 Good afternoon and welcome to today's City Council meeting. Madam City Clerk, could you please call the roll? Yes, thank you, Mayor. I've been informed that Council Member Tibbets will not be at today's Council meeting, so he will be marked absent. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Fleming. Council Member Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor Rogers. Here. Council Member Fleming, have you joined us? There's Council Member Fleming. Excellent. So let the record show that all Council Members are present with the exception of Council Member Tibbets. Okay, we'll start our day in closed session with item 2.1. If you have any comments to give on this item, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. And Madam Deputy City Clerk, can you please handle public comment? Thank you, Mayor. If you wish to make a public comment on the closed session item today, please do so in Zoom with the raise hand feature. If participating via telephone, please dial star 9. There are no hands being raised in Zoom. There are no members of the public wishing to speak in person, and we receive no voice message public comments on this item. Okay, we'll go ahead and recess into closed session then. For those of you just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish Channel by clicking on the icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish Channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Paloma, can you please restate this in Spanish? For those of you just joining the meeting, please, there will be a live translation available in Spanish to any member wishing to listen in Spanish. To do this, please, click on the Zoom icon below in the bar and there will be a global world where you can use the Spanish language or the Spanish Channel. We recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Go ahead. Thank you, Paloma. I'll be putting you over into the Spanish Channel to interpret with Pablo. Thank you for your help today. Pablo, can we do one last mic check from the Spanish Channel, please? Thank you. Welcome back. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes, thank you, Mayor. As I announced earlier, Council Member Tibbets will not be attending the meeting today, so we'll start with Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Council Member Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor Rogers. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all Council Members are present with the exception of Council Member Tibbets. Great. Mr. City Manager, let's go on to Item 3.1. Mayor Rogers is Members of the City Council. Item 3.1 is our first of two study session items this afternoon. The matter before the Council is the Homeless Services Request for Proposals for the Fiscal Year 2022-2023. Our Homeless Services Manager is going to be providing the staff report on this item. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers and Members of the Council. Next slide, please. So, as the City Manager introduced the item, I will be presenting a study session to review a draft of Homeless Services Request for Proposals. I'll refer to it as an RFP and seeking Council direction to issue this RFP. I had initially scheduled it for this Friday. With the holiday, I realized it's a little ambitious, so subject to your feedback this afternoon, we'll plan to get that out on Monday, November 15th. My presentation this afternoon will be brief, looking for Council direction on the draft RFP and then also looking forward to hearing from the public about the RFP. Next slide, please. The purpose of the RFP is to seek proposals from Homeless Services Request for Proposals. I would like to ask the City Manager to provide an experience organizations to provide Homeless Services and for operation of the City-owned Samuel Jones Hall Shelter. I'll refer to that as Sam Jones Hall throughout the presentation for the upcoming Fiscal Year 2022-2023. Next slide, please. The purpose for the RFP, has significantly increased its investment of Homeless Services over the past several years. The Council is aware of that, obviously. This is a top priority for the City Council to provide you with some context. Going back to Fiscal Year 2015-2016, our budget for Homeless Services programs was 1.5 million. And the current Fiscal Year 2021-2022, that's almost 5 million. I was double-checking the numbers this afternoon before the study session. And the budget is 4.9 million dollars for our Homeless Services program for the current Fiscal Year. So with that, with an increased focus on addressing Homeless Services in the community, as well as increased investment, we're shifting the sort of annual allocation of our funding to a competitive process. The last time the City has run a competitive process was in 2004 when Catholic Charities was selected as the operator for Sam Jones Hall. And that shelter opened in 2005. We do run an annual process through our public services program through the Housing and Community Services Department for community development block grant funding. And that goes to the Homeless Service Center and Family Support Center operated by Catholic Charities, as well as the living room. Next slide, please. The term of the RFP, we're of course looking for providers with capacity to implement the program by July of 2022. The initial term will be for Fiscal Year 22-23 and up to five years. So through 22-23 up to Fiscal Year 2026 and 2027, this is of course on a conditional basis. So annual renewals will be subject to available funding as well as contractor performance. Next slide. So in terms of the scope, there are two key areas in the scope. One is homeless services and I'll cover that. In this slide, the second is the operator for Sam Jones Hall. So the city currently provides funding in five key areas for homeless services. Those are outlined in this slide. So we have day services, street outreach and encampment resolution, emergency shelter, housing support and community-based solutions through our community homeless assistance program. And our current providers that we fund are Catholic Charities, Community Action Partnership of Sonoma County, the YWCA and the living room. And then through CHAP, we're also working with the faith-based community. That last bullet there, other innovative approaches. So as part of this RFP, we are open to considering other ideas, other approaches to addressing homelessness in Santa Rosa within the scope of the five key areas that I just outlined. Of course, any, you know, new programs would be subject to available funding. And those providers or those proposals would have to meet the criteria outlined in the RFP, including fidelity to housing first. Next slide, please. The second category under the RFP scope includes operator, selecting an operator for Sam Jones Hall. Some of the criteria for, for that program or that facility is that the provider must operate the shelter in a low barrier model. We want to serve the most vulnerable and need a shelter and work with them to get them into shelter and services, not to screen them out. So that's the, that's the approach with low barrier. Low barrier also mentioned housing folks for focused, but it's housing focused that in addition to providing shelter and basic services that we want to make sure we're providing the support that people need to move out of homelessness and into housing already touched on basic services and case management. And then that the proposer or the applicant would have experience operating a shelter of similar size and scope. Next slide. So general requirements. These are of course outlined in greater detail in the RFP, which is a part of the agenda packet. Applicants or proposers must have nonprofit status. They must have experience providing similar services. I already mentioned fidelity to housing first. Also alignment with our local continuum of care. That includes data and reporting through the homeless management information system, HMIS participation participation in coordinated entry. And for those operating emergency shelter, compliance with the COC emergency shelter standards. We also want to see that providers have policies and procedures for engaging the client, clients they serve in the broader community as well as seeking the feedback from clients in the community. Partnership is a key component of the RFP. Our providers are partners in responding to homelessness in the community. And so we need to see in their response in their proposal. And in their prior experience and ability to partner, partner with the city and all the various stakeholders that we're working with on this issue. Reporting is also important. So providers needs to demonstrate a track record. Of meeting reporting requirements, whether that's through the city or with other agencies that they've worked with. Next slide. Thank you. Proposed schedule for the RFP. As I mentioned, we'll be releasing this on Monday, November 15th. We'll be holding a conference for interested applicants or proposers on the 19th. To answer any questions that they might have. The RFP will be due on December 13th. We'll be convening an evaluation committee to review the proposals in December. We've discussed who to include on that evaluation committee with housing and homeless ad hoc committee members, vice mayor Rogers and council member Schwedhelm. And tentatively, if we can meet all these benchmarks, we'll be returning to city council in January on the 25th to make recommendations to city council. Next slide. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the operator of Sam Jones hall and providers of our homeless services program. For the upcoming fiscal year. This will give us the time to draft the contracts. Work with any new providers. Bring those back to. Council. We'll start on July 1st. Next slide, please. In terms of criteria, again, this is just a summary slide of the criteria that the evaluation committee will be using to, of course, evaluate and rank and score. Any proposals that we get. The criteria is described in greater detail in the RFP. And that's on page 11. Of the RFP and the agenda packet. I'll walk through each of these just to give you some more detail about them. And. Here. So for organizational capacity. Sorry, I'm having a technical issue there. There we go. We're looking for agencies that demonstrate both the infrastructure and experience to deliver the services described in this RFP. For best practices. We're looking at the budget to see if there's a thorough allocation of resources. That the applicants demonstrate experience providing responsive services and alignment with housing first, as I mentioned, and other best practices with an emphasis on approving the ability to get clients housed. Financial reasonability. So we're looking at the budget. To see if there's a thorough allocation of resources. The budget is clear and thorough and provides justification for that. So we want to see that they have a proven delivery of, of providing these services either directly or through a sub contractor. And for data and reporting, we want to see that they have a proven track record of meeting data and reporting requirements, either with the city or other agencies such as the county or the continuum of care. And that would also include, you know, the federal government and the state. And strategic goals. So we want to see in their response, alignment with city council priorities and the COC strategic goals, including diversity, equity and inclusion, another priority of the city, but another priority of the city council. And then client engagement and feedback. Again, I mentioned this earlier, but we want to see that there's policies and procedures in place for engaging clients and seeking feedback. And that includes the community. And the other category includes, you know, completeness and quality of proposal, quality of references or supplemental materials and any other factors that, you know, staff or the evaluation committee might deem relevant to the scope of the RFP. Lastly, we have some bonus points here. That's 10 bonus points for a new provider or innovative program. So, you know, a provider or program that the city is not currently working with. And the reason for the bonus points is to touch on that briefly. We really want to be able to provide options. We want to encourage innovation and we don't want to exclude or discourage new providers. We're also open to existing providers so that bonus points could go to existing providers if they have a new approach, an innovative approach to delivering the service that we're not currently providing. For new agencies, I do just want to highlight, we're going to be looking for, you know, a new agency that we haven't worked with, that we don't have a track record with. We want to see documentation of their experience providing similar services with, you know, other agencies. And that, you know, sorry, just looking at my notes here. They would still be held to, you know, all the requirements of the RFP. And again, we're just going to be looking to, if they haven't worked with us directly, that they do have experience delivering similar services as those outlined in the RFP and with other government agencies. Before we go to the next slide, and that's the recommendation side. So I'm just about to wrap it up here. I didn't want to touch briefly on outreach and what outreach we're doing related to this RFP. So an announcement went out last week via city connections to let the community know that the draft RFP would be before you this afternoon. I did send it out to the continuum of care listserv. So all of our providers counting wide are aware that the city of Santa Rosa is going to be releasing an RFP. We've reached out to our current providers and we're also going to be reaching out to providers out of the area that we're working with. So we're going to be looking at where communities in Cinnamon County have expressed interest in working with. Next slide. With that, we have a recommendation slide. It is recommended by the city manager's office that the council hold a study session to review a draft of the homeless services RFP for fiscal year 2022-2023. And provide direction on the RFP prior to its issuance of the RFP for fiscal year 2021. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much, Kelly. Councilor, are there questions? Council Member Alvarez? Thank you, Mayor. Kelly, historically, who have been the providers for services for the city of Santa Rosa? Thank you, Council Member Alvarez for that question. So we currently fund programs that are operated by the city of Santa Rosa. We're working with community action providers, Catholic Charities, community action partnership of Cinnamon County, the YWCA, the living room, and then through our CHAP program, which is pretty small. We're working with the faith-based community. We do provide some grants to assist them with things like trust service and portable toilets and handwashing stations. Thank you, Council Member Schwedem. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. And as a way of saying thank you to the community of Santa Rosa citizens, it was last done in 2004. I don't think there's many folks who have been around to see how we did it back then. Some of this, I apologize, because we had at our subcommittee meeting, and I brought this up, but I just want to hear the thoughts of the rest of the council. Regarding innovative programs, that term, how would we evaluate what's an innovative program? and there's four different areas where here's how you're gonna say this is a promising practice. I'm a little unclear as how the panel who will whoever will be if someone is saying I have an innovative program how are we going to evaluate that because what's innovation for one person but if there's no evidence of promising practice how would we do that do you have a vision on that? Thank you for that question Council Member Schwedhelm. We're gonna be thinking through exactly what that means in defining it further before the Evaluation Committee convenes and so I appreciate the suggestion about the county's upstream investments we can look at that and I'm open to you know other feedback from the Council on how we should you know be defining that and how we should be evaluating. Great so yeah so I'd be strongly in favor that if we're kind of coordinate our regional approach with some of the upstream investments I think it would only make sense there and then regarding new providers again I get the interest in trying to encourage additional people to imply is there any other city RFP that you're aware of that we've ever gave given bonus points for someone who's never worked with the city before? So the RFP process is new to me we did do a lot of research in terms of other RFPs issued by the city and other communities and not that it hasn't been done before I'm not aware of it I did check in with purchasing finance department about this to see if there were you know any concerns around it raised similar ones and that we need to make sure that we define exactly what you know innovative program and new provider means for the Evaluation Committee but that we have the flexibility to do so if we wanted to. I'm happy to do more research specifically on that question see if there's other departments or other communities have done or taken a similar approach. So to frame that question just from my interest because I really appreciate all the criteria there and for me it goes towards our mission of accomplishing getting to functional zero I'm not sure giving some bonus points for being a new provider helps us get to functional zero in a more efficient and effective manner it may be but that's just a new one for me and then on in the application page 21 of the application we asked questions about 2.2 was working with government entities and then 2.3 in the application was asking the applicants about staff training for racial equity cultural humility strengths based service delivery during this criteria process where would those questions that we're asking be evaluated in the process. So I think I'm looking at the criteria and in those sections in the RFP so in terms