 I don't know how you're going to get out of this. I got a skill. That's right. Just try. Real table position. So Claire, you know, when various people, there's one person in particular, but it drives me nuts, but left the city, they took everything. Like I opened drawers and it was empty. Sometimes I have a hard time finding certain things, and then with transitions back and forth. But yeah, I'll send you a few things, and then... Oh, you're talking about the strap? Yeah, and then I'll send you more. But we've done iterations, and then some of them don't have, like, a power plug, but it's like, so we did the, you know, aggressive augments, and then we did the housing. So it was things where we didn't do a full plan, but we did elements that supported a variation or an initiative. Oh, yeah. So it wasn't like the big one. Yeah, so this one was the big thing. Well, we did things before that, and then we did elements, then we did the 2008, then the 2012, and then the other things, and then we focused on specific initiatives, but not going back, because if you read this, it's... apart from doing updates to the data, the elements are good, you know. Well, that's what we're going to get to talk about today. It's the style of strap planning. Yeah, you're going to lead that to the discussion, yeah. I have password problems. I've got problems. I've got problems and 99 of them. Oh, God, don't say that. I'm just quoting all sorts of different things today. Oh, God, I'm in. You shouldn't be like, ah, I got into the system, but that's how it is every day. I have three things in life, times I can and sometimes I can. My phone is not working. It's the key for Sutherland, you know, 24. Exactly. That show was great for Sutherland. The show was great for two seasons. Well, I was going to say, and then it was the same show for another time. I was going to say, yeah. As you say, most shows are good for two seasons. We're really enjoying the first season of the diplomat right now. Is that good? Yeah. It's really good. I've been recommended that and Yellow Jackets. I don't know what Yellow Jackets is. It's about the girl soccer team that crashes on an island or in the jungle and then like it goes back and forth between their time there and then them as adults, coping with what they did. But you don't know when they say, when they talk about what they did, they don't say what they had to figure out. Florida is bad. Yeah, kind of like, did they eat somebody, kill somebody? Yes. Well, here's the problem that I have. My favorite show growing up got canceled halfway through. Which was? It was The Pretender. Did you ever see that show? Oh, yeah. It got canceled halfway through. And it was a super interesting concept to me. And then there was zero resolution whatsoever to it. That's the one where they're looking for something like they're all these relationships. And it was somebody who was, who led them all on and they got bonded together to find them. No. So this is the one. It's a kid who's a genius. Oh. And so he gets stolen from his parents and basically a terrorist organization uses him to gesture wildly. Yes. Yes. Thank you for my own time slot. Nick Castan. It's not critical setting. It's on some more topics and looking for it also. How many on the agenda item? But it's simply one to revisit kind of more micro issue around supporting Canada's industry in the city. We had a great meeting with the police chief and district attorney at the beginning of the year discussing the overall safety issues in the industry. And as we're looking to continue to attract the entertaining and helping this industry grow, I think it's important to take into consideration the extra costs that the industry is spending to be able to operate safely right now. And because of that, we've talked about, I asked for you to consider a tax deduction for the costs that are being spent by cannabis companies on security measures. Those security measures promote the economic environment in the business in the areas where the businesses are housed. And it's really important for their growth. There are also funds that are being spent that are taxed as though they were income by the federal government and are taxed as gross receipts. That income is taxed by the state. So if the city were to take the small gesture, this wouldn't be a huge expenditure in order to support the industry and be able to provide the security that also benefits the community and the neighborhoods around it in supporting the economic growth of an industry that you've committed to for almost a decade now and incubating, we really appreciate that consideration as you walk into budget discussions and comprehensive economic development plan that I hope to be very engaging. Thank you. Great. If you have any other hands on Zoom. See here. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute once called upon. There are no comments on Zoom. Great. We'll keep moving. Let's go on to 3.1. I'll kick it off. So we have the one item today for you, comprehensive economic development strategic plan. We, it's been some time since we've had a dedicated comprehensive strategic plan. We've done a number of initiatives over the last, I don't know, 10 years as, as relevant to the economic times that we're in. And what we'd like to do today is provide a, have right so we'll walk us through some of the background of what we, what we have done in the recent years, but where we're headed now with a comprehensive plan. It isn't our work plan this year. And we will be working on one. It will be working with our, the resources that we have, which is our available team and any data that we have to work with. And then we have some ideas about how we would scope it out and produce it and process it. But we're here today really to talk about the opportunity and then the fine feedback from council members about what you would like in the plan or how you would like to approach the plan. Does that, does that sounds good? Okay. We'll have to raise it. Yeah. You know, the only thing I'm just going to do is really give you a brief review over the years of the kinds of plans that we've done or, and what we've focused on. So before I started with the city, which is a long time ago in 2003, the first one that I'm aware of first, economic development strategy plan that we had in this pre year. And then in 2003, we did something that was more of a project list, which was interesting. But it's the first time we saw, you know, the explicit objective of increasing high quality jobs, preserving the city's quality of life, a generating tax revenue to fund enhancement of civic development. And then in 2003, we did something that was more of a project