 come to some creek cleanups and different things. So I'll be around to take public comments. So anytime. Yeah. Okay. Water department report. Is there a report from the water department? Yes, there is. Good afternoon. Chair Rubino to members of the committee. My name is Kyle Spomberg. I'm an environmental specialist with the stormwater and creeks team and coordinator of the creek stewardship program. So we just finished our annual report cycle. So I wanted to share with you some of the highlights of the creek stewardship achievements for the year and also touch on creek week, which is coming up in September. So for during the last fiscal year, the creek stewardship program partnered with 41 businesses, neighborhood associations and agencies, as well as 33 school and youth organizations with the help of our contracted environmental educator environment. We led 363 educational outreach and stewardship activities throughout the city, including over 8,000 participants, six hundred or 6,600 of which were under the age of 18. These activities resulted in nearly 3,500 hours of community service and 7,400 hours of a creek based education in total. Thanks to our great volunteers and partners, we were able to remove nearly 1,100 cubic yards of trash from the creeks as well. And speaking of community outreach and engagement, I'm also excited to talk about creek week today. For over a decade, city staff has offered fun, educational events and volunteer opportunities to the residents of Santa Rosa during our annual creek week celebration. Creek week helps bring awareness to the harmful effects of pollutants on our creeks, waterways and oceans. On Tuesday, September 12th, proclamation will be presented at city council for claiming September 16th through the 23rd as creek week in the city of Santa Rosa. To kick off creek week this year, we partnered with the Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation to lead a beginner's workshop on nature journaling, which will take place on Saturday, September 16th. On Sunday, September 17th, our stormwater and creek staff will lead a guided nature walk along Santa Rosa Creek, starting at Flat Rock Park and working our way upstream to one of our active restoration sites. Also coming back this year are the ever popular downtown underground tours where we explore the cohorts that run beneath City Hall. We increased our number of tours this year to hold two on Tuesday, September 19th and two more on Thursday, September 21st. These tours are already wait-listed with over 150 people registered for these tours. So they are very important. On Wednesday, September 20th, city staff are invited to participate in our second annual Dash for Trash competition and will compete for a chance to earn the Golden Trash Cup trophy. We'll have cleanup stations with supplies staged near our municipal buildings here at the Prince Memorial Greenway for our downtown employees and also at Stony Point at Santa Rosa Creek for the MSC employees. On Friday, September 22nd, members of the public are encouraged to hop on their bikes and join us for the Tord Creek Trail bike ride where they can enjoy scenic views of the creeks and learn about the over 40 miles of creek pathways that we have throughout the city. Finally, we'll be capping off Creek Week on September 23rd with the volunteer cleanup along the Prince Memorial Greenway on Santa Rosa Creek. For anyone interested in attending one of the events, we do ask you to join or to visit our website, srcity.org forward slash creek week to register. As I mentioned, some of the events are wait-listed already. And for anyone that can't attend one of our in-person events, we do have several online activities available for people as well. Thank you all, and we hope to see you out there. If you're fine work, I really appreciate it. Palestine, very involved with the efforts I've taken to restore and, I guess you'd say, improve the Prince Memorial Greenway along with Carol, but thank you for your efforts there. Thank you. A couple of questions. Please. How many dumpsters in 11,000 cubic yards? Your standard dump truck is a 10-yard box. So it's, what is that, over 100? Yeah, 11,000. 11,000 dump trucks. Excuse me. Over 100 dump trucks. And second question was promoting all these great events. How would the average person learn about this stuff? We do have a Creek newsletter that we've been putting some work in to revitalize. We've added a bio spotlight to include plants and animal highlights on the creeks. So we also promote our events through that. We are actively hanging posters for Creek Week right now. You also can go to the Creek Stewardship webpage on the city's webpage as well. Is there a social media presence? Through the Santa Rosa Water Department page, they post our events. I got a poster card in my water bill. Yeah, so for Creek Week specifically, we do bill inserts. I actually have a couple extra of those if anyone did not get one. Bills? I like to do that. What do you say? Sorry. I kind of stay out of that part of it. You have to keep my bill on. It's a good way to reach people. We're doing a bill insert, so first time we've done that. Okay. So there's another item here. Some of our water departments already went from the water agency here. Okay, we're going to move on to our scheduled item for the day, which is the draft general plan, which Amy is going to lead our presentation. Yep, thank you so much. Do I need to share the presentation from here or can you all share it? I have it logged into Zoom there. Okay. Yeah, would you? That'd be great. All right, so this presentation today is going to give you all an overview of our general plan update process, where we've been and the draft general plan that we have out for public review right now and then some of the next steps. I'll just note that we have a lot of people from the team here. So we have Beatrice, who is our equity and public health planner. Sherry is also working on our general plan, who you will all get to know soon. Estrella, who is our intern, she's leaving us to go back to school. I think this is her last day physically here with us, but she's been fantastic in working a lot of her outreach. We also have Nancy, senior planner on our advanced planning team, who's been helping out with a lot of the workshops and is working on a lot of other policy efforts that are going to be tied to this general plan as well. And then of course, we have Jessica, our deputy director, and she's been a big part of our update, really, since it started. Let me just take a two-year break. Yeah, I just took a two-year break. So, and you want to advance it for me too, since you're sitting there. All right, so we're going to go back to basics a little bit here, but the general plan is really the constitution for development. This is a very rare opportunity to change and shape policy for the city. Happens every 10 to 20 years, depending on funding and political will. We're very fortunate here in the city that we have funding to do a comprehensive update, and we have a lot of support to be able to do this work. And so our team has been dedicated to this, and it's a huge priority for our department for the city. But ultimately, it is looking at how we relate to our built environment. So looking at roads, housing, schools, jobs, and how those interplay together. Next slide, please. But it also looks at other aspects of