these councilmembers. I did want to make an announcement. I'll make this a number of times throughout the night. We are going to be taking a few items out of order on the agenda. Once we are finished with public comment for items not on the agenda, that typically happens right as close as we can get to 5 o'clock. We are going to jump down to items 15.1 and 15.2. Those are both appeals. And we know that there are a lot of students who are interested in being here as well. So we're going to take those first. The council is likely going to then take a dinner break, as it's expected to be a long evening, probably somewhere around 7 o'clock. And I apologize if I'm jinxing it. And then we will come back from the dinner break and finish up our report items. And we'll go from there. Ms. Gomez, do you want to call the roll? Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of Mayor Schwadhelm and councilmember combs. Excellent. And Ms. Gallagher, any updates from closed session? Yes, the council met in closed session on items 2.1 and 2.2. On 2.1 the council gave direction to staff. And on 2.2 the council did approve retention of outside council Megan Simaji to represent the city in CPUC proceedings regarding PG&E and wildfire resiliency. Thank you so much. We do have one proclamation today. It's the 25th anniversary for Sonoma County preservation. Receiving the proclamation, and I'm going to invite him down to the floor is Arthur Dawson and councilmember Fleming. I believe you have this. Thank you, Vice Mayor Rogers. Thank you very much. Whereas Sonoma Mountain preservation was founded in 1993 to protect Sonoma Mountain, which spans 63 square miles, provides nearly 40 miles of public access trails, contains over 9,400 acres of protected open space and is surrounded by five cities, several towns, and a quarter of a million people living within a dozen miles of its summit. And whereas Sonoma Mountain preservation is celebrating 25 years of working to preserve the mountains, seen in agricultural and natural resources to provide a forum for constructive discussion of issues relating to the mountain and to expand the recreational opportunities there. And whereas Sonoma Mountain preservation created the Sonoma Mountain developmental guidelines that now protect Taylor Mountain and the Mayakamas range, created a Sonoma Mountain database and parcel map in 2014, and participates in the Sonoma developmental center's land committee that discusses how to protect SDC's wildlife corridor and the open space district. And whereas Sonoma Mountain preservation participated in the general plan 2020 update was a member of the SDC coalition reviews and enforces all PRMD permit application compliance with the developmental guideline ordinance. And whereas Sonoma Mountain preservation was instrumental in the transfer of 600 acres from SDC to Jack London State Park in 2003 and as well as in the development of the east and north slope trails on Sonoma Mountain. And whereas Sonoma Mountain preservation has published a yearly Sonoma Mountain journal since 1999, discussing aspects of preserving the mountains integrity, history, and future. And whereas Sonoma Mountain preservation in culmination of its 25 years of working to support Sonoma Mountain is publishing a book where the world begins, Sonoma Mountain's stories and images in order to inform the community of the treasure in its midst and to remind them to take great comfort from its various gifts. Now therefore be it resolved that I, not Tom Schwedel, Victoria Fleming, city council member on Santa Rosa, on behalf of the entire city council do hereby recognize, commend, and acknowledge the Sonoma Mountain Preservation's 25th year anniversary. Thank you council member Fleming. And I'd like to introduce, this is my colleague Nancy Kerwin who's the treasurer of Sonoma Mountain preservation and I serve as the vice chair and Meg Bieler is the chair and Jack Nissen is the treasurer. And just to take all that was said, thank you for all the accolades. Just to put it in a nutshell, we speak for the mountain and we advocate for open space, recreation, and scenic preservation on Sonoma Mountain. And this book has gotten just tremendous support from the community. I had the privilege of being the primary author but many other people contributed. We had a number of local photographers. Nancy helped with selecting photographs and also has one of her photographs in the book, a number of local authors. So it really, this felt like a community effort to celebrate the mountain. And we had a book launch on Thursday and 175 people showed up at Finley Center. So the mountain is near and dear to the hearts of the community here. And just in case you think Sonoma Mountain is someplace far away, the Sonoma Mountains, which is the range where Sonoma Mountain is part of, come right down here to Annadel and Taylor Park. So it's right here at the edge of Santa Rosa. If you'd indulge me just for a minute, I'd like to read just a couple of short paragraphs out of the book. There are lots of reasons to consider Sonoma Mountain a remarkable place. It marks the center of a region, the hub of a local cosmos. More than half of Sonoma County citizens live within 12 miles of its summit. Ringed by roads encircled by cities, vineyards, and villages, it lives among us as a familiar silhouette, an elevated landscape, an island in the sky that the eye and the imagination can escape to even when the body is stuck in traffic. It is our mountain in ways that more distant and dramatic peaks never will be, both a part of our daily lives and a part from them. The roles the mountain plays go far deeper than scenery. Among other things, it serves as wildlife habitat, refuge, and corridor as a barrier to weather and travel, as rain catcher for three of Sonoma County's major streams, and that's Sonoma Creek, Petaluma River, and the Russian River, as inspiration and sanctuary for the human spirit. At the center of a web of relationships, it carries all the presence and complexity of a living being. So thank you for the proclamation, and hope you get a chance to check out the book and also spend some time on Sonoma Mountain. Thank you so much, Mr. Dawson, and thank you and congratulations on 25 years. Thank you. Mr. City Manager, do we have a fire recovery and rebuild update? Yeah, I see Jason Nutt rising up, and so we're going to have a little bit of an update. Good afternoon, Vice Mayor Rogers and Council Members. Jason Nutt, Director of Transportation and Public Works. With me is Jamie Smetus. She is our Marketing and Outreach Coordinator for the department. We've got two updates for you. I'll do one, and she will do the other. The update that I'm going to provide right off the bat is talking about the status of the street lights in the burned areas. We do have a number of street lights, approximately 500, that were damaged during the course of the wildfire back in 2017. The department is actively working and attempt to try to restore those lights as quickly as possible. Recognizing it's really not necessarily in our hands, we are working with PG&E and other providers to try to get the power and electrical conductors plumbed over to each of the lights that were damaged so that we can get them back up and restored. Some of the challenges that we've run into are internal, meaning we've had difficulty communicating with PG&E and getting them to understand, quite frankly, we're all so busy trying to get work done that we're stumbling on ourselves. We believe we've now corrected that and we're in a process of trying to move forward. With that said in Coffee Park, there are some areas where we're having to go back and read and double check where PG&E may not have completed some of the work that we had hoped they would, and that was part of the communication issue. They thought we were doing it. They thought that we thought they were doing it, so now we're going back and replacing service lines to a series of street lights out in that area. That work is actively going right now. We expect that should be complete within the next couple of weeks. Some of the additional work for areas that we do have responsibility for in Coffee Park, we've gone out to contract with an effort to try to have someone come and provide us an adequate design. We expect that will be awarded in April with work being completed or being started in May. In the Fountain Grove area, we're in the same process. We're having, now that we've worked out some of our kinks with PG&E, we're actually working very smoothly with them up in the Fountain Grove neighborhood and Hidden Valley neighborhoods, where underground utilities may have been damaged. We're actually now coordinating our efforts to identify where the service lines are, which lights they feed, where they need boxes and how we're going to get these lights restored. We have about 350 lights that were damaged up in the Fountain Grove area, about 150 that were damaged in Coffee Park. Council awarded a contract to purchase some new poles this last fall. We will be coming forward here very shortly with the requisition to purchase the remaining lights so that we're prepared and ready to go as such time that PG&E has power restored to the service link. It's our hope that we'll be able to restore lights when the requests come in. I know many of you have started to receive emails from constituents that are looking to move into their houses shortly, where the street light is non-operational. We're taking each of those cases one by one. If we believe there is a service line or the light is not damaged to a point where it's unsafe, we will restore it in the interim waiting for a permanent and final solution to come in. And we've been able to do that at a couple of locations. Unfortunately, not every location is set up in such a way. There are some areas of the Fountain Grove where they had wood poles and carriage lights. The wood poles were almost all damaged and basically burnt to the ground. Because we are in a wild and urban interface area, we'll not be restoring wood poles in that community. We're actually going to purchase spun aluminum poles that have a carriage fixture on the end of it. Same general style but steel pole instead of wood poles for future value so that those poles last and moving forward. And so that's sort of the status that we're at with the street lights. As requests come in, we'll do our absolute best to try to get things up and operating, but know that we are still working with PG&E to try to ensure that power is to each of the service points where the lights are. And as new equipment comes in, we'll do our best to try to get those reinstalled. Any questions about street lights? All right, let's keep rolling. All right, the next quick one is there's been a lot of questions about the trenches out in Coffee Park. Public works and planning and economic development have been working to monitor this situation. We just heard this morning that there are permanent trench restorations coming to a series of roads in the Coffee Park neighborhood that have been dealing with the temporary trenches. And so we expect that we'll begin here anytime now so that we're going to start to get better roadway surfaces in those neighborhoods. In particular, it looks like random barns and pine meadow are going to be the first that should be starting in the next week or so. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jamie Svenus and she's going to talk to you about something exciting that she was able to put together for us to track progress. Vice Mayor Rodger and council members, this past December, Jason Knutt and Eric McKenry. Make sure you bring that microphone nice and close. This past December, Jason Knutt and Eric McKenry presented a dashboard to show you FEMA's, sorry, FEMA's public assistance project dashboard related to the recovery of public infrastructure. While the dashboard is a beneficial tool, it provides a snapshot of statistics and graphs related to the infrastructure recovered process. If you're not familiar with the FEMA public assistance program, it can be a little overwhelming. So I worked with Eric McKenry and we worked through the ESRI format and we created a kinder, gentler, more narrative format for the same information. It was just launched today. It's on the rebuilding page under repairing public infrastructure. The initial page starts as an overview. So a lot of the data, well, all the data is the same as in the dashboard, only presented a little more narratively. So it does, it starts with an overview. So public assistance program, that tells you what that is. As well as it provides the statistics, tells you there are 28 current pending active and completed projects. Seven of those are completed. It also gives you a graph of the FEMA categories with the city's estimated project costs per category. A little more narration, it gives you an explanation of what cost share means. It also gives you the city's estimated cost for a total repair of the 28 projects. This is 2.2 million. Currently, FEMA has approved 29.4 and the remaining amount is 22.9. This amount does not reflect pending funding or funding submitted for appeal. However, it may contain a portion of funding under FEMA review. Now out of the 29.4 is the cost share. This is FEMA's cost of federal, state, and local. This number can increase if this isn't approved. We have the same map, has the same map as on the dashboard. Just pick a project and you can see that it's already begun, scheduled to end, and it also gives you a link for more information on that particular project. We also have a resource footer. This is on all the sub pages as well as this page. It gives you access to the FEMA public assistance dashboard as well as the recovery process maps. I also included pavement condition index as well as bicycle and pedestrian maps, and there's additional links of interest. Okay, there are eight categories that make up all 28 of the projects. Category A is free removal. This is a temporary project. All of the sub pages have the same structure. So this is FEMA's definition of what qualifies under Category A free removal. If you'd like further information on what's in Category A, page numbers have been provided, as well as the program and policy guide, a link to, as well as a link to CIP projects map. So this map will take you to the full projects of the CIP department. So within Category A free removal there are two projects. City has estimated those two projects to cost 3.3 million. These are the two projects. So what you'll find on all these sub pages is that FEMA projects will be listed and underneath will be links. It'll give you the CIP link. It'll take you to more information and tell you the status of the project or it'll be the FEMA's project summary report where we included the definition. They look like this. So it just tells you in room removal, tells you about the project. What's nice about this one is primarily most of the work has been completed. There's just one yet to be done. Of the 3.3 estimated project cost for this Category A, FEMA has only approved 46,000. Remaining funding is 3.1. There's nothing currently under appeal and there's 125,000 pending. And the rest of the footer is the same. Category B is also temporary. They're either temporary projects or services. Again, tells you definition of what qualifies under FEMA's Category B. Further information, go to these pages. Here's a link to their program and policy guide. There are seven projects within Category B. City has estimated those projects total cost at 5.1 million. These are the projects. So citywide for 30 days, 31 days, TPW, 30 days, water, TPW. Interesting one that's on here is Fire Station 5. This is temporary work. It's a temporary structure that was installed, put in place, so it qualifies under Category B. Just to give you an idea of what falls under citywide for 30 days. It tells you security, firefighting, and emergency operations center. Out of the 5.1, FEMA has approved 3.5 million. Remaining funding is 1.5. Portions of the smelt are currently under review. Formal appeal and there's nothing pending. And the footer is the same. Now we're going to get into permanent work. So Category A and B were temporary. Now Category B or C is permanent. So this is roads and bridges. This is what qualifies. Again, they're all the same structure. These are the pages. There's five projects, but nine capital improvement projects. These five FEMA projects are estimated at 8.2 million. These are the five FEMA projects. However, they were broken out further into basically how they're going to be completed into the capital improvement projects. So to give you an idea of streetlights and guardrails, we click on one project. You can see it's slated to begin. It's already begun. This is our guardrail project. It's to be done this month. I believe they'll have it all finished by next week. This tells you the locations as well as the map will identify the locations. Out of the 8.2 million, 1.3 was approved by FEMA. 2.3 is remaining. Some of that's under review. 4.6 is under appeal. Nothing's impending. Okay. So these categories go in order alphabetically. So this is Category C. So this next one, Category D. This project category was withdrawn. I left it in. It says withdrawn. There's no finding under there, but I thought people would wonder what happened to Category D. So Category E. It was withdrawn and reassigned to another category just for clarification. Thank you. Buildings and Equipments. Again, the definition that falls under Category E. More pages for more information and where you can get them. There are three projects in this category at a total estimated cost of 10.7. These are the three categories. Now Fire Station 5. We saw that on temporary projects. Here's permanent because the permanent aspects of this project are items like the fence or the irrigation. Actually, I'm going to correct Jamie on this as well. The particular one that she's looking at is still the temporary fire station location. FEMA actually consolidated the two projects. This is the project that's currently moving forward. The category B project was rolled into this one back last fall. And again, you can click on any of these to go to either the project summary report or the CIP pages. So of the 10.7 million, 1.7 was approved. 9 million remains is in rainy funds. Utilities. Seven projects, five CIP projects, and city estimated 17.5 million. The five projects, you can see whereas these are separate FEMA projects, but Station 2 and Station 20 were put into the same CIP project. You can click on the links and find more information. So of the 17.5, then you scroll down and you see that 13.1 was approved and 4.4 is in remaining funding. Category G is parks and other items. What was funny is other items that do not fit in Category C throughout. For more information, again, there's three projects. City estimated, 12.3. Here's the three projects. And again, you can click on the link and find more information on them. 9.7 of that's been approved. 2.6 is in remaining. And then administrative, that's in one project, and it is all still impending. To get back to the overview page are the breadcrumbs of above. This will take you to the overview. And then to get back to the rebuilding page, which is recently launched. And once again, oops, this is how you access through the repair and the billing. Any questions? Yeah, I want to just also add that this is one of the first times this type of web interface has been used to demonstrate public infrastructure projects. And our consultant Ernst and Young informed us that they've been so intrigued by this as an interface page. The couple of conferences they've been to recently, they've actually taken and shown it to other consulting firms, as well as other communities around the country. And trying to use this actually as a model of what we can do as a public entity to provide information to the community as far as how we're progressing in our implementation of the public projects. So I was really impressed that Jamie took the initiative to put this forward. It was modeled a lot after work that was done in planning and economic development. And I think between the two web pages, we've just done a phenomenal job of providing information to our community. And I just want to also add that it can't be emphasized enough that this is actually new territory, because again, these things change over time. The numbers change and there's been reticence in other places, because somewhat it'll be confusing. You already see in built-in the CIP projects may be different than the actual FEMA project. And there can be lots of confusion just in terms of how you're tracking an individual project. We categorize and deliver a project in a different methodology than FEMA funds it. Timing issues come into play here. What's an appeal? What's currently under review? The total cost estimates can vary on each of these projects, but it's a way for us to track at a particular point in time where we are against projects, show people that there is work evolving, even though it may not seem like it is as timely as we all would wish. Those projects are in some sort of development phase, and we're trying to address those projects. Yeah, and Director and Jamie and Eric and all of your guys' teams, I do want to say really thank you for this. As I've talked with other Council members from around the state, trying to figure out either A, how to recover from their own tragedies, or how to prepare for one. This really has been a way for us to cut through some of that disaster industrial complex that we talked about earlier that really is confusing intentionally and necessarily for the public, and it's really tried to make it accessible for folks. So thank you so much for that. Council Member Tibbets. Yeah, thank you, Jamie. Chris said it all, and I just want to reiterate really nicely done. All right, Mr. City Manager and Ms. City Attorney, your reports. Yes, I have a couple of things to catch up on. On January 23rd, Santa Rosa Police Officer Andrew Castor was honored as the Santa Rosa Rotary Officer of the Year for his life-saving efforts in March of 2018. Officer Castor saved a drowning woman by pulling her out of a pool and using CPR to revive her before medical personnel arrived. Then on February 7th, Detective Kevin Nagel was presented with an award by the Petaluma Alk's Lodge for his outstanding narcotics enforcement efforts in 2018. The detective led several investigations resulting in the seizure of multiple pounds of narcotics in that same year. On February 7th, Officer Tim Guler was recognized by the California Robbery Investigators Association at its annual conference in Las Vegas for his response to an in-progress robbery at an armored car facility. Officer Guler was the first to respond and engage the suspects who were taken to custody and convicted of armed robbery. And on March 7th, just this past week at Slater Middle School, a special needs child was having difficulty moving between classrooms. According to her mother, she sometimes will freeze in place. In this instance, she had been standing for about an hour in the hallway holding her stuff Kermit the Frog. That's when Officer Christine Morrison came on the scene. She sang Rainbow Connection, a song by Kermit the Frog, making a connection with a young girl. It was caught on video by a teacher and has subsequently gone viral and been featured on ABC News. This simple act of kindness by school resource officer Ms. Morrison, who sang to and connected with a special needs child, has shined a light on a very humble officer. She is to be commended for going out of her way to assist a child. And we are thankful that someone captured it and shared that experience with all of us. And lastly, I'd like to recognize Daisy Gomez. She has earned the designation of Master Municipal Clerk, which is awarded by the International Institute of Municipal Clerks. It is a designation only for municipal clerks who have completed demanding educational requirements and who have a record of significant contributions to their local government, their community, and state. Congratulations, Daisy. And I have nothing to report this afternoon. Okay, we'll move on to statements of abstention from Council Members. Saying none, we'll go to Mayors and Council Members' Reports. Who would like to start? Sure, I'll start. Yesterday, Council Member Davidson, I attended an economic development subcommittee meeting, and we got to report a couple of our staff members went to a conference to deal with and learn more about P3s. P3s are public partner, public private partnerships. The community will be hearing more and more about those three letters and what it means to the city of Santa Rosa and other agencies as well. In short, the staff is we've refined RFP seeking technical assistance to perform the RFP3 feasibility study and expect to release the RFP in the next couple of weeks. So we are at the very beginning of the process that we discussed as a Council a few weeks ago regarding the downtown and all the different, this wide variety of funding mechanisms to help us move our projects along more rapidly. And that this is just the beginning and it will be a long process, but well started. Thank you. Council Member Tibbetz. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I just want to report to the Council that the first meeting of the Renewal Enterprise District took place. I think about either last week or two weeks ago now, it's a bit of a blur. But we're off to a great start under the leadership of our staff along with the county staff. And it was a fascinating experience because as we were going through, we were looking at all the opportunities to use the red to kind of attack and address some of the social needs for housing that we have in the city, driving certain developments in our downtown area and reducing vehicle miles traveled and putting an emphasis on green construction and things like that. But ultimately, you know, where we ended up was that we want to use this district to really just get properties going, get housing going in the downtown particular and other areas. And so it's very much in the formation stages, but I'll continue to keep you all updated on some hard concrete things that emanate from that JPA going forward. Councilwoman Fleming. Thank you, Vice Mayor Rogers. I wanted to make the announcement that I will be filling out my last two vacancies for my boards. I'll be appointing Lainey Wall to the community advisory board position for at large. Lainey is a veteran of the United States military where she served both in active and reserve duty for 10 years. She's a mother of two and a recent graduate of UC Hastings. She lost her home in the Tubbs Fire and has emerged as a neighborhood leader. I don't think we could be better served by somebody if I had to go out and conduct more interviews. So and then I'm very pleased to note that Casey Edmondson, former planning commissioner under our last mayor, has moved back into District 4 and has accepted my invitation to join our cultural heritage board. So thank you for your patience with me while I get the best people to serve us. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. I have just a couple of things to report. A week ago from last Saturday we had our Open Government Task Force Implementation Subcommittee where we have finished walking through the city's sunshine ordinance. We've made amendments to it. We have taken in new topics and we will be turning that back out to the public for comment for an additional month and then we'll be approving it hopefully and sending it to this entity. So just as a status report, we do have a couple of additional recommendations that are still to come but the sunshine ordinance should be at the council level next couple of months. We had Sonoma County Transportation Authority yesterday and they are very happy to be cutting the ribbon on a brand new building so they will no longer be utilizing this council chamber and instead they are located now on Fifth Street right by the corner of Fifth and E. So go ahead and go by and check out the building. Walk through the right door. I definitely set off the alarm walking through the wrong door. And then finally this coming Friday we have our mayors and council members legislative task force meeting. Just so council members know that this is coming, we will be having a substantive debate on the merits of the CASA Compact, an issue that we've talked a little bit here at the DEIS about in advance of our discussion that we'll be having with MTC on the 26th. What we'll be doing as the mayors and council members group is actually making a recommendation to the full mayors and council members association on whether to support or oppose the CASA either in part or in whole. If you have any concerns or any comments or any questions that you would like asked and addressed prior to us making that determination please make sure that you reach out. There have been many opportunities for us to have that discussion and so I do know many of your thoughts on it but again we will be making that determination on Friday. And with that we will go to item 11 approval of the minutes. These are the February 12th 2019 minutes where there are any changes from the council. Seeing none we'll show those adopted. Move on to the consent calendar. Item 12.1 resolution. First amendment to professional service agreement. First American title company. Item 12.2 resolution. Approval of use design bill procurement for removal and replacement of utilities field operations audio visual system. Item 12.3 resolution. Approval of two agreements with the California department of tax and fee administration for the collection of measure O essential city services revenue passed by voters in November 2018. Item 12.4 resolution. Resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa authorizing a request for 383 $271 in low carbon transit operations program funds for fiscal year 2018-19. Authorizing the director of transportation and public works to sign the certifications and assurances. Authorizing the mayor to sign the authorized agent form. Item 12.5 resolution measure O public safety choice grant program cycle nine year two funding recommendation and approval to execute a grant funding agreement with breakout prison outreach DBA California youth outreach under the choice grant program. Item 12.6 resolution approval of use of design bill procurement for roof replacement for Samuel L. Jones hall 4020 Finley avenue and water stations for dash 2260 Sonoma avenue and 13-801 White Oak drive 12.7 resolution amendment to the city classification and salary plan. Item 12.8 resolution approval and adoption of city salary plan and schedule. Item 12.9 resolution extension of proclamation of local homeless emergency. Item 12.10 resolution extension of proclamation of existence of local emergency due to fires. Thank you Mr. City Manager. Are there any questions from council on the consent calendar? I just had one quick one for you on item 12.6 the limited term administrative technician position that is now becoming a permanent position was that originally funded by the state and if so is it still continuing to be funded by the state? Jennifer Burke acting interim water director is coming down to answer the question. Thank you Vice Mayor Rogers. No that position has been funded by Santa Rosa water department. We initially started the H2O program as a pilot program. The state is now requiring that some type of low income program be put forth. So we'll continue to fund that to make sure we're meeting the state requirements as well. Okay great thank you. Master clerk do we have any comment cards? Okay councilwoman Fleming. Okay I would like to make a motion that we adopt the consent calendar items 12.1 through 12.10 and I waive further reading of the text. Second. We'll pass with five ayes and council I'm going to exercise my mayor's prerogative if you don't mind and we will be taking a brief recess here before going to item 14.1. As I made an announcement in the very beginning we will have our public comment at five o'clock I suspect that this item 14.1 will bleed through that public comment period so we will do public comment at five o'clock come back for items 15.1 15.2 our public hearings then we will take a brief dinner break and then we will come back and pick up items 14.1 14.2 and 14.3 so we will be right back at five o'clock thank you folks I'm going to bring us back and we will go to public comment for non-agenda items we have bob harter followed by elizabeth nailin we'll come back elizabeth nailin followed by Steve Dunright. Well hi there I had a nice snap thank you I'm glad I'm here I don't really feel like singing today I heard at the raging granny practice that homeless man had committed suicide here in Santa Rosa I never read about it but I talked to one homeless man and he said that he witnessed it so I really don't know what happened I know that it's pretty serious situation to be out there on the streets and cold and wet and homeless and maybe not enough food that's all I really feel like saying right now I I'm not really in this the singing mood and I'm not really don't have much of a speech made but I'm glad I came down and I I do hope that our homeless receive the care they need thank you thank you miss nailin Steve Dunright followed by Anita Lafellette do we have Steve Anita sorry to make you wait I think he's out outside I'll go get him but in the meantime this is weird okay thank you for hearing me today I want to talk to you about the 12.5 million dollars that's coming from the state you know we have the CDC that is a mandated two supply homes to all the people that are living here in Santa Rosa article 25 of the human rights commission you've probably seen the letter to the Sonoma I'm not sure if it went to you or went to the you know to Sonoma County but anyway the CDC is required to do this and they took over the CDC you know they have a new group of people that are deciding what it is we're going to do with this money since we're an emergency situation and nothing's been done for the homeless since the emergency proclamation has been made except to sweep them when it's raining raining a lot too and so I want to let you know that this technical advice made up of 24 people who it's not the leadership council the leadership council is with sweat helm and Hopkins and yeah others in the community no others who are in administration but those that are on the technical advisory committee and I've met with them once um not I'm not a part of that committee 24 people who really know homelessness and they really know what to do they've been working in homelessness for a long time and so what's happened is the proposals are going to CDC and there were eight of them no eight or nine great proposals ways to put people in shelter and it's not going to happen with a new fangle home it's what we need right now are tents for people who are wrapping themselves up in oil to stay dry at night behind bushes hiding from policemen and you're next Steve and um I want to let you know so these proposals have been rejected but they've never gone to the technical advisory committee we have these 24 people that are part of the tack who have never seen the proposals and so I'm sorry Mr sweat helm isn't here because this is his baby he set up this institution to be able to handle the 12.5 but in fact they're not using the resources that are in it and I'm very dissatisfied with that I hope you could tell him when you see him that I spoke and if he could at least look at some of the proposals that have been made thank you thank you so much miss lafellette here's steve mr harder did mr harder come back in the room okay mr dunright hi good afternoon happy first tuesday in lent if anybody wants to go buy godlaws that's quite the question on the subject of what she was talking about a while back the city council apparently doesn't seem to be doing very much on non-agenda items like the homeless and a few people got on the floor to try to make a change and you guys all left and city council was closed that lady who's a psych evaluator and the elderly woman was arrested on the floor and charged $2,500 and then went to court no charge no money back it was somebody got that money another misappropriate funds and because of that incident sweat helm there's none of us that want anything to do for the homeless allowed on the committee we have catholic charities that won't even give you a decent mattress that never gave us a meal at sam jones but but catholic charities is on the media making it sound like they had something to do with sam jones oh you guys didn't either you got $582,000 from the government i thought for sure that the armory i mean would be open nope but as soon as there's a million dollars for a roof i can build a house for less than that i still gotta wonder what red herring you're throwing us the one i spent over a million dollars on a roof i'm still thinking about since you hate the homeless you don't want to see the homeless and you want to start burning the bushes the homeless are hiding behind what's still wrong with the water agency let's get together with the county the homeless be out of sight they could take buses and and sneak in and eat at the redwood gospel mission or saint vincent the paul and then get on the bus in skedaddle you got 3.6 coming why don't you do that instead of let's put money into a place that you run the seniors out of because it's not suitable for them but it's suitable for the homeless why retrofit it all just let it collapse on us you can't kill us can't light us on fire so why don't you just work with us now i just heard about accommodations for a lady that that pacified somebody that has a little mental problem well i deal with a lot of people have mental problems and they get pacified by beating kicked or beat or dropped off for psych evaluations and 48 hours later they're being dumped off at a mcdonald's that was closed for the longest time on fulton and gernvill road what a joke i'm just getting i i talked to a lady here that was coming to come and speak she's going through so much crap she says i'm just so damn upset i can't speak i had to give somebody 20 bucks to watch my cart so i could come here because i have no place to put it i have somebody else that got arrested and had their blankets taken out because it's illegal to be homeless do you think hey all those people that want to grow up and be homeless raise their hands damn none of us wanted to be homeless i got hit by a drunk driver i got a little crippled sorry i can't work but don't look down your nose at me you can't go in the mall if you look homeless you're not welcome there a quarter to 11 the bathrooms aren't open yet at the mall for real if we had a place to put some of our stuff and maybe a place for a storage but let's keep one thing straight no money will be spent on the homeless i'm chasing 582 thousand dollars you had it since june i've yet to see a porta potty thank you so much mr denry god bless we'll come back to uh mr harter in the second public comment period we'll go to item 15.1 item 15.1 public hearing appeal of planning commission decision to approve a conditional use permit for be kind llc a cannabis retail and delivery business for business at all and adult use in an existing building located at 112 h sonoma avenue santa rosa california assessor's parcel number 014-121-002 file number c up18-079 bill rose supervising planner presenting thank you so much mr city manager and before we go there uh council we have to disclose any ex parte communications i'm going to uh go ahead and let the presentation happen first and then we'll come back and if you've learned anything additionally from your communications please disclose those at the time so the public knows we'll do our staff presentation we'll give an opportunity for the chair of the planning commission to explain the discussion that happened at the planning commission then we'll have 10 minute presentations both by the appellant and the applicant will open the public hearing to allow public conversation to take place and then we'll close it we'll have our deliberations mr rose well actually it will be claire hartman let me just go ahead and give you an overview of staff's presentation we've organized this to sort of in a couple of phases the first i will kick off just to give you an overview of how we got here in terms of cannabis retail so the cannabis ordinance how it's set up specifically for retail and then we'll move on to project planner immanuel ursu who facilitated this particular application on appeal so with that as most all of you in this room know and and work through for a couple of years the city of santa rosa developed a comprehensive cannabis ordinance but before we even got to that in 2015 the city council identified cannabis policy and sort of a permissive path to compliance type of cannabis policy development as a top priority it took some time to do that work it took a lot of outreach and as a result we ended up with a comprehensive cannabis ordinance that went into effect in january of 2018 and with that that ordinance addresses personal use as well as commercial cannabis use and the premise behind a commercial cannabis policy was to find placement in our community legal compliance placement in terms of appropriate districts and sites for all aspects of the cannabis business including retail and so you see that is one of the land uses highlighted here and that is the related to the item before you tonight i do want to know we do have a couple of retail related land uses in this list retail being just your traditional storefront dispensary which might also have accessory delivery service and also something called a micro business which is a collection of cannabis uses that may include retail and those also follow through the same process as a storefront the one type of retail cannabis that we don't allow is delivery only okay so what's before you tonight is an application that relates to this type of cannabis retail and that is specifically the sale of cannabis or cannabis products to customers so it's not between licensed operators it's direct to customers and the way the ordinance is set up for cannabis retail is we do allow cannabis retail to locate in seven different zoning districts throughout the city and this is not specific to any quadrant this is these zoning districts are exist throughout the city in particular this site is zoned commercial office which as you can see is one of the eligible districts for consideration uh and as i noted uh the premise of the policy was to find a permit compliant path for this this industry and for the most part the city's attempted to treat this industry like any other commercial industry so locate manufacturers where manufacturing non-cannabis manufacturing is allowed locate labs where labs are allowed and locate retail where retail is allowed however through our public process we quickly learned that there are some exceptions that are appropriate and so those ordinance does support those exceptions one of which is setbacks to a sensitive receptor specifically k-12 academic schools and what was decided after that public process was that 600 feet would be the established mandatory setback between a cannabis retail and a k-12 school in addition the concern was about over concentration so another specific setback that came out of that process was 600 feet to another cannabis retail so the idea there was not to overwhelm any particular neighborhood or or street or block and then most importantly the city relied on a traditional public review process in fact the highest level of land use consideration the city can offer which is the major use permit process it requires a neighborhood meeting before they apply if there are adjacent residences nearby and also requires always a public hearing with the planning commission and they are delegated the authority to act on that use permit but again it's the highest level so it is there is an appeal process and that's what we're experiencing tonight in addition there's very specific requirements in our code that address cannabis retail addresses deliveries it does allow for them use permits must be explicit about the manner and operational characteristics of that as part of their permit we do not allow drive throughs we are restrictive on our hours of operation we can be more restrictive through the use permit process but this is the sort of outer limits that operator can propose security the ordinance is proactive on several levels of operational characteristics of a retail facility that are different for cannabis retail than other retail and one of which is security you need to have a visible entrance you have to have secured products you have to have 24 7 surveillance there were a number of items that are the