 Good afternoon. I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence translation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish and join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Interpreter, will you please restate this in Spanish? Para los recién llegados a la reunión, la interpretación en español está disponible y los miembros del público y el personal que necesitan escuchar en español pueden pasar al canal de español para cambiar de español para cambiar de canal haga clic en el icono de interpretación ubicado en la barra de herramientas de zoom. Parece un globo terragueo ya que según al canal de español recomendamos que apague en el audio principal para poder escuchar la interpretación únicamente. Thank you and welcome everyone to our march 14 2023 Santa Rosa City Council. It is now two oh one and we will be starting our meeting. Welcome madam city attorney and fellow council members in the quorum madam city clerk may please call the roll. Thank you council member staff here councilmember Rogers here councilmember o Krepke here councilmember Fleming. Councilmember Alvarez president vice mayor McDonald here mayor Natalie Rogers present that's a record show all council members are present. We will begin our meeting today with three closed session items item 2.1 public employee evaluation of performance title city manager item 2.2 conference with labor negotiators item 2.3 conference with legal counsel with for existing litigation. Madam city clerk may you please conduct public comment. Thank you mayor we are now taking public comments on item 2 if you are in the chamber wishing to make a comment and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the well please make your way to the podium. If you are participating via zoom please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand. You will have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period. Mayor we have no public comments coming from council chamber deputy city clerk on zoom. Do we have any public comments on zoom. We have no comments on zoom and no prerecorded messages for this item. Thank you we will now recess into closed session. All right welcome to our regular city council meeting for today. March 14th. Making sure that's the right date seeing seeing a quorum. Madam city clerk may you please call the roll. Thank you mayor. Councilmember step. Councilmember rogers. Here councilmember O'Crepkey. Here councilmember Fleming. Councilmember Alvarez. Present. Vice mayor McDonald. Here. Mayor Rogers. Present. Let the record show that all councilmen. Let the record show that councilmember Fleming is present and all members of the council are present. Perfect. We will now move to item 5 report on study and closed session items. Madam city attorney. Thank you madam mayor. The council met on items 2.1 and 2.2. I was not present in those two items but I understand there was no final action taken at that time. On item 2.3 the council met with conference with legal council concerning existing litigation. The Bay cities paving and grading incorporated versus city of Santa Rosa. The council gave direction to staff and no final action was taken. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on to item 6 proclamations. We have three proclamations today. We'll start with items 6.1 which will be read by councilmember O'Crepkey. Thank you. We're service to others as a hallmark of the American character at the router history. Citizens have stepped up to meet challenges by volunteering in their communities and whereas AmeriCorps provides opportunities for nearly 270,000 Americans to serve their country through an intensive commitment to service at nonprofits, schools, public agencies and community and faith-based groups across the country and whereas AmeriCorps enriches the lives of its members building habits that create engaged citizens who become participants in civic matters affecting their communities long after their service terms are completed and whereas the AmeriCorps members of Napa County Office of Education dedicated a year of their lives to service throughout California by providing tutoring, mentoring, support and active break activities to over 2,000 students in four school districts in both Sonoma and Napa counties and by supporting nonprofits and educational organizations in Sonoma County and across the state of California by building volunteer capacity and engaging volunteers and whereas the various ages, backgrounds and experiences of AmeriCorps members helps to meet community needs through tutoring or mentoring children in use, supporting seniors, veterans and military families and addressing various issues throughout the state and whereas in exchange for their service these members develop valuable work skills, earn money for continued education and strengthen the lives of their families, communities and California as a whole and whereas AmeriCorps week is an opportunity to recognize the dedication and commitment of the more than 1 million Americans who have chosen to serve their country through AmeriCorps and their community partners and to encourage more Americans to follow their footsteps in service. Now therefore, be it resolved that I, Natalie Rogers, mayor of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council to hereby proclaim March 12th through 18th 2023 as AmeriCorps week. Thank you, council member Ocrepke. I would like to invite the representatives that are here today to receive this proclamation to the podium if you would like to say anything? No. Okay. Then we will go ahead and open it up. Madam city clerk, can you please facilitate public comment? We are now taking public comment on item 6.1. If you are in council chamber and wish to make a public comment but have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the well, please make your way to the podium. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. You will have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period. I see no public comments from council chamber Zoom host. Do we have any via Zoom? We have no hands raised via Zoom and no pre-recorded messages. Thank you. Mayor, we do have the recipient, Noelle Marchetti here for to receive the proclamation. All right. Noelle, would you like to take a picture with us? Yes, everyone can come on down. Let's take a picture with council. You guys. Thank you all so much for being here today. We will now move on to item 6.2, which will be read by council member Fleming. Thank you, Mayor. And I got a little sticky on here that said that this was changed and the changes are reflected on the online proclamation, but I will be reading an inaccuracy into the record and I don't know what it is. So, wish me luck. Council member Fleming, you have the corrected proclamation and we will upload the corrected proclamation post meeting. Thank you. All right. Whereas in 1872, a special day was set aside for the planting of trees and this holiday called Arbor Day was first observed with the planting of more than one million trees. Arbor Day is now observed throughout the nation and the world. Since 1909, the state of California officially declared March 7th Arbor Day to commemorate the birthday of our very own Luther Burbank and whereas in 2023, National Arbor Day falls on Friday, April 28th and the city celebrates Arbor Day on March 11th with a tree planting event at Northwest Community Park as a service to our community and local school programs and whereas trees protect our environment, toll resources, reduce erosion of top swell, cut heating and cooling costs, moderate the temperatures, clean the air, produce oxygen and provide habitat for wildlife and whereas trees support our city's economic development, increasing property values, beautifying our community, enhancing the vitality of business areas and whereas the interest in strengthening community image and sense of place throughout the preservation and dedication to Santa Rosa's urban forest has been a major goal and commitment since at the city's founding, Santa Rosa has been recognized as Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation for over 40 years and desires to continue its tree planting ways and whereas trees are terrific in all shapes and sizes like people. Now therefore be it resolved that Natalie Rogers, Mayor of the City of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire City Council do hereby proclaim March 5th to March 11th 2023 Arbor Week. Thank you, Council Member Fleming. I would like to invite the representative or representatives that will be accepting this proclamation to the podium to say a comment if you would like. Thank you, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor McDonald and members of the Council. I'm Jen Santas, W Director for Parks and with me tonight we have our Park Superintendent James Castro and our Assistant Park Planner Tim Bernard who will say a few words on behalf of Arbor Week. Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor McDonald and Council Members my name is Tim Bernard. I'm a Park Planner Assistant for the Parks Department. I'd like to take a couple of minutes and tell you about our Arbor Day event and a couple of tree programs that we have in the City. Over the past year the City of Santa Rosa through volunteer efforts such as Arbor Day planting events planted 45 trees throughout the City. This past Saturday, yes in the rain and drizzle, we held an Arbor Day event at Northwest Community Park where nearly 70 community members including 23 children plus City staff participated. A total of 25 trees including six different varieties and numerous riparian plants were planted in three hours. In addition to our annual Arbor Day tree planting event the City of Santa Rosa is a proud contributor contributing member to Tree City USA for 43 years. Earning Tree City USA recognition encourages our community to continue our commitments to planting and caring for trees. This recognition honors our citizens' efforts and interests to provide trees throughout our city. Finally I'd like to mention that the City Parks Department has a well-established Park Month program which focuses community volunteers and City staff efforts towards a different park each month. The focus is on cleanup, maintenance and pruning and planting trees. Our next park a month will be held at Franklin Community Park on Saturday April 8th from 9 to noon. Rain or shine, I hope you can join us. For more information regarding this volunteer opportunity and more please visit the City Parks and Recs website at srcity.org backslash 387 backslash recreation dash parks. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Castro, did you have something to say? No, I don't. Thank you. All right. Thank you guys. Madam City Clerk, can you please facilitate public comment? Thank you, Mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 6.2 Proclamation on Arbor Week in Santa Rosa. If you are in the chamber and wish to make a public comment on item 6.2 and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber, please make your way to the podium. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. You will have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert you at the conclusion of that period. Well, my name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Rosalind. I'm a tree hugger. I love Arbor Day. I grew up in this town back when it was like big time because Luther Burbank was what Arbor Day was about. But by the same token the city, which used to be a tree city, it had that designation here in Santa Rosa for nationwide being one of the best places for trees. But somewhere along the way, we lost our way. I guess it was because of budgeting. But we've cut out so many workers that took care of our trees. And now we don't even save trees. We just cut them down. As a matter of fact, if somebody comes in and says, you know the sidewalk in front of my house is being bothered, they cut the tree down and they don't fix the sidewalk. You can go all over Santa Rosa and see spots like that. So I'm here to thank you for having this proclamation. But at the same time, I'm here to advocate that you hire a tree staff again and that you make sure that it's fully, fully funded and fully staffed. I believe in the back in the old days, I guess there was 11 or 12 employees that took care of the trees here in Santa Rosa as part of parks and maintenance and that type thing. So I don't have, you know, I don't make my money by coming down here and advocating for a union or for any of that kind of stuff. I'm not a lobbyist. I'm a man that works in health care. And trees are part of health care. Did you know that? You probably never thought of it that way. But they're nature's green lung. And if you think about it, you should understand that we need more trees. We need a bunch more because we've lost so many during the drought. Now with these drought stressed trees, we've had some who have been falling during this harsh weather. Well, the weather will subside, but the trees won't come back unless somebody goes and plants them. And you know what? We don't even have anybody planting trees right now. So this is one of those things where you can use this proclamation, not just to give out the good news, but to say, you know, we're going to embrace this whole idea of Arbor Day and make it Arbor Week, Arbor Month. Oh heck, what the hell? Arbor year. Let's go for getting in the trees. Let's go for getting enough employees to take care of the trees so that the youth in this community will have good, clean air over in Rosen, where I'm from. We're trying to save trees. It's a difficult road to hoe because a lot of times bureaucracies don't think trees are that important, but they are. And the sidewalks, you know, you can replace them. Those can be built easier than in the 20 years it takes to get a good redwood tree to be doing the carbon sequestration that all you folks who support these climate measures that you're passing talk about. So there you go. You got that one more positive vote for Arbor Day and our staff too. Thank you, city staff. Thank you, Mr. Chernoff. Go ahead. I don't see a time thing on this. There will be a timer up on your screen. You can look straight ahead and you see the timer. Okay, thank you. Hey, I'm back. Nice to see everybody. And so Luther Burbank. His most amazing thing was the cactus. And there's often fungus among us, but you got to practice with cactus trees are great, but cactus is going to save the day. Frost resistant drought resistant firewall erosion control. I could go on for an hour. And that's where the answer is. So I just got back from the future and I have witnessed all the students in Sonoma County walking out for 40 nights and 40 days. They were tired of the system's caca del Toro El Grande. And so within seven days of them walking out, all of a sudden the supervisors and city council is found a place for the homeless to reside. There's so many empty buildings. There just wasn't any political will. So they impose some love and spiritual will. So thank you for what you're about to do and taking care of the homeless. And plus they're going to be involved in the biggest massive garden program ever. So we're gonna thank Luther Burbank. Let's abide what he was all about instead of all these grass lawns and all this stuff that's going on. We'll start about I don't know what 10,000 new gardens and 5000 football field size greenhouses. Sounds good so far. It's a done deal. But the youth and the youth will step forward to make sure this happens. The youth today are referred to as warriors of the rainbow spirit by the Hopi prophecy of purification, the most powerful youth ever in the world. And they're in the most powerful state. And they're here to fulfill their fate as destiny's date. And even my father, Yeshua, the one they call Jesus said there will be a generation that does greater things than I. That is this youth here and now. Now regarding what happened to Montgomery, there seems to be a lot of pointing fingers and throwing illusions up. I mean the students really, if it was up to me, they'd be out of class and explaining the power of truth and love to all the adults in this county and lead the way. No more blaming. Tyler Alborn was once stabbed by a student, Santa Rosa. He healed and came back to work. Sir, excuse me, sir, are we still talking about trees in Arbor Day? I'm on public comment, right? No, that's not where we're at. Well, actually, this is the support of the Tree of Life. And right now, I'm being kind of like short circuited with my time frame. And this is very powerful because the truth, the youth and the homeless are going to work together to plant all these cactus and plant more fruit trees. But I'm also concerned that what's going on there is being obfuscated intentionally by the system of bar lawyers, which have been very problematic, all 300,000 of them in the state of California, people that never work except with each other to steal from the rest of us and to cause all this problem and havoc with even students. Once they find out their power, it's going to be a most beautiful, beautiful thing. And so it is that I thank you for blessing me with some of your time. And the students need to understand it's no time to point fingers anywhere. We need to understand where the Are there any additional comments in the chamber? All right, Madam City Clerk seeing none. Zoom host, do we have any public comments via Zoom? Public comment via Zoom and no prerecorded messages. Thank you. All right, so no additional comments. I'd like to invite those that are here for this proclamation down to take a picture with the council. Thank you so much for being here. We will now move to item 6.3, which will be read by council member Alvarez. Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is a proclamation for the National Surveys Week. Whereas surveying has been an essential element in the development of human environment since the beginning of recorded history. And it is a requirement in the planning and execution of nearly every form of construction with its most familiar modern uses in the fields of transport, building and construction, communications, mapping and the definition of legal boundaries for land ownership. And whereas in order to accomplish their objectives, surveyors use elements of engineering, physics, mathematics, astronomy, law and history. And whereas since the colonial days of the United States, surveyors have been the leaders in the community, statesmen, influential citizens and shapers of cultural standards. Formal notable surveyors include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Lois and Clark, Daniel Boone and Henry David Thoreau, among many others. And whereas many services are now provided through the use of specific sophisticated surveying equipment and techniques, including satellite born remote sensing devices and automated positioning, measuring, recording and prodding equipment. And whereas the establishment of the week of March 19th through the 25th 2023 as National Surveyors Week is a fitting tribute to all surveyors. Now, therefore, be resolved that our Mayor Natalie Rogers on behalf of the entire city council to hereby proclaim March 19th through the 25th 2023 as National Surveyors Week. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Alvarez. I would like to invite the representative or representatives that are here to receive the proclamation to the podium if you would like to make a comment. On behalf of the City of Santa Rosa's Transportation and Public Works Department, I would like to thank you for this proclamation. Hi, my name is Mike Jones. On behalf of the National Society Professional Surveyors, the California Land Surveys Association and the Stoma County chapter, which we all belong to, Walt Oloski, Bruce Johnson. As you can hear in that proclamation, there's a lot of stuff going on. It sounds like a pretty cool job to me, but we do have a hard time recruiting folks to use all the engineering, science and math. And there's a pretty cool historical figures in that proclamation too. So thank you for bringing some recognition to our profession. And yes, thanks again for the proclamation. Thank you very much. I think they pretty much covered it. I'm Bruce Johnson. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll have a public comment, and then we'll also invite you down for to take a picture with the council. Okay. Madam City Clerk, may you please conduct public comment? Thank you, Mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 6.3, the Proclamation for National Surveyors Week. If you are in the chamber and wish to make a public comment and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber, please make your way to the podium. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period. Mayor, I see no people advancing towards the podium for public comment in person. Zoom host, do we have any participants via Zoom for public comment? We have no participants via Zoom and no pre-recorded messages. Thank you. Alright, if you would like to come down and take a picture with the council and accept your proclamation, that would be great. Thank you again for being here and accepting that proclamation. We will now move to item seven, which is staff briefings. Madam City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor, members of council. Item 7.1 is our Community Empowerment Plan update. Program Manager Gardunio will deliver the briefing. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor and members of the council. Just a couple of quick updates here. So going back to my updates from last month, just a reminder that the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Spaces mini grant program launches April 1st. First deadline to submit an application is June 30th of this year and eligible applications can receive up to $5,000 per project under this program. Citywide internship program. We now have six out of the 10 internship positions filled. So community engagement, violence prevention, public arts, economic development, housing and community services and the Santa Rosa Police Department all have new interns. So you'll see a lot of new faces here at City Hall and other facilities in the next few months. And then we have four additional positions left to fill. Finally, a quick update on the Mary Lou Lowrider Patrol Car and programming. We are currently partnering with the public arts program to host an exhibit at the Finley Community Center on low writing. And we're partnering with also with the Sonoma County Lowrider Council on this particular event. The dates are still to be determined as we're figuring out some logistics. But this will include a viewing of the Mary Lou Lowrider Patrol Car documentary that our team created last year. And we're also receiving quite a few community requests to have the patrol car out at community events and parades this summer. And so given our limited staff capacity, we're trying to prioritize where the car is going to be in the upcoming months. And that is my update. Thank you. Madam City Clerk, may you please conduct public comment? Thank you, Mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 7.1. If you are in chamber and wish to make a comment and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber, please make your way to a podium. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period. Seeing no one approaching the podium for public comment on 7.1, Zoom host, do we have any public comments via Zoom? We have no public comments via Zoom and no prerecorded messages. Thank you. We will now go on to item 8, City Manager and City Attorney's Report. Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'll give our report on settlements and active litigation. We did just give a report at your last meeting as well. So just I'll keep this very brief. We have no settlements to report today. We do still have about 30 total cases appending in our office. About half of them are personal injury cases 15, although we also just received a new complaint yesterday. So that'll be 16 personal injury cases, eight general litigation matters, three police matters, three rits of mandate and one receiver. So we are, we have one case that is currently in trial, currently in jury selection. We have several other trials coming up later this year. Happy to answer any questions. All right. Thank you. So Transit Driver Appreciation Day is March the 18th. So this Saturday, March the 18th, the Santa Rosa City bus will celebrate International Transit Driver Appreciation Day. So I would like to personally recognize Santa Rosa City bus operators, not only for their track record of safe driving, but also for their excellent customer service and commitment to our community. So please join me in celebrating our city bus drivers on March the 18th. Clean Santa Rosa. So beginning this Friday, the city's new community volunteer cleanup and beautification program Clean Santa Rosa is partnering with Caltrans for Clean California Community Days, which is an 11 day statewide beautification event. So we're promoting this event to the community. And I would like to invite you, your family, your friends, your co and your coworkers to join city staff to take care of our wonderful city and keep Santa Rosa clean and beautiful. You can sign up and find more information on srcity.org forward slash clean SR. Women in public safety day. So this Saturday is women in public safety day. It is an immersive career learning experience led by our Santa Rosa fire and police departments to encourage more women to pursue careers in emergency medical services, law enforcement and fire service. The event will be outdoors and it will be rain or shine from 10 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the fire training tower across from the community family community center which is located at 21 26 West College Avenue. And you can visit srcity.org forward slash women in public safety day for more information. Thank you. Thank you, Madam City Clerk. Can you please facilitate public comment? Thank you, Mayor. We are now taking public comment on item eight. If you wish to provide a public comment and you are in council chamber, please make your way to a podium. If you are participating via zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. You will have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period. Seeing no public comments from council chamber zoom host, do we have any via zoom? We have no public comment on zoom and no prerecorded messages. Thank you. Moving on to item nine statements of abstention by council members. Are there any abstentions that need to be made today? Seeing none. We will now go to item 10. Council members and mayors report. Councilmember Rogers. Thank you, Mayor. So since our last council meeting, we have I have three things of note to report back on. Yesterday we had our Snomick County Transportation Authority and Regional Climate Protection Authority meeting. It's our monthly meeting. We did what one of our own staff referred to as a small but mighty approval. It was for a contract to integrate the three bus transit operator websites. This is reporting back on our ties study. It's something we've been implementing for two years. Basically looking at how Santa Rosa City bus, Petaluma Transit and Snomick County Transit can better integrate into one usable system for folks. This was kind of the last of the low hanging fruit in terms of being able to move things forward. All of the websites will have a similar landing page as well as be consistent in their marketing. We've done a pretty good job of trying to align our fees. The next thing and we've approved the contract now is for an integrated service plan between the three agencies. So stay tuned for that as we try to make the system more usable across our entire territory. We also have materials that'll be coming out shortly on free rides across all public transit for youth during the summer of this year. That'll be not just our bus systems but also smart. And I know that they're working on some of those materials for folks. And then lastly, and this is specifically for my colleague there from Roseland, we did a letter of support for her and for safe routes to schools yesterday as well. The week prior to that we had Snomick Clean Power. We advanced three new projects from our geothermal zone. It is an effort to try to create different types of geothermal energy that can be relied on for our evergreen programs in the evening when solar is not as abundant. And by that I mean not at all. We had two completely noncontroversial companies that came forward that wanted to either expand the geysers here locally or create capacity in Snomick County or in Nevada. The third that we partnered with was a little bit controversial. It's this group called Chevron that you may have heard of before. They are expanding their renewable resource divisions and we did choose to move forward with a partnership with them to expand geothermal potential since they had the expertise and the mapping quite frankly. Energy for the year was up 12% in terms of usage. That means that budgets were better for Snomick Clean Power. And so for our rates that are going forward for Snomick Clean Power customers, they will remain 5% below PG&E's rates, which is something that we're obviously always looking for. The last thing to report out on is that we have a lot of people who have come to Snomick Clean Power. It's just a huge thank you to our team who participated in the Jennings Crossing community meeting. This has been an ongoing issue for more than a decade trying to get an at grade crossing built at the Jennings Avenue site. Smart has been insistent that they'd like a grade separated up and over crossing. It was great to see neighbors who were there eight years ago when we originally had a lot of people who were there. The idea of having to walk a quarter of a mile up and around was if not as difficult, more difficult than it was the last time we had the discussion. I want to thank Jason and others from the team for being there. Councilmember O'Crabke. Thank you very much. Just a few quick things on March 3rd. I was able to tend the crab feed for the North Coast Builders Exchange. It was a lot of fun. I was able to have a raise over $130,000 that evening for workforce development programs that they offer here in the community. Last week, I was also able to attend the ribbon cutting at Bennett Valley Golf Course for the new iron and vine restaurant. I believe it's bar, restaurant and event space. They do all three and fantastic venue. Spent a lot of time there last week and can't say I was able to attend the legal aid gala where they raised an incredible amount of money for their services to represent those who don't have access to legal representation for a variety of reasons. It was a great event, raised a lot of money. Some people walked away with a very nice watch. And I think everybody should try to go to that if they ever had the opportunity. Councilmember Alvarez. First off, thank you for the letter of support for District 1. It's greatly appreciated. On Thursday the 9th, we attended a informative talk about gangs and the resources that are available to the community at the Roseland cafeteria. So that was great to see the community. There was over 80 participants from the community, both young and old. So I was really happy to see the participation and the involvement from the community in that community. Actually, Assemblyman Collie's first town hall meeting in Runner Park alongside many of their elected officials. And it was great to see the amount of legislation that he's trying to put forward. Everything from youth mental health resources, as well as the issues that play our youth with ghost guns and other weapons that are found in our community. And last but not least, during our goal setting that was held by the community to visit Iron and Vine and see what they've been doing with the place and how it's been revamped and really beautified. So hopefully if you haven't had the opportunity, please do so. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Steph. Some good news from the Ag and Open Space Advisory Board. They closed escrow on a sizable piece of property out along Bennett Valley Road, which is adjacent to Trinidad State Park. It's 174 acres that will gradually get out of the way of the construction of the system. Thank you to the Sonoma County Development Board and the CTE Foundation. They did a way workforce development breakfast a couple weeks ago down in Petaluma focused on on helping students develop career paths as well as bringing other individuals from the county into the workforce. I had the chance to attend and was glad that I was there. I thank you to Congressional Commissioners for the opportunity to meet with members of the CTE Foundation. It was a well attended event and then finally another congratulations to the Bennett Valley Golf Course for the opening of Iron and Vine. A number of us were there. It was again a well attended event. Lots of folks and a great night. So congratulations to the golf course. Thank you. Vice Mayor McDonald. Thank you Mayor. Just a few updates. Senator McDonald and I was able to attend as well and get an update from the City of Santa Rosa and what we've been working on and let them know that we were going into goal setting the very next week. I was also able to attend a parent student listening session hosted by Santa Rosa City Schools to allow students as well as parents an opportunity to voice their concerns over the tragic events that had recently happened at Santa Rosa City Schools. And then with that information I was meeting with Senator Feinstein's office and I was able to communicate some of the concerns that we're hearing from our students around the support for mental health and I was there on behalf of California State PTA but the increased funding needing to support our schools and our teachers as well as the additional funding that we need for the school district to do and that this has to be a shared responsibility it's not something that just the school district can do on their own as well as the city's support that we need federal and state funding as well to do those things. I also attended the Sonoma County Legal Aid event and it was a great success and some maybe up here did win a watch and that could have made some of us bitter but we are happy for that person and I was able to meet with Melanie Dodson from Four Seas this week to talk about child care and the need for support for that as well and then I just want to do a quick thank you to President Taj from Santa Rosa or pardon me from CalCities he's had appointed me to be on the governance transparency and labor relations policy committee but I am not going to be able to fulfill those duties as the two dates of previous engagements and conflicts and so I just wanted to thank them for including me and the opportunity to serve on behalf of City of Santa Rosa and look forward to working with them in the future. Thank you so my report I was able to attend the Jenning Crossing community meeting briefly to meet some residents and also give the welcome but I did want to thank Council Member Rogers for being the entire meeting that was very helpful I was also able to attend the Maria Carrillo Walkout Montgomery High School Walkout and the Santa Rosa School District listening session which was very informative to see how we could work in collaboration with the school district to help keep our children safe. I was able to hang out with our very own Santa Rosa police officers at two of their staff meetings and again thank you for welcoming me into your space and having those tough candid conversations it was appreciated I was able to attend the Iron and Vine grand opening as did many of my fellow council members and like Council Member Alvarez said if you have not been there then I invite you to invite me to lunch for a delicious burger because I was told that they are really really good so if anyone wants to join me for lunch I am up for that on March 11th I attended the legal aid gala for justice which was a fantastic event and I am happy that I already have the Apple Watch and lastly on the 12th I had the honor of attending the national arts program ceremony and pass out prizes to awardees there were beautiful pieces of art that were created by our Santa Rosa residents as well as Santa Rosa city employees I had enough time to walk through the exhibit twice and the second time my eye caught things that did not catch the first time so if you have a chance to make it over to Finley to see that exhibit I would encourage you to do so I would like to thank all the participants for sharing their creativity their heart their talent and for allowing us to see the world through their eyes through their art and congratulations to all the awardees for those of you that have participated for multiple years and a special thank you to the volunteers that made it all possible by hanging the art and volunteering on the welcome table and from what I hear that was also a small but mighty team that put that together so with no additional report madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment thank you mayor we are now taking public comment on item 10 if you are in council chamber and wish to make a comment and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber please make your way to the podium if you are participating via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand you will have three minutes for your comment and the countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period seeing no one approach the podiums for public comment zoom host do we have any public comments via zoom we have no comments via zoom and no pre-recorded messages for this item thank you moving to item 11 we have no minutes to approve over that and go to our consent item madam city clerk can you please read the consent items thank you mayor item 12.1 resolution second amendment to the professional services agreement number F002506 with terry black and company LLC for executive and senior management recruitment item 12.2 resolution approval of a design funding item 12.3 resolution authorizing for request of low carbon transit operations program funding for fiscal year 2022 through 2023 for purchase of battery electric bus item 12.4 resolution authorizing the filing and execution of an application for funding from the federal transit service for funding from the federal transit administration buses and bus facilities in low or no emission programs for federal fiscal year 2023 and committing any necessary matching funds item 12.5 resolution approval of second amendment to professional services agreement number F002284 with rainy public law group LLC 12.6 resolution termination of a proclamation of existence of a local emergency relating to the threat of community health posed by COVID-19 item 12.7 resolution extension of proclamation of local homeless emergency that concludes the reading of the consent calendar thank you bringing it back to council are there any questions regarding the consent calendar council member Fleming mayor I know this is not the moment we do have one perfect we have no questions madam city clerk may you please conduct public comment thank you mayor we are now taking public comments on item 12 the consent calendar if you are in the council chamber and wish to make a comment and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber please make your way to the podium if you are participating via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period the first public comment from council chamber will be Peter Chernoff I worked with two navy vets one was black one was white and they are both named Paul and they both had the Christos light in their heart and we started the homeless mentor program and we believe then as I believe now that the key to addressing the homeless issue is purposefulness and one thing that almost anybody can do is garden and I believe that that is an avenue that needs to be addressed in conjunction with being thankful for Luther Burbank and gardening is truly the best therapy so to help stir things up and keep things going in a positive direction perhaps Bishop Bassa may wish to step up to the plate as many of these huge properties like St. Eugene's has thousands of houses in the city a potential sleeping area I encourage the Bishop to now serve God Almighty and no longer Mammon which has been the case for most everybody in this country for him to step forward would be a really beautiful thing and perhaps he could be more motivated by more information that directly connects the Bishop but better still could take over the pews and share some true good news as they school this nation to its highest station with a massive gardening program with hundreds of miles of living cactus fences which provides plenty of purpose and work for all and absolutely including the homeless it would be a beautiful resolution people are always talking about a revolution we've been under revolution for hundreds of years facing its tail a resolution is a clear direction for proper insurrection of a system that is all but dead as we speak and you are in a beautiful powerful position to help make these changes happen and this is the nature of what I wish to share so the homeless you know if Martin Luther King saw the promised land then we're all homeless people talk about forgiving maybe we need to forgive ourselves we're not looking deep enough into our own hearts to see who we really are this has all been about spiritual warfare and we're all spiritual beings we're actually very powerful spiritual beings and you are in one of the coolest cities and the coolest county in the world in the most powerful state on the planet and so I encourage you through my heart to yours to do all that you can both the winds and the gusts that says it's time for the promised land or bust for us to get on board with the living Lord and lay down the sword and be kind to the animals and to appreciate the Constitution as it was truly given thank you very much see no one else approaching the podiums for public comment Zoom host do we have any public comments from Zoom public comments via Zoom and no prerecorded messages for this item thank you Vice Mayor McDonnell can you please put a motion on the table no one pulled any just before I put a motion on the floor I didn't want it I wanted to make sure that okay I can put the motion on the floor first though I'd like to move items 12.1 to 12.7 second Council Member Fleming thank you Mayor in regard to item 12.6 the termination of the proclamation of the local emergency related to COVID-19 I just didn't want to let this one pass without making a notation of how much our community went through during these last three years it's been almost three years I want to thank our city staff our council president and previous and everybody who pitched in I know there wasn't always unanimous consent about how to proceed and what direction to go in and acknowledge that we were all really scared and I just want to thank everyone for your hard work, for your patience for everything that you gave up to reduce the loss of life and disability over this illness and to remind us to remain vigilant but also to have an eye toward balance, cohesion and forward momentum so thank you everybody thank you comments by council seeing none Madam City Clerk may you please call the vote thank you Mayor Council Member Stapp Council Member Rogers Council Member Okrepke Council Member Fleming Council Member Alvarez Vice Mayor McDonald Mayor Rogers let the record show that motion passes unanimously we will now move to item 13 public comment on non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to speak to the council matters not listed on the agenda but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council Madam City Clerk may you please facilitate public comment thank you Mayor we are now taking public comments on item 13 if you wish to make a public comment in person and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber please make your way to the podium please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand you will have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert you at the conclusion of that period we will take 12 speakers under item 13 if we have more than 12 public comments on item 13 the remaining speakers will be afforded an opportunity to speak under item 17 non-agenda matters to provide public comment the first public comment will be