our community and how we interact. So things that are necessarily built environment, but our public services and all the services that we provide as a city government, but also looking at social aspects of access to food and health and education, violence prevention. And so this is the first general plan that we will have an environmental justice element as well. So we'll talk about that a little bit later. Next slide, and one more, please. So just to talk a little more about what a general plan is, this is actually required by state law. So every jurisdiction needs to have a general plan. And we are required to have nine mandatory elements. We can have optional elements and we do have quite a few in our existing general plan. So one of the goals is to create something that's very concise and that is well-complimented by the other aspects of the plan. So you'll see these mandatory elements, but combined with other things. So the chapters are not expressly this, but you'll see how we've combined them to make sure that you're looking at the co-benefits and there's synergy between the different topics. Next slide, please. And we are towards the end of this general plan process. So we've been working on this for a couple of years now. And unfortunately, most of it was done during the pandemic. So it was quite challenging, but we really have gotten a lot of good input and this is truly a community-driven plan. And along with the draft general plan, we are also working on a draft environmental impact report. So that will be released in a few months after this draft goes through public review. And then both will be finalized for another round of public review and hopeful adoption early next year. And because we've been out this for a while, we have a lot of different documents and I know some of you have heard me speak about this over the different phases, but on our website, you can find all of these things. We did start the project with a community involvement strategy and really checked in with our internal team and our consultant team and the community and the council to make sure that we were doing this differently, that we were going to work to engage communities that don't normally participate in government and really trying some different techniques to go to where people are and not just depend on them to come to City Hall. And that was accepted and then the pandemic started. So we have done a lot of shifts and pivots and we'll talk a little bit about that, but what we've done is after each phase really tried to identify who did we not hear from, what didn't work and then do something different the next time to make up for that or to really get those populations that we hadn't heard from. And then we have our existing conditions report. This is a lot of data, demographics, market study, looking at all the existing conditions pretty much as of 2019, 2020. And that's on our website as well. And that combined with more recent documents have really been the baseline for a lot of the policy work. We know that things have been updated since that point. So, but it is there and it's a great resource if you just wanna learn more about the city in general. And then if you don't wanna go that deeply we also have a briefing book which is like an executive summary of what's in the existing conditions report. And then we have our vision statement which I'll talk about shortly here. And then our alternatives workbook and preferred alternative. And those are really land use circulation scenarios that we put out to the community to start to hone in on what the vision would look like on the ground and what the community would like Santa Rosa to look and feel like in 2050. Next slide please. So this is our vision statement. This is our, call it our word flower but these are the words that we arrived at from working with the community. We did a lot of workshops, a lot of Zoom workshops, surveys, different things to come up with this statement that really is our guiding principle for all of the work through the rest of the update. And so I'll just read it for you. Santa Rosa is a diverse, equitable and sustainable community built on civic engagement that empowers everyone to provide and support equal and affordable opportunities to obtain good housing, education and jobs to enjoy vibrant cultural events and arts and to live healthy lives in resilient neighborhoods that adapt to social and environmental change. Next slide please. So building on that, we created three different scenarios for the community. And the first one was really looking at our downtown core and just a little bit out from there as far as where additional growth and change would occur. The next one was looking a little bit further out and looking at our downtown but also established neighborhoods that were already within the city that could be available for increased densities or infrastructure. And then the third is really housing everywhere. And that is pretty much our status quo. Our existing general plan overestimated the amount of growth and so what we have right now is we have a lot of growth potential everywhere in the city and there's a lot of sprawl. And so these models really represent how do we shift things knowing that our existing framework is really somewhat spread out and also knowing that we are not looking to expand the actual city boundaries significantly because we do have a voter adopted urban growth boundary. And so ultimately what we heard is a blend of the existing corridors and neighborhood main streets. And so the draft general plan that is produced is really looking at that blend of those two along with a couple other primary comments related to Oakmont or some other areas of the city that weren't exactly replicas of these two scenarios. Next slide, please. So we have our draft general plan that's been out since mid-July and we're gonna be taking comments on this through the end of September. And the chapters we have tried to make in a very concise fashion. The general plan that we have right now has around 730 policies. It is not broken up into policies and implementation actions. So it is very unruly to read and it's also hard at the self level to implement and create real solid strategies around. So what we want to do is create something that is very clear to be able to implement and follow in track over time. And so this also includes an update to our climate action plan. So that is included in the draft general plan. And we also will have a greenhouse gas and reduction strategy that will be coming forward in a couple of months that will look and feel like our current climate action plan where it'll be a little more technical but it'll set up almost like a work program and metrics to track over time. And so as I said, this is a comprehensive update. It also includes our housing element which we took out of sequence because we had a state deadline to adopt that. So that was adopted and certified earlier this year. So that is already completed and will be kind of a standalone element just because that is required to be updated every eight years. So that was for an eight year chunk of time. The rest of the document is looking at a 20 to 30 year chunk of time. And there will be periodic updates as necessary and our safety element is also required to be updated periodically as well. And I will say also, I know most of you are familiar