of the the training around diversity equity and inclusion we'd be looking at that for strategic goals I think it would also fall under organizational capacity seeing that they have infrastructure and experience you know described in the RFP to deliver the services and then in terms of their the other one was about working with other agencies and where we would be evaluating that I could see that falling under a couple of the criteria specifically under the first one organic organizational capacity and then also probably with the reporting because if we don't have direct experience with them we can't look at their track record with us reporting but maybe they've worked with the county or the continuum of care I can reach out to those agencies and and see you know how they've been submitting their report reports in a timely manner and what's been the quality of the data and their reports. So for me I guess my suggestion be since there's a state session I think we I would like to see more emphasis put on DEI work and using the model that city staff developed for the one-time monies there were some specific criteria that resulted in a score to lump DEI work with just 10 point strategic goal which could potentially be 10 percent I would think that's more of an emphasis given the council conversations that we've had and more specific criteria and again I'm just thinking having sat on some of these panels that'd be a tough one to score without more specific criteria almost like the innovative program versus promising practices and I think those are all the questions I have for now thank you. Vice Mayor. Just to go back and look at the bonus points in the new provider and a functional functional zero I think to believe that we can achieve functional functional zero with only one provider is not a good belief I think that everyone does not fit in the same in the same space and so the more providers that we have in our city for me means the more people that we can reach because it's different ways in which we can reach different people and so that would be a way to for me to look at it is different organizations have different approaches as to how they reach people so in the innovative realm when we're looking at that is how are people going out reaching the people that we are trying to reach and in this case it happens to be our unhoused residents so how are they going out to reach them some people don't want to work with people that have a religious background so if it is Catholic Charities they think Catholic Charities religious background I don't want to work with them well we don't want people to have to not get services because they have that perception we want services to be available to all so for me functional zero means different services that are available different types of same service different providers provided in a different way so to me that is how we reach functional zero is how do we have different ways of reaching our unhoused residents and not trying to make them fit in what we perceive as the space that they need to fit in but us trying to see how we fit into their lives and into their space to assist them with where they're at and where they need to go not the other way around so that was just my two cents on the functional zero thank you I'm just pulling this back to 50,000 feet for the public that are watching the meeting can can you or or maybe Madam City Attorney walk through for us who does the scoring what what does the selection committee look like and then what are the RFP requirements when this comes back to council in January are we required to go with the highest score how will the the ultimate decision be made maybe that's also a question for the city manager I think it's probably a question of combined Kelly will have some of those answers in terms of the composition of the selection committee but in general there will be a committee that is appointed to review the proposals and using these criteria that are set forth in the RFP will evaluate each of the applications and will give rankings that ranking will come back to council the rankings are based on how well the proposal meets the criteria of the RFP and the intent of of the city and providing these services it is not based the ultimate recommendation will not be based on cost it's based on the quality of the proposal what will come to council will be a recommendation the council has a discretion to either accept that recommendation or move or move in us in a different direction and Kelly I don't know if you'd like to add anything to that or correct anything I've said thank you I would just add in terms of representation on the evaluation committee this is an item that we raised with our housing and homeless ad hoc committee yesterday again that's Council Member Schwedhelm and Vice Mayor Rogers and so we're working on putting that together and I assure you will be a diverse representative presentation to include of course city staff a couple of council members there will also be representatives at least in the draft list that we're putting together from our entitlement jurisdictions so City of Petaluma the county as well and then a number of other subject matter experts which we're working to identify so a diverse a diverse panel but with that criteria that is objective so we can return to City Council with recommendations for providers based on that the criteria that we're covering with you this afternoon and I'll mention one other category for membership on the committee was it was just on the evaluation committee it was discussed yesterday to include those with lived experience great thank you Council you're on mute John sorry about that again I didn't read all 70 pages of the RFP it is a very important and extensive document I'm wondering if if I missed an area that might have included some scoring on the ability of an applicant to bring kind of leveraging leveraging additional resources not just the ones that come from the city but because of their experience in this field bringing other funding mechanisms into the program now it may be in the RFP some place that that is although it may not be I mean it'd be nice if it was scored because I think it would be especially in these in these times of fiscal challenge that somewhere in the scoring even if it wasn't a specific line of scoring that it that have to do with leveraging funds and bringing bringing more funds into the program based on their experience their their the respect they have in their in their in their community wherever they may be etc so I just wanted that there is any place if you if you considered that or if there is anything in the RFP that includes that thank you councilmember Sawyer so in the one of the attachments to the RFP the proposers are required to submit a budget that identifies all funding sources so not just the funding that they're asking from the city it doesn't specifically ask about you know how they're leveraging resources to you know to to maximize resources and implement their program but I can certainly since this is a draft I can certainly make that change in the the budget template that we're providing proposers that they speak to how they're leveraging resources to implement their programs and not just relying on the city okay thank you and the other item that I had it's just a comment I've sat on a fair number of these committees I've never seen a bonus for not having a relationship with the city I and I mean I could if we were to attach bonus points to it I would think that it wouldn't be an equal as wrap around services data reporting the strategic goals those seem pretty important and actually rating it above client engagement and feedback I mean I just I I'm just a little I've never seen that and I'm not necessarily it it it seems inappropriate to me to be giving someone extra bonuses or extra points for never never having had a relationship with the city it's just well it's neither wrong way kind of quite frankly and I don't think that it I and especially when you talk about innovative innovative could be synonymous with experimental how do you you know if there are innovative programs I'd sort of like to know what they are and to have you know what is what does innovation mean to to a particular provider of services I would I would need that quantified if you're going to offer 10% of the scoring for something that's innovative I would want to quantify so that's just a comment thank you for clarifying the information on the the leveraging of finances so that's that's that is important and thank you for clarifying that so that's all for now any other questions from council okay we will go to public comment for this item if you're interested in providing a comment going to either hit the raise hand feature on zoom or go ahead walk towards the microphone here in the chamber I'll start with Shirley hello there we go hello yeah I'm Shirley chill I'm from the homeless task force of first United Methodist Church under the scope section in the RFP I see community homeless assistance program chap has allowed us to operate safe parking for many years initially we received a chat grant thank you and have since been operating from donations we've provided a place to park installed lighting cameras volunteers regularly visit the site to cover security some of our guests have found housing however some have just languished for years yes years in our parking lot because of the lack of access to services and case management it seems like after their initial intake they have been forgotten and perhaps considered taken care of this has led to a severe decline in their health and led to their extreme lack of trust in the system I come before you to plead again for access to wrap around services and case management case management we are not counselors we are not housing locators and we are not able to provide mental health or a addiction support I will repeat those unhoused guest in safe parking under the city's chap program need full access to services I am hoping that any proposal you receive will consider the needs of our unhoused guests and the volunteers operating programs under the chap program at this time we are certainly reluctant to take on new guests you know we want to work with you we want to be considered partners our goals are to support the unhoused and reach out and support the needs of the city especially in the roseland area where our property is located thank you for including chap in the scope of services and then to answer the vice mayor's point we have never ever had any religious strings attached to any support we give the unhoused or the community thank you thank you so much Shirley next is Devin Devin are you able to unmute okay awesome hi my name is Cameron Hernandez I've been homeless often some 17 plus years that's actually long enough the term for the term homeless to be new to me before that I was actually more closely identified with the word transient or indigent since it was attached to my name wherever it appeared such self-awareness grew to self actualization but after entering Sam Jones hall I was able to rest and heal and feel the ladder of these is what compels me to express my sincerest gratitude for the shelter and its staff I still have not felt though that I've given my thanks enough to the folks who have made what's tangible in my life currently possible so thank you San Rosa City Councilmen and women for your action and work sorry I'm getting emotional through your action and work to designate funding here at Sam Jones hall thank you because it provides the staff with who is so well trained not strained or overworked who also have integrity and are well suited for the hard work and people that they care for I want you all to know this means a lot to me because it's made such a difference in my life personally than many others and also thank you because the Sam Jones Hall case managers the ones that I've met with and worked closely with who assessed me and helped me with my full well-being like for instance medical, gentle, mental health, financial skills and you know after 17 years it's a big onion to peel so you know they even even the bus tickets for instance to help me follow through on on appointments outside the housing navigators where I was helped with my credit history, cleaner, rental info applications, fee waivers, their professional advice even which is prices who also also sometimes they come in you know to my dorm just to just to say hey you know you're eligible and then they would insisting with the process you know they would keep me excited because it's work you know but anyway so you know wherever there's a rating left my name exists on it and that's that's so much hope it's amazing also my thanks of your continued support and funding at Sam Jones Hall because it goes so well beyond my study here such as for instance again my health care team the counseling service and all the support that goes with that so most important my desire to live well is priceless and please by all means continue to fund Sam Jones Hall because it's it's changed lives it's changed mine thank you you all right thank you for your comments are there any other hands for this study session seeing none I'll bring it back to council all right we'll start on zoom council member Sawyer pardon me oh my apologies we have some voicemails my name is Larry I'm calling regarding agenda item 3.1 homeless services request for proposal I was a participant at the drop-in center for a few years and now I volunteer for transitional residential program I want to thank the city for making the drop-in center possible and I want to thank the drop-in for all the help it has given me with this team I'm able to help people living on the streets have access to services and whenever possible help connect them with housing and up housing opportunities the staff here feels like a family and have taught me a lot while I'm volunteering they helped me with my own housing this has been a big deal in my life and I hope it can be a big deal for many others thank you for ensuring this program can serve our community hello my name is Michelle and I'm calling on agenda 3.1 the family support center has helped my family tremendously I came to them broken no home part-time part-time work and on foot the staff was welcoming and very directive they opened my eyes to other avenues in my housing search as well as the twins education they gave me support on days I wanted to give up they were and are my advocates to a better future the children's coordinator was so helpful with all of the kids including mine she got them on the busing systems to and from school and after school programs like chops continued support through the COVID-19 which was very tremendous to deal with they gave us mental and emotional support the meals and functions for families made a difficult situation seem more tolerable my individual housing specializer was amazing as I sit in my own three bedroom one and a half bath as my son just came up to me and smiled as he explained to me how the Christmas tree will look good here in our own home none of that would have been possible if it weren't for the funding that the Santa Rosa City Council had provided to the family support center thank you my family has truly been blessed by by our city council thank you for all of your funding and I pray that such great funding can continue to help more families once again and thank you so much for all for bringing us home home for Christmas study session item 3.1 Duane DeWitt from Roseland the homeless services that are being provided by Catholic charities at the taxpayer finance Samuel Jones Hall have sometimes fallen short and many people I've spoken with who live in the area feel that the homeless shelter has become problematic because many of the homeless spend a lot of time just out on the streets there and in a sense our nuisance to the local residents who over a decade ago told the city that there shouldn't be more than 40 or 50 people there and the city ignored that and apparently wants to put hundreds there I can sympathize with folks who are homeless and I've known some of the people who've lived out there one of the dilemmas is congregating all of the homeless in such a spot I shouldn't say all of the homeless but hundreds of the homeless in such a spot can be counterproductive scattered side homeless shelters throughout the city one on each district so everyone bears the burden would be a much more equitable and hopeful approach hopefully the organization which is going to get this long-term contract would look into that instead of one big center there on the west side of town thank you on 3.2 the groundwater sustainability plan there are a number of people in rosalind who are on wells and they're real concerned the city hasn't really been involving the community well the approach that the city takes is typically top-down doesn't really do bottom-up involvement and claims some torque some type of community engagement occurred that's not really the case it's just a situation of going through the motions then saying that you've had a discussion with the community there needs to be more to help these well owners out here in rosalind so they'll understand what you're going to do to them thank you maybe that concludes public comment right so i'll pull it back and we'll go to council member soyer thank you mayor um well i've kind of made my comments i am concerned about the the innovation piece and the new new new relationship with the city piece of if if nothing else i'd like to see reduced to five points if it's if it's to be maintained at all um and i believe that well first of all let me thank all of those involved in coming up with what is um to my mind going on those comprehensive rfps that i've seen uh in my experience uh and i'm very pleased that it's coming forward because uh in in 2004 when we were we were funding only the sam jones center and we felt that that was uh enough at the time uh we could not have anticipated the growth in our homeless and unsheltered population i think that this rfp addresses i i can't think of anything that it doesn't address and