list, which was interesting. We were going to give generating tax revenue to fund enhancement of civic city services, but they specifically called up parks and recreation and public safety, preserving the areas rural character, which I thought was interesting, providing first class urban amenities and mitigating the regions, chronic housing shortage. The, that was the first time that I looking back that we sort of recognized housing and quite high quality jobs, which became sort of the thing throughout it. They had project criteria at the time, long-term impact on Santa Rosa economy, ease of implementation, which included both political acceptance and sufficiency of demand in the marketplace, and as well as cost to the city. After that, and this is where I started with the city, one of the first things that I did was to start the next 2008 comprehensive plan. But before I get there, it was interesting. The reason why this became one of the first things to do was there was a feeling that we had completed, basically checked off all of the projects in the plan. And just- Yeah, when he talked about housing, I was like, nailed it. Exactly. Done. What they did was they rezoned a lot of things for housing, but we didn't get the housing. But this is kind of fun in the way back machine. They had a list of 14 things, which included develop a food and wine center, develop a transit village project, develop a lifestyle center as the Eastern anchor to downtown, lower cost barrier to new restaurant development in core area, preserved land at strategic locations for future hotel development, revitalize Albertson Center to into a new Hispanic shopping center, which I think is the Rosalind Village area. Expand areas available for commercial development in the center's Avenue Corridor plan for the expansion of auto dealerships, prepare a specific plan in Master EIR to guide development, target development of 1000 multifamily units in central area by 2015. Target selected firms retention and key sectors for attraction, develop a new city hall and library complex as new Southern anchor to downtown, provide leadership to introduce commercial air and streamline development approval processes. So I say that because back in 2003, one by 2005 they felt that they accomplished a lot of these things. I think that what they meant is they started them, but look how long it takes to actually achieve economic development. It's so predicated on market and willingness on political will on consistency. So 2005 is when we created our big more comprehend, what I think of as a comprehensive plan and it was less a list of projects and really sort of buckets of areas to focus on. So it had two objectives, which was to assist centers with an inventory and evaluation of its innovation assets and economic strengths and weaknesses and identify initiative priorities, policies and practices for strengthening Santa Rosa's economic development platform for the new innovation economy. And so this is what set for us the trajectory of what the economic development division was. It gave us a first sort of like big tranche of data and information. And it was something that we've been able to iterate from since then. So the three buckets were existing and emerging cluster development, innovation and entrepreneurial development and then business climate culture and communication. That last one, what that means is it was known to the city, well, it was discovered through this year long process that the city really had a very bad perception of doing business with them. So it was our own business climate and culture. And that just from 2008 onward just spurred a number of changes that you kind of saw through it. The other thing was for existing emerging cluster development, it really identified where we have the biggest potential, like what our current clusters are and where we have the biggest potential for growth. And it was this idea between that and the innovation and entrepreneurial development was to really go after industries that we have but are kind of hidden that can be expanded so that we could be better positioned in sort of a global economy. So from that 2005 one, we went through a number of different iterations and in 2008 we had an economic development sustainability strategy at that time, green business creation of green economy was a big thing. So we chased that a little bit. Again, looking at those businesses that was sort of focused on what was of interest at that time, we did another one in 2012. And I don't have notes on those thereafter but on that one it was, again, I think we turned and looked at the recovery economy because we're coming out of the 2008, the Great Recession. So we did initiatives that focused on easing enabling businesses to recover a little bit more easily and growing some of the sectors where we had, what I don't know, I was gonna say fast cash but it's like really sales tax revenue. It was auto industry stuff, that type of thing. So that was 2012. We were pivoting more into then housing after that. So we didn't have comprehensive economic development strategies but we focused in specific initiatives. So by 2016 then we had the housing action plan and then economic development was a big part of 2017. We had the fires and we did all this economic recovery. But in 2017, 2018 or 2017 before the fires we were preparing to go out for another RFP for a comprehensive plan that just got way laid. We focused on economic recovery. We tried to pick that up again in 2019. So I have RFPs from 2017 and 2019. And again, 2020 when we're ready to go, it changed it. So 2020 what is interesting is we actually, in 2019, I think it was, we did the arts program that merged over to us. So we have a comprehensive strategy for our public art program and arts component. And so we were gonna then use that, we did use that same consultant to then do an integrated thing. In 2020, 2021 the biggest thing was equity. So like where we had green initiatives in 2008 recovery thereafter, equity was the biggest thing. So what we ended up doing is sort of an equity overlay. So not a comprehensive economic development strategy but an equity overlay that really considered small businesses immigrant businesses, the disproportionate effect that we had in 2017 and then during the pandemic on sort of the more disenfranchised elements of our community and the value of building those businesses and stabilizing it for just economic growth, economic development that's comprehensive. And that's where we are today. So with that, we never released that. We've been sort of doing fits and starts and I'll hand it back over to Claire on where we are with it, with what we wanna do for the next