with policy but the framework is really goals, policies and actions. So the goals are really looking at what do we want the end result to be? So that's our aspirational goal. And so each chapter or element is broken up into those goals. And then we have policies under that and then actions to implement the policies. And so there are some chapters where we have a lot of policy and a few actions and a lot where there's a few policies and a lot of actions. So it really just depends on the subject matter at hand and the work that we've been doing internally. So we've been working very closely with our city departments. We have a technical advisory committee and we also have a citizen advisory committee. And as part of this process, we're gonna be opening up our technical advisory committee beyond the city. So Sherry's been working on setting up meetings with our broader audience of other agencies and community partners to make sure that we're getting input from them as well as schools and some folks that we have really, we need their investment into this document to make sure it's gonna work for them as well. All right, next slide please. So there's a couple new maps as part of this effort. So just wanted to go over those briefly. This is our equity priority area map. This work has actually come out of our grant that we have through Kaiser Permanente, which allows us to work on a deeper level with environmental justice and public health. And then that's how we were able to hire Beatrice, who's our equity and public health planner. And so this is her work. And one of the key parts is really identifying the areas that we know have been disinvested in or that have other needs as far as infrastructure or other things within the city. So this map is really representing a couple of different things. So in Cal and virus screen, and then also looking at the highest, the areas with the highest amount of poverty and then the highest number of people of color. So you'll see throughout the document that we do have policies that reference equity priority areas. And so these are those areas. And I think we all being Saras or residents understand where these areas could be, but we want it to be very precise. And this is also consistent with plan Bay Area and regional plans and helps us understand where we can prioritize funding and also where we may be more eligible for grant funding as well. The question on this map, I must be looking at it wrong, but it looks like Rosen has a lot of white. Yeah, do you want to speak to that? Yeah. We use the 25% highest poverty areas and the highest concentration of people of color. So those areas are definitely lower income, but they are not as low income as the ones in purple. So these are extreme areas kind of like? Yes, exactly. And the area that you're looking in, that is white in Rosen is an area that is in the process of being gentrified. So we have other people who are higher income and the percentage of poverty is lower than the rest of the areas that are on those census trends. Okay, thank you. What do you mean by in the process of being gentrified? What does that mean? So that's how they classified on the Berkeley project for gentrification. And that area specifically has a lot of higher income people who are buying houses in that area. So... I guess what I'm asking is there a point in which the gentrification process is complete? If it's in process, and what does that look like when it's complete? Yeah, we don't have any area in the city that is completely gentrified based on the indicators of a project that has defined these different areas. I think once you see full gentrification, which are some areas of San Francisco, for example, or Oakland is when you have only high income people when this area used to be a disinvested one, if that makes any sense. Okay, thank you. One other question. I'll go ahead. And I wanted to follow up on the gentrification question too. So is that a descriptive observation or is it an intention? Gentrification. So when you say the process of gentrification, and here's what we have observed happening versus it here's what we plan to do. That's... The only reason that I'm mentioning this is because we've got those indicators from a project that analyzes gentrification at a larger level. So as an analysis, it is an observation. It's an observation, correct? And I will say with our housing element work, we did identify these areas and beyond where there's been issues around gentrification or previous indicators of redlining, although we don't actually have redlining maps in Santa Rosa. And then we do have policies around anti-dentrification or tools to alleviate the issues. Although I have to say there's not a lot of proven things that it's a very difficult issue. So that is something that we'll have to work on over time. Then did the Portrait of Sonoma inform any part of this process? Yes, it did. And you will find in a map to life expectancy and some of the instances that we identify that are connected to built environments. So yes. Thank you. You're welcome. On our website, we actually have a GIS viewers with all of the different data that Beatrice has pulled together. So beyond this, you can actually see all the other indicators related to health as well and environment. I can't stop myself from saying something. There are areas, however, in Santa Rosa that had restrictive covenants, that restricted occupancy to people of Caucasian background and restricted others who are just to be domestic, and not servants, but to work domestically, but not to be residents. And there are areas of Santa Rosa that still have those on their titles. Just want to bring that up. Not of course, not legal, not constitutional, but still a part of our past. I guess you should. So also I want to just say, wait, we can take this a lot of different directions here today. There's so much in here. And I don't want to stop questions and discussion, but it'd be probably wise to focus more on the jurisdiction of our committee regarding creeks and how that interrelates. And it does because creeks go in every neighborhood of the city. So anyway, I don't want to stop discussion and questions, but anyway, that's our main focus. All right, well, let's move on. So the next map that may be of interest and it's new to our planning efforts is areas of change. And so this came out of the community process of identifying the neighborhoods that may be available for increased densities, but we know need increased amounts of infrastructure or neighborhood retail or bike and pedestrian amenities. So these are the areas where we've identified we'd like to see complete communities be created. So there's other policies in the document that relate to these areas of change as an area to prioritize certain things. Next slide, please. And so now we'll get into the actual elements of the documents. So the land use and economic development element or chapter includes our classic land use element. So you'll see a description of all of our land uses and honestly, not many of them will be changing. We have a great structure as it is. And as I mentioned, we are not anticipating a significant amount of new growth because our existing general plan overestimated the amount of growth. So the things in this element that may be different is one in our economic development area, we're looking at micro entrepreneurial