that's really important because it's it's a very complex issue complex challenge to our city and to the region um i hope that the rest of our partners in the county can come up with the same kind of of uh but rfp and in their in their own right and help us with this this very difficult and challenging problem but thank you for coming up with that very comprehensive rfp and i look forward to um seeing the results of the when the once the applicants are reviewed council member alvarez thank you mayor uh in the paper a couple days ago there was there was there was an article where it stated that smaller cities are now stepping forward with their own homeless or transient or population uh has there been too much cash between us city san rosa and with our smaller cities here in sonoma county would be my first question i have another follow-up question after so it certainly you know we're working very closely with the county um and as you're aware we have uh you know seats on the continuum of care so you know and that's a regional body so that would be our you know connection with with the county and our regional partners and in being more in the know and coordinating collaborating with other cities in sonoma county um assistant uh interim assistant city manager claire hartman is also in a number of meetings with county staff and then staff the representatives from the other cities throughout the county to understand more about you know what they're doing to address this issue so uh there are um there's work underway to both increase communication throughout the county as well as coordination thank you philly and the second question i have for you is there a mechanism in place where if we see that one r of p proposal goes great in one section such as the housing but then we find another r of p proposal that's great in the outreach aspect is there anything in place where we could actually incorporate both entities or is it pretty much under one and then they would do the the subcontracting to another entity within within our county for percent so if i understanding your question i think that they're we anticipate working with multiple providers not just one provider as i covered in the study session or at least in the presentation we are working with multiple providers at the moment some of those providers have skills in other areas and the scope of our contracts for example sam jones hall that's emergency shelter right but it goes beyond that because there's case management services there to help individuals move into housing and staying what same with street outreach it's more than just street outreach there are other components to that so that can be um you know defined in the scope um in the r of p we are asking the the applicants the proposers to define you know what program specifically they're applying for um but there is some flexibility once we get to if they're selected once we get to contract negotiation and also for those providers to subcontract out services if needed and i hope the answer is your question if not i can try to clarify further no no it no it doesn't thank you for the for the clarification on my question thank you kill council member fleming thank you for your great work i think you did a fantastic job and i support it as is council member swedham thank you mr mayor thanks again kelly for doing this again i did read all 71 pages and i know a lot of work went in behind this um and i think we're doing something that i think will add that years of value to our community so feedback on this um i'm not in favor of the innovative program language i am in favor of using promising practices consistent with upstream investment and just for the rest of the council um with it on the county's website i'll just use the introductory paragraph in the upstream portfolio and evidence informed practice it's designed using recognized theory and research shows evidence of positive outcomes and is being evaluated for its impact on our local community to me if i'm on the panel as mr story said i've been on a lot of these panels that gives me some framework versus innovative practices so i'd be in favor of doing uh evidence informed practice or promising practices i would also like to see some language for the criteria about organizations experience dealing in coveted and disasters because many of us on council experienced some of the adjustments we had to make even with sam jones hall when your food service provider closed it down and they had to come up with some things that i know some of us on council helped them with that but getting experience and hearing what agencies have done about responding to the pandemic and some of our recent emergency i think that's very um i think be very important because unfortunately i think we'll probably experience that in the next five years and then the uh last thing is i just don't see the reason why we would give bonus points for a new provider and one of the reasons i say that because i really think it's a shared responsibility being willing to work with anyone and i'll use my experience on another panel with a continuum of care where we had uh HUD funding half a million dollars come to the community and cdc staff we did not have enough people interested in applying for those dollars were their strings attached absolutely federal government HUD guidelines but they had to reach out to some of the experience providers who were willing to take that risk and apply but the opportunity was there for any other agency to help in this effort and so that's the shared responsibility i'm talking about so the money was offered some people chose to accept that some did not and so i'm just not sure how that's going to help us and i totally respect other folks opinion on this but to give bonus points for a new provider it just doesn't make uh evidence-based sense to me thank you vice mayor um thank you for the time in uh putting this together and even putting together an rfp because i know we have not had one um and a long time for homeless services so just for putting one together um and i guess i i do um encourage us to look at um additional providers for the the reasons why i specified um because i i do think we need a variety of providers to assist and support the needs of the variety of the unhoused residents that we have because they are not all alike and they all have different different needs um and i just want to thank you for all your hard work i know uh first hand that you've been working very diligently and putting a lot of work and effort into this so thank you very much yeah i want to echo those comments kelly i know you've been uh asked to do a lot with a little and we're very grateful for the work that you're doing i have read all 71 pages of the rfp as well it is very thorough and i can appreciate how much effort went into it uh i'm not going to be supportive of the uh new provider language uh to me to me it starts with the presupposition that our providers are not doing an adequate job and a 10 bonus to somebody who's never worked with the city is a significant advantage when the entire scoring criteria is only 100 points uh i want each of the proposals to stand on their own merit based on where we've gotten to today with our evolution of our focus our services our budget uh and our ideology around homelessness what can each of those providers give to the city of santa rosa to help us with one of our priority issues i don't care if that is an existing provider i don't care if that's a new provider the only thing that i care about in that equation is who's going to actually help get folks housed and who's going to be able to deliver the terms of the rfp and what we're looking for in terms of the scope uh so i understand that the thought process and i agree that we do need uh diversity of providers and i know that we have new providers who have started to pop up let their work stand for itself don't give them an automatic bump up just simply because they're new um with that do you have the direction that you need from council i do have one question i just want to clarify so what i'm hearing is um for the bonus points do away with the new provider component of that i want to add that that doesn't exclude new providers from applying for the rfp it's open to any providers so suggest that we remove the new provider we keep the bonus points for innovative approaches but we reduce it to five points um and that these have innovative innovative approaches um must uh expand on engagement opportunities and housing outcomes um and we need to further define it um related to promising practices and and evidence based practices uh how does that sound to the council i can make those changes in the rfp and the criteria i'd be supportive of that but i'll look to my colleagues to see thumbs up or comments councilmember alvarez uh you're on mute thank you thank you mayor uh in regards to the five points i think innovative i think one of my fellow colleagues said it very well innovative means um without without experience without proven proven uh results i believe that that in the in the request itself anyone that is is submitting a proposal would love to share their ideas that have a proven track record regardless if they're the one they are one with that we've already worked with or one that we've never worked with so it's aligned with the 10 points for the bonus points i simply would like to see the the the innovation proven innovation without having to give it extra points i think that's just on on the merit of them trying to having tried different things that they can prove are working so i i don't feel that we should we should give them an extra points for that when it should be upon themselves thanks mayor um this may just be not accurate but when we were looking at how do we apply the dei to our framework when we were looking at the budget stuff that's something that we had never done that's something that and we have to figure out a way how are we going to apply it what was it going to look like okay well us just even having staff look at that was an innovative way of having staff look at it how are we going to do it how are we going to apply it that's being innovative thinking out of the box how are we going to do it so it's it's kind of thinking out of the box the same way and how are you going to approach things differently because times are changing we're looking at things differently things are not the same so how are we going to go about doing things differently because things are changing it's the same principle people are changing times are changing things are changing we are not the same we cannot do things the way we did them a hundred years ago 50 years ago shoot we can't do things the way we did them five years ago so we need to think out of the box if we're going to get to functional zero which is our goal then we need to find a way to get there if we had the key to get there guess what you guys we would have already been there but obviously we don't have the key and we don't have what we needed to get there so why don't we open it up to hear people out and see what's out in the community thoughts of people like what they have what they can bring forward to get us to where our goal is i don't want to like cut anyone short about what they could possibly bring to us to get us to where our goal is because we're saying oh we've never seen that before where there's a lot of stuff we probably haven't seen before but that doesn't mean that it's not going to help to get us to where we want to go it means that we need to get not stuck in our ways and to get out of this box that we think we need to be in because i don't want to be in the box anymore i want to move forward and i want to get to functional zero so head councilmember yeah um i agree with the vice mayor i think we're in a situation of that expression you need id to get id you know where if you want to propose something and you don't have a track record i mean obviously we're not going to take wild crazy ideas but if somebody wants to propose something new and innovative um there's no way to gather data information on something until you get an opportunity to try it so um and that's that's what we do in social work that's how we apply our principles if you have to have rigorous data and testing and in metrics and one of the things that i saw in the rfp is a strong data component so i'm not too worried that if we get something and we try it and it doesn't work that that's going to be not going to be a huge problem we're a council that says we'll try something if it doesn't work we'll change it and i'm i'm pretty comfortable in our staff's ability to monitor that and to to work with whoever um is awarded contracts to that end so i go ahead councilmember soyer thank you mayor i was just i wanted to hear councilmember schwedhelm's uh he was referring to the county to a county program or something that you were looking um to have added to the rfp could you articulate that again for me you okay mr mayor if i do that it's regarding the uh the county's upstream investment portfolio and my understanding is when there is funding available there's different categories that organizations can fund uh or apply for funding for and there are some evidence-based but there are those promising practices which for me that's what i'm hearing the language we've been talking about is an innovative program and so upstream investments have clearly defined it so that people who are applying there's four criteria here a literature review a logic model a manual and an evaluation plan which again helps those organizations that may be new to the game here's the criteria that you can use that we're going to evaluate the effectiveness of your program because i think the issue is with upstream if we had unlimited funding knock yourself out let's fund everything but we don't so what's the most efficient and effective investment and that's what i think upstream investments has designed with this in that category for innovation is under promising practices and the criteria is there and with homelessness we're going with a regional approach upstream investments is a regional approach and i just think it'd be wonderful if we're consistent with the language so those nonprofit providers also understand here's a criteria that we need to develop to be consistent because doing all this working on all this together our odds of success are much greater thank you for that and i actually agree with that it does help when when um scoring these rfps to have some clear language to bounce your scoring off of so um i would if we can get that in there i i don't see a downside to quantifying and qualifying um that whatever upstream investment one of our uh respondents would have i think that would be uh proved so i think uh kelly i think i heard from you three different potential changes so i think what would actually just be helpful is if we go through and do a straw poll on each of those three individually what i heard was removing uh new provider from that bonus category i heard lowering it from 10 points to five points and then i also have heard a desire from council to either keep it broad and uh as innovation or to give some form of structure to it by adopting the promising practices model that the county uses for their funding so if it works for council let's walk through those three components to see where we're at on them because we might actually be in agreement or have some form of direction and just be talking past one another councilmember alvarez did you have a question before i do that it was more of a comment for clarification mayor if i may yeah go for it i think i think we're we're to clarify my statement it wasn't so much that that that we want to hear about diversity equity inclusion but i like the language where it says alignment with city council priorities i like i like that much more than a hearing or giving points to to innovative ideas and i think i like more the language of of aligning aligning itself with with our priorities and i think that's where we're probably more definition on that thank you sir okay let's do quick straw poll first uh show of thumbs are people comfortable with removing the new provider language from the bonus category okay so i'm saying four thumbs for that uh are folks comfortable with reducing the number from 10 to 5 for the bonus category okay i'm saying four votes for that uh and then uh is council comfortable leaving the language broader and having it be based on innovation let's see thumbs for that and again the alternative thumbs down means put in place the promising practices structure as opposed to leaving it a little bit broader so thumbs up if you're okay with it being broader thumbs down if you'd prefer the promising practices language and i'm saying no thumbs from people so i'm guessing that that means that there's clarity that needs to happen there so council member soyer gave a thumbs down so you're in favor of the promising practices language yes yes um because because of the ability to quantify it qualify it and and rate it and and uh place a a um a score next to it that's that's really the the main reason that i'm that that's what i'm looking at okay uh council member alvarez really no comment mayor um i agree with with the statements of removing uh the bonus points lowering the the the bonuses so so no uh no other comment than that so you have no direction on the innovative language versus the promising practices structure the innovative language again i would much rather see a line with count city council uh priorities and and i think that that it's upon let's i believe that's upon the the RFP proposal to to align strategies with ours and i'd almost say without us having to tell them to see where they go with it so that's kind of where i'm coming from okay uh council member fleming i have to admit that um while what council member schwedhelm suggests is suggests sounds fantastic i don't under i don't not familiar enough with it to make a recommendation that differs from staffs at this point in time and that's where i'm at with it okay council member schwedhelm i support the