city's technical advisory committee worked with the city's police department to develop sort of minimum standards for security to address the most prominent land use related impacts that a use like this would have in addition it's not on here but odor and was a prominent issue that we heard and so we set the standard that and this is a in addition to cannabis retail but all cannabis operators yeah that you shall not detect or smell the odor of cannabis outside of the structure or facility itself that's unique to Santa Rosa and that is that is our standard so you don't have to condition it if this use is approved that's what is expected we also have rules for onsite consumption that's not part of this application tonight and I want to talk very specifically about sort of a primary issue that has emerged through our retail dispensary process to date and in particular with this application but it starts at the state level one thing that we have we recognize and we hear a lot of is well the state has a statute that says that no cannabis business it's not even specific to retail but no cannabis business is allowed within 600 feet of a K to 12 school daycare center or youth center but the importance is the completion of that statute which is what we look at and it further states that unless a licensee authority or a local jurisdiction specifies a different radius including this is our ad including up to a zero setback so we can have a different radius and that was discussed at length throughout our policy development process and in fact in the end the city did want to assert our rights as a local jurisdiction we did establish different setbacks and then in the end we established a 600 foot setback to a K to 12 school but just for cannabis retail and just to K to 12 school we did not extend it to the other land uses there so that is explicit in the code we cite that section in the code so that it's out front we're not hiding behind that we did assert our right we do look at state definitions for schools we can get into that if we need to but it's basically the academic setting of a K to 12 so in addition the premise of these applications we're relying on our traditional conditional use permit process there are six findings that the planning commission had to make that you will have to decide tonight and these six findings are right here here's the first three compliance of applicable sections of the zoning code we just talked about a number of them we do that analysis we also of course look for consistency in the general plan finding C here is about compatibility with existing and future land uses so this is sort of the discretionary element of a use permit the third I'm sorry the fourth is the site's physically suitable for the intensity of the use E is that it would not constitute a nuisance or be as conditioned as presented and finally of course it's compliant with the environmental quality act so with that I will turn it over but before I do I just quick update on so where we're at because this is the first application that's before you for cannabis retail so we've had this ordinance for a year we did anticipate quite a bit of interest in cannabis retail so we had established a two-week window of opportunity for applicants to come in with a application that was last April we received 38 applications so we were right we knew that we had a lot of interest and we sure did that was higher than any of the office pool guesses but we had prepared in advance for that we've been working on them ever since to date we the planning commission has approved 13 of these use permits we have seven more to go that are scheduled for hearing we have two of these actions are on appeal to council tonight's the first of the two and that is and we're proceeding with the with those that are en route to the planning commission so with that I'm going to turn it over to Emanuel. Thank you Ms. Hartman. Thank you Ms. Hartman. Vice Mayor Rogers members of the council you know members of the public my name's Emanuel Ursu I'm the project planner this application before you this evening as Claire mentioned is for a retail dispensary does contain delivery as well the building it is proposed in is approximately 2,300 square feet it is an existing building that has had a history of medical office use of the 2,300 square feet about 635 would be used for the retail sales floor area the back left hand corner of the business would be the delivery function it's about 180 square feet and then the remaining areas are support functions as shown on this slide the process started with the submittal almost a year ago in April of last year we had held a neighborhood meeting after that went through a few rounds of review before the application was deemed complete is during that process we want to make sure we have all the information necessary in order to make an informed decision the application was deemed complete in the summer in June and the public hearing by the planning commission was held in November at the 29th of November we received an appeal subsequently by the school district the project is located at 1128 Sonoma Avenue this is in the northeast quadrant just past Brookwood Ave on the south side of Sonoma Avenue this is a aerial photograph a little far further out showing the location of the property it is next to Glenwood Court which is a private drive that leads to several homes a handful of homes beyond the proposed business the Santa Rosa French American Charter School is on the top right of this graphic at the corner of Sonoma Avenue and Doyle Park Drive the property is zoned or excuse me designated office use and it is surrounded by residential use to the south to the east and the property to the west is designated office use it is developed with multifamily residential uses this is the zoning for the property which coincides with the general plan land use designations this is the site plan Sonoma Avenue is on the right hand side of this graphic the building is just behind the street and the parking is at the back of the property there are nine parking spaces that are required nine that are proposed for this use the parking requirements is similar to other retail uses one space for every 250 square feet of floor area this is the floor plan minor interior improvements are required the far right hand side is the retail sales floor area a reception desk would be removed to open up that area and then in the bottom left along the corridor there are a few walls that would be going in to make separate rooms additional rooms the distribution function would be in the top left hand corner of this floor plan the planning commission approved the application with limited hours on the tail end during weeknights so the code allows retail operations cannabis retail to operate between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. given the surroundings of the the immediate surroundings of the project the end time was moved forward to 7 p.m. on sunday night through thursday night 9 p.m. on friday and saturday night delivery would be allowed 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. during the public neighborhood meeting process before the planning commission meeting and at the planning commission meeting there were there was input from immediate neighbors who had concerns with the project from parents and of students at the senator as a french-american charter school and the concerns really had to do with safety exposure of children to cannabis uses public nuisance loitering those types of concerns the appeal filed by the school district addresses four points these are discussed in detail in the staff report and in greater detail in the appeal letter that is also attached to the staff report i will not get into the responses the staff responses there as i said in the staff report and the applicant or the appellant may as part of their presentation get into the details as to the basis of their appeal the statute local ordinance requires at least a 600 foot separation between cannabis dispensaries and schools k-312 schools the this project is 685 feet from the center as a french-american charter school so it is it does meet the the quantitative standard of the code regarding setbacks this aerial photograph shows the the proposed business and its surroundings the red roof shown to the right and the buildings behind that those are multifamily residential uses and then to the left of the proposed businesses are also residential uses similarly behind which is to the south or at the top of this aerial photograph are single-family residential uses the parking that's on the left side is not part of the project site that is parking that's associated with the adjacent residential use on the opposite side of glenwood court the private driveway this is a view of the business from the street one of the requirements is that the front entry be visible this shows the the entrance to the business which is just kind of located to the left of that column at the front left corner of the building as you can see the multifamily residential use to the right and then the parking is behind the building this is looking north towards sonoma avenue the business is this the small low-lying white building in the left side of the graphic the parking spaces on the left side of the parking spaces that would be used for the business the parking on the right as the parking associated with the residential use a concern that was raised and addressed through a condition of approval by the planning commission is that cars coming and going headlights from the from vehicles pulling into the parking area would shine into the residential use the apartments just to the west shown on the left side into that end the planning commission imposed a condition of approval that a fence be a solid fence be installed where there's now a chain link fence with slats in it and that fence would be just along the portions of the property line where it is necessary to mitigate or to avoid headlights shining into the neighbors windows and this shows the area where the fence would be located so basically that chain link fence would be replaced with a solid wood fence as I mentioned the conditions of approval were to restrict the hours of operation so rather than 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. as the code allows the 9 p.m. time was restricted to 7 p.m. Sunday through Thursday 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday evenings delivery was allowed 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and then the parking lot screening which I just mentioned was also a condition of project approval the planning commission found the project to be consistent with the california environmental quality act under three classes or four classes of exemptions that applied as listed in this slide and with that the planning commission recommended that the city council approve the project and allow the applicants to proceed with their with their business for cannabis dispensary and that concludes my presentation. Thank you. Thank you sir. I'm going to go ahead and bring up chair cisco talk a little bit about the discussion at the planning commission. Good evening vice mayor rogers and members of council patty cisco chair of the planning commission. I was not chair at the time of this meeting but was a member of the commission and present at that time. We had a full commission present all of the commission members visited the site either individually or with the applicants representative and excuse me because the cannabis uses are relatively new like you just saw here we had a presentation about the history of the ordinance gave us a real strong overview of what the ordinance is and how it developed that was for our benefit as commissioners also for the benefit of educating the public as these things come forward we have that done each time. The 600 foot setback from schools which is the main issue on appeal here was thoroughly vetted both before the public hearing and after the public hearing addressing questions of the commission and also of the public following the hearing. We heard from the applicant specifically as to outreach to the neighborhood increasing their private security beyond the property boundaries to benefit the neighborhood. The applicant cited the importance of an east side dispensary which at the time of this application this was the the loan applicant up for the east side approval. The applicant cited the desirability of the location in an existing area of medical uses that it's walkable and with transit available and also cited the economic development policies of the general plan for vertically integrated Santa Rosa businesses. Our public hearing was about 20 minutes with five four and three speaking against yours might be a little longer. In our discussion commissioners noted specifically that the project was outside the 600 foot setback for the French American Charter School. We noted that the development of these businesses a priority of the council we noted that it's important that the businesses be dispersed throughout the city so an east side location is desirable. Commissioners appreciated the security plan for the project and the increasing security for the neighborhood appreciated the walkability of the location. The commission could make all of the findings necessary we agreed with the reduced hours of operation and the increased fencing and ultimately the commission voted six to one. The one commissioner making the the loan no vote also said that this was a very good project but was fundamentally opposed to the 600 foot setback from the schools so that's how our hearing went. Chairwoman did that planning commissioner raise that objection when the policy came through? Yes. Councillor do you have any questions for either the chairwoman or from staff? Councilmember Oliver? Yes thank you just for clarification from the chairwoman related to the 7 p.m. closure what was the reason behind that was that to be kind of in sync with the the surrounding businesses that are there what was the thought process? It was to be sensitive to the neighborhood the the actual the residences more more so than other businesses there. Thank you. Anything else? Okay we're going to go ahead and go to the appellant presentation by the Santa Rosa City School District. Mr. Vice Mayor can I have one more brief question to staff? Absolutely. Claire I think earlier you mentioned as far as the process as you mentioned a technical advisory committee just for the purpose of for the sake of the public could you let us know who was part of that technical committee or who has been? Yes so similar to other council priorities they cross multiple departments of the city so our effort was actually led by Assistant City Manager David Gowan because it crossed multiple departments so we had a technical advisory committee made up of various city staff and it's probably easier to exempt out what who wasn't there than who was there but just for sake of clarification of course fire police investigation unit as well as the plan review staff that we work with engineering building of course planning economic development code enforcement housing and of course our city attorney's office played a huge role so yeah it's probably easier to exempt out who wasn't at the table. Thank you it is clear that these these processes do involve more than just your department it really does involve like you said most of the departments within the city. Yeah we characterize this as a cannabis program because it really does touch also finance played a big role so it plays across multiple departments in the city it's a comprehensive effort and it's going to be a comprehensive program. Thank you. Go ahead sir you're going to have 10 minutes for your presentation. Good evening my name is Jim Traber and I'm an attorney representing the Santa Rosa City Schools. The school district has asked me to come here tonight and present this appeal. The school district feels strongly that this appeal should be granted and the decision of the planning commission should be overturned. The school district is seriously concerned about the proximity of this facility to the district Santa Rosa French American Charter School. As staff discussed in their report one of the findings that must be made in order to approve a conditional use permit is that the use is not detrimental to the public interest and if you think about this logically the council has already found that having a facility like this within 600 feet of a school site is detrimental to the public interest. The 85 foot difference here doesn't make a substantive difference to kids. This property is just 85 feet from violating the setback and the policy that the city has already established. We understand that 600 feet is the line but as a substantive matter kids at the school won't be measuring the difference. They'll be feeling the impact just the same. The city's own ordinance also prohibits marketing one of these facilities within a thousand feet of a school prohibits advertising them. This is another inherent finding by the city that that type of public advertising is detrimental to the public interest. If you've seen the building it's a beautiful design it's attractive. Substantively it's an advertisement for this facility that's within a thousand feet of the school site. To think that this won't grab the attention of these kids as they walk by you have to suspend this belief. Parents and community members have been voicing concerns about the project since May of 2018. They're concerned about exposure to cannabis by minors. They're concerned about public safety crime and noise. They're concerned about motorists who may be under the influence driving to and from the facility where young children are leaving and coming to their school facility. There's also concern on behalf of the community that there are general negative impacts of such a facility so close to a school and a surrounding park area. Again there is really no substantive difference. If you if you take away what is in the ordinance and understand it to be an inherent finding that the city doesn't believe that marketing should happen within a thousand feet and doesn't believe that a facility should operate within 600 feet you have to ask yourself substantively what's the difference here and we don't believe that there is one. Sonoma County restricts selling alcoholic beverages within a thousand feet of a school. Similarly you already have a federal law federal sentencing guideline which doubles sentencing penalties for the distribution of marijuana within a thousand feet of a school. These are all clear markers of other entities finding that this type of activity within a thousand feet of a school has a detrimental effect. Based on the foregoing the school district respectfully requests that the council reverse the planning commission's decision awarding a conditional use permit to be kind a location that is literally only minutes away by foot from the French-American charter school. Thank you. Thank you sir. Councilor are there any questions for the appellant? Councilor were there any questions? Council Member Tibbets. Thank you vice mayor. I do have a question about marketing. What would define marketing would assign indicating that this is a retail cannabis operation. I mean I assume that's not defined as marketing but how are we drawing a distinction here with our own policy? Part of the ordinance does speak to sign and advertising and you're not allowed to advertise marijuana on your sign within a thousand feet of the school and that's consistent with the state law so we did carry that over. But the building type itself is not related to that sign ordinance. So to paint a clear picture in the case of of this cannabis facility the name can be on the facade but you can't have now showing this vape product. I don't know I'm just throwing something out there. Yeah let me I should rephrase you you can't advertise cannabis or cannabis products in that way it can't be be kind cannabis or be kind marijuana that can't be on their sign but just be kind could be a sign. Okay thank you. Council Member Oliveris. Thank you Madam City Attorney can we get some clarification on the federal guidelines that were cited I don't know specific sections were provided but do you have an opinion on that? I'm sorry the federal regulations in our respect. Regulations related to I believe the statement was made as far as doubled and penalties to use of drugs within a thousand feet of a school or something like right it's the cannabis of course is unlawful under federal regulations and the federal regulations increase penalties if you are located within 600 feet for I'm sorry within a thousand feet of a school but it is enhanced penalties for violation it does not prohibit location again cannabis is not lawful under federal law. So this would be an example like other conflicts between federal and state law. Correct. Thank you. Council. All right sir I have apologies I don't see where you went. You mentioned what caught my attention was the arbitrary nature of the 600 feet versus the 668 feet what is the policy justification for a thousand feet as opposed to 600 feet what additional level of safety or concern do you think will be mitigated by that 400 feet? Well I think it's the same it's the same justification as you would have for prohibiting signage in marketing within a thousand feet if the building is there and it's actually doing business I'm not sure how it has less of an impact than a sign that's advertising the business with between 600 and a thousand feet there is you know it's almost double it's almost double the distance so there's definitely a different impact there on kids and it's going to create greater spheres of safety for the students that are attending various schools throughout the city. Okay thank you we'll go on to the applicant's presentation go ahead sir you have 10 minutes. All right thank you Mr. Vice Mayor and Council members first I just want to thank you for your time and energy put into this effort I know just how grueling it can be to go through all of these meetings and analyze everything but your time and energy and looking at all sides of every issue is always greatly appreciated I just want to thank staff for their diligent review and analysis on this item there were many hours and neighborhood meetings and and back to forth conversations that came to what we believe are very reasonable additional conditions that were adopted by the Planning Commission as well as what is ultimately going to be a superior project for this neighborhood and lastly I want to thank Chair Cisco and the Planning Commission for their work analysis and strong recommendation for this project with us here today are many supporters and employees of North Cal Cannabis the parent company for be kind I want to acknowledge your presence they're in green shirts in the audience and you know recognize that one of the goals for Santa Rosa under the general plan is the ability to connect Santa Rosa to Santa Rosa businesses under the economic vitality provisions of the general plan EVB4 and really create that synergy and that economic boost that comes from a vertically integrated position this will be a sales and retail point that will also be fueling the jobs that are in the cultivation and the manufacturing and the distribution facilities that you've already approved for this company and it's an important link to keep those dollars in economic activity in Santa Rosa for the benefit of our community. Be the analysis that staff has given you and the Planning Commission really accurately rec recommendation really accurately represents our project I'm going to address a couple of the items I heard from the appellant but I want to leave most of my time actually for your questions I know you have a long agenda tonight specifically just the concern around marketing and advertising we do appreciate the school district's concern for our business plan around this but the they're not necessary types of advertising this isn't a convenience store model this is a medical district where as you've seen from the record there are doctors offices looking to be able to make qualified referrals to a known dispensary that is nearby for the convenience of their patients it's a neighborhood where it is walkable and it is bikeable and there is a strong interest in being able from the residents to be able to come and access this type of retail outlet and lastly we have a security aspect to this project that for all comment that we've received should help address many of the existing conditions that were brought up to us in the neighborhood meeting we've additionally asked our security personnel to be able to patrol further down to the creek edge in order to address the existing transient issues that were brought up and we've worked very closely with the neighbors along that corridor in order to make sure that their concerns of how the neighborhood is currently dealing with these types of impacts can actually be improved from our project I think we need to reject the premise of the suggestion that a cannabis retail facility is in somehow way shape or form a negative impact we have city code regulations and state regulations that far exceed those for alcohol and for other things that in many ways we now consider to actually have be more detrimental in public policy those regulations if followed at the minimum will be an improvement of security and safety in the area and as you know with NorCal and their existing compliant facilities within the city they operate always above the minimum I have no further direct responses to them other than one tidbit that I had sent to you as well in an email which is just a site that the origination of the 600 foot sec back came from the policy document created by the California PTA association in 2010 addressing medical cannabis facilities I'd emailed that to you a couple of weeks ago so you could see the original document on their website as you know I was a part of a lot of the state conversations in our role at the state level as advocates and it really was in large part the education community and the police chiefs association that led to that to that starting point but every community is different and that is why every jurisdiction the state was given the ability to adjust up or down where the setbacks go and we believe that you prudently went through a two-year process to discuss this policy and adopt it where everyone was at the table and everyone had the opportunity to participate in that policy decision and we'd ask you to stand by your policies tonight thank you very much for your time and I'm available to answer any questions I also have with me Mike Ginty who is the head of security for NorCal cannabis if you have specific security related questions thank you sir counsel do you have any questions for the applicant okay we will go to the open public hearing but first we will disclose any ex parte communications I had an opportunity to hear from both some parents as well as from the applicant no additional information was provided that hasn't been provided in in the open session so far councilmember oliveris thank you vice mayor I did visit the the site and also walk the neighborhood and did not receive any additional information councilmember soror thank you vice mayor I watched the planning commission meeting and visited the site with the applicants representative no additional information was received this evening councilmember Fleming like councilmember oliveris I had an opportunity to visit the site and receive no additional information and councilmember tidbits I have no additional information right we'll go to our open public hearing first we'll have Nancy Richardson followed by John Marcus my name is Nancy Richardson and I have lived in Santa Rosa for 46 years I and many people I know don't like what is happening in our city it is a topic of conversation believe me the decision before you today city council members comes down to one word setbacks today you will vote up or down to approve a cannabis dispensary less than 1,000 feet from a school I have done some research on this issue and find that the county of Sonoma requires that a cannabis dispensary and I quote shall not be established within 1,000 feet from a school and it shall be measured in a straight line from the property line of the protected site to the closest property line of the parcel with the dispensary that's section 2688 256 I think the critical word in that sentence is the critical words are the protected site moreover skull the Sonoma county office of education and the Santa Rosa city school district the largest in the county oppose this application because of the setback and have been forced to ask for this appeal hearing they ask for a thousand foot setback how can you take Santa Rosa down this road this is a new industry with no proven track record we are in uncharted territory yet Santa Rosa has given the industry a green light with no speed limits your city staff and your city council sit here and ask for your approval they will also tell you in the future in a future appeal hearing next month that the Kiwi preschool on summerfield road is not really a school under city law and it's okay to allow a dispensary on a parcel that shares a property line with Kiwi's playground what other surprises are we going to find in the city regs I urge caution I support school I support the Santa Rosa school district I support a thousand foot setback and I hope you well too thank you miss Richardson John Marcus followed by Evelyn Anderson good evening my name is John Marcus I'm a middle school teacher born and raised in Santa Rosa due to rescheduling of this meeting my parents David and Jacqueline Marcus who own 1128 Sonoma Avenue are unable to attend I would like to now read my father's comments if it pleases the council my father practiced medicine on this very corner of Santa Rosa for 30 years he developed a very solid grasp of what this neighborhood is all about it is his strong belief that this is an ideal location for a cannabis pharmacy dispensary he feels it is not only appropriate for this location but also convenient for hundreds of patients and residents who travel by its doors every day since my parents moved to Santa Rosa in 1986 this stretch of Sonoma Avenue and the corresponding block of Montgomery Drive are the heart of the medical community of Santa Rosa the very center in the neighborhood you have Memorial Hospital 1111 Sonoma Medical Building Doctors Park Doyle Park Medical Building Santa Rosa Radiology and Cancer Center and Tuttle's Pharmacy whose long-term owner also supports this dispensary additionally you have hundreds of doctors practicing in the immediate vicinity including physicians chiropractors dentists and therapists several of these doctors have also submitted letters in support of the dispensary for the convenience to their patients on cannabis therapies there also happens to be a french american charter school in our neighborhood but that does not make this a school district this is clearly a medical district and always has been we are not here tonight to discuss or legislate the pros and cons of cannabis the men and women of california have spoken we are here to discuss the presence of a cannabis of a cannabis pharmacy dispensary in the vicinity of a school in the center of the city school's appeal there's a glaring absence of facts to support their objection this is not an oversight after arduous study on the subject doctor marcus could find no data or evidence anywhere to even suggest that a cannabis dispensary will pose any threat or problem to the citizens of the neighborhood or the children who go to school there my dad has previously provided city council members with a document detailing study after study all of which conclude that cannabis dispensaries are safe and actually most often beneficial to the surrounding communities when you read the studies you will recognize the rationale and wisdom for the policies established by the state of california the city of cenarosa then adopted these policies one of which is the ample 600 foot buffer zone which was established based on the recommendations of the california state pta itself it is our hope that when you consider all of the evidence or lack thereof you affirm the planning commission's decision to grant this permit thank you for your attention thank you mr marcus evelyn anderson followed by jim traber congrats on the new gig thank you thank you vice mayor rogers and esteemed council members thanks for the opportunity to speak with you um i am evelyn anderson formally of the school board and now the interim principal of the french american charter school many have said that the cannabis industry is the new gold rush for cenarosa and that's great because we could really use some good news around here but it need not be done in the spirit of the wild west as romantic a notion as that might be for some we are an established society and you are our governing board and we look to you to govern our city in a forward-thinking sensible way including when it comes to our children and hopefully making them as much a priority as you make business a priority you are in the position of not only making policy but also evaluating and modifying that policy if necessary when embarking on a new industry it's natural to look to other guidelines um at the state level or elsewhere but you may consider after a bit of experience that you want to do better than the guidelines you might want to do better for the children of cenarosa than the guidelines suggest some people equate cannabis businesses with liquor stores well your youth may have been more sheltered than mine but our school bus stop was across the street from a store that's old liquor and people often purchased liquor to provide to children it was just a normal course of activity mayor schwethelm and i were in the same class in high school and while i don't remember him at any parties where they were smoking pot um he probably would not be surprised to know that we had classmates who began smoking in fifth and sixth grade i believe their life trajectories were significantly impacted by the normalization of cannabis in their lives even if your child or grandchild or niece or nephew um doesn't have to walk past a dispensary after school rest assured his her his or her classmates will and those students will normalize can cannabis in their lives and all our children's lives you see it's not just about the extra 85 feet between this particular dispensary in this particular school it's about the daily exposure not only of these elementary students but at all locations in the pedestrian pathway of our students throughout the city as you go forward in planting cannabis policy and making choices about where the new gold rush should occur please do not ignore the impact on your children and all the children of santa rosa i'm sure that like me you want each and every one of them to have the best possible opportunity to learn and thrive without distraction or negative influence please make children as much a priority as you make business a priority approving this appeal will be a great first step our city is not so tiny that alternative locations further from children cannot be found thank you for your time thank you miss anderson and thank you for your service on the school board jim traber followed by monica pantonous i was asked to fill out a speaker card but i've already spoken so monica followed by teresa schultz good evening i am an employee of north calcadamus i have been employed for two years with the company i'm a middle-aged lady that was in healthcare management for 30 years and after my husband passed away decided to try something new and different this company and their owners welcomed me with open arms um they're caring they have strong ties to the community um they have created jobs within santa rosa that are desperately needed um that's all i have to say but thank you thank you so much teresa schultz followed by diana perkins good evening council members and guests in the audience my name is teresa schultz i am a santa rosa resident uh good length of time now i don't brag the way john soyer might on five generations but um we're three generations strong here um i want to thank dr david marcus's son uh for being here and one of my questions was who does own the building and how do they feel about its use um i guess a lot of pertinent information has been shared my main concern at this point would be traffic i'm wondering how many delivery trucks or vans would be going in and out of this address seven days a week nine to nine on some days where might the um qualified employees park are they going to be using public transportation or bicycles to get to work and um i walk a lot uh driving sometimes is too painful and it's a very busy um exchange of traffic there on sonoma avenue because of the high mixed use of medical offices and a beautiful school with a wonderful public park tucked behind it so my mindset always goes towards the safety of others including the traffic safety um and then i had another question and where might this be kind product be grown and is it grown local we seemingly are now branding our area and priding it on supporting local businesses so i didn't know if their product was grown locally which then gets me thinking about the water table and where does our water go and water is life but if we could just keep each other safe on the redways take time for grandmas like me and for young children who get excited when they leave the schoolyard after a hard day of learning and i really wish there were a lot more people here earlier for the homeless in my hometown i'm glad we have a gold rush but i think the beauty of our community is in all the aspects of all the lives that live here including those of us that are growing gangbusters rich by being cannabis producers thank you for your time thank you miss Schultz diana perkins followed by rachel denny we do have a second microphone folks don't be don't be afraid of the camera my name is diana perkins i'm the post cultivation manager at the nor cal cannabis santa rosa facility the last time we were here i spoke about our processing team being one of the largest departments in the company that crew is close to doubling in size with the projection of continuous growth through 2019 while these jobs create wages they've also provided health care and a community oriented environment where employees have had the flexibility and support to nurture their family lives further their education and pursue career paths it is undeniable that sonoma county is unique and prosperous because of decades of contributions from cultivators and processors that have fueled the community's commerce and culture during the movement toward legalization cannabis business owners have been asked to empty their pocketbooks and jump through hoops and after peaceful compliance are often met with the response you are not welcome or we don't want you around but the truth of the matter is that we are here and to move in the direction of progress there needs to be some form of acceptance and respect for an industry that has laid the foundation of this great place that we call home so while you take a stance on this matter consider that while this vote is about cannabis its true impact will be on the people in this room in green shirts and the community that they represent thank you thank you miss perkins rachel denny hi i'm rachel denny i'm a veterinarian in santa rosa and i actually live on glenwood so i've seen how the homeless can affect the area and i've done my research and i do believe that the dispensary is going to bring increased safety to the area and i i heard a few comments about wonderful doile park and i'm i my partner and i take our dogs there often we make sure to do it during the middle of the day because there's a very large population of homeless people transients that use a lot of serious drugs there we've seen them shoot up on the street that is just adjacent to the french school charter school excuse me i'm just a little surprised that there's so much resource and energy going into this appeal rather than focusing on the homeless problem the drug use and you know the homeless people that are just adjacent to the school it's just a little confusing to me so i i'm here in full support of the dispensary that's it thank you thank you miss denny is there anyone else who'd like to speak on this item saying then i will close the public hearing and i'll bring it back to the council the applicant will have three minutes for a rebuttal well thank you for inviting me back up we are mostly in support of the comments that were made during the public hearing if there's any specific issues that were raised that the council wants us to address we will many of these things were brought up in the original neighborhood meeting as far as concerns and again we went through a process of talking with the police department directly about the existing conditions talking with planning and talking with all the departments because a lot of existing condition issues were brought up and we believe that the project as conditioned and designed will actually help address existing issues and impacts in the neighborhood so there's any specific questions i'm available as well as our head of security to answer them yeah if you could really fast there was one specific comment or question from the public about traffic of how many for the delivery service side what impact of traffic there would be during the day so the traffic memo and trip generation study prepared by our engineers looked at the traffic impacts of the whole project and doesn't piece them out specifically by individual types of of traffic generation but in but that trip generation study includes all trips anticipated related to distribution delivery deliveries from FedEx and such actual trips from the delivery operators going out to residential and as well as people coming to retail location we've been engaged at Golden State government relations as a firm not specifically for this client has been engaged in a broader look at the traffic impacts of delivery of delivery vehicles on dispensary projects with other engineers trying to get a reliable statistical sample we're not there yet because we only have three dispensaries in the city but when we did that and looked at the initial numbers the one dispensary that offers delivery has a lower trip count than per square foot than the other ones and we believe that that is in part because customers come they sign up for delivery and then they don't have to make the trip back again to reorder which is also a major convenience that we want to provide for the patients that will be seeking therapeutic treatments or or need better access because of their disabilities so I apologize did you have a number or I don't have a specific number on that the trip count that's in that no counts for all of those anticipated trips so it was deemed to be less than significant as an impact overall we don't have a specific number associated with that okay appreciate that counselor are there any additional questions because member oliveris thank you mr. castle I'm asked for clarification of the appellate as well but the comment that was made related to exposure of minors to cannabis in what ways can that happen at at a dispensary here from my knowledge of all available research the most common place for minors to access cannabis is in the home similar to alcohol and prescription drugs because that's far less secure than a dispensary to enter this facility you have to have an id that will be checked at the door before you can even get in far superior to our process for bars or any other age restricted location I there is no foreseeable way that a minor barring fraud or some other type of this you know attempt to this to deceive would be able to enter the facility and there's no on-site consumption and and and there's a prohibition on consumption on the on the parking lot as well correct and that's enforced by the community liaison security position that will also be looking at the adjacent parcels to make sure that no one goes off the property and and tries to consume there this is also not an issue that we've seen at the licensed dispensaries in santa rosa and in in other locations in the state thank you all right uh councilmember tippets do you want to put a motion on the table I move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa denying an appeal and approving a conditional use permit for be kind to operate a medicinal and adult use cannabis retail dispensary and delivery business within an existing building located at 1128 sonoma avenue assessors partial number 014-121-002 file number c up 18-079 and wait for the