uses. So along with that concept of having complete communities, we're also looking at how do we empower homeowners and property owners to be able to develop businesses that are more neighborhood-centric or instead of having to buy capital, what can they do within their homes? How do we create more vibrancy in neighborhood centers that would allow different types of uses that we may not be allowing now or not embracing right now? So you'll see a lot of policies around this. So some cities will say, oh, we need a big box store, we need to attract this type of new industry, but we really have a rich mix of industries as it is. So this is really just trying to highlight what we have and creating more access to be able to develop new smaller incubator type uses that may grow over time. Next slide, please. And so this is an interesting combination of issues. So our chapter three includes circulation, open space, conservation and greenhouse gas reduction. So there's some major shifts in the policies within this document. First and foremost is a shift in how we look at transportation planning and funding. So we've worked closely with our public works team to identify as a prioritization bike and pedestrian and transit facilities over cars. And so this is a real fundamental shift in how we think about investment and prioritization. And so there's a lot of policies that are really stemming from that concept within this element. And it really ties in with our greenhouse gas reduction strategies and our climate action goals. We do have very ambitious targets to meet for our state level, but that even locally, our council has adopted a climate emergency resolution that requires us or strives to be carbon neutral by 2030. So that is an almost impossible goal, but we are confident we will be able to meet our state goals through the work of this document that we have adopted. And there are stretch goals and policies where if we want to go beyond, there's a pathway for that, but that really recognizing that community aspiration for climate neutral by 2030. Next slide. And so the next one is urban design, historic preservation, arts and culture. This is a blend of some of the separate elements that we have now in our existing general plan. There's not a lot of major shifts within this element, but it does recognize the synergy between all of those different concepts and tries to heighten the importance of historic preservation and recognition of some of the work that we're already doing here in Santa Rosa. Next slide, please. And then safety, climate resilience, noise, public services and facilities. A lot of these are required elements that we have blended together. And because we have a lot of different disasters we are prone to in Santa Rosa, this is a really important element to look at where our population densities are relative to where these issues are, how climate resilience plays into this, so where are our vulnerable populations relative to a lot of these climate vulnerabilities and what do we do about it? So we've worked closely with our environmental, our emergency operations team to make sure this represents their work and their goals for the future. And there are some new concepts in here. First of all, we're looking at new policies around managed retreat, which really hope to remove populations in areas of high fire danger. And that concept is usually employed around sea level rise or flooding and not so much wildfire, but we did some work with the Oakmont community and their board is very interested in looking at those policies. So we have a pilot program built in if we are able to put that on our work plan to work with the Oakmont community to try that and see if it works. The other things in this are policies around reducing the intensification of uses and densities within the wildland urban interface. That will I think be a controversial piece. There are some very old policies in here that we want feedback on because they're obviously gonna be different viewpoints. And as this is community driven, we want to be able to get the input provided to decision makers. So they're well informed on what we have heard and what the community thinks. Next slide please. And then the last element is our health equity and environmental justice element. We've already talked about this a little bit, but this includes a lot of different subject matter areas that we have not entered into as far as policy at the city. And so we even have a section on food access and urban agriculture. Tuesday night we did a workshop with the Food Systems Alliance who have really been helpful in creating some of those new policies. But this really looks at what's required under state law and at the regional level and then also a lot of the work on Portrait of Sonoma and other things locally here. And Beatrice has also worked closely with a lot of our community groups that are looking to engage with the city at this level and where our health disparities are and how do we overcome those issues? So a lot of policies in here that are very new to city government and we have a lot of different opportunities to engage with this specifically. Next slide please. I need to go to one more. So I just wanna go over some of the ways that we're hoping to engage the community on this plan. So we do have a survey. The survey is gonna ask you point blank what you think of some of these bold policies and whether you support it or you don't. And then we also have a very open-ended area where you can just write whatever you think. And so this is gonna be out probably through the end of September for people to really take and share broadly. We have it in English and in Spanish. And then we also are doing workshops. So we've had two, we have two more to go. We have one next week at the Rankin Valley Library and then another one at Latino Service Providers. And we are also doing pop-ups in the community. So we've been at the wildfire ready bears, that's what it's called. We've been at food distributions, downtown market. All, we've been all in the place. Santa Rosa Junior College World Foundation. That would take one too. And we'll be at the marathon this weekend and Montgomery Village this weekend. So we're trying to go where people are already gathering and you don't have to be a Santa Rosa resident. I mean, we realized that people play here and work here and may not live here. So please share this broadly as possible. And we've also been doing some really innovative youth engagement things. So as I talked about where we try to pivot where things aren't working, we realized through the last phase working on alternatives that we weren't hearing a lot from our youth. And we were finding it really challenging to engage. And so we did quite a few different things. One, we, with the help of our consultant team, created curriculum for high school students. And we were able to partner with some teachers at Montgomery High School. And they actually included it in their senior curriculum and were able to have the students do their senior projects on our general plan and present it to us. So our whole team got to go and listen. And it was really fantastic. Also because they got to learn about city government just as much as we got to learn about what they think and what they need. And so we're hoping to continue that work and expand that to other schools. We also hired an art