step or what we want this next economic strategy to be. Yeah, I think one of the interests of the city through the city manager's office is to have a comprehensive citywide economic development plan. And so I think that was a great background cause that is really, that's sort of the rhythm that we, the cadence and the rhythm that the city has engaged in with economic strategies to be nimble, to be reactive. But I know there is interest through the city to have something that's a little bit more proactive and what are we going to try to achieve in the next three years? I don't know if we wanna go, oh, what if most draft plans are five years, but now what do we specifically want to achieve in the next three years? And then look at that comprehensively, I think learn from the equity overlay work that RISA did in the last couple of years and the data that we have on that, but to produce something that can be published that can be measured so that we can be accountable to those goals and objectives and sort of move our way through it. So that's the interest from the staff level and we're here to find out what your interests are. Great. So just sort of as a fundamental question, are we looking to take the last iteration that was not released and updated or are we talking about doing a fresh start new plan that may have some of the components if those are still relevant, but really kind of focus on the here and the now and where we are. I probably would say the latter, we're looking at to create a comprehensive plan. We know that that one wasn't, that it wasn't the purpose of that work, but to create a comprehensive plan. So, but to make use of the information that we have and to layer that through. So I would say that. Yeah, I think that's fair. There's a lot of good stuff in that plan that wasn't released. And so I hate to throw the baby up with the bathwater so to speak, but in my opinion, it needs to be flushed out a bit more. Okay. And so both hand to answer your question. So how long? It didn't have like the specific objectives that sort of drive our work and drive our priorities and drive our investments. And so I think that's one of the things that we really are eager to have. Yeah, yeah, I was just jumping by the way it's a conversation. Well, thank you. I'm inviting you to participate. No, I'm hearing what you said from the 2003 through whatever was 5, 12, 19. I mean, I agree there's the bones are there, right? We don't need to completely start from scratch. I think it's pretty obvious that like when we started we started to get this going in 2019, you know, COVID happened and none of this accounts for the economic detriment that happened during COVID. I think that's something that's gonna have to be brand new but the bones are there. Personally, something that I would like to see in terms of approach is a holistic approach to the city while also maybe focusing on certain areas. You know, obviously downtown railroad square, Roseland. We have a Northwest Station area plan. Maybe just instead of just doing specifically that maybe the entire smart quarter is seeing what we can do along those areas to help increase the usefulness of smart as an economic device. That's kind of like one of some things I would wanna see. You know what's interesting about that is because when we were going through, when we started in 2020, it followed the timeline of the general plan update. And what was interesting about that is, there's an economic development section of it and that's really market studies and stuff like that. So we were trying to sort of come together in alignment with that. And I think as the general plan update has like one year left in it, right? And it's identified neighborhood centered growth that our interest has always been to sort of be, that's a 50 year plan or whatever it is, 30 year plan over long it is. But it's a long term plan is to be able to take that and chunk it out into like five year, three to five year increments. And I think if we can look even at where that draft is now with the preferred alternative and see, cause I think we can then align some of those with what you're saying, Jeff is identified those neighborhoods. We can pilot some programs or initiatives or incentives in really specific areas and then see how we can build that out. So that's something we've been talking about lately via the general plan update. Yeah, so I think some of the things that I'm looking for in the plan, obviously retention is a big one. Where our only public comment and not agenda items was about a specific industry and some of the challenges that they're facing, right? So not just a plan for how we're going to retain our existing businesses, but how are we gonna continue to have that relationship where we can talk to them about as the market changes or as conditions change, what do you need to feel supported? Not just so that you stay, but then you tell your industry counterparts like, hey, Santa Rosa is the place to be. Look at all of these things that they're doing, right? And one of the things that I think about and talk about often is the high strength waste digester and the result that that's had on the beer industry in Santa Rosa, right? Not just because I love beer, but because then when you have that conversation and people are looking at when they have really small margins and they're starting out, where do I wanna start? It's a place that's supporting me and thinking about what my needs are, right? So I wanna make sure we have a strong component of that. I wanna have a strong component about business recruitment. I was actually, quite frankly, a little bit surprised in my two years as mayor, how infrequently I was asked to make phone calls to businesses trying to bring them to Santa Rosa. And I think back to sort of when we did the developer tour where we brought people here, just to show them what we have, right? How do we create a plan that goes to businesses and says, hey, come here, look at what we have to offer as you expand. This is where you wanna be. By the way, and on the support side, I'm thinking of also really strongly about the small mom and pops, creating entrepreneur space where people can take an idea that are from here, take an idea and grow that idea. I want a section of the plan that looks at emerging markets and how do we position ourselves for people to start businesses here that are in kind of that space where it's not yet a proven business but can continue to grow, right? There's a lot of loyalty for companies where they start, where they got their break, right? So how do we capture that ahead of time? So if we can do the retention, if we can do the emerging markets, if we can do attraction