reading of the text the second so we have a motion and a second a discussion from the council councilmember tippets yeah thank you mr vice mayor you know I it's it's it's tough for me at these appeals sometimes because to me to me an appeals process is is a public hearing it's it's a formalized quasi-judicial hearing where a lower body moves a piece of ordinance up to a higher bar body for a reversal or upholding a decision and usually that's done in light of new evidence or new information coming forward from the previous body's decision and so when we create a ordinance process if you will in our municipal jurisdictions beginning with the state of California approving recreational cannabis use with the development over the course of many years of a cannabis policy our subcommittee levels and at the municipal level as long as that applicant is going through the process is abiding by the ordinance ie the law it takes a lot of new information for me to be willing to go against that process and I don't plan on doing it here tonight but one thing that is a little bit concerning to me is the fact that we are hearing from our leaders within our school district and to me that says that either a when this process was happening the school district did not know about our process or wasn't communicating to us what their needs or concerns were or they did and we were unresponsive to them and I just think that that's something that we should not be doing I have gone to the school board on two occasions in the last year to represent this body on matters important to the city and we are constantly talking about partnership communication and advancing mutual interests so I'm just a little bit concerned that that's happening here tonight and going forward I hope that if the body does approve this denial tonight and the cannabis dispensary goes in that the school district will communicate to us about issues that are arising with the new dispensary I really want our staff to be responsive to that and I hope that our subcommittee too will take heed of tonight and communicate with the school district as well relating to amendments to future cannabis policy decisions thank you mr vice mayor council member Fleming want to thank both the applicant and the appellant for coming out as well as staff all the time that you put into developing and implementing the regulations and the process by which you evaluate our applications I'm a licensed clinical social worker I've treated hundreds of people with drug addictions probably over a thousand one of them has been addicted to cannabis these dispensaries are very difficult to get into and I I hate that we are doing something that is uncomfortable for our schools and makes people feel afraid for their children and that's something that I think we need to have an ongoing discussion about and that it's early days I know that as a parent of a child who's about to be going into kindergarten that I personally wouldn't feel uncomfortable about this distance from the school because I've been to a dispensary before and it's way more secure than a lot of other drug and alcohol outlets are in general additionally you know many of the people that I've treated for substance abuse disorders have been addicted to opiates or methamphetamine 276 feet away from the French American Charter School is Tuttle's pharmacy a pharmacy that I frequent and I really love and so I wonder what greater risk we're thinking is going to come to our students from the the dispensing of regulated cannabis twice the distance from regulated opiates or regulated amphetamines is going to be additionally I appreciate that the federal government has slightly different regulations but I think that given that we've decided to completely ignore federal regulations on this matter that they using them at all at this point would be I don't know maybe a little hypocritical so I welcome a further discussion about the setbacks and I also want the the members here in the parent community and from the French American Charter School to know that this decision has not been easy to make and that your concerns have been heard thank you council member Sawyer thank you vice mayor I'll be voting to deny the appeal that was brought forward by the planning commission holding the planning commission's decision the people of California have have made a decision to legalize recreational cannabis in this state and I think it's incumbent on this body and and our city to have our land use decisions respond to that decision by the voters and that is all this where I'm coming from with us on this decision tonight the trap there was another issue that was brought up tonight and I'm going to use a packed council chamber to reiterate the issue around traffic in our city people need to slow down in the city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma Avenue is it is a busy street and we have that issue all over our city regardless of where we place dispensaries or schools or anything else in the city I encourage everyone to please slow down especially when you see children to the left or to the right of you but people are going too fast and our community is paying a price for that so I encourage you all to to respond to that citizen who mentioned our traffic because it is um creating quite a problem but I'll be voting to deny the appeal council member all of theirs thanks vice mayor clearly cannabis use is not new to our committee we've been dealing with medical use for a number of years and we've gone through a long process of developing policies to accommodate that and I know I think for probably most of my years on the council which is going on quite a few I've been on the cannabis subcommittee and I do value the process that we've used in internally with staff the use of of other departments with our technical committees to ensure that fire police water others weigh in on potential impacts and really being careful on what we craft as far as policies clearly the voters spoke out several years ago as it relates to adult use of cannabis and we've been preparing for that we have been working very hard along with staff the committees our council committee as well and and I'll tell you the outreach has been strong I know that the department has conducted a lot of outreach to stakeholders to the community to attend our meetings to voice your concerns it was not easy really to to craft the policy because it was it's hard to work doing it for the first time but I I believe that we crafted at the end a very good policy and process and one that is being replicated in other communities people are looking to what we have been doing here in Santa Rosa but also speaking to our past use of cannabis or having cannabis businesses in Santa Rosa the data inevitably doesn't support the issues that have been raised related to crime and drunkenness and noise and people hanging around these these boundaries it's it's again I think it's important to look at the data that is presented I don't see that happening with us either I didn't see having a simple sign that says be kind to be a big draw to youth to come in to look for marijuana but I think the even today's discussion brings up a much bigger issue that we have been talking about at the committee too is we need to as a community to do more work at the area of education and awareness to our community about what it is to have legalized adult use of of cannabis in our community there are still a lot of misconceptions out there about what it is and what it isn't what it causes in a community and that's incumbent on all of us including our our schools our parents us as a city and staff and of course the industry is contributing that process well to educate and do that saying that there have been quite a few discussions already on how we make that happen there is a willingness to do that it just it just seems that even though things seem like they're moving slow they're also moving very quickly but one of the things that's lagging behind though is that education awareness that we could be engaged in so we need more of that and so again I am supporting the planning commission's decisionist and will be denying the appeal thank you council member I think it's really apparent to our community that we are rolling out a process with a lot of uncertainty and I think that the subcommittee and the council has taken a lot of deliberate steps to try to craft a policy that is both understanding to folks who are fearful of this industry while also understanding the reality that it is now legal in california and in fact 57.4 percent of santa rosen's voted to legalize it just a few years ago I think that all of us are willing to look at our policy and find where it is coming up short but I think that when we do that we need to do that based on facts and data not based on fear and in this appeal and when it comes in particular to the 600 foot versus a thousand foot setback issue we're devoid of any facts or data that would suggest that either what we're doing isn't working or that what we're doing is going to produce a bad outcome I do know having talked with some of our police department about the currently regulated dispensaries that are up and running in santa rosa that they have not increased the impacts on that neighborhood but they have not created a safety issue and when we talk about 600 feet versus a thousand feet that 400 feet that that's there may be important in terms of calming fears but from a practical standpoint 600 feet or 700 feet or 800 feet it's never going to be enough if the if the facilities that we are approving are not secure facilities that they don't take the necessary steps to prevent cannabis from getting into the hands of children and I feel very confident based on the work of our staff based on the applicant's proposal that if they follow to a tee what they are expected to do that these facilities will be safe and if they are not following to a tee what they are proposing to do they will lose their their ability to operate in the city that's how the the permit process works so I will be supportive of the motion denying the appeal and we will continue to look at this and we'll continue to learn and we'll grow as a community from it but it has to be based on what we're actually seeing and based on data council members your votes through a point of clarification daisy what is yes what is no for denial here I apologize a yes vote would deny the appeal okay thank you and council member combs disconnected so just to let you know she's not on the line okay hopefully we'll catch up to her on the next item and the appeal is denied five to zero we'll move on to item 15.2 and folks as you file out if you could keep your conversations to the outside we'd really appreciate it so we can continue to conduct the public's business item 15.2 public hearing bicycle and pedestrian master plan update 2018 Nancy Adams transportation planner presenting I tried Mr. State Manager let's give it a a minute here I'll take the moment with the dead air here to remind folks that we are taking item 15.2 and then the council will take a quick dinner break and then we'll be back for items 14.1 through 14.3 master clerk and we lost council member combs council member combs are you there all right we're going to push forward without council member combs while she tries to reconnect perhaps we'll get back with her on item 14.1 after the dinner break go ahead Mr. City Manager item 15.2 public hearing bicycle bicycle and pedestrian master plan update 2018 Nancy Adams presenting on yes good afternoon vice mayor and council members Nancy Adams with the transportation and public works department and I'm delighted to be here to share with the council your our last stop on a 16 month journey that has been kind of exciting and really fun to work with the community so the bicycle and pedestrian advisory board has been really the the cornerstone in progressing this plan through its development and joining me tonight is Jeff Knowles he's the project lead from also planning and design so he's done a lot his team has done a lot to update a plan that's nine years old it needed some refreshing and he's integrated the some of the emerging technologies that we see the smart passenger rail train bike share which will soon be coming to Santa Rosa he's introduced some new standards to how we evaluate bicycle and walking in Santa Rosa by looking at level of traffic stress and high incident network collisions and so I'm going to start off the presentation and I will then hand it over to Jeff to actually have you have you have him share the the document that he's produced for the city so just as a way of background as I mentioned this is a current plan that the city adopted back in 2011 and so now we're looking at refreshing that up to this 2018 plan we are we're going to be asking the council to amend the general plan as part of this process and so here's here's just a quick rundown of some of the things that have occurred as you can see the 2011 was when the council adopted the plan with a negative deck and more recently the bicycle advisory board in 2018 along with the waterways advisory committee reviewed the draft plan that you have before you and in 20 this year in 2019 in January the actually the bicycle and pedestrian board by motion recommended that the city council adopt the plan and approve the general plan and then finally the more recently the planning commission in February unanimously recommended that the council adopt and approve the general plan amendment so just really high level the plan focuses on updating as I mentioned projects and information related to projects programs and policies that guide how people walk and bike in Santa Rosa and yeah I mentioned some of the things that included the service for smart that just started and then this year we expect to see bike share be introduced in Santa Rosa and it's it's a pretty critical tool for active transportation and making Santa Rosa a more bicycle and pedestrian friendly community so we have approximately 31 miles of class 1 bike lanes and that would be for example the Santa Rosa Creek the Prince Memorial Greenway that's an example of a class 1 we have 67 miles of class 2 bike lanes and that's what you typically see on the street Santa Rosa Avenue Mendocino Avenue have class 2 bike lanes and then I see a typo we have a class it's class 3 bike full of ours and that should be 1.6 miles and that is Humboldt Street and then we've got a piece on Jennings Avenue so I'm going to hand this off to Jeff and he'll start talking about the plan that he's produced for the city great thank you vice mayor members of council staff and public my name is Jeff Knowles I'm the consultant from Alta Planning and Design the project manager uh the cornerstone of this plan was really based in robust and extensive public outreach and so I want to share with you some highlights here we broke this up into three phases first we started by listening without any preconceived understanding of the needs but really listened to folks across the community about what they'd like to see in terms of active transportation walking and bicycling we followed up with a collaborate so we shared with them early drafts of recommendations and then we refined that in the third phase to produce this draft plan before you we had three community open houses six pop-up events that were strategically located geographically dispersed around Santa Rosa 11 stakeholder focus group meetings there were project flyers and active social media presence throughout the course of this project we had a community survey that had over 1300 responses and we produced an interactive web mapping tool where people could who couldn't attend or meet with us in person were able to engage over 2100 comments and votes an email distribution list that went out to 11,000 newsletter subscribers in addition to local newspaper radio and media alerts a few images of our open houses here are most well attended one 90 people came to our july open house and the rink and valley library here on a warm evening we've also had two events of our pop-ups were in the low rosalind community we attended the welcome rosalind annexation event along with sinker demio festival both well attended spoke with hundreds of folks at those two events in rosalind this is just a snapshot of our online mapping tool we're very proud of of the results that we were able to get with this again reflecting what we heard in individual conversations but also folks that wanted to comment and engage from the comfort of their own homes in terms of board commission and council meetings nancy mentioned this before but eight bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee meetings they really were our steering committee and and we took a lot of direction from them as your representatives throughout this process three waterways advisory committee meetings a community advisory board meeting planning commission and here we are at city council tonight so the components of the plan update we looked at your existing conditions and needs that helped inform a vision and goals along with action policy steps we looked at programs and policies in more detail including ordinance change we developed recommended bikeways and pedestrian infrastructure along with proposed crossing enhancements and locations for trail bridges finally we went through a prioritization process with first phase and funding recommendations for how to get this project built in addition we have bicycle industry and design guidelines that help planning staff and engineering staff implement these projects down the road so for existing conditions and needs analysis we introduced a couple of new tools that were not in the previous plan including looking more closely at equity and low income communities in vulnerable populations we looked at level of traffic stress for the bicycle network and so this is looking at vehicle speeds presence or absence of bicycle lanes number of travel lanes that helped inform where places that maybe had or didn't have bike lanes but people felt uncomfortable located you can see a lot of red here on your arterials it's easy to put bike lanes on maybe lower volume streets but they don't connect with the destinations that people want to get to and so this was an informative exercise that we went through and then finally we created a high injury network and so this is where we're see the prevalence of severe and fatal injuries for your people that are walking and people bicycling in your community that also helped inform the location of recommendations and how we prioritize projects your vision and goals is broken into three separate goals to support this vision Santa Rosa is a community where walking and bicycling are comfortable convenient and common for people of all ages and abilities our three goals were to increase comfort maintain and expand the network and support a culture of walking and bicycling you have one that exists today it's very robust and there are hopefully ideas here to help support and expand that culture another key element that we were asked to evaluate was your status as a bicycle friendly community this is bestowed upon you by the League of American bicyclists right now you have the distinction of being a bronze community staff and the board asked us to evaluate and give an audit about how you can improve to silver and and beyond and so this is this analysis and evaluation went into that the good news is you're achieving on many levels of the criteria of what makes you a bronze community the key outcomes in terms of crashes fatalities and the ridership are what's keeping you behind and so hopefully through the programs and infrastructure that we've laid out here the next time you're up for evaluation you can get that silver or gold or platinum level status in the in the future at this point I want to turn things back over to Nancy to talk about a couple broad policy programs that we analyzed as part of this plan okay thanks Jeff so just a couple of things that are occurring in the in the plan that you um has not they have not been present in the currently current adopted plan so these are basically some new initiatives the first one on the left is the vision zero policy and currently the the council does does not have a policy that we we've adopted as a city and this would require us to look at a variety of things to make us where we are really reducing incidents of fatalities and crashes and Santa Rosa and it's a it's a heavy lift it requires resources from this from the city standpoint and it's something that the plan as jeff does as uh crafted it's it's it's a something that we are suggesting that that the city consider it's not recommending that we do adopt a vision zero policy so it's it's a little softer but we do recognize that this is something that as a city we may want to consider so that's that's that policy and the second one is the vehicle miles travel which is vmt and that's actually something that the city is going to have to address as we get closer to the 2020 deadline to based on the sb 743 and then now seek new sequel requirements to make that adjustment so that will be something that we'll do anyway as a city and again just addresses that that's something that we need to um uh further address oh and so one more so uh and i mentioned these um earlier just these are just some statistics and actually i was at a smart board meeting um a couple weeks ago and we are now they are now over a million uh passengers that they have served and they are close to a hundred thousand bicycles that have boarded the train so just just some statistics about their service and then as i mentioned we're going to be starting up a bike share uh initiative here in 2019 probably towards the end of the year and then that's Jeff great thank you so uh let's get into the heart of the plan recommendations hopefully you have 11 by 17 of the the maps or you've had a chance to look at them they're citywide maps and then we've also broken them into quadrants in the downtown as well so that's before you get there really fast i just want to make another announcement for folks who might have missed it since i'm seeing quite a few purple shirts filling into the into the room uh we are on item 15.2 we'll finish that take a dinner break and then we'll come back for item 14.1 and 14.2 and 14.3 so uh perfectly uh welcome to join us in this discussion about bicycle and pedestrian routes throughout the city but if you're here for item 14.1 uh we will be taking that after a dinner break okay go ahead thank you this table shows your existing network and what we're recommending so for class one which are shared use paths those are your typical trails you have a really robust network of already 30 31 miles we're consistent with the citywide trails master plan and we're expanding that 30 close to 39 new miles of off-street trails bicycle lanes another 49 miles of bicycle lanes we're adding a new distinction of close to two miles of buffered bicycle lanes so there's an additional paint on the road to separate bicyclists from moving traffic for class three bicycle routes another 35 miles of bicycle routes another two miles of bicycle boulevards so where there's traffic calming to reduce vehicle speeds and volumes on those roads and then a new classification from caltrans is this class four separated bikeways this is where you're creating a physical separation from the bicyclists and traffic on road on street uh but grades that level of comfort for for bicyclists and those 2.2 miles are unsurpassable for the pedestrian network uh trails serve dual purposes for people walking and bicycling so those uh repeat there but in terms of sidewalks filling in your sidewalk network 21 miles of new sidewalk projects and at the intersections uh proposed crossing enhancement locations 39 of them along with trail bridges 31 to make those trail connections more seamless the city themselves as traffic engineer will need to evaluate exactly the elements that go into these uh proposed crossing locations we have some suggestions that are in the plan but that will need to be looked at in more detail through a process of prioritization we looked at all the projects together and we looked at a couple strategic values that we wanted to make sure were reflected in this first phase projects that achieved safety and collision reduction were the highest priority in terms of the scoring criteria connectivity to major destinations employers comfort so again reducing that level of traffic stress out there for people bicycling closing gaps in your current network so that people can have a continuous experience getting from where they live to where they're trying to go and equity all right really prioritizing areas uh where you have some of the most vulnerable residents in Santa Rosa all that went into a process of identifying projects that were near term short term opportunities uh and then with staff input in the BPAP we created the first phase map things that need to be done in the next five years in addition we identified how to get this done so there are grant sources uh lined with different types of projects that we've identified in the plan and I messaged before that compingium is this is the bicycle pedestrian facility guidelines we've outlined the needs of walking and bicycling new advances and different types of treatments and inside the engineering toolbox along with typical applications and cost estimates for each of these types of new treatments and so that's there as well for staff to use as needed in the delivery of these projects and at this point I'll turn it back to Nancy thanks thanks Jeff so what I'm going to do with these next series of slides is is summarize the general plan amendments that were reviewed by the planning commission and then I'll report on the planning commission and then wrap it up with the recommendation so with that we're going to be amending a couple sections in the general plan related to bicycle and pedestrian facilities and as you can see there's a couple pages and I'm just going to go to the next slide so essentially we're going to change the number of designated bikeways from 180 to 242 per the plan that Jeff's team produced we're going to be adding three new bikeway categories it's called the bike buffered bike lane which is class 2b and then class 3b is a bike boulevard and then class 4 is a new facility which Jeff already mentioned which is a separated bikeway so those are new additions to the general plan and then let's see I'm going to go to add text from okay this is from the planning commission which was and there's there's quite a bit of verbiage to that and I'm happy to go over with that with the with the council but basically it's text to help the reader understand the criteria that we use to determine these bikeway categories that are in the plan and will be entered into the plan as part of this amendment and then the next amendment is just a designation of the number of miles that have been changed by designation and I'm happy to go through those but they're up there for your information and then this this item has to do with the criteria that we used to prioritize the bike and pedestrian project which Jeff mentioned so that will be a change to the current text on the general plan and then as far as the pedestrian facilities go essentially what we're doing is asking the council to remove the existing text and replace it with text from the plan update related to sidewalks pathways and crossings and trails and that information is in your packet and I'm happy to go over if there's any questions on that and then next I'm going to highlight some of the major themes that and recommendations that we heard from the the planning commission so the first one we heard quite frequently it was to hire a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator the second one was to review the plan update more frequently and the third was adopt division zero policy and adopt the vmt standard to evaluate traffic impacts and then lastly to add the text from the general plan related to the criteria to determine the bikeway categories which I just spoke to you earlier about so the first four are actually in the plan as it's currently written these are just stronger recommendations from the planning commission so I wanted to make that distinction to the council and with that I would close with the with the recommendation that not only the planning commission and the department of transportation public works request that the council by resolution adopt the bicycle and pedestrian master plan update 2018 and approve the general plan amendment so there's consistently consistency with the bicycle and pedestrian master plan and that concludes our presentation thank you so much councilor are there any questions so just a quick question on the switch from the traditional approach to the vision zero policy I just want to make sure does that change the city's liability in any way no that would be an aspirational goal of where you want the city to head great thank you so much I did hear from a couple of folks and had an opportunity to to talk with my appointees in particular there was some questions about the prioritization which ones how you made the determinations of phase one I do appreciate you walking through sort of those five criteria as as I heard them prevention of collisions high use connections comfort closing gaps on existing bicycle paths and equity my understanding is that you also might be bringing back the individual scores on those to the bicycle and pedestrian committee to for them to be able to see what those scores were for the prioritization is that correct so I'll answer part of your question and yes we have received the scores from the consultant team and those scores will be forthcoming to the bicycle and pedestrian board so I'll let Jeff talk a little bit more about the criteria I can pull up a slide that goes a little bit more into detail if that would be helpful by yeah absolutely and if it's helpful while you're pulling that slide out if I could ask you another question that I think to me is very much related can you talk a little bit about what in this plan rather than just being aspirational what is this plan actually in your view doing to help change the culture or the mindset of the community that biking is safe here in Santa Rosa right is it just the extension or the upgrade of the the types of lanes or do you think it's more than that I think this plan has a lot of early first steps that if council invests resources and the staff is able to find the grant funding can build a great momentum to build out some of these more aspirational more difficult projects trails and these class four separated bikeways will take additional study they have trade offs involved to create them you'll need to go back and kind of work with businesses and residents that may be impacted by them but they have great benefit in terms of creating safety and creating the types of facilities that we heard from with our survey that people currently aren't willing to even accept or try bicycling until there's more continuous connections that are off street or have these greater buffers between fast moving cars and their kids bicycling and so we hope that this plan sets the first stages of getting the ball rolling in that and if the staff thank you are able to have some early successes with what we've prioritized in the plan I think in the next update you can really expand and grow from there so this is I hope the the weather balloon of really getting that going it was there any type of a cost estimate for getting through phase one there was not a cost estimate done for all these individual because they require a lot of design that would go in and there's a lot of you could do a really cheap version of these class four with just paint and post and so we can provide that those were in the design guidelines in terms of individual ones but not applying it out to the whole project itself I think that we would probably not do a good enough job in terms of what the staff can already provide you and looking at projects on the ground and so I don't know if Nancy has other questions about the cost estimates but I think something staff is perfectly capable of right and we we've talked a lot about that and I think what what happens is could happen and it does happen is that plans get done and then they sit on the shelves and they have these cost estimates for individual projects which are outdated so we opted this time to just do a unit cost or something that was a metric that we could you know apply to a project as we as we move forward and we actually start building it so yeah I appreciate that and I appreciate identifying potential funding sources and grants that we should go after but if you wanted to talk prioritization go ahead just real quick this is a slide this is actually a graph these graphics are in the plan a little more detail step one was the priority evaluation so making sure that we evaluated projects that hit those strategic goals step two was looking at the feasibility so a technical evaluation of its complexity and so projects again that could be completed quickly brought a high score stripe signs and striping plans those are low cost items and staff can do that with a whole lot of delay and then there were more heartscape improvements trail projects maybe things that have to go through a secret process we'll need additional funding and study not to say that they don't also meet strategic values but taken together we wanted to have kind of a nice bucket that the city can choose from the scores I think important to mention is that we didn't want to list out everything in ranked order because that's not how staff we don't want to lock them in and say that they need to move down the list 100 through one there are opportunities that come about with repaving with private development and so we want to give them flexibility to move things around with staff and council direction and so hopefully the way that we come up with implementation categories gives flexibility to staff to the city to implement as those opportunities come about and as grant funding is hopefully successfully acquired. All right I appreciate that I do want to say thank you to the to the committee for including the Jennings crossing still on there as well as our continued support as a council on the bike bridge to go up in over 101. Any other questions from council? Council member Sawyer. Thank you vice mayor and this may be for our planning department but I'm curious and this this the this plan is is aggressive and visionary and and aspirational and I and I appreciate that in it but the some of these words are they are very um they're action oriented um the words adopt for instance and adopting the vehicle miles traveled the VMT standard what does that do to so I'm I am concerned about the expectation of the community when you put this into a plan what would that adoption do to the planning department's ability to process applications what how what is what does it do to the time that an applicant might spend in applying for a project for instance has that been determined and does it need to be discussed at all so I think that that's not necessarily a question for for Nancy to feel but again this is an aspirational document we're going to have to get into further conversations I wouldn't you know again we we've got a budget process coming up I see one of the recommendations is to hire a staff member I don't think that that's going to be our first recommendation we need to get financial sustainability under our belt before we can start to venture into that conversation but there's going to be opportunities to have that one but I I don't I'm not foreseeing a delay in project determination I think as as was pointed out there are elements here that would be um more that we have to have further conversations with the community about elements that are not unusual which is the separated bike plan but it would be new to our community so we would have to have further conversations about that but I wouldn't necessarily say there's going to be a huge burden as I look to the to to to economic planning and economic development to come down and and for finish this conversation thank you may I ask a question just one moment cast member combs I should uh I was derelict in announcing councilmember combs has joined the meeting as the voice from above we'll we'll come back to you in a minute Julie and if I may just for the record I will note that I understand that councilmember combs did join at the beginning of this item so she has been on the phone and listening thank you David Gu and I'm director of planning and economic development um reiterate what the city manager said we have been working closely with the transportation public works through this process um we do look at this plan like other plans such as a climate action plan they are long-term visions that we'll be working and incorporating into our process um as we move forward and and incorporating elements into the general plan process as well thank you all right councilmember combs go ahead thank you um I have two questions uh first let me appreciate staff for meeting with us in advance to talk about this uh project uh it's very helpful I talked with my um planning commissioner and my vice and ped representative I'm really pleased with the amount of community outreach and involvement I've seen so I want to thank you very much for that um it's not entirely clear to me if we're what the steps are that we need to take to get to the vision zero council policy can you clarify for me what steps we need to take for the vision zero policy well I'll make a stab at it and Jeff could maybe add a little bit um so my understanding it's going to it's a it's a very collaborative effort and it would um it would require some cross departmental you know engagement with our police department and particularly and it would be an effort that would um require some resources I think to be a successful policy that the city would um embrace so it's you know we we it would be a like I said an inter departmental group working with the community and of course our bicycle and pedestrian advisory board would have a probably a role in that so I I hope that answers your question thank you um I have uh an interest in the prioritizing as well um having since even before my council days um been working with a group called that involves safe routes to school and trying to ensure that the routes of children are a high priority also appreciate that in some parts of town we have people who must ride a bicycle in order to get to work um it is it I guess I'm I'm asking about how we're prioritizing but the list had equity at the bottom and that always makes me a little concerned and it had um I think vulnerable populations came I was surprised at where they came in the conversation and just wondered if you could clarify for me um how we're awaiting the priorities for equity and for vulnerable populations thanks okay great uh so again Jeff Knowles multiplying and design the other one I guess key point about schools and school safety uh on page 126 which talks about policy changes and our recommendation that's where you find the vision zero it's a recommendation to study these policy changes and so it's not obligating council at this time as Nancy mentioned it'll need to go through typically most cities go through and to build out their own vision zero strategy or plan and it's going to take a lot more conversation that we just didn't have the time and resources to devote within this plan but certainly something that we heard loud and clear there is another recommendation another policy school zone speed limits and this is something that the state now allows you to set new speed zones around schools and so there's a conversation about that there in terms of the prioritization around schools that was looked at in terms of our Haringey network again collision and reduction was weighted at the highest um equity along with the other scores of connectivity to destinations comfort um the other scoring criteria were weighted equally along those regards so safety at the highest and then the other ones were weighted equally among the other criteria where we looked at where you have vulnerable populations that was defined by MTC the regional body has criteria for developing what they call communities of concern which is an aggregate of many different criteria in terms of people's median household income the number of vehicles that they have access to um race uh they also look at migrant populations all these different they have nine different characteristics that go into these and they've identified three of these areas within center so we use those boundaries which include most of roseland as part of this area but kind of continue up along the western border of um of the smart path of the smart trail so those were factored in and projects that were within those communities of concern were scored heavier than other parts of the city and so that's how we helped prioritize those and give them a little more weight in the prioritization process great council member combs does that answer your question we we may have lost her any other questions from the council i will go to public comment i do have quite a few cards on this so i'm going to ask folks to limit your comments to two minutes so that we can get through it and get on to our additional long items the rest of the night first is bob gazer followed by thea hensel good evening my name is bob geiser i'm co-chair of the uh southeast greenway campaign committee well okay we very much appreciate the process and the fact that this update has been done at all and we participated quite a bit and we do support most of what you see before you in the the plan update we do have a few specific map concerns and requests in the greenway itself the greenway has been the southeast greenway has been designated as a class one route since nights since 2011 uh from hone avenue to spring lake park we this time around they we added on to the west over to the end of rail street class one designation excuse me about one moment we we've lost our quorum we actually haven't oh we have it because member fleming is oh okay and and may i confirm that council member combs is online again council member combs is online very good we have forum sorry bob go ahead continue okay our only request within the greenway area is to have the four street crossings and this it's class one path but it does cross four uh busy public streets we want these crossings designated on the map and this is one of the maps that staff showed you as crossing locations uh specifically it's called preferred crossing enhancement location uh these are blue dots on the map for each of these four major street crossings these are recognized in the eir for the project which is in the process with the planning commission right now each one is specifically indicated a separate mitigation measure with some design guidance so they are recognized as an inherent part of the project and the eir characterizes them as necessary to prevent pedestrian and bicycle safety concerns uh we are committed and to help fund uh the design and development of the greenway through all of our efforts to to get grants donations and other funding uh in order to assure the maximum funding from all these sources we need the the bicycle pedestrian master plan and the greenway project plan to be consistent so we're just asking for these said crossings these four street crossings to be designated we have some other concerns of other other of our members will address those thank you so much Bob thea hensel followed by eris weaver thea hensel representing southeast greenway campaign committee uh we have a few things that we want to mention the north end of the proposed taylor mountain regional park path which is new to us is at bennett valley road and it's just a few blocks from the west end of the greenway and we currently support this new route to taylor mountain regional park and southeast santa rosa however significant improvements will be needed on bennett valley road and farmers lane to allow safe movement of cyclists and walkers from the new path north through farmers lane to the southeast greenway montgomery high school and beyond at present there are no sidewalks on bennett valley road from the path east to the farmers lane intersection no north south crossings at that intersection and inconsistent bike lanes on farmers lane if you've ever tried to ride a bike there you know it's suicidal we therefore request that the master plan's maps of crossing locations designate preferred crossing enhancement locations at two places the first one bennett valley road at the north end of taylor mountain trail and farmers lane and the second