engagement consultant. And so we've been doing some work on one, a coloring book, I meant to bring one, but it is a gorgeous coloring book. And it's really for our younger age group, elementary school age group. And it was designed by a local artist. I'll make sure we get you one if you'd like. I think we're almost done. Yeah. Yeah. And then we also had a rap artist, poet go to our juvenile hall and lead a workshop of poetry. And then she created a song and a video to go along with that. So we will be releasing that next week or this week. And so that will be a water bill insert, which is gonna be exciting. And we'll also have that on some of the city buses. And so that's just another way to hopefully engage the community and kind of unique in a different way. And then we also had another artist lead in the courthouse square actually create an art installation. And so that we hope will be coming out for display in various ways too. So we are trying to do our best to really work with community in different ways and create some buzz around this project because this is traditional planning work at the end of the day, but it is really meant to touch every aspect of our city and how we live and so anyways. But yeah, we have the whole team here. So we're happy to answer any questions that you have and we'd really love your help in promoting this work and getting people engaged. Questions, comments? Cal, try to make it work with what we do there. You can go wherever you want. It's okay. Careful, careful. Okay. Daryn, no thanks, Daryn. Yeah, so the San Francisco Giants, I don't know. I'm on a specific plans and like the Creek Master Plan, there's a integration with the general plan. So how do you guys do that? Yeah, it's a good question. So the general plan is really the overarching document and then the specific plans are fall under that. We have to update our specific plans eventually too. They usually have a shorter shelf life than a general plan because they are looking at a lot more detail. So we have, most of our specific plans are actually somewhat newer. And so this really, for instance, recognizes the work that was already done for the downtown specific plan and doesn't suggest any substantial changes because that process had just concluded and that vision has really just been set by the community. The Creek Master Plan I know is one of our older documents. And so that may be ripe for update based on this general plan. But those are really work products that can occur over time and it's really just a matter of prioritization and work programs. So which will supersede or when there's a conflict like for the Creek plan and the general plan, is it one's really specific and one's more general but sometimes there might be a conflict which has priority? The general plan has priority but the conflicts will need to be identified but really alleviated over time. So we won't be able to update everything all at once. There will be a zoning code update along with this project. So those two documents will be consistent but there will have to be a close review of all the other planning documents to see if there's other things that need to shift or change or just need to be completely updated. Okay, thanks. Following up on Art's question, are there parts of the new proposed general plan that would alter what is in the Creek master plan which would enhance perhaps the preservation of creeks, the restoration of creeks, the bikeways on creeks and all the things that we as a committee deal with? Or would you say the proposed general plan would add to or enhance that? Yeah, I don't think there's any significant changes because it is pretty high level. It really sets up the structure for the Creek plan and the bike and ped master plan to exist. And so I have not seen any explicit conflicts in just the work that we've done on the policies but that's also something we wanna hear from you all. As you review it, if you see something that needs to change or if there is something that needs to be enhanced, for instance, the downtown plan, obviously there was a shift in focus on the Prince Memorial Greenway and asking the tenants along the creek to face the creek and pay attention to the creek. This doesn't get into even that level of specificity. So, but we can. So if there's guiding policies you would like to see in support of certain aspects, this is the place to do it because it can be part of an implementation program. And it's one of those things that we have to follow and highlight annually of whether or not it's happening or not started or what's happening with that. And to that, what you're saying is, because there's not a lot as I'm looking through the draft specifically about development on creeks or even to help identify creeks. I mean, some people are walking on something and they don't even know it is a creek. And encouraging the type of development if you're developing on a creek or walk away, encouraging development to have the creek or walk away be a feature of the development as opposed to, maybe we're developing here, there is a creek there. We'll make sure that we don't mess it up. We're gonna put a big wall and no access or an ugly fence. So maybe if I were king of the forest, right? I would like to see some language when we're talking about development on those areas that make that highlight that feature in the development where possible. I mean, clearly that can't be possible all the time, but pushing for that, pushing that our developers take a look at how do I integrate this in a way that is beneficial to everyone? You know, following up on that. Thank you for bringing that up. Creeks are not just creeks, we know that. There are areas where people walk. We wanna get out in open space. There are areas where they ride their bikes and choose to use that mode of transportation and not jump in their car when they wanna go somewhere, which gets into access issues, accessibility of getting from where you live to the creek and also getting from where you live, not just to the creek path, but building paths. Some areas of our city have, they're on the plan, but they've never, nothing's happened from downtown to the hospital, Memorial Hospital over to Farmers Lane. That segment, nothing has ever happened. It will connect to the rest of Santa Rosa creek going eastward to Mission. Other areas of the city are not connected. If you look at Northwest Santa Rosa and the creek system in Northwest Santa Rosa, there are water agency paths, they don't connect. You've got a Gernville road, you've got College Avenue. How do you get to downtown? If you choose to live, if you're in Northwest Santa Rosa, how do you get downtown? You're gonna go in your car. So it enters this whole climate change issue very directly to itself. You know, we all know this, it's all interconnected. And so I just wanna say that the creeks are part of every other aspect we're talking about here. The degree to which that can be included, I think, or let's say, implemented is, I think, important. Other questions or comments, Carol? Carol. Building on that again, what these two guys have been talking about is our monthly purpose here in reviewing these projects and these litmus tests are in place, would this be superseding what's already in place for setback for accessibility, as far as I know, the only projects that do not have to go through our current review