promising practices definition that the county is using with upstream investments okay and vice mayor i would feel more comfortable if we didn't just if the committee didn't just come back with one recommendation that's not an answer to your question that's my answer um um yeah because i feel like it's too narrow in scope so yeah and i think that's probably what my problem is more than anything is i feel like when they come back with one recommendation um i just don't i i would feel more comfortable if there is more than one that they come back with more than one recommendation in the notes from the committee on uh the notes from the committee and then allow us to to pick the provider but narrowing it down if that's what it takes but not to just come back with one i think that's too narrowly focused okay so i've not much i'm not hearing much consensus on the council around the promising practices framework versus leaving it more broad i'm going to suggest that the council leave it broad if we can get there and then i know that a number of providers will watch this study session and perhaps trying to figure out how best to be able to demonstrate that their innovative idea is worthwhile perhaps they will adopt the promising practices or some other type of structure and then make the best case that they can to the the folks who are going to be judging the rfps i'm seeing some nodding heads can i get some thumbs all right let's move that direction then that i it will note the vice mayor's um desire to see uh multiple operators uh and also uh obviously we won't just see one provider's score coming back but we'll see the scores for all of the providers that submit for the rfp yep go for it um and i just would like to make a comment that i i think i can well i'll speak on behalf of myself that i am very thankful for the providers that we do have in the community i think that we have some really great providers in the community and i'm very thankful um for the providers that we do have in the community so i i don't want anyone to take my comments as if i am ungrateful um for the providers that we have in the community um i just like to advocate for uh us to have a variety of providers to to get to everyone that we want to um provide services to um no matter if i stand alone in advocating for that i just that i will stand alone to advocate for that but i think that that is very important but i am grateful to the provider so if you can pass that along i would appreciate that kelly councilmember soyer thank you mayor and you know at the end of the day i think that we are going to be seeing from the applicants to this or respondents to this rfp a great deal of innovation it's been almost 20 years since uh we started down this path and my guess is that not a not a single respondent if if if they don't use innovation in their responses i don't think they're going to get very far so that that would be my guess given how much time has passed and how important this is and how much change has been made in in how communities address this challenge i think there will be a high level i'm expecting i'm hoping a high level of innovation from all of our respondents councilmember alvarez thank you mayor on my and again speaking for myself for me you know we've become so accustomed to these key words that that spark de i and for myself i would love to see what comes from the proposals and and with from from within themselves that they don't just pick up on those key words that that check boxes off that's not what i'm looking for i definitely want to see the innovation but because it comes from them and i'm really excited and i can't wait to see the proposals that come forward thank you councilmember all right kelly thank you so much and we'll see this again in january when the when the providers come back nice mr rogers if i may just quickly i i know that de i was a theme throughout the study session this afternoon i just want to add that um i'll be sure to include our staff members to core of shields uh while we're fleshing out the criteria and i'm inviting her right now to be on the evaluation committee so i know that it's very important to the council and we'll make sure it's part of the process moving forward thank you thank you all right mr. city manager let's do 3.2 mayor rogers and members of the city council item 3.2 is our second study session item of the afternoon the matter before the council it's a santa rosa plain draft ground water sustainability plan peter martin our deputy director of water resources will be um presenting the staff presentation and this is a time sensitive matter uh the plan has to be submitted by january 31st of 2022 and it's going before the santa rosa plain ground water sustainability agents authority board in december of 2021 so your input will be valuable for staff to incorporate in the process uh thank you for that introduction city manager uh good afternoon uh mayor rogers and uh members of the council uh yeah definitely appreciate the opportunity to be before you today uh to talk about this regional planning effort that's uh taken over two years uh and um recently culminated in the release of a public draft uh for a review last month so if we go to the next slide so uh in terms of what i'd like to cover today uh i was hoping to cover you know just in general uh the standable management groundwater management acts also known as sigma uh and the requirements of that i was going to talk a little bit about just kind of giving an overview of who the santa rosa plain ground water sustainability agency is uh and then today i'll just kind of give a real overview of the elements of this draft groundwater sustainability plan and then we'll talk a little bit about the public input process and uh next steps as well next slide so uh to quickly orient you with um you know as the city and others in the region became involved and and how we became involved in the sustainable groundwater management act and carrying out the planning elements and the groundwater sustainability planning efforts necessary to meet state mandates the standable groundwater management acts was a landmark piece of state legislation introduced in 2014 in response to rapidly declining groundwater levels throughout california and it was continuing to create a wide variety of issues specifically in the central valley especially uh economic water supply and water quality issues in addition to environmental and environmental justice issues that were getting quite a bit of press at the time you know as i mentioned these were most prominent in the wide swaths the central valley and they did receive quite a bit of attention at that time uh typically california policies regarding groundwater supplies and access to groundwater have not been as tightly controlled they're regulated as our surface water supplies for instance um you know there are some limited exceptions uh with legally adjudicated groundwater basins but in general uh the right to access groundwater resides with the overlying property and the well owner so that means that for the most part uh california does not have a permit process to regulation of groundwater use and groundwater use doesn't require approval from the state water resource control board or court similar to our water right uh surface water right um so you can see how this kind of wrinkle led to the overdrafting of certain basins in the state um but sigma ultimately tasked local agencies with managing their groundwater resources at a local level uh in a sustainable managed manner on a 20 to 50 year planning horizon uh the first thing it required was local agencies to form what they call groundwater sustainability agencies uh in all uh designated high and medium priority groundwater basins and sub basins and that was required to be done by June 30th of 2017 Santa Rosa water and other agencies in the region with jurisdictional boundaries and authorities formed a grant uh joint powers authority to act as a groundwater sustainability agency or GSA in the basin um and it's now known as the Santa Rosa plain groundwater sustainability agency so the legislation also required sort of these comprehensive groundwater sustainability plans be created uh and then they be created also in a transparent public process and definitely imposed timelines for the adoption of these plans um so basins that were designated as critically overdrafted were required to be uh delivered by January 2020 um this basin here is designated as a medium priority basin and thus must have a plan in place by January 31st of 2022 so um as you were aware the GSA is in the process of finalizing their plan for adoption by the end of the year next slide so just to kind of give you an idea of where the Santa Rosa plain groundwater sustainability agency boundary is uh encompasses approximately 80,000 acres and is generally bounded by uh the low lying hills of the Mendocino range uh on the east and uh oh excuse me on the on the west and then um by the snow mountains and the myocomus mountains on the east the sub basin is approximately 22 miles long and the width varies uh from approximately nine miles um through the Santa Rosa area for instance uh to six miles wide at the south end uh and then kind of narrows greatly at the end near Catahti uh the sub basin the sub basin includes uh the town of Windsor cities Catahti, Runner Park, Santa Rosa and Sevastopol and areas of unincorporated rural communities and a lot of agricultural cultivation as well so the principal streams here in this basin are Mark West Creek, Santa Rosa Creek and the Laguna de Santa Rosa which uh ultimately drained a combined watershed of approximately 251 uh square miles next slide so um the Santa Rosa plain groundwater sustainability agency as I mentioned earlier was is a joint powers authority comprised of the representatives from the city of Santa Rosa, the city of Catahti, city of Runner Park, city of Sevastopol and the town of Windsor, the county of Sonoma, Sonoma Water and the Sonoma and Goldridge Resource Conservation Districts and also there is a representative from several independently owned water systems in the basin that also utilize groundwater. The advisory committee of this agency is comprised of representatives from those same members that I mentioned above but additionally has community members with diverse perspectives on beneficial groundwater use and that also includes representatives from agriculture, the environmental community, the business community, rural residents and rural well users and also public water districts. So you have the board of directors and that advisory committee has configured there and the GSA itself also has several staff and technical consultants that administer the many activities of the GSA including creating the groundwater sustainability plan which we're going to be talking about today and overall just generally carrying out the directives of the board and the various public processes involved. Your representative for the city of Santa Rosa on board directors is council member Tom Schwedhelm who also happens to serve as a chair of the board directors and council member John Sawyer is the alternate. Next slide. So in a general sense there are sort of three important steps required as part of sigma that is sort of outlined in this graphic. The last time we were before this council between 2015 and 2017 a groundwater sustainability agency was being formed as required by law and the city has thus participated in that joint powers authority since 2017 and since then that GSA has been focused primarily on step two here, development of groundwater sustainability plan and that's where we are today with the final draft having been circulated last month and a final document being proposed for adoption by the GSA board on December 9th and after that step three is going to be having the GSA implement that plan and ultimately ensure that the basin achieves sustainability as defined by sigma on a 20-year time frame. Next slide. So I was going to stay at a pretty high level but I would like to talk a little bit about the elements of this plan. You know it is about a 800 to a thousand page document with all the appendices. I don't anticipate that this council will dive into that too much but I do want to give just definitely an overview of some of the independent elements of this plan. Sigma does mandate that specific elements are going to be addressed in this plan before it can be submitted and approved by the State Department of Water Resources. So first the plan must have a very comprehensive description of the basin and the aquifer sort of including the hydrogeologic characteristics, land uses and various other sort of important descriptors that can orient someone as to the conditions occurring in the basin and so the plan also must identify sustainability indicators and objectives and goals specifically tailored to our local basin and address how the region plans to meet the goals of sustainability on a 20-year planning horizon and beyond. And of course with those indicators and objectives it'll outline how we'll prevent the groundwater basin from sliding into various specific undesirable results in the future. And then the plan needs to lay out various actions the GSA will undertake to achieve sustainability goals in terms of projects and management actions and then of course we're going to need to develop a wide-ranging monitoring plan to determine the long-term health of the basin and see how we're doing with achieving the goals outlined in the plan and ensuring success in the future. Next slide. So as I mentioned one of the required elements of plan is a sort of a piece that's sort of description setting and highlights the important geographic and hydrological elements of the Santa Rosa Plains Subbasin. This sort of not only includes just the complex technical water resources and geological related discussions but you know definitely covers things like political jurisdictions that may exist within the boundary of the GSA and the area that the GSB covers and you know things like current land use designations throughout the entire area. It should be noted that the Santa Rosa Plains Subbasin does sort of have a particularly complex geology there's many fault lines that bisect the subbasin and that does come into play when developing this plan and as you can imagine things like land use can also affect water quality and quality throughout the basin as well. So this plan sort of also separates out into two aquifers there is a shallow aquifer existing of approximately 200 feet or less and then a deep aquifer that is below that 200 feet threshold. These are considered unique and therefore will need special consideration in that plan for future protection and establishing future planning goals as well. Next slide. So in all there are an estimated 7,000 wells groundwater wells in the basin and they generally fall into three category sectors rural domestic municipal wells and agriculture. The estimated demands by these sectors are displayed in that pie chart there with about 50 percent of use being applied to rural domestic users. Those are folks that have you know independent groundwater wells in rural areas and are not connected to municipal systems like ours and then 32 percent agriculture and then another 18 percent to municipal users as well. Next slide. So by law the plan must include a water budget and hydrogeologic model. This budget really is sort of an inventory of involve inflow and outflow or kind of the supply and demand of the groundwater total groundwater basin and this plan sort of includes a summary of both surface water and groundwater budgets even you know as you can imagine they are naturally linked in the water cycle as well. So you know using this budget the plan is is able to input this into a model and really kind of forecast out and evaluate the potential changes in groundwater storage with you know projected changes in things like you know climate land use designations and many other supply and demand considerations over this sort of 20 to 50 year planning horizon. Next slide. So this is just a real basic or it's actually not very basic but it's sort of a complex illustration of the various potential inflows and outflows that create the water budget. You know these include the various import inputs you sort of know about like rainfall and stream and other you know irrigation inputs but you know also the losses that occur from things like evaporation or you know the municipal domestic and agricultural demands that I highlighted earlier. You know so these inputs in this plan were sort of robustly calculated for the plan in order to gain a critical understanding and picture of what's going on underneath our feet with this groundwater basin and how to look in the future. So next slide. So this graphic here just sort of shows a little more detail of some of those inflows and outflows in terms of just describing them. You know just in general it should be highlighted this plan for this plan there are three water budgets that are required to be developed for the GSP and you know those are sort of the historical conditions those being from 1976 to 2018 when this planning effort started and then the current conditions which would cover you know 2012 to 2018 and then of course where the modeling comes in you know there's projected conditions how they would occur over a 50-year planning and implementation horizon of this plan. So that would cover you know sort of 2021 to 27. Next slide. So the plan will show that going forward you know total groundwater storage is projected to sort of stabilize during these extended wet periods based on some climate models and then eventually it will decline during long term droughts. You know obviously with projected demand increases in demand changes to land use and our climate. The plan does project a long-term deficit of about 200 acre feet per year between now and 2040 and 1400 acre feet by 2070. So you know for comparison the three sectors are using an estimated 17,000 to 20,000 acre feet of water on average right now. So you know this is a deficit it's not something that has to be fixed