provided by Peter Chernoff thank you we will go to Dwayne DeWitt my name is Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland I gave some handouts to the clerk that I hope you will all get and we want to invite the mayor for a hamburger at the vets memorial building two weeks away Saturday the 25th we are actually inviting all of you to come for free hamburgers and barbecue with veterans if you got a veteran in your family bring them on down come and have fun with veterans we also gave another flyer that you will get for a pancake breakfast on the 1st of July at the vets memorial building also so we invite you to come there and interact with veterans who spent some time in their lives to make sure that we have some freedom in this land I would like to make a comment to you based on the governor the state releasing information to the water professionals at the 6th of March technical advisory committee for water here in Santa Rosa it was mentioned in the government affairs update that the governor specifically believes facilitating groundwater recharge projects is important in that meeting it was mentioned by myself and discussed with others that natural riparian corridors are some of the best stormwater retention basins and that's what nature did before humans got in the way so we came up with something called flood control and that's created perhaps more problems than it's helped over in my area of Roseland we have Roseland Creek which still has a number of natural sites along it those can be saved and you can get money from the state to do it if you would actually reach out and say we want to build water resilience and this is something that the governor has been implementing for a couple of years before we had these good rains come and the rains are here you can see how nature keeps water and it helps that's the recharge that's the best on Saturday April 22nd which is Earth Day we'd invite you to come out to Roseland and be along the creek at 10 o'clock we're doing a creek cleanup which we've done every year for decades I actually saw one of the former mayors of Santa Rosa and we talked about how almost 25 years ago he came out there to talk with us and work with us on these things so with that in mind, Earth Day 22nd April 10 o'clock Roseland Creek be there be square all the best to you thank you the next public comment will be from Peter Chernoff thank you very much I guess I should somewhat apologize I thought it was public comment earlier and because Luther Burbank was mentioned I jumped on that because I speak about that a lot so pardon me for that anyways on the front page of the press democrat today and I'm not a big fan of Operation Mockingbird media and if you're not familiar with it look it up Operation Mockingbird it's how they manipulate the public lie to you because banker system still safe says the US government I think that anybody with the capacity of critical thought will start withdrawing your money immediately because things were happening very fast and as I mentioned the other evening in Petaluma I said a lot of law enforcement have stopped paying their ransom mortgages because they know what's about to happen and the media is not about to report that and they also get on board which they should anyways we've been on our knees to bankers and lawyers forever and if the students or as the students find out to the degree that they've been manipulated and lied to they will step forward even more than before so I have a concern about all the deviation of true information and I want to quote a real fast quote attributed to John Trudell and John Trudell I got the wrong paper here but basically John says to blame others is to take away from our own responsibility as intelligent beings and that's all I see going on with this case is blaming others they're firing the principal and another guy named Tyler Alborn who actually was once stabbed at a Santa Rosa high school and he came back after he healed and he now is in this position and because something out of their control which we're all responsible for they're going to fire him to deviate from the facts but I believe the students are starting to understand what's going on they understand that spiritually and religiously murder always included animals from the time of Moses that's behind all war foreign and domestic violence and all of us to stand up and be majestic and that the Bar Association Liars 300,000 strong California have gotten wealthy by working for the U.S. bankers as they urinate on the U.S. Constitution which according to the true 13th amendment they're not allowed to be in public office no one with a title of nobility is allowed in public office so I ask you to open your heart and listen to your heart and soul if the promised land like me be the promise thank you we'll now go to item 15.1 which is our public hearing of the night and then we will go back to 14.1 Madam City Manager item 15.1 it looks like we have another public comment thank you the next public comment will be Juan Venegas my name's Juan Venegas and I'm a field representative for the NorCal Carpenters Union Sonoma County Local 751 I decided to become a field representative to give back to my fellow members this organization is the reason I am who I am today and has changed my life for the better over the years it gave me a career to provide for my wife and two children I have been in the construction industry for almost nine years now I began this journey by enrolling in the Carpenter Apprenticeship Program that has a duration of four years I had the privilege to learn on-the-job and in a classroom setting with certified instructors throughout those four years all while earning a livable wage to support my family and being debt free from student loan healthcare was something that was provided to me when I began this journey as my two children were born and have grown I realized the importance of having healthcare and benefits along with earning a livable wage I believe anyone with the family can agree that having healthcare is a necessity over the years I have commuted all over and have only worked close to home a handful of times I can personally speak on the triumphs on a daily basis that's why I believe that labor standards language for future projects is critical as a type of guideline for developers to follow specific language like apprenticeship healthcare and local hire would set standards for developers when it comes time to bid on a project in conclusion I ask you this question how can you as the city council better support the working class here in Santa Rosa thank you all for your time thank you are you providing public comment on non-agenda matters? hi Madame Mayor city council representatives and everybody in the chambers hello my name is Anna Diaz I'm the trustee for the rosin school district I am only here today to ask for a certain request and it's a crosswalk on Burbank Avenue that is right across the street from rosin creek elementary it is desperately needed and a lot of parents and community members would love it as well and I think that's all I just wanted to say today thank you thank you seeing no additional public commenters from council chamber zoom post do we have any via zoom? no comments via zoom and no pre-recorded messages thank you idle 15.1 okay great is the public hearing accessory dwelling unit urgency ordinance deputy director Jones will introduce herself and her team as they get ready to present thank you thank you city manager Smith Jessica Jones deputy director for planning and presenting tonight will be Amy Nicholson supervising planner for our current development team thank you Jessica and good evening mayor and members of the council let me share my screen here okay so the item before you this evening is an urgency ordinance and it's related to accessory dwelling units accessory dwelling units are seen as a really important form of housing in the city of Santa Rosa we've seen a really large increase in the number of accessory dwelling units over the last eight or so years and they provide an important source of housing for many different members of our community an accessory dwelling unit is limited in size this is consistent with state law and city's local regulations and that an ADU is an independent residential structure but it cannot exceed 1200 square feet a junior accessory dwelling unit is a type of ADU it is limited to 500 square feet in size and it is contained entirely within a single family residence so this can include the garage of a single family house or it could be a conversion space one unique factor about junior accessory dwelling units is that they may actually share sanitation facilities with the primary residence so I just mentioned that because there are some changes in state law that I'm going to go over this evening and I wanted to just explain the definition of those two types of residential units so back in March of 2020 the city council adopted an ADU urgency ordinance which included a number of local provisions and this most recent August of 2022 the state legislature adopted two accessory dwelling unit bills which were later signed by the governor and both of these bills became effective January of this year which then voided the city's local accessory dwelling unit ordinance which included a number of local protections and provisions so the reason we're before you this evening is to comply with state law and also ensure that our local provisions are included once again this slide shows the two accessory dwelling unit bills that are the subject of this urgency ordinance assembly bill 2221 and senate bill 897 and I'm just going to quickly walk through these slides and I'm happy to answer any questions afterward and we also have staff from building and fire available on zoom as well so these two bills have a number of amendments many of which are clarifications to changes that occurred back in 2020 many of these relate to just the department's general processing and permitting of accessory dwelling unit building permits and so here a number of different clarifications are shown on the screen we actually don't require any changes to our current practice in the planning and economic development department to comply with state law but these are some examples here again these relate to the city's processing and permitting practices one change relates to the city reviewing and issuing demolition permits for a detached garage at the same time as an adu application being reviewed so this is again this is done typically in practice but this would be a change in that it would be added to the city's zoning code again these examples here show some additional clarifying language related to legalization of an unpermitted adu and then also when fire sprinklers can be required this slide shows a few of the development standards which are changed by these two state bills one notable one relates to the front setback so as prior to January of this year accessory dwelling units had to be located outside of residential front yard setbacks which are typically at least 10 to 15 feet now if somebody couldn't locate an accessory dwelling unit in the rear or