 We'll open this joint session of the Santa Rosa City Council and Planning Commission. Mr. City Manager, item 4.1. Item 4.1, general plan update work plan. Jessica Jones leading us off. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm going to hand it over to Andy Gustafson, who is going to be the project manager for our general plan update. So before I do that, I just wanted to give a quick reminder to the council, the commission and our community about why it's so important for us to be doing a comprehensive update to our general plan rather than a more limited scoped update, which is what has been done in the past. So as you're probably all aware, the last time that the general plan was updated was in 2009, and it was done so at a limited capacity at that time. The horizon year for the general plan looked out to 2035. As we're all very well aware, there's been a tremendous amount of change in our community over the last 10 years, from the wildfires to the annexation of the Roseland area bringing in 714 acres into the city, the housing crisis, and the need to not only meet our regional needs, but really to meet the needs of our community at all housing levels. We've also had the introduction of the cannabis industry to our community and many other economic and social changes over the last couple of years, including the designation of Southwest Santa Rosa as a disadvantaged community. So Andy's going to go into a lot of this, but it really is important to take the time now to really address how those issues have impacted our community, and comprehensively look on how to address that through land use, circulation, environmental impacts, as well as how services are provided through our city. So I'm going to hand it over to Andy now, and he's going to go over the scope of what we're looking at for our general plan update. Thank you very much, Jessica. So the goal today is to review the scope of the request for proposal that we're preparing for release upon direction by council and by the commission, and we would like to review just briefly the need and purpose of the general plan, and to talk specifically about the big issues that need to be tackled, and we want to make sure we've got the right issues. So today is an opportunity for both the council and the commission to make sure we're not missing any key points. So the general plan is really a shared community vision. It really lays out how we're going to develop in the future. It's based on data. It's based on emerging trends, and importantly, it's based on community engagement. We go to the neighborhoods. We go to special interest groups, and we get input. We get feedback, and from that, we get a plan that's supported, and as development comes in the future, it comes forward in the context of community discussion. The 2050 general plan update or the 2050 general plan will allow us to revision our goals. We'll be able to adapt to all of the changes that Jessica mentioned and look at how best we can organize our work to streamline development reviews so that as we get proposals coming forward to implement the goals of the general plan, we can do so efficiently. And furthermore, we do, through the general plan, implement a number of state laws, and there's been a lot of changes in the housing and land use arena as well as environmental arena over the years that we need to incorporate. So the general plan, if you have ever looked at it, is spoken of in terms of elements. Elements are different topic areas that need to be addressed according to state law. But what's most important about the general plan beyond the elements is really how they integrate towards achieving a goal, and it really does, again, base its goals on community vision and values. As a result, we're really looking at an all-hands effort. This general plan, as all general plans, really depend upon broad scope of engagement by technical experts that work for us in our departments, also by the consultant community who understand best practices and general plan implementation and how they're structured. Probably most importantly, what's unique in this general plan, comprehensive update, will be our approach towards public engagement. The chart up there illustrates three rails or activity areas that will occur continuously throughout this update, which is projected to last three years to get through all of the tasks and activities. And all of those blue boxes really combine together to be the general plan. It's the background studies, the analysis of issues, presentation of proposals and alternatives, establishing which is the preferred alternative, and finally, coming up with the policy set that best implements the direction we want to go. The green lines on either side represent that we have continuous public engagement throughout this process. We're touching base with community members. We're touching base with the decision makers, this body. And then also, we're looking at the environmental effects of the project. We're always looking at opportunities during this process to reduce, avoid, mitigate potential impacts that are associated with growth. So it is a full scale, all hands on effort. And the outcome of this will be a document that not only envisions the community's sentiment and goals in your direction, but also will prepare an environmental baseline, which will really be a valuable resource for the community, the people who come here to change land uses to implement the general plan. They'll be able to work from our environmental document and thus help streamline that part of development review. So this general plan, the triad, the three major activity areas beyond the writing of the plan in the center is, again, public engagement and environmental review. And the engagement component will be leveraging the city's community engagement department. We'll be partnering with them as well as the other departments on the technical issues regarding infrastructure, traffic, police, fire protection, public safety. So all three are going forward and together and share, I would say, equal stance or stature. It is projected to be a three year program to complete the tasks. There are inevitably issues that'll come up that we'll discover during the background studies or policy investigation. And we'll be able to be, the team that we assemble will be structured to be nimble to respond to those and then come to city council for direction on how to proceed. So we anticipated three year program under the current work plan, which were laid out under the request for proposal that's a part of your packet today. The important thing here to notice, again, is that long blue bar under community outreach, it's a continuous activity throughout the program as we go stepwise through these different major tasks in the general plan update program. We anticipate a $2.5 million cost for this. Our budget provides for it. We have advanced planning fees that we've collected that will support the program through its completion. We will look for opportunities for funding. There are many state programs that we seek to leverage as they become opportunities for us to do so. The next series of slides touches on some major issue areas. And I would like to invite you to stop me and please ask questions or add something that may have been omitted. These issues that we're reviewing aren't the only issues. They just represent at minimum what this general plan update will be addressing. They are all expressed in the scope of work that we will be releasing with this request for proposal. The big issues, as Jessica mentioned here, we have disadvantaged community designation, which triggers the need for a environmental justice element in our general plan. And that discussion will engage all of our other elements. It'll tie in land use, housing, air quality, traffic. It'll bring, it'll require, it'll thread through all those different element areas. Housing requirements that we're working with will be woven in, including the need to provide opportunity for supportive housing, as well as lower income units. Or housing for lower income families. And also kind of more of a technical issue, but very important nonetheless. We need to shift how we look at traffic or transportation within the city. In the past, we've really looked at vehicle travel and congestion. Now we really want to look at how might we organize the city or develop land uses to reduce travel in the first place as a key measure to help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to attain climate action plan goals. So those are sort of the, we have also I should say currently active is work to help to mitigate wild land fire risks and other natural hazards. That plan as well as other plans that we have in our ongoing in the city, they will be incorporated by the general plan. So I'd just like to take a moment to explain that relationship because it's an important linkage that needs to be recognized. This general plan is a policy document that has city wide scope and reach and touches upon all disciplines. We are engaged in other planning activities that are focused and looking at either certain sectors of the city neighborhoods or specific issue areas. For example, the downtown specific plan update is ongoing and this general plan will incorporate its findings, its policies in whole. That plan will deal with specific issues to the downtown area. Another example is for instance the bicycle pedestrian master plan that was recently completed. That too will be folded into this plan, it will be referenced. We also have potentially a climate action plan coming forward and policies that come out of that work effort would be coordinated with the policies of the general plan. So the general plan kind of becomes a sort of a policy clearinghouse and then we have these not stand alone but dependent detailed plans that tie off of it. So that's an important thing to bear in mind. So these next series of slides are really kind of big tasks and issue areas that we'll encounter. The first is this relationship between housing and land use. With the general plan, we're going to take a look at where we are today in terms of our housing inventory, population characteristics, jobs. We'll be looking at building that information to update our housing element, which will be one of the tasks of this general plan update. And we'll be looking at how we can best integrate state law requirements. Such as how we promote development in the priority development areas and such. Now, there are a list here of issues that kind of go with that. We need to really take a close look not only at the lower income households but assess how we might help middle income housing here in the city. And also, how do we approach what is our strategy to provide the housing we need and that we're committed to providing under our regional housing needs assessment requirements. We're challenged by that. We've talked about housing. You're fully aware that we need to be creative how we approach it. And the general plan proposes the arena to do so. Development feasibility is an important consideration. We've talked to both bodies about how we might update our inclusionary housing ordinance. So we talked about development feasibility. So that will continue to be a topic of discussion in our general plan. Also, how do we protect affordable housing now and the businesses that serve communities of lower income to keep them vibrant. Furthermore, in terms of where we have opportunities to growth, we really need to take a cold hard reassessment of what our environmental or biological constraints here in the city. The Southwest was seen in the 2035 general plan as an opportunity to provide a lot of housing. But we find that in reality it's fairly constrained by the Endangered Species Act. And we need to develop strategies how to address that either through mitigation or looking at different styles or directions of development in the city to reach the housing demand or scope or supply that we want. Growth management ordinance was drafted in a time with different issues. Today, it probably needs to be updated. So that's sort of the scope of issues and I'll pause for a moment if there's any comment here about this housing land use relationship. There are about four other major topic areas that we can talk about that some of these issues will repeat on. I see tentative takers. Just because the number of us, if you just want to go through the whole presentation or come back and then we'll work it out that way. Thank you. And before Andy moves on, I just wanted to also mention that as he's going through these slides and these different topic areas, these were also provided to the community. We've had a number of community conversations. We had eight of them in seven of our council districts and then an additional eighth at the Roseland Village Center, which was held entirely in Spanish. In addition to those community conversations, we also attended a number of events throughout the community. We've been at Wednesday Night Market. We went to the Cinco de Mayo event, Earth Day. So various events throughout the community trying to reach out to everybody who is part of this community to get their input as we move forward with this really important plan for the future. We also had an online component where we did a survey and that survey went out to the broad community as well as to our internal staff to really understand again what topics should be included in the scope of this update. So we've been really trying to kind of start that engagement process early and work that through. So I'll let Andy continue. Thank you, Jessica. Sorry I passed over that, but that is truly an important component at the start of this general plan update. In the staff report, this is spoken of briefly and I'll add that. We received almost 500 responses to the survey and the compelling issues that came out of that. Top three issues were homelessness and housing, community preservation and development as well as environmental protection and climate change. So those are the issues on the minds of people who are engaged currently. Our public engagement efforts will broaden that conversation to become more community wide. So thank you, Jessica. So the second slide really pivots around the tasks involved or the issues involved around environmental justice policy. The bubbles up on this slide illustrate the point that it touches on many points of the general plan. And so this list of significant issues here are what come to mind as most immediate. And really you can see touches on a variety of topics, community health and environmental quality. We want to make sure that when we are looking at development policy and programming infrastructure improvements in the city, including our street system, that we're doing so in a way that fosters walking, reduces exposure to air contaminants, provides opportunity for active outside play and also goes to issues of providing equal access to food and services in our neighborhoods. So making sure we have a good mix of supportive land uses. It touches on housing. We want to make sure everybody has access to housing throughout the city. That there's opportunity for a variety of types for ages and income. And we're also looking at how people move around, bicycle, pedestrian, whether they're elderly or disabled or need to rely on a car. So we do have an equitable distribution of mobility options for our community. And finally, that there are equal access to public amenities such as parks and libraries and transit. Infrastructure and public services go together. It's kind of the backbone of what the city provides. We are always in need of assessing our infrastructure capacity and needs where we can fill gaps. This does touch on that environmental justice component where we need to make sure we've got the same kind of street improvements throughout this or street improvements that meet standards throughout the city. Here, we will be looking at how those improvements support the land use and the circulation goals of the city. And it's important to note that these policies regarding infrastructure and public services become a way of validating and supporting future capital improvement program requests on an annual basis as departments come forward. This discussion begins to support requests for funding for a variety of improvements over the years. What's notable here is also we want to take a look at incorporating wireless telecommunications as an infrastructure within the city, thinking about it more comprehensively and integrating it better into our fabric. And also how we are going to deal with electric vehicle stations here in the community as our vehicle fleet transitions in the future. Circulation, again, this is a big component of the general plan always with land use. It's how they tie together, but circulation alone, we need to understand how the city's functioning, where with review of land uses and intensity changing throughout the city, our streets might need to be altered in terms of their capacity and performance. Looking at new ways of mobility within the city, pathways, different connections to different uses, providing opportunities for access. We do wish to move forward with a robust complete streets program in the city. So it begins to re-envision this, I refer to it as a public domain. It's the biggest public space we have. Our streets in the city, and it's really important to how people are residents and visitors experience the city, so it's an important component of the general plan. And finally, part of the circulation element will directly tie to how we incorporate the vehicle miles travel or VMT standard as a way of evaluating the city's performance for traffic and transportation. So that goes through the major issue areas. I'll conclude that by saying, as we move forward in this program or with the general plan update, you and other members of the community will be able to follow on the Planning and Economic Development Department's website. We have a webpage up. As Jessica mentioned, we had a survey that the public went to. You too can take the survey. It is going to be the source of information regarding release studies, timing of meetings, and a number of other resources as we move forward with the project. So with that, I will conclude and wait for comments. Thank you, Andy. Chair Siscoe, you want to query the Planning Commission first? Questions? Question? Vice Chair Weeks. Andy, if you could go back to page 10 on the PowerPoint. The bottom talks about development in 2010 area, eliminate specific plan requirement. Can you describe that? I will let Jessica, who's more familiar with that issue. Yes. So there is an area in southwest Santa Rosa that is currently outside of the city's boundaries that was identified. We have some specific policies within our general plan that identifies the need for a specific plan for that area to look at land use and circulation. That area was brought in to the city's sphere of influence. A number of, I can't remember how many years ago, but it was a while back. But when it was, when that was done, there was no, we did not look specifically at how development would happen and how circulation would work in that area. So the requirement within our existing general plan upon annexation or prior to annexation is to require that a specific plan to be developed so that we can look at how that area will develop land use-wise and then the associated circulation. Thank you. So, and before I move on, let you continue with your questions and comments. I just did want to reiterate that the next step in this process, we're going to be taking the comments that are received from both the Commission and the Council today to help refine the request for proposals that I believe was attached to the staff report. And we hope to send that RFP out in the next couple of weeks and start working on, start working on finding a consultant that will help us through this process. Okay, but just a couple other quick questions. How is the Community Advisory Committee going to be selected? And will there be representatives from the Planning Commission on that? Or do you know yet? You know, we need to look at how that'll be formulated, but it will be a body that'll be present during the development of the general plan. It'll be a group to help to ensure we have points of view throughout the community who can voice their perspectives on alternatives. Make sure we get the baseline studies correct. Do you have anything to add to that? Yes, generally the Community Advisory Committee is made up of members of the community that really are there to help us get the word out, help us with our community engagement process. But what we will be doing as kind of a first step once we have a consultant on board to get the project kicked off is prepare a community engagement strategy that will outline how we intend to move forward with our engagement process and the different bodies that will be part of that. So the Technical Advisory Committee, the Community Advisory Committee, that is all generally laid out in that document. And that is something that would come before the Council for acceptance before we move forward with that strategy. Thank you. Commissioner Duggan? I'll come back to Commissioner Peterson. Yeah, I've got a couple of questions. In the staff report, I believe it talks about one of the issues to address is persistent homelessness. And I'm wondering how, and I didn't see it mentioned of that in the RFP. I'm wondering what you're in, how you envision that would be, which elements it would be part of, and how that would be addressed. Also in the RFP it mentions level of service on page 10 instead of VMT. And I'm wondering if those things are, if you don't mean the same, that's different things. So if we want to change that. Thank you for that, Ketch. And I think it's also in the staff report it mentions that a climate change element might be triggered by state law or there might be a requirement for a climate change element. And it sounds like maybe we're thinking of just updating the climate action plan and or just incorporating different climate change elements into each, well each of the discrete elements. So I'm wondering if that's what the, what the ideas are. We actually want to have a whole separate element just on climate change. With regard to homelessness, our housing element is the main venue in the general plan to talk about issues or programs to address homelessness. The RFP should underscore that point and we'll, I'll make a note to myself here that we will do so. And again, thank you for the LOS catching that reference. We need to phase into the VMT. With regard to climate change, we need to address it. And I think this, the likely strategy will be a document that stands outside the general plan but is reinforced by policy within the general plan. We've been discussing internally the best approach for this and other types of plans that become more technical regarding implementation might be better, be implement, be placed outside the general plan, hazard management program, bicycle master plan, those type of elements or topic areas are good examples of better to be standalone plans. So I imagine the climate action plan will be stand on. So we'll revise or look at the language within the RFP to not bias or stress towards incorporation of a climate action plan directly into the general plan. So just a quick follow up for the climate action plan. That is something that we know is going to be in need of updating in the near future. And so that is something that we will be working with the council with regard to the reference to LOS versus VMT. And we definitely need to look at vehicle miles travel. That is where the California Environmental Quality Act is coming from now. But I believe that our traffic engineering division is still interested in understanding impacts to our intersections and levels of service. And so we will likely see some of both. But that is something that we'll work very closely with our traffic engineering division on to make sure that they get what they need to make sure that circulation and travel throughout the city is going to work. Commissioner Peterson. I just have a hopefully quick clarification on the community advisory committee question from Vice Chair Weeks. So is the advisory committee engagement in this RFP or are there statutory or other state or local regulatory requirements related to it? Or is it going to be designed entirely by the consultant? So in some of our other projects, so for example the downtown stationary specific plan that we're currently working on, the community advisory committee was a requirement of the grant that we had. So at this time we don't have a grant for this process. We've got internal funding that we've been collecting over the years. So we don't have that as a requirement, but it is something that we have found is very effective in engaging the community. So how it is laid out and determined how it's going to work at this point is really up to the city. So that is something, as I mentioned, we will be flushing out through that community engagement strategy. We'll certainly be working with our community engagement office to make sure that it's going to work best for us in this process and then we'll bring it to the council for further determination. Thank you. Other questions from commissioners? Commissioner Carter. Thanks for the opportunity here. On slide five, the diagram that sort of showed a general process, it has, and I can't really read it, but I believe it has a goals and policy step before land use alternatives. And when I read the RFP in detail, it looks like the land use alternatives happened before the policy updates. Thank you. Can you clarify what's the chicken and what's the egg here? This graphic is a generalized but not controlling outline of the process. We would approach the work program in a way that makes no sense. So I think what you point out is a consideration. Should we not be setting goals and policies first or do we look? I think what's going to happen when we get engaged with our consultant team will finalize how best to work or link these different tasks together. This is by no means a dictate of how we proceed. Yeah, and just to follow up, generally when we have done these plans in the past, it is the land use and circulation alternatives that come first and then from there, once we have a preferred alternative, we then build the goals and policies that will help to support and implement those land use and circulation plans. So that's probably the direction that we would head, but yes, as Andy mentioned, as we get into a consultant selection and the actual proposal that will be within the contract for that consultant, we'll make sure that that is flushed out in very detail so that we know what steps are coming when. Well, it seems to me that we need some criteria for evaluating the alternatives. So what do we use to make that analysis? And can you say a little more, mainly for my own education here, about the nature of the disproportionate pollution impact in Roseland that made it classified as a disadvantaged community? Certainly. It was designated such because of the lower income household, the proportion is greater there, far more households below in that lower income category. Also, other indices included concentration of air quality in that area is lower or more impacted, a mix of land use types, industrial, residential, the lack of retailing in that area. And this designation applies to a specific census tract, and I apologize, I don't have that track number in mind, but it does extend along the 101 corridor on the east side and it really kind of runs along the railroad, the track. So it's income, concentration of pollutants, lack of services, and then there's some index of infrastructure, roadways, lack of sidewalks and that kind of thing. And you're mentioning the census tract reminds me, for building the community profile, will we be using 2010 census data or 2020 census data? We'll be using census data, they produce, there's data sets coming out all the time, so we'll be using the most current, is the shortest and easiest answer, I think we'll be using a product that's coming out more currently than the 2010. Any other questions down there? Yeah, by Shewicks. Sorry, I have one more question. Have you thought about perhaps having a representative from the Planning Commission sit on the interview panel or the review panel for the consultant? So we do have a member of the council sit on that and there's a rotation for how that person is selected. So we have not had a member of the Planning Commission in the past, but certainly something that we can consider. Okay, and then I just have one clarification question about how the, in particular, the specific plans are incorporated in the general plan or downtown stationary plan is running pretty close to, you know, it'll be done very close to when this update begins, probably not likely to change, but as this vision gets created, the Roseland One and the North specific area plan, those could have amendments to them as a result of this update process? That's correct. So the general plan again is a city-wide policy document and by necessity, it formulates policy that's broadly applicable. The downtown plan, the North Station area plan, the Roseland area plan, they are specific to those communities. The intent would be that the general plan would support those documents. It is possible that in the course of developing general plan policy, there could be an issue or a matter that goes into those specific plan areas and would compel an adjustment, but what I would say the intent would be to continue to support those as active viable planning documents and that we would just, in the course of the data collection we do and the issue analysis that we conducted, be able to validate and support further their goals. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Mayor. Okay, thank you. Council questions? Sorry, just one last follow. In the existing conditions city profile portion of the RFP, it talks about assessing the existing circulation network. I'm wondering if that's an opportunity to introduce the new VTM standards if we can get some baseline VTM information in that phase of the investigation? Absolutely. That will be necessary in order for us to establish the baseline for the CEQA document. That's a vital component of that investigation. Okay. Okay. Council questions? Ms. Combs. Thank you. This is, I'm excited that we're moving this forward and I really appreciate the community engagement piece of this. Thank you very much for that. My recollection over the past couple of years is that you've done an excellent job with community engagement in a number of the things that the Planning Department has come forward so I really want to appreciate that you're doing that. I do have a couple of questions more about the scope of what's included in a general plan. I'm looking at slide 12, though slide 11 is somewhat affected. Where do we include consideration of sort of impact and expenses of the plan for the city? If we build out the city in a certain way, how much does it cost us to maintain and manage that city as it's built out? Where does that costing information impact the plan? I'm not really seeing where you pull that out. I'm seeing that we need to plan on services, but I'm not seeing where we're planning on how we afford those services. So the general plan typically falls short of an actual implementation program. It can be a part of a general plan, but by statute doesn't need it. That's another distinction between a general plan and a specific plan. And the infrastructure component, if we're talking about how do we support increased density and does the infrastructure need to be expanded or does our street network need to be altered, we can have as a part of the general plan an assessment of at a very programmatic level costs. So that might be something that you're suggesting would be an important component of testing. And do the tax dollars of those items balance the costs that are going to be needed? For example, when we build a subdivision of single family residential homes, we have a certain income we get from residential development of single family homes, but we also have police, fire, roads, infrastructure for underground utilities, schools. I mean, all of a sudden, all this stuff comes with it. So when we do the general plan and we say, yes, this is going to be an area of single family residential homes, do we also then say those homes bring in X dollars through taxes typically, but the expense is this much? Where do we offset that in the other part of the plan? I'm not seeing where we have that conversation in this document. And that would be an added element to this RFP. It seems to me at my house, if I have a plan for how I'm going to do things at home, like that I want to add a room, I take into account what my budget will allow me to do over time. So it feels like planning needs to do that. And it would seem logical that if we're, that assessment at the alternative stage. Yeah, and obviously this is not a single, it's like you look at how much will it cost if it's developed the way we planned it, but you also have to look at how do we, it's not going to happen all at once. The whole plan isn't going to be there at once. It's going to come in stages over time. So can we get from here to the full build out and afford it also is a piece of that? I personally have no idea how you do that middle piece, but I hope greater minds than mine are on it. Yeah, so we can definitely make sure that we consider that as we are putting together our RFP and addressing those concerns. Thank you. I'm also concerned when I think about this about our sources of income and that we need to, as we have that conversation, if we're looking at what we're going to build or allow built or zone or plan for certain areas, we need to also keep in mind whether that's going to be something that actually happens in the future. We have a culture right now that does, we're financially very dependent upon property tax, I mean not property sales tax. We're very heavily dependent on sales tax. It isn't sustainable environmentally to sell clothing through fast fashion the way that we do now. It can't go on. If we continue to say we're going to build retail without paying attention to the kind of retail that is going to disappear in the future, who's looking at that? Does that affect, I mean we have a lot of money from car sales, maybe they'll shift over to non-gas cars, it'll be electric cars that maybe that won't impact us, but looking at the economics of what we are engaged in a 30-year plan to do is anybody looking at. So I believe that will be part of the conversation, but the one word of caution I would believe is we're, there's limitations as to what we can project in that conversation. And I would even say on the business modeling side, my only word of caution is that's part of the reason that you can make an argument that California hasn't built housing is because that's been the argument is that you can't afford to build housing because of Prop 13. So I would just say be careful for the answer you get may be complicated and tied up in how this particular state encourages or discourages investment because we don't set property tax. And so I'll just say we're happy to explore all this, but the answers as we all know are very complicated and challenging and are part of our forecast, but do have challenges built in to them. As long as we're thinking about it, was it Yogi Berra said it's hard to predict, especially the future? And then also just to follow on that, we do have an economic vitality element of our current general plan. And while it wasn't identified up here, that is something that I would anticipate we would continue moving forward with. Okay, thank you. And again, I'm not sure how you predict some of those things. I also have a question it might be slide 10. This recently came to my attention. So I'm just asking the question when we say as a city that affordability is at a certain level, we have the cost of the housing unit and the income of the individuals on some charts within the city that we use. It's recently come to my attention that those may not be the numbers that are applied based on the source of income or tax credits or whatever funding is used to do the construction. Can someone with that information go into how we look at our affordability as we're doing the general plan? We can look at all of that. I don't think we can get in that discussion this evening, but we can absolutely incorporate that. I just want to know it's in our plan that we're talking about either taking into account what the real numbers are or requiring that the numbers be our numbers, one of the two. Is there anything in here that will discuss improvements in identifying, protecting historic neighborhoods or key historic properties? Yes. Okay. Is there anything in here that addresses the impacts of flood, fire, and earthquake? Yes. Okay, including the budgetary impacts? It would be analyzed as looked at in terms of a minimum programmatic level and service capacity. Okay. In the circulation section, can we also have a conversation at some point about no more drive-throughs in certain areas of our city? That's an excellent example of a kind of a policy that might land in that chapter. Okay. And again, I really very much want to thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you. You all do a really wonderful job. It is a pleasure to watch you work. Thank you. Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. In this conversation, how will unincorporated urban pockets be accounted for? Will it envision for us what we'd like to see from those pockets? Should we make the city whole? Or is that up to the LAFCO process? Yes. It is a part of our general plan update. We do pre-zone or not pre-zone established land use designations over those areas. Yeah. And I've actually already been in contact with LAFCO staff about this general plan update. And they're very interested in keeping on top of this and being part of this process with us to make sure that whatever policies related to annexation of future county islands are addressed. So, yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. And piggybacking on my colleague's comments about infrastructure, I'm very interested in this concept of whole cities rather than regionalization of some of it. I'm also very curious in this conversation about how we talk about location of amenities, in particular grocery stores, where our food deserts are, as well as access to child care facilities. At what point in the conversation will we be able to talk about which sort of amenities we'd like to make sure do have that regional aspect to it? And as it pertains to vehicle miles traveled and making sure that in neighborhoods and localized communities, folks have access to those services? That's a core part of the conversation from the onset. We'll be evaluating the city fabric today to see how it's functioning. That's probably one of the issue areas that will help inform our conversation and how we develop policy for making neighborhoods complete or whole. Okay. I'll just put in a plug for it really early then that I do want to see particularly as it pertains to neighborhood pockets, access to grocery stores, child care facilities, and walkable, bikeable components. Any other questions? Victoria? Yes. Thank you very much, guys. I'm curious to know since this is not a implementation plan, this is a state mandated process that we go through, how does it dovetail or does it dovetail into a process of implementation? Yes, so probably the best example of implementation of the general plan is our zoning code. It lays forth all the development standards, the densities, all the requirements that then get translated into physical development. Another example is it might set policy for child care and it gets implemented through an update to the general, excuse me, to the zoning code for a certain mix of uses in a mixed use development or in a commercial development. So the general plan, while it doesn't necessarily drive a specific standard for development or an implementation measure, it sets the stage for it and as projects come forward, we can look back to the general plan and help shape development in a way that's consistent with our goals. This is a bit of a tough question and it's not intended to be adversarial. I'm genuinely curious, when you and your staff look back at the last general plan and the progress that we have and haven't made since then, what strategies would you advise implementing going forward so that we can in 10 or 15 years look back at this one and feel like we made a little bit more progress than we did over the last one? That's a great one and I'm thinking when we finish with our initial assessment, there's going to be a forensic exercise with our background study. We're going to look at our general plan to see which policies have worked, which one had been just sitting on the sideline and why. So I won't pretend to be able to respond in any detail to your great question but that's part of the core of what we're trying to learn as we do the background policy assessment part. I do wonder if greater connection between visioning and results will drive greater community engagement in the process and more success with it. I'm also wondering, I've looked over the RFP and please forgive me if I missed it. I didn't see anything about water infrastructure or the Board of Public Utilities in there. It's lumped into the broad category of infrastructure, sewer, water. We don't deal directly with power but we do. So we would coordinate with the water department. One of the key things that they're working on is a citywide water assessment. That'll be part of our, it'll be incorporated part into the plan. Okay that's very hopeful to hear. I'm curious to know also if there are strategies around meeting our housing needs assessment goals and water infrastructure in terms of how we can use our best leverage our water infrastructure to meet those goals without overburdening our infrastructure going forward. That's the balance that we get to try to achieve in this document. We work with our goals to provide a variety of housing, housing for all, and in places where we have infrastructure and where we don't have it try to be efficient on where we grow in the future. So again that's the kind of discussion that will be a part of the policy and alternative development. So just a follow-up on that. Part of this general plan update will be a comprehensive update of our housing element as required by state law and part of the overall process. So we will need to show in that housing element that we're meeting our required RENA needs but as far as part of the overall general plan update the water department will be preparing a water supply assessment to show that we can provide the water that necessary for development of not only just housing but also all of our non-housing development. Is it possible to take that a step further beyond just availability to where it makes sense where our water is least expensive to provide? And there you're speaking in terms of supply whether it's I'm talking about location and housing you know it's less expensive to provide water to people who live on the plane rather than people who live in the hills because of you know gravity. Yeah that's certainly something we can take a look at. Okay because I'm hopeful that we could possibly have our our resource availability and our infrastructure availability inform some of where we go with this rather than just saying we need this and having and then hoping that we have the resources that would follow. Ms. Combs. Thank you I wanted to follow up on the question about infrastructure a little bit just because we have a tendency to forget to mention IT as an infrastructure digital cable internet and I just want to make sure that when we talk about infrastructure that we include all of the infrastructures that are going to be important in the 21st century. Thank you. I have a couple questions. There was in the staff report you mentioned in light of recent trends and event significant issues includes housing production and homelessness reduction they're kind of bundled together it seems like that but I didn't see anything about specific strategies to reduce the amount of homeless individuals in our community. How is that going to be addressed because there's in my opinion there's two totally different strategies about housing production and reducing homelessness. So they're bundled together in the sense that they are major topic areas of the housing element and the housing element is going to be the opportunity for us to really flesh those strategies out including how those strategies can be supported by land use transportation social services that might be discussed in other elements. So this RFP doesn't direct the strategy but rather we want to make sure that it brings up the issues that we need to address. So I'm still not clear on what role it will play in our effort to reduce the homelessness in the city. For instance is permanent supportive housing going to be a topic of discussion that we need more of this type of housing which would have a direct impact for those experiencing homelessness. Yes there will be an assessment of need and then recommended recommended policy how to address the need. Okay and again if that is going to be the case I strongly encourage some of the other efforts with community namely the leadership council what efforts are going on with that body and the funding that's coming from the state through that body that can support what our general plan I would hate to see two different parallel or separate tracks different silos working together and actually getting feedback from that body would I think very be very helpful. Yeah I think if I may that really supports the need for a public engagement program that is reaching out to the those sort of entities that are already underway working on and that have initiatives going and we dovetail into that. And that was part of the general realignment strategy that we just went through as a city organization to help bring these things together and make sure they're supporting each other and that information isn't getting lost but to your point Mayor that's exactly what we're trying to achieve. Great and then regarding the RFP regarding some of the objectives and the full engagement we've talked a lot about and has been mentioned numerous times full engagement of residents what metric will be will you be using to see if they're successful and engaged in all of our community? Well there we're going to be looking towards our the response to that same question to our consultant team we want them to show us how they've done this successful in other communities obviously we want to go beyond the people who are normally involved in civic activities we want to go to people where they are congregating and making sure we're getting the family that's at the soccer field or at the PTA meeting or at the church that we get a broad spectrum the metric in my mind is not only absolute numbers but diversity of income language ethnic background so as I've mentioned with other excuse me conversations with other city staff that we do a lot of these efforts but sometimes the results are single digits so I'm more interested in the numbers and actually you know and if we have a number or have an idea we'd like to get you know 10 000 opportunities for feedback at different events rather than right yeah we've done this this and this sounds great but if the results you know 500 sounds great but I know shortly after the fires we did a survey and they got like 2500 responses so again I would really push them and have some specific goals that we want just not more events because if no one shows up to the events it kind of misses the point agreed we mentioned the portion of Rosalind identified as a disadvantaged community could you share that information at least with council where that is because again that would be something I'm interested in and you mentioned what the metrics were that led to that designation but again it's something that I would like to be aware of so if there are some other opportunities to enhance that portion of town not just in the general plan I'd be really interested in seeing what those boundaries are yes and and I'll follow up with the council and the commission with that area designation so you know where geographically is very helpful and then also on page 14 of the rfp they talked about address wireless telecommunications and electric vehicle does this include the 5g technology and some of the cell tower conversations that have been brought before the city council it should include the latest and greatest we're not limiting it to a certain type standard today but rather we think about how we make this technology how we configure the city to accept and integrate this technology into the future so I'm also interested in the safety aspect of it because we've had several neighbors saying yeah maybe great technologically but at what health costs would this general plan be addressing what those may or may not be and I know we can't predict the future but where we're at now because that is a common conversation that comes before us and a lot of discussions around that thank you yes okay are there any other questions I have one card from members of the public okay Dwayne DeWitt hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt I'm from the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group and also the disadvantaged underserved overburden community of Roseland Creek I want to thank you all you're the baker's dozen today 13 of you there listening to these ideas and I want to thank God for the biological constraints to development in the southwest area of Santa Rosa because that may cause the city of Santa Rosa to have a better plan for the future on how to actually get the housing and put it in places where it will achieve the goals that you're going to talk about with that in mind I think it's really important to look for the money first it was mentioned that the budget will be two and a half million dollars for this three-year activity yesterday morning I was fortunate enough to talk to an employee of the Sonoma County Community Development Commission her name is Miss Gasser we were talking about the opportunities to bring more money in for a good planning in a collaborative manner comprehensive planning it's called with the city in the county as you know 392 thousand dollars has been given to the county to help with some brownfields assessments in Roseland there are millions of dollars available from the federal government for what are known as community wide area planning grants under these types of EPA activities the disadvantaged community of Roseland has brown fields still and that's one of the reasons why there's these designations I think what's most important about all this that you've been talking about is this shouldn't be a time limited democracy type of activity where you're all just like oh your time's up yeah thank you for coming community you're very proud that only 500 responses to a survey have occurred in a city of close to 185 thousand people this is the kind of thing where you need to look in a different approach and not go with the traditional not go with that same old paradigm if you will so I would like to ask you especially because actions speak louder than words you know that old proverb then there's that other one about proof is in the I'll change it community perception the community currently feels at least where I'm from that a lot of this is all show and no go a lot of money gets spent a lot of things don't get changed so I'm hoping that you please do not use the same consultants that you've used for over 10 years that many people feel are cheating roseland in our community we've been made disadvantaged because of the way city government has handled that whole situation out there for over 25 years since the southwest area plan of 1994 so last but not least it's really important that these community advisory committees be real typically they're powerless they're mushroom committees kept in the dark just showing the light when you're already cooking something up to cut them into it thank you very much thank you doing any other cards great before we go to final comments from planning commission and council did you want any other additional direction would you like to hear anything else other than the questions that have been asked that would help you in this process no can't think of any can I okay pat you want to go for final comments for the planning commission there's any final comments anyone like to make yeah commissioner carter more just a procedural question andy um there's maybe some typos and things in there would you welcome written comments on materials yes absolutely from anyone yep any other comments no to you mayor okay council any final comments okay yeah I appreciate this is an exciting period of time starting here and I really appreciate the emphasis on community engagement because again it's not just a one one one stop shop be as creative as we can i'll be anxious to hear what the consultants can propose to really engage our community in this effort so thank you very much okay we will adjourn this special joint meeting of the city council and planning commission and we'll take a brief five-minute recess before reconvening a meeting of the city council thank you okay