as sort of the baseline and then start to look downstream from that, what are the biggest factors, right? We already know cost of living is a high one. We already know that workforce development is a big one. So how do we, and it doesn't necessarily need to be built out in the economic strap plan but can give nods to like, hey, council in the future, you're having workforce development issues in this specific area, how do you talk to the industry to see what would be supportive to make up for that or to help with that, right? Even just something as simple as teacher housing is a big one. Obviously the economic development plan can't solve all of our problems in the city but Bryce and I and Darielle, we've talked about I'd much rather find a way to expand our economic base than go back to the ballot for another tax measure. And so really kind of keeping that lens as we're doing this. Yeah, I'd also say kind of dovetail off that in terms of workforce development, not to get too granular, but not just homegrown development but recruitment, I think one of the biggest issues we have as a city is we're on an island up here, so to speak, we're not the East Bay or South Bay where you can live in one city and there's just as big of another city next to you where you can go between businesses or have opportunities to recruit workforce to our area if it's not homegrown and especially with an aging population where people are retiring and we don't have a younger population coming in, we have to be able to recruit from outside the area. So to find ways to make us more attractive to a workforce of any kind, really not so industry specific but a younger workforce to backfill those retiring individuals and help our businesses to grow not just backfill but also expand. I think it's something that we kind of really need to focus on because it's difficult to get people to come up here from outside of the area because as I said, we're on an island. Yeah, and that's to sound like a broken record over the last seven years but we have to change our local preference still. Our local preference are dollars that we are spending from the city's coffers that are not necessarily going towards driving economic development in the city. And so one of the things that we had talked about back in 2018 and to 2018 was that the emerging businesses that we saw were by and large minority owned and women owned as the, not as the most emerging but as the biggest potential across the city. And so looking at ways that we can mirror our equity policies with our local preference and our economic policies to really drive investment to folks who studies have shown don't actually get the same level of investment to be successful I think would be really helpful for us. With that said, in 2005, I believe that the vision was moving in that direction for Rosalind with the Albertson Shopping Center. So I believe there was a little bit of a plan for the feature that ultimately didn't happen but I think I'm hearing more of economic support for the underrepresented or disenfranchised businesses. So for me, with what was just said I would hope that we continue in that direction of supporting those of the mom and pops the minority, the woman and so forth. And for the worker retention, the outsourcing because it is true we are on an island. Yeah, I was having a conversation with folks from Keysight yesterday. And one of the biggest challenges that they had was their public utility, right? PG&E was one of their big challenges. So they ended up doing a workaround where they are almost entirely sustainable self-sustaining off of battery packs and whatnot. We didn't help with that, but that was a big threat that could have happened where they just decided to fold up shop and move to someplace that was more reliable. I'm glad that they didn't, right? But I want to hear about those issues before they become an actual serious issue for those businesses to see if we can be nimble enough to try to be a good partner and keep people here. I think we're lucky with Keysight that they are metaphorically and literally embedded in this community and they can't move. Well, never say never, right? HP. Yeah, HP. Yeah, so I think the other thing that I'm really interested in is how do we quantify this? How do we make sure that it's working? What level of oversight and data are we gonna have to be able to go back to the public and sell things? I'm just thinking even something as simple like the waste digest or issue that I used, that was an upfront cost that we figured would help over time with the economic development. Sometimes security, if I'm using Nick's example, right? It looks like an upfront cost that we know is then going to help spur economic development in those areas or at least make those businesses feel supported. How do we actually quantify that and show people that there's a push-pull to how we're spending our dollars? There's that upfront investment that will get back long-term. And how that benefits for calls to these businesses to invite them to the city and to demonstrate through some type of metrics that we are a vibrant community who supports not only our labor force, but your labor force. And so that as well, I can see that being very beneficial. So when we did the comprehensive one and then just the smaller versions of the 2008 and then we did similar things for like the housing action plan, stuff like that. So it was a long process of pulling interest groups together and including the equity when we had education at the table. So historically we've had business at the table. And then this last one we brought in just a wider range of community organizations, et cetera, et cetera. So I think we can merge those two things, but what's interesting to me is like what I'm interested in is sort of using this group for if we can is to understand like, cause each of those things are like a huge thing into themselves, what are the implications with the largest city? So I think it's going to be, I mean, I look to you guys a slightly slower process to be able to say, okay, so if we look at this emerging industry we do have capacity in our digesters. We do have some of that infrastructure to say that, but what we don't have is X and a lot of that are the tools that live in other departments. So beginning to one, work systematically with the businesses, bringing them in. And it is very different speaking to Keysight or Sutter or Kaiser than it is speaking to say the Roseland businesses or the Mama Pop businesses. And I think there's a way to fit it all in but how do we begin prioritizing something like an identifying some of the key projects where we'll begin to see some traction? Because