side yard they would be able to encroach into the front setback to get an adu that was 800 square feet there's also a number of allowances for height increases so the city currently allows a 16 foot one story adu in all residential zoning districts and then a 27 foot adu in all residential zoning districts this is just a minor change so now state law says what was 16 feet can be 18 feet in some cases as shown here on the slide and the draft ordinance before you reflect those changes here we have a few other clarifying pieces that in cases where an adu is proposed on a multifamily site the city cannot require that multifamily dwelling be basically changed so that it complies with the current requirements of a 4 foot side and rear yard setback and then there's also two changes to when parking spaces can be required or cannot be required for accessory dwelling units the state bills also have a lot of language related to the city so the city has a lot of direct fees for water and sewer which are shown on the next several slides and the city doesn't require any changes to its current practices to comply here just to briefly go through the local amendments that were previously adopted by the council they were primarily focused in the city's hillside development permit so we see the city's hillside as an important visual resource and so we want to make sure that we have some ability to impose our more restrictive setbacks for certain adus in these places as well as more restrictive setbacks in our creekside areas we also have some specific requirements for architectural compatibility within our historic preservation districts in our residential neighborhoods generally and so again no changes are proposed here this is really just to ensure that we have some local protection still in place just as a summary this is presented to you as an urgency ordinance because the statutes which became effective on January 1st of this year voided the city's local regulations and therefore we need to look just to state law when reviewing accessory applications this urgency ordinance would be effective immediately following adoption and the california government code and also the city charter do allow for an urgency ordinance to be adopted for the immediate preservation of public peace health or safety and those reasons have been outlined in the draft ordinance before you this evening this ordinance is exempt from the california environmental quality and it's statutorily exempt pursuant to seek with guidelines section 15282 subsection H and with that it is recommended by the planning and economic development department that the council by motion I believe this should say introduce an urgency ordinance amending oh adopt oh that's right I'm sorry adopt an urgency ordinance in 2042 1 3 0 to allow accessory dwelling units and junior accessory dwelling units in compliance with state law and my contact information is on the screen for any questions thank you thank you so much for that presentation looking to council members are there any questions councilmember rogers thank you mayor just a quick question I'm going to garble the data point a little bit but I know that prior to the adoption of the council streamlining for ad use which I think was in 2018 we were only seeing about eight ad use created in the city each year and I know that between our adoption and fire rebuilds that that sky rocketed and I'm just wondering what are we still seeing in terms of actual creations of units through our ad policies and through legislation thank you for that question I have some numbers written down here this is accessory dwelling unit permits issued by year so as councilmember rogers mentioned back in 2015 2016 and 2017 the city on average received about 10 or issued 10 ad use permits per year and then in 2018 so this was following changes to the city's fees in particular for utility connection we saw 80 permits issued in 2018 and then it sort of fluctuated since then but in general I'd say the movement increases 2019 there were 50 2020-65 2021-95 and then last year we're still finalizing this but we're really close so that number is 113 and this these numbers include any additional accessory dwelling units in our fire rebuild areas but it doesn't count anything that would have been replaced through the rebuild process thank you so much I really appreciate it any additional questions councilmember rogers my question for me thank you councilmember foaming thank you I was just wondering if you could review if this would loosen any controls over adu construction in historic zones districts I want to make sure I'm understanding it would these changes limit the city's ability to have exercise control over our preservation districts that's more or less the question I was asking it actually from the other way would it make it easier for people to place these in historic preservation districts I don't believe any of the changes required by these state bills would make it easier in terms of our local regulations we do have a number of options for people to meet that compatibility requirement in preservation districts so state law says that we cannot use any subjective judgment in reviewing accessory dwelling unit applications so compatibility can be a bit of a tricky term so we define it as mimicking things like materials and architectural features as one way to meet that requirement in our preservation districts and then the other way would be we have a number of options that are from an architectural historian which says yes it's compatible so there are options there there's a little bit more of a requirement in our preservation districts then in other neighborhoods though thank you and well done on those ADU numbers any additional questions seeing none we will now open the public hearing madam city clerk item 15.1 if you would like to make a public comment and you are in council chamber please approach the podium if you are participating via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand you will have 3 minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period mayor I see no one approaching the podium for public comment in council chamber zoom host do we have any public comments no public comment on zoom and no prerecorded messages from the item thank you seeing no one wishing to make a comment we will now close the public hearing and I'll bring it back to council for final comments seeing none council member rogers I will make a motion of the council introducing an urgency ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending title 20 of the santa rosa amending section 20-42 point 130 regulating accessory dwelling units to ensure consistency with state law and waive further reading of the text second we have a motion from council member rogers in a second from vice mayor mcdonald council is there any discussion seeing none madam city clerk can you please call the vote thank you mayor council member stepp council member rogers council member okrepke council member fleming council member alvarez vice mayor mcdonald mayor rogers let the record show that ordinance passes with a unanimous vote thank you we will now move to item 14.1 madam city manager item 14.1 is a report item recommendation to rescind June 30th 2021 drought emergency declaration rescind stage 3 of the city of santa rosa's water shortage contingency plan remove authorization to utilize water enterprise fund catastrophic reserves and implement demand reduction actions consistent with the recommendations of title 23 section 996 c1 of the california code of regulations for the duration of this emergency regulation for the duration this emergency regulation is in effect i would like to introduce deputy director no you're not deputy director director burke thank you thank you city manager smith and good afternoon mayor rogers and members of council as mentioned my name is jennifer burke and i'm the director of santa rosa's water shortage contingency plan this evening is peter martin our deputy director of water resources and we are very pleased to be in front of you this evening to bring a recommendation forward to rescind stage 3 of our water shortage contingency plan and look to continue to comply with the state regulations we are going to talk about our regional drought response as well as stage 3 our statewide emergency drought rags and then i'm going to talk a little bit about local supply conditions and outreach and resources we have available continuing for our community and the recommendation before you so with that peter great thank you director burke good evening mayor rogers and members of the council it's a busy slide but i do want to sort of give you the timeline for the drought response over the past few years really it dates back to the year 2020 we started to see a very dry year and winter and we started to see some challenges regionally in the upper russian river especially in terms of water supplies we began a dry winter campaign shortly thereafter the water supplies in lake minnesino became pretty dire the governor newsom stood in the dry lake bed of lake minnesino on april 21st and proclaimed a drought emergency in sonoma and minnesino counties the first two counties in the state to get that designation shortly thereafter we launched a regional campaign for water supply and then with the water supply challenges that were coming this council acted to put in place a voluntary water use reduction as we began to evaluate the water supplies through the remainder of the summer sonoma water filed a temperature change petition around that time and it was granted in june with that it became a requirement that sonoma water reduced the diversions by 20% when compared to 2020 so the council acted and instituted stage 3 of our water shortage contingency plan consistent with that 20% reduction and instituted allocations for all of the contractors so excuse me sonoma water instituted allocations for all the contractors so this allowed us to comply with those allocations through the remainder of the year in fall of 2021 we got some false hopes with an atmospheric river about 11 inches fell in one weekend and then it was followed up by pretty much the driest january and february on record excuse me second driest record and sonoma water again filed another temperature change petition we launched the drought is still here campaign reminding folks that we still were in a drought in 2022 they again instituted allocations for their contractors and we were still complying with the 20% reduction in water use this fall lakes sonoma fell to its lowest levels and its operational history and it was getting very concerning as you can imagine coming into the winter we lucked out beginning on December 26 series of storms and atmospheric rivers made water supplies very plentiful all of a sudden lakes sonoma recovered more than 145,000 acre feet in a very short period of time and our reservoirs are now basically fuller than full and that's why we're here today so this really has been a regional response in terms of us working together as sister agencies throughout the watershed on carrying forward a coordinated drought response that