we'll call to order this meeting of the san rosa city council um madame city clerk could you announce the role please let the records show that all council members are present with the exception of council member soyer attorney can you comment on our closed session uh yes the council held closed session on item um 3.1 and gave direction to staff great thank you we have no proclamation staff briefings mr city manager do we have a staff briefing um I will turn it over to the city attorney for tonight's staff briefing on fire recovery rebuild thank you uh mr mayor and council members just going to give you a very brief update on jerry's end we have been working both our office and the both planning and economic development as well as housing and community services we have been working with burbank on development of their closure plan plan for closure of the park given the unique circumstances of the journey's end site we will be bringing forward to council some revisions to our closure plan ordinance and those revisions will streamline the closure process for the for the journey's end site and any similar similarly situated mobile home parks we anticipate bringing that ordinance to you in the late fall we would expect submission of the park's closure plan then shortly thereafter certainly by the end of the year any redevelopment of the site will be considered and and discussed after the closure plan has been has been approved by the city and I'm happy council any questions for city attorney mr shavings thank you mr mayor of the city attorney I appreciate you bringing the update I did have the chance to speak with leadership within Burbank and I was actually here today prepared to ask that we we do get an update so thanks for taking that on and beating us to the punch I just wanted to say that I really support us moving this forward and closing that park so that it can move forward and they can apply for their tax credits and state funding on time and I know that you know we are burdened as a as a city staff right now but just as a friendly reminder and and and a plea that we do continue to keep our foot on the gas particularly when it comes to bringing you know the people's lives and journeys and to closure or more explicitly give them a glimpse of hope that we're going to reopen this this or a new community soon so thank you very much sure and I will say we certainly understand that the time time sensitivities and the time pressures and we are we will be moving as quickly as we can on this any other questions for our city attorney on her report seen none city manager report yes I have a message from the transportation and public works team street smarts back to school bike blast this saturday august 17th from 10 a.m. to 12 noon the city of santa rosa street smarts program is hosting the back to school bike blast the fun bike safety and traffic awareness event held at martin luther king jr park the event features a bike skills obstacle course led by sonoma county bike coalition teaching rules of the road and best safety practices there will be helmet fittings booths with fun activities bike mechanics offering free bike safety checks a big thank you to sutter health 60 youth bike helmets will be given away at the event parking is limited so grab your helmet hop on your bike and ride your family to martin luther king jr park this saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon thank you i'm city attorney you have a report i do have a report this evening mr. mayor we have our quarterly litigation and settlement report and very briefly the the outline is in your packets but very briefly in the second quarter of 2019 we had three settlements this actually includes a couple of settlements that have come in in the third quarter as well three settlements abadera versus city of san aroza that was a settlement with the firefighters regarding calculation of qualifying overtime pay and some additional fair labor standards act claims we settled the fridel matter consistent with council direction this is a case of personal injury miss fridel suffered significant and permanent injuries when she was struck by a police car in a parking lot settlement was for $260,000 for current and ongoing medical expenses as well as for lost earning capacity and then finally we settled the baudin versus city of san aroza matter that was a non-monetary settlement there was no cost to the city the settlement simply confirmed an earlier superior court order that found that baudin is required to obtain building permits and pay fines related to certain construction that took place on site a number of years ago but that the company is not required to attain additional planning permits for their construction of the bag house and some related equipment so those were the three settlements that took place again in the second quarter and a little bit into the third quarter we had four additional cases i'd note they are listed on exhibit b in which our office obtained dismissals at no cost to the city and no payments were made for those dismissals so that resolved those four cases and then after the settlements and dismissals we currently have 18 active litigation matters in the office and we have received we received three additional new claims in the second quarter and we have received several additional claims since that time till now as well so that is the quarterly report for our litigation and happy to answer any questions great council any questions on that report seeing none great did you have any other report to make outside of that and nothing else to report this evening great thank you and i do have one card on this item Debra Tavares hi thank you very much i just wanted to make a quick comment about the street smarts and bikes and back to school recently we've become aware that the e-bikes those are the lithium ion battery e-bikes that are now becoming very popular we've done some research on that and the lithium ion batteries explode and when you type that in on the internet with e-bikes and lithium ion batteries you'll see youtube videos in london and other parts of the world where they've become quite popular and lithium ion batteries are very difficult to put the fire out they don't the fires don't go out easily and they're literally like bombs if they're slightly damaged or when they're being uh literally plugged in at night in people's homes their houses can catch on fire so i thought that this was really relevant to get this out so that everyone understands the danger behind the lithium ion batteries and the bikes thank you thank you all right uh statements of abstention by council members um all start i'll be abstaining from item 12.1 the meeting minutes is there anyone else mr tibis yeah thank you mr mayor i'm going to be abstaining from the source of income agenda item tonight unfortunately given my role and leadership position with the society of st. Vincent appall we are currently creating a conversion project where the income is reliant on section a voucher income and according to state law anything that has a material financial effect on your organization positive or negative requires one to recuse themselves it's particularly frustrating for me because i believe that my experience working with people experiencing homelessness and poverty would be a good addition to this conversation but unfortunately the law disagrees madam city attorney is there any last minute comments about my ability to participate or not council member um it is obviously your decision as to whether to recuse or not i would point out that the ordinance that is being proposed places the responsibility on the property owner to avoid any discrimination based on subsidize subsidies for housing section eight and other programs so it's an it's an interesting um a mix in your situation uh it would not necessarily impact whether you as a as a or your organization as a property owner um will have a financial benefit or not it will impact will would require you as a property owner to accept involved let me put it this way as to not discriminate based on sources of income um but as you say you already in your organization already intends to accept housing vouchers uh so the um so the ordinance would likely not have a significant impact but again recusal is is based on both the specific financial regulations under the fpbc and also your own sense of whether your own involvement in the issue makes it too difficult to uh weigh it independently so okay i leave that thank you okay any other statements of abstentia i need to abstain from the minutes because i was not present for that meeting i believe the the minutes and um i was not present for the interviews for all of the personnel board people so i need to abstain from the vote on the personnel board any other abstentious okay mayors council members reports who would like to start any reports on the side of the room seeing none um i've got a couple uh the economic development subcommittee met on august 8th uh we had four items of discussion just to keep everyone apprised uh we talked about the stage uh gave direction to staff that that item will be so consistent with existing city policies we also received an update about the simon mall discussed the visit that some city staff made to indiana and visited with the simon executives and there will be an ongoing dialogue about that we also received a timeline on our public private partnership the p3 timeline progress and updates will be brought to this subcommittee we'll report out and i left before the q4 sales tax update if one of my colleagues would want to update us on that if it was warranted i also want to give a brief report out on the groundwater sustainability agency we had our meeting also on august 8th we had three action items i want to share one the resource conservation district grant we authorized ten thousand dollars of matching grant to authorize the gsa administrator to provide support to the sonoma and gold ridge resource conservation district for a natural resource conservation service grant for groundwater recharge studies and best practices we also updated the ordinance pertaining to the registration of groundwater user facilities water use reporting and authorizing the adoption of groundwater sustainability fee we also included clarifications on the appeal process and the last item action item was we voted to emit the city of sabastopol to the san rosa plain groundwater sustainability agency we prorated their financial contributions for a total of seventy one thousand four hundred dollars they'll be paying thirty three thousand dollars for fiscal year 1920 and then nineteen thousand two hundred for each of the subsequent two fiscal years they will also be making their usage fee contributions similar to other member agencies so i think that's a very positive thing that sabastopol is joined our groundwater agency with that we'll move to item 11.2 board and commission committee appointments um madam city clerk would you like to start with the at-large positions thank you thank you mayors by town members of board's commissions and committee shall be selected from all applicants by process of elimination or by motion in this instance for the at-large appointments to the personnel board we will be doing the process of elimination each council member shall vote for a number of applicants equal to the number of vacant positions plus two those applicants receiving one vote or less shall be eliminated subsequent votes shall be taken with each council member voting for one less applicant than voted in the previous round only applicants not eliminated may be voted upon voting continues until three applicants remain council members should have their ballots at their dais we will be doing the votes by roll call through through the mayor i don't um have a ballot for the the labor back position i only have a ballot for the at-large position so with the labor ones will i'll be entertaining a motion for that since we had two applicants and uh two candidates and to see if we'll go it has abstained i will move on to council member fleming please vote for up to five but no less than three alexander maloney eric stevens ever florida's deras justin hind and pretty curts thank you council member alavarez maloney uh stevens florida's uh deras hind and uh curts thank you council member tidbits thank you vice mayor rogers maloney florida's hind curts mayor schwedhelm um maloney florida's courier hain and curts thank you one moment please while i tell you thank you the candidate eliminated is john farando please strike him from your next round of voting uh round two is on page two on round two we'll vote for up to four candidates but no less than three we'll start with council member fleming i'm sorry i'm um just i'm having a hard time seeing someone been eliminated yes john farando what's eliminated please strike him from your round two at large thank you for your patience okay um maloney stevens florida's deras and curts thank you council member alavarez maloney uh stevens hain and curts council member tidbits florida's floney i'm sorry can you repeat the last candidate maloney florida's courier did you uh confirm did you say hain i did thank you vice mayor rogers maloney florida's dera hain curts mayor schwedhelm uh stevens florida's deras hain and curts one moment while i tally thank you council uh the next round will include voting for maloney stevens florida's deras hain and curts please strike through scott courier and john farando for round three council member fleming please cast your vote for three candidates maloney stevens florida's deras thank you council member alavarez stevens hain curts council member tidbits maloney stevens florida's deras vice mayor rogers maloney florida's deras curts mayor schwedhelm florida's deras hain and curts one moment please thank you council for your patience we are going to move on to round four eliminating scott courier justin hain and john farando from your ballot can you say that one again who are the three justin hain john farando and scott courier thank you starting with council member fleming please vote for three candidates maloney stevens florida's deras thank you council member alavarez stevens florida's deras and curts thank you council member tidbits maloney excuse me maloney stevens florida's vice mayor rogers florida's deras curts mayor schwedhelm stevens florida's deras and curts thank you one moment please thank you after five or after four at large rounds um the final candidate eliminated was alexander maloney as the fewest vote getter leaving eric stevens ever florida's deras and pretty curts as your appointments great thank you so much for that process and now for the two labor representatives since we had two applicants and two openings i'd entertain a motion uh from a council member for those positions i'll move acceptance of both uh lisa maldenato and maria paluso second we have a motion and a second and are we doing your votes please and that passes with five eyes and one abstention thank you fold in new technology thank you madam city clerk all right next on our agenda is the approval of the minutes item 12.1 i'll be abstaining as well i believe miss combs any corrections for those present seeing none then we'll go ahead accept those minutes mr mayor is it possible to have a five-minute recess first just for some coordination issues absolutely we'll take a five-minute recess thank you okay it's five o'clock once we'll reconvene the meeting item 13 consent items we have no consent items so we'll move to item 14 public comment on non-agenda items i have two cards first up deba tabaras followed by shirley benett deba tabaras i'm commenting about the fuzzy map of pg&e that was issued in the press democrat that would explain some of the power outage areas and it says in the article that pg&e provided local officials at the recent closed door meeting through a secure data portal a comprehensive overview on pg&e's electric network and the fire risk areas and that will be released to the public within a few weeks um that article in the report was very disconcerting because of course i think all of you can appreciate those of us that are listed in the areas that have been revealed they said that they include the most high-risk areas in sonoma county include sonoma the maya commas mountain ranges as well as the forested hills of west county so my concern and my question to you is this the maya commas mountain range i've been attending a number of city council meetings lately where sonoma clean power is now recommending and the cities are now going into the evergreen aspect of calpine because they're being told that it's more green that it's 84 percent geothermal and geothermal is in the maya commas mountains in fact the geothermal operation which does cause earthquakes as we've recently discovered was there was some concerns in the 2017 fire of the consequences of the fire in the geothermal operation so i would wonder how would electricity continue to flow if the cities are now partnering up with evergreen that obtains their electricity by using a part of sonoma county's what wastewater treatment fecal and urine and pharmaceuticals that's injected into the boreholes causing earthquakes how does the liability issue of all of the cities intertwine with the operation of in in many opinions of increased pollution with acid rain and the seismic activity on the maya commas mountain range as well as now being stated in here that it's susceptible to fires so if there were a fire problem up there how what would happen with the electricity and i think we can all agree that many of the areas in these locations are in the rural country areas when power goes out there is no water those that are on well water i'm waiting to hear a discussion on prepping those homes that could potentially suffer for a week or more as being discussed in these reports and not having access to water supplies let alone the fact that if there is a fire they can't even hose down their homes unless they've spent a tremendous amount of money in equipment thank you thank you deba surely been followed by dwayne duet thank you good afternoon council members today i'm here actually on the same issue the psps i am here on behalf of myself my friends my family my neighbors and really sonoma county because i find the report that was presented last tuesday uh woefully deficient i'm very disturbed by the massive impact that the shutdowns that pg and e is proposing um and you know let us remember this is a public utility i really do not feel that the public is their major concern i feel that we are really being left to figure out what to do there aren't going to be as far as um oh things like letting people know what kind of emergencies might happen if there's already a fire going on so i'm just going to cut to the chase what i think we need to do because i feel that pg and e has done such a poor job of outreach to the public and letting us know what to expect i believe we should have a giant city county town hall i think that if we had something like that where it would be city council members supervisors uh state uh senator maguire our state assembly members congressman mike thompson and congressman uh jared huffman that we could at least get some answers i think the public would really benefit and i think they would come out and really ask questions and be much more informed because i feel right now none of us really are i don't really even feel that you and the county are that informed because pg and e to me feels like they are really just trying to um continue to to blow smoke and obscure things such as the blurred map they they they presented um so i would really like to um suggest that a city slash county town city county hall uh to really address the issues and address the questions that we all have i think that would be an excellent idea thank you thank you doine duit my name is duane duit i'm with the sonoma county housing advocacy group and i wanted to thank the city for putting the new online maps showing where the city owned parcels are available that are zoned for residential while looking at them the other day i saw there are six parcels on stony point road at rose avenue where the widening of the stony point road project has been completed and those parcels are owned by the city they're large enough for houses to be on just so happens the city owns six houses that they've said they have to demolish one may be saved but i believe all six could be saved and i believe the houses that are currently on burbank avenue and mc minne avenue could be moved with the help of house movers to the city owned parcels on stony point road i've spoken to a number of veterans and construction people in the community some who worked on the tiny homes project that was so uh successful in the eyes of many and they've said yes house moving is plausible possible comes down to political will not being in a hurry to demolish the houses that you already own by you i mean us taxpayers the taxpayers own six houses that were all occupied in the past and were habitable and are owned by us taxpayers and if we were to work together in a win-win type of a situation we could move those six houses to those six residentially zoned parcels on stony point road at rose avenue that all had houses on them in the past which were destroyed for the widening of the road so i'd just like to ask you elected officials not necessarily the bureaucrats because they got their view but sometimes the community is thinking different things and would like to have our elected representatives work with us to do some positive things that are needed you're going to be having an item on housing and how there's active discrimination towards people who use vouchers so here would be an opportunity with city owned houses to be moved to city owned land and then find a way to let those be used by voucher users perhaps do it under the land trust there's the sonoma county housing trust and the santa rosa housing trust there's ways to do this you just need to be innovative and have the political will and i guess there's also something known as the courage so let's have some courage on this especially as you talk on this next item 15 one and let's end discrimination by you folks taking the lead and saving houses for those who are in need of housing thank you mr. city manager item 15.1 item 15.1 report an ordinance of the city a council of santa rosa emitting the santa rosa city code adding a new chapter 10-46 housing anti-discrimination code carmelita howard and adam abel presenting good afternoon mayors welcome and members of the city council my name is carmelita howard and i'm the deputy director for housing and community services and adam abel is here with me including dave guine to present the item we are here today to present to you an item for your consideration that will prohibit rental housing discrimination based on source of income which includes housing choice vouchers and other rental subsidies the proposed ordinance would make it unlawful in the city of santa rosa to discriminate against tenants in rental housing based on their source of income either in the application process or as residents the ordinance defines sources of source of income as any lawful source of income or rental assistance from any federal state or local or non-profit administered benefit or subsidy program including but not limited to the section 8 program the section 8 program the language in the ordinance was based on similar local laws that have been enacted in other jurisdiction here in california as part of preparing for this item we met with the california apartment association legal aid north bay organizing group representing tenant rights and community action partnership we discussed the item with fair housing and took their feedback the landlord group was interested in landlord incentives and tenant groups felt this item is necessary to find housing to rent for low income clients addressing housing needs is a tier one council goal and council has established a comprehensive housing strategy that includes specific actions to be completed between 2019 and 2023 an ordinance to address differential treatment of renters using housing subsidies is one of the recommended council's housing strategy that is in front of you today there are 16 other jurisdictions in california with local ordinances addressing the treatment of rental housing subsidies most recently in june of this year the the city and county of los angeles pass source of income ordinances here in the north bay the county of marine including fairfax novato and san rafael have all established ordinances the prohibit rental housing discrimination based on source of income these ordinances like the one before you today aim to protect and increase affordable housing opportunities if council recommends the ordinance santa rosa will be the first city in sonoma county to prohibit discrimination based on source of income housing strategy city council has allocated funding to address homelessness through the rapid rehousing fund allocated to catholic charities this funding is used to fund rental assistance as a form of subsidy according to catholic charities there are 235 families through this program that have been housed with landlord incentives of $500 to house a homeless person in a room and a thousand to house a family in a rental unit council has allocated 534 000 for this program in addition to the funds allocated by council the housing authority board through the housing and community services have enacted policies to support the city council in its tier one goals to address and prevent homeless issues by allocating 24 vouchers set aside for referrals through our homeless service providers and 48 housing choice vouchers for fire referrals through rock the housing authority portfolio includes 414 hotbush vouchers for our homeless veterans and over 1400 regular housing choice vouchers which help qualifying extremely low and low income and very low income families to pay their rent we pay approximately two million dollars a month towards our rent to our landlords and our currently separate is 88.65 percent for all vouchers which means that we still have more than 120 voucher how voucher holders looking for housing the housing choice voucher program and programs like it are cost effective alternatives to government funded housing families with vouchers are given the choice to locate housing that meets their specific needs and preferences however even with a guaranteed rent payment tenants may find their opportunities limited since property owners may refuse to participate in the program the rental assistance has been made available by council and through the housing authority and is currently underutilized due to several factors including grants that are higher than the