process are the state mandated infill, which your department is kind enough to bring forward to us regardless because the projects are trying to meet our goals. It's not that we don't have this stuff in place, it's that the tests may go away or be overruled. And do we have to rebuild it into this or is the given, whether we meet them or not, because we have passed that start and stop, journey's end, the waterway that separates the journey's end project and Kaiser Hospital, it starts, it stops, there's the freeway. And we talked about this, what, two years ago, making sure that the people who live there have access to that, are we calling it a creek, a channel? Are they gonna have access to a vibrant waterway? How do we continue to promote that in spite of everything and encouraging it as a healthy part of our life? And that's something that this community is really invested in, but we have conflicting important interests. And I think it's important that we know that what we're here for is part of this and is being promoted, yes? I think it would be great to have a policy that speaks to that. I will say our setbacks and other requirements are more specific in the zoning code and those remain and that is what a lot of these ministerial projects have to adhere to. So if there's pieces of that you feel need to change, that is a, that may be another discussion for, after this general plan has adopted, but we can put policy in here that kind of creates that framework of what you're hoping to gain within the code. And then one step further, we've got the right audience in the room because Nancy's here. We are considering an update to our objective design standards and that is the ministerial checklist that some of these by right housing projects have to adhere to. And so as part of that, we can have more in that document about what they're required to do when, you know, not just the setback to the creek, but if there's something more about you want them to face the creek or you want a certain amenity involved, that is creating a checklist for them that they have to do in order to meet the minimum qualifications to apply. So there's a couple of things that you could do, but at this general plan over arching level, I think even just setting your intention is something you can do. So I can try to craft a policy to get at that. And maybe Sherry can bring it back to you at the next meeting. And then that could go in the final version of the general plan and you can look at that again at that time. Perfect. And maybe I should be talking to you because you're going to be the one. I'm taking it all in. Don't take it all in. And that's what I struggle with is, you know, it's hard to, you know, you can't have specific ideas in the general plan, right? Just by definition, right? So, you know, if we can, in general, highlight somehow, you know, to the public, to our goal that our creeks, our streams, our waterways are our unique gems, our unique, you know, Sherry on the top of our wonderful city and highlight and educate and in general, you know, put them forward, you know, it would be great. This is also very good at, I'll use the word generously incentives for builders, that there are exchanges made, not necessarily compromises, but exchanges to encourage access engagement. And this definitely dovetails into addressing the unhoused situation along many of our creeks. Getting people engaged with our creeks will clean up our creeks, which encourage, and it just has the potential to steamroll for everyone's benefit. And if I might add, we also have the expert in the room here too, that reviewed some of our policies. I don't know if Steve wants to add anything, but I can work again closely with him to, you know, work with you guys to get what we've discussed here, because he is truly the expert on that. Yeah, so we are, our whole team, we reviewed the drafts so far. And I think everything was pretty consistent. I mean, there were some recommendations on tweaking in English, but there wasn't really anything significant that I can recall. Thank you. I have a number of comments, if I may. First, thank you for describing the process. It sounds like a really robust process, and certainly the time was put into it and the effort to engage the community and all the various departments. So thank you for sharing that. Can't wait to... You'll hear it again at DRB. So, I'll record that. Carol just heard it last night from Beatrice. So I think I'm gonna make a comment first. And Terri, you were talking about, you know, the cherry on the top of our beautiful city. A friend of mine who I will not name, who is an architect, when I first got to Santa Rosa, and I was talking with him, he said, do you know what the best architecture of Santa Rosa is? And, you know, I was like, well, no, I don't. And he said, it's the trees. He said, that sets Santa Rosa apart. That was, I mean, obviously that's a... But why not the trees in the creeks? Why not the trees in the waterways as the sort of the crown jewels of Santa Rosa's built environment that we have protected, which takes us back to the sort of, we're all talking about this systemic or, I mean, it seems to me we're talking about a kind of a systemic view of waterways. Or, you know, that I'm just reviewing our statement of purpose, right? Like we've reviewed development that's adjacent to creeks and waterways. I mean, how adjacent is adjacent? Is like, if you're in Santa Rosa, you have something to do with waterways, right? So even if your parcel doesn't have a creek or waterway on it or isn't immediately adjacent to it, you shouldn't be thinking about that. That's like the connective piece, like that the waterways do more than just move water around. And again, and we go back to, you know, imagining that we've talked about this when we've reviewed projects, imagining the creeks as assets, as something to highlight and as opposed to something you have to deal with, this is a challenge, it's gonna cost us money. What do we do? It's an asset because it's part of the larger built environment of Santa Rosa, which includes things that are of nature and that we have chosen in building our city to protect, enhance and make accessible to everyone, right? So I think that's basically that's kind of an overview of what we're saying. And I have one more coming. So, but go ahead if it's directly that. I just wanted to say, did you know we do not have a tree crew in the city of Santa Rosa? Correct me if I'm wrong. A tree what? A tree crew. We don't even have an arborist. Do we have an arborist on staff for the city of Santa Rosa? No. Yeah, we used to, but we don't anymore. Correct. And I've been rallying around this for years. And how do we have healthy trees if we do not have a tree? They're vantage arborist. Vantage points like if you just get up on a little hill and there are plenty of them right in the city and you look out and you, you know, you see trees and then, and if you're really looking carefully you see the waterways because you see how the fauna has responded to where the water is. And it's beautiful, it's really moving actually to get to any of those vantage points. So here's my one question because this is a general plan for Santa Rosa for 2050. Is there, I mean, was there scenario planning? And if so, what, like, where did we come up with? Or what did we, not where did, what did we come up with for in 