I think what we have to do is not go back to 2003 and be like, we're going to build a new library and downtown and city hall. But where I struggle sometimes is one the difference between stating an objective that's going to take say five years, 10 years or depending on the kind of what happens and versus getting the infrastructure set up so that the market can take it. And I think identifying what those are and knowing the difference because it does take multiple iterations of a plan to sort of see some of the fruition. We see that with housing. I'm one of the biggest thing and even childcare like the investment that we're getting that house with workforce marketing then becomes a different thing or power needs, are there opportunities like we've had discussions in the past with micro grids but if public works isn't at the table then micro grids make it a very difficult conversation to me. How do we integrate this plan effectively into the departments? The digester worked because that was David is water and us having a comprehensive conversation about it and it being able to fit that into a two year plan for water. Yeah, I'm trying to delineate but it steps into it the difference between a plan and a toolbox but the toolbox is part of it, right? But like I've had it in my head for a while what the city would really benefit I think from having is a digital city where if I don't live here but I wanna move here and I've got an insurance company I go to the city's digital city that we have established and we say I wanna be, I wanna insurance and it shows me every property that is available that is zoned appropriately and has a checklist of like if you wanna come here and start an insurance business you need x, y and z here's where you can do it here's your contact at the city to get it established, right? So you got a toolbox but then in the plan so the plan would be developing those tools and also how do you push those tools out and make them usable for people and market them so that it just the ease and the convenience of using it, right? Which makes for a very unsexy plan but yes. Yeah, there's definitely an intersection. I think though the purpose of a strategic plan is so we can all get aligned on the north star, right? What is the overarching vision? What are we rowing toward, driving toward over the next five years, right? And you're right. I think through that strategic plan we will identify certain projects certain programs, certain services absolutely a toolbox of sorts but apps in a strategic plan, right? It's still, what is tying all of these program services tools together and what are we trying to achieve as a city five years from now, right? Anecdotally, you all know that I'm recent transplant here and so I oftentimes when I'm in conversation either with staff members of the public, policy makers I'll ask, right? Hey, when you think Santa Rosa what's the first thing that comes to your mind? And if I ask 10 people oftentimes I get 10 different answers, right? Ask the same question about Napa. I get one answer, right? And so I say- Stop being us. That's it. So in my mind a strategic plan will help us answer that question, right? Who do we wanna be as a city? How do we wanna be defined and what steps are we taking so five years from now? We at least get six or seven out of those 10 people that say the same thing. Yeah, I think for me, I mean we get told all the time when we look at housing or homelessness or whatever else we're the biggest city between San Francisco and Portland. And I think economically we need to act like that. We need to invite businesses in and be an economic center for the entire Redwood empire and not just by default, but proactively bring business in and from various stakeholders. I mean, yeah, I think for me that's what that is is being the economic center which brings along all sorts of things brings along childcare, brings along housing it through various means, you know but that's to me what we should be is we, you know you don't have a city of almost 200,000 people be a sleepy bedrooms community forever, right? With just businesses because you need businesses I think we need to be proactive and bring businesses here because we can support businesses that areas between San Francisco and Portland cannot. And I think that there's an element too if we talk with the folks who do expansion in major businesses or successful businesses there's only a select things that they're gonna tell us they look for in a location, right? When they're looking to expand how do we develop that, right? How do we get to the top of that and make ourselves attractive to even get our foot in the door in the conversation, right? Because, you know, I'm not I'm not one of those people who's like throw money at a sports franchise and build them a stadium because then you'll get here and get the revenue. I'm not one of those. Worked out will for open. Yeah, right, but how do you have that conversation about like what do your actual exes and those look like and are there ways for us to be supportive to drive that investment, right? But I think we need to ask what because like from the governor's office we get, you know, all sorts of leads but, you know, we don't have maybe 60 acres of Greenfield, right? Or a 100,000 square foot factory that has access to a train line out as back door. So, obviously no for those but it would be interesting to start having a conversation about and then having the data behind it to back it like, okay, we want high tech manufacturing this sector emerging business. This is what we have, we need retail which again is that fast cash, it's cheap money but we can fill certain things and then also prioritizing because you're looking at a staff of really two myself and Rafael, how do we prioritize that? And then I think it is recognizing on the other things, the toolbox development that is not reliance on economic development or solely on economic development that has been saying, okay, you know, planning what zones or like that example you gave how do we look at what this is that has that is shovel ready, we don't have inventory. We don't have inventory that or what things we do know we have sort of the land uses but what is mired in Tiger Salamander and then understanding what then is needed to sort of free those up. So that does begin affecting those bigger businesses like we're not gonna get it probably another key step with something that we've had interest and that interest has been mostly in the Southwest where we get down the road and they say, well, I think we can handle Tiger Salamander but what do you have to help us? And we say nothing, you know, then it becomes difficult but we need to