program limits can approve increased competition between tenants for a smaller number of units available here to rent and landlords who choose not to accept the rental assistance as a form of payment all of these factors limit the effectiveness of programs that are intended to make housing affordable and accessible to low income renters the ordinance before council for consideration this evening is part of a comprehensive housing strategy and is intended to give tenants who are using vouchers and other forms of assistance equal access to housing and increase the utilization and effectiveness of rental assistance programs 11 states and more than 50 local governments have passed source of income protection laws that prohibit property owners from refusing to rent to voucher holders solely because they will use the voucher to pay the rent nationwide analysis of these jurisdictions have repeatedly demonstrated higher success rate for the pro for the voucher program compared to areas that do not have protection for renters using vouchers the the ordinance would add chapter 10 dust to chapter 4 i mean to page 46 to the santerosa city code titled housing anti-discrimination code it would define income to include rental assistance from any federal state local or nonprofit subsidy program as well as any other lawful form of income such as wages pension social security which are already protected under california law the proposed ordinance would make the active this active the following activities illegal when they are based on tenants source of income refusing to rent based on source of income including the use of a rental subsidy impose restrictions in the rental process based on source of income refuse services because a tenant is using a rental assistance program or makes or makes statements that indicate a preference or limitations such as though sometimes we see in rental advertisements when the lease of or the lease of qualifications includes the words no section eight it is important to note that the ordinance does not prohibit landlords from screening tenants from standard lawful factors such as credit worthiness or rental history instead the ordinance requires that if a tenant is otherwise qualified for the rental then they must be treated equally in the application process the ordinance requires that property owners include the rental assistance payments when considering the tenants income to determine whether they meet the income standards which is similar to existing source of income protections in addition to the impacts of council's affordable housing efforts this ordinance also addresses fair housing issues state and federal law requires that the city of santa rosa analyze identify and address impediments to fair equal and affordable housing this ordinance based on national studies create opportunities for low income clients to compete for housing and improve the concentration of voucher holders to move to better neighborhoods some fair housing implications when housing providers are permitted to enact policies that exclude rental assistance program participants fair housing questions are raised because low income renters who qualify for housing subsidies are often also members of other classes of people who are protected under fair housing laws such as people with disabilities people of color and families with children policies that deny housing opportunities to applicants using vouchers may therefore have a disparate impact on those protected classes and in practice discrimination against voucher holders could be used as a proxy for other illegal forms of discrimination protections for santa rosa residents santa rosa tenants in rental assistance programs will both affirmatively further fair housing and address affordable housing crisis some ordinance decision points as drafted our policy in our ordinance here governs all rental units council may decide to exclude rentals in which kitchen or bathroom is shared with owner and exclude properties with less than three units cities that exclude rentals where the property owner lives are east palo alto fairfax los angeles county novato san ancelmo san diego and san francisco and cities that limit the number of units corte madera only applies to properties with 11 or more units mill valley applies only to properties with six or more units east palo alto san ancelmo and san francisco limits it to three or more properties some ordinance decision points also as drafted includes both governmental and nonprofit administered subsidy programs and also as drafted we limited based on um some comments from the landlord group limited the programs intended to subsidize the full term of the lease for example if um a non-profit organizations subsidy will only be for six months then the landlord can put the rental agreement to last that six months of the subsidy for the enforcement as drafted we will um it will be based on a group individuals the city of san rosa can also enforce this ordinance or any person or entity who will fairly and adequately represent the interest of the protected class so that will be usually some of the tenant um um you know legal aid or CRLA that usually help the tenants or an alternative is to limit to one or two of the above a number of jurisdictions provide for private action only for damages as drafted recovery of special and general damages suffered by a grieve individual plus a tourney fees and costs an alternative will be to limit the dollar amount of recovery or allow punitive damages a number of jurisdictions limit damages to 200 to 400 per occurrence but allow for punitive damages when appropriate adam can a can provide you also examples of other cities if you need more information of what they do sb 39 so fair employment and housing act currently prohibits discrimination based on source of income the sb 3329 would expand definition of source of income to include federal state and local housing subsidy program it applies broadly and excludes only single uh owner within single border within owner occupied single family home it has already passed the senate and is spending in the assembly therefore the department of housing and community services recommends that the city council introduce an ordinance adding chapter 10 dash 45 to the santa rosa city code prohibiting dash 46 to the santa rosa city code prohibiting rental housing discrimination based on source of income including housing choice vouchers and other subsidies this concludes my presentation and we are here to answer questions great thank you currently for that presentation council questions thank you for bringing this forward i very much appreciate the work that you've done and are doing on this um not exactly a question but i will point out a story from the press democrat from august 17th of 2018 talking about uh an apartment complex that terminated the leases of every tenant enrolled in a federal housing subsidy program including in this particular story a 75-year-old woman who was given 90 days to find a new place to stay shortly after the fires when there were no housing available we know we have a serious problem we know from a variety of sources this is a article on a Pew research program that indicates the serious problem with voucher use and i've passed to everyone here in your packet a HUD document that covers issues that show pretty much throughout the country this is a problem they see as much as 78 percent of landlords not taking HUD vouchers prior to the fires i had an individual with a phd do a study on housing voucher program and how it was working and we found closer to 90 percent in sonoma county we're refusing to take housing vouchers um so it's clear that we have a problem one of the nice things about this HUD evidence matters document is that it also includes how to do landlord incentives to make the program viable so i'm hoping that we can look through this document in a little more detail as we move forward i was told that there was a shortage of stakeholder outreach but i heard you say as you sat down that you did do stakeholder outreach can you tell me about the stakeholder outreach that you did so what we did was we met with california apartment association did you meet with an individual or with a group of owners with a group of owners that represented the california apartment association we met with legal aid we met with Beatriz Camacho the head of the north bay labor coalition and we also met with community action partnership the landlord group of course were very interested in the landlord incentives and then like i said the tenant group were more interested in really finding more housing for our residents of course yes so um we've talked up here i know the mayor and i have both i think particularly the mayor but the mayor and i both have talked about looking for some kind of risk mitigation pool i'm not seeing that here is that in this document or were you planning on bringing that at another time is it in here i think that this is purely about an ordinance that was addressed this particular program okay so this would be an incentive that we may want to agendize in the future yes come maybe back with this so that we have the mitigation discussion along with it what date would this be implemented if we if we vote to pass this would it come into implementation 30 days after is that the intention uh yes it would go into effect 30 days after the second reading and adoption and if we wanted to extend that deadline to give people some time would that be possible yes you may extend that time okay so as public comment comes in i would be interested in hearing uh comments from the public regarding risk mitigation and the date of the implementation one of the differences between sb 329 and this is the inclusion of non-profit funding it do you have a graph or chart of additional differences between 329 and what we're looking at no we included the non-profits uh peace and after carmelita and dav met with the apartment association we took what they had to say and that's as carmelita said we've kept it in however we've made sure that the the length of the voucher equates to the rental term so as carmelita said if catholic charities had a six-month voucher a tenant was provided that the landlord would not be required to rent longer than six months otherwise it could harm the tenant and the landlord yes i appreciate that and and like it i'm hoping that if there are other differences you'll make them clear as we go along um is it possible we hire a firm now that does testing regarding the fair housing amendments regarding the fair housing act um we have funding that comes from the i think federal government to implement a program um is it is it as it's written now possible for uh that firm to add this item as a fair housing item uh in their testing and in their investigation of violations i have not looked back at the scope of work of that particular contract i would need to do that to know whether it would encompass or whether it would require an amendment to that contract okay the HUD guidelines for working through this type of program recommend something like a 24-hour customer service hotline i know we've talked about that with regard to placing homeless persons um is that included in here in any way now okay i'm just asking that's another thing that i'd like to know if the community is interested in um and there's also a section on security deposit assistance in the HUD guidelines for how to run a program like this is there any discussion about that in here at this time just to let you know that um we have asked HUD permission to use our admin reserves for landlord incentives and risk risk mitigation pool but we were told that we cannot use that funding okay so it has to be from the general fund have to find another source of funding for a risk mitigation pool correct okay and would we need to do that also if we did a security deposit assistance very likely okay um again i'm very interested in listening to what we can do to make this work for our whole community uh thank you for bringing it forward it it sounds as if we may have some additional work to do um but i'm very interested in hearing what our community has to say about it okay mr rogers thank you mr mayor i want to start by talking about the community engagement piece so you listed some of the organizations that you sat down with did you meet with them once or was there an ongoing conversation over the course of the months that you've been working on this um this issue was brought uh before so we met with them before but this time with the california apartment association we met with them once um and but we exchanged emails after that some of their recommendations with the legal aid we met with them twice and also exchange emails and same for the other ones that we discussed the issues so for the groups that you did outreach to are they all supportive of this or did they have an opportunity to give you some of the concerns that they had and how do they know that that was reflected and i'm thinking in particular legal aid in the apartment association i know both worked on marines ordinances quite a bit and were able to actually craft that in a way where everybody was in agreement did we reach that point what what we tried to do was we tried to craft an ordinance looking at what every other city and county who has passed such an ordinance has done and i would estimate that probably 90 percent of every city and county like ordinance is almost verbatim and so what we tried to do was to create an ordinance uh and try to keep it even keel knowing from some of the slides that we gave council options to make it either more lenient or more strict from my understanding i haven't met with any of the groups but i've certainly been working with davin carmelita have been cc done on the emails and so some people want it more lenient some people want it more strict and so we kind of kept it even keel knowing that you can't make everybody happy we wanted to make sure we met the purpose of the ordinance which is what we did and certainly i can go into damages what other counties and cities have done these of the what we've crafted well we'll get there i'm i'm really going to hone in on the community aspect of this first and foremost uh north bay organizing project is here did they have a chance to look at the ordinance before it was a public document 72 hours ago to say whether they support or oppose it and i'm using them as an example go mbop uh but i also mean the apartment association i mean legal aid i mean the groups that you're saying you outreached two is this the first time they're seeing the ordinance so i think carmelita's address those who the city has met with that's not the same i i apologize i'm being a little bit of a stickler met with is not the same thing as did policy engagement and actually we're able to get back to folks on whether or not their input was taken into account and whether or not the final product is something that they are supportive or opposed to and i would need to defer to carmelita and dave what i what i can tell you is you asked if we took into consideration what the groups that they did meet with uh legal aid in the apartment california apartment groups and did we take that information and tweak our ordinance accordingly what i can say is that we did uh taken a consideration take to heart uh what was suggested to us and for example when the ordinance was originally crafted on the nonprofit piece we just had the nonprofit piece as a uh voucher that could not be discriminated against if somebody had such a voucher we decided to make sure to make sure it was fair to the landlord as well as the tenant that if again the voucher was six months or a year that the landlord would not be required to rent beyond the terms of that voucher so if it was a year lease and the tenant only had a six month voucher the requirement would only be a six month lease there was also some concerns about whether or not our ordinance as drafted was too general where we said any person could could file a civil suit uh we changed that added in aggrieved to make sure that whoever reads the ordinance understood that aggrieved as we defined in the ordinance is the person claiming that they are subjected to discrimination so we added that piece in it as well those are the changes that we have made after getting input from the groups and individuals that carmelita has referenced there were some there were some discussions with carmelita and dave about the damages piece that we put in right now the ordinance has crafted allows uh with the responsible party the landlord would would be responsible for general and specific damages those are actual damages suffered uh which would be special damages general damages would be specific out-of-pocket damages uh we had some um that some concerns from the apartment group they wanted us to add language in there that the landlord would have a right to sue as well and that attorney's fees could be obtained from the prevailing party we did not include that language in there because i think it's fairly clear that a landlord would still have the ability to terminate a lease just like they could terminate any lease whether the tenant was a section 8 tenant or or not so we did not we we listened carefully to what they said we took to heart what they said but we decided that uh it was not necessary uh to be put in this ordinance and did not meet the intent of the ordinance okay at any time did anybody engage with catholic charities to ask them about the risk mitigation pool how much of it has been used what the barriers have been yes and provide provide a little bit of background as carmelita mentioned at the same time we were in discussions with the city council of a risk mitigation pool landlord incentives things of that nature out of the rapid rehousing fund we looked at it using our section 8 reserves for this program and as she mentioned hud told us we couldn't use that resource twice so we have a risk mitigation pool experience through catholic charities through our homeless service programs through that they've been able to get 43 landlords to participate in the program as carmelita mentioned they they've been able to house 235 individuals and then they've came up with the the incentives to have a landlord accept a new tenant based on a room in a housing unit haven't had to use the risk mitigation pool yet but it exists in the amount of uh $100,000 in the event it's needed and so it has not been used yet i the 100,000 the last time i talked with catholic charities it had not but i can follow up okay so if this ordinance went through uh there'd be a landlord incentive component through the catholic charities program uh if there was damaged or lost income to the unit would that be covered by the risk mitigation pool to my mind it's a separate conversation you have your homeless services rapid rehousing risk mitigation pool if it was the interest of the city council to have a similar program for non-income non-discrimination we'd have to meet with the city manager identify a resource put some program management management to that etc so as i said to the other to councilmember combs earlier that is not part of this conversation if that is something council wants to direct us to follow up we can do so but there is currently no risk mitigation pool associated with this program i think there's going to be a number of different landlord incentives that we're going to talk about tonight that i and i bet other colleagues as i'm hearing are going to want to talk about as well in that conversation in particular i'd want to make sure that the risk mitigation pool covered not just damage to the unit or loss of income from non-compliance or non-payment but also have a conversation about how long it takes for landlords to get certified to be able to do this program and the loss potential income for those months that it would take i've read in a number of letters from folks that it could take up to three months to get certified that's three months that the unit is saying empty which is not the intent so i want to make sure when we talk about i'm seeing shaking heads are you referencing based on damages that tenant caused or i'm talking about a number of different facets that i'll want to make sure that the risk mitigation pool covers one of them is damages one of them is non-payment for a month of rent and then another one is the time that it takes for the landlord to actually get certified by HUD to be able to do this program can sometimes take what was referenced was three months that's three months where they don't know yeah um just for clarification there's a HUD regulation that requires us to inspect a unit 10 days when we receive the request for tenancy approval and and part of our in our minds incentivizing landlords to take on this program we we balance the needs of the tenant we want to cultivate good property owners we have over 720 landlords we work with and so we're willing to sit down and see if there might be an incentive based on our administrative model to be quicker in trying to get the inspections and look at how it impacts our our budget and how our staff and things of that nature there's a willingness to walk that through yeah and i appreciate that and uh in the initials let's let's start it this way walk me through how a landlord would get approved to do this section eight program so the tenant has a choice to look for housing they look for housing they find go ahead good start with explain to me how a tenant gets on the list how long the list takes okay some of that information so our waiting list is open every two years and um the moment you're in the waiting list our clients usually wait eight years to get a voucher when they get the voucher they're called in to make sure that they still qualify for the program that is the income you know they are income eligible when they get uh when they are found eligible then they have a briefing where they get their voucher to look for a housing to look for housing in that voucher they get a request for tenancy approval that is the form that we use that when a landlord accepts the client to be their tenant and when we get that form we are required by HUD to inspect the unit 10 days from when we receive it but after the inspection sometimes that there there's some issues with the inspection so we cannot pass the unit without those failed inspections completed after that is complete if after the inspection passes we will mail the form the contract to the landlord to sign and we will require them to complete the w2 form because we report the income they receive from us to um irs and then that's when when we get all of that back that's when we pay we have just to inform you we have worked with hud bash to you know for to house our veterans to do the ways to make it as efficient as we can and we are willing to work as much as we can with the california association group to house our tenants and you know make sure that if a um unit is ready to inspect we will try our best to do that so you know we are open to um any suggestions that they have and we will work with them because our goal we both have the same goal and we feel that we have a very good um relationship here with our landlords we are one of the lucky cities where you know in the newspaper even though we have some um non-discriminate you know no section eight our landlord group here really works well with us that's why we pay two million in rents a month yeah no and i appreciate that i think the goal is to figure out how to get people in the units faster i did see a study that said that these types of ordinances increase the uptake in voucher use by about 12 but one of the key components that i noticed for some other cities is when there's a failed inspection the landlord has expedited permitting and waiting of permit fees in order to get that unit up to up to code faster and so that's something that i would expect us to have a conversation about as well um have we seen any data in locations that have passed this sort of an ordinance without having a vrbo policy on folks switching from long-term rentals to vacation rentals in their units no we don't have that information okay and that's something that i'd like to look at as well uh and obviously pushing again that we don't have a vrbo ordinance i know it's something that we've been talking about for a long time if i'm a renter and i am how would i know if i was denied because i my source of income was a voucher it's an interesting question because you kind of got to look at the facts look at the history because you're going to kind of have to read into the minds of the landlord i mean again the landlord has to treat everybody equally assuming this ordinance uh we're in that specific city but of course the landlord can look at non section 8 tenants and so long as they both qualify technically he can pick the non section 8 tenant there's there's no way to prevent that so you'd kind of have to look at patterns and histories get the facts i mean they get called all the time about issues that then come to me and we try to put the facts together and determine if there's wrongdoing or not but yeah i mean so long as the landlord can choose so long as they all meet the background checks uh they can choose to select the non section 8 tenant so it's an interesting question they simply can't discriminate against the section 8 tenant who has a voucher so there's no perfect solution other than you would look at the facts look at the history and see if you could make the argument that this appears to be discrimination versus non-discrimination and so in the ordinance who makes the determination that it was discrimination is that the city attorney's office not necessarily so we you know looking at i i was tasked with looking what other cities and counties the 16 who have passed them to date and um it's not clear cut i mean there's there's really no way to determine that that's one of the reasons we have the fair housing uh yeah i mean we we if it came i asked the question about that that we will get information about in the future if it came to us i mean obviously the way the ordinance is written the individual the aggrieved party as we've identified it in the ordinance certainly has the ability on their own to go out and seek advice from an attorney or legal aid we may not even know that certainly if they come to us we will initially probably refer them carmelita would probably refer them to legal aid the city attorney has the ability to bring forward an action whether it's a civil action or injunctive relief per the verbiage in the ordinance i would envision that i mean if we came across a situation where there was a landlord in town had a lot of units and we were getting a lot of word that there appeared to be evidence of discrimination again putting