2050? In fact, where we are is likely to look like this given climate change, given, say that we're, we're not going to be selling gasoline powered vehicles anymore, like what, do we have a scenario? Not explicitly, no. But that is what we're trying to paint a picture of. Right, but I mean, there's like, there's also, there's climate science that can help us paint the picture. And I don't, it would be really cool to have that. Even if I'm like, let's go ahead and get the general plan and then say, oh, and by the way, you know, we're probably gonna, it's probably gonna look like this. You know, Sherry is also our climate subject matter expert. And we, so you're speaking to the right audience. I'm loving all this trust me. So we will have that greenhouse gas reduction strategy will, which will be super technical, but we do, the council did provide our department, I think about 200,000 PGN settlement funds to focus on climate implementation. So there will be some money that will have to figure out how to, what we want to spend it on as far as implementation. And so there's programs that you wanna see or actions in the general plan related to what you're saying. That's what we would wanna know because we can put that in there and that will drive how that money gets spent. Because I, that resonates with me of creating that vision of, all right, what do we want it to look like? What, if we meet our carbon neutral by 2030 target, what does 2050 look like? Or just to kind of help envision what that is and why we want people to make a shift in how they live. So I was just among the many newsletters I get. There's a guy at Tulane who has started telling, and I think he's in, I don't know if it's environmental design or if it's urban planning. Anyways, he's telling his students that when they are alumni, because of climate change, their campus will no longer exist because it will be under, this Tulane in the North, right? It'll be under water. So either the school will move or it will cease to exist while they are alive, right? So that's a scenario that is highly likely given if we extend outward what we can expect from climate change. What do we in Santa Rosa expect? We're gonna be, you know, we're aiming for carbon neutral, that's a good thing, but climate change, I mean, there's already stuff happening. So what, you know, can we get that's a scenario so that we know as we're doing the general plan, we're also thinking and what we're gonna have more, we'll have longer, we'll have more extreme weather, we'll have more flooding, we'll have more heat waves, you know, and how does the city respond to that? Some of that is in there. So I really encourage you looking to look at the climate resilience section. Okay, great. I wrote some of those policies, but I also don't feel like I was totally inclusive of everything that we should look at, but please do let us know. Yeah. Well, I'm just thinking like, you know, maybe some of the PG&E money goes to a scenario planning study, not all of it, but a tiny bit could. A couple other things too. We have a vulnerability assessment that's a separate document on our website. It's also a good place to look. But we also were chosen with a couple other cities in the US for eco-adapt to do a study on. And so they're tracking us over, I think it's a five year period of time and are doing reports on it. What university are they out in? Colorado, I think. No, I thought it was the East Coast. It's not in my unit. Eco-adapt? Eco-adapt. Is it Vanderbilt? Nash, I don't remember. But anyways, we'll figure that out. It's on our website. Great, I'll look for it. In the vulnerability plan or elsewhere? Yeah, so they are looking at climate adaptation. So they're doing climate adaptation studies for a few different jurisdictions. And it's looking at things over time. And then also we've worked with ULI, Urban Land Institute. And they came to Santa Rosa, it was right before the pandemic, I think. And they also did a report. And I think that was one of the few reports I've seen that really does look at future results of current action. So that was another good document to look at. And I think that's on our website as well. And I think, and my suggestion is, whatever we have done, like the general plan, and it sounds like it does, at least in the climate resiliency area, needs to consider that. Okay. If I might, thank you for the good comments. Well, tree planting, if I were gonna spend that money, I would spend a lot of it on tree planting because that has obvious positive impacts on climate change in the long-term. But I think this topic, there's so much interrelated with creeks here, that a statement of goals, it calls for preservation of creeks, restoration of creeks, building the infrastructure of pathways, pedestrian bike, connectivity between different neighborhoods to the downtown, to each other. I think some kind of an overall goal to enhance creeks to fulfill those functions, in addition to connecting open space to neighborhoods that don't have good access to open space, which something, the Southeast Greenway is going to be able to start to do. But, and there are three creeks and perverse it. But, and then action steps is here saying, policies and that implementation that would get us to be able to recognize the importance of how creeks can contribute to all these other goals, I think would be a very appropriate general plan. Yeah. And a great slogan, I speak creek. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love the cherries. I think it's so clever. I think these guys are right in that term. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. Want to give us a list of what he's talking about? Which slide here you want. It's, it's can it's. I don't know. It's number three. I think that it's fine. Circulation three, step three slide 16. For me and I think go through all the zoom steps to get it out. Yeah, hmm. So this one right here. I'm. I know, I had it all there and then I went to make it bigger anyway. Yeah, so I think this is exactly what you're referring to, Steve. So this would be one that we should really focus on, I think, with the committee. Small story. We were driving in Nevada and it's like, why did they put the road here? Well, the road followed the railroad tracks. Where did they put the railroad tracks? The railroad tracks followed the creek. So it all really does go back to basics, which modern civilization has spent so much time doing better than witness the channelization of the creek because we had to stop. So it's kind of respecting and being a partner with mother nature or father nature for our benefit rather than always being better than and incorporating that for everyone's health. Not to mention the wildlife that lives along the creek that does the pollinating and all of that. It just barrels back in and it costs money and it and it in the short term doesn't benefit anybody, but in the long run, benefits everybody. Are there additional comments? Anything we've not touched yet as a community? Anybody have other comments or thoughts? I had a Debbie Downer question, which I'm real good at. When you guys started out, was there a goal of how many unique responses you were hoping to get from community engagement? And are we anywhere near your hope expectation? Those numbers may not be the same. We do have some metrics, but it is so much more complex than that because