intersection at farmers lane and neotomas and hoenn frontage road and i just want to say even though uh councilman soyer's not here i appreciate him asking drivers to slow down thank you so much dear eris weaver followed by roberta delgato okay eris weaver on the executive director of the sonoma county bicycle coalition there is a lot to like in this plan there were multiple opportunities for public input and the process of prioritization was really good a lot of the program and policy recommendations look like you could have just taken them right off our website i particularly agree with the planning commission recommendation to hire a bike ped coordinator even if that person was only part time your public works of transportation people have a lot of things to pay attention to having someone that that's their job makes it more likely that all that stuff will get done oh thank you um the plan has very ambitious goals for increasing bike ridership i am not convinced that the projects in the plan will move the needle that far education programs and better bike parking is not going to get someone on their bike if she doesn't feel safe on the street paint on the pavement is not magic and only one third of the project miles in the plan are the class one class four paths that are protected from cars we'd like to see more of those but my main concern are the projects that are in the section under first phase study stony point roseland college avenue these are high injury areas and what the plan calls for in those areas is to complete studies on them by 2040 a bicyclist was killed in san francisco on friday and today they have begun the process of adding temporary barriers to create a separated bike path on howard street where it happened their mayor has made a commitment to investigate collisions within 24 hours of the incident and then within 72 hours of that investigation to install temporary safety improvements that is what it looks like to take bike and pedestrian safety seriously to contend to 20 years to study a high injury network does not so i would urge you to amend the plan to include stronger more active in aspirational language to those areas i support the comments from the southeast greenway folks to make that path connect more safely to the rest of the city there were quite a lot of recommendations made by planning commissioner vicki dugin that i wish had made their way into the plan but um it's a great next step from the previous plan thank you thank you so much eras reberta delgado followed by hue helm my name is reberta delgado and in these comments i represent the southeast greenway campaign committee the last section in the comment letter submitted by our group and make sure you speak into the microphone please sure better the last section of the comments letter that was submitted by our group refers to the bicycle and pedestrian master plan proposes to ensure safe bicycle connections from spring lake park and montgomery drive eastward to highway 12 and oakmont the bpmp designates a class two bike lane on los alamos road between montgomery drive and highway 12 however the county has approved a study by the regional parks department of safer off-road routes between montgomery drive and highway 12 the several approved options go through property that could be developed which sites are inside the city of san erosa and cooperation of the city is thus required the bpmp has designated only one of these off-road routes to highway 12 and the designation is for future study this route is mostly on property between melida road and los alamos road currently owned by caltrans but also goes through two undeveloped parcels and a developed home site not owned by caltrans we have requested designation of a route potential development area west of los alamos road in keeping with a class one route option in the county study we are very concerned about the use of the future study designation that is applied to the off-road routes in this area and further east to two routes connecting channel drive to stonebridge road in west oakmont this future study designation is used to indicate routes where there is uncertainty and the need for further review while we appreciate these route designations as better than no designation at all we have to question the legal sufficiency of a future study designation when attempting to secure route easements or path installation from developers we wonder whether the city can require a developer to do anything with an uncertain designation for a given property if not we request that a class one bikeway designation be applied instead to the off-road routes to highway 12 and oakmont and we ask that this be addressed by the city attorney before any future designation of future study designation be adopted in the bicycle pedestrian master plan thank you thank you reberda hugh helm followed by elizabeth ridlington uh thank you mayor rogers and council members uh i am a resident of oakmont village uh chair of its community development committee and the point person for this bike plan uh i want to thank uh nancy and jeff for all and all our staff and consultants for their hard work this is a great plan it involves a lot of compromises and i hope you'll adopt it it includes the idea of trying to create some kind of artery or linkage that'll bring santa rosa and the sonoma valley together and in part what it includes is a route of course down through the proposed south east greenway and brings track bike and pedestrian traffic into the park but then it picks up after the park and routes traffic from agglomerate out to route 12 where it theoretically will pick up the new sonoma valley trail proposed trail and carry carry the people's uh eat to points east through that route there is a partial temporary detour of that route through oakmont uh of necessity because there's a dangerous section of 12 but we recognize the sensible nature of that and we're quite willing to accept that and we will i will do be doing my best to get our oakmont residents to welcome and and accept these cyclists through our community and we will also hope that the bicycle community will do its best to try to encourage its riders to obey the traffic laws and ride single file there's one glitch in that plan however and that's how you connect that south east greenway to that connection to this sonoma valley trail right now traffic has to go either on the dangerous section of mcgumbry which is east of mission or it has to schlep your bike over that uh flood structure that that goes between channel drive and mcgumbry uh what i what i'm disappointed in the plan in a little bit is that there's no greater emphasis placed on studying how to solve that problem okay i would suggest i'm only bring it up today because i hope i'll raise it in some people's radar so it'll be a little more thoughtful thought will be given to it but the either mcgumbry drive east of mission has to be widened because it's obviously has no shoulder and is very narrow and it's quite dangerous that's very expensive or my pet idea is that they should take that flood structure which is now a walkway that you can cross between channel drive and mcgumbry and turn that into a full fledged access point so you can have traffic pedestrians and bicyclists drive across it and then ramp down into mcgumbry drive and then easily go on out um elita or some route to 12 and then on to the sonoma valley trail so uh with that i appreciate your time i thank you for everything you guys do and uh i look forward to some good cycling take care thank you so much you elizabeth ridlington followed by nanona heavenland my name is elizabeth ridlington i'm a member of the bike and pedestrian advisory board and i'm here to ask the council to adopt the updated bike and pedestrian master plan in addition to improving safety and allowing people to be more active the plan is an important tool to help the city achieve its climate emissions goals one of the council's top priorities for this year is to implement santa rosa's climate action plan transportation is the city's top source of climate pollution and making up about 60 percent of total emissions in the city we cannot meet our carbon goals if motor vehicles are the only real option for how residents get around town yes emissions will fall as electric cars buses and trucks become more common but that's going to take decades we need to begin reducing emissions now and we can accomplish that by helping people drive less more residents will choose to walk and bike if the city increases safe comfortable and convenient options for doing so the bike and pedestrian master plan update is not perfect as you've heard in some of the comments but it's a vast improvement over what we currently have and it will help lay the groundwork for the steps that the city needs to take to make biking and walking more attractive for the city's residents in particular i think that the recommendation to hire a bike and pedestrian coordinator is very important along with adopting vision zero in the coming months so i hope the council will approve approve the update and support its implementation in the coming months and years thank you so much elizabeth menona hevelin followed by beth dad cow hi i'm menona havin i'm the current vice chair to the bicycle and pedestrian advisory board and have been working with um bicycle and pedestrian advisory board and staff and auto planning on the master plan update and i think it is um a wonderful document and out the planning and say staff have done a great job in updating the bicycle and pedestrian master plan i um urge you to adopt the bicycle and pedestrian master plan update however i also urge you to go one step further and to consider adopting very soon a vision zero policy for the city of san rosa i think this is important because although there are many recommendations in the plan for physical improvements in order to make the leaps and bounds forward that san rosa needs to make it more comfortable and safe for people to get out of their vehicles and walk and bike around town uh there needs to be more changes than just traffic engineering can do operating in a silo in their own department they need to be working with um uh the police department and with planning and with education and outreach and throughout the city to really set a strong um uh policy for improving safety in san rosa um i i say this because and between the last master plan and this one the bike network has increased 40 percent 115 miles of bikeways have been built but have that 40 percent more people started biking and walking no they haven't because they don't feel safe on the streets of san rosa between 2007 and 2017 more than 1200 people were severely injured um or fatally injured walking and biking in san rosa that's 10 people 10 people a month for every month of that decade that is a lot of people for the size of the city of san rosa the city of san rosa is below average in california for its safety um as we become a really truly bicycle and pedestrian friendly community we need to reduce these severe um and fatal injuries on our streets and that needs to be done in a more aggressive and comprehensive way through um policies such as uh reducing speeds um um making quick changes to the um infrastructure as um eris weaver indicated other cities are more nimble responding when an incident happens to really be able to change the dynamic at that intersection to make it safer um i am running out of time so i just want to say i also think hiring a pedestrian and bicycle coordinator would be a um very good move for the city of san rosa but i don't think you should wait to hire a new person to enact strong policies you could adopt this vision zero policy with no additional resources thank you so much menona beth deadco followed by christine dekter good evening um i have had the honor and privilege of being a member of the bike and pedestrian advisory board for the past 12 years and the last eight i believe is the chair and um i've recently stepped off the board i was um former council or member core c is appointee but it was very fortunate to help with the bike ped master plan update over the past 18 months and in my very early years on the v-pad i participated in the last update process that you saw was adopted in 2011 and i just there were many challenges during the last update process that made the timeline drag out and this time around i've been so impressed with the tpw staff but i want to really acknowledge nancy adams and rob sprinkle as well as our consultant also planning jeff nulls over there to prepare a very high quality plan with vigorous and meaningful community engagement that really stayed on the timeline i was i'm very proud of the plan and especially some of the new elements that are in the plan um we've been working on a set of design guidelines for years and so i was very excited to see these codified in the new plan and another new and important element is the analysis of how to improve our status as a bicycle friendly community and as you guys heard we're at the bronze level and and we have many of the things that it takes to get to sober or even the gold level but one thing that is holding us back are our injury and fatality rates for bicyclists and the b-pad we were really surprised when we saw our numbers and we were reviewing this and so we really feel and i i'm going to speak for myself i really feel an important recommendation is to consider adopting the vision zero policy with the goal to reduce bicycle and pedestrian fatalities and severe injuries and vision zero as you heard it's not a prescribed program but more of a lens of how we make decisions that impact traffic safety and i know um councilmember soyer just mentioned the last item that cars need to slow down and this policy could really help address that concern um the sonoma county department of health services and the sonoma county transportation authority recently applied for a cal trans sustainable communities grant to coordinate a county wide vision zero planning process and they'll find out very soon if they're successful and it would be really great to get out in front as a city and be a leader for the whole county or with vision zero the other big recommendation is to hire a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator to support bicycle policies programs and activities and one of the main things that this person could do would be to coordinate a vision zero effort so i encourage you today to schedule a follow-up conversation about vision zero and funding a bicycle and pedestrian coordinator and i believe it would send a very strong message to the community about the city's commitment to safety and equity and thank you so much for your time and everything you can do to ensure the successful implementation of the bicycle and pedestrian master plan update thank you so much beth and thank you for your work on the plan christine dekter followed by sieve burrell bow good evening my name is christine dekter i'm also i am still a member of the bicycle pedestrian advisory board and i wanted to offer my support for the new bicycle pedestrian master plan i'm excited about all the innovative solutions for our city and really look forward to the improvements for bicyclists and pedestrians but i'm also concerned as a mother and two and as a city resident who bicycles around about the high numbers of injuries and accidents in san aroza to bicyclists and pedestrians compared to cities of a similar size and i highly encourage the city council consider adopting a vision zero policy as noted in the master plan proposal vision zero's goal is to bring pedestrian bicycle deaths to zero yes that is lofty but that's better to m4 than one or two vision zero would benefit all bicyclists and pedestrians including the homeless population which i know the council sees as a priority and they also the population is disproportionately affected by these accidents thanks thank you so much christine steve burrell bell followed by shon ralston thank you vice mayor and members steve burrell bell with the transportation and land use coalition i'd like to talk a little bit about congestion every person that's on a bicycle or on foot is helping with the condition congestion issue 20 percent of residents are not drivers to the extent that they have to get into a car with their parent or some other person in order to get where they need to go we're contributing to congestion there's very likely to be a measure on the ballot next year to deal with issues of transportation the extension of measure m quarter cent sales tax i suggest that including a staff person who will make it his his or her responsibility to accomplish the vision zero vision would be a good thing to have in that measure the decisions that need to be made around safety and around bicycle pedestrian issues are very fine grained not to have someone whose whose salary responsibility is to carry those things out is missing a great opportunity so let's staff up for it and make sure that this plan gets implemented as quickly as possible thank you thank you steve shon followed by am sealy hi my name is a shon ralston i'm the chair of the bike pedestrian advisory board thank you vice mayor rogers my appointer councilmember oliveris council members alter planning and staff we love santa rosa and we love cycling in santa rosa as pedestrians and cyclists we're putting forward this update to improve the quality of life for residents and visitors by helping make walking and cycling more convenient and comfortable modes for actual transportation when working on this plan for the last 16 months we made sure to get input from city boards commissioners and extensively from the public even using high tech interactive maps online social media and good old fashioned low tech ground floor community meetings what's before you addresses public health collision reduction for pedestrian cyclists and automobiles equity across diverse geographies quality of life improvements and environmental considerations by removing greenhouse gases we listened hard to constituents across the board and we made a lot of compromises and accommodations we believe this plan update will provide attractive and safe streets for pedestrians and cyclists to help develop a modern citywide system of designated bikeways that serves both experienced and casual cyclists and really a safe convenient and continuous network of pedestrian sidewalks and paths that links neighborhoods with schools parks shopping areas and employment centers this is really an intentional plan and not only does this plan make sense but it'll help santa rosa become healthier and more fun so with that we recommend that you push that green button and adopt the plan and the general plan amendment thanks a lot thank you shan hand selie good evening council and selie speaking for concerned citizens for santa rosa i want to speak only about one matter and that is that i hope to confirm with you council and with staff that the community connector bridge is in the general plan amendment that is before you vice mayor rogers i appreciate you mentioning the city council's support for that community connector it is a very important element in improving access not only with the to and from the junior college elsewhere but to connect people to multi family housing on the west side of the freeway for people on the east side makes it a lot easier will improve our housing situation so please do confirm that that is in the general plan amendment thank you thank you and i'm seeing some nodding heads here from the the table uh this is a public hearing so if there's anybody else would like to speak on the item please go ahead and get up to the microphone sing none i'm going to close the public hearing i will bring it back to the council let's go ahead and first get a couple of these questions answered first and foremost was sort of an overarching question about input that came from the b-pad and from the planning commission can you talk a little bit about uh either how that was incorporated or what the process would be for having some of that incorporated into the plan so i guess i'll start with the the bicycle and pedestrian advisory board so um as jeff mentioned we had eight meeting sessions with them and we they they were our our cornerstone in terms of processing this plan and jeff's team really i think did a good job of of reaching out with the board members i think uh from a staff perspective there were in jeff mentioned this we have crossings and those those items tend to be very micro specific and they are they're represented in the plan but the plan doesn't get into the level of detail that um i think we heard some comments from board members about specific locations and and this is a network and and the plan i think the goal of the plan and jeff can chime in is to really make sure that we have connections and it's all about designations that make sense in terms of bicycle and pedestrian movement throughout the city so i don't know if Jess wants anything else to that and then if i could ask specifically along that line we heard from a couple of folks about the preferred crossing enhancement locations along the greenway are you saying that that sort of level of granular detail you would not expect to have in the plan so specific to the greenway so i'll talk a little bit about that so and i have met with the southeast greenway folks about their suggestion and jeff i think has added that those designations in the plan but to be more specific i think would be premature to say what what we want to put out there in terms of design you know what what type of bike and pedestrian facility do we really want to put out there because for one the council hasn't taken that item up yet for a discussion but assuming that goes through the the process with the council and the planning commission there there's going to have to be a excuse me a master plan that's developed for that southeast greenway assuming that it goes through all the approval process and the master plan may generate some other considerations for crossings um associated with how that land is developed because right now it's a blank sheet paper and and there's a lot more to to go through before we can say this is what we want to see out there so i think on that specific note i'll let jeff answer that but i believe the plan at least acknowledges those crossings but we don't get much more in detail into details we did incorporate the new connections there are four of these that i think were mentioned before north south connections that go lateral to the proposed southeast greenway it's the midblock crossing locations which would mean a wholly new designation specific to this one trail that's yet to be designed and so at a citywide master plan level um creating new designations for trail crossings at the midblock location we didn't fill was warranted especially since southeast greenway we'll go through a design process to determine exactly what Nancy mentioned the look feel and location of those through that design process and that will become incorporated with your approval as well before it goes into design so there's another level of detail to iron those so as the southeast greenway plan moves forward it would be consistent what is being proposed with what this plan calls for and in the planning commission and potentially council process is when that additional layer of the preferred crossing enhancement designation would come into play correct okay we didn't attempt to design southeast greenway that's gonna be a process that continues for time to come and there's a question about studying collision areas by 2040 high collision areas by 2040 and there was at least one commenter who talked about what other cities do was there any discussion related to process or recommendations to the city based on how we should respond on high collision areas only i'll just make a record or clarification about the study those are necessary because these areas what we've recommended we're going to require some trade-offs and so the vision zero program is such a paradigm shift in the way that and it really does start with mayor and council taking a political stance and saying we're going to commit ourselves to safety above our vehicle culture and so they're going to be trade-offs in terms of congestion in terms of potential on-street parking that are gonna have to fall away in enhancement of safety so it's a big conversation it's going to happen with your police department in terms of enforcement it trickles down to your entire city government and that's why it would be premature to just put this in the plan and expect you to adopt this and be in a meaningful way so it's going to have to be a long conversation about what that means part of that process could come up with rapid response like the city of san francisco is doing and hopefully we'll come out of that conversation if you afford in that regard the studies what we recommended here really outline the things that we think are most important stony point road is one that was brought up and we have seen kind of a unfortunate increase of collisions and fatalities there since even recommendation was made in this plan so through staff's own resources and direction from council that could be one that you don't need to wait to 2040 studies can happen immediately to start thinking about are there short-term solutions that can happen within the year and what's our long-term phase for how we're going to build this out hopefully I've answered that question yep thank you councilor are there any other questions hey councilmember flaming I believe you have the item I'd like to put a motion out that we adopt the bicycle and pedestrian master plan update 2018 and approve a general plan amendment consistent with the bicycle and pedestrian master plan second and is there any discussion I would like to say I think that there's been a pretty broad conversation here in Santa Rosa about what our responsibilities and our roles are in relation to climate change and I think that the aspirational goals of increasing our ridership and making our community less dependent on vehicles is not just something for us to shoot for but a moral imperative that we have to figure out how to hit I will be supportive of the conversation of figuring out how we get to vision zero I will be very supportive of a conversation about a rapid response in areas where there's collisions and we really need to figure out how we can do more to help get people on their bikes I will readily admit I used to absolutely hate when I would see bikers on the sidewalks in areas where pedestrians are supposed to be but when I started riding a bike around the city not only was I worried about riding in the street but also debris that might be in bike lanes when there was dedicated bike lanes and I started to use the sidewalk as well in certain areas I get it we need to do more in the city to change the culture and to change the perception of biking it's the only way that we're going to get to our goals when it comes to climate change we've got this great new train that I think is going to be really helpful for moving that forward as well it was mentioned earlier that smart is about to hit its 100,000 bike on board that's one out of every 10 riders on the smart train is closing that last mile gap with a bicycle and I think that it falls on us as a jurisdiction it's our responsibility to make sure that we are getting people to that train safely for them to be able to ride it so I'm very supportive of this thank you so much to the chair to folks who have worked on this plan for the last 16 months it is not easy doing a vision across the whole city I'm just really impressed with the work that's been done so thank you so much council your votes council member call do we have any comments and we have to do roll call I thought it was a roll call but I did want to say thank you to staff and to express support for the vision zero concept I know that a number of years ago the community advisory board wanted to look at collision intersect high collision intersections and I'm really delighted to see that we're moving that forward so thank you and I support this item all right and we will have to do a roll call vote with with council member combs calling in from Ecuador so master clerk go ahead uh vice mayor rogers hi council member combs yes council member fleming hi council member aloe vera's hi and council member tidbits that will pass with uh five eyes and council member soyer had stepped away I've mentioned a couple of times prior to going back to item 14.1 the council will take a quick recess I'll call it 20 minutes and we'll be back at the desk ready to move forward on item 14.1 we do have an overflow room also that is open that's across the way and down feel free to go in there it's uh it's warm it feels a little bit less jets versus sharks and so we'll we'll resume in a couple of minutes here we can hear you all right folks i'm going to bring us back thank you for your patience mr city manager item 14.1 item 14.1 report appeal of cannabis policy subcommittee decision to select highway retail outlet to move forward in the conditional use permit entitlement process for proposed commercial commercial cannabis adult use retail facility located at 470 Sebastopol road assessor's parcel number 044-072-008 file number c up 18-078 claire hartman leading us off all right thank you i'm uh like to introduce this item this is kind of the first of its kind for the city so i think it's uh worth going through how we got to this type of process which is quite a bit different than what we just uh accomplished in one of our hearings for a use permit on appeal the appeals before you tonight are they have not gone through their use permit process they it's an appeal to be selected to enter that process and so i want to start by talking about how we got here and why we created a slightly unusual process for cannabis retail and as i had mentioned earlier this evening we anticipated a lot of cannabis retail applications entering the city and we created a window of opportunity that was for two weeks last april and we did anticipate with the limitation of over concentration being you can't have more than one cannabis retail application within 600 feet we didn't want to completely process to knowing that they had a conflict with that over concentration clause so uh following the adoption of the comprehensive ordinance we realized we had sort of an urgency situation of what if they all come in in the same uh two weeks and they're all on top of each other there's several that are and so at the council's uh action action urgency ordinance was adopted to allow the department of planning and economic development to work with the cannabis subcommittee to come up with a program for intake and how we would wrestle with with that idea that they um applications came in at the during that same window but were within 600 feet which one would get to move forward in the use permit process so what you see on the screen here is essentially what that process map looked like and that is something that we developed staff uh with the cannabis policy subcommittee and the idea is some of this is customary to just the use permit process pre application phase where you're doing your neighborhood meetings and your due diligence as an applicant working with staff um to you know find out what they need to do to put in their application we had a window of opportunity we received 38 applications but um and then all 38 of those went through step three which is a completeness review because one thing that came out of this process um map was that we wanted to only move forward with first you had to be complete and if you didn't pass that then you're not going to get selected to move forward uh all of those that went through that process ultimately were deemed complete so then we had the next dilemma um but we have a solution here in this in this process guide and that is now checked for potential over concentration so um out of the 38 uh one was disqualified because they they were too late uh they were past the window of opportunity to apply uh I think it was 16 applications uh were found to be what we characterize as single applications meaning one application within the 600 foot boundary those moved on to the use permit process so much of that work has already been accomplished um with a few uh remnant uh or we're finishing up on those applications now but 21 out of the 38 fell into the other category multiple applications within the same area so again we were right they were on top of each other they were in the same industrial area or same commercial area and so what we had established and published upfront was this idea of a merit point based um ranking and selection process uh and we'll talk about uh how we went through that process and the result of that process working through the subcommittee uh which of course we included um the opportunity for an appeal uh but again just to highlight this is different because this is a selection process and what we wanted to do is come up with a basically a tie breaking process if they came in they were both complete they were within the window which would get to move forward and the uh essential premise of this process was some evaluative criteria to select the the better of the two if you will the most complete applicant the most prepared applicant um the one that is uh uh responded to the criteria that are outlaid um not the first come first serve so that it was a conscious decision to to do it in this way uh we may reconsider that moving forward but that was what was this this was about was what if they both come in um we would pick the better of the two the more complete the more comprehensive the more prepared and uh what you'll see tonight is it's been a challenging process uh because we got great applicants from great applications and so it became harder than we thought it might be uh so that's one thing that we learned but with that i'm going to turn it over to uh senior planner tummions and she's going to walk us through on this particular item thank you uh mr vice mayor and members of the council and christine tummions senior planner um this is a slide that uh summarizes what deputy director hartman just mentioned so the window of opportunity ended on april 20th 2018 for dispensaries to apply for a use permit applications deemed complete within that time period were evaluated for potential over concentration if they if certain locations are within 600 feet of another proposed retail location then they entered into a competitive merit point based review process planning staff identified a total of 21 applications in that track or representing seven areas of concentration you'll hear um appeals from two of those uh different concentration areas tonight the first one is two applications um one one of the areas of concept over concentration um on dunn and surpassable road the project sites are opposite each other um highway retail outlet applicant uh sorry that that slide is the arrow is pointing at the wrong uh applicant so phenotopia is the project to the north it's in that large shopping center the um retail um suite is in that first elbow along um the string of a retail tenant spaces and highway retail outlet is proposed to the south in its own um retail building so just to go over the review process a little bit um the city review team independently reviewed so it's a composite about of three reviewers and each reviewer independently reviewed and scored both applications individually against the four criteria that are identified in the cannabis use application retail use requirements and they assigned points based on each criteria and sub criteria uh resulting in a staff recommendation based on the highest ranking average score points were awarded based on the quality and extent that an application addressed the merit criteria uh staff findings and applicant proposals were presented to you the cannabis policy subcommittee um who then selected which applicants got to move forward in the conditional use permit process so here is um the reviewers average points um I broke it I broke it down into what each reviewer assigned as far as points it might be a little bit difficult for some folks to see if you could read off some of the scores I think that'd be helpful sure so um so for highway reach a highway 420 the average 65.4 average points um the average for local and state compliance was 12.3 um out of 20 uh site management average was 18 out of 20 neighborhood compatibility uh was 16.8 out of 30 the neighborhood enhancement was 18.3 out of 30 for a total average score of 65.4 to the right you'll see Pinotopia's average points of 92.4 for local and state compliance they scored 18.7 out of 20 for site management 19 out of 20 for neighborhood compatibility 27 out of 30 for neighborhood enhancement 27.7 out of 30 for a total average score of 92.4 uh councilmember tipp it's really fast you mr vice mayor can you just if briefly could you explain um how you weigh neighborhood compatibility and how somebody gets a high score or you or say that I guess I can ask you later if it's a long answer for a neighborhood compatibility so again if you look at the merit-based review criteria there are four sub criteria components um for example one is description of how the use will fit into the stability and quality of the surrounding neighborhood and so what for that um that subcategory the reviewers were looking at how well each applicant specifically addressed that point and how thoughtful um and uh and we were looking for quality responses to those answers so they had to address each and every sub criteria and they had to give substantive answers for a high score um another sub uh sub category would be demonstrate a clear and attractive entrance pedestrian orientation bike parking and access to transit so perhaps they didn't address one of those items they probably got docked a couple of points or half a point or depending on what how the review was scoring so that's that's basically how it's scored and as a quick point of clarification the three reviewers on applicant a they were the same reviewers blind on applicant applicant b yes so reviewer one is the same for applicant a and b same with reviewer two and reviewer three it's the same scores on november 14 2018 staff recommended to the cannabis polysubcommittee that the highest scoring applicant phenotopia move forward um after but after hearing presentations from staff both applicants and the public the cannabis policy subcommittee by motion ultimately selected highway retail outlet or highway 420 to move forward in the conditional use permit entitlement process which would it in effect void phenotopia and that red circle shows the 600 foot uh radius the buffer so here are the project location aerials just to give you some perspective so phenotopia is to the north it's in that shopping center and highway retail outlet or highway 420 is to the south and in a standalone building so here's highway retail outlet or highway 420 at 470 sabasco road a little bit closer a look at the site here is the site plan that was presented during their application process initially i believe they showed they were only taking up a portion of the building but i think at the cannabis polysubcommittee they stated they would take up the whole building but this is what the reviewers looked at when they were assigning scores here is a street view of that retail storefront or highway 420 or applicant a and then here's phenotopias project site here's an aerial of the shopping center you can see they're proposing to take up a tenant space kind of in that first elbow there here is their proposed elevations so with that the applicant or the appellant has six grounds for appeal and they had very lengthy detailed grounds for appeal staff's position for the most part is the reviewers were limited on what was submitted during that review process and the subcommittee was privy to more information that that was presented at the hearing and subsequent information that was presented beyond what staff was able to review and it's within the subcommittee's right to weigh all the information at the cannabis policy subcommittee meeting and therefore that's why we have this recommendation the city council's cannabis policy subcommittee recommends that the council by resolution deny the appeal and affirm the cannabis policy subcommittee's decision to select highway retail outlet applicant a to move forward in the conditional use permit process for a proposed commercial cannabis adult use retail facility located at 470 sabasco road and just a point of clarification if i may so that is how the process was imagined to work that one point of consideration the initial would be the completeness review and then this independent staff review against the established criteria that would be presented obviously that's a technical review and i think you use the term blind is very objective technical and i guess blind in a way that information is presented to the subcommittee and then the subcommittee weighs that as point of consideration but they can also hear and they did direct presentations from all the applicants in that concentration area and they can weigh that information but also took place is we allowed public comments at those meetings so they listen to public comments as well so the way the process was published and envisioned is what happened that it can take the totality of that experience and then make a recommendation after a discussion which is essentially what they did so but it also this process does allow for the appeal for the city council to check the work if you will and so that's why we're here tonight thank you so much miss hartman i'm going to turn it over to council member oliveris who chairs the cannabis policy subcommittee council member if you could give us a little bit of an overview of what the discussion looked like and how we ended up at the recommendation that we did on this item thank you thank you and i'll invite the other two to weigh in as well and thank you staff for attempting to clarify for everybody the process that we've developed over a long period of time because it is complex and we're here because it works this is this is part of the process and i think it's important for the other council members to understand that this is only a single stage they talked about the 38 applications that were brought in the 37 that ultimately would be moving forward in some direction 16 with no conflict so and then 21 with conflict because of the proximity to each other so it's important to note that the two applicants that are here today would be moving forward had they not been so close to together i mean it's part of the process and it's also important to note that again this is only a part of the process it does get some past the application phase now there are many many more phases that they have to go through potentially including planning commission and other bodies to move to move forward and that's that's important to note so and again in crafting the policy and how we would work this through it was not easy and i think we did the best that we could ultimately could things be different you have to be nice because one of the things that create that we created with this even knowingly was when there is a conflict you create this meaning there's conflict even within the industry and that's not something we typically see when we're dealing with land use issues you know having people in the same industry having to compete and that's where we are here today so for for this and again the the raiders within staff did their work based on the materials that were submitted to them that was a requirement again reviewing completeness and and complete and to the extent that they provided the applicants provided the information necessary for them to conduct their review process and they limited to that once it comes to the the the three members of the the committee yourself vice mayor and and council member Sawyer they have an opportunity to make a presentation to and again one of the things that i stress is the chair early on was to really focus on the areas if they're falling short focus on those types of areas where you feel that you need to build up some points or or provide more information reminding folks that they're not before the planning commission because sometimes we've got into too much detail we're really beyond our purview so in in this case that was done by both the applicants making a five-minute presentation to us so with power points lights pictures anything that they wanted us to consider in our final decision and again in this one you see the discrepancy with the scores from the initial phase was there was some difference there but based on the information provided during our