the facts together certainly the city attorney's office would think long and hard about we want to get involved and bring an action because the whole goal of this ordinance is to preclude discrimination based on source of income so we would work with the with the aggrieved tenant listen to his or her story and certainly give them advice i may write a letter to the landlord that may be the extent of my role we'd go back and forth with the tenant refer them to legal aid or we may want to take it on ourselves would the city have the ability to compel the landlord to turn over applications that they they had for the unit or would that only be once it goes to a civil case i think that would be once it went to a civil case i mean certainly that would be the evidence it's a good question because again you kind of have to read the mind of the landlord to say is he or she in fact discriminating against the tenant if there's two equally qualified tenants and one's a section eight and one isn't so yes i mean if in fact whether the individual the aggrieved tenant or the city were to file an action that's when you would seek through discovery the background of how they've treated others and that would help you make your case all right thank you and then just as a as a note because the piece of legislation is referenced here just so folks know the end of the legislative session is september 13th and the governor would have until october 13th to sign any bill so uh not sure if that's helpful or not this morning thank you very much my colleagues asked most of the questions that i have i uh wanted to follow up i understand that you know we are not today discussing uh risk mitigation pool but i i had a answer that i wanted clarified you said that you spoke with hud and they preclude us from using the funds that we have to administer such a pool does that preclude our use of the funds or is it just use in administration um we can only use some hud funds for paying rents to landlords does that preclude use of uh um security deposits yes we're not allowed to pay anything except um share of the 10 a share of the housing authority to the rents to the landlords that's the only way we can use them does uh housing community services or the housing authority have any funding that is not currently being used or earmarked for something specific i mean that's uh we can look at what resources we we have and bring that back at a future conversation thank you um when you looked at uh other legislation that you referenced and you spoke with our stakeholders um what types of takeaways did you come up with in terms of crafting this ordinance in a way that would best meet the needs of of all stakeholders knowing that not everyone's going to be happy about something like this well in council maybe you're absolutely correct i mean there's no way to craft an ordinance that's going to please the two sides so what what what was going on in in my mind when i crafted this was uh i i looked at every other ordinance that has been passed whether by a county or city uh we were certainly uh speaking and dealing directly with the deputy city attorney for Santa Monica i don't know if Santa Monica was the first to pass such an ordinance if they weren't the first they were one of the first and the reasons we reached out to them was they are a big uh city attorney's office and they are doing all the litigation themselves so we certainly talked to them because they're dealing directly with the litigation and so what my real goal was was to make sure that the ordinance met its purpose was which is certainly to make sure that source of income cannot be used by landlord to discriminate against a tenant we i tried to craft the ordinance in such a way that it both sides there's some things that they would like it some things that they wouldn't like about it as i indicated from my research of the other 16 cities and counties who have passed a like ordinance i'm going to estimate that probably 90 percent of every ordinance looks identical there's there's little tweaks and we can get into it if needed uh one of the major differences that some of the different cities and counties have is in their damages section that what's the uh liability to the landlord what type of action can be brought who can bring the action so generally speaking uh it's a pretty simple ordinance you cannot discriminate based upon source of income the question is what happens uh if there is discrimination and that's where the the little differences are and so we we certainly got input from the um the tenant group that they wanted the language that we crafted a harsher against the landlord and we can talk about that and that's why in the slides we gave options where council can either if they decide if you all decide to adopt such an ordinance depending on what you feel is appropriate we can make it stricter or less strict as it relates to the landlord who may bring the action but generally speaking they all meet the goal which is to prevent discrimination make sure that there's a level playing field so it sounds like that was one of the points that came across um i'm imagining that there were other points that you came across that you um you were able to incorporate or not i'm curious um following up with vice mayor the vice mayor's question around walking through the amount of time that it takes from uh and i'm going to hone in on this and say you know let's say i i've received my voucher today and i find a landlord who's willing to take it and there's no hiccups in the process you guys inspect within 10 days per had regulation and then what happens and then if it passes inspection we will send the landlord the contract to sign and then after it's been signed it goes back to our office so we can issue the payment and with the two million dollars in rental payments that are our housing authorities making um we must have some data i'm imagining on the amount of time between me getting my voucher today finding an amenable landlord having great credit and a deposit and all that stuff between how long will it take on average um before i can move it based on um from three years ago because we conducted the data we uh it took us 20 days from the beginning to the end from the search to the payment okay um did you have a community outreach strategy in mind when you started this process our strategy was to reach these groups we've already mentioned however if the council wants us to broaden that through our community engagement office we can certainly do that i'm gonna uh cede the floor thank you mr alvarez thank you mayor i had a couple questions related to the ordinance decision points that you pointed out the first one is um what are some of the reasons with other jurisdictions why they would choose all rental units or limited to the number of units for example here you have less than three what would be some of the reasons they would do that i'm go ahead i mean i think it really depends i mean i can't speak for the other jurisdictions uh why they made the decisions they did and i don't mean to sound like a broken record but the the general tenor of the ordinance is the same for every city and county so it really depends on i mean some cities uh are higher income san francisco for example uh theirs is is not surprisingly stricter than some of the others because the housing costs are so high so it becomes a bigger problem so i think it really depends on the jurisdiction and council would look at the the unique situations that each such jurisdiction had cost to living homelessness etc and would would make the choices that they did i mean there seems to be uh some uh similarities that what some cities and counties did but not surprisingly at least in the research i did the the higher income cities were more strict in terms of uh what could be discriminated against in in in what didn't qualify uh within the the tenure of the the ordinance so i think those are really the the primary factors so there is no real matrix that we would use to consider something like that it's just a matter of choice i don't think i don't think so and the same thing would apply to source of income government or government and nonprofit what why would one decide one or the other not both only it same reasons same reasons okay and then uh as far as the process for rentals besides the inspection once that once we're moving that direction and the contract are there any changes to the actual rental process that a landlord would go through um not no if it passes inspection then it we're good to go the landlord and the tenant decides to um choose a date when the tenant can move in and as a housing authority we are in the middle we want we need the landlords and we need the tenants so we want to work with both the tenants and the landlords thank you that's it mr. ellis that's it okay thank you all right um most of my colleagues asked most of these questions um one of the reasons i uh i think a lot of us are asking what was the outreach because i for one have been inundated with emails on both sides of the art both sides of the position it's like my hope and i still have this hope almost like what we had with a recent project for a hotel on the northeast side of town where it started somewhat adversarial and by when it came back to council they're in agreement with it because more discussions are having so that's the part at least for me why i'm hearing these questions because it sounds like in the community from the landlord community and the rentor community there's not a whole lot of agreement and so that's where my concerns are so again what i heard you say earlier the timeliness of receiving the voucher payments um how does that handle when would a landlord who is receiving the vouchers when do they get their payments compared to someone who's not possession in possession of a voucher um one advantage of landlords um on section eight they get their payments the first five days of the bond compared to you know it's guaranteed rent okay so what you right and so that happens religiously every month they get within the first few days okay and then what is the frequency and timeliness of the inspections does that only occur when a new tenant comes in when a tenant moves in and we are required by HUD now to inspect the unit once every two years once every three and that's what we do and so again you said within 10 days by per HUD regulations the inspection needs to take place for the move for the move in correct me is that calendar days uh yes okay i know there's been some discussions about projects based vouchers and other vouchers how does this fit into that whole concept and i guess it may be a little bit more of the emphasis from the housing authority about issuing project based vouchers versus these are tenant based vouchers is that the correct terminology uh tenant based vouchers vouchers um you know project based the project is the one that gets the voucher and project and the regular voucher the tenant can go anywhere they choose to move to so it um you know the regular voucher really helps with the deconcentration that's one of the HUD's reg you know once um HUD's um real dream is to for low-income people to move anywhere they want so that they could assimilate to you know different kinds of neighborhoods and where they would want to live but for project base project base is very popular because it helps with the financing but with the project base the project is the one that gets the voucher correct so could an existing unit receive a project based voucher if the landlord is saying this will be i will only rent this unit to someone who is in possession of the vouchers there's still a uh it will not be project base um but it will just be a regular voucher and um if they say they want to continuously rent to a to a voucher holder we will know them right away you know we will just identify them strategy because for me the strategy is getting more people housed and if it's a more efficient strategy by actually let's get the actual units whether it be a project based vouchers that that unit will be rented to someone who is available through your program you know the housing authority project basis vouchers to existing units and for new construction based on that strategy so back to your question if you were a property owner and you wanted to ask for a about convert a voucher from from portable to project base we would be evaluating that request and how how is that decision being made an example is right now the housing authority has a notice of funding availability out through the housing trust and it's paired with offering up to 100 vouchers from our program to be project based and that's going to go through a vetting process with the subcommittee the housing authority and then a full recommendation and then for the city attorney can we compel someone to join the program yes we can preclude someone from discriminating based on a source of income and and subsidy program and as part of that we can require um that they comply with the requirements of that of that program including the inspection and uh this the execution of the contract okay and then i have some questions too i heard you refer to the rapid rehousing fund and i believe we're making reference to it during some council meetings as a housing first fund is that the same fund 534 000 last fiscal year that's correct so for last fiscal year um because my understanding that we actually said during the council meeting it could be used for three things rapid rehousing landlord incentive and risk mitigation if so i'm interested in what where did those dollars go from last fiscal year i'm also interested in an update of this fiscal year how what what has how has that breakdown gone because i heard you say the number of folks that have been housed in the mountain money spent but i'm interested in some updates and when when where would someone either on council or from the public find where that data is yeah um the information has been received our our program manager is off this week but ready to post that onto the website it'll be probably ready in a week or so so and what have we done to market that funding availability so it's been through the homeless service program uh through our homeless outreach service team the housing navigators that are uh uh in samuel jones hall and the family support center so it's i'm interpreting the word marketing it's it's made available to those professionals to help a family lock in with the landlord and part of the cost mayor was to retain a housing locator someone real estate experience rather than social work background and so it started out slow because we had to get that in place um we were looking at a rollover amount until we had the new wave of vista fire i don't know if the council remembers we got the charities help those displaced households that were at risk of being homelessness and so it at that moment when we were presenting the budget we didn't want to go straight to another contract year for that full amount one thought we had as staff is maybe seek proposals from the service community about how many other people can we help in different ways we learned now basically on the new wave of vista fire and recent events of the 43 landlords accepting those 200 people is is that we need to resource that contract and so we're preparing to come back to council with that items as soon as we can yeah so i guess my my point i hear what you're saying and things happen in the community we're reallocating those funds it's kind of like the carrot in the stick because someone interpret this type of an ordinance being more of a stick versus a carrot that we're offering but if no one knows about that carrot i'm kind of struggling how do we measure the effectiveness of what we had done last year to incentivize landlords to accept these vouchers and that's where i'm kind of stuck is okay what are we doing to enhance this program what i was thinking of in the homeless service side the program is running through the service providers if the council wanted to have an incentive program for the vouchers yes we would come back with a way to promote the program and in the condition of things okay and then with the if this ordinance were to pass based on the experience in which you know what would be the metrics that we could use has this program been successful because this was a new there's some new slides here and we've been in different sessions since two o'clock so there's new information about those other options to see okay if we do a b and c these are the results we can anticipate any thoughts on that if this passes as is recommended recommended what would be the results we should anticipate seeing with the use of the vouchers it's an excellent question i don't have a specific response to the metric what we've been talking about internally as staff is watching to see if it has any impact pro or con to our cultivating good relationship with landlords as we've been mentioning but we can certainly give that some thought and return with with some more specificity i guess that's what my concern is based on some of the correspondences we've had with community members some landlord saying again it's just an email if this goes in i'm out of the landlord business which may even reduce the amount of available rooms available you know available to members of our community so again i think metrics that return on the investment if we do this this is the return we should be expecting one of the measurements that we will be able to measure is the increase in list of of our voucher holders you know how many voucher holders list up more after the ordinance pass compared to before the ordinance pass and we can do that like monthly or weekly as to how many landlords are accepting the vouchers so could you just confirm right now how many vouchers issued by the senator's housing authority do people have in their possession but they haven't found we have 120 people looking for housing right now and what is the average length of time that they've had those vouchers um i cannot tell you that right now but i can you know i can email you or bring that back it would just be helpful again and i'm trying to be how successful are these programs if someone's having the average the average um search is four months four months yeah mayor i would add you you heard us use the term lease up rate currently at 86 percent um before the disaster we were at like 96 percent and so we have it's it's a blend of art and science running the program and with escalating rents number of people were trying to help and making sure we can lease them up and so we we i think 86 has been um some of the lowest we've experienced in a while but that sometimes it also depends on the market great okay those are all the questions i had are there any other questions for staff before we open it up to the comments no okay uh again we have i think 22 cards here so you don't have to take all three minutes but i will allow three minutes if you do need translation services we will allow double that time for the translation okay we're up to 26 so first up we'll be dwayne do it followed by keith becker is dwayne in the house no keith becker followed by george uberte good evening um mr guine mentioned the 720 landlords my name is keith becker i am one of those 720 right now i have 10 residents who are receiving either city or county housing assistance three of them have been with me for 20 years we entered into four new hood contracts in the last 12 months and we're in the process of establishing two new tenancies in the next 30 days both of them are going to be within city limits i'm not opposed to the mission i'm not opposed to the purpose of housing assistance but i am opposed to this ordinance the ordinance forces individual housing providers to enter into a contractual relationship with the governmental agency with all the inherent and the predictable difficulties of doing so the city housing authority officials have themselves already recognized the flaws of the system for example their acknowledgement that hud is more prone to hold housing providers liable when issues fall apart than residents even when hud realizes that sometimes the tenants fault that things occur they don't have the system in place you asked about the number of inspections and the inspections that are done every two years yes those inspections are done but the results of the inspection are reported to the owners saying these are things you must do they do not turn around and say dear tenant these are the things that you must do to keep your to keep your voucher i don't want to spend my time drilling into this on a very low basis um it's the ordinance is the ordinance is bad at a very high level the way it's written the incentives are not there for housing providers i hear from those of you on the dais that you are looking at what sort of incentives will make this more palatable the outreach was not there with any sort of significant measure you want to know what sort of incentives will make this more desirable attractive to owners speak to us um the idea that a policy or a possibility would be to say that you have these programs that have a six-month coverage so you write a six-month contract that's not beneficial for anybody you do not want to have a tenant move in it's disruptive to them it's disruptive to the tenants disruptive to the owner to say somebody's going to move in and then six months later just move out that's not itself necessarily a solution it's a complicated situation requiring a very complex solution and you're not ready to vote on this tonight unless there's a lot of changes thank you thank you george uberte followed by shelly clark thank you council members uh i think you know absolutely and unequivocally i want to put my support behind this ordinance right i think it's a step in the right direction okay um no if we're talking about a step in the right direction right we need to talk about where we're coming from okay now council member rogers and and i think one thing i agree with my uh the previous speaker is that we could use more incentives for landlords here uh council member rogers talked about ordinances like these increasing uh you know the lack of discrimination or decreasing the lack of discrimination by about 12 percent right uh on the contrary though miss combs talked about uh you know actual figures in this report it says uh 61 uh percent landlords accept miss combs said that uh denials are much closer to 90 percent right now that's a problem right it's a very very serious problem now a few weeks ago uh we had a meeting with uh midpen housing who's going to build an affordable housing complex and the affordable housing complex that they were going to build uh was a segregated one now we're passing an anti-discrimination ordinance right now the housing complex that they were going to build was segregated across exactly the lines that we're talking about discrimination existing on right here right now discrimination and segregation go hand in hand they have a reinforcing effect okay you know we want to talk about why our landlords denying at a rate by miss combs estimation of as much as 90 percent you know guaranteed HUD money every month why are they doing it right it's very easy to have a negative perception of someone you have absolutely no contact with right that is what segregated so when we're talking about the situation that we're in right now where we have to pass ordinances against discrimination across these lines we need to think about the environment that that discrimination is coming out of right it's coming out of segregated environments now i want to encourage the council not only to pass this ordinance but to pass the clearest and strongest version of it that they possibly can all right this three units or no when people hear about this they need to hear you cannot deny period somebody based on their income period all right and it needs to be clear or you know even with that clarity like with mr miss rogers estimation 12 percent okay let's look at how we can get enforcement of this ordinance at the highest level that we can be right now we talked about bringing civil actions right but let's talk about code enforcement right let's talk about you know like council was talking about who is required to bring the action okay people who are using section eight are not in a position of having too much power they're in a position of having too little power the city needs to put its power behind this ordinance and behind those people shelly clark followed by steve jones hello i'm shelly clark i'm the housing policy attorney at legal aid um our executive director ronnie um asked me to give her apologies that she's not able to be here tonight we're here to ask you to pass this ordinance and offer our support in both educating landlords and tenants about the ordinance and also help enforcing the ordinance we're open to working with any groups and there's a way to come to a compromise and to get this thing done as miss howard mentioned earlier the city of santa rosa set aside 48 vouchers for fire survivor for fire survivors our disaster team told me today that of the vouchers that have been allocated to the most vulnerable of those people they're having a really hard time using them because of this exact problem in the past month we have had three clients who are disabled senior veterans who are unable to use bash vouchers because of this type of of discrimination many other jurisdictions across the state have enacted this type of ordinance um the policy has been litigated and vetted through practice um santa rosa has the opportunity to be a leader in helping sonoma county's most vulnerable residents find and stay in housing please take this step to protect housing choice vouchers let's get this done thank you thank you c jones followed by kathleen kain hello steve jones doing business with steven ken jones real estate uh in 2016 another council passed a just cause eviction ordinance that was horrible for any landlord lady and fortunately the city voters overrule the city council i have a hunch that that might happen this time again because neighbors as well as landlords and ladies don't want to be mandated who will live next door to them thank you kathleen kain followed by sarah seats good evening i want to express my strong support for your passage of this proposed ordinance it is bears repeating and emphasizing that it is already illegal to discriminate in the rental of housing based on source of income it is illegal it has been illegal the what's that the the issue here is the definition of income if section 8 rental payments for example were provided to the tenant who then forwarded the funds onto the landlord it would be income because the money is being paid to the housing authority is paying the money