there's each phase and we don't necessarily want to hear from the same people on each phase. So if you go to our website, we do have a count of the unique comments that we've received, but I don't think it's as simple as saying it's what we hoped. Like I said, we're looking at who didn't we hear from and what, you know, during the pandemic anyway, it was like, how can we do anything? And we really just have been trying to pivot each each round. So I will say originally part of our outreach plan, we were going to do a double decker bus and do tours around the city. We were going to do a board game. We had a lot of different really unique ideas that we were not able to deploy. And those were really tied to certain key phases of the project that were just happening during the pandemic. So we, we've done a lot of different things. Some things have worked and some things have not. So, yeah. Very last thing. Sorry. On action number three dash four point two six. It says ensure that construction adjacent to creek channels is sensitive to the natural environment preserves topography of vegetation along the creek does not disrupt or pollute the waterway and provides an adequate setback buffer. Things that you were talking about. It'd be great if it also had to ensure that construction adjacent to creeks, where possible can highlight and provide access to Very good. Great catch. Thank you. 3.1. That's three dash four point two six. Thank you. Other comments. Kevin. Well great discussion. Thank you very much. I love the idea of setting an attention and some of this philosophical discussion we've had today. I think it's really helpful. I'm sorry that, you know, I speak creek came up first because that's a really good slogan. I wanted to go with connectivity and creeks as sort of that's our city, because I think you Steve a lot of things you said get to that. And I love the idea that creeks are not just there to not be messed up, but they're there to be an integral part of development throughout the city. I love that. The other thing I think is that the other thing two things come to mind. One is with general plans. We try to please everybody I think and it's really tough. And I'd love to see us go all in on less projects, but do them really well. I'm thinking about bikes for example. The bike master plan came out a couple years ago. I've seen some changes and some striping and some green lanes and stuff around. I'd love to go all in on that because I used to ride my bike for transportation around the city, but I don't anymore because I haven't felt safe. I mean, and some of that is just speeds on certain streets. Some of that is I stopped to stop light one time and the car next to me said, you know, I have the right to run you over if you get too far out of my lane. Ironically, I was really far over on the right. And of course, that's not the law. Nevertheless, I hear it's not. I hear that's against the law. Okay, here you go. It gives me pause. Let's say when I when I write so and I realize some of the things we might not go in on that we might go all in on things that wouldn't be my first priority. And nevertheless, we become known maybe as a city that has great bike lanes that are separated from traffic and and we really become one of those bike friendly towns. So whatever it is. So connectivity in Creeks and going all in, I think, especially on bikeways would probably be some of the policy intention that I'd love to see a set. And those bikeways along the Creeks, of course, are just when they're connected. I see a lot. I drive around town. I see a lot of bikeways along Creeks, but I don't know where they go. I don't know how many people are going to be on it. So is it going to be safe? And so I sometimes I often avoid those. You know, the city has done a really good job on the Laguna de Santa Rosa pathway and making it go along the creek and through through streets and well signed. But you know, it's a small community, but it'd be great if Santa Rosa was able to do something. Sounds like our next field trip. And this highlights the interactivity between this committee, Creeks, parks, bike and pedestrian safe. We work in bubbles, we communicate in bubbles and depend on staff to make sure that either the interaction happens or at least the communication happens. Good point. I will say we have been working with the bike and pet board. So we just presented to them last week and have been going to them kind of an iterative process. And the public works team is actually working on an update to the bike plan. They're calling it the active transportation plan. So that will have a separate public process that will it'll come from these policies and they've been, you know, working on our policies as well. But there will be a whole separate public process that will start for that too. It would be great for that to come here. So that we can start integrating more so because we are, we are somewhat in bubbles. I mean, it's just the nature of government, some respects. But I think that is really a direct relationship to what we're doing because there is connectivity between the creek paths and these paths on streets, which don't really work all that well together. It might be nice if we could have a joint meeting one time. Yeah. Put together. Good idea. Any other comments? Anything else we haven't covered anything else that we want to add? Do we have it? In terms of what you'd like to say? Are you done with this topic? Where are you at? I'm headed that way. Are you? Well done. I mean, if you're done with this topic, I have one thing I want to know. Oh, yeah, this is the topic for the meeting. Well, because maybe for our next agenda, we could discuss a potential new time to meet. We were talking about that right before the meeting and, you know, traffic really hard at this time of day to get here. And I just want to at least have as an item of a new channel so we can talk about it. Maybe there's a better time that we can meet. Okay. That's fine. Yes. As a comment that thank you all for that the work. It's exciting it's forward looking. I think something to be proud of. Thank you. Yeah, it's very exciting. Thank you for all that hard work. And if you would have told it gave us a little bit more notice, we could have a little going away party. And a welcoming party. Before we adjourn, we've got a question over there. Off topic. I wanted to mention that land pass is doing a tour of Southeast Greenway this coming Monday night. I don't know if you guys have that but if you could send if staff could send out the link. When I talked to Ingrid yesterday, there were still 15 available slots left. Do you want us to send it to this group, please. I think that would be wonderful. When I said it's great. Thank you. There's a lot happening on that project and it's going quicker than we anticipated for a first time. I've been involved in the group for this. Yeah. Good things happening. So it would be worth going on. What is our next meeting? Are we, we have a meeting in September. I know we always put it on our calendar. Are there items yet that might be on that? I haven't heard of anything. Nothing yet. But we have a, we usually schedule those couple of weeks out. So planers have time to get those projects in if they want to keep the date on our calendar. Anything else you'd like to bring up? Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.