review process there was not initially unanimous decision within our committee based on the information that was presented to us after some discussion we did come to unanimous agreement to approve to make the recommendation for approval knowing that we could be at this stage next meaning that again this is a part of the process to appeal and so i guess that's the process that we've went through and i don't know if the two of you have any any other specific comments to make before we move on to presentations through the vice mayor i think it's going to reiterate well said um councilmember oliveris i think it's worth stating again that the process and this competition process is clearly not one that we usually use with land use is really the the um the best that we could come up with at the time kind of flying that's building this plane as we were flying it and um no one liked i don't think anyone including staff there were there was no one that was cheering in the aisles around around this process because it is unusual to make land use into a competition and that wasn't as ultimately what happened that it was not i look i look forward to the day when we go back uh one way or another to a more general plan based process of decision making land use but it was it was a difficult process for all involved and i think it's important to to state that again i appreciate that councilmember and uh the the chair was very artful in describing how this conversation took place at the subcommittee level i think even looking around the room you can understand that this one was uh one of the more difficult conflicts for us to resolve i think the initial vote was one councilmember with one project one councilmember with the other project and one councilmember i i think wanted to duck and hide i'm not really sure what the vote was uh we did ultimately decide to uh send uh applicant a as a recommendation with reservations and understanding that we are going to have this conversation with the full council uh here today um i think it needs to be acknowledged that as you saw the application intake period ended almost a year ago and we are very aware that a lot of folks have been holding properties for that amount of time trying to come out of the black market and be legal and that we needed to do what we could to expedite and move things forward so that's where we are as we sit today uh the recommendation coming from the subcommittee is for applicant a and it is an appeal by applicant b phenotopia and what that means is with six council members here today it will take four council members to flip the recommendation or to uphold the recommendation in the event of a three to three tie the original decision from the subcommittee will uh go forward applicant a will move forward uh if a three to three tie so i just wanted to make sure that everybody understood uh what the potential outcomes are here today uh with that we will go to the appeal oh well yeah go ahead council member thank you um so one question i have is this revolves around certainty you know the city council and the city of santa rosa goes to great lengths to provide investors in our community with regulatory certainty so getting into this process i mean i admit that i'm not completely well read on it to the extent that the subcommittee is but when when two applicants buy or lease to secure a long-term commercial lease in an area next to another applicant do they know from day one that they're going to end up here in front of seven people to determine the fate of their investment and their labor is this a high stakes poker game or is this a lack of understanding that it could end up here and i i pose that question to staff and i also will ask the applicants that when you get the chance to speak because to me i'm struggling with this con over concentration part of the policy and i'm sorry to armchair quarterback because i know particularly how much time and effort you all put into that policy and by and large it's fantastic um we we were pioneers in the field in the state of california and i think that's important but i think it's also important recognizing that that we're going back and making adjustments because the last thing i want to do is have anybody any investor especially if they're a local investor who spent a year's worth of time and money on something to lose that opportunity at the whim of seven people or four um so with that could you answer that question if i may weigh in um tonight we're looking at the appeal uh under the current ordinance so the issue of potential amendments future amendments to the ordinance is not has not been agendized and so it's not not before you tonight well but i i do need an answer to that question because it is going to impress upon the decision i'm about to make if i understand correctly i believe the council member is asking if there's an ability for the council to waive the council policy tonight or if we have to make a determination tonight and then move forward potentially with a discussion about a policy change right there there is no opportunity to change the policy the 600 foot setback tonight that has not been agendized and it's not before you this evening this evening we're operating under the ordinance as it is drafted but i'm also asking is about the regulatory certainty so do these applicants know when they applied in that two-week period that they're they're about to secure a commercial lease and put all this investment into a business next to somebody that they're going to compete against a year later do they know that um this process was laid out in advance of the application period so um and it was the subject of uh at least a couple public hearings as my my recollection are or public public meetings on the shape of the ordinance and the shape of this process uh in implement in implementation of the ordinance i just want to reiterate um that yes uh it was of the utmost importance because as you know we're going through a lot of process improvements and cultural improvements with the city it's very important um to create that predictable um application process because there is a lot at stake there's a lot of um uh resources and properties being tied up so uh we work through even while we were working through the preparation of the ordinance we knew something like this was emerging and so that was part of the public hearing process even when we were developing the ordinance but the um the deference was provided for staff to work with the council policy subcommittee to come up with this program and to publish it in advance of the actual intake and we had quite a bit of discussion with this industry and they wanted this process because they did not want the lottery they did not want the first come first serve date and timestamp there's drawbacks to all the processes this is the one that won the day in terms of what they wanted what we all didn't really realize is that it was challenging because the competition everybody up their game and uh that's what brought us here again i i really do applaud your work and particularly when looking at your evaluation criteria it's amazing to me how much work does go into this so please believe i am not questioning the efficacy of that but again my question more specifically is if applicant a jumps in in that two week period and they get they're they're in the hopper and then applicant b walks through the door does it do you let applicant b know that applicant a is 400 feet away we did when we could so once the application period was closed it was a two-week period we i think it was that a day once it closed i uh posted a map on the website so that everyone could see where all the applications fell even the one that was untimely and was disqualified we put it all out there okay thank you and and if i can clarify i know i referenced a couple of times the ordinance i do understand this was a policy that was adopted uh in order to implement the requirements of the ordinance the other questions for staff okay we will go to the appellant presentation 10 minutes from phenotopia can everybody hear me yep good evening vice mayor and members of the council thank you for having us here this evening my name is blaire gu I'm an attorney from rogway law group and my firm represents phenotopia the appellant in this matter as you know we're here tonight because phenotopia applied for a storefront retail permit for its location at 443 dotten avenue in roseland and despite being awarded the highest score in the city's merit-based review process was not selected to move forward in the c up process our hope is that taken in conjunction with the original application materials and the new documents that were submitted on appeal what you hear tonight will assure you that phenotopia is the appropriate applicant to move forward at this time i'd like to invite the owner of phenotopia padrick fehy and his wife rosy fehy along with phenotopia's community liaison lizzette darkos up to say a few words good evening council members thank you for hearing my appeal my name is padrick fehy and i'm a 14-year resident of santa rosa i'm the applicant and owner of phenotopia the proposed cannabis retail business in roseland as a business person i strive to be the very best at whatever i do in preparing the business plan and application for phenotopia i engage top local professionals in the field one of our highest priorities is to be compliant with the complex city and state laws we go above and beyond as seen in our sustainability plan and our community benefits plan with the help of our diverse team our proposal was awarded the highest score of any competitive application we continue to work to make our business plan even better not only for the surrounding neighborhood but for our community at large we recently signed a labor peace agreement with the teamsters and have committed to vocational training and will work with the teamsters for an apprentice program at this time i would like to introduce my wife to discuss more about herself and our community involvement good evening i'm rosy fehy 19 years ago i fell in love with a diverse and welcoming community shortly thereafter i decided to call the city my home our children were both born in sutter hospital on shunate and currently attend public schools here we are proud active members of our community padrick is a dedicated coach for local youth sports and i am an active volunteer at our children's schools we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the community of roseland for their overwhelming support tonight i'm also pleased to announce that we are pledging five percent of our profits to vocational training charities and non-profits that benefit the roseland community i urge you to support finotopia and now i'd like to introduce lizette the arcos gracias rosy buenas tardes soy lisette arcos la enlace comunitaria de finotopia estoy aquí para hablar de nuestras relaciones comunitarias in rosland now in english i'm lizette arcos i'm finotopias community liason and i'm here to talk about our community relations in rosland i grew up in rosland i attended shepherd i attended center was a middle i attended center was a high and most recently i was the acting deputy town clerk at the town of winsor having grown up in rosland it is incredibly meaningful to bring this business to our community for over a year we led a bilingual community outreach effort which meant having one-on-one conversations with many business owners and community members in rosland we are honored to have received over 250 letters of support which are from local community members from business owners and industry leaders and this also includes overwhelming support from other businesses in the dungeon plaza we credit our high degree of community support to the community giving program and the vocational training pledge even though we are not operational yet we have already donated to caps the boys and girls club and we're also planning to donate to homeless reduction organizations that work in the area i would also like to highlight our diverse inclusive hiring practices we will actively promote all of our recruiting efforts within rosland to elicit applications from the community we serve this will ensure that our team is made up of individuals who are personally invested in the improvement of our community we also acknowledge that rosland is primarily Spanish-speaking and we are committed to maintaining a bilingual team through our engagement in rosland we heard that rosland would benefit from having vocational training we are pride we are proud to offer this in hopes of working with the teamsters and other local organizations that are dedicated to developing rewarding career paths we believe that today's vocational training participants will be tomorrow's cannabis business leaders thank you for your time now blare we'll talk about our formal appeal thank you as is i think as a parent phenotopia will be a local business run by local residents for the benefit of the local community and we'd like to highlight some of the reasons why we think phenotopia is the best fit for rosland with the score of 92.4 phenotopia is not only the highest scoring applicant in the city's merit-based review process but also the applicant that planning staff recommended to move forward in the c up process here phenotopia's application not only scored 27 points higher than highway 420s but also received higher marks in each of the four areas evaluated by planning staff such a high score differentiation demonstrates the superiority of phenotopia's proposal in all areas one of the reasons phenotopia is the better applicant to move forward is because of its proposed location and how it will benefit without interfering with the other local businesses around it phenotopia's proposed location is in the rear corner of dutton plaza one of rosland's main shopping centers although being in a shopping center was framed as a detriment at the subcommittee hearing the benefits of such a location are actually quite clear and are depicted by the city's willingness to permit other cannabis dispensaries to exist in similar shopping centers in the city one of the major benefits of having phenotopia in the plaza is that it will expose more customers to the neighboring businesses and create more convenience for local consumers another significant benefit of having phenotopia in the plaza is the security it will bring not only to the plaza itself but also to the trailhead to the joe ridota trail which runs right behind the shopping center during its community outreach phenotopia learned that existing businesses have current concerns about the shopping center and its security if permitted to operate phenotopia will not only work with the other businesses to create a site safer environment but will also have 24 hour security cameras and will provide a security officer to patrol around the entire plaza and the rear of the building by the trailhead to make sure that safety of the businesses customers and community members is a priority as a part of the dutton plaza business family phenotopia's customers and employees will utilize the shared parking lot as shown in the parking study that was submitted by phenotopia there is more than enough parking available to accommodate phenotopia's employees and customers and based on the photographic jones study that was completed over seven days there were on average 78 parking spaces available which is close to half of the spaces existing around the entire plaza thus that in plaza provides more than adequate parking and as planning staff noted in its review presents no ease of parking concerns additionally phenotopia brings with it a highly qualified management team that is dedicated to running a compliant business padrick fahey who you just heard from phenotopia's founder and ceo is not only a family man and a longtime resident of san aroza but he also comes with 20 years experience in the cannabis industry padrick began working in small with small cannabis cultivators in 1996 and worked hard to become an innovator in large-scale cannabis cultivation facilities by both designing and managing them additionally padrick spent five years as a buyer and supply chain consultant to numerous compliant storefront dispensaries now to supplement his experience padrick has retained johnny nolan as phenotopia's c o o with over 14 years of leadership experience in the cannabis industry which includes serving as vice president of operations for both spark and peace and medicine johnny has extensive experience managing two of the bay area's most successful storefront dispensaries phenotopia's qualifications and storefront retail experience are actually in stark contrast to that of highway 20 whose owners have at most three years experience in the non storefront cannabis space and based on information obtained after the subcommittee hearing may not have represented themselves entirely honestly in this application process not only is there evidence that highway 420 continued to operate in 2018 without a state license which is a violation of state law mr. Miranda's criminal background which involves a 10-year prison sentence related to trafficking methamphetamine a violation of a court order by unlawfully re-entering the city of santa rosa and assaulting one of its residents and being held in criminal contempt for lying to a judge shows a history of making misrepresentations to law enforcement and the court a pattern of conduct that seems to have continued in this application process for example his bio and highway 420 c up application states that after high school he worked for a local contractor until 2008 however this this claim is a little bit difficult to understand because according to the commutation documentation provided by highway 420's mr excuse me highway 420's representative mr. caston and which was confirmed by the nada navada department of corrections mr. Miranda was actually in prison from 2004 to 2010 what's important to remember here is that this is a process to determine who the most qualified applicant is to serve the roseland community in conjunction with the qualifications that were previously discussed phenotopia has a more detailed and expansive public benefit plan as community community liaison lasette to arco snowed it earlier phenotopia's plan includes a dedicated bilingual community liaison which she is continuing its existing community giving program instituting thank you so much hiring process and working with the teamsters thank you thank you council are there any questions for the appellant okay we will go on to the selected applicants presentation mr. caston you have 10 minutes all right thank you members of the council again for the long night and all the work you put into this and the staff and for everyone who turned out tonight i want to echo the statements that this is definitely a process that has caused division not just within the community of the cannabis industry but also within my own community of roseland i think it's good to hear that there is process going in the other direction but unfortunately we do have to move through tonight and i encourage you to select the selected applicant highway 420 i took a screenshot of their chart and we'll attempt to respond to a number of things are brought up today and as a part of our process we wanted to be available to respond to your concerns but i think it's important to know that this process is a very challenging one it's one that has resembled more of a political campaign than a land use permit we've seen our supporters offered jobs to change sides gift cards and compensation other types of compensation offered for to folks to support our posing application the ethics and integrity of our professional team attacked and these are not the types of things that we are accustomed to in land use process and i look forward to the day where it doesn't happen there have also been many things said against one of the owners of this process project mr moranda all relating to an incident in 2001 at the age of 18 where he made some bad decisions and had to eventually be rehabilitated and work through that process we haven't had the time to fully gather the complete record from the state of Nevada to respond to those and did request a continuance in the event that that is information that is important to the final decision of important note is the transcripts from the commutation hearing where the sentencing judge made the motion to commute to his sentence as a part of his involvement in tutoring other inmates and actually churning his life around leading to the entrepreneur and father he is today we also should note that the majority owner William Garcia who's here today and will be speaking in public comments has a long and successful business career without any blemishes that haven't been brought up at all by the other by the appellant and you know it's incredibly unfair to have these elements that aren't listed in the code for consideration brought up the day before this hearing was supposed to be scheduled and not within the 10 day period of the appellate process so please note that our request if that information is important to you stands for continuance this is a project that is fundamentally going to be looking at a land use permit the operator at the end of the day may stay there may not stay there for the future in future iterations of of the business operations as a land use decision your chosen applicant has a standalone building an option to take full control of it and support from his neighboring business he actually has support from all of his neighboring businesses which you've heard both through comments at the subcommittee and through letters that have been submitted to you the building in addition to having ample dedicated parking solely for the building's use also is adjacent to the sidewalk creating a more walkable and accessible environment and that is something that's been called for for a long time within our land use processes and general plans it's something that we worked on diligently 10 years ago to incorporate additionally while the applicant misunderstood or sorry well the appellant misunderstood our traffic study as being something related to parking we hired and engaged a professional third-party traffic engineer to look at this project before the process even started to make sure that the traffic impacts would be less than significant which is another feature that is unique to the highway for 20 application and shows its viability as a land use application when we look at community benefit this is the only 100 latino owned cannabis dispensary proposed in the city this before you is supported by leaders it is supported by leaders including willy tamayo who is an active member of the roseland community both with the lc allen foundation and his role as a business leader it has the supporters neighboring businesses and it has the support of the hispanic chamber of commerce it brings a vocational training center with an actual facility that was proposed in the original application into roseland as a part of its local hire plan the local hire plan connected to that training facility is intended to create a connection so that local jobs are available to people and they're able to get the training to fight for those jobs which is very important because if you just post and hire locally then you're not able to actually necessarily qualify for in the local community so we wanted to provide the training and the hiring locally this training center is going to be run by a non-profit organization many of the board members are here today and what you will hear from them and that includes representatives from the hispanic chamber of commerce the teamsters local industry leaders local hiring experts it is going to be an actual facility meant for roseland and it was proposed from day one in the application process also as an existing business highway 420 is able to have it has maintained its employees albeit not growing and because of that has been able those employees have been able to work with the teamster 665 they have elected to pursue unionization and there is an election pending for them to join teamster 665 in that arrangement teams are 665 would be providing and monitoring the compliance with all health benefits being able to provide pensions and all the other benefits that go along with that fundamentally I asked you to reject this appeal for a number of reasons not the least of which is when we go back to the scoring that staff focused on there were a number of things that were inaccurate and presented in a way that I think led staff to misinterpret the original elements of the first application as it went into the subcommittee first and foremost what was presented the subcommittee was the fact that many of the high scores for neighborhood enhancement and community and community benefit were in part because of an outreach campaign where many of the supporters thought they were supporting our project and submitted letters saying that they had been misled and testimony that they've been misled to support phenotopias project that was a fact that was presented by the people that had signed phenotopias outreach support letters thinking that it was our project in their presentation today they presented inaccuracies that are easily verifiable they claimed that we'd never committed to bilingual staff that is written in our original application as submitted I'm pulling it up here they claimed that we didn't ask offer a specific local hiring plan our vocational training plan was in there from day one in order to create that direct loop they claim that we don't have a community benefit program on site I I don't even know how to um how to respond to that I mean it's it's from day one it's been a large part of this conversation it's troubling to see all these inaccuracies go back and forth because as I said all of this really truly resembles a political campaign more so than it resembles a land use process and when you take it all away when you take away the issues around 18 year old convictions that have nothing to do with state licensing when you take away the support whether it's been community organized through connections or or rallied through um you know the processes that we've seen which are really disturbing it it's still a land use decision an individual building directly on the street with a traffic study saying less than significant dedicated parking walkability that is what you're voting on today is who gets to go to the planning commission for a conditional use permit and I would submit to you that highway 420 as an operator has operated in the past compliant with absolutely no complaints when it was operating under the 215 model and after closing down operations despite the screenshots that conveniently cropped out the big temporarily closed sign on weed maps um and left you with just the impression that the advertising was up there there was no operations there's no factual record to support it other than the end to end though and screenshots that were essentially doctored and put into the record this project highway 420 deserves the opportunity to move forward to the planning commission as roseland resident and an advocate for this project I ask you to let the 100% latino owned business that's been locally operating that has existing employees that are pending for a union election to go forward thank you for your consideration tonight and I'm available for any questions thank you mr. caston council are there any questions for the selected applicant seeing none we will go to public comment on this item folks we have quite a bit as you can probably imagine looking around the room I'm going to ask you to keep your comments to a minute and a half so that we can get through this quickly I also think for myself and potentially for other council members it'd be very helpful for me if you would let us know if you are from roseland what part of roseland you're from and then also as is typically customary in our chamber if you're being paid to be here we would like to have that information as well so with that we'll start with David Morton followed by Jose Gomez council member Sawyer has also pointed out and I think it's good for us to go over some ground rules for folks who are new to the chamber to try to make sure we get through this quickly and that folks have an opportunity to be heard don't applaud instead if you'd like to show your approval wave your hands so thank you folks go ahead David my name is David Morton I'm a long-term Sonoma County resident and live adjacent to roseland and frequent area on my bicycle common very familiar with the redevelopment and issues going on there I think that's phenotopia should be given go ahead and forward and you should accept their appeal I feel that they're a very good cultural fit for the roseland area as seen by their exemplary outreach to the last year and their commitment to bilingual services I think their commitment to sustainability is the best plan of any of the that I've seen and that they have a very detailed plan that's in is good for our community in our county finally they are committed to reinvesting in the community I see my other five percent commitment of profits that they're going to reinvest in also the job training and finally I think following your own process that you laid out and following the merit scores is the most best way to go and that they're the most deserved candidate and you should basically select phenotopia over highway 420 clearly thank you very much thank you mr morton jose Gomez followed by ben for ferriva hi my name is Jose Gomez and I'm from Roseland and I've been here for 20 years and all I want to say is that you know we are also a Latino community and phenotopia you know to me it's one of the best candidates and I would like to move forward with that thank you thank you you mr. Gomez mr ferriva ferreira thank you thank you hola hello my name is Ben I'm a Brazilian musician student of music and audio we're in Roseland neighborhood uh about the cook middle school uh Lombardy Lane I believe it's important for the community that the dispensary is pre-occupied with the people too and that's of course the effort they make to attend and have the best information to all in Spanish and in English uh what does it mean to all of you in your language also phenotopia has an open house so that everyone who is interested can see dentro de la dispensary o que significa transparencia en sus acciones gracias thank you and if you would serve uh if you could uh summarize your comments in in English if you would for folks who don't speak Spanish as well yes uh so what I said that I believe it's important for uh for for the community that the dispensary uh concerns also with the persons with the people and that's uh clear when you look at the effort that they're making and to have the best information for everyone in English or in Spanish no matter what language they speak and besides that that phenotopia has a open house uh but for this way anyone that is interested can uh look inside the dispensary and know how they work and that means transparency in their actions great thank you so much thank you Mitchell Thompson followed by Tammy Rackham good evening I'm Mitchell Thompson I'm not being paid to be here um I'm here actually really just because I really want to talk about my friend Johnny Nolan who is the COO of phenotopia so obviously I'm here in favor of phenotopia um and Johnny and I started work together uh quite a long time ago uh when we helped start peace and medicine together with another with a small group of very like-minded progressive individuals Johnny Nolan started as dispensary like a patient consultant and he was our purchaser I did our member services and over the years he rose to become our general manager and then ultimately after when he left this peace and medicine spark family he was their vice I don't know what you were you were he was a big deal and he was the one who led spark and peace and medicine through the whole change between medical use and adult use and so he knows this stuff better than anyone so why why not hire that person who really knows their stuff that's why they scored so high I'm confused by some of these things but really I still Johnny is the perfect man for this for this neighborhood his non-profit caps just had their puzzle feed at uh rosin elementary school and it was huge and that was partly in due to Johnny's work so I'm sitting here uh trying to figure out why a process that clearly states it's based on the points and the merits and and the skill and talent and the beautiful fit with the neighborhood is going to be passed over thank you very much thank you mr. Thompson tami rackham followed by julie mercer ingram hi good evening my name is tami rackham and I just wanted to address something that I wasn't going to I don't think this is just a land issue this is a community issue and there is a lot of passion behind this and I am going to say my statement now but I am kind of wanted to put that out there that this is more than just a land issue or a permit this is a community that's at stake this is a business that is coming into a community and I think it is important to look at it like that and not just a straight land business deal again my name is tami rackham I am from sonoma county grandparents cousins nieces nephews generational I've been able to raise a son here I have a big passion for sonoma county um I'm feel blessed to have grown up here and I'm here to tonight to express my support and excitement to have phenotopia in roseland area there are a number of reasons I chose the phenotopia I did my research and it came to the conclusion that out of the applicants phenotopia in my opinion is the best so I am not surprised that their scores were as high as they were um they are obviously the highest rated applicant they have done their due diligence in connecting with the local people identifying the needs of the community phenotopia has already made and taken many steps to improve the lives of the people in and around the area thank you miss rackham you're welcome julie mercer ingram followed by linda frisbee good evening council members my name is julie mercer ingram i'm an attorney at kind law in san arosa and I represent highway 420 and mr maranda as legal counsel on this project for the past several years I have seen how hard the team has worked to develop a compliant tail facility and our team will continue to be involved to ensure that they're as compliant as possible moving forward to my knowledge the city of san arosa has not inquired into or evaluated any criminal history for any cannabis operator seeking permits under the current ordinance criminal backgrounds are not a factor for obtaining permits in the merit based process um process criminal backgrounds have not been evaluated for any other retail application mr maranda should not be singled out for and evaluated different from other applicants moreover mr maranda's criminal background will not be an impediment to licensure in my opinion state law mandates that cannabis license fees criminal background information as owners however the law requires licensing agencies not deny a license based solely on prior criminal convictions related to controlled substances not just marijuana all control substances in fact the state must consider the owner's evidence of rehabilitation in their final resolution of the permit of the license application while mr maranda made some mistakes whom he is young he has moved on and developed a beautiful family and a contribution to the community that should not be ignored i urge the council to only to look past these allegations and marine of my client and to unanimously uphold the unanimous decision of the subcommittee thank you julie and i will just for folks who are hearing the overhead noise we do have councilmember combs who was calling in from ecuador we mentioned that earlier her connection may be a little bit spotty at times but she is connecting and back on so linda frisbee followed by vick castrow good evening i am linda frisbee from labor resource management i have been doing teamsters payrolls for over 25 years from san francisco through sinoma county san aclara san jose denver colorado all over the united states when i was told about this i have just moved santa rosa uh year and a half ago my business and patrick and i talked and i am certified with the state of california in the cannabis industry i do compliance i do hr besides payroll i stay within the union contracts and this is what patrick wants he wants to give back to the community wants to give skilled labor he wants people to have benefits he wants people to have pensions he he is very involved and i really think that everybody needs to think about that because he is bringing forward skilled labor in this business and i think we need a lot more of that in san rosa thank you thank you linda vick castrow followed by tim martin my name is uh victor castrow from uh labor resource management as well i'm the compliance officer and i was not paid to be here i drove from san francisco i work with the san francisco equity group in cannabis and um the compliance officer for labor resource management we have a long-standing relationship with the teamsters and i see uh the company finitopia as an opportunity for a sustainable company that will bring uh merit to the community uh jobs you know for people to be able to put food on the table i think is very important in these tough times and i look forward to uh the council members and the vice mayor to please reconsider and to look at the process that was done i mean if you go by just scores alone it would we wouldn't be here but obviously there are different mechanisms in the in the way that things are done here but i'm just respectfully asking that you reconsider and give this company a chance to bring something to the community thank you thank you sir tim martin followed by ashley nelson hi i'm tim martin i'm from rosin recently relocated to bernard park california um we need businesses like phytopia who care about the environment and energy conservation as equally as they care about providing quality compliant cannabis to our residents finitopia substantial substantiability plan shows they will put a great deal of effort enhancing dutton avenue plaza by focusing on efforts regarding energy water soil ways and pollution prevention finitopia outreach efforts by the owner and the team alone prove care about the community the fact that the pardon me thank you very much thank you so much ashley nelson followed by chris haze and folks if you could be respectful of the the presenters we'd really appreciate it thank you hi my name is ashley nelson i was not paid to be here i just wanted to take a couple of minutes to talk about johnny nolan the coo of finitopia i have been working with and learning from johnny nolan for eight years first at uh peace and medicine dispensaries in sabastopol and san aroza and later at spark dispensaries in san francisco after the company's merged johnny hired me as an entry-level employee and over the following years i worked my way up from that entry-level position to become a supervisor in the dispensary and then the dispensary manager and then the operations manager and ultimately became the operations director for spark we'd gone from employing a handful of people to over 100 full-time permanent employees i think we all know that not all bosses and not all companies are interested in promoting from within developing staff and creating positive workplaces many companies are only interested in the bottom line but johnny nolan is a skilled operator with a proven track record of success at other local cannabis dispensaries who is also dedicated to compliance and to the community that he serves any company with johnny at the helm will provide more than jobs to the community johnny creates companies programs and systems that lead to meaningful employment personal development and long-term growth opportunities for people i know because i am one of the people who learned from him and benefited from his skill set and dedication to developing his employees i recently moved on from spark and i'm now the chief operating officer of a new permitted manufacturing company in sabastopol that is prepared to work with phenotopia should they get their permit please grant the appeal to phenotopia we will all do well with their participation in the industry and the community thank you for your time thank you so much chris haze followed by shivan brady folks again if you're going to have conversations please step outside hello my name is chris haze i've lived in sonoma county for more than 25 years i'm the ceo and the cultivation director for justice grown here in santa rosa i'm here to speak on behalf of johnny nolan johnny and i worked together at peace and medicine and spark for over seven years i joined peace and medicine almost 10 years ago coming from the industry i'd seen a lot of unethical unethical business practices the thing that attracted me to peace and medicine was the integrity they brought to this industry during my seven years with them i learned johnny was the backbone of that integrity and it was my honor to work with johnny nolan as justice grown works towards opening our own permitted retail location i know that legal adult use operators need to work together to maintain the high level of integrity and ethics that people like johnny have brought to this industry for close to two decades please grant the appeal to phenotopia i'll be happy to work in santa rosa with johnny and phenotopia thank you thank you sir shivan brady followed by victrina pilot good evening my name is shivan brady i live in sonoma county for over 30 years and my family has been in the county for three generations i am not being paid to be here i work in the cannabis industry as the vice president of regulatory affairs for justice grown justice grown is licensed in over five states and in california hold six cannabis business licenses i provide area expertise and compliance and regulatory issues in the california and national market i serve on the sonoma county cannabis advisory committee and recently was appointed as a board member to the sonoma county growers alliance board i also hold the 250 acre industrial hemp license in the state of north carolina and i've been in the cannabis industry for over a decade i consider johnny nolan of phenotopia to be one of my earliest mentors someone who taught me the fundamentals of transparency and self-regulation before the industry was mandated to do so he was my manager at peace and medicine from 2011 to 2015 throughout that time i observed him continuously making decisions that aligned with a high standard of principles and seek out the ethical high ground in a time when the cannabis industry closer resembled the wild west johnny is a beacon of light amongst cannabis operators he has a long history of running compliant cannabis businesses and has an excellent reputation within the industry for as long as i can remember this is why his team crafted the highest scoring application in the city johnny has a unique style leadership based on principles of diversity equality and transparency eager to amplify the voice of the underrepresented he is a champion for social equality and this can be seen throughout the leadership culture he creates i highly recommend phenotopia move forward with the application process thank you shavon victrina followed by jessica call hi my name is victrina pilot i've lived in san rosa my life and i've lived in the roseland district all my life as well i was um raised on burbank avenue and i still am local and i'm still in the roseland district i live off of corby avenue just close to sabasca road and i'm excited for phenotopia to bring back to the community um my kids have gone to school here are also local and have been local um in the roseland district my kids went to cook and to roseland school and to shepherd as well as well as myself and we've all shared the similar teachers which is kind of cool and i'm excited for phenotopia to bring back to the community and to help bring security to the area for the trails so we may be able to ride them again thank you thank you jessica call followed by james shawalter garcia good evening i am a home owner and a resident of the roseland community i've been here for over 20 years and i'm writing in support of phenotopia's cannabis dispensary application i'm willing to be on public about my support because we need them for the betterment of our community i'm very excited to be here about phenotopia's community giving plan where five percent of proceeds will go back to the roseland community the fact that phenotopia will have a bilingual staff is a great relief to myself and many other residents in