get that granular on some of those things once we understand what kind of businesses we wanna get. But there's a, yeah, I think we get, I think we're so used to seeing our other, we're so used to jumping to the toolbox of the implementation or the details because that we are really good at that when we get there but I feel like what we really need to focus on what's the aspiration, what are the emerging industries. I think what worked well with the examples that you gave us, we knew we were gonna do this. We're, you know, and so then you engage with that and then you figure out what do you need as opposed to trying to, we have these solutions, where does it match? It's like, no, we need to figure out what do we wanna achieve and then go for it and then acknowledge we're not gonna, we're only gonna be able to help so much but are we, we could be really creative, we can connect, maybe we don't have it but we can connect. I feel like if we are clear on our aspiration and the industries we wanna support or the areas of the market we wanna support, we can just go for that at least and it would be all hands on deck, right? It's not, ED is a small division and like Gracie says, it really takes all the divisions working but once you accept that clear compass, the how emerges, right? But I feel like we don't know what yet and so that's what I'm interested in finding out. What's interesting is that our weakness is also our strength. We're a metropolitan country, bunking. That doesn't exist on that island. But at the same time, you know, going back to the old studies, I believe one of the lines was preserving rural areas and addressing the housing shortage. I mean, how contradictory are those things? And then you throw tiger salamander into the bunch and it just complicates it that much more, right? But at the same time, we're looking at the beauty of Santa Rosa which one of the answers that you might have heard is our hillsides, our plains and preserving those areas such as in the west or near the west county. But we also have downtown Santa Rosa which we were moving in the right direction with the amount of housing that we're seeing currently and that's supporting the housing for a labor force that has an emergency in. So I believe that our weaknesses are also our strengths. How do we expand them? And I believe that's the question that we have before us. How do we preserve those rural areas? But at the same time, how do we invite a business to fill the gap and create more need for housing in downtown? So going back to your sort of what's our North Star, I think for me, the North Star is Santa Rosa becoming a place where anybody who has a good idea has the tools that they need to succeed. And I think the way you demonstrate or describe that website where it's a package, like if you want retail, this is a general package. If you want retail clothing or anything else, this is the packet that pertains to you. And you just saved that young entrepreneur the biggest headache is where do I start? And it might not even be young entrepreneur, it could be a business development officer somewhere for some company that's just going through different cities and then finds like, oh, this is easy. And then we get on the recommendation list for whoever else. Or even like we have a woman who fakes tamales in our kitchen and walks around for big gardens and the door, right? And I know that there's some proposed entrepreneur spaces where like she'd have access to a commercial kitchen and see does she actually want to do that? Or does she prefer to just do a little bit in it, right? Anybody who wants to see if they can succeed should be able to have the tools or have a path forward to see if their business is viable and if they want to grow and expand. That's sort of where I'm at on it. I'll tell you the most depressing part about being mayor during a pandemic was you get layoff notices from the governor's office, right? For all of the businesses that are laying people off, those suck. I want to figure out how do we support businesses so that they don't have to do that more. Keep the tamales going. Pitch and fight. Yeah. Everybody's eyes, collectively, went like this. Yeah, what's going on? You know, there was an incubator program that just banded in Rosalind. And from my knowledge, at least four of those businesses have gone on to be very successful and are right. And if we can reproduce that, as you were both saying, actually, the largest scope for the entire city of San Rosa, develop that model and reproduce it. Why reinvent the wheel? And I believe that's why we're not getting rid of those studies and just kind of building an option for them. But incubator programs, I would love to see more of those. Yeah, any business but avocados, I hear that that's the pits. That's a good one. That will go to public comment. Do you guys have what you need, though? We'll come back in. We'll wrap up. Yeah. Dwayne, thoughts? Mr. Kaston, what's your first, if you want to speak? I spoke already once, so you go along. Thank you, county. Mr. Alvarez pointed out something very important about the Rosalind situation. And I've been here following these efforts on economic development since before a small office was set up. One of the dilemmas that's being discussed, and I think is a boogeyman, is CTS, OK? Basically, they're dead, and it needs to be reevaluated the one spot they had out there in the Southwest. They eviscerated the species long ago. I'm an environmentalist. I studied that stuff. I'm not here to tell you to save them. They're already somewhere else, supposedly. So how you can save yourselves on these issues, the land in the corporate center partway where the old air station was, is your spot where businesses can come in. You had optical coating that then became JDS Uniface. And that worked. And there's plenty of space out there with the infrastructure. The dilemma that you face, as you say, I want downtown-centered activities. So you've got the other day at the March meeting where Mr. Nutt stood up and said, you have 1,400 properties that you want to offload. Some of them are right here, downtown. So why don't you look right here in this core area and say, that's the area that's going to be our business incubator. Also, that's the spot where we're going to come and say, it's focused here. And then you'll also get your housing down here. Mr. Futrell is the banker of note, if you will, getting stuff done now. It's been too huge to help Santa Rosa. In cutting, you Futrell. The big building is going up. Let's get a bunch more of them down here and get the citizens back down here. There were residents down here when I was a boy. And I worked with people and the