right away but it's something that's projected and has to be monitored and it's one of the things that the GSA will need to overcome ultimately to achieve long-term sustainability in the base to ensure protection of water supplies. As should mention this is all obviously projected based on a model you know so there's a lot that you know remains to be figured out in terms of what that deficit will look like. Next slide. So you know the plan must address how the basin is going to ensure that we achieve sustainability long term in the basin and there are these six sustainability indicators that must be addressed in the plan and they're the anchors of this groundwater sustainability plan and really these indicators will be how we determine success on the 20-year planning horizon. You know these six indicators are the issues that sort of could pop up and must be addressed long term and the plan includes sort of very important thresholds and you know how we'll know that these indicators are being addressed and ensure that there will be no harm to the beneficial users of the groundwater basin and then the plan you know as I mentioned you know must create these sort of minimum thresholds and measurable objectives you know that are tailored around each of these individual indicators in some cases you know these thresholds and objectives may not be directly measured and so you can in some instances use proxy measurements to determine progress in achieving sustainability so a good example would be you know sort of reduction in overall groundwater storage you could perhaps use monitoring of groundwater levels to determine if that storage is reducing long term. So it also should be noted that seawater intrusion is not a concern in this basin due to it the basin not obviously being proximal to sailing water inputs so it was not directly addressed in this plan. Next slide. So each of these six sustainability indicators have three primary sustainable management criteria terms these are the undesirable results and minimum thresholds and measurable objectives you know obviously the top two sort of define what is an unacceptable range for these indicators in the basin and determine you know long term whether the basins can be managed sustainably so a good example as I mentioned earlier would be groundwater levels if you're seeing groundwater levels continually declining you set a threshold to where that is no longer acceptable and the GSA needs to step in and take proactive measures and so the the measurable objectives are the term which sort of defines you know what's desirable within the basin and really kind of overarching what the GSA must try to achieve long term. Next slide. And then lastly a monitoring plan the groundwater sustainability plan must include a you know robust monitoring plan to ensure you know the objectives are being met and established thresholds are not being exceeded throughout the 20 year planning horizon. So you know data will be extracted utilizing sort of these networks of dedicated monitoring wells various land use and water monitoring tools that are publicly available. Next slide. So as you can see here the plan you know would include a network of monitoring points in groundwater wells and dedicated groundwater monitoring points that are tailored to address the needs of those two aquifers that I mentioned earlier you know both the shallow and deep zones that exist throughout the basin. There's a total of 34 potential representative monitoring points that are being included in this monitoring plan with 18 of those being in the shallow zone and 16 in the deep zones and you know also in this plan with this monitoring plan you must identify any areas the basin where data gaps may exist too so that would be identified and potentially incorporated into future plans for monitoring as well. And let's go to the next slide. And then yeah so finally the the groundwater sustainability plan must you know identify and describe project concepts and management actions that are going to achieve sustainability long term. You know this will help ensure that those deficits I mentioned potentially earlier are not going to be problematic in the future for the region. You know the plan specifically includes the prioritized and phased approach to projects and management actions to be implemented. You know some of those include the things above like you know addressing data gaps through monitoring or other technological advances. Potential voluntary water use efficiency measures you know much like we do water use efficiency here at the city and the water department we could be expanding that to rural well owners in the region. You know obviously there's opportunities here for stormwater recharge or you know large farm scale or other large scale options exist as well. Aquifer storage and recovery is something that has been discussed at length and then you know obviously there's another option for mandatory actions for well users that's conservation you know are cutbacks to groundwater use. So I'll talk a little bit more in detail about a couple of these concepts that are in the plan in the next couple slides here. Next slide. So stormwater recharge at a very high level you know is known that can be used to recharge groundwater through sort of these small basins and some of them are you know also these large on and off stream you know basins that can essentially allow water to percolate and recharge and you know it's also shown promise in certain areas of the region in terms of you know flooding permanent crops at times when there's a lot of water available as well. So next slide. And then the concept of aquifer storage and recovery is something that is has been discussed at length in this plan. It's sort of a temporary storage of surface water underground when surface water is plentiful you know water at a basic level is recharged through wells and directly into the target aquifer and during wet surplus periods and then pumped out for beneficial use in times like we're experiencing now during a drought or other you know sort of peak need periods as well. Next slide. So if nothing I think the most important takeaway I'd really like to convey today about this groundwater sustainability plan is that it is very much meant to be adaptive. These plans are sort of the first of their kind in response to that legislation in 2014 and as you can imagine the remain significant data gaps and hurdles we need to better formulate and understand in terms of framing up what the groundwater management needs are of this of the region. And you know the plan sort of establishes these defined goals and objectives and they're very global but it definitely allows the GSA to sort of continually check in on the various requirements for reaching sustainability and there are very obvious off ramps in this plan if things start to become problematic in terms of our water water quantity or quality or other issues. You know and then the GSA very much has the ability to adapt and change course adjust and institute you know any variety of actions in the future that are in the plan to address issues over this 20 year planning horizon and of course beyond. So let's go to the next slide. So just to kind of take it all home I imagine the council may be asking more specifically what the effects of this groundwater sustainability plan are on the city of Santa Rosa. You know most importantly the plan will ensure the protection of groundwater supplies for Santa Rosa water and well users within Santa Rosa. You know the plan will have impacts in that coordination on land use decisions in the region now need to occur with the GSA. An example would be the city needs to notify the GSA of any proposals substantially amend the general plan this is all by law and they must review and consider any adopted groundwater plan and potentially any comments from the GSA when amending the general plan. So something new is coming on as well but you know and then groundwater users you know fees to implement the groundwater sustainability plan will be placed on municipal and private wells mostly based on usage. The council may already be familiar but within in June 2018 the board of the GSA directed staff to sort of develop a fee structure and approved a fee in June of 2019. Rural residential users are considered de minimis and they would pay under this previously adopted fee $9.95 per year and large groundwater users like the city would pay $19.98 per acre foot of water pumped annually but this fee is going to be revisited and instituted likely it's proposed to be instituted likely in the next fiscal year to support the future implementation of the groundwater sustainability plan. During this planning process the cities and towns and the county as well agreed to pick up the tab for the planning effort but any future implementation would need to be spread across all groundwater users. And then finally the plan includes sort of these conceptual multi-jurisdictional projects you know that could be implemented to secure the groundwater supply for the future and the city really could participate in those if they choose to there may be benefits. But the plan you know notably does not obligate the city to participate in any future conceptual projects. Those projects of course would have to go through rigorous environmental review and other things as well. So let's go to the last slide here. So I just want to cover some of the next steps. You know public draft was released on October 1st and two public workshops were held virtually to receive public input on the plan. This public comment period has now concluded and staff of the GSA are working to address some of the comments by you know sort of improving certain sections for clarity in response to these comments that came from the public. You know drafts were available online and hard copies were also available at public locations including you know City Hall. And so I just wanted to also point out that critically the Santa Rosa Plain Board of Directors will hold the public hearing on December 9th to consider adoption of this final groundwater sustainability plan. And then you know staff will go back to the Board of Public Utilities this month and also return on November 30th with a much shorter presentation seeking direction to the City's Board Member, you know Council Member Schwedhelm, in terms of direction on whether or not to support the adoption of this plan. But by law the plan must be adopted and submitted to the California Department of Water Resources by January 31st of 2022. So that deadline is coming up very soon. So I guess we go to the last line. So I think today you know definitely my goal was to make sure the Council felt comfortable with the plan. It is very meaty and some of the topics that are going to be covered so that we can you know gather input from the City Council and answer any questions that may come up and sort of you know be able to take any of that input back to the GSA too if necessary. All right, thank you so much Deputy Director. Before I go to additional questions Council Member Schwedhelm, first of all thank you for your service on the committee and for being the Chair. Is there anything that you wanted to add or any context for Council? Just at the context a little bit and thank Peter and staff, you know Jennifer Burke, Director Burke and her staff has just been fabulous supporting not only me and Council Member Sawyer but also on the whack Vice Mayor Rogers because it's a subject matter expert right in this Groundwater Sustainability Plan is very technical. So when I heard oh there's going to be an executive summary that's great it's a 27-page executive summary because this is very technical information and it's we have fabulous staff and Sonoma Water has done a fabulous job there but we really have been you know we've had a lot of community meetings public meetings for all this input I would encourage everyone to read that 27-page executive summary just to give that feedback but it's a fabulous job here and some people at some community meetings I've heard you know some people are of the belief if I've got a well I own the water below me that's not kind of how the way this thing works it's a shared resource that we all need to care for this and that's what the whole idea behind SIGMA is whatever we pull out we need to make sure we replace it so generations to come have this a standable water source and that's the whole intent behind this and also once we do approve this and it's real important it's not the Santa Rosa City Council approving this plan it's Department of Water Resources in Sacramento now as Peter mentioned in 2020 the urgent or the high need areas had to submit their plans and Peter how many have they gotten their feedback yet from DWR because I also want to set the expectation we submit it in January of 22 we may not hear from us. Peter can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah that's a great point Councilman Schwedholm at this point you know two years later four of those plans the reviews have been released to those basins I believe the remains about 16 other critically overdrafted basins that have not received their formal review and output but those are forthcoming basins but it is they have about two years by law to review these plans and they're taking every bit of it for the most part and you know just because the plan is in review it's important to note that the work doesn't stop with the GSA there are requirements to continue to develop these cornered quarterly and annual reports by the GSA and continue to make progress on certain planning elements of the plan absent that review as well. And again as Peter said this once we're done with this it's not it will be different iterations as we get feedback because some of the technology that's being applied for some of these measurements and we're very fortunate out of those six metrics seawater intrusion is not something we're worried about in this basin but some of the technologies I know there's going to be a helicopter flying around Sonoma County measuring some things with a device from the bottom of it it's all about this this is new technology we're trying to apply so that we have the sustainable groundwater source so I just want to thank you know Peter and the entire staff for this it's scary when you think back to you know 2016 2017 when this started now here's this product and it is very dense technical data but let me just assure you we have the sub matter expert from Santa Rosa water and Sonoma water have done a yeoman's job to get this product here with a lot of community feedback and our advisory committee too they are also very engaged and provide a lot of feedback that has resulted in the product that's now available thanks thank you so much council any other questions all right let's go to public comment on this item then if you are interested in providing public comment go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on zoom or line up at the microphone we'll take comments mr. DeWitt you want to kick us off yes sir hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt I'm from Roseland I'm a renter that's on a residential domestic well and the well owner has been frightened by this whole process he's not on the internet and I come in to use the library to check the internet you folks seem to think that everybody's geared into this process when you use the word public but essentially it's just been a narrow group of folks that you term stakeholders who've been able to actually participate in these groundwater sustainability management plan meetings I've gone to some of them and they're rather exclusive they're not really about making sure that the residential well owners the domestic people are in the decision making process if you will you've said there's 7 000 wells in the county and what you haven't stated today is how you're going to monitor the residential domestic well water use you've stated you're going to have about a ten dollar a year de minimis fee on all of the wells and that might not seem like a lot to you but to somebody who believes and has believed since they owned their property that the water beneath them is a mineral right and you have no definition here that says to them well you're losing your legal rights what you're basically saying is it's a shared resource and everybody's going to work together to make it good for the future one of the things that concerns a lot of people is they see wineries and other water users within our community using a lot of water and they don't necessarily see how that's going to be monitored and done in a balanced manner with a residential domestic well user the person that I get the water from at the well is very conservative and so am I in the sense of we don't waste water we're very careful with this resource but we see how many industries and commercial landowners are not so uh if you'll excuse the expression concerned I see it when I go by a landscaping with a broken sprinkler and the water just pouring out onto the street and no one taking care of it we see it in many different ways we hope that you folks as you go forward will stand up for the rights of the residential domestic well owners and make sure that they're not monitored in a sense where everybody has to have a new water meter put in thank you for your time thank you we'll go on to the next Mr. Mayor members of the city council my name is David Gavridge I really appreciate the opportunity to speak on this plan I have a 45-acre property in Bennett Valley that's on relies on the private well so this has been a interesting process to watch I'm a former EPA federal EPA staffer and I think the plan that has come out is absolutely spot on in terms of what it has identified as alternatives for alternatives to strict mandates and one of my questions is uh when at first reading the plan I thought we've got to have better alternatives in terms of the water rushing out the Russian river during these heavy rain times and the plan actually speaks very directly to that one of my questions is how good is our data in terms of what the capacity is in the underground aquifers