roseland and shows how they are part of not apart from what makes roseland so great as a frequent customer or 443 dotting avenue i've seen firsthand the need for increased security in the plaza the security guards provided by phenotopia will help protect those coming to the plaza as pedestrians or bicyclists and provide better access and use to the bike path this keeps us all connected to the greater center rosa in a real and safe way the residents and businesses of roseland will greatly benefit from phenotopia being awarded a permit to open a dispensary on dotting avenue help the roseland residents by ensuring that only qualified and compliant operations are awarded permit to open the business in our community thank you thank you jessica james shawalter garcia followed by jeff calligan good evening my name is james showalter garcia and i've been a member of this community for a very long time i grew up in san aroza as did many of my past generations of family um and they've been business owners here my mother denise showalter has been a business owner in san aroza my father has been a business owner and my family has been have been business owners in that exact same space um lolas and lolas if you know lolas lolas was there in that same space and it was so tiny and she didn't put out anybody else out of business and then she got bigger and you know what we call that etchela ganas she put on her batteries she ponte la pilas and she invented and vigorated the community to grow we want a good example for our community i'm a teacher i grew up in this community and i was provided opportunities through businesses like phenotopia or businesses or 5013 c's like chops downtown to provide education for kids and i've learned and learned to grow and love that industry i'm a teacher and i believe in setting good examples phenotopia is setting good examples the other side is saying we will provide we will do this phenotopia is saying they're pointing to an example we have a ceo we have a manager that will operate we have people that have proven success and grow businesses for communities such as the ones in san francisco and sabasapu i'm so excited to be here speaking with you tonight again my name is james showalter garcia i'm a sixth grade teacher here in san aroza and i grew up in rosalind thank you thanks james jeff callahan followed by ryan hunt good evening vice mayor and council my name is jeff callahan i have lived in san aroza for 12 years 10 of which were spent as a rosalind resident i lived off north or off dutton avenue actually i am and have been a part of the medical cannabis industry for years it was great to see a desire to expand the rosalind business community and provide a new experience for shoppers going to the dutton plaza phenotopias community outreach efforts and desire to give back to the community with five percent of the proceeds prove they are the right fit for the rosin community the residents of rosin need to have access to quality medicine and we want to be confident that we are purchasing cannabis from a reputable dispensary thank you jeff ryan hunt followed by alfonso farrell my name is ryan hunt i'm a rosalind resident proud union member and a father of two boys thank you for considering a permit to open a dispensary in the dutton avenue plaza the residents of rosalind need to have access to quality medicine and we want to be confident you're purchasing cannabis from reputable dispensary it's great to see a desire to expand the rosalind business community and provide a new experience for shoppers going to dutton plaza as a union member i was especially happy to hear that phenotopia has signed a labor peace agreement with the teams through local 6 6 5 santa rosa having a business owner in the community who is open to and fair and dealing with organized labor is very important to me help protect the residents by awarding the permit to phenotopia their community outreach efforts and desire to give back to the community with five percent of their profits proves they are the right fit for the rosalind community thank you thank you ryan alfonso followed by donovan watt good evening city council my name is alfonso farrell i've been in sonoma county for 20 years i lived in rosalind district for 14 of those years um i support phenotopia i believe that they have increased security and that they will increase security in the dun plaza bike path trail and we need this my family and i ride that bike path and see many of the dangers there um we believe we believe that phenotopia is the best it's ready to hit the ground and run and um we support them locally thank you thank you donovan watt followed by diego figaroa i'm donovan watt i'm here to support phenotopia and i've been here for 32 years 22 years ago i was down in the front there trying to get a permit from you guys to open what automotive you guys did me well i hope you could do jeff and patrick pretty good too thank you very much thank you sir diego followed by felix figaroa dear vice mayor and council members my name is diego figaroa phenotopia is local and has local ties they will give five percent of the dispensaries profits back into rosalind plus higher from the community phenotopia's application also ranked the highest in the city planners i believe that this is because they are the best choice for rosalind please grant the appeal to phenotopia and allow them to move forward thank you thank you felix followed by clayton taylor dear vice mayor and santa rosa city council hello and good afternoon my name is felix figaroa i have grown up in rosalind i met my wife here and we have raised our children here as well i love rosalind and the diversity that is rosalind patrick fate he has been a friend of mine for over half of a decade and i've always appreciated his honesty and his kind heart i know this will be the story of phenotopia he have been transparent and i am personally grateful for phenotopia's bilingual community outreach efforts the commitment to give back five percent of their net profits right back to rosalind is something i believe the community needs phenotopia's sustainability plan as it relates to their personal carbon footprint is paramount we have to insist businesses protect our environment phenotopia is the highest raking applicant i believe that is because they are the best choice for rosalind santa rosa and sonoma county i'm asking the council to grant the appeal to phenotopia thank you thank you felix clayton taylor followed by josh good evening council i'd like to start off by saying i am paid to be here i'm a representative of team chris local 665 um we uh we do have agreements with both parties and we're ecstatic and excited to work with um honestly ideally both um i'd also like to point out that the community support here shows a clear divide within the community on these projects and i'd like to urge the council to use this as an example of why we need to get rid of the ordinance the competitive process within 600 feet thank you thank you clayton josh followed by shon sepple vita hi my name is josh and i'm here to support uh phenotopia and patrick i've been a resident of rosen district since birth going on 30 years now and he has helped me out a lot right now going through this he has uh paved a way for what i run in my community i run a backpack drive and a giveaway for the kids and what it is is partnering with him or having his back in with this five percent are allowing me to be part of the community and giving back is a great way for it to show that phenotopia is great support for the rosen community um i'm a union card holder out of the san francisco area and senorosa and allowing him to open vocational training uh is allowing more community help and it's allowing the diverse community to be a part of what they are trying to fund um my my parents have been in the rosen area for 35 years and they support him also and just giving back is i what i see is great thank you thank you josh shon followed by grace maranda leon good evening my name is shon sepple vita i'm a 36 year resident of santa rosa and the rosen district um i currently own an operated business roughly about 10 years in business in the rosen district and i also live in the rosen district um i own a couple homes in the same area i just like to kind of specify based on the datan plaza the datan plaza is kind of vastly big highly populated with a lot of traffic um as opposed to their opponent across the street which is a much more smaller area but it's not as compacted and it's not as many patrons that visit this place um being as i live or excuse me i work roughly two minutes away from both areas if i choose to go to somewhere for lunch and i want to pull up in the place that implauses a lot more congested heavier traffic hard to get into hard to get out of and then you kind of got a fight with you know the the homeless community and and other people that are in that same area as opposed to if if this were my choice and i was pulling across the street uh easy access to park easy to get in easy to get where i need to be back to my vehicle and back out um that's pretty much where i stand on that but thank you for your time have a good thank you so much grace followed by gear mo sanchez my name is grace maranda leon and i'm justin maranda's sister we were both raised here and have families here we did not what you have call a normal childhood we lost our mom and a cox when justin was just six years old we buried our mother here she's buried in the santa rosa cemetery after her passing justin was forced to grow up really rather quickly uh he made me breakfast he took me to school he woke up when i had nightmares yes he followed in our father's footsteps and made some bad decisions when he was just a teenager santa rosa is about family and second chances when my family lost our homes in the fire justin gave us his place for me and my kids so my boys wouldn't have to change schools they go to steel lane and they also play sports here they play for santa rosa american little league and black oak's youth soccer there we are a big part of our community santa rosa is about growing from the ashes and this is why high highway 420 is a right fit for our community they're about giving second chances and not judging people on their past or the way that they were raised thank you thank you grace gear mo followed by jeremy messias good evening my name is Guillermo Sanchez i live in roseland and i'm indirectly paid to be here i own the building where chase and miranda and william garcia are planning to open their business they will have security they will employ people directly from roseland i remember the building across the street where there when there was no building they have had problems there with security without a cannabis business there are problems in the back of that building with homeless there have been stabbings fights robberies across the building i mean across the street putting cannabis business there will only complicate things i know how it sounds as i own the building where william and jason plan to open their business but facts are facts thank you thank you you hear about jeremy messias followed by freddie osseguera hello my name is jeremy messias thank you for having me here tonight i came here on behalf of jessen miranda just to his character i hired justin several years ago with his criminal background record and i have zero regrets in doing it the boy that made a poor decision when he was 18 is not the man that i hired the man that i hired was a great manager leader and mentor to his team and everyone he was responsible for he's had a positive impact with everyone he has come into contact with i have come to know justin personally over the years as i employed him and now i consider him a friend i know him as a fantastic coach a loving father and a great entrepreneur his level of commitment cannot be matched his word is worth more than gold i appreciate your time thank you thank you so much freddie followed by mckel james good evening my name is freddie osseguera i have lived in sonoma county my whole life and in the rosalina area for about 20 years first growing up in a small town of cloverdale i know what it's like to look around and grow up around locally owned businesses once i moved to santa rosa you can imagine it was kind of a change of scenery i had a hard time adjusting and eventually i had to go through my own rehabilitation process shortly after my release i applied at a dealership looking for a job looking for a fresh start and justin miranda was the manager at this location after being upfront about my incarceration justin miranda decided to hire me he gave me a chance he gave me a job he gave me an opportunity please give him an opportunity thank you so much mckel followed by i apologize i'm gonna butcher the name dotzen newman my name is mckel i've been living in santa rosa for my whole life i've been here for 35 years i went to rosen elementary school i went to cook junior high school i graduated from lc alan so i basically know the neighborhood in and out in where phenotopy is it's really not a good location because at any given time there's really no parking even right now there's probably not parking in there there's a loitering all times of the day there's soliciting all times of the day it's just really not safe as of across the street uh for me i'd probably feel more comfortable going across the street and thank you for having me thank you so much yes sir hi my name is uh chinny is there a dotzen newman uh i was born in roseland in the house in the bathtub um i'm here in support of highway 420 because i know they really like uh how we like to say is tap in with the community um there's a lot of community members i see in here and it's funny because as much as i've been in here i've been able to talk to people on both sides of this debate and i didn't really see too much of that going on with uh you know the opposition that just kind of like resonated with me because i feel like i'm a member of the community so if people don't really reach out to me and i feel like i'm kind of being alienated myself you know and that's like what i've already been through my own issues you know growing up being member of roseland and dealing with you know certain types of political things that going on just growing up being a man of my statue you know color whatever however you want to put it but you know um i just you know that's that's one of the things is that they kind of he's always kind of like accepted me reached out to me and asked me to help him so i kind of like helped him you know do a little bit of footwork and through that i've noticed that i've been able to kind of build myself as a person you know and for me to kind of like lose that opportunity and be able to communicate and help people out with their needs and stuff um it seems like that's kind of being you know it's not really allowed you know i feel like i'm kind of being segregated you know saying so as much as you know it is about land use and everything you know i think that highway 420 would really be making the most use of the land and really be able to spread the you know the love and spread the good vibes and spread the the medicine and everything throughout the community the right way that's it thank you sir bob nickles followed by julian erin hi my name is bob nickles i work for kind law and represent uh highway i'm here reading a letter from another attorney um in northern california sunshine len show who couldn't be here today i'll skin the intro sunshine met mr maranda while working as an attorney for the owner of another santa rosa licensee and mr maranda reached out to connect with a neighbor and wanted to talk about synergies with his plans for workforce development and community outreach it is clear from the letter of the law that mr maranda is eligible for a license his conviction is over a decade old and the code only considers conviction in the last five years it seems laughable to hold a father of five who has done so much for the community at large accountable for his actions to teenager uh the main talking point and justification cited by voters in support of proposition 64 and the recently passed and signed bradford bill was provided tangible changes to california law to rectify the war on drugs the bradford bill which will be funded by our current administration is set to provide support to those individuals like mr maranda who've been convicted under disproportionately applied drug laws indeed mr maranda's plans for community benefits and job training would be eligible for the funds created by both proposition 64 and the bradford bill is ironic that now nearly 20 years since his conviction he is being asked to prove his worth to operate a business that the state has openly said it would not prevent him from opening mr maranda is the embodiment of social equity and restorative judgment and is the very restorative justice and is the very person he should be given the privilege of operating cannabis business thank you sir julian erin followed by marco suarez hey guys hey america my name is julian and uh i'm not being paid to be here i'm not a not a rose in resident a lot of rose from people here but i am a local of known justin for quite a while i actually have a couple applications pending in the county in unincorporated and the city and i've been a supplier of justin before when he had his delivery business operating and i will be a supplier when he gets his storefront up and operating we have a lot of employees that are locals i've introduced them to some other distributors that are also got about 30 local employees so being able to trickle down effect on these decisions is going to be you know more and more locals being supported i also want to remind you guys that a lot of these decisions you know they always come down to money unfortunately that underlies a lot of these things and people can claim you know they're going to be doing good things for the community they're going to be giving money back to the community xyz but at the end of the day you got to look at the proof in the pudding right and uh when you look at the floor plan for these guys their vocational training center is twice as big as their storefront their storefront is half the size of their their training center and so for for myself and other people in the local community in the supply chain being able to draw on you know a guy like that that's going to be providing a job for the community who'll be something i'm excited about tapping into and it just goes to show with the the size of his storefront these allocators he's put the community first before the money and you got to look at that in your decision thank you thank you so much marcos followed by louis terra torres thank you good evening uh council members and everybody here in the public my name is marcos suarez i am the past president of the hispanic chamber of commerce here in sonoma county i'm currently in the california hispanic chambers board of directors where we have an initiative to support latinas and latinos and communities of color throughout the state of california to be able to have access to the cannabis industry especially now that it's legal right i mean the last 40 50 years who has been marginalized latinos latinos african americans people of color now that it's legal we're trying to promote and elected officials you know county city statewide to implement policies to support those communities that have been marginalized here and we're looking at i mean it's sad for me to see that people are attacking justin and saying oh wow he can't he shouldn't be allowed that's the type of marginalization that continues happening in our communities and i've been here i've worked with communities of rosen we have business owners here from rosen business owners from the actual shopping center they're opposing the project because it will be detrimental to their business and so and they will be coming up here and speaking to that we have i have two letters here one is from the california hispanic chambers of commerce supporting highway 420 and justin and will as well as willy tamayo willy tamayo met with justin maranda and we spoke he spoke to him and i'll just read it really thank you so much parkers thank you louis for followed by jorge alcazar mi nombre Luis Torres soy dueño de la tienda de el juiria toro soccer sports the one that's behind with the guy right there um topia i don't know what the name of these people right here uh they this is the first time i come over here in this area here and then the problem is this uh you guys uh everybody talking about over here but the business but the business but the business and then they don't take care about the but the kids they don't take care about the family see this shopping center right there and and do to plaza this is a family shopping center see i am there for six years i have this store right there and then i was have another store right there by by sabastopol row 77 sabastopol row i am in that building before and then um i get robbed right there but the gun when the guy guy see he robbed me all my jewelry over there and then also and then went over there and seven 750 point road i get i get like like three months ago the some guy they go stole all my jewelry see and then um that's a lot of money they're stolen in there so this shopping center right there 443 dot naverida is a little bit dangerous in that place because so many guns in there and then the the owner that's building the every money is right there to get all those those people run because sometimes when i go to open my business they're sleeping in the doors right there so i don't know why this guy right they say they say they get put a lot of security in this place right there but uh 443 that's on suit 11 this the people right here i know who is who is the one the colors uh purple and and and and red sir i don't know nothing about this these people right here the only thing sir thank you thank you so much for your comments yeah the only thing it is this is a bad decision you guys give it to these these people thank you right it's it's somebody else's turn or hey followed by jose jose guzman hi uh good evening council members and vice mayor my name is jorge alcazar i'm a business owner and i'll be the immediate neighbor of highway 420 i'm here to uh pretty much just support highway 420 and i've met with justin and will and just looking at them i can see myself eight years ago just trying to open a business in what is the complicated uh process and santa rosa so you know young guy latino sometimes not knowing or having their pockets to weather these tiring process so that is one of the main reasons that i'm here to support them as a fellow latino business owner who will be also an immediate neighbor as i'm in the same complex as they will be if you guys do approve the uh the project which i hope you do thank you thank you so much jose followed by one gamino mendoza buenas noches mi nombre es jose guzman y tengo 20 años viviendo en la área de roslan y mi dirección es 1983 giffen avenida y y este ah pues tengo un restaurante se llama la fiesta en la área de la cebasto porro y pues para mí este es muy importante pues de que la área se mantenga pues con seguridad y y pues me interesaría que justin estuviera con su plan que ya lo miré como es el del y me encantaría que él siguiera por la situación de la área donde él lo va a ser es más privado y pues ojalá que pueda seguir con sus planes es todo i'm just gonna do it for him uh yes uh uh so since guzman uh i own la fiesta restaurant he's a business he's an owner of giffen avenue he lives in roslin been in rosin for 19 years and i um as a business owner and annoying justin and and meeting his plan in terms of the security he's very important about security he likes that he has his own parking and his whole uh he's i looked at the plan and i and i feel that that would be a great uh you know project so i i ask you to support justin so we can move forward thank you so much one followed by daniel torres hello uh my name is uh juan gamino mendoza i'm the owner of uh rancho mendoza supermercado uh we're at 640 sebas porro uh we're within the 600 foot radius uh we've been on sebas porro since 2007 when it was still uh county um i'm supporting a highway 420 justin and william came over introduced themselves uh gave me a tour of their vocational and training center and uh i haven't seen the other facility but just from uh my experience when i applied for my abc license to sell beer and wine uh it took me almost two years to get it uh and because of the issues that the done plaza uh with uh crime and um they still there's a liquor store in there that sells a lot of like fortified malt beverages mickey's a lot of the cheap um fortified wines and uh um dealing with abc um that was uh there was a lot of issues in the area with alcohol so i had to go through a longer process because of the over concentration and and and the issues that they had there for me to get my abc license um i tour the facility and and i think they would do a good job there you know same thing i started uh there in 2007 and uh you know thank you thank you so much sir daniel torres followed by maria castillo my name is daniel torres um i'm here supporting our phenotopia i work at um at the 443 dot an avenue plaza um and i believe um we would uh need the um security there and um i believe uh phenotopia is a perfect um candidate for the for the place and yeah please um if you guys give him a chance thank you for your time thank you maria castillo followed by eddie alvarez pagada my name is maria castillo i own tamales magos i've been in the community for 19 years and i support highway 420 i think it's a better project better area for the dispensary and uh the shopping center i don't believe that's a good place because there's many a lot of children and and he terms here in the latino community i think we i heard that many people that are here are have been paid uh to be here thank you thank you eddie alvarez followed by freddie alvarez good evening i've heard of uh donya lola don leo from lola's market and i think about the opportunities that they were afforded and what they could afford to their their family members we know that there's lolas in many cities around sonoma county now i think about the mr mandolso who just left here and spoke about the difficulties that he had acquiring his alcohol license because of proximity issues uh councilman tibets you made a great point and were the applicants aware of the poker game that they were about to enter into i think that i would highly implore our council members to maybe look at this issue as the opportunity that that's the number that san rosa is losing by not allowing both of these applicants to proceed forward i am the president of the hook dispensary i just successfully applied through the permit process and i will be opening within two months hopefully i welcome both applicants as my fellow competitors because after all competition creates a healthy community that is my experience as a president or past president of the roseland business association as a community advisor advisory member that was appointed by our late mayor bob lantern before he passed i see opportunity i see great san rosa i see the mecca of morta right here in san rosa and i think we should explore those options we should implore the opportunity that's before us not one above the other but together we move forward thank you thank you eddie freddie alvarez followed by bianca castillo hello how's it going my name is freddie alvarez um we have the dispensary called the hook we are licensed latino farm from seed to flower which is really rare um it seems like the cannabis this uh industry is getting divided or like we understand this is a landmuse permit but we have a yellow and purple over here and we're just pretty much dividing the whole industry we need to stick together i have 29 years in the 443 shopping center pretty much took showers there with the school there i know everything about that town um i just think the cannabis industry is going in a wrong path it's not fair that people still can charge for cannabis as we speak with um permitting process from the state and so forth we all need to stick together thank you sir bianca castillo followed by josea um hi my name is bianca i'm here to support 420 one of the reasons are because they're local and local helps community and i don't think having that older sito piano in the plaza it saves i'm always taking my daughter over there by the donor shop and i'm always worried about the homeless now i can imagine having a dispensary over there that will be not safe for kids thank you thank you so much josea followed by lindsay white josea are you here lindsay white followed by salina parto hi my name is lindsay white and i'm attorney at rogaway law group representing phenotopia i first want to clarify that pursuant to section 5002 of the bcc regulations as part of their discretionary review of state license approval the state requires all applicants to submit a detailed description of all past criminal convictions not solely those within the past five years note though that the appellant's presentation is not intended to malign highway 420 or to state that mr maranda should not be allowed to run any business in the city of san rosa rather the appellant's intention is to point out the discrepancies and inaccuracy in highway 420's application and to advocate for phenotopia's transparent character this application process is based upon transparency and honesty and phenotopia has demonstrated these qualities throughout this process furthermore i'd like to take a minute to clarify the slides that were shown during the appellant's presentation during the cannabis policy subcommittee meeting highway 420 presented a slide which inaccurately claimed that phenotopia's application was lacking in many substantial areas today phenotopia presented a slide to rebut the slide shown at the subcommittee meeting the slide appears to have been misinterpreted by mr castan at no point this slide claimed that highway 420 had or had not done things it was simply a slide rebutting what highway 420 had previously said about phenotopia and demonstrating the many ways in which phenotopia has prepared to be a superior member of the rosalyn community and the city of sienna rosa finally phenotopia's owners recognize that many community members are concerned with security issues at the subject property and this is something that phenotopia is completely prepared to deal with and improve thank you lindsay salina pardo followed by willie vela neweva hello my name is salina and i was born and raised here in san rosa and i'm an alumni a sociology alumni from our community's colleges i was not paid to be here and i'm speaking in support of highway 420's project as members of their community highway has already made themselves known in their community by using their location for community involvement projects such as allowing open houses to the community allowing local artists to host their art galleries and events in their location currently and allowing local designers to showcase their clothing in their location the invitations to the community were a huge success as i witnessed their neighbors in the community come together and even draw the attention of larger known artists in the bay area to come up to sienna rosa to support all of these initiatives taken for the roslyn community by highway statistically communities such as our roslyn community have suffered the most injustice from previous marijuana regulations and the rising opportunities in the cannabis industry is a huge opportunity to help these communities that have been most affected by once illegal marijuana regulations and invest in these communities to help those once convicted on nonviolent drug offenses the appellant has been very vocal about not allowing those same individuals to be hired within their company advertising this to and upsetting members of our community and i support highway for roslyn because they're in discriminatory workforce and invested commitment is here at home the corporate investor supporting the appellant already have an open location just down the street on north benton avenue in santa rosa thank you so much selena thank you willy followed by judy judy yura hi my name is willy vanueva um i just wanted to touch on two points uh i'm for the highway 420 project i did hear a lot of um from the opposing team that there will be uh there is a plan to hire bilingual staff i am currently already are being bilingual already hired with highway 420 along with uh a couple other co-workers of mine that are also bilingual um and we hosted the bench spoken right before the art gallery along with um showcasing the fashion designers uh local brands so yeah thank you so much judy followed by michael walker good evening dear council my name is judy yura i have been living in sonoma county for 21 years five years of those uh i lived in rossland i am an mvs student at sonoma state and i'm also a professional for more than 20 years so when i hear everyone here speaking about either um the purple or the green my initial thought is this boat is not just about who has the larger parking lot the boat is about what business is going to be a better fit for that community of rossland that's my point number one point number two as a nature professional when we hire we look at many several different resumes and at the end of the day what the business in this case what the city is going to do is hire the right person for the right job when i look at the credentials of green team and when i look at the credentials of purple team my boat is for purple team they have the plan together they know they're when they know what they're going to be doing and they also know that they're giving back to the community and they have a plan for it so um i do hope that you guys take into consideration everything not just the fact that that one group is founded by latinos and i'm a latina i speak spanish and i really vote for for for my latino community but but in this instance vote for the best team thank you thank you juda michael walker followed by javier artesana i've been a resident in santa rosa for over 20 years uh during that 20 years i've created a business i've had that over eight years also during that 20 years i've had a young kid she's now 16 actually works for the city and i'm just in support of highway 420 because i know that they give back to the community thank you thank you sir javier followed by one jose navarro hello my name is javier artesana i'm here to uh to bring up three letters from um owners from the dot in plaza one from the restaurant cancun i jorge redriguez i'm in full support of opening of phenotopia at dot in plaza i believe that they will uplift our strip mall bringing in new customers that we need in addition they will bring needed additional security to the plaza and help our patrons feel feel and stay safe i am in full support of phenotopia from the restaurant owner of cancun um there's also a restaurant called oh sushi i key hung park owner of oh sushi will like to give my full support to phenotopia their business plan will not only help bring in new customers but add additional security that we very much need i'm aware that they are the highest ranking applicant and i've offered to donate five percent of the profit to our local community we need this business at our dot in plaza tamales mana i am a duardo ario i'm in full support of the of a cannabis dispensary at our dot in plaza i feel the dispensary will promote business opportunity and growth in our plaza which has which needs added business to flourish please do support this application by phenotopia as i am aware they are the highest rated applicants thank you very much thank you so much one followed by william garcia do we have one jose navarro all right william garcia hello um hello my name is william garcia i am the force the ten four seven is about support role i would like to thank everybody for coming here and showing support for both business i understand that is a big contradiction going on but under everything pass advice for everybody um i am the majority owner of the investment holdings and applicant for the permit i have successfully two businesses and will sustain commercial real estate and i intend to build highway for 20 uh to a dispensary that everybody will like in the community uh shows just and as a partner based on the credible job he had done with highway for 20 collective he came barely recommended by members of the cannabis industry and also the community he was very honest with me about what he did 18 years ago and i like that but i have no doubt in my mind he will not do that again and i you know he's a family man just like me i am a latino third world country kid you know i appreciate everybody coming here there's a big opportunity for me i understand everybody says the other applicant is uh more prepared and everything like that i do understand but from the bottom of heart thanks everybody positive vibes they wrote me something else to write but it's already too much going on and i appreciate everybody coming and how for 20 really opens for the community um and thank you and i also like to add uh we are going behind veterans minorities and also women for this business and we've been a bilingual and also me especially being a hispanic background from the beginning we have been bilingual thank you thank you so much uh are you uh one hosanna i am one hosanna borrow go go for it good evening um i'm been in sonoma counties for 29 years now um i have the business of sazon peruvian cuisine almost nine years um i got an opportunity to meet both parties they're both great i mean this is this is this is tough here but i did see it sit with both of them and the you know that what really impressed me was the phenotopia since they're integrity and i'm going to hold them accountable for everything they're they told me and and i hope the best for them too whoever whoever it's it's going to be the best candidate and now they put pressure on both of these guys to do good in the community and um i'm i'm just thank you for letting me be here and that's good luck but i i support phenotopia for their integrity and everything they want to do in the community and best in education for the spanish community they want to they want to teach the community what is this cannabis you know because a lot of people don't know so that's one thing that really attracted me the education in spanish and and to invest in that thank you so much thank you so much sir uh genie currents good evening my name is gene currents and i'm a vice president with boys and girls clubs at boys and girls clubs we open our doors every day in elementary and middle schools affordable housing complexes an even juvenile hall with a mission to enable all young people especially those who need us most to become caring productive responsible citizens we now serve 10 000 members annually and 35 clubs in 11 communities throughout sonoma emmerin counties we know the youth of sonoma county are facing significant challenges nearly 50 percent of sonoma county children are considered economically disadvantaged 78 percent of sonoma county english language learners are already behind in school by third grade only 82 percent of fifth graders in sonoma county meet state physical fitness standards eight percent of ninth graders say they are in a gang 44 percent of sonoma county english language learners will not graduate from high school rosalind the proposed location for phenotopia is one area where we're serving those who truly need us most currently we serve 1 000 members on five rosalind school district campuses and in rosalind village in addition we serve 300 young people each summer at our summer day camp located in rosalind in the rosalind neighborhood of the children we currently serve in the rosalind area 91 percent come from low income homes 38 percent come from single parent homes 92 percent are english language learners we know that more young people need access to a boys and girls clubs we believe that any partnership which enables us to change these statistics and to serve more youth is valuable we're grateful to patrick fehy and phenotopia and 421 group who have supported boys and girls clubs and who have made a five percent commitment thank you so much five percent of their profits thank you appreciate it thank you michael perez followed by jude freitz hi my name is michael perez i actually wasn't going to speak i was just here to support but um i have two kids they're very young they go to school here in santa rosa and i know both areas well i've been to both areas and just a quick question to everybody if you're walking with your children young children would you feel comfortable with them seeing the dispensary you know right dead center of the whole shopping center it's a family oriented shopping center kids go there to get ice cream tacos the spanish breads and i mean the other dispensary is off to the side it's not right dead center in the middle of a family oriented latino community you know what i mean so i just keep hearing all these this and that and this and that it's just more about i think the other places a little bit more private not dead center of a whole shopping center that's full of kids i mean you can go at any time there's kids there all day thank you thank you so much jude good evening my name is jude fratis i am a rosalinda resident and i did write the sustainability plan for phenotopia and first off we're just very excited that they engage in the sustainability plan before knowing there was a competition they would need to distinguish themselves that way our plan does cover the three a's of sustainability which is environment equity and economy and they do meet or exceed sonoma county's green business program and the cow green building requirements there has been a dedicated or there will be a dedicated sustainability manager who will be in charge of implementing all of their policies and projects as well as monitoring results making sure that they see the highest results possible they will hire from the local community which keeps the local economy vibrant and active and reduces travel impacts they have they will implement energy consumption through policies and products such as led led lighting regular maintenance schedule proper thermostat setting etc as well as reducing water consumption that will be curbed through regular checks for repairs and leaks low flow fixtures reducing landscaping some consumption their pollution will be curbed through policies and projects and really just i was very excited that they took the time and were on board with every single policy and project because they do care about the local environment and they want to see their business be an example for others to look at thank you thank you so much Jesus Espino followed by Maurice Walker good evening everybody my name is Jesus Espino I live in Pereluma but but I I do have a couple of businesses in Santa Rosa I own a surpro and uh Bama which is a Brazilian academy of mixed martial arts we I'm in business for about 15 years and I'm here to support phenotopia I guess we are looking for security and transparency and I believe that phenotopia can provide that you know we are looking for our children to be safe the community to be safe and I by uh by them providing the security I guess it'll be okay with them so I'm here to support phenotopia thank you so much Maurice Walker hello how y'all doing I'm Maurice Walker I grew up in Santa Rosa I've got three kids all year all go to the Rosalind district schools uh highway 420 is a great place for their business cross streets really not too uh too safe really you know you got a lot of things going on and that's pretty much it thank you thank you so much this Gomez is that it for public comment that's it all right thanks folks for for sticking with us I'm going to bring it back to the council we'll close public comment uh council are there any additional questions for staff mr mcglenn you look like you want to say something I have a question all right one second council member you good Sean all right go ahead Julie it's um okay I have a couple questions uh one of them is uh there have been some wonderful offers made on both sides with regard to their community benefits we have two able applicants here um as this is a land use planning type decision do will any of these promises being made be part of their permits as conditional uses does this go forward with those promises attached if staff can let me know that I think that's a question for both Sue or Claire uh as so far as the land use is described in their project narrative that's what's presented for the land use permit uh and then uh things that are outside of our city code um