place was thriving downtown Santa Rosa. It's essentially been hollowed out for 40 years. If you want to bring them back in, you make this your central spot. That's your North Star right here. You just spent 15 to 18, maybe $20 million on the courthouse square refurbication. You Futrell got the old AT&T building over here, saying that these were going to be residential units. So start to push on these people that have made these promises to you. Get these things done down here downtown. And we're getting thousands of housing units coming out in the Southwest. So they'll get your housing out there. But it's needed here in the downtown area. Economic development starts where your formal commercial anchor was. Bring it back. Might seem to. It's that old school to you all, but hey. I think we actually all agree. All right. That's a first. Things are changing, Dianne. Thank you again. I also want to acknowledge y'all putting this into the Council goals for the year, and that we're now here talking about. And it's nice to see quick action from March reading to here. So I appreciate that. I have a strong interest in this, not just because I work, helping advise businesses on strategy, but also because I live here. And having a healthy economy is incredibly important. And one of the things that's made San Rosa so resilient over the last 20 years that I've been here is our diversity in our economy. When one thing has fallen, we've had other industries that were able to come up. And it hasn't always been as quickly as we wanted to be. And sure as heck wasn't as intentional as we wanted to be. But that's where I would encourage you to focus, is how our North Star, since that's our word for the day, be maintaining that diversity in industries and economy. So if any one element falls away, we have jobs to retrain people into. We have goods to sell to tourists, or if not tourists, our newfound burgeoning population. And I suggest that you take a very deliberate, almost academic and boring approach to that in creating a system where every two to three years you're going out and testing against a study of saying, these are the pain points that we as a city are able to solve for businesses. This is how we're able to communicate it. And we've proven that through these metrics that we determined, which you can create now. And then going out to those industries that you're able to solve pain points for and have those pain points and attracting them here, but not getting locked into which industry you want right now. Because I think that's where we lose that opportunity for diversity in the mix. Is it going to be the green economy? Is it going to be the other green economy? Is it going to go? Which one's that, Nick? You know, I'm going to go a little bit of solar panels. And they'll know what we already have. I mean, we have what we have maxed in that builds all those scanner devices for grocery stores. We have the AVI, which is literally creating the need for money to be printed on. Medtronic, which is doing heart stints and study. I mean, we have at least one or two defense contractors I'm aware of that are building like prototype things of fine wear and do things I probably don't like. But that's all very exciting. So let's not define what industry we're running here. Let's let what we can solve. And the industries that we can solve are for handle that and focus our plan on maintaining diversity so we never get locked too far into one industry. And yes, Southwest Santa Rosa is a great place for the hub of those jobs. And the advantage of having all of those jobs that then there's someone to go and buy a sales tax, taxable things that create the revenue. So focus on the jobs with the economic development plan but the sales tax, taxes follow. Let's not go out and figure out a nice fast food restaurant we can bring in and call it at long development. So thank you. Yeah, let's see if we have any public comment. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute once called upon. There are no public comments on Zoom. Okay, I'll bring it back. And I do want to punctuate that last point. I think it's a really important one that we're not talking about chasing sales tax with low-wage jobs that doesn't actually solve the problems that we have across Santa Rosa. We're talking about creating good paying jobs and letting the revenue follow from that. So I do appreciate explicitly putting that out there. Eddie, any additional comments? He probably made avocados when he said an early green stuff. Yeah, I think that that's right. That's what I picked up on. I'll put it on a more serious note. You gotta have a thick skin to be in the avocado. You know what I mean? I walked into that pitfall, didn't I? Motion to adjourn. The one error that NAPM might've made, and they're very strong for it now, is that they went one direction and that was grapes. I haven't forbid that something such as a sharpshooter shows up and takes out the whole area. It's one thing that I'm very happy with with Santa Rosa is that we do have our diverse economy, whether it was during the fires, Rosa stepped up, whether it's jobs, electronics, ABE before them. So we do have something that's diverse, but going back to really the direction that downtown Santa Rosa is moving in is something that I'm very happy with, especially with the recent focus of the REIFD. If I did, get those I and the E transpose. Yeah. Did I care? R-I-E-D? E-I-F-D. One of those too. But nonetheless though, we're beautifying their downtown and I see how it's gonna benefit the entire city of Santa Rosa and moving more deeper in that direction. It's definitely about more traffic for our businesses in downtown so we can start, stop seeing the vacancies. I mean, just this week, I know two more vacancies are coming up and that's on Mendocino and right across the street from Courthouse Square. So we need more traffic in downtown and I believe we're moving in the right direction. If only they would have followed through on that long list that was presented, there would be no job security for the current council members, but nonetheless, there's a job and I believe it's downtown. Yeah. I appreciate you being on the committee as a successful businessman who walks the clock. Thank you. Comments, Jeff? Yeah, I'd like to comment that that was awful. No. No. No. No, I, yeah, I agree with everything that's been said here. I think one thing that I'd point out is, our bring up is there's this presentation I've seen down a couple of times and it's usually Peter Stanley who does it. It's a housing heat maps. Urban three. Yeah. And one of the slides is three skylines and the presenter asks, what cities are these? And I mean, they have