to know how much room there is to store water during these heavy rain events I didn't see a lot of detail in that I know I've heard about the helicopters flying around with measuring instruments and wonder are those doing that for measuring the capacity in the underground aquifer but I was bracing myself for some heavy regulations as a private well owner in Bennett Valley and also in Windsor unincorporated Windsor and I really appreciate the well thought out nature of this plan and I hope that it stays on point and that monitoring is the key and if possible I'd like a response in terms of how where are we at with regard to the accuracy of measuring capacity underground so I very appreciate the council holding this session thank you thank you sir hi good afternoon my name is Joe Massina I'm a well owner and I'm kind of concerned I have a couple questions that um the city and the county are asking us to to conserve conserve conserve there is a drought I'll agree but when will the city and the county lead as examples instead of mandating and putting all these laws on us when will they take care of their problems such as two aqueducts one has been leaking for over five years and the water agency has not fixed it yet and I'm sure you all know about it it's I know where it's at the other aqueduct has been leaking and you the people are not taking care of it you hired an outside contractor to come and take care of these leaks he threw his hands up in the air and walked away they're not getting fixed I think the city and the county need to lead by example stop the building and letting the water go out into the ocean learn how to conserve that instead of coming after us little guys who have well you have big industries out here that are wasting water I'm at the bottom of the wine industry you want to talk about waste I've been in the cellars and I've been down there people leave hoses on and it's it's a waste so hey I commend you and looking at this problem that we're going to have uh water but you guys need to lead by example thank you the last comment I see in the chamber if there's anybody on zoom who would like to speak now would be the time to raise your hand and seeing none uh do we have any voicemail public comments looks like no no so I'll bring it back to council for uh additional comments peter there was a question in there about the accuracy of the capacity underground could you speak to that please sure yeah um uh you know that's that's a fantastic question from the member of the public um you know that those things have been sort of modeled and there are datasets that perhaps go back decades that sort of look at um you know you know the makeup of the basin um and and that includes you know the different uh types of uh you know geologic formations and things like that um they they are an estimate you know in terms of the total capacity and and the department of water resources does maintain a dataset uh in their published bulletin 118 and that sort of does have an estimate of the total capacity of the basin but it is a bit you know fungible and as the councilman per Schwadhelm mentioned um there are these airborne electromagnetic surveys aem um it's a helicopter that sort of goes around with this dangling contraption um that sort of will allow them to um you know really it uses magnetic measurements I don't fully pretend to understand how it all works but um you know it'll it'll you know definitely gain a better understanding of the underlying structures that are in that basin and really will help um create a statewide dataset that will improve that long term and these are the types of things that that need to continue to occur um you know long term so we can better understand you know things where like where we can perhaps put um you know aquifer storage and recovery projects in place or stormwater recharge projects you know on agricultural lands um you know understanding these underlying structures uh geologically uh is important so you know I mean historically it was you know using well logs and you know perhaps going out and doing some uh some drilling and things like that to determine the underlying makeup of the groundwater basin now they can just fly over and gather huge swaths of data uh through this as well so um you know the technology is improving I appreciate that I have no other questions or even really substantive comments other than just a huge thank you to the entire team that's been working on this thank you to councilmember schwedhelm and the entire board I do remember when the when sigma was passed a number of years ago it it did fill people with a lot of uncertainty about what the process would look like it was uh a terrifying prospect for many folks and at the same time it was regarded that it was absolutely going to be needed particularly given what we expect to happen around climate change and we're obviously have been seeing that play out over the last couple of years so thank you to everybody who has taken the time to build this plan the right way to engage with the community to hear those concerns and to really come up with what I think is a thoughtful plan councilmember swerve thank you mayor I just want to help help I want to thank councilmember schwedhelm it was gracious of him to even mention my name he has not I believe he has missed one meeting um and I'm very thankful for that because I would have been like a fish out of water um pun intended uh it's uh when he first started on this much of it is a mystery and now I consider him a subject matter expert on uh on gsa and although I'm fascinated by aquifer storage I won't ask any questions about that I'll I'll do that offline um I'm very curious how it works and how the measurements are done both the the um the size of the storage how it's how it is mapped the quality of the water uh et cetera it just it really does fascinate me and um so I'm a bit um envious that he gets the he's on the ground floor when it comes to learning about how we will deal with water in the future so thank you tom for your diligence and your uh your ability to go to each one of those meetings you um saved my skin um and thanks to the entire team and the center was a water for their expertise in developing then helping to develop this plan although they're and of course it's not popular with everyone but necessary for us all so um thank you for that and um I'll leave it that thanks tom thank you john is there any other feedback for the deputy director okay we look forward to seeing this uh will we give formal direction to the council member on I believe it's november 30th all right thank you and with that uh council we have the rest of our meeting starts at four o'clock so we're going to go ahead and recess and we'll come back in about 25 minutes let's go ahead bring us back madam city clerk can you please call the roll yes thank you mayor as I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting council member tidbits will be absent at today's meeting so i'll start with council member schwedhelm here council member soyer here council member fleming here council member alvarez vice mayor rogers president mayor rogers here that the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member tidbits all right madam city attorney could you please report out on closed session yes thank you mr mayor um council met in closed session on item 2.1 a meeting with labor negotiators um and the uh council gave direction to the negotiation team and took no final action thank you great thank you so much we have no proclamations today so let's move on to our staff briefings mayor rogers and members of the council our first staff briefing is our covet 19 response update and we have to share with the council and members of the public today some covet 19 guidance for holiday travel people planning to travel and attend gatherings over the upcoming holidays should take steps now to protect themselves from covet 19 and ensure that they have proper documents required to prove their vaccination or testing status the cdc guidance states that people who are not vaccinated should avoid travel and holiday gatherings however there is still time to get vaccinated before the holidays unvaccinated people who want to gather for Thanksgiving should get vaccinated immediately as it takes two weeks to become fully protected against covet 19 after receiving the single dose j&j janssen vaccine or a second dose of the two-shot Pfizer or Moderna vaccines for information about vaccine clinics and how to make appointments through the county's vaccine clinic webpage visit sonoma countyemergency.org forward slash vaccine or visit myturn.ca.gov last week children aged 5 to 11 became eligible for the Pfizer pediatric vaccine providing families with another tool to protect loved ones over the holidays doses for young children are now available in sonoma county to find a dose parents are encouraged to reach out to their pediatrician or local pharmacy starting today vaccination clinics are available for families and students at nine schools serving populations without convenient or affordable access to health care for locations of clinics in sonoma county please visit the sonoma county office of education website at scoe.org as of sunday november 11th the county has 1317 active covet 19 cases and a total of 408 deaths since the start of the pandemic that concludes my uh covet 19 response update the next uh staff update that we have to share with you today is our community empowerment plan and that will be presented by mcgally tell us our deputy director of community engagement ma'am thank you um excuse me ma'am may i make an announcement really quick and we are having some technical difficulties with our closed captioning apparently the captioners have connected to the uh different encoder so the captions appearing on our meeting are for a different meeting that is happening so our it department is working with granicus to find that what's going on but i just want to let anybody from the public who may be watching um the captioning is um not for this council meeting it is for another one do we need to take a five-minute break to have it sorted out um no i don't think so because this is something that the it um uh is checking in with granicus and so i don't know how long that's going to take they're working on it right now but um they're hoping they to get it fixed but in case anybody from the public who's on and realizes that the information being shown online and in the captioning doesn't match what's happening in the meeting that is why thank you may i may i mr mayor um and um miss williams will the closed captioning ultimately be uh be up for the for this portion of the meeting or will this simply be lost for closed captioning i'm waiting for an answer on that okay great yes i pose that question and thank you waiting for that answer like all you if you want to take it away okay sounds good um thank you uh good afternoon mayor rogers vice mayor rogers members of the council uh margarita is a director of community engagement here with a quick report on the community empowerment plan um i should say update sorry uh so in terms of our community engagement efforts around the side shows our team collected 608 survey responses from community members providing input on the issue of side shows in san rosa we've also held a one in person and one virtual listening session to gather additional information from our spanish speaking community and representatives from city council police transportation and public works as well as community engagement office participated in these listening sessions our team will be holding a final virtual listening session in spanish next week on monday the 15th at 6 30 p.m um we can provide definitely the link um for folks that want to join us um or if they can check in with uh one of our community engagement folks are happy to supply that and our team will be working on analyzing the the data and determining next steps on how to report out the findings to both council and the community um we're regarding the mary lou lowrider patrol car the pinstriping um pain has been purchased pinstriping and mural making have been delayed uh due to the weather the rooms and tires were delivered which is really great we were concerned about um a shipping issue and we're working on identifying a shop that can install them for us this normal county lower rate council is working on designing a car club plaque for the car which is really great um the the stereo system has been ordered and generously donated by enterprise rent a car the reveal date has been postponed uh accommodating for shipping delays that we are experiencing with some of the other items and per the soma county lowrider council's request to align with the celebration of sesad chavis day um so we're going to be pushing our event to march 26 2022 it will take place on campus and um the staff will continue to meet with the lower council to complete the build and the reveal plan um also the lower order committee would like to um extend an invitation to the different departments um here so that you know different departments could um table and provide information will also be extending um that invitation to our local school um system so san rosa schools and our roseland unified school district to come table and sort of provide as many resources and the celebration as possible for that day uh for the multicultural roots project november is national native american heritage month and we're featuring stories from our local indigenous communities this month in the multicultural roots projects project um so please check that out we encourage our community members to learn more about the rich history of our local tribes and tribal leaders and lastly the resolution to declare racism as a public health and human rights crisis will be coming to council next Tuesday november 16th and we're looking forward to presenting that um for all of you that is the end of our report thank you all right thank you so much all right our third uh staff briefing of the day is um on the bennett valley golf course and jason nut our assistant city manager will be providing that update one moment he is being promoted to the panelists side good afternoon mayor vice mayor and council members jason nut assistant city manager uh wanting to provide you with a quick update on the bennett valley golf course project um we uh in early october uh pulled together the bennett valley review and selection committee to review three proposals that were received from our solicitation for an operations evaluation the review and selection committee consisted of council member schwethelm chris knell who was a member of the public that was appointed by the bennett valley golf course ad hoc committee gen santos of our parks planning team don hicks of our recreation division james castrow of our parks maintenance division jill scott with real estate and terry blatto of our parks uh planning team uh as they reviewed those three proposals uh there was a unanimous decision to recommend the national golf federation based on their experience with similar scopes of work and other municipalities uh in an effort to expedite this process i moved forward and expedite and approved the contract i recognize that during prior conversations i had agreed to bring this back to the council for authorization given our timeline and the fact that we were recently informed that we would not be able to get an extension on the current operators timeline we felt it was in our best interest to try to gain as many weeks as we could to complete this study which would allow us time to put a new operator agreement on the street as early as possible in 2022 with that said i went ahead and approved this contract it had a total amount of 44 000 which was significantly lower than we had anticipated and we will be bringing forward an item in early december on consent to allow council to authorize the use of the gulf enterprise funds to cover the cost for this in the meantime the the national golf foundation is currently underway we did our kickoff meeting with them yesterday morning had a great meeting between staff and their consultant team um their top line from their website reads this it says the national golf foundation exists to foster the growth and vitality of the game and business and the business of golf that's exactly what we're attempting to do with this process and so using that top line is really a great idea and let me just read you a very quick statement from them uh as they put in their proposal says the national golf foundation is the recognized industry leader in municipal golf course consulting and has served an extensive client list of public sector agencies including many in northern california in recent years because national golf foundation does not manage operate design finance or maintain golf facilities we're able to provide the utmost objectivity in our evaluations we're also uniquely qualified to assist the city due to our dedicated research division that has been at the forefront of industry participation research and trends for decades including extensive recent work relating to the demand effects of COVID-19 finally national golf federations recent survey research of municipal golf courses in the us allows us to benchmark our municipal golf facility clients against more than a thousand other municipal facilities on on key metrics those statements were really key and critical in that selection committee making the decision to move forward with us and we're very excited to to have them underway that was the nature of the report i just wanted to make sure i brought this information to the council in the open session as well as give the public an opportunity to understand what direction we're going again my administrative process adjustment was approved by the betta valley golf course ad hoc committee we did discuss that in late october they unanimously agreed that i could go that i should go ahead and expedite this and so with that that concludes my update and reports we're excited to see this process move forward i'm happy to answer any questions if you haven't