was very consistent as I mentioned back in May 2021 sonoma water began asking their contractors to adopt resolutions with a target of 20% reduction in water use and since then we worked together through the sonoma rent saving water partnership which represents 13 different utilities in sonoma and marin counties serving about 600,000 folks so that has really helped it's been a coordinated campaign we use similar messaging and similar branding so it is not lost amongst all the folks in the region that we are in drought so santa rosa has been in stage 3 mandatory requirements of 20% reduction in water use since june of 2021 by the action of the city council and since then we've achieved an 18% community-wide reduction in water use compared to 2020 so our customers have responded so just a little bit about the stage 3 which we're currently in it has a community-wide water use reduction target of 20% of course our water waste ordinance is always in effect which prohibits leaks and wasteful practices including overspray and runoff from properties but with stage 3 there is enhanced prohibitions and restrictions of specific limitations on timing of irrigation shutoff nozzles are required for hoses excuse me no washing of hard surfaces and less required for public health purposes restaurants are required to only serve water upon our quest and hotels and lodging establishments need to carry messaging about washing linens only upon our quest and of course no pressure washing with potable water without a variance for that as well so in terms of enforcement over the past two years done a broad amount of outreach to customers I'm sure they've heard plenty about it at this point conducted water waste patrols we've received over a thousand reports of water wastes to our online portal and we've really taken advantage of our automatic metering infrastructure that we invested in the last few years and then we issued power washing variances for certain health safety and construction activities we obviously didn't want to impact the economy where needed so that folks can continue to do the things that they needed to do in the meantime the governor did issue to emergency declarations and requested the state board come back with new conservation emergency conservation regulations those remain in effect until the state water board he either resends those or the emergency is no longer in effect at least through this summer for there's two different regulations that were passed the first was specific to certain prohibitions on wasteful uses of water many of these are very consistent with those that we have already in place as a city including our own water waste ordinance I won't spend too much time reviewing many of these but these remain in effect furthermore there was a second emergency conservation regulation which required the prohibition of irrigation of non-functional turf the state enforces this requirement and it applies to our commercial industrial and institutional properties and they are not allowed to irrigate what is termed non-functional turf unless it is also tied into a system that irrigates shrubs and trees and then furthermore this regulation also required all utilities institute demand measures consistent with up to 10 to 20% so that's just the demand measures that's no target but they're expected to institute some measures that are consistent with that so Santa Rosa's been outreaching to our commercial industrial and institutional customers since early 2022 making sure that they understand this prohibition is in effect so with that I will pass the remainder of the presentation off to director Burke thank you so why are we here today we're here to say thank you to our customers for their outstanding work in saving water by complying with the requirements for stage 3 our customers reduced their community wide water use since June of 2021 through last month February of 2023 by 18% compared to 2020 that's a 1.8 billion gallon savings so thank you to our customers for all of their great work they did exactly what we asked for which is follow the restrictions in stage 3 to get us through until we have ample water supply back in place we're also here to say thank you to the board of public utilities and to the city council for your leadership in helping us navigate through this shortage condition we are now at a place where Lake Sonoma has 289,600 acre 600,000 acre feet in storage this is 118% and we anticipate that the army core of engineers will be releasing water soon because they are way above their flood pool storage Lake Mendocino is now at 91,600 acre feet which is 105% of the current storage curve and they have been releasing water from Lake Mendocino since Monday of this week this year we will be in normal conditions with no anticipated reduction in diversions and no allocations from Sonoma water and we now have four years of water supply in Lake Sonoma we go to the next slide but of course we also want to make sure that our customers continue to implement water use efficiency that is appropriate for our community Santa Rosa is committed to water use efficiency as a way of life and so we need to ensure that our customers continue to eliminate water waste and continue to use water efficiently and we have a number of programs and resources to help our customers do that which will continue to be available on our website as well as outreach through our social media channels and bill inserts but at this time we no longer need our customers to implement austere measures to reduce water use by 20% community-wide compared to 2020 so with that it's the recommendation of the Santa Rosa water staff as well as the Board of Public Utilities that the City Council adopt a resolution rescinding the June 29th 2021 drought emergency rescinding implementation of stage 3 removing the authorization for the water department to utilize water in the state so with that we're happy to answer any questions that the council may have thank you thank you for that presentation looking to council to see if there are any questions council members thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you any questions council member rogers thanks mayor so first of all a really good item for us to have and I know my wife has been ready to use the power washer with our chickens in the backyard so she'll be thrilled that she can do that one of the things that you very briefly touched on in the presentation was FIRO the forecast informed reservoir operations I was hoping just for the public you could kind of explain what that is and why that's so significant especially as I know they're looking now to expand that I think there's only eight or nine if I remember the number places that use it and they're looking to expand it across the nation now okay I'll start and then deputy director Martin can add in but yes thank you for that great question FIRO is forecast informed reservoir operations that was piloted by Sonoma water in collaboration with a number of different agencies including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to really look at recent and predictive forecasts to help them manage the reservoir storage this came about because a number of years ago I believe it was 2013 we had a big rainstorm and the water supply in Lake Mendocino encroached into the flood pool and that was in early December and so the Army Corps released water per their rule curves to drop it down into the water supply pool and then released more in anticipated storms and the spigot completely turned off we never had another storm so in essence they lost about 20,000 acre feet of water that they could have held which was really important and Sonoma water started partnering with others to say can we do this better can we do this a different way so forecast informed reservoir operations has been adopted by the Army Corps for Lake Mendocino we actually have a major deviation in place that allows additional storage to basically an additional to go from about 68,400 acre feet to about 80,000 acre feet during the flood stage and then it increases every day until we reach May when it hits the water supply target storage of 111,000 acre feet whereas before we would have had to stay down at that 68,400 so that's really great news and then on the Lake Sonoma side they actually have a minor deviation that allows them to store an additional 19,000 acre feet so we would be held to that 245,000 acre feet right now and Army Corps would have been releasing quite a bit already but we can actually hold up to 64 if I can do my math right in my head 264,000 acre feet so they're actually going to be able to hold that additional water they are looking to implement that in various other water agencies mostly looking on the west coast because this really seems to be the area where able to predict when atmospheric rivers are going to hit and how they're going to hit and then use that to manage the reservoirs so that's a really great tool that's really helped us be able to capture more water supply during those really big rainstorms which is great and obviously we get kind of hit on it on both ends of it obviously the drought has been the big issue and there's anticipation that with climate change it's going to be a recurring issue I seem to remember a headline that we had a La Nina coming this year that meant that we weren't going to have any rain so that was wrong but I also know we've been working on the flood wall out at the La Nina treatment plant trying to prevent flooding so I guess my last question that I'll turn it over to my colleagues is sort of how are we going to use this time of now normal operations to both bolster against potential flooding if we were to have more of these atmospheric rivers and also what types of investments can we make in infrastructure to be able to weather future expected or potential droughts so thank you councilmember rogers that's a great question as well we a couple things we've already been doing and are looking at so one is we will always be implementing our water use efficiency programs and encouraging our folks to use water as efficiently as possible our community has been incredibly responsive so we'll continue that for long term savings during these normal times we have also embarked upon a water supply alternative study called our water future which is really looking at how we can have water supply availability and resiliency during these times of drought and also capture water supply during these times of abundance abundant rainfall and see how we can store it in different ways so that project launched earlier this year and we are on track actually last year and we're on track to complete that by the end of this calendar year and we will be bringing those updates to council so we can look at different opportunities to really bolster our water supply resiliency we are also working with Sonoma water on a region wide resiliency study where we first identified some things we could do in terms of drought and we've already taken advantage of that when we had times of abundance abundant flow in the river in the Russian river Sonoma water was able to actually divert that flow down