can be recognized with the commitment of the project narrative also three conditions of approval so if it's in the project narrative or was scored on the checklist it's included or is it still um only a possibility at this point it is a possibility as Claire mentioned matters that are outside the the land use typical criteria can be incorporated into a project based upon the applicant's own voluntary commitment but tonight we are not at that stage we are um looking at an appeal of a decision of which application is going to move forward into the land use um planning commission process the use permit process so the council is not in a position tonight to place any conditions on the application because you are not approving an application you are simply giving a green light to one or the other application to move forward in the process okay I just wanted to clarify that I have another question and I'm hesitant only because I like to ask questions I know the answer to already I don't know the answer to this one already so here goes anyhow there has been much talk about which whether the process would be better another way for example one of the suggestions has been to do it first come first serve uh do we know who applied first this is Claire um so the variety of processes were evaluated and what this process that is before you tonight is based on what was um accepted and published and is the current process so um of course dialogue on uh the when and how the city opens up for new retail can open up different processes but this is what we're implementing at this point I understand but do we know who applied first it was not a point of evaluation as long as they made it within the two-week window of business hours they were all on even playing field and and I would add that at this point at this stage of the proceedings it would not be appropriate to add in new criteria for evaluation and what we have up on the screen now um what Claire has put up on the screen are the review criteria that have been used for this stage of the process I will withdraw the question based on legal advice do do other do can we consider whether the applicants have other applications in process and the status of those applications yeah again I would I would recommend that the council keep to the review criteria that were established at the outset of the process um that is what the um applicants that is what was presented to the applicants that is what um has been the basis of the decision all the way through I want to clarify that we are looking at a scoring process that includes conditions we cannot place on this decision but we cannot look at other matters again my recommendation is to keep within the established criteria as a basis for your decision and yes I do recognize um that we do not at this stage have a mechanism for ensuring that promises that are made will be kept down the line but that will be within the um within the ability of the planning commission to enforce those or to add conditions to enforce thank you for your patience for those questions thank you and back to your mayor or vice mayor thank you councilwoman other questions from the council questions council member all of ours thank you I have questions follow questions for the preferred applicant then for the appellate so they could be maybe come to the mics maybe we could get one at each mic and maybe I'll make you switch that'd be perfect uh and I'll have let me know if you want me to refresh your memory but back almost a year ago in april both of you submitted um disclosure forms my question is there's a question down there for additional uh for civil engineers architects consultants to the project have have there been any changes additions or deletions of any consultants to your project since you signed these in april mr castan I don't have it right in front of me so um I don't believe there have been any changes w trans was our traffic engineer I'm the applicant representative kind law um has been representing as legal counsel William Garcia and Justin Miranda um with William Garcia being the primary owner um and mr Miranda uh being the minority owner um are the owners um again I don't have the document in front of me um so for the record those are that is the applicant team as we move to planning commission for the next six months we may add additional vendors thank you no and I'll remind you you have you have listed julie mercer ingram uh yourself net castan tom wilson jeff warner and jennifer pierce listed as consultants correct yes jeff warner being the mechanical engineer and there's been a number of other technical advisors within that team for no there's been no additions to this list no thank you and to the appellant any changes to yours you had jessica peat drew miller craig litwin john johnnie nolyn and crime alert security consultant and a i c e engineers any additions to your consultants um with drew miller um i'm not aware that if he's still working on the project i would like to add rogaway law group my firm that i work for where we're working with the applicant now i'm in terms of any other uh people that would need to be notified i'm not aware of any okay so you don't have any other consultants that have been used in this process uh 421 group and i think it's everybody that's listed in the application thank you and then uh for you you um you mentioned and there was also presented by people speaking on your behalf that you have made a commitment to improve the bike bike pass security behind that building can you talk a little bit about that plan have you spoken to the city or county about what that plan looks like sure so the trailhead to the joe redotta trail um which i know has recently been in some news for some of the issues that are occurring on that trail um runs right behind the dot and plaza and the things that phenotopia is looking to do is not only will they have um you know their their security cameras that are going to be up for 24 hours a day so if anybody's crossing behind the business and law enforcement needs assistance with identifying anybody that's been involved in crime or trespassing things like that phenotopia will absolutely assist with that process but additionally phenotopia is going to dedicate a security officer above and beyond what's required for its actual premises under state law to not only roam the plaza itself so to help with a lot of the concerns that people were talking about um of you know crime happening there or transient population issues things like that um so that security officer will not only run roam the front of the plaza but will roam the back of the building that runs up against the joe redotta trail trailhead um and be able to work with law enforcement if they notice anything but also be able to take care of some environmental concerns too if there's trash or things left over um from people who maybe are camping out there because they don't have a place other place to go um they'll be able to notify the proper individuals to come take care of that or even remove those things themselves so excuse me so they will be available for the other merchants there to use as security at their discretion as well that's correct and that's been discussed with the other merchants in the plaza thank you and can you provide a little bit not uh my new shed detail but tell us more about your five percent give back to the rosin area what does that look like sure so five percent of the profits that phenotopia makes will be um given in part of the give back program to um operators like the boys and girls club um to help them with any program that they need for the the youth that's clearly underrepresented as we heard um also the caps program through their vs bronza program which really looks at using a multi-generational approach in the roslin community um to help uh members of low income communities around there really thrive and have proper health benefits and and do well in education which so important in the community um on top of that there are other nonprofits that i believe phenotopia is looking into that will deal with trying to help reduce the homelessness problem that so many people did speak about not only during this process but earlier in the council meeting i know a lot of people came out to talk about that during general public comments and other items um so those are all things that their phenotopia is looking to do um is to make sure that that five percent of profits is really going back to the community back to the roslin residents um who deserve to have uh programs like that in their community thank you thank you any additional questions from council all right council member oliveris do you want to put a motion on the table thanks vice mayor i will move resolution the council of senator rose denying the appeal of uh phenotopia applicant b and affirming the cannabis policy subcommittee's decision to select highway retail outlet applicant a to move forward in the conditional use permit process for a proposed commercial cannabis adult use retail facility located at 470 sabbatical road apn 125-162-025 file number c up 18-078 and wait for the reading of the text is there a second council member combs okay that motion fails council is there another motion council member timmets sure i'll put forward a motion upholding the appeal and wait for the reading of so there we go okay can i get a second second all right go ahead council member timmets and i'd like to speak to that too you know i think that on the city council i've come to learn that there's two types of bad decisions you get to make there are decisions that are controversial that you don't want to make and then there's decisions that you just really do not want to make in this case it's the latter for me because you know i joined the city council wanting to create opportunity for people and because of the policy what we're faced with having to do tonight is to create opportunity for one at the expense of the other and to me that's an inherently faulty policy it really is i'm going to be supporting phenotopia tonight because of the scoring the scoring was substantially different i trust our staff's policies as far as evaluating that criteria but again i i just do it with a lot of disdain and i i will add that i hope that we can go back as a city look at this policy and create opportunities for people like mr maranda and mr maranda specifically i i'm also just wanted to point out that i do not like the fact that we brought somebody's past history into question when evaluating their opportunity what i see is is a man who wants to move something forward fulfill a vision and create something great for himself his family his neighborhood and his community and i don't think he should have to suffer kind of public scrutiny to that degree so i just want to put that out there on the record to mr maranda and his family i appreciate you investing in that neighborhood and in this community and i hope that there's an opportunity for you down the road councilmember fleming thank you all for staying so late and for being so engaged in this process i appreciate all that our staff has done to make this a process that works for our community but it's clear from these hearings tonight that we have two good applicants and have inadvertently created a problem that the market could and should address with great respect i asked that the subcommittee reevaluate the over concentration parameters and look for ways that we can allow multiple operators to to enrich our community so we often see coffee shops multiple coffee shops surviving and thriving right next to each other gas stations typically don't compete with those who are across the street they compete with those who are on the same side of the street and i think that had we had a different regulation that we would have seen an outcome in which both businesses would have thrived i visited both i thought that they both presented great opportunities really different business models and would have been fine in the market would have sorted itself out this has been a really difficult decision for me i have gone back and forth lost sleep had intense conversations and at the end of the day where i come back to is i could see how staff could in a subjective process end up finding a couple points more or less for fairly equal projects but in this case the difference between genotopia and highway 420 was just really drastic and so given the fact that i i see two great applicants with both with great community support i have to go back and rely on our staff and ask our subcommittee and our staff to reevaluate the over concentration thank you thank you council member council member combs yes it's hard to know within the industry when overcompensated over when over concentration is hurtful to the industry itself grocery stores are harmed by over over concentration and we have policies of our land use to limit the location of grocery stores so that they can make ends meet we don't end up with a race to the bottom type knocking out grocery stores so we don't know if this industry is like that industry or if this industry is more like gas stations and shoe stores and coffee shops um it will be interesting to find out clearly in this space where we have two well qualified applicants that if they have not been so close together would have moved forward we want them we're finding to be uh in the policy but it would be helpful for us to keep track of whether this particular industry which within itself needs to have uh competition limitations the second reason to have non over concentration is because we didn't want certain neighborhoods to be the total pot neighborhood right we wanted the cannabis industry to have uh people access throughout the city for all of the uh residents and not to be concentrated in certain areas um we typically hear a police report when we have a request for alcohol uh sales to let us know how the area is doing with regard to the sale of alcohol with regard to alcohol related crime uh I would anticipate in the future we might include something like that type of analysis uh a piece of information that we would receive from the police department uh to help make that decision so I agree with my colleagues that I look forward to hearing from the subcommittee uh ways to improve uh this policy so that the industry benefits and so that the community also benefits um I will be voting for Utopia in this case again based upon uh the uh great difference in the um staff scoring uh it's a substantial difference and I uh hope that we can uh sort out uh a more suitable location uh for uh Mr. Miranda thank you thank you councilmember councilmember Sawyer thank you vice mayor first of all I want to say that in my 13 years in serving on this council I have never seen such a large group of respectful courteous and passionate participants in this process it has really been impressive and I want to apologize as well for in need of a process trying to find something that would actually work and allow us to move forward we have split a community and I'm hoping that the healing begins tomorrow or tonight one way or another um we are we will need your passion and your commitment and your presence in so many ways in the in the neighborhood of rosin in the coming months and years as we um deal with the the village and the the changes will be coming after annexation we need you there we need this kind of participation in the future in rosin and I hope that the next time you gather in this chamber that you will be able to come as one um hopefully in uh in advancing an appreciation of the the continued improvement and evolution of of roseland not that it's going that it has to change drastically but it is going to grow and it is it is going to evolve and I so I hope that we can take advantage of your commitment and your passion in the future I will be um voting to move um the natopia forward to the next process and I want to thank Justin for for his willingness to get be a part of this process a difficult process um and I wish him um all the best and I'm I'm hoping uh like I think probably everyone behind this day is uh that he will um have a business in roseland um and hopefully we will be changing our some of our processes um as we get better at trying to satisfy the needs of the community and the um cannabis industry as well thank you councilmember olivares thank you mr vice mayor uh I think for this process in the end uh we have the process that we developed I think this council did develop the process that we used including the over concentration issues that was something that came out of this entire council not just the subcommittee so that's important to note that we uh progress on this based on the rules uh at guidelines that we established and it's also important to clarify that uh and as I mentioned before this is a process it was a process this is a part of that process and some of you have made reference to to the scores which is good which is a part of the process the subcommittee uh the liberation and the presentations made by both parties uh during that subcommittee meeting were a part of that process so it's it's a continuation just as this is for me even going back to the committee uh discussions I I do believe that uh the uh preferred applicant at the time did provide compelling information that for this council member this committee member convinced me that uh there's course should have been uh very much higher in two critical areas and that is neighborhood compatibility and neighborhood enhancement and I spoke to this then we uh and I think somebody mentioned it today too about making a decision not just a land use decision but really a community decision this is a big decision for the rosen community and as I mentioned before uh standing alone uh as as as individual applications were about the over concentration they would have both had the opportunity to move forward that was clear it didn't matter but in this case there was a choice there was a choice and I saw this choice as a rosalind choice having been newly annexed to the city uh and and what will the future roles that look like and for me it came down to location location including both the traffic issues the parking issues uh the proximity to other other locations uh we did to see we did receive a letter of opposition from the very next door neighbor that has the sporting goods and jewelry store uh she was very concerned about the change of the culture and talking about how the appellant doesn't really understand the culture of their community there and she was worried about that she was worried about security uh not and not so much thrilled about cannabis in general but saying that there's going to be one I think that's the more simple place over there but there are concerns in the rosen community about this issue and I appreciate those from rosen that came from the business owners I spoke as well because this is going to start setting this the stage for them there uh I do hope that things work out I do have my concerns about it uh and and I appreciate the apologies too to the division that this caused in a community and within the industry but more so my apologies to Justin who was singled out in this process unnecessarily and he just goes to show the links that we go uh in trying to come out the winner uh not just with uh the issues that were brought up related to Justin but the payment of people to be here uh the rumors that can mean about people being paid to be here I'm I'm not surprised by the numbers that are here uh Justin is a type of person that I have been fighting for for over 15 years people who make mistakes people who turn their lives around and want to do something good and as soon as they try to do that somebody keeps pushing them down and pushing them down and pushing them down and and that's not okay with me Justin didn't speak today and I wonder why you know you have almost an entire community you know his whole life is put out there very literally to scrutinize and look at uh and I don't think that was necessary I think it was a real injustice to him who was trying to do something better with his life uh to raise a family in the rose land and to really start a business just like many other businesses in rose and started uh small entrepreneurs should want to do something different so uh I I I can count I see where this is where this is going I appreciate that I I do wish uh the balance uh success in making this happen and working uh and I and I also uh encourage you to commit to the things that you said you agreed doing in the community because they're going to be watching for that uh and again like I said this is going to be a lasting decision uh the over concentration issue yeah we we've already talked about looking at that but it's it will be an issue we have that issue with liquor stores and others so well hopefully we'll find a better way but starting out this was the best way we could find to make a move so these are the rules that we had in place I understand that it's it's not easy but it's not always easy and I and I appreciate that so I appreciate all your comments and uh with that I I I I I do uphold the uh uh I mean I I I would deny the the the appeal thank you thank you so much council member and uh I I want to echo the comments that you made about um the the character assassination that's taken place as a result of this process and I do think for folks who have been in the industry for a long time that's not what folks have been doing for a long time they've been supporting one another they've understood that we've been under a system of uh uh illegality in the cannabis industry that many of us disagreed with and have seen the impacts that's had on the community particularly for individuals primarily young men of color who have been thrown in jail and now we have an opportunity to try to help rectify some of that situation and I know that one of our big conversations that we're having at the subcommittee level and that I think we need to have more broadly in public is how we make sure that communities who have been impacted are also empowered in this process and it's not just predominantly old white folks coming into communities and being able to move forward projects where other people have been incarcerated and I think for me that's been that the saddest thing about this entire process is watching the community that has held itself up for years and years tear itself apart to try to move forward I I think that that needs to be acknowledged by this council and it will definitely be a conversation topic at the subcommittee level for me uh I really dislike this conflict because to me applicant a has by far the better location and applicant b does score much higher on the metrics that we had asked them to to come to I disagreed with uh one of the comments that was made that this is a purely land use decision it's actually not the land use uh decision will be made by the planning commission and then it'll come to the council this is the merit based decision based on other factors as well I agree with councilmember oliveris that given the additional information that was given to us at the subcommittee I would if I was scoring these bump higher and neighborhood compatibility and neighborhood enhancement what really for me makes the difference in this project and while be ending up uh going and and voting to grant the appeal is the compliance with the local and state laws and for me I understand that while roseland is its own unique community within santa rosa what happens in roseland is going to reverberate throughout our community and in the industry that is trying to come out of the shadows and be compliant needs to be able to meet and exceed our expectations when it comes to local and state compliance every mistake by any of you operators out there is going to put a greater stress and impact on everybody else who's trying to come out of the the shadows as well and so for me that's really what ultimately tips the scale and puts me in the in the position of supporting the uh the appeal uh so with that council your votes oh sorry roll call vote okay vice mayor rogers hi council member combs hi council member fleming i was going to clarify that we'll need to bring back a resolution on which we can put on consent uh that's your next meeting but the vote i'd recommend you go ahead and take the vote tonight and direct us to come back with a resolution that reflects your decision so you're saying everybody gets to get back together again and do this again so sue my my motion is to uh uphold the appeal move phenotopia forward and bring back a resolution on consent yes okay uh council member oliveras no council member soyer hi council member tibbetz hi so the appeal is granted four to one thank you folks for for sticking in there we will take a two minute excuse me five to one yes and we will take a two minute recess while folks file out mr mcglenn do we need to do item 14.3 tonight or can we absolutely have to do 14.3 okay we'll be back with items 14.2 and 14.3 in two minutes 14.2 reports mr city manager we need to corral at least one more council report tibbetz sit down all right reports appeal of cannabis policy just need quiet please report appeal of cannabis policy subcommittee decision to select friends and farmers formerly green trove wellness to move forward in the conditional use permit entitlement process for a proposed commercial cannabis adult use retail facility located at 330 358 yelanda avenue assessor's parcel numbers zero four four dash zero seven two dash zero zero six comma dash zero zero seven and dash zero zero eight file number c up one eight dash zero seven zero and the same team is coming back thank you mr city manager and before we get started i do want to let the council know the appellant has requested a continuance i have denied that request and will be pushing on but it will be an option for council as we hear the item if council members feel like there's a compelling reason can make a motion for us to continue the item until later go ahead thank you vice mayor rogers christening tummions this is a similar type of appeal that you just heard appeal of cannabis policy subcommittee to select friends and farmers believe now their name is sunstone advisors to move forward in the conditional use permit entitlement process this is a similar slide that you saw earlier just summarizes the overconcentration area and the evaluation process the original overconcentration area included five applicants along four along yolanda one on santa rosa avenue ultimately so well the two projects that are subject to the appeal tonight is cn santa rosa which is a commercial zone partial on santa rosa avenue and applicant c which was friends and farmers at the subcommittee located as applicant c at three three thirty and three five eight yolanda so this talks about how the points were awarded the review process the merit merit based review process and how staff arrived at our scoring here so the reviewer's average points for cn santa rosa so this is the project on santa rosa avenue um for local and state compliance the average score was 18.7 for site management the score was 17.3 out of 20 for neighborhood compatibility the score was 24.3 out of 30 neighborhood enhancement it was 24.7 out of 30 for a total average score of 85 for friends and farmers um for applicant b uh this is the project on yolanda for local and state compliance the average score was 18.7 out of 20 for site management it was 18 out of 20 for neighborhood compatibility it was 23.7 out of 30 neighborhood enhancement it was 21.3 out of 30 for a total average score of 81.7 so based on the highest scoring applicants staff recommended that cn santa rosa the the uh project on santa rosa avenue to move forward at the november 26th uh cannabis policy subcommittee however after hanging presentations from um staff both applicants the public the cannabis policy subcommittee ultimately by motion selected friends and farmers or applicants c to move forward in the conditional use permit process this would void everybody but applicant e in that over concentration area since that time um applicants b and d have withdrawn their applications so e is no longer um anywhere near being over concentrated in this grouping uh with applicant d uh withdrawing so here you have the two project locations applicant a is on santa rosa avenue applicant c is on yolanda avenue i believe it's the former magic motors site here's applicant a um their existing aerial uh there's a mixture of automotive uses on the site uh and uh commercial uses here is a um a photo of the exterior of that building on santa rosa avenue for applicant a here's their proposed site plan they would be occupying that larger building and utilizing the surface parking for their use this is their proposed elevations what they're proposing to do the exterior of the building to spruce it up here is the project location on yolanda avenue applicant c um it's 330 and 358 yolanda i believe it's a former used car sales lot this is a street view of that project site on here's their proposed site plan um it it's part of a larger complex but the area um um indicated in red is where the dispenser would be located and the associated parking lot that would serve that use here are their proposed elevations that were provided at the time of their application uh their proposal would be to demolish what's there and to build a new building these are the grounds for appeal submitted by the appellant they're outlined in the staff report um there are i believe six or and if you'd like to read those further those are um outlined in the staff report and in their appeal is also included as an attachment and we do have staff response also outlined in the staff report if you'd like to read those as well if you have any questions about staff response i'd be happy to answer those why don't you go ahead walk through them for the public okay did you want me to go through each grounds for appeal or there's just an overall response based on um the appellant's ground for appeal so um planning staff reviewed and scored the applications against the city's cannabis use application retail use requirements late correspondence and information was not included as part of the merit-based review that staff conducted planning staff recommended that cn san eras applicant a move forward because the aptly achieved the highest score and the reason they achieved the highest the highest score is because um they had the uh the most detail and um they score the highest based on their narrative that they provided with their initial application however after hearing presentations from staff applicants on the public um the cannabis policy subcommittee considered all of the that new information along with um staff recommendation and by motion opted to select applicant c to move forward in the conditional use permit process with that the um city the city council's cannabis policy subcommittee recommends that council by resolution deny the appeal of cn san eras applicant a and affirm the cannabis policy subcommittee's decision to select friends and farmers applicant c to move forward in the conditional use permit process for a proposed commercial cannabis adult use retail facility located at 330 and 358 yield on the avenue thank you so much mr olivares do you want to run through sort of what happened at the subcommittee with we were lovingly calling this over concentration the thunder dome yes similar to the last one i gave an overview of process and again this is only one step in the process being me the the scorched staff both applicants had the opportunity to make a presentation to the subcommittee and after that presentation public comment and questions by the subcommittee there was compelling information to to move with applicant and remind me of the letter here c applicant c unanimously by the committee and as a point of clarification regardless of the decision that's made tonight applicant e is able to move forward in the process yes that's correct because of the withdrawal of the um uh most adjacent neighbor yeah thank you so much uh any questions for staff with the council no all right we'll move on to the uh appellant presentation for cn santa rosa my name is crystal madder and i am counsel for cn santa rosa crystal if i could get you to yeah you can raise it up with uh on the right sure you've got a little switch there i've never had this issue before where i have to raise it good evening my name is crystal madder i am the attorney for cn santa rosa and before i get started i would like to reiterate uh actually i'd like to make two points that are not points um specific to this uh the appeal first is the request for a continuance um first i'd like to request the continuance because the mayor is not present i have i believe it is prejudicial to have three members of the cannabis subcommittee um making a decision where there is six present on such a major issue um that does provide a substantial exposure to the city i think this because of the exposure to the city it is incredibly important that the mayor be part of this decision secondarily um council member combs has been in and out of reception the entire meeting and i am very concerned that um she does not have the ability to hear everything that's going on here so for those reasons as well as the fact that it is now almost 10 minutes to 11 o'clock that it would be not only prudent but necessary to continue the hearing until such time as the mayor can be present and until such time that that business would usually be conducted or at least at the dinner hour um secondarily i'd also like to ask the city attorney to affirmably ask these sitting city council members if there are any present conflicts and i would like the the amount of time to be restored to 10 minutes until we have affirmed that there are no conflicts with any of the city city council members before we proceed and i actually i'll i'll grant that if the city attorney would like to respond on the continuance issue uh we have already asked council members about conflicts but i'll i'll reiterate if any council member has a conflict that would preclude them from being able to hear this item please speak up i'm not seeing any madame gallinger yes it is um appropriate for the council uh as are present uh tonight to hear this matter there's no nothing that would preclude um the six members that are here from moving forward uh in the absence of the mayor thank you sue i apologize you get a poor man's tom's wet helm tonight but we'll press on and we'll give you the 10 minutes understood i appreciate it if i may um i did hear hearing the the phone beep i'm afraid i didn't respond to the second point of council member combs presence and i would ask if council member combs um indicate whether she has been able to although the phone connection may have come in at times i'd ask if she could confirm or or or or not um whether she has been able to hear the entirety of the meeting me a question yes uh council member combs um can you let us know whether you've been able to watch um or hear the meeting this evening i've been both watching on live stream as well as listening on the phone we have had some difficult phone connections i would say that it is also true that when i am sitting there in a meeting that has lasted this long there would be moments i might for example excuse myself to use the restroom i would say this is not an inappropriate amount of time that i've not if i have not heard something it is not an inappropriate amount of time well we certainly appreciate you hanging up when you have to use the restroom thank you are you ready to rock and excuse me if there's delays in my responses it's because i forget sometimes that i'm on mute we're ready go ahead okay thank you again my name is crystal madder and i am an attorney for uh c and santa rosa now at the outset i i would like to state that i have served and had served a variety of public records requests those requests were insufficient in so far as they did not provide all of responsive information from each of the city council members many of you did and i appreciate that however there was correspondence missing from a number of you as well as the attachments so at the outset i there will be some sort of follow-up with respect to that what this appeal really is about is about moving the goalpost after the ball has been kicked we've heard from a number of people tonight that have raised issues with respect to the process and i can tell you i've been before several city councils and i understand that it is a very difficult process and i will tell you that what you all have come up with as far as a merit-based process is good on paper it's a great idea the city of pacifica did a lottery system and when they did the lottery system they didn't regulate how many bingo balls the applicants could have so you have 12 spots and one guy submit seven bingo balls we kind of has an unfair advantage there in various concentration areas but what you all came up with here as far as the tiebreaker is fair it provides order security and fairness which were the three values that the city council said that they held paramount the problem is that the cannabis subcommittee didn't uphold those values and and that's my intent in in bringing this today and in showing you the slide deck that we have here first the cannabis subcommittee has come up with a retail use application process and as we all know that the sticking point of this evening is step five and step five is part of the ranking and selection process says that three appointed city council members will review score and rank all applicants in this category and will select a public meeting which applications move forward in the process based on ranking and prior to finalizing these scores the subcommittee will request or may request additional information from an applicant that didn't happen here the scores were finalized without getting any additional information so presumably they were the correct scores they were the the rightful winners of this process now in order to determine who should win this process on a fair and an equal merit based scale you have to take a look at the quality and extent of the responses to the categories as submitted there's a level playing field everybody had to submit applications on the 20th and everybody had until June 21st to rectify those insufficiencies in applications that provided narrative details and or exhibits that fleshed out all these details will be ranked higher than those who don't applications that are the highest in score will be allowed to move forward to step six that is unequivocal it doesn't say that the cannabis subcommittee will take all of the information into account and then decide who they prefer it also doesn't say that that an applicant will have the benefit of taking a look at all of the scorecards determining where they fell short and then providing a new application that shows a wholly different program than what they led all of you to believe they were actually going to put together so here we have how all the scores shook out and I apologize that it's a little bit darker than I intended it to be but I think we can all we all know exactly where this is going see in Santa Rosa came in at 85 then the the appellee here came in at 81.7 and louise gooey's came in at 81 now what I intend to show you here is that on the left is what the appellee said that they were going to do this is what they've sold all of you on initially this is what staff reviewed and rated them on and then when you look on the right it's a wholly different plan can I get you to use your microphone a little bit it's sometimes hard to hear you my apologies thank you what they submitted on November 14th after having the benefit of six months after the program and after having the benefit of the ranking and selection process having come out and all of the scores being processed it's a wholly different program and your rules provide for what happens when somebody provides a materially different product or application what than what they initially promised you it says that they provided misleading information and they get rejected you have to stick by whatever you presented to the city council and and the cannabis subcommittee initially rules are rules you follow the guidelines and you get you you win the application you win the merit based scoring now the rules also said that the cannabis subcommittee would do the review selection and ranking they delegated that authority so crystal I apologize please use that microphone so councilmember combs can hear you my apologies my apologies they they delegated that authority to staff which they were wholly within their responsive their their authority to do what they were not within their authority to do and what what constitutes an abuse of discretion is to then take those the ranking and selection and then decide who they wanted to give the the project to ultimately it completely takes away from the merit based scoring system now secondarily we for now we've established why we are the rightful winner of the the cannabis use permit under step number five the next step is why we are the better and the safer choice for the city and the reason is because cn cn santa rosa which is cannabis nation has operated six dispensaries they've created millions of dollars in taxable revenue which I would assume for for this city council is one of the reasons why the city council chose to have cannabis in its backyard and that's because it creates a great taxable revenue source cn santa rosa has a proven model of millions upon millions at least five million dollars last year in taxable revenue in their dispensary operations they can be up and running by fall of this year and they have a proven model that they can replicate here conversely you have the appellee who has who has defied your rules here and on top of that they have they want to generate a six acre parcel which will take several years to build out let's assume that they can have the funding to to actually effectuate this what you won't get is the taxable revenue even in the short term and what I can also tell you is that what they're proposing has never succeeded in any state or any jurisdiction in the united states what they are proposing as far as the the tourist destination has not been successful and if you want to check my facts look up el-monte look at the multiple municipalities across the united states that have proposed something like this and how it's failed and ask yourself would you rather go with the safer bet of a tried and true mod tried and true model of six dispensaries that have proven taxable revenue and that can it immediately give you that taxable revenue I believe this year versus the possibility of a project that may give you taxable revenue in two years if it can be funded and if it's what the public wants and I would also go as so far as to say that current research shows people don't spend more than 30 minutes at a dispensary so to build such a monstrosity which is not compatible with that neighborhood wouldn't even fit the current market it doesn't even fit the current cannabis market so for these reasons I would say that we are not only legally the better fit for for this particular application but we are also the safer bet for city council and with my remaining time of a minute and 30 I would like to at least address the response from the appellee in the late papers first it is complete red herring to say that you cannot consider information that was submitted on February 12th I have I've gone before many city councils and you file a notice of appeal within 10 days but there is absolutely no rule that precludes me from adding additional information for consideration by the city council indeed I would hope that you would have full information in making whatever decision that you need to to make also I would like to point out what is missing from the response and what is missing from the response is any sort of rebuttal to the language that we've pointed out to the city council that these are your rules these are the rules that you adopted to be fair and to have a merit-based system and they simply cannot respond to the fact that we followed the rules they didn't we won fair and square and this should be the the permit should go to see in Santa Rosa thank you so much council are there any questions for the appellant nope we will go on to the selected applicant's presentation Ms. Carlstrom you have 10 minutes good evening mr vice mayor and council thank you especially to councilmember combs for a late evening on the phone with us cognizant of your time we will keep this as brief as possible thank you very much for your service to our community we're very pleased to present a project in my neighborhood the friends and farmers project at 358 Yolanda