great thank you so much jason i've got a couple of questions and council will ask questions on all of the staff briefings but jason my questions are for you so with this contract being approved can you give us the updated timeline for completion of the study and having a new operator in place so we believe based on the consultants timeline they provided us that they would be able to complete their study by the end of december given the fact that we're providing them an additional three weeks by expediting the agreement approval our hope is they'll have a draft to us before christmas which would give us an opportunity to finalize and have something ready to go for a drafting of a new operator agreement in early january with that we believe that while it may be tight we believe we can have a new operator selected and prepared to take over operations about the time that the current operator uh his contract expires at the end of june so um it is a it is a tight timeline still uh with that we are looking for weeks to add into the schedule where we can uh and that's why we went through this process of expediting uh and what i heard was around the time that the current operator uh his contract expires what is the contingency plan if we get to that point is it as i've heard concern from community members is it to shut down the course temporarily or is there a backup plan so mayor obviously we would like to ensure that there's no that there's no um closure of operations we would like to have an operator in place several weeks before the contract expires so that we can have a smooth and easy transition and we believe there's time in the schedule to make that happen uh there are a number of unknowns we don't know how many operators will be interested in in bidding on the the proposal we don't know what conditions those operators may have in order to take over the existing operations so that's why right now we're going to think optimistically and say that we're going to have a smooth transition in the event that something occurs um there may be a closure of operations of the course um during a period of time um we believe that early in in the new year we'll understand whether or not our timeline could be in jeopardy if we believe there is an opportunity to create some level of assistance with city staff in order to keep things operational we will certainly put those into motion we just need to understand at this point in time staff has never operated this golf course at least not in recent history and so uh i can't say that we can step in easily um and therefore uh i want to make sure that uh you know i'm i'm trying to be direct and upfront in saying that there could be a closure of the course if things fall into place uh the wrong way um we will continue to maintain the course uh our maintenance staff is prepared to take on that level of operations so that we don't lose any of the asset and that asset is very valuable to us and there are specific maintenance criteria that need to be performed on a daily basis and it's our intention to ensure that we can continue to make that happen um so mayor uh we will be doing our best to sustain operations without any interruption but i i want to make sure that um you and the public know that there are potential scenarios where we will have to suspend play for a period of time while we do a transition all right i think if that is going to be the case in the beginning of the year um the sooner that you allow us a chance to have a discussion to see what we can do to avoid that i think the better uh efforts it is my intention to bring uh to be as transparent and clear with council as possible and i don't expect that there'll be any unforeseen um surprises i'm hoping that we'll be very much on top of it as we move forward okay and then we have had attempts to extend the current operator if we need to we have made uh several attempts to work with the existing operator to extend their contract we received the most recent correspondence that explained that he was uh that he and his staff were unwilling to extend and that they were intending to simply comply with the current contract terms was there a particular sticking point there were a number of areas that that particular that our operator was concerned about being the condition of components of the irrigation system uh and the condition of some of the equipment that his crew was operating at this point in time um we acknowledged that we were willing to work with him on the acquisition of additional equipment and that we would be looking at the components of the irrigation system that we felt we could reasonably enhance improve or replace um within our current scope and budget okay are there any any other questions from council okay we'll go to public comment on this item we'll start with Gregory thank you mayor uh rogers i'm a treasurer of the uh Benivelli golf club but i'm i'm asking this question purely as an individual but i know a lot of people will be interested i haven't heard anything about whether or not the restaurant legends is being included in the process or not just like clarification are we bidding are people going to be bidding on the entire operation or just the golf course operation um enlighten me thank you thank you Gregory the only hand that i see we have anybody in the chamber who'd like to speak on this seeing head to shake no let's go to our voicemail public comment item seven staff breathing my name is Duane DeWitt from roseland COVID response community empowerment plan and the golf course study in a sense that could all be tied in together one of the concerns that a local resident pointed out to me is what are we saving the golf course from and i thought to myself mismanagement that's been the problem and having the people who've been mismanaging it try to make it better might not help it's kind of like how things went with the COVID response and community empowerment hasn't really occurred yet so maybe what you could do is have a strong community empowerment throughout all of Santa Rosa's seven districts to talk about how that one golf course is so important to those people there and those people in that one district want all the rest of the city to help them save the golf course so this is where you could really do good community empowerment you could explain to the rest of the city why it's helpful to them to help Benna Valley that would be great yes start those meetings up soon looking forward to hearing about it all the best to you by now thank you mayor that concludes public comment on item seven thank you dina i'll bring it back jason there was a question from Gregory about the restaurant could you provide some context yes thank you mayor the restaurant is part of the evaluation that's being done right now questions that the consultant will be looking at is whether the restaurant operation should be operated independently of the golf course or whether should be a component of the golf course operation we anticipate that by the end of their study they will give us a recommendation on whether there should be one or two operating agreement solicitations and we'll we'll go from there but but the restaurant is absolutely part of the evaluation process right now okay thank you and i think what i've heard overwhelmingly from the public is do everything that we can to make sure that there's continuity of service that we don't end up having to close down for me as we go through this process the restaurant while important is not vital to the success of the golf course and so if this needs to be a bifurcated process to make sure that we are able to maintain keeping the golf course open i want that option on the table as well council member soyer thank you mayor i just wanted to reinforce mr. net's dedication to keeping the golf course open if at all possible he's looking for every option to maintaining the the play at the golf course part part of the difficulty in that the city has never operated the golf courses is the pro shop and you know it's it is a business and being able to take a staff member or train staff to operate that particular business and scheduling play and all of the the nuances of operating a golf course are numerous and so regardless of the challenge i know that mr. net and his team is looking at all possibilities and not having any interruption in play at the golf course it it does not guarantee there won't be but i know that that he and his team are looking at all options to be able to maintain play at the golf course they understand the value and the the importance to families and those regular players and players from out of our city in maintaining the livelihood and profitability and maintenance of golf course maintaining the greens and maintaining the the infrastructure is in essence easily done by by the city we know how to do that but operating a pro shop is not generally in the wheelhouse of the city of Santa Rosa and that's where the challenge lies not insurmountable but it is it is we're probably the largest challenge lies and i know that mr. net will be giving us fair warning when it comes to the the potential of having to interrupt play while the contracts are negotiated i appreciate that council member i heard you offered your expertise as a former business owner i sold magazines not golf clubs all right council there any other questions any other comments great we'll continue to move on then let's go on to our city manager and city attorney reports i'm going to have the city attorneys start tonight oh thank you mr. mayor i do not have anything to report this afternoon so thank you well that was easy then it was mr. mayor members of council i will happily take the city attorney's time and i have four short items to update the council on the first is regarding the santa rosa veterans memorial here at city hall i'm pleased to announce that through the city's volunteer and park program local resident ross loscombe and a group of dedicated community members have adopted the veterans memorial monument at city hall this team of dedicated volunteers who've trimmed trees installed new drip irrigation and planted low water use plants throughout the five bedding areas to bring a new and vibrant look to the memorial site i'm grateful to our dedicated and caring community volunteers and in honor of veterans day this thursday i encourage everyone to visit the veterans memorial monument located on the southwest corner of city of the city hall campus and to pay tribute to the men and women who served and sacrificed their lives for our country i'd also like to celebrate the retirement of one of our very long-term transit department members a city bus operator for the last 36 years who has served the city for that long period of time with no preventable accidents during his career congratulations to mike jackson and please enjoy your retirement and finally two items from our police department uh recently the police department department hosted a trunk or treat at the veterans memorial building on october 27th with several other public safety partners and it was well attended with hundreds of vehicles and families in fact if you happen to be driving by the veterans memorial at that time you probably experienced the traffic jam uh also uh i think there was an article in today's press democrat that reported out about an ongoing project where officers and detectives led a city effort to address a nuisance property after numerous calls for service and arrest of occupants for narcotics and other crimes officers collaborated with code enforcement and the city attorney's office to remove the occupants and resolve the ongoing neighborhood complaint this was a concerted effort which required many hours of investigative and administrative effort from each of the city departments and congratulations to all those involved and thank you for that great collaboration and teamwork that concludes the city manager's updates for today great we have any questions for the city manager on his update let's go ahead and check public comment if you're interested in providing comment hit the raise hand feature on zoom i do not see any hands do we have any voicemails we do not mayor great we'll go ahead bring it back thank you so much move on to item number nine do we have any statements of abstention by council members council members what help yes mr. mayor um although i've read the material viewed most of the video from the last council meeting i will be abstaining from item 12.17 and 12.18 because i was not present during the presentation okay are there any others council member soyer thank you mayor i will need to abstain from item 11.2 um they are minutes from the august 31st meeting special meeting and 11.3 which is the the minutes from the regular meeting on that same date as i was absent we'll note those abstentions let's move on to mayors and council member reports who wants to start let's go with council member alvarez thank you mayor uh just want to inform the public and and really through our interpreter that the consulate the mexican consulate will be here on saturday september 20th uh to conduct business for our uh mexican nationals and this will be held at 987 airway court in san rosa with catholic charities and it could be reached through uh mixel.sre.gov.mx forward slash cits. web portal forward slash and i'm hoping that our community can take advantage of the mobile consulate that will be coming to town and hopefully it will be a uh a reoccurrence a recurring event for people to have access opposed to those that don't have transportation to have to travel all the way to san francisco to conduct their business who to renew their their their documents and and conduct new business thank you mayor thank you council member council member soyer thank you mayor um well this morning we had a referring to my notes so you'll pardon me um was a it was a good long meeting and and very effective this morning we had an economic development subcommittee at which we got an update on the economic development strategic planning process including the vision and mission and discuss the focus airy elements and i want to thank council members flaming and alvarez for attending this morning and of course our economic development staff because of their the um uh there's there are oftentimes um our our plate is full as our many subcommittees and so i really appreciate their their attendance i know everyone on council were sent a briefing on this and on the subject matter that we discussed today and i encourage you to to find that email and review um the the overview itself um the second main area of conversation was on furthering the equity overlay that was developed for the ARPA funding um discussions uh the the idea is to develop an equity lens framework for ongoing use um bolstered by data uh where we consider climate justice economic justice and social justice alongside our own procedural justice so we can be really thoughtful in effecting change moving forward thank you very much thank you council member council members widow thank you mr mayor uh two things first i want to give a water update report on november 1st we had a water advisory committee meeting and all of us in san rosa experienced that atmospheric river so i want to give a little bit of detail about that so sonoma water staff reported due to the atmospheric river in mid october as well as other rainfall events both reservoirs have gained storage lake minnesino gained approximately six thousand acre feet of storage and has over 18 000 acre feet in the reservoir lake sonoma gained approximately 15 000 acre feet of storage and has over 120 000 acre feet in the reservoir due to the rainfall the state water board removed the requirement for sonoma water and its contractors to reduce diversions from the russia river by 20 compared to 2020 usage but it's still requiring compliance with the governor's drought declaration we're still in a drought and the reservoirs are still critically low therefore all of sonoma water contractors will continue to implement their respective storage plans which for san rosa is a requirement for a 20 percent community wide reduction one other item that won't go into great detail because if we think it was a lot of technical details with the grant on a sustainability plan the potter valley project relicensing uh the potter valley project partners requested and were granted an abeyance through april of 2022 from FERC which is a federal licensing agency regarding the relicensing of the potter valley project and it will provide updated information as it becomes available and lastly along with a couple other council members i attended the merit awards sunday at family center and i just really want to compliment recreation parks staff for creating a fun and very appropriate COVID appropriate event those of us that have experienced in this chamber it's one of the best days of the year where you have the chamber packed and everyone gets to share this great news but the way recreation park came up with it it was awesome and i think all the recipients really appreciate it and i was very impressed with the youth representation during some of those awards thanks i just want to take the time to acknowledge our veterans and thank them for their service and give a big huge shout out to my husband sergeant andre t rogers and my daughter uh e3 sledge who is now in the navy very very proud of them and also to announce the food and fun drive that will be taking place on december 4th at a place to play between 10 and 2 that many of our council members will be attending which i'm really happy about that we're partnering with redwood empire food bank to do a drive through food drive so please look out for more information to come on our city connect and also on our facebook pages so thank you very much all right thank you vice mayor a number of things since it's been a couple of weeks since we've met i did want to really thank all of our public safety staff who and park and rec staff who participated and planned the trunker treat event uh was a huge success when i went by there were literally thousands of people who were waiting to get