to the landlord on behalf of the tenant it's not income that's smoke and mirrors it is a source of income is the definition it is illegal this program if you pass this ordinance would enable very low income tenants who are on housing authority waiting list for years to actually use the money they're winning the lottery this would allow them to actually get into stable housing housing that's located throughout the community in a concentrated way it's the it's just the model of mixed income housing in our community i do hear there are concerns on the part of rental property owners i admit i was the executive director of the sonoma county housing authority for 12 years so i am a little biased probably but i don't believe that it's a burden to contract with a governmental entity in this case as you've heard staff say the portion of the rent that is paid by the housing authority is guaranteed to be paid on time every month the fact that the tenant now only has to pay what's actually calculated as an affordable portion of their income for rent is a strong it's not a guarantee but it strongly helps ensure that that tenant will be able to pay their rent on time every month as opposed to a rental a renter who is not assisted under the program who's stretching to pay ever-increasing rents they're more likely to cause loss of income to the property owners and i guess with my time left my my final point is yes there are inspections yes HUD does require decent safe and sanitary housing but who among us would really argue that our renters in santa rosa should pay the types of rents we have for housing that isn't decent safe and sanitary i strongly encourage you to pass this ordinance thank you thank you sarah seats followed by kasey epp i'm sarah cites and i've lived in santa rosa for about 30 years and i'm supporting this ordinance is i have a 29 year old daughter with high functioning autism and she's been on the waiting list for the city vouchers for three years and she's hoping that by the time she hits 40 she might get off the list and she's really interested in living on her own so please pass this ordinance to support the low income and disabled citizens of santa rosa like hannah i don't want to tell her that many landlords won't rent to people with vouchers kasey epp followed by myles bergen advising attorney at fair housing advocates of sonoma a division of fair housing advocates of northern california and we've provided fair housing counseling services to renters in the city of santa rosa since july 2016 and many of our clients rely on the use of housing subsidies we also serve the rest of sonoma county with the exception of the incorporated city of petaluma as well as the county of marin and the cities of fairfield and vallejo first we want to commend the city of santa rosa for understanding the importance of affirmatively furthering fair housing and for taking for doing more to try to address and combat and counteract the barriers and impediments to housing choice for protected classes again we wholeheartedly support such a fair housing ordinance and believe it's a crucial step to preserving affordable housing for our most vulnerable populations and those are you know individuals who are protected under federal and state fair housing laws when there's a lack of rental protections for tenants it's members of protected classes who are targeted and who suffer disproportionately particularly racial and ethnic minorities people with disabilities and families with children and virtually all voucher holders fall into at least one of those protected classes our clients in santa rosa often allege discrimination or have a disability related need but because of their fear you know they're they're sometimes too afraid to raise those concerns or allow my office to intervene because they are a housing choice voucher recipient and they know the barriers in finding new housing finding someone willing to accept their voucher particularly after the loss of housing stock sonoma county's own analysis of impediments in 2011 identified a number of barriers for housing particularly those for those who are latinx often latinx families as well as people with disabilities and the complaint based and systemic investigations my organization has conducted over the last several years confirm that those discriminatory practices do exist against individuals who are latinx african-american families with children people with disabilities things like refusing to rent offering higher higher rents worse terms and conditions less availability and given the demographics of voucher holders studies have shown a refusal to section to accept section eight as often a pretext for discrimination based on those factors you know i'm not sure what problem a neighbor would have with knowing a neighbor of theirs was a voucher holder if there wasn't some other pretextual issue there i will say that my organization recently conducted a systemic investigation in all three counties looking at race discrimination for voucher holders so we had a caucasian voucher holder an african-american voucher holder we saw how they were treated i only have a few seconds left so i will just say our testing excluded from consideration properties that said no section eight or yes section eight so these are all neutral properties only 20% of those in the county of sonoma were willing to consider a voucher holder so the problem is much greater than we realize thank you for taking the step miles bergen followed by albie manuel thank you mayor schwaedalman members of the council i'm miles bergen from southwest santa reza i stand today in strong support of the non-discrimination ordinance but i think at the end of the day our goal with this ordinance should be to make our housing choice voucher program as efficient and effective as possible the fact is the status quo is neither effective nor efficient currently in the city of santa rosa voucher holders have an eight to ten year wait before they can claim their voucher and then once they're looking for housing the majority of units don't allow those vouchers to be redeemed in fact in the entire county of sonoma according to the cdc only 300 units per year turnover that accept vouchers meanwhile more than 5% of the county's population well over 25 000 people are on the waitlist at the county level at the same time we have hundreds of homeless veterans on our streets who would otherwise benefit from va supportive housing vouchers councilmember combs mentioned the housing and urban development study and that that HUD study shows that ordinances work on the high end of the five housing markets they looked at there was a 78 percent decline rate for voucher holders yet on the low end in the district of columbia where there is a non-discrimination ordinance that number was 15 percent in fact the study found that legal protections for voucher holders improves housing choice voucher program outcomes and merits further consideration if the trump administration says that non-discrimination ordinances affect outcomes and improve outcomes that should be no-brainer for us here in sonoma county it's important to do to pass an ordinance like this soon but it's also important to pass it right and i think there are some questions that still need to be answered about this ordinance councilmember combs mentioned possibly delaying implementation or talking about how long implementation should take i wouldn't be opposed to extending that period of implementation for up to 120 days from 30 days the reason being if we have landlords in our community that are threatening to take their their properties off the market and a longer period of implementation with more focused outreach to them could preach the benefits of a section 8 program and other housing voucher programs and prevent the unit from being removed from the market additionally we still have to look at the issue of air of air bnbs and vrbos the worst case scenario that vice mayor rogers mentioned is that the city of santa rosa turns into the place where i grew up in unincorporated sonoma county where well over 30 percent of the housing in my neighborhood is now air bnbs and vrbos or at least the neighborhood where i grew up which has a significant impact on local businesses on local schools due to declining enrollment we need to make sure that whatever we do today is effective and efficient but at the end of the day we have to do something because the status quo simply isn't good enough thank you very much albie manuel uh followed by iran evans thank you city council for allowing us to address the issue of chapter adding chapter 10 to 46 to the center of the city called prohibiting rental housing discrimination based on source of income including housing choice vouchers known as section 8 my name is albie manuel i'm a native on a fixed income and a renter six years ago i acquired housing at a senior complex and at that time the rent was 50 percent of my income five years later that complex increased the rent to double that amount around that same time i got noticed when city um housing that i was approved for a housing voucher however my place on that waiting list was 20 000 they were currently serving a waiting list of 7 000 i knew i had to find a new rental and soon or be homeless i started searching the press democrat and internet for a rental i saw several houses for rent which stated section 8 need not apply i never gave it much thought at the time because i wasn't looking for a house however now i realize the implications of that requirement i realize how unfair that is to families needing safe and affordable housing i became more sensitive and aware of the needs of my brothers and sisters that was why i became an active member of north bay organizing project and now i'm a member of the first sonoma county tenants union having affordable safe secure home to go to is a basic right it is a human right we are not products or commodities we are human beings who have hopes and dreams for ourselves our children and grandchildren i spoke to a good friend who is a landlord of several units and asked him how he felt about housing vouchers he immediately said he would absolutely accept your housing voucher because he knew there was a need for homes in our community kugana kasa chik saw igloo tp cabin trailer apartment house all expressions of what we call home it should be a place of safety refuge and security a place to make plans to have celebrations and create memories discrimination of any type is unacceptable i ask that you support adding chapter 10 dash 46 to the city council or to the city code thank you thank you herring evans hauled by thea hartman good evening i thank you very much for your time and allowing us to come and speak with you um i do appreciate thank you hello mayor and city council members um i want to tell you that i live at vintage park senior apartment and i am in my 70s and i'm a cancer survivor i worked hard all my life with corporate job i raised three children mostly by myself and now i have seven grandchildren and a great grandchild um my life is full but i have disabilities and i do have to um i use hud section eight and without it i don't know how i'd manage sometimes um hard for me to go to work with arthritic hands i can't do the computer work i used to do um i do appreciate the housing assistance i have it's very important that's why i'm here hard for me to come up and speak but i really want you to understand how important it is to all of us that have housing that have had how it means to us that we can have a decent place to live and have a portion of our rent played so we can actually live people who don't have hud i have a horrible time living on nothing just to pay rents even in a place like we live that has that has the rents are low so i want you to seriously consider letting us keep hud even though it may not be a perfect situation for a lot of people but we do need it and let's work the bugs out of it whatever they as we've heard tonight some that are and let's work it out so we can keep this and make it better if we need to but that's important to me and important to any of us that are trying to struggle with rentals so i do appreciate your time thank you very much thank you fia hartman followed by brian ling hello uh honorable city council members appreciated city council members thank you considering this this ordinance which is up in front of you i am not i i'm not a unlike my dear friend i mean i'm not a section eight recipient yet i'm on a list and those lists are long it takes a long time as people have said it's would be better for me and it would be better for our landlords um and thank goodness the place we live they they don't discriminate in fact i think they prefer it and the reason will be better is because i would pay a third of my income instead half of my income for rent that would be better for me for the landlord it would be better because they would get a the whole fair how fair rental market amount every month and now they only get my reduced rent so it's better for them too so it's better on both sides and it's better for the community too because if i had section eight then i would have more money disposable income to spend it would go back into the community and you just multiply that by a lot of people so i don't it's discriminating against people for having section eight makes very little sense i you before i moved where i am i lived with a man who was a landlord in oakland and he preferred section eight people he wanted section eight because he knew he'd always get his rent and even if they ended up not paying their portion he got the other 80 percent or whatever it was and you know it came in and he could he just knew it would just keep coming so he preferred it and i think that there's there's i'm wondering why i i know there's a few little hurdles but it can't be as much of a hurdle as uh trying to worry about whether the tenants going to have the money um i i suspect that this has been mentioned that there is a lot of racism and classism behind any discrimination that occurs and you know it's for the source of income but it's really uh directed at certain groups and these days uh what's happening in the federal government there are lots of just it's in the news right now laws that would discriminate further against immigrants who against getting any assistance so legal immigrants immigrants so i just really think santa rosa should take the lead and be strong in resisting that kind of discrimination thank you ryan ling followed by michael stanford ling sonoma county alliance executive director i do not our group does not represent a particular landlord or tenant group uh although we continue to be advocates for all types of housing supply projects and that leads to our opposition of this one uh this ordinance by itself is not going to encourage or incentivize any landlord to invest more properties for the rental pool the rental pool will only go down the way to get more people housed the way to get the prices down is to increase the supply it's fundamental economics and we'll continue to fight for that at all these hearings we've got to do common sense ordinances that increase the supply this will only decrease it understand the merits both sides mayor you mentioned maybe there'll be a future compromise that can work maybe there can maybe there can't i think everyone in this room hopes there will be but if there can't we've got to go with what we have despite the the accusation status quo can't do status quo is better than the supply of housing going down which is the potential result of this we feel strongly that the unintended consequences of this are going to be overwhelming tenants will not benefit from this landlords are not going to benefit from this lawyers will benefit from this and at the end that only does the lawyers good so we continue to we will be back here every time to can encourage you to increase the supply any way you can there's numerous ways to do it we'll be there to support everyone here to do that but these type of ordinance that could potentially decrease the supply we will continue to oppose thank you thank you michael stanford followed by btrees kamacho good afternoon i'm michael stanford chair of the committee on political education for service employees in a national union local 1021 here in sonoma county and we are against any discrimination of any form or venue i'm here today to speak on behalf of my fellow members and their families who are renters and supported the proposed ordinance on expanding household opportunities for those who have housing choice vouchers last month i was told by a fellow member that a family member of hers who had a voucher couldn't get a place to live and was forced to forfeit the voucher for myself as a methodist christian we need a morally just economy and we need to have morally just ordinances such as this proposed ordinance that helps least of us thank you you thank you btrees kamacho followed by jennifer colman alcalde members del consejo muchos de ustedes me conocen mi nombre es Beatriz kamacho organizadora de inquilinos con el proyecto organizativo de norte de la bahía esta tarde estoy ante ustedes como Beatriz kamacho inquilina de toda la vida de santa rosa ahorita rento en el distrito tres y esto es un asunto personal para mí mayor city council members many of you know me my name is Beatriz kamacho tenant organizer with the north bay organizing project this evening i stand before you as Beatriz kamacho lifelong santa rosa tenant currently renting in district three and this is a personal issue for me i grew up in what is now district one although i grew up in an extremely low income family my parents always made sure that my brother and i had what we needed to survive they did the best they could with what they had i grew up in a beautiful three bedroom home where i remember always feeling safe the only reason my family was able to live in this beautiful home was because we were on section eight i remember the various housing inspections and in-office meetings that i or my brother would provide english to spanish or spanish to english interpretation for not always fully understanding what it meant but knowing that we had to do a good job because staying on section eight and in our home depended on it during our time on section eight we had a landlord that was like family someone who would come over for dinner because he would love my mom's enchiladas we were never scared to call when something needed fixing we were lucky my family was lucky to have found a beautiful home that accepted us as tenants on section eight i don't know what we would have done if we weren't able to find a place that accepted the only way in which my parents were able to afford a home if my landlord of about 20 years discriminated against my parents because they were voucher holders my reality our reality of living in a safe and beautiful home would have been drastically different this is an anti-discrimination ordinance which means that what is currently happening is blatant discrimination those who have expressed opposition to this ordinance appear to be in favor of discrimination think about the impact that this will have on so many tenants who are simply looking for a place to call home please as you'll make this important decision stand up for the tenants in your city and take a stance against discrimination i urge you on behalf of the countless individuals that couldn't be here this evening and depend on housing choice vouchers to please pass a source of income anti-discrimination ordinance the city needs this tenants need this and we need this gracias thank you jennifer colman followed by deborah tovaris name is jennifer colman i am uniquely uh qualified i think to have a perspective on this issue because i'm a renter and i'm a landlord um i i take a lot of pride in what i do um i want to keep my renters happy and i want to provide them with excellence in housing um when i screen people i take all applicants i i don't deny any application based on income what i do is i have to use my best judgment at every turn i have a business partner whom i have to run my decisions by so when i look at an applicant i take them on merit based on their credit their source of income it could be lottery winnings hud vouchers could be retirement savings i used to look at their past rental history background what their needs are with pets if it collaborates with what i can allow for pets um i i'm against section eight housing at this point in time because i do agree with my colleagues at cAA and some of the people that have spoken here that i think it's not streamlined and it's not properly manned in a manner that safeguards the interest of the stakeholders to the debate that is the renters and the landlords collectively who stand to lose on both sides i think the system needs refinement section eight i do believe have delays and potentially uh getting our units approved due to bureaucratic systems ill equipped to process section eight landlords um potentially months of inspections as other people have said what really scares me uh are the risk uh some of the things that scare me are the risk of unlimited co-tenants that can climb on board now maybe i'm ignorant to this so perhaps i need to learn more but that really frightens me because i don't have any control over my choices over my property and that feels like discrimination reversed uh problematic eviction rules for voucher holders again i'm confused about that and that that has ambiguity and it scares me as a landowner um compliance challenges also frighten me to date we've let go of three properties that i've worked so hard for my entire life i make 27 000 a year and i've scraped hard for everything that i've gotten and i have to pay the mortgage or just like i pay my landlord so it scares me when i think i'm going to be on the tarmac for a while waiting for approval and i still have to pay my mortgage it frightens me to death um lastly i'm just really not financially prepared to risk the problems that i believe still remain with section eight um i do feel for both both sides of the situation and i don't want discrimination to happen um i've had the joy of being able to rent to um somebody who came to me uh with the great and rancheria a year and a half ago and i worked hard with her to get her approved because her credit was less than adequate but i worked with her and we made it over that hurdle thank you thank you Debra Tavares followed by paul carol hi thank you very much Debra Tavares really saddens me that we have to see an ordinance that has rental housing discrimination because i think as a nation that's being used to really cause increased divide i think when we look at the bottom line we're all human we're all looking to be safe and in a safe place but i heard a lot of conversation today about incentivizing landlords i would say let's also incentivize tenants equally and what i'm bringing up is how you could do that because i don't think the tenants nor the landlords are aware of the climate action plans that you have approved and those climate action plans are going to catastrophically increase cost of housing period for both tenants and landlords when everyone becomes aware of the required retrofitting and the energy home scores that are already occurring in portland and in los angeles and in pasadena people will become inherently aware this is not about discrimination between housing this is about policy discrimination against everyone because when you look at housing and the requirements to bring down greenhouse gas emissions where owners are going to be required required or they're going to have substandard housing that will be placed on a substandard housing list no financing available and more difficulties to get off of a substandard energy list that means retrofitting every aspect of older buildings not that that is an opposed situation but landlords will have to take on more loans through pace pace are predatory loans put together by rockerfeller and pace loans which do cover in retrofitting are going to cost landlords and tenants untold amount of housing increases even if the landlords want to keep their housing down to retrofit to the requirements that are in the climate action plans that you have approved for everyone here whether they know it or not is going to go beyond discrimination for just tenants and versus landlords this is a city discrimination against everyone and i would encourage everyone here to please type in santa rosa climate action plans and understand how each and every one of you are going to be affected whether you're paying rent or whether you're paying a mortgage this is going to turn ownership and rentals on their ear as what is now currently happening in oregon and the energy scores are real thank you paul carol followed by isabel fisher paul carol 31 year resident of santa rosa um when racial discrimination was outlawed in relation to housing business interests cried foul they said the government was trying to control their property when the ada came out businesses cried foul again saying the government was trying to control their property um there comes a time when especially in sonoma county when there are thousands of people who will never ever enjoy the notion or sometimes a burden of owning property they're going to be tenants their entire life and the provision of rental housing so far has been viewed as a simple economic issue it's something that people get into to have a return they never have to accept the consequences that it's a human issue because a provision of homes even rental homes is a human issue and it's something that landlords which is kind of an archaic term in a sense need to understand is they have a social responsibility at that point they have entered into the social compact and in doing so they should not be able to discriminate against anyone you know they should again check the references of the people that come to them make sure they have a good rental his his history i worked in section eight for 12 years we responded to landlords as quickly as possible i currently manage you know some units that we entered into a section eight lease with the city of santa rosa they were out we got the request for lease approval in like on a wednesday they came out the following wednesday the specious argument that there's three month delays are just are just those types of our arguments it doesn't happen we need to move beyond the concept that property a person's home can easily be taken from them or denied them landlords need to understand that they have a social responsibility or they should not be landlords you know and the threat that they're going to take their unit off the market well maybe they shouldn't be in the market and those same threats were made back when racial discrimination