office buildings that are nine, 10 stories tall, apartment complexes is not. And like your first thought is to go to like a metropolitan area or whatever. And it's like, no, this is, and I can't remember what they exactly they are, but it's like, this is for Collins who has, you know, 170,000 people. This is Wichita that has 190,000 people and you just kind of sit there as specifically as a council member going like, why do, why does ours look so different? And I think in analyzing that, what I said before is acting like an economic center and not a sleepy bedroom committee suburb north of San Francisco is what we need to do. Right. We can't just be like, oh, we're just going to San Francisco and we, you know, we have some commuters and we have businesses here and this and that. It's like, no, we need to be an economic center for the entire northern part of the state because that's what we are by default because we just have a lot of business here because we have a lot of people here but we need to start acting like bringing businesses here because I mean, there's an extensive amount of facets that get improved through that, you know, the services we're allowed to do, we can do as a city quality of life generally overall, you know, quality of life for kids, education, all those things. It all comes back to something like that. And I think that's for me, is what's really important to focus on. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. I think that's why it's important that we as a city define who we are so we can go articulate two others, especially if we're trying to attract businesses, right? Exactly who we are. To your foot traffic point, right? Point well taken, I think in this post pandemic world, we all have to figure out what does this new normal look like, right? And I say that because I talked to my colleagues in San Francisco and the Breed administration. I talked to my colleagues in Oakland and the Tile administration. I talked to my colleagues in San Jose, right? And they are all struggling with figuring out how do we get people back downtown? Well, these are your three major cities in this area, and it doesn't mean that it isn't a problem that we can't solve for, but I just want to acknowledge that this is a problem that all cities in this area are grappling with, right? And so we've got to get innovative, creative, and figure out, well, what do we do and how do we do it differently to get more traffic downtown? And then also do some level setting, right? To Dwayne's point, maybe downtown doesn't look like it did 40 years ago, but what does downtown look like in 2025? What does a thriving downtown look like? And hoping that a strategic plan helps us to get there. Yeah, and I think exactly to that point, SMART is the first transit agency in the nation that has now acknowledged work from home as the norm in how they do their pricing for commuter passes. That if you do a month pass, it's based on the assumption that you're gonna ride the train three days a week, not five days a week. And so it's less expensive, less revenue for SMART, but it's more realistic in terms of the way that the traffic patterns are going to move here in the new normal, I mean, as a millennial, I'll never take another nine to five, five day a week job, just won't do it, right? Doesn't fit with what I want from my lifestyle, doesn't fit with what most millennials want in terms of vibrancy and life expectancy. And so I think understanding that and acknowledging that puts us ahead of many places that are still asking the question of, how do we force people back into their businesses where we have office spaces? And Sid says, how do we welcome people back into our downtown regardless of what they choose to do, right? Which I think was exactly what your point was going towards. The amount of vacant office space in downtown San Francisco was just astounding at the moment. So, and then I agree with everything that's been said by my colleagues, my public comment. The only other point that I'll continue to punctuate is, how do we measure the success? Do we work with a Rob Eiler at SSU or somebody else who does that broad analysis to look at and be able to say, is our plan working? Is it actually set up for success? Are we seeing the success realized and then how do we continue to retool it as we move forward? But I'm excited for it. I think it's something that once we get the economic plan in place and make sure that's integrated with our housing plan and our climate plans and whatnot, I think we start to see the different components of a healthy city really start to emerge. And understanding there's gonna be intersection with the county also, right? I mean, I guess they're a big employer. Yeah, I've heard a lot of great cohesive feedback which is very helpful actually. And so, yeah, just the terminology that struck me in terms of aligning an approach or components that we would be looking at holistic approach, embracing the city as economic center of the North Bay, focusing on retention, addressing, getting to know what the challenges are for existing the economic community. What do they need to feel supported? Supporting the small mom and pops that sort of growth opportunity, emerging markets, business attraction, defining the vision and then the toolbox or defining who we are and then how we support that and maintaining diversity and resiliency which we have threaded throughout but it's really hits home I think today where we would head with an economic strategy. Did I miss? Yeah, you said something that I just triggered a thought for me but even like developing metrics, I don't know if this one in particular would be helpful but like we can look back and we can say, the average business in Santa Rosa that failed within two and a half years, right? And after we develop the plan and after the plans in place for a while, do we see that number start to tick up but even the businesses that fail don't fail for four years, for five years, right? Are the things, are there metrics that we can look at to say, are we actually doing the right things to try to be supportive? Yeah, that's great. We definitely have to have that and that's kind of the driver of like, okay, adjust, adapt or refocus because if you really want before you do have to be driven by the metrics. This is really great feedback. I am excited about this. I think we'll probably take this back and come up with an approach, maybe a timeline and check back again on our way on the right path and meeting the direction that you invited today. That's awesome. Cool. All right. We can find them tomorrow. Right. Yeah, it truly is. All right, we're adjourned. Ready? Thank you. All right.