 Hello, my name is Paul Ohenthal, Division Chief Fire Marshal with the Santa Rosa Fire Department. In December of 2023, the Santa Rosa City Council passed the City's first Vegetation Management Ordinance, referred to it as the Hazardous Vegetation and Fuels Reduction Ordinance. The ordinance followed several years of discussions and consideration that originated with the City's Community Wildfire Protection Plan that was initiated in late 2019 and involved a considerable amount of community feedback and information that ultimately led to a plan. That Community Wildfire Protection Plan is serving as a road map to make our city better prepared to mitigate the risks of wildfires. Part of that was this Vegetation Management Ordinance. The ordinance, which was again passed in by Council in December of 2023, will go into effect in January of 2024. The ordinance covers four main parts to it. The first part is our attempt to address the considerable amount of dead and damaged trees as a result of the numerous wildfires that have directly threatened or impacted our community. Those are primarily the tubs, nuns, and glass fires. The ordinance will require the removal of dead, fire damaged trees within 100 feet of a structure that includes accessory dwelling units and decks of a home or structure within the burn scar. And that's part of the defensible space zone as well. It will also require the removal of those trees within 30 feet of a right-of-way, which is considered a road within our community, and within 30 feet of a property line. This is our attempt to address the trees that pose the greatest risk to both falling into a right-of-way onto a neighboring property or creating a fuel load within a defensible space zone. Residents will have one year to bring their properties into compliance, and we plan to start conducting the inspections for compliance in January of 2025. The second thing that we're asking residents to do as a part of this ordinance is remove stringy-haired combustible mulch, common referred to as gorilla-hair mulch. This is a mulch that we saw create a number of issues with us during the glass fire. We were tying up a significant number of resources, putting out hot spots and dealing with a mulch that really is receptive to ember cast and is very hard to fully extinguish and again tied up a lot of resources that could have been used in other parts of the community to defend homes from the approaching wildfire. Residents will have again one year to remove that stringy-haired gorilla-hair mulch that is within 30 feet of a structure. We're asking residents to remove that 30 feet away from the home to again to mitigate the risks of ember cast and help protect fires from spreading from the mulch to structures. The third thing that we're looking at right now is the excessive growth of invasive species of vegetation in our community, primarily Scotch broom and French broom within our burn scar. We have and still have a beautiful community but areas that were directly impacted by the tubs, nuns and glass fires killed off a lot of our tree canopy and that keytranic canopy allowed for a healthy growth of seasonal grasses. With the lack of tree canopy we've seen an explosive growth of again Scotch broom and French broom that in some parts of our wildland urban interface are making the conditions worse today than they were in 2017. That growth is exploding around our wildland urban interface and again making a much more hazardous environment. We've seen a lot of property owners take steps to mitigate that by removing it. We will now be requiring the removal of Scotch broom and French broom from within 30 feet of a road right away. Within 30 feet of a property line and again within 100 feet of a structure which will be part of the defensible space zone. We already have a weed abatement ordinance that addresses seasonal grasses and generally uses some of those same guidelines. This just expands off that existing ordinance and now requires the removal again of that specific type of growth. This also will be given one year to come into compliance and we anticipate starting inspections on that in January of 2025. The fourth area that we're asking residents to comply with is the defensible space. Defensible space is already a requirement by law within certain parts of our wildland urban interface. Those are areas that have been identified by the California State Fire Marshal's office as a very high fire hazard severity zone. The state has mapped portions of our wildland urban interface as those very high fire hazard severity zones and they are already required by law to comply with defensible space. The ordinance will expand off of that and now require defensible space compliance within our entire wildland urban interface. Again, this is designed to help protect our community, mitigate the risk of fire spread from structure to structure and make our community better prepared to withstand the potential effects of future wildfires. We anticipate starting those inspections in summer of 2024. Ultimately, our goal is education, making sure that residents know exactly what is required of them and our staff look forward to engaging with the community and the residents as we make recommendations as well as tell residents what they need to do to comply with the actual defensible space itself. In addition to the four elements that we've discussed thus far, there's another area that the ordinance covers and it's specific less about structures but more for vacant lots within our wildland urban interface. Currently right now through the fire department, we enforce the weed abatement ordinance on those lots. Generally speaking, if they're under five acres, we require the complete removal of all seasonal grasses and if they're over five acres, we require property owners to put in at least a 30 foot break around the perimeter removing just seasonal grasses. The ordinance is going to expand off of that. The intention right now is to require trees to be limbed up, the removal of a lot of dead and down fuels or vegetation within that first 30 feet, as well as ensuring that any branches that are overhanging a property line aren't within a set number of feet of a chimney or a structure. So really, it is intended to help provide a higher level of protection for those residents that are immediately adjacent to a undeveloped vacant lot within our wildland urban interface. The exact rules for those lots will be found on our website. The ultimate goal of this vegetation management ordinance is to make our community safer. Since 2017, we've seen our community directly impacted and threatened by the tubs, nuns, glass and kinkade fires. We cannot go through another disastrous fire. Our city's been through enough, our community's been through enough and our fire department is committed to making changes like this to make our community a better place to live, work, recreate and visit. We thank you for your cooperation and we look forward to a happy, healthy community moving into our future.