came up and when the ADA came out thank you isabel fisher followed by victoria yanez good evening council members my name is isabel fisher and i'm a tenant living in santa rosa i'm also a member of north bay organizing projects housing task force i'm here tonight in strong support of the source of income anti-discrimination ordinance i grew up here in sonoma county and when i came back here after college with lots of student loans to pay off i moved back in with my parents as so many young people around here have had to do i thought that this would be very temporary and was looking forward to moving into a place of my own as it turned out even after getting a good job with quite a good income i still had to live with my folks for two years before i saved enough to even start considering moving out as i looked through numerous craigslist postings for apartments not only were the rents almost always too high for my income but about half or more of all the descriptions i saw read no section eight no section eight no section eight now i was lucky and privileged enough to eventually secure an apartment that was doable for my income but as i was looking at all those listings i kept thinking to myself god if i was on section eight or had a housing choice voucher i would have an incredibly hard time finding a place to live it's important to me that you pass this ordinance because nearly every young post college person i know who moved here for work after college or returned home to this county or city after college is already in debt from student loans how are we supposed to live in this beautiful place we grew up in as independent people contributing to our community when rents are unreasonable and we are already in debt if landlords can discriminate based on how a person pays for housing then how are low income or fixed income people on housing choice vouchers supposed to find housing when the assistance they receive is so widely not accepted 90% as councilmember combs said i can imagine that it makes it extremely difficult and i want to echo what another speaker said earlier that it's already illegal in the state of california to discriminate against the tenant for certain source of income like it's illegal to discriminate if they're on social security so i don't really see how this situation we're dealing with tonight is that much different so i think that opposition to this proposed ordinance and not passing it is allowing discrimination against low income and fixed income people to continue happening we need to ensure that folks get housed especially the most vulnerable among us please pass this ordinance because shelter is a human right and a home is a human right the way that you pay your rent should not dictate whether or not you get a home thank you very much victoria yanez followed by thomas ells is victoria still here no thomas ells followed by alex coffin thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for addressing this particular issue victoria had an emergency as i understand so she had to leave so we understand that hud pays by the fifth uh mortgage holders are paid by the 15th usually by fanny may and freddy mac so uh on a pass through if you're a mortgage holder uh that means what happens is everybody's mortgage uh is sold to fanny and freddy if you didn't know that everybody's mortgage is sold to fanny may and freddy mac and uh so the person who owns your mortgage no longer the bank and that person that owns your mortgage is paid on the 15th they're never paid before that so if you're paid by hud on the fifth that's gravy and people think fanny may and freddy mac is is a government agency an entity it's quasi-governmental hud is a government entity when you're guaranteed your payment you are 100 guaranteed um and the numbers sound different because if you pay 30 percent of your income to the mortgage or to the to the rent uh it sometimes is only 20 percent of the rent because people make less than the total rent so they couldn't even afford it if they paid 100 percent of their income to the rent uh that's that situation discrimination is dehumanizing and that's why it was changed from you know alimony and child support made the families would depend on children that was called income and so they said you cannot discriminate on the basis of income but hud is not income because it's not going to be taxed uh that amount it's not going to be taxed so it's not income and therefore not discriminatory so um cathleen kane is absolutely right and i want to point out that we are a distressed community it was cathleen kane who mentioned 80 percent of sonoma countyans pay more than 50 percent for their rent and transportation it's the highest in the country there is no other place that's higher in the country new york cities does not pay more of their income for rent and transportation than we do san francisco does not pay more for their rent and transportation than we do um san amonica was one of the earliest adopters of rent controls and various things with high density housing they only have 92 000 people we have twice that many people we're twice as big a city as san amonica and we should do better who are the landlords that we're talking about multi-family uh housing really uh and why would they resist inspections are they slum lords do we remember uh the slum lord in chicago uh the famous one who went to jail uh the point is they should not resist those inspections thank you thomas alex kauflin uh followed by tom amato good evening mr. mayor and members of the council my name is alex kauflin i'm with the california parliament association thank you for the opportunity to be here this evening and to comment on this item um i am here tonight in opposition of this ordinance um we believe the way this ordinance is drafted um it is a costly mandate that fails to provide additional funds necessary for local agencies to administer the program there's also no incentive or risk mitigation measures for landlords who actually participate in this program and there are quite a few many of them are members of caa so to stand here and also hear the notion that we have landlords that do not understand the significance of this pro of this program is a little bit disheartening we may disagree on how to implement it but i do think there is a place for this program um and i'm also sort of questioning the notion of stakeholder engagement and i say this um and with all the respect to your staff i think it's frustrating to to be handed a document that is pretty much 99 done um which is then presented to city council and we're then told that there was stakeholder engagement i am really grateful for the opportunity to discuss some of the issues that we saw in the ordinance but quite frankly most of them were not addressed we continue to have these problems um this is why i am opposing this ordinance i would love to be here to say you know we worked with staff we had concerns but we were able to work them out and we're going to do our best because the one thing that's crucial i think for everyone to understand here and even your own assistant city attorney mentioned this it's very hard to implement this ordinance and the only way it works is if both sides actually agree to work together and sit down and talk about how to draft this in such a way that it's equitable for tenants and for landlords and there was a comment made that if you are here opposing this ordinance that you're discriminating i could not agree with that more and it's that particular rhetoric that quite frankly prevents us from really having a productive discussion of how this policy should look for it to be really successful because if it is successful it will work for the tenants and the landlords and for the city so i am happy to continue this discussion to work with the city to offer c a as a resource and continue to move forward but we have to have an honest discussion thank you very much thank you tom amato followed by al liner i'm tom amato and i'm the chair of the okman democratic club and right before coming over here our leadership team endorsed that we would ask the city council to approve this ordinance because we think it is a good ordinance which is good for our city i'm also an active leader in the north bay organizing project and i salute their effort to organize tenants for me this is a fairly personal issue i have three relatives that have profited or have survived is a better way to put it because of vouchers one is a formal art former air force vet who has mental health issues the second is a woman who has been who worked for a good part of her life but then has serious physical health issues and the third is a woman who raised her family worked for the government retired at age 70 and still was low income that happens to a lot of women in our society and is one of the reasons where there's a need for this ordinance vouchers all of them have profited or profitors again survive because of vouchers one of the things i want to address my family when i was a kid we did rent property and i'm aware we've set up a market economy which gives landlords the right to rent their property and a right to make money and a lot of cases a right to make a lot of money but with that right also does come responsibility it is a social contract with our community and renters are both stakeholders and they also have a right to a decent place to live and it's up to governmental agencies such as city councils to balance that out to make it fair moving this type of ordinance forward does make it much more fair and and helps landlords to be accountable not the good landlords already are but helps the landlords who want to make money but don't want to help the whole community it holds them accountable to the community need so again i would recommend that you approve this and move it forward so thank you thank you outliner followed by heather dunn can you hear me there you go um first of all thank you for letting me speak i would like to remind the council that this ordinance is the first very very small step in a very big looming housing crisis this is only a small step um one of the things you know santa rosa used to have a motto the city built for living do you remember that that's no longer the case it's just not true a one bedroom apartment or house costs around 15 to 1700 dollars a month a two bedroom one bath minimum 2300 dollars a month we know that renters make about 40 000 a year or less do the math it doesn't work it can't work this is not the city built for living anymore unless you make 70 000 a year it just doesn't work out that way to all the owners who i get that you don't want to be under the thumb of government i totally understand that and the reason i understand that is because i have been a renter since i returned from vietnam and i have been under the thumb of landlords the my entire adult life so i do not understand what it's like to be under the thumb of somebody else my rent goes up 10 percent a year since the fire it's just just natural i live on a fixed income and i'm just an example of everybody else that rents this needs to be the city built for living for everyone once again it is just not that way i truly truly support this and and i feel bad for those people that don't because you're not understanding what it's like to be a renter thank you heather done followed by ben terry hi my name is heather done i am the supervisor for the head bash program we partner with housing to house our homeless vets i just want to speak on behalf of them because that's where my experience is and this isn't about forcing people to rent to to to my veterans it's about giving them an opportunity just to apply and that's that's where i really want you to hear is that i just want them to be given an opportunity to just apply like everybody else we have a housing specialist works 40 hours a week they comb through craigslist they comb through all kinds of things to try to find available units he maybe has three a week for our 35 veterans currently trying to locate housing so we have 35 veterans with vouchers currently three viable options for them to actually apply so it's an absolute crisis i've been doing this for eight years when we first started our turnaround time was 30 days 30 days from admission into the program to housing that's eight years ago now we're like 120 days maybe 160 nationally we should be at 90 days that is our requirement we have to house them in 90 days of admission we don't meet that standard um nationally we are one of 10 worst housing markets how do i know that because we applied for assistance to help us find housing to low to house our veterans and we were granted the assistance and the assistance couldn't even help us that's how horrible it is to try to house these veterans so all i want is an opportunity for them to apply you know you can do all of your background checks you can do all of the stuff that you do with you know on a regular basis for our veterans i just want them given the opportunity to give you an application that's it thank you thank you ben terry followed by daisy pistilin good evening i have a couple questions i'd like to ask the city council and the housing authority why didn't you reach out to the black community just in case you don't know it they're all black community here the black churches different organization a region community the nacp the 100 black men's and i can name a lots more i don't think you guys are ready to take a photo on this but i wish you would go back and revisit those peoples that you really need to talk to thank you thank you daisy pistilin followed by clayton angstrom hi daisy pistilin um i just want to share that for most of you this isn't a personal issue and you're listening to stats and figures and you're hearing from staff on what the numbers are but for those of us for whom it's a personal issue this is really a crisis my sister lives on section eight and she's disabled and i've gone through this with her and i've seen she sat waiting to get a section eight voucher for something like four or five years living in an moldy place she couldn't afford to move out of when she got the voucher there weren't places available she was luckily that landlord accepted her voucher and was able to keep her there but it gave her health problems and it wasn't until one of these amazing affordable units opened up several years later that she was able to move out of there i've sat with her and looked through rental ads and seen them say how few will accept section eight vouchers and even when they do accept them how hard it is as someone who's disabled or differently abled or has any sort of thing that make you seem different from this society to be accepted into one of those units this is one small piece of making acceptability higher for these people giving them a chance to get into a home that any of you sitting there has that allows you to be healthy that allows you to live a life that you don't have to worry about your housing this is completely it's just complete discrimination against people who had no choice these people have sometimes served our nation and we now discriminate against them because of things that befell them and i really hope that you guys think if you were in this situation how much you would hope that the people who represent you in this city would support you in this and give you the opportunity to apply for any available housing and have the opportunity to potentially be accepted thank you thank you clayton angstrom followed by leneita marie johnson marsh well home members of the council thanks for indulging us here tonight um i've been a landlord for 39 years um of those 39 years probably 30 of it i had a voucher person or persons in different rentals that i do have my first rental i bought when i was 20 years old i was paying 44 of my income not to live in the house it was a rental that was in 1980 i was paying 12 and a quarter percent interest the only what i'm trying to express to you is Sonoma county has always been expensive and it's you got to dig deep it hurts it really does hurt and this is not an anti-discrimination policy you're trying to establish you're trying to force landlords to take a volunteer program and make it mandatory let me express to you some of the differences expressed by the people your staff it's going to be a minimum of 20 they say 20 days is their average if the property needs any kind of work and repairs done to it you got to get a contractor in there go through get the repairs done at 1500 a month 50 bucks a day 20 days instantly the delay is going to come as reported by staff 20 days is a thousand dollars cost to get into the voucher program so let me just say that you're not comparing apples to apples it's a different type of program also the voucher program has a 90 day to vacate the unit whereas state law is 60 days so there are differences and to say the thing that this is just about discrimination it's not i said i've always been available for vouchers the last rental i had i got an email from the veterans group saying wanting to know if i would take a voucher my immediate response to them was of course i will what do you got i would love to instantly be able to have stand people standing in line that would be the right people for my properties that would be wonderful to have not every property not every tenant fits every property every single property is as unique as the human beings that want to occupy it how many vehicles they have how many people are in their party just parking issues there are so many different issues that not everything is going to ever be a perfect fit and to make it punitive on the landlords i'll just say that threatening owners and managers will not place more voucher holders but it will create a bad environment for both parties if i have anything other here yeah the best tenant is not qualified just by their income and i will say now i do have a 20-year tenant in one of my properties that is a disabled vietnam vet he came with a voucher he does not he lost his voucher he's still there thank you lenea mary johnson followed by erin george good evening everyone council members staff i every time i come in here about any kind of issue my first thought is how come there's nobody over there that looks like me it just it just befuddles me the closest it's my buddy down there mr oliveris thanks for doing your best to represent however this issue about housing is almost laughable you can either afford to live here or not it's not a lot of middle ground you're either married to somebody who can afford to live here or you're not is a discrimination issue and it's an issue that needs to be addressed and i am so happy because every time i come down here for something i'm the only one with a tan so mr terry thank you for being here sir and i so respect you for everything you do in our community and young lady i don't know who you are but i'm glad to see you here too but nevertheless the bottom line is why should we have to come to the city about an issue that's economic it's not political it's being politicized but the bottom line is it's about economics i went to college i'm from the east coast i'm the oldest of nine so i have to be the perfect example for my siblings that's been the story of my life get an education get an education get an education that's that one if you're a girl get married i didn't do that nevertheless i had offers right now what i'm living about is that we're even having this conversation it's clear something needs to change and it needs to change now i'm facing becoming homeless because my landlord raised my rent knowing full well that i couldn't afford it i didn't ask to be disabled i got a brain tumor i didn't ask to live in a place that i couldn't afford or at least i didn't think it would become that and i urge you to strongly consider this ordinance on behalf of the people who deserve it otherwise it is just plain discrimination in plain english thank you thank you erin george thank you again for having all of us here not only the city council but also for all the community members that came out because this is really where changes start i'd like to think um first i wanted to make sure that we were recognizing the difference between housing vouchers that are provided through HUD and the discrimination that is apparently going on to totally separate issues that are going on um i see many people that i know that have benefited greatly from having HUD vouchers and many that are still waiting to be on that list i've had the what i will call unique opportunity of owning a three-unit building in the unincorporated area of sinoma for 10 years in that 10 years i had one person call asking if i would accept her as a voucher recipient and i said absolutely and i'll tell you the truth it was a really great program i actually felt as if i had won the jackpot um during the time that she was there the stove was working fine the refrigerator was working fine both were upgraded i think that through the work of our programs that we have available here at the county maybe through pgenie if i remember correctly it was great why is this word not getting out why are we only hitting heads with the discrimination issue that's out there because i did not see that i still i sold my building let's say my mother and i each put down 60 000 every single penny that i had to beg borrow and steal in order to buy that unit sold it 10 years later and i was able to put 45 000 in my back pocket not one month did i take one penny out of that house and i still have great joy when i run into the people that i had the opportunity to provide housing to um i have also had the great privilege of being a real estate agent in sinoma county since 2002 and have the benefit of not only talking to tenants but also landlords and i can tell you that having the strict restrictions put on landlords will absolutely affect the supply that we have i think it would be a really interesting to statistic to look to the other counties and jurisdictions that have implemented do we really want to look like san francisco do we really want to look like burkley is that the type of housing that we want to offer i'd like to think that we could go back to the drawing board and create a real true win-win because i've seen it happen and i know we can do it thank you those are all the cards we have deem any others that's it right um i will bring it back to council and councilmember combs you have this item if we can start with the motion we can have additional conversations well i actually before we go there are there any questions of staff based on any comments from the public go ahead okay um was there somebody who had a card who didn't get called is that lisa go ahead lisa lisa badden for government affairs director north face association of realtors i will keep it quick first and foremost thank you for your work on this obviously um this is a complicated issue a very heated complicated issue i have been homeless and a homeowner and it is legitimately complicated i just wanted to be very very clear we represent 3600 professionals that own buy manage sell and rent property we saw this proposal on uh friday morning so we stand ready and engaged ready to deliver to you some of the real complex complexities of a proposal like this the programs that exist in san francisco and in marin and in the 15 other jurisdictions that we were able to find kind of today all focus on trying to mitigate the same concerns for landlords and so i do think that there are legitimate concerns many owners there is this idea that owners can just kind of shoulder whatever kind of cost come their way because they own property and it's a very different reality in the day-to-day the vast majority of your owners here in santa rosa are small private owners as proposed this ordinance would include my mother's rental and single family homes and everything across the board it sounds like future discussions are on the table and we are here and prepared and happy to be there thank you thank you lisa miss commas thank you um i'm gonna make the motion uh i'd like to make a few comments with it um it it's certainly i i fully support this ordinance um i'm delighted that staff has brought it forward to us um i think we've had what is functionally a good study session i think we have some points that we would feel better um if we could have deeper conversation with the community and with council about those those key points you brought us some questions i think we brought some questions and the community has also brought some questions so i'm going to modify the motion asking that instead of dealing with the ordinance today that we give folks some time to read it and to do more outreach uh so the motion i'd like to make is that we bring this back on a date certain and that that date be september 10th of 2019 i need a second second thank you i i want to be really clear i support this i hope we will see you again on september 10th i hope that between now and then many conversations have occurred um it it sounds to me as if stakeholders need some time with this and some time to have conversation i do not anticipate that we can get to a complete everybody's delighted state i don't think win-win is completely possible all the time but i think we can do a lot to make what we're doing work better for renters and for landlords um so i guess i'm suggesting that we talk to share uh more stakeholders including veterans groups fair housing groups the apartment association uh north bay north bay organ you're on my list north bay organizing project the black community NAACP um i heard churches uh i think i think staff heard that there are some people to reach out to to still talk i think anybody who came here today uh who are with groups we should be reaching out to them um i think we have a strong interest in the risk mitigation pool and i think it needs to come with um maybe others will make a statement up or down about whether we want that to come back with but i think details about that options with regard to data implementation um uh that's included um i have a strong interest in the security deposit assistance um i don't know if we have time to do the rbo rbnb conversation uh we do not have time to do that um i i would like to ask when does the rental inspection program come forward is that scheduled on our future dates we already have a discussion of a rental inspection so it's it's on september 24th okay so close enough that if we came back on september 10th uh any rental inspection issues we can discuss the next time at the 25th so so my only concern is with the with the timetable as it's laid out we would we would like to strive for the 10th but there's a there's a lot of folks that want to be touched in this conversation well that's four weeks well it's four weeks but there's a major holiday in there