to areas where there's storage so North Morin Water District for example has like Stafford so they're able to fill that Morin Municipal has a number of water reservoirs they were able to take that water and fill that so that we didn't just lose that water to be discharging out to the ocean but were able to store that in various ways so there's a number of things we've been looking at not only as a water department but as a region how can we best capture this water in times of high rainfall and flow and then be able to leverage that to use that to get us through the dry times I know I said that was my last question but you triggered two more so my apologies one is specifically for the infrastructure I know in the past we've offered to partner with our agricultural users to create some form of catchment or some form of capacity that they could better utilize are we still interested in having those conversations and if so how do we move those forward so I just want to make sure I understand are you talking about recycled water or are you talking about the potable water side either so for we continue to meet and regularly communicate with our agricultural partners and customers from the regional system we continue to look at various opportunities where we can increase the efficiency of our operation to make sure that we're maximizing water supply available and we do look at that as a strong benefit because it helps us reduce reliance on groundwater and also we look to implement as much recycled water application to offset potable use as well so diversions from the river so we're continuously available and open to any conversations folks would like to have if there's desire to look at opportunities for increased storage I think those are some of the best opportunities and we continue to say we're here and we're available to discuss we're also looking at some innovative solutions for example can we use the geysers pipeline in a different way to wheel water that might help as well throughout the region so we're open to all of those opportunities and suggestions and I think a lot of that is also going to vet out through our water supply analysis that we're doing yeah that was the second follow-up question was specifically about the geysers and I was trying to remember with the contract with our commitment to the geysers and how much water we deliver is it every calendar year or every budget year and the reason that I asked that is have we completely through last year fulfilled our obligations and then now obviously we've had three really or more than two really rainy months and so are we well on our way for the next calendar years obligations in water where we might not have to worry about that so much down the road so our contract it's on a calendar year runs through 2037 on average it's about 4.2 billion gallons per year we have to deliver we fully met our contract obligations last year so we have to meet 90% or greater and we are very very full on the storage side so we have been discharging and we're still discharging through today we're at about 1.1 billion gallons out of 1.4 billion gallons of storage which is very high especially with heavy weather coming in so we are balancing that to maximize deliveries to the geysers right now keep as much as storage as we can without having an uncontrolled discharge because that would be very very problematic and put us in violation so we are discharging doing a controlled discharge to manage our storage levels as well and that's discharge up towards the geysers or discharge out towards the ocean discharge into the Laguna de Santa Rosa right now so even with discharge we're still seeing increases in storage so we're having to manage our storage very carefully right now okay I really appreciate that thank you are there any additional questions from council members seeing none Madam City Clerk may you please conduct public comment thank you mayor we are now taking public comments on item 14.1 if you are in the council chamber and wish to make a comment and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber please make your way to the podium if you are participating via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand you will have three minutes for your comment and a countdown timer alert at the conclusion of that period may I see no one approaching the podiums for public comment Zoom host do we have any public comments via zoom we have no public comments via zoom and no recorded messages thank you council member staff can you please put a motion on the table I move that well actually how do I get my verbiage right here this is the first time I've done one of these I'm pleased to introduce the resolution is that correct is that what I'm doing alright I'm pleased to introduce the resolution of the council the city of Santa Rosa we're sending the June 29th 2021 drought emergency declaration we're sending stage 3 of the city's water shortage contingency plan removing authorization for Santa Rosa water to utilize the water enterprise fund catastrophic reserves and directing staff to implement demand reduction across actions consistent with the requirements of title 23 section 996C1 of the California Code of Regulations for the duration this emergency regulation is in effect and I ask that we waive the reading of the text second we have a motion made by council member staff and a motion made I mean in a second by vice mayor mcdonnell are there are there any comments or questions council member rogers my apologies mayor I just know that this has been such an ongoing thing for our team and our staff really since 2020 if not before and I want to take a moment and appreciate all of the work that the two of you and your entire teams put in and to echo your thanks to the entire community at 18% reduction from our 2020 goal is really significant and as we continually hear from our community members when they come forward many of them are already really efficient to begin with so the fact that we are able to deliver an 18% reduction I really think speaks to the trust that they have in your team as well as the effectiveness of the messaging so I wanted to make sure that before we voted on the motion that that was said allowed thank you thank you council member rogers for stating that now I don't have to but ditto I appreciate staff community and also the different boards that work on that work with the water thank you so much Madam city clerk can you please call the vote thank you mayor council member step council member rogers aye council member okrepke aye council member fleming aye council member alvarez aye vice mayor mcdonald aye mayor rogers aye let the record excuse me let the record show this resolution passed unanimously thank you we will now jump down to 16.1 which is our written communication state legislative update to support for ab 30 ward atmospheric river research mitigation and climate forecasting program provided information madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment on 16.1 thank you mayor we are now taking public comments on 16.1 if you wish to make a comment in person please put your name in with the administrator at the top of the well if you are participating via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 you will have 3 minutes for your comment in a countdown time or alert will alert at the conclusion of that period seeing no one wishing to provide public comment on 16.1 from council chamber zoom host do we have any public commenters we have no public comment via zoom and no pre-recorded messages for this item thank you moving to item 17 public comment on non-agenda matters this is the second opportunity today for the public to speak on speak to the council on non-listed items on the agenda but that are within our subject matter jurisdiction of the council so madam city clerk may you please conduct that public comment thank you we are now taking public public comments on item 17 non-agenda matters this is the time when any person has not previously addressed the council under item 13 may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council if you are in council chamber and wish to make a comment and have not provided your name to the administrator at the top of the chamber please make your way to the podium if you are participating via zoom please raise your hand if you are participating via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand you will have 3 minutes for your comment and a countdown timer will alert at the conclusion of that period we are now approaching the podium zoom host do we have any public comments via zoom yes we will call Eric Frazier you are being asked to unmute this is Eric Frazier and my address is truthintourism at gmail.com many people recognize me as a researcher on matters related to short term rentals and there is a lot of overlap in many many many many issues in fact I thought I was in the queue to public to have a comment on the ADU item that just appeared on the agenda but for some reason maybe a technological technological difficulty technical difficulty I was sort of passed over there what I would have said there is to remind you how important STRs are in developing ADUs and it appears that the state laws provide some additional toe hold for STR justice and equity because decisions about ADUs can't be made subjectively and so as regulations regarding STRs become more fact based and the opinion about STRs isn't what governs the decisions it's actual verification of facts then that should hold well for STRs being utilized or ADUs being utilized as STRs occasionally when they meet performance standards now regarding STRs one thing I wanted to make comment on is that obviously this is a big issue it's very controversial the city has spent millions of dollars on this millions and millions of dollars has disrupted people's lives has not delivered justice on this issue and we know that it's supposed to come in front of the in front of planning and I assume also the city council but when we look at upcoming public meetings there's no mention of these STR ordinances and you know the history of these STR ordinances has been one of gamesmanship and brinksmanship and not bargaining in good faith and this really appears to be a continuation of that and that's really quite unfortunate both for supporting the concept of competent management of the city but also legally and you know when it comes to disrespecting the public's opinion whether they're pro or anti STRs it's government's purpose to provide facts so that we can discuss facts of when setting policy and you guys are not behaving ethically so what's up with those meetings that are supposed to be scheduled around STR policy thank you very much Zoom host are there any additional public comments we have no additional comments and no pre-recorded messages thank you we will now move to item 19 which is our adjournment but I would like to take this opportunity to adjourn this meeting in remembrance of Reverend Curtis Byrd who was a former planning commissioner and a CAV member and a long time president and CEO of the Gray Foundation so thank you very much this meeting is adjourned