which was selected unanimously by your subcommittee several months ago today as you'll see on slide one we have an underutilized and dilapidated commercial corridor one of the very prominent commercial corridors connecting Santa Rosa Avenue and Petaluma Hill Road tomorrow a focal point for community redevelopment education and health and I would submit to the council's consideration that this drawing is reflective of the very reason that your subcommittee again unanimously selected our project over the other applicants because of the extent to which it represents the opportunity to redevelop this sorely neglected portion of our community quickly to just review the appellant's claims uh there they break down and I will go through them uh and and previously have submitted to you an 11 page response detailing the extent to which they fail to substantiate their claims however in brief again we were approved by your subcommittee unanimously for approval and and to move forward to the planning commission for further conditioning and review we submit that of course in contrast to the appellant's claims our application was indeed submitted completely and on time and in compliance of course with all of your established ordinances and Santa Rosa policies and duly developed practice we have followed all the rules and requirements that your city and state your city ordinances and state law have developed with respect to the iterative process pertaining to land use decisions such as is before you this evening um and that furthermore in contrast to the appellant's claims your subcommittee acted in adherence with your established council protocols quickly uh though the appeal purports to present eight different grounds for appeal grounds one and three to seven essentially boil down to the same claim they claim that our project improperly made changes during the application process and presented them to your subcommittee in a manner not consistent with city and state regulations of course your subcommittee members know that is not the case the city of Santa Rosa demands and should demand that the best projects be approved especially in this competitive process as we dole out highly contentious highly competitive retail cannabis permits over the course of the last year the friends and farmers Sunstone advisors project has been subject to a variety of changes and we would submit that that is to your benefit and that it would be foolish for you as a council or for your subcommittee to have simply accepted the first draft of anyone's application ground number two asserts that the process does not allow for a dialogue between the applicant and the city and that you should or your subcommittee should instead have relied exclusively on your staff's review of written project narratives you can sense why as a member of the voting population of the city of Santa Rosa why i would reject that notion you as a council as a subcommittee have every right to demand that projects improve over time and ours is no exception ground number eight of course asserts that this project's affiliation with city officials meant that somehow the subcommittee review process was unfair leading to an unfair outcome however as is more thoroughly detailed in our reply to the appeal each project was subjected to the same level of scrutiny and public review each team was granted the exact same opportunity to be heard and to advocate for its election and in fact in this case our project was initially due to be reviewed in september and was not in fact reviewed until november so each project had an additional two months to advocate to grow to change and to become better as ours did and with that i will highlight one of the small areas where we've detailed in our reply appeal with respect to the points this project in particular warrants your further scrutiny in this case our project was a mere this is a typo on our part three and a half points behind the other project these are an additional 10 points where upon further review we feel that our project would have been awarded further points had the review process been slanted in our direction as the appellants assert and with that i'll turn it over to alicia rose our project proponent good evening and thank you all for staying so late i'm a little taller than erin sorry um so very quickly um all of you know i'm alicia rose i am the founder of urba buena and friends and farmers um as well as the company's unstone advisors um which is the entity name so just to avoid any confusion um a redevelopment project we believe is going to make the city proud built from the ground up and designed to be an industry defining project we are building an immersive and experiential location to inform and inspire a deeper understanding of holistic health and environmental sustainability while showcasing the history legacy and future of cannabis within the broader context of our northern california community offering a highly curated selection of wellness inspired products and the finest locally produced sungrown biodynamic and full spectrum cannabis were committed to serving and supporting our local economy full stop a beautiful focal point for the renewal of yolanda avenue district our retail destination will serve the needs of both local residents and the estimated multi trillion dollar agritourism economy that we have here in wine country serving both our local community and significant tourism industry will drive revenue and positive notoriety conscious business practices have been utmost uh import as part of this process and i laud all of the people that came before me as part of um this competitive process but the ethos of this process uh print sorry project runs deep with a commitment to supporting the health of our patients our customers and our community we have a commitment to environmental and community sustainability in fact i have a master's degree in ecosystem science we have a local hiring policy with fifteen dollar guaranteed minimum wage we have an employee profit sharing program a compassionate care program for seniors and veterans and we do already employ a community liaison director and outreach coordinator for community benefits we've already taken steps to try and um become more integrated in ways long before we're going to be revenue positive to try and give back to organizations like first five of sonoma county we've already become a donor to fund family programs and risk prevention for youth uh we have been working closely with the teamsters uh and are really committed to providing exceptional working to conditions and wages and we've uh started to develop a relationship with the palms in veterans permanent housing unfortunately because we're so late tonight akash can't be here uh but not only have we been in a donor but we have already discussed initial work placement programs this is an unparalleled redevelopment project i think we all understand that it meets and exceeds provisions in the city's general plan improving the visual appeal and function of an entire block the six acre campus is not a part of this initial 8400 square foot project just to point out if we provide visual cues for the redevelopment of the entire yolanda corridor we are a hundred percent local and woman ownership with funding commitment to a local business we offer a diverse range of services to diversify significant commercial center we'll create local jobs with living wages and offer significant tax revenue potential obviously we have an environmental focus on sustainable development with native what native waterwise landscaping and the rest of the things we already know i won't belabor that point because it's something that we establish our entire business model on that will have a new anchor storefront it's the beginning of the larger redevelopment project and provides visual cues for the redevelopment of the entire corridor we're going to have significant improvement to 500 linear feet of street frontage and remove 3000 square feet of impermeable surface we have an extraordinary team uh the landowner and uh land developers alan henderson and mike gasperini are well known in the community and responsible for santa rosa's largest 100 affordable by design housing development because i'm running out of time i will also let you know that we have an extraordinary uh executive um from restoration hardware and creighton barrel that is on our retail advisory team tim baca is a financial advisor uh he co-founded mountain hardware and willies reserve cannabis we have four years of operational experience appreciate thank you so much council are there any questions for the selected applicant no clare do we have presentations by the other two non-selected applicants louise guis and black elm we do not okay and i will go ahead i'm sorry both have been withdrawn at this point okay it's clear great um i will go ahead and see if there are any additional questions from the council so there was uh an insinuation there regarding the legality of the subcommittee to take in additional input outside of the the score could you respond to that for us sure the um regulations do provide for um the the applications to come to the subcommittee for it to be a hearing for there to be testimony and additional submissions and that is all within the realm um that the subcommittee could then take into account um the process does not close with the evaluation of um that is submitted by the staff there it is an ongoing process until the subcommittee makes its decision and just as tonight um on appeal you'll hear additional you have heard additional evidence and that you may take that into consideration as well as you evaluate the two projects under the established criteria so the idea that the staff scores were the final number and that we are compelled to follow based on the staff scores is incorrect that is incorrect your your correct it is incorrect that that the process ends with the staff recommendation great thank you so much we will go to public comment we have Eric Harvey followed by Clayton Taylor and again folks because it is so late i'm going to ask you to keep your comments to a minute and a half and we'll move from there okay great thank you um good evening vice mayor and city council members appreciate everyone being here so late i will keep it brief my name is Eric Harvey i'm part of the Sunstone Advisors team um and we'll tell you that this project has a unique vision establishing a cannabis tourism destination for northern california it'll provide visitors with education about the benefits of cannabis and the value of carefully grown produced and curated products Sunstone Advisors has our experienced operators with four years of successful operation and medical use cannabis prior to the legalization of adult use in california the team also brings many years of experience in the luxury wine industry including working with wineries producing hundred point wines such as harland estate positioning Sunstone Advisors to provide a high caliber consumer experience this vision will bring and will bring to the cannabis and will be brought to the cannabis industry providing a much needed counter to an industry dominated by consolidation pursuit of profit and the quest for high thc levels Sunstone Advisors project will be sustainably built and run and will bring revitalization to an area where it is sorely needed thank you thank you so much Clayton Taylor followed by Allison Costa good evening council again um Clayton Taylor Teamsters 665 i'm actually the cannabis organizer also keeping it brief so we have a unique opportunity here in Santa Rosa to incubate cannabis business um that's going to be pro-labor and actually work well within the established industry and Alicia the very first time that we met went out of her way and actually introduced me to other cannabis industries uh companies that are going through this process and really uh went above and beyond in our relationship and trying to bring more people into the labor movement and to me and to the Teamsters that said a lot about what their project is going to be thank you thank you Clayton Allison followed by Brian Noble hello and thank you council members my name is Allison Costa I have been a resident and local business owner uh for the past 18 years in this community I'm in here in support of friends and farmers we're neighbors uh in a cannabis business on Yolanda Avenue uh we are applicant E we have I've known Alan Henderson personally I've been his neighbor for over 10 years he's always been a pillar in Santa Rosa community donating his time and his resources to better his community in a multiple uh multitude of ways and as friends and neighbors and business owners in Santa Rosa I support friends and farmers in this project and the vision that they have in the contribution they have that they're bringing to the community to not just Santa Rosa but in the cannabis community thank you for your your time and your thoughtfulness through this process thank you so much Allison Brian Noble followed by Devika Maske uh good evening council persons um I wanted to just uh thank you for taking the time to uh to listen to us here and um I wanted to uh share some thoughts that Angie Dillon Shore uh provided to me she couldn't be here uh with the length of the presentation as they've gone on earlier tonight she's executive dresser of first five uh snowman county and she wanted to say she was uh excited about the potential to maximize the economic in uh opportunity for the canister in just cannabis commerce that brings to Santa Rosa and the do some good things for families and children um she is uh she was approached and she is supportive of friends and family friends and farmers uh and specifically one of the principles of that project Alan Henderson Alan and his team have approached her about the developing the community partnership uh with first five um she uh she knows that um she's very happy to get his call and she was happy to learn that he's manned with deep commitments to economic vitality of Santa Rosa uh substantially increasing affordable housing for families in the Paseo Vista development and he helped raise over $90,000 uh for um for uh fire survivors and journeyed in even though he was self was a surf fire survivor as well um he is uh he is uh she's happy to support him as not only a principal of the friends and farmers project uh with the business interests his own but as a way to increase overall activity and vitality in the Yolanda Kiwana Springs area uh so I just wanted to share that with you guys uh so you had that uh her input on that so thank you thank you so much Brian Devika followed by Denny Rosali thank you council members my name is Devika Maskey and I'm a resident of Santa Rosa for the past 20 years I'm here in support for friends and farmers to achieve a Santa Rosa city cannabis retail permit our cannabis project NKM enterprises which is applicant E in this over concentrated area located on Yolanda Avenue in Santa Rosa is also moving forward with the CUP hearing we're in full support of our neighbors we have personally worked directly with Alicia and her brand Urban Buena in a number of events over the past two years Alicia is a knowledgeable cannabis professional that is a leader in our community as well as a wonderful example of successful female-led business we completely support friends and farmers in their pursuit to update Yolanda Avenue as a community building location and learning campus this project will immensely contribute to making the Santa Rosa cannabis community something the city and the state of California can be proud of thank you for your time thank you so much Denny followed by Alan Henderson thanks for the assist good evening good evening Mr. Mayor and members of the council thank you for your stamina this evening my name is Denny Rosetti Rosetti consulting I've had the pleasure to work with friends and farmers as community relations specialist outreach for the past nine months we've been working to create a community benefits program for the project to date we have agreements with first five Stomac County which you just heard a letter from Angie Dillenture who was unable to be here this evening as well as the Palms which is one of our neighbors veterans housing and homeless development we've also been working with the Teamsters Union and those discussions have been very productive we welcome the conversation around formal representation for our future workforce we also sent the comments that were delivered by the first five and the Palms from the subcommittee hearings into the council since those folks were not able to be here this evening this late in January we had an open house where we invited in neighbors and our community members and interested stakeholders which was very well attended at the site we also hosted a community dinner at the Palms and served around 100 dinners to residents as a way to sort of introduce ourselves to that community and get to know their interests and our neighbors a little bit better and we're also looking to them as a potential future workforce for the for the project which is very exciting thank you for your consideration of our project and to allow us to continue these awesome relationships we're building tonight thank you so much Alan Henderson followed by Tom Woods yeah thank you Vice President Vice Mayor Rogers and the council thank you very much I'm Alan Henderson born and raised in Santa Rosa I've had the property there in Yolanda for about 20 years it's a dilapidated buildings there I'm trying to fix it up I would have spent money there except I invested all my money into the sale vista where we're trying to put in 132 affordable homes so if anybody knows about an application process and how much it's changed from its inception going before the council going before the all the boards trying to change everything to make it better I've been doing that and that's what I'm going to try to do with this project here so working with Alicia I believe in her process her product I believe in her vision and what she wants to do I think it's going to be a beautiful project it's going to be the line light of that of that industrial park trying to fix it up it's kind of a blighted park so it's the beginning of what I think is going to be a revitalation of Yolanda Avenue so thank you very much thank you so much Tom Woods thank you council I'll be as brief as I possibly can I just wanted to reinforce the value of our relationship with friends and farmers there people that are represented by labor unions make on average 20 more than people that don't that are not and every represented person in a community raises the wage of three unrepresented people by about 10 percent friends and farmers by partnering with us is not just giving us an opportunity to organize their workforce and represent them they're assisting us in networking and assisting us in our goal to help set a wage standard in an industry that is new and create a environment where companies cannot find efficiencies by misusing their workforce we're very very proud to be partnered with them and we look forward to many years of collaborative negotiations thank you so much I'm going to go ahead and bring it back that was our last card go for it no you're all good the more the merrier well we like to all make it brief my name is phil natole and I am the property owner at 2612 Santa Rosa Avenue and we have the pleasure of working with Tyler here with CNN Santa Rosa and he would he's would make a great operator and the Santa Rosa community um what I like to say is that uh you know we do we're passing out a few few information flyers I want you to take a look at we have quite a few vacant buildings along the Santa Rosa corridor that I think that would probably stand to use a tenant in the near future so they've been multiplying for quite some time and we're we're now up to about a hundred thousand square feet of vacancies including the very last building or that last page is our building in there which is currently vacant as well I just think instead of building new structures and and taking resources out of the economy where we could use those resources for building homes or whatnot you know we should probably put it into put these businesses into vacant structures and especially the one that I own currently we have a great visit we have a great location it's on Santa Rosa Avenue it is the gateway to Santa Rosa all these all these uh buildings that you're looking at are also on the part of the gateway of Santa Rosa this area is actually what people see first when they come into town and my building is right off the freeway it is actually visible and it's easy great parking and easy access I'd like you to consider the appeal for CNN Santa Rosa great thank you so much sir Sue I see whispering is there anything that the council should know sure I'd like to just clarify a couple of things the appellant suggested that the sub this goes back to kind of the process before the subcommittee and there was a suggestion that the subcommittee had delegated the responsibility for ranking to staff that's not correct this is a typical process in land use matters where the staff undertakes analysis of the projects and comes forward to a subcommittee or to the planning commission or to another board commission with a recommendation and that's what happens in this process as well um the application process uh chart uh states that staff scores applications against merit criteria council's cannabis subcommittee reviews and establishes the ranking list so it is the responsibility of course of the subcommittee to do that um and further elaboration in the application materials um is that the city's cannabis subcommittee uh reviews scores and ranks all applicants in the category and selects at a public meeting which applications will move forward in the process this also notes that is as typical in any land use proceeding that the subcommittee may request additional information from an applicant before making its decision so just to clarify and that at that meeting where these applications were considered you did ask for additional information you asked a number of questions the subcommittee asked a number of questions asked for more information that information was taken in you evaluated the projects based on both the information and recommendation that you had from staff and your own uh receipt of information and evaluation um and to make your decision and now we are up on appeal and we're going through the same process where there's additional information coming in you are free to consider and indeed you should consider that additional information and then make your decision based on that great thank you so much and i'll i'll ask if claire wanted to add your good thanks councilor there are any additional questions all right councilmember soyer i'm going to ask you to put a motion on the table sure i'll introduce a resolution of the council the city senator osa denying the appeal of c and senator osa applicant a and affirming the cannabis policy subcommittee's decision to select friends and farmers applicant c to move forward in the conditional use permit process for a proposed commercial cannabis adult use retail facility located at 330 and 358 you along the avenue apn 044-072-006-007 and dash 008 file number c up 18-070 and wait for the meeting a second councilmember colm's do you have any comments no any other council members councilmember soyer i do i appreciate the the um comments by the appellant and i i have to admit that this is risky i think it's always risky when people do something different and a bit grander and perhaps a little less predictable than than some other models especially in retail retail is a challenging business and i and i know that personally but it indeed is part of what attracted me to this to this particular model it is um it's pushing the envelope it is not the status quo it's raising the bar and again it is risky and there will be failures in in these businesses in senator osa at at certain times we will have businesses that fail um it's just the nature of the beast and when you're when you are looking at something it's a bit more grand perhaps that raises the odds somewhat that there could be some changes in the business model and there could be failure but i'm um excited by that personally i think that there is a there's a predictability to some of the the standard um cannabis dispensary models and cannabis dispensary shops i think there will always be room for those they will always they will come and go just like any other retail establishment so uh is it is it looking at things a little more grandly is it is it is it more risky yes it is but if it's but when successful it adds to the in a in a very highway it adds to the to the good mix of cannabis businesses in santa rosa so i'm i'm pleased to um to to deny this appeal because i'm i am i'd like to see this succeed and i think there will always be room for the more traditional models and um as time goes on i think those opportunities will be will actually present themselves because not everyone knows what they're doing when it comes to retail and there will always be opportunities in the future i think for just about everybody but it's just not going to be today thank you council member nothing new well said about my colleague i appreciate those comments thank you all right sue all good all right so the motion is to deny the appeal to allow applicant c to move forward uh council members your votes um then it's a voice i just like pushing the buttons nice mayor rogers i know that about you chris council member cones i'm voting in favor of denying council member fleming like you're such a yes yes council member all of eras yes council member soyer hi and council member tidbits thank you so so and i uh this was not a public hearing the the applicant has an opportunity to reply and do a rebuttal in a public hearing this is a report item and there is obviously additional public hearings to come for the applicant at the planning commission of the city council but this was not a public hearing so i i appreciate yep i appreciate that thank you uh and i i do want to acknowledge that council member combs is sitting at 130 her time as well pushed through item 14.3 i have a promise this will be presented in in efficient manner uh report first amendment to professional services agreement number f001622 with bureau veritas north america for post fire recovery and rebuilding services fiscal year 2018-19 budget amendment david guin assistant city manager and gabe osborne deputy director of development services presenting thank you and we will be quickly quick through this we have a budget item for you tonight there we're going to do two things with you um due to the increase in activity in the rebuild efforts and the increase in activity in the uh planning department normal operation services and so what we'll be doing is uh going through a presentation identifying a budget adjustment for those two elements the rebuild recovery center and our pet operational budget based on revenues that exceeded our expectations at the beginning of the year and so this is fairly typical to come back mid-year and do an adjustment like this based on revenues that we we see come in um so the the two items uh the first will be to um amend amend the contract for the bureau veritas and the second will be our operations budget and i'll pass it off to gabe osborne deputy director of engineering services to go through the presentation very quickly good evening vice mayor rogers and members of the council has mr guin mentioned i will move through this as quick as possible due to the lateness of the hour um the item before us is an amendment to the budget in this outline um sets forth the specifics that we're going to discuss one is an amendment to the bureau veritas contract and it will do two things it will increase the budget it will modify some staffing classifications associated with that um we will also be proposing to reimburse economic development for some funds that were dedicated to developing a lot of the educational and outreach materials that were produced early on in the fire uh rebuild efforts and then the last item is really focusing on our core services outside of the fire rebuild which is we'll assign additional revenue to the plan check um an inspection uh professional services to help out with our normal services that we provide on that area um so i'll touch really quickly on the rebuild the bureau veritas contract just as a reminder was executed back in november 21 of 2017 to support the rebuild efforts in the in the permit center um and at that point this slide actually comes from that presentation we weren't really quite sure the full breadth of service that would be provided at that point um we do we did know that we needed a dedicated one-stop shop that would have dedicated staffing we obviously would have to have an expedited plan review and there would be various support resources and outreach and education that would go along with that uh fast forward a year so december 31 of last year um we were really branded as a resilient city permit center it does have dedicated staffing we peak out at about 6 000 staff hours a month approximately 30 positions provided through bureau veritas there is expedited plan review of five days um we've been able to institute 24-hour inspection turnaround and there's a variety of services that really support the overall rebuild from landscaping we did fire review at a point in time um and we've looked at stormwater compliance and did a significant number of inspections to ensure water quality um what we've seen over the course of the last year is a significant volume of permit activity this chart shows two numbers the first one is 2682 parcels that experienced a complete loss of a structure in most situations those are single family homes and then the total count of completely lost structures is 3123 so we really focus on the 2682 number to gauge where we are percentage wise with the recovery efforts and out of that we have about 1456 of those properties moving forward and so that's about 55 of the parcels at year one have moved forward so the significant amount of permit volume that went along with that activity and if we look at where those parcels are um and this once again was at december of last year we had almost a thousand under construction we had occupied 110 and then we had about 400 in various stages of the permit process uh this once again was a slide that was pulled out of the november 21 presentation we did some estimates based on the cost of services we were looking at really a two-year program as far as the rebuild efforts went at that point in time um and we had an approval to spend on that contract of 8.8 million excuse me 8.8 million um and we broke that down into really two years so the assumption was we'd have about 4.6 dedicated to year one um a 4.2 dedicated to year two and the assumption at that point was that it would be completely offset by revenue so we were assuming in year one we would get approximately six million in revenue in year two about 4.4 million with year one resulting in about 1500 plan checks and 750 inspections and year two about 800 plan checks with a thousand inspections um moving forward our year one estimates were a bit off as far as expenditures and that was due to the permit volume um we actually had an expenditure of 5.8 million which was up to about 1.2 million from our estimates um as far as the revenue that was also up due to the permit volume so where we thought we were going to hit about 6 million we hit about 7.2 million um and that was the difference of almost 1.2 million um and this is all based on our revenue we had some estimates of an average plan check and inspection fee of 5 000 per unit um what we've seen thus far is that's really close we're sitting in about 4 733 per unit so this chart's really the last year as far as accumulative revenue so the first line uh that is our consultant expenditure and that is purely bureau veritas and that topped out at 5 million 800 in december um as we can see it really had an uptick in april when we had a significant amount of permit and volume and we had to increase staffing the second line is some of the total costs with the permit center so in additional in addition to bureau veritas we also had some costs associated with setting up the center cubicles um computers things of that nature uh this also includes the cost to develop some of the outreach material that was generated really early on and then the last line actually shows our revenue associated with that so that's the 7 point almost 2 million and if we look at the first phase where the revenue was lower than the expenditure that was really in the initial development of the permit center um so at that point it was really setting up the center uh there was a heavy amount of outreach material being produced at that point the permit volume was fairly low um there was a significant amount of policy modification and we were also we had a lot of city staff participation in that process it wasn't just bureau veritas as we move forward this gets us into a heavier permit submittal volume that was really the peak of the construction season on as far as submittals go so we had heavy plan review we weren't fully into inspections at that point um right-of-way coordination started to become an issue because we had more activity in the field we were still producing outreach material we still had a lot of public outreach that we were doing from a city staff standpoint it got into a bit of more predictable schedule than every weekend in just about every weekday and we're also doing minor policy modification if we move forward to december it's really full go as far as permits submittals and inspection so it's really heavy construction activity um we see because of the permit volume that there's a bigger difference between the revenue and the expenditures at that point still doing public outreach still doing minor policy modification so the difference between the two numbers the revenue and the expenditures is a little over a million what that will go to is future inspections and then permit center operation there's always some level of overhead and permit center operation with customer service and then that million dollars will have to go to future inspections that will be delivered over the life of the development of those building permits so the specifics we are proposing to amend the professional service agreement with beer veritas so what our proposal will do is it will move it from the 8.8 million not to exceed amount to nine million two hundred and sixty three thousand two hundred and twelve and that is anticipated to get us through the remainder of this fiscal year and then we will bring anything back through the normal budgetary process so that results in a three hundred and seventy seven thousand fifty two dollar increase in the not to exceed amount we're also increasing the budgeted amount so although we received an approval to spend of the eight point eight each year we budgeted a certain amount that we thought we would need so what we're proposing to do is actually match the budgeted amount with a not to exceed amount in the contract itself once again this will all be offset by the revenue is our assumption we're still sticking with the five thousand number as time goes on that number may increase we're seeing that a lot of homes are coming back bigger than they were before and the square footage drives the plan check in an inspection number so the other pieces we're proposing to modify the staffing classifications because we did not know the full breadth of services the original contract did not have a wide range of staffing classifications and we're modifying that so we're adding ranges for the core positions of inspection plans examiner and permit technician and the intention there is it will allow us for to do a little better job of retention and attraction those are very popular positions right now when we need to make sure that the pay is competitive the other pieces we're adding staffing classifications for more entry level positions so we found that data entry was pretty heavy in the rebuild and we also found that there are certain inspection types that do not require a seasoned inspector and those positions will be billed out at a lower rate that's what what is in currently in the contract so if this is their approval happens today there are positions right now that will be billed out at a lower rate and that will likely result into a reduction of $30 an hour over 120 hours a week so we do think that that will result in a significant reduction in the overall expenditures the other item is to reimburse economic development for 188,750 there was a contract executed with the engine as read in October 24th of 2017 to support really outreach material development and what it was going to be for the fire rebuild and outside of it what we found is due to the high demand that the majority of those expenditures went to the fire rebuild so what we want to do is give economic development that money back the intention is to focus the additional financial resources on investment and development activities in the proprietary development areas so that touches on the rebuild so I'll get into the area outside of that which is our core services which are planning building and engineering review and inspection so this will briefly touch on our staffing model so what we rely on is a base staff level of permanent employees and that actually results in the development of housing units and commercial operations and that ultimately influences a general fund with an increase in taxes and in the sales tax and property tax excuse me what we've seen since the recovery in the downturn of the economy in 2008 2009 is of course staffing levels have not always met the demand so year to year we budget in professional services which is in the next layer which really shows the consultant support that we anticipate with each budget cycle and that really has the same result of the development of commercial operations and housing units what we have seen over the last two or three years is we have additional fees that come in and our revenue is higher than we anticipated and the permit activity is higher than we anticipated so we have the need to layer on another piece for consultant support which then has the same benefit of housing and commercial units so if we look at our revenues over the last fiscal year they all come from service fees and those are application review and processing fees they really are intended to recover the staff time associated with those processes so our budgeted revenue for 1819 was almost nine million it was eight million seven hundred four when we looked at our actual revenues at the end of january they were over that so we pulled an additional 785,000 so we were approximately nine million in budget revenues or excuse me actual revenues so what that has us do is then look at what our budget is going to be moving forward for the remainder of the fiscal year and that looks to be approximately 17 million and that additional 7,500,000 is based on real projects with real fees associated with them that are coming through the door we don't always know where they're going to hit fiscal year to fiscal year but there are real numbers behind all those projects and that what that's what we use to generate that budgeted amount so what our proposal is is since the revenue is higher and we are anticipating those projects to come through and we want to make sure we have the resources in place to address those we are requesting that we take some of that anticipated excess revenue and apply that to professional services to address that need and the way that will break down is we want to assign 300,000 to building consultant services for plan review and inspection 200,000 to planning consultation services for entitlement reviews and then 300,000 will be signed to engineering consultant services for plan review and inspection which will deal with that full breadth of application types that we're assuming will come in the remainder of the fiscal year so this breaks down the total proposal so our total budget amendment is four million three hundred and fifty seven three hundred and twenty two dollars and it breaks down as I have previously discussed with approximately three point four going to bureau veritas the hundred and eighty eight thousand going to economic development and then the breakdown to engineering planning and building so I'll conclude by simply stating the formal recommendations so the recommendation that the council we have to excuse me the recommendation that the council authorized the chief building official to amend fiscal year 2018-19 adopted budget to increase budgeted revenues by four million three hundred and fifty seven thousand three hundred and twenty two and increase the appropriations in the jail geo keys which is basically the the spreadsheet we saw in the previous slide and then the second recommendation is that council approve and authorize the mayor to execute the amendment to professional services agreement with bureau veritas north america incorporated in the amount not to exceed nine million two hundred and sixty three thousand two hundred and twelve dollars so with that I'll open it up to any questions council are there any questions go ahead councilmember I know we want to go home so I apologize but you guys did such a good job I just want to actually take a moment to acknowledge it you created a plan I think back in November of 2017 you had great execution and now I mean you've come in past expectations and the rest of the department's going to benefit from it really really appreciated great job well all right I have one card on this item George uberty who I think has left so I'll go ahead and bring it back I do want to say thank you I had a conversation with the councilmember from another city just yesterday who works in the construction industry and he said that our plan check has been phenomenal they're trying to figure out how to do that themselves but that our soft spot that we needed to work on was putting more resources into our inspections so I appreciate seeing this play out council members councilmember Sawyer I have this and I echo the the comments about good work it's a it's a tough presentation to go through late late at night a lot of work went into that and really appreciate it excellent job maybe next time we'll be more awake to be able to appreciate it even more so I'll introduce a resolution of the council the city Santa Rosa approving the first amendment to professional services agreement numbers f 001 1622 f 001 622 with bureau Veritas North America incorporated to increase compensation and update contractor staff classifications for post-fire recovery and rebuilding services amending the fiscal year 2018 2019 budget for planned check and inspection professional services for planning and economic development offset by associated fee revenue and wait for the reading second second and I'd also like if I made to say thank you for the improvement being planned in inspections all right miss Gomez you want to call the vote yes vice mayor rogers hi councilmember combs councilmember Fleming councilmember Oliveras hi councilmember Sawyer hi councilmember Tibbets and that passes unanimously council we have one card left for public comment uh thomas it's almost midnight i'm giving you a minute thank you under the consider under the circumstances um i wanted to commend you for a really uh incredible debate and understanding i don't know how it all worked out but it but it did i i came in here to talk about the the um keep funding and i just point out what the new york times that wells fargo banks 27 000 employees were surveyed online and said concerns included their ability to raise grievances with managers and whether wells fargo conducts its business activities with honesty and integrity we've had conversations about that and the worry is about where the direction of the country is going in but it's right here it works right here so please do forgive me if i take a minute more um chinese coal entrepreneur zhu faqi has disappeared he said chinese entrepreneurs yearned for the rule of law to replace arbitrary power he disappeared he's probably dead um he was a coal entrepreneur and he added and the judge ruled in his favor and then the records uh were stolen from the judge and from his from his courtroom that that supported his claim senator amy clobucker was a white crimes prosecutor and said paul manifold sentence you can't have two systems of justice one for the rich and one and powerful and one for everyone else and if i could just take one second thomas i appreciate it thank you so much for your time and we are adjourned you