and there is scheduling and getting things posted so i will say uh what we would like to do is is outreach to folks and get that conversation set but to your point council member we have that other item coming at the same time we would like to strive for the 10th i just want to make sure that you know there's going to be a huge effort here to make some outreach there are going to be some impacts to potentially other items so and i don't know what that is but i want to just make that apparent that that this is a community outreach effort coupled with a stakeholder specific outreach effort and we will make it for the 10th we've got the the item on the 24th but there may be some other things that are going to get a little bit delayed out of that conversation i'm feeling pretty strong about the 10th but i understand if it needs to come back on the 24th and i will listen to my colleagues regarding a change from the 10th if they so desire but i don't want us to leave here without a date certain i'm comfortable with that i just would say that that if we move to the 10th and the the outreach list that you've provided i'm happy to have staff start working on that but i want to have a legitimate chance to crack that open for staff i would also appreciate it if i can recall having a one-on-one meeting with a staff member regarding the rearrangement of the leaves on our Santa Rosa symbol i mean it was the little flower with three leaves and they were talking about rearranging the leaves it concerns me when we have something this important and i didn't get a one-on-one conversation with staff so if there can be some kind of communication with council members about the choices and so that we can more fully understand what the option so so again if that's going to be the direction i would really lean toward the 24th because you understand we have a 10 day posting requirement too in here as well i mean i'm not i'm not trying to be difficult it's just or the consequences if it's going to leave the 10th you're going to leave it to me to look at the other work plan items and there may be some consequence i'm happy to have time on the 24th to bring this with the rental inspection program we will make time to do it there as i said i may have to do some rearranging but if it's going to be the 10th what i'll need is some permission to what i'm asking for is if you're going to move it to the 10th which i will do i may have to do some other rearranging with staff workloads if we do it on the 24th and we bring it with the rental inspection program it's very similar groups of people that would be reached out to can we include the outreach for that so that's that's one of the reasons i'm pointing to that is that we could we could work on a plan that captures some community engagement efforts around that particular enterprise so that's that's why i'm saying we can i think that pairing i would ask mr oliveris says my second are you comfortable with the 24th and i'm very comfortable with the 24th i don't want to rush it through the next four weeks i don't want it to look like we're just going through the motions of engaging people i want true engagement in this process if we're going to do that so i i think i don't want to hear from staff on what is reasonable to make that happen well again i think that to me we can we can partner up our efforts on some of these these discussion items and so that would give us some clarity about and pathways that may have already been established so so that would be comfortable for us to to move it to the 24th and pair these engagements and make sure we're doing them and we'll also know about the bill by that time right sb 239 wasn't it well it sounds it sounds like based on councilmember rogers that will have a better better idea how that's progressing and i will be clear that i continue to have the desire that we craft this in such a way that it suits santa rosa the best way santa rosa means appreciating the legislature's work but i think we need to have a look at it for ourselves so i'll change my with the permission of my second change the date to the 24th as a date certain yes thank you okay so that's the motion and we've got a second so any additional comments we've heard from his comas miss phleming thank you um i gotta say i think that this was not an inevitable outcome for tonight i think that had we done the type of community outreach that we see out of other departments that we would have come to at least a better process where and we would have had a study session and then we would have had a vote and i find this frankly unacceptable to have this larger piece of impactful um policy not i mean you heard from all the groups that didn't feel heard from and i would add you know that the council on aging and maybe the commission on the status women that the people on both sides of this needed to be outreach typically in these types of situations departments will come to individual council members i'm so frustrated that there was the lack of community outreach the lack of data and the lack of clarity around some really basic questions that i would expect to hear from in this situation i i stand with my fellow council members who have said that they want a risk mitigation pool to be brought forward with this i definitely understand that we cannot address um vrbo's and in this timeline and but there are also issues around adus and loopholes in there and um of course the inspection program so i i'm going to support the motion on the table and just please know that i appreciate all of your work but i know that we can do better Mr. Olivares any comments yes i would like to get uh when it's coming back a little bit more information related to an outreach plan once if we do move forward with with this ordinance is what are we going to do for the outreach what are we going to do related to education not just of our property owners landlords but also tenants that this is a change um you know and against some more clarity i think i'm hearing different things about the inspection processes and all the others just get in the sense for what that looks like so that we have a comfort level in this i think that's something like this can't be a part of a broader comprehensive housing plan by eliminating barriers to unequal treatment but i think that if we're going to be the first i think doing this as right as possible would be would be good for us and again it related to the landlords tenants etc property owners renting is a business and it comes with government regulations just like other businesses so it's not that's not the issue for me i think the issue for me is making sure that we have an equal process for people who want to rent and to deal with the issues but also to make sure that we have uh the true active engagement of all the stakeholders in place before we make a final decision on this thank you Mr. Reichmeyer thank you Mr. Mayor so eight years ago i was working on a piece of legislation sponsored by gsmol the mobile home uh organization and what was happening in southern california primarily was that the mobile home park owners were denying the transfer when one owner would sell to another owner and once they had denied 50 of the folks who lived in a home they could sell off the entire mobile home park so we had a bill that would prevent them from being able to deny that transfer if somebody met the particular criteria stability so some very similar parallels here and i sat down with the mobile home park owners and what they said to me right off the bat was we're going to fundamentally disagree with your bill we're going to disagree we're going to oppose it but here's where you have some conflicts in current state law with what you're trying to do it turns out what we were actually asking in the bill and in the language was contradictory to other parts of law that they're going to be under requirements about and if we had not actually reached out and talked with them we would have never been able to catch some of that and to actually craft what ended up being a good bill that we did pass that does protect tenants while at the same time doesn't put an onerous burden or an impossible at the time burden on the mobile home park owners uh what i'd like was really interesting to me about this conversation is at the end of the day the landlords and the tenants should be on the same page in a program like this from a from a landlord perspective you're getting a guaranteed income you're getting a tenant that comes with it a level of of uh certainty that you don't normally get from somebody and from from a tenant perspective you're getting access to a place to live to a home and there's a disconnect that we're seeing here amongst what are some of the concerns and fears from the landlords uh that haven't been addressed and to me that means that we haven't done enough outreach that we haven't done the level of coordination because what we've seen in other communities is when they've worked together they actually have figured out a middle ground where everybody ends up winning out i i mentioned san rafael and in marin county so i am supportive of of the continuance for that to take place i do want to have a menu of options for landlord incentives to come back that actually have been based on conversations with landlords about what their actual fears are not the discrimination side but some of the legitimate concerns that have been raised about loss of income while they're going through the approval process uh who is going to actually uh help if there's damage to the unit um the red tape and the wait times and then also talking with tenant advocacy groups fair housing and groups that are underrepresented in our community already uh talk with the NAACP talk with the rosin community building initiative groups that have been focused on this so that we can actually hear what's the actual the actual outcome that we're trying for which is to put people in units and how do we address the actual legitimate concerns thank you and my call i'll just be brief because i don't want to echo what you've already heard today really that desired outcome for me is that both sides be have felt like they're heard and there may be some disagreements okay then the seven of us you know if there will be seven however many of us will be here we'll make that decision but where i'm uncomfortable where it starts sounding like an avicera relationship because we're in the same community together like you know i get win-win may not be the right word for it but where everyone's feeling that they're they're being heard and this is a fair response to this because no one wants discrimination that's not a community i want to live in and i know the task sounds large for you and i also think for those in the audience here it's just not dependent upon staff to get the word out if you have an opinion about this work with our staff because the those up here on the council want to have all the information so we can make the best decision for the city as a whole not what's the best decision for tennis what's not the best decision for landlords we're sharing the space together and we call santa rosa so i think we can do that and i'm very supportive of you know continuous i appreciate you uh recommending that and i'm hoping with our staff priorities i get it mr city manager we're balancing all these things and if we can combine it on a couple different items so makes it more efficient for not only staff but for the community and for the council up here i'm willing to move forward so with that uh we have a motion in a second to bring this back date specific in september 24th 2019 your votes please i'm thinking we're missing our vice mayor do we need to do that again or let's try it again may i ask that we also have some clarification in the meantime about who needs to recuse and who doesn't and under what circumstances thank you no worries we're almost there oh here we go your votes please she'll get it yeah there's only five of us there we go you now for the continuation five oh thank you very much okay mr city manager do we need a break are you good for 16.1 we're good for 16.1 thank you item 16.1 public hearing preferential parking permit program kim nadeau parking manager presenting good evening mayor and council members this item proposes adding a new chapter to the city code to establish an on street employee per parking permit program currently the city there are constraints in the west end neighborhood on certain streets on street employee permits are not available and long-term spillover parking is impacting parking for those who live in and work in the west end oh well this is where it would have been better if this had been tested this the colors are not showing up as well as i had hoped on this slide so i apologize for that what i'm looking to show here is the purple area on west 6th and adam street which is where we recently installed three-hour time limits at the beginning of this year at the request of local businesses who are having issues with people parking they're coming early parking all day there was there was no turnover so we did some outreach and reached out to the businesses in the area about putting in three-hour signs we didn't get any negative feedback at that time so we installed them at the beginning of the year what what transpired from that was that the people that were parking on 6th street appear to have moved over to west 7th and west 8th street so our problem just pushed the bubble so we conducted two community meetings at deterrent round barn and one meeting with key stakeholders to discuss the current conditions and the needs of the area the solution being proposed is to expand the three-hour time limit into the commercial areas of the west end and offer permits to employees of eligible businesses in that area the permits will allow employees to park all day exempt from the posted time limits while deterring long-term parkers who don't work in the area so this map shows the new expanded area so the areas that's marked in yellow is where we propose to expand the three hour time limits so that would be on west 6th 7th and 8th these areas are adjacent to commercial properties the permits would then be located to businesses that are located within 200 feet of that designated preferential area they would need to provide a valid tax certificate and proof of employment for those employees and they would be able to purchase up to 25 employees per excuse me permits per business so this slide shows the entirety so it's the existing three-hour time limit plus the expanded area this is the area where the eligible employees would be allowed to park and this shows the 200 foot zone around that area where the eligible employee the eligible businesses are so we would have three hour time limits from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday the permits would be $25 a month and would allow the employees to park beyond the posted time limits in the designated area the permit does not guarantee a spot however we did do a survey of the businesses in the area and asked them to let us know how many employees they had parking on the street so we think that this area will be sufficient there's about 110 spaces and through the surveys that we got back there was about 80 employees who were parking on the street there may be more because not everybody responded to the survey but certainly the most significant employers did and the other point to make is that not all the employees are parking at the same time so there's a lot of some people work Monday through Friday some work on the weekends or different hours so I think we're going to have the capacity to be able to absorb the demand so it's recommended by the finance department that the council introduce an ordinance adding chapter 11 dash 26 preferential parking to the city code to establish an on-street employee permit program and by resolution approve the revised schedule of parking user fees great thank you bring it back to council any questions for staff can you clarify if you don't mind go ahead news comes sorry I was buying time for her can you clarify what happens if a resident lives in the area this area is all commercial where there's no residents in the area at this time well I will there is one exception so when we installed the first round on west 6th and Adams there is one house on Adams street between chops and Starks so we have I reached I reached out to them because it's the only house in this whole area so I did reach out to them and I said if you're having problems parking let me know we'll make some arrangements and initially they didn't have any problems and then several months later they asked for a permit so they have they have we've made an exception for them because they're the one house and the other thing I will note is that the residents of the west end who have also been experiencing a lot of challenges with parking are circulating a petition to establish a residential permit zone so I expect that we'll be coming to you in the not too distant future with their petition and then that will expand it's you know a different program but similar in concept and that will be adjacent to this area thank you for the exception for one person I appreciate that any other questions from council on this item okay this is a public hearing so I'll open the public hearing you don't have to fill out a card would anyone like to comment on this item to the council anyone anyone at all and we have no cards Dana then I will close the public hearing bring it back to council are you graciously accepting the responsibility of introducing this item Miss Fleming you know me I'm gracious thank you all right well thank you for your great work in engaging the neighbors and the businesses in the west end and so it is my pleasure to move an ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa adding chapter 11-26 to the santa rosa city code authorizing preferential parking in designated areas of santa rosa and with further reading of the text second we have a motion to second any final comments okay your votes please that was quick unanimous we have five eyes thank you mr. mcglenn item 16.2 item 16.2 public hearing the santa rosa fire department annual weed abatement program reports paul lowenthal assistant fire marshal presenting saving the best for last a good evening mayor members members of the council here tonight for our annual lean process as you know the city santa rosa fire department coordinates the annual weed abatement program throughout the respective parts of santa rosa unapproved lots over half acre and the wildland urban interface the season is declared through cal fire upon the declaration of the fire season partials are required to comply with the ordinance following the declaration of the season fire department staff conduct the inspections moving across santa rosa from highest priority to lowest priority when they identify a property that has not complied with the ordinance they issue a notice a notice is sent to the property owner that is listed through the assessor's office and that property owner is given a minimum of two weeks to bring the property into compliance for reinspection when the reinspection occurs if the property is found to be out of compliance still they'll then receive a notice of violation the initial notice that they receive lets them know that if they don't bring their property into compliance and they approve time in the required time frame then they will be subject to the fee associated with the inspection if the property remains out of compliance following the second inspection and another period of time we then send the property to abatement if the property is abated then we have to recover our fees associated with that and the properties that have not um essentially paid their fees that are outstanding to the city now have to by resolution be turned over to the county for the lean process so in your attachment is itemized list and we ask you to ratify and confirm the itemized list that's provided by the fire department for the cost of the weed abatement as approved by city council code or city code sorry great thank you council any questions mr vice mayor thank mr mayor this do city parcels also go through the same process yes so um city parcels do go through the same process and the city parcels are almost treated as the same way we would treat property owners that have multiple properties that we're responsible for um one of the issues that we've seen uh in santa rosa this year like a number of the parcels across santa rosa is the the regrowth and the time it took to actually do an effective cut this year this year we are treating much differently than previous years based on the conditions that we have the leans that are associated with this report are from 16 17 and 17 18 so previous years where we weren't experienced the same conditions regardless yes we the city is required to bring our properties into compliance just like our community is however um one of the issues i was trying to was explaining is that much like private properties and the city properties there's timing issues and we routinely and regularly grant extensions to parcels that have timing issues contractor issues and or multiple or large properties um that they have to bring into compliance so basically the way we treat we treat ourselves the same way we would treat our our community members and those properties that are not that do have issues that go through this process and receive those notice of violations and have penalties associated with them we regularly receive requests to um basically waive the fee and we'll look at several um trying to get a good example we'll have people that have hardships we'll have people that had issues or contractors will canceled and they'll provide you know documentation to our department and we'll we'll waive the fee it's a really roundabout way of assuming i had a feeling where you were going with that sounds good these columns thank you i've received a number of social media comments about city properties and so i'm following up with my colleagues question in part because i have some concerns about city properties and i'm aware that we recently made the decision to not continue a set of positions in parks um for maintenance workers um our i guess this is a city manager's question can you get back to us and let us know what the obstacle is to having prompt clearance of city properties because i'm getting an awful lot of so so we're looking at that and that's probably a wider range of conversations about that involves frankly uh some of the the the landscape ordinance that's coming back to you shortly i think we'll be starting to touch on some of those things and what's what's what are we going to do with our parks what's an acceptable way of encountering our parks and it may be a larger community conversation i certainly do not expect a short answer tonight but to address this exact point i think you know we're going to be working on this and so yes it's going to be a we have to have a conversation about what is a suitable way to maintain a park but also what's acceptable you know what's and we may have some education out of that so yes council member it's going to be a very much a part of a longer conversation about that i look forward to talking at length about that any other questions from council okay this is a public hearing so open the public hearing we have one card alex crown oh not on this item would you like to comment on this item anyone else mr. gosner you interested open book anyone don't have to fill out a card okay see and then we'll close the public hearing bring it back to council miss flamin i think you have this item also yes i do thank you for your outreach in our community with our property owners and so forth okay the resolution of the city of the santa rosa confirming the itemized report of the santa rosa fire department of the cost of removing weeds and or rubbish from a pond or in of certain lots or partials of land within the city of santa rosa all right any additional comments seen none your votes please keeping your suspense paul and that passes unanimously with five affirmative votes thank you all right no written communications public comments mr. crone you wanted to speak on this item 18 non-agent items you're up thank you uh i'm alex crone i'm a physical therapist here in santa rosa i've lived in santa rosa my whole life born and raised and i'm here to speak to you for the many concerned residents about having small cell phone towers placed in their neighborhoods here we are about a year later and i want to thank you for you guys's time and listening to us last year the project i guess has been on pause and most of the 112 contracted sites with verizon and mobility haven't been built yet but i can tell you the ones that have are very powerful they're not low powered like they were advertised they're anywhere from 500 to 2000 or 4001 case millivolts per meter at ground level the neighborhoods were at about 10 millivolts before they were installed um i want you guys please to educate yourself on the matter please look at credible scientists who have spent their careers studying the biological effects of wireless radiation on living organisms and i understand the federal FCC and guidelines handcuff you guys quite a bit but there are lots of local municipalities in california who are trying to protect themselves and do what they can um i would appreciate if we had a thorough public notification process for any future cell sites um and if you really look at the FCC and the people who are trying to strip our local authority away from us to control these things it's tyranny their current chairman the headman for the current FCC um attempt to really streamline these things is verizon's ex attorney think about that a tnt and verizon between the two of them they own comcast nbc cnbc tnt tbs direct tv universal studios e bravo cnn and yahoo so it's frustrating that maybe we don't see this very important issue on the news channels we watch again i'm asking you to educate yourself i want to invite you formally there is a lady named dafna tack over coming to town this weekend saturday at two o'clock at the rink and valley library she's an international attorney um from israel and she practices in israel in new york she's an expert in the legal matter of this and she was also in the israeli army and specialized in telecommunications so she is an expert in the science and um really the health issues of this as well so i have some flyers here if i can pass that out or you can remember if you have time i think you owe it to your constituents and your residents to santa rosa to educate yourself on the issue thank you right thank you any other cards madam city clerk okay no other items on the agenda adjourn the meeting