into the the vets hall to be able to participate uh wanted to thank the chamber of commerce and their partnership uh with their halloween event that they did as well i had a chance to be a judge for the the costume contest my personal favorite was a little eight or nine month old who was dressed as a smore which i thought was a pretty clever costume and again another shout out to our team who partnered with our youth and a huge thank you to everyone who participated in our two-day day of the dead event that was on the square last week a couple of working items uh did want to give a brief update uh on our long-term financial policy and audit committee we did begin to talk about uh the pension stabilization fund uh that we've talked about here from the day as we talk about our long-term finances the full council should see that item coming forward sometime soon uh we've had two different meetings on the aca seven working group that's the constitutional amendment that i've mentioned to council before that would allow local ordinances to override statewide statewide bills related to land use ongoing and i'll continue to update councils we have something further and then finally yesterday we had our sonoma county transportation authority and regional climate protection agency meeting uh the urban land institute has released a report after working with many of our folks here in santa rosa and across the region on uh long-term sustainability and in particular looking at our land use practices and how they relate to resiliency and wildfires there's 40 recommendations in that report all council members will be getting that report from scta staff and i would really encourage you to read at least the executive summary as it really is based on our experience with wildfires in our in our community uh and will be really critical for moving our county forward in terms of resiliency move on to item 11 actually let's go ahead we'll do public comment on council members reports if you're interested in providing comment go ahead to hit the raise hand feature on zoom not seeing any oh we've got gregory yeah i just wanted to ask a question um was the merit awards taped and if so would you please put it up on your website so we can all see and if it wasn't taped god what a missed opportunity thanks thank you gregory so we uh i could answer that we actually have split the merit awards into two different weeks uh so the vice mayor council member sweat helm and i had an opportunity to do the first half this last sunday taking photos and looking at information and congratulating the winners on their projects that will all be released via social media i believe following this coming sunday when we have the second batch of folks who are coming in and meeting with us meeting with council members taking photos and getting their awards i know staff has been really cognizant of being covet safe and obviously we had to cancel the awards last year so this year it's an opportunity for us to take that in get that good feeling from such an incredible event in our community and then yes it will all be shared via social media and congratulating the winners on that let's move on to item 11 we have five sets of minutes august 24th august 31st for both the special and the regular september 14th and september 28th uh were there any amendments to any of those minutes okay seeing none we'll see if there's any public comment and i do not see any did we have any voicemail public comments we do not mayor great that we'll show those minutes adopted as presented without objection and show council member soyer as abstaining from items 11.2 and 11.3 mr city manager let's go on to the consent calendar mayor rogers and members of the city council we have 18 items on the consent calendar this afternoon so please bear with me as i read the titles item 12.1 is a resolution for the approval of the issuance of a purchase order to day management corporation doing business as day wireless systems for the purchase of 130 bendix king portable radios and required accessories through bkm slash re lm naspo value master agreement number 0 6 9 1 3 be the state of california participating addendum number 7 dash 16 dash 58 dash 15 item 12.2 a resolution making required monthly findings and authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing for public meetings of the city council and all city boards commissions and committees pursuant to assembly bill 361 item 12.3 a resolution approving a design build contract award for public safety building generator replacement located at 955 and 965 sonoma avenue item 12.4 a resolution authorizing the purchase order for the 2022 forward police interceptor hybrid suvs item 12.5 also a resolution regarding the acceptance and appropriation of grant funds from the state of california alcoholic beverage control and office of traffic safety item 12.6 a resolution for the adoption of a memorandum of understanding with unit 5 police officers represented by the santa rosa police officers association effective july 1 of 2021 through june 30 of 2024 item 12.7 also a resolution for the adoption of a memorandum of understanding for units 4 support services unit 6 professional and unit 7 technical represented by the international brotherhood of teamsters local union 856 effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.8 a resolution for the adoption of a memorandum of understanding for unit 3 maintenance represented by the operating engineers local union number 3 effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.9 a resolution for the adoption of a memorandum of understanding for unit 13 mechanics represented by the operating engineers local union number 3 effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 10 point i'm sorry 12.10 a resolution for the adoption of a memorandum of understanding for unit 16 utility system operators represented by operating engineers local union number 3 effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.11 a resolution for adoption of wages hours and other terms and conditions of employment for unit 10 executive management effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.12 a resolution for adoption of wages hours and other terms and conditions of employment for unit 11 middle management and unit 12 confidential effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.13 a resolution for adoption of a memorandum of understanding for unit 9 police safety management represented by the santa rosa police management association effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.14 a resolution for adoption of a memorandum of understanding for unit 18 miscellaneous mid management represented by the santa rosa management association effective july 1 2021 through june 30th 2024 item 12.15 a resolution regarding a request for summary vacation of 3 25 foot by 3 foot unused public utility easements located at 2900 and 2934 mcbryde lane and 1142 state farm drive assessors parcels numbers 015-492-019 015-492-017 and 015-492-006 file number vac 21-003 item 12.16 a resolution for approval of a master agreement administering agency state agreements for state funded projects item 12.17 an ordinance adoption and ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending title 20 of the santa rosa city code to incorporate zoning code interpretations made by the city's zoning administrator and other technical corrections file number st 21-001 and the final item 12.18 an ordinance adoption and ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending title 9 of the santa rosa city code by amending chapter 9-12 refuse in sanitation and chapter 9-14 construction and demolition debris by adding provisions and requirements of senate bill 1383 short-lived climate pollutants organic waste reductions that concludes the consent calendar thank you mr city manager councilor are there any questions on that very long long consent calendar all right let's see if there's any public comment we'll start with gregory thank you mayor for indulging me my name is gregory farron i just would like to have somebody maybe it's your long-term finance committee report but it'd be nice to know what the cost of 12.6 through 12.14 is i suspect it's probably a consent calendar that tops every every decision you've ever made financially and i'd just kind of like to know what those mo use cost us thank you all right that's the only hand that i see there do we have any voicemail public comments consent items 12.2 duane duwit from roseland these meetings that you've been holding for over a year and a half of um you call them teleconferencing they could be helpful to the city but they're not as helpful to the community unless perhaps you explain how the community can maximize their efficiency for a citizen it would be wonderful if you continue to do this perhaps because then you don't have to have everybody down at the city people can call in people can send messages but one would hope you would allow for the people who do attend the meetings in person to actually be given the courtesy to have their concerns and comments first and then those folks that are zooming or calling and have theirs after that would just seem to be polite although i know often politics isn't polite it could be nice on these other resolution items all of the arganine units appear to have made agreements now it looks like they run through to the 30th of june of 2024 and it looks like people will be feeling okay with their financial packages that they wouldn't agree so i'm hoping now you'll get to the next thing and that's allow the public to participate in some discussions about the hiring of the next city manager perhaps allow public members to be at the interviews although i've been told you already finished everything and you're just waiting to hire the person that you chose without even really involving the public that's the case that's a sad state of affairs they call that business as usual blah blah hopefully we won't have that hopefully you'll get a new city manager that won't tolerate the malfeasance that's gone on in the past in the city thank you kindly mayor that concludes public comment and item 12 consent great mr. city manager there was the question about the total cost of the mo use that were presented today um i don't know if you've got that number or the number that is of the mo use that have been approved overall because we did a couple in another day but i think it's instructive so just so we're clear with the public we still have four units that are still involved in negotiations for contracts that have not been resolved yet so of the ones that were approved tonight uh the impact to the general fund on an ongoing basis is about nine point two million dollars per year the total cost for all employees including the enterprise fund employees is about twelve point two million dollars per year great thank you so much council are there any other questions or comments all right i just want to take a moment and thank all of the bargaining units that we do have our mo use on for today for not just continuing to serve the community but really serving the community at a difficult time and working with us to make sure that your members get what they need to to feel valued and also understanding that we're not in the financial condition that we would like to be in to really be able to show that as much as we feel it so we'll continue to work on that through the long-term finance committee through all of our different discussions uh and really it just can't be stated enough how much we appreciate the hard work that everybody does um around here that let's go ahead and see if there's a motion vice mayor i move items 12.1 through 12.16 and wait for the reading of the text second let's call the vote okay i have a note that council member schwedhelm was abstaining from item uh 17 and 18 okay not on consent uh 12 12.17 12.18 okay thank you that was council member Sawyer seconding all right council member schwedhelm i'm sorry mental clerk before i before you go forward with me um abstaining from um i'm sorry never mind i i just disregard thank you sorry if i confused you no it's okay no not a problem i confused myself okay so council member schwedhelm hi council member Sawyer hi council member Fleming yes council member alvarez vice mayor rogers hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with six eyes with council member tippets absent i would also like to move items 12.17 and 12.18 and wait for the reading of the text second motion by the vice mayor and a second from council member Sawyer let's call the vote council member schwedhelm oh i'm sorry i abstain thank you council member Sawyer hi council member Fleming yes council member alvarez vice mayor rogers hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with five eyes with council member schwedhelm abstaining and council member tippets absent okay well council we have to take a two minute break while we wait for the five o'clock hour when we come back we will just keep rolling through our agenda and do public comment for non-agenda items and then finish up with our public hearing we'll be back in just a minute and we're back madame clerk can you call the the roll please thank you council member schwedhelm here council member Sawyer here council member Fleming here council member alvarez present vice mayor rogers president mayor rogers here let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member tippets okay let's see if we have any comments for our non-agenda items this is an opportunity for the public to bring up issues that aren't on today's agenda we can't get into a back and forth but it is certainly something that we can get some questions answered or get back to folks outside of the meeting if you're interested hit the raise hand feature on zoom all right if you want to come up to the podium thank you mayor vice mayor council members staff for your time and your ongoing commitment santa rosa's betterment it is really appreciated uh last week the sacramento b ran an editorial entitled pg&e has destroyed enough california communities it's time for a public takeover two days previous to that congress member ro cana from silicon valley had gone on kqed radio to say that pg&e has pushed things beyond the tipping point and we need a public takeover but santa rosa doesn't need to wait for the dismantling of the conglomerate santa rosa city can invest in public power so what is public power public power utilities are one of the three primary types of electric utilities that serve customers in the united states public power utilities are not for profit community owned and locally controlled all in all there are already 52 municipalities in california that provide public power to the residents and businesses according to public power dot org and not for profit that tracks these things one in seven americans are served by a public power utility more than 2000 communities in 49 states and five u.s. territories have public power utility so if you live in a public power community it means that you own your electricity your electric utility and and can participate in running it it means you benefit from affordable energy better service and a utility that cares about the overall well-being and growth of your community a couple of more statistics residential customers of public power utilities pay 11 less than customers of investor owned utilities outside of major adverse events like storms customers of a public power utility are likely to be without power for less time 62 minutes a year compared to 150 minutes a year for customers of private utilities my friends in southern california ask me why do you pay so much for electricity and the answer is because we are still beholden to p g&e and we don't have to be if one of the council members would a champion public power and get santa rosa out from under the destructive and usury thumb of p g&e that council member would be a hero to all santa rosans thank you for the for your time i really hope that the city council will take public power seriously as so many other communities in california already have thank you thank you saying nobody else in the chambers i see no hands via zoom do we have any voicemails leader mayor my name is barbara phillips and i'm calling about agenda item number 13 i specifically would like to address lighting along the santa rosa creek trail at night um there's been a few incidents with a group of bike cyclists that i ride with and um not to blame the homeless because they have they need some place to go that they're out there without lighting of any sort and we had to run in just last week where someone had sustained in our group sustained a minor injury if there had been lighting along the way would have seen the obstruction and been able to avoid it so i'd like to encourage some lighting along there for safety purposes thank you hi this is eris weaver from the sonoma county bicycle coalition and i'm speaking to agenda item number 13 um as we are moving into this darker time of the year um safety of driving and cycling at night is really important and i'd like to bring your attention to one particular issue and that is the lack of lights on our class 1 bike paths like the santa rusa creek path um there have been uh reports that i've been getting of minor collisions between folks cycling on the path and the folks sleeping or hanging out there in the dark um and even though the folks riding did have headlights on they were still not entirely able to um see the folks who were staying there so having some light on those pads would make it a lot safer for everyone involved and possibly make them um more better used through more of the time those of us who use the paths for transportation and not just for recreation sometimes you know it's dark when you get off work and you need to be able to get home in a safe way so it's either right on the street um where you're worried that cars are going to see you or ride on a path where you're worried that you're going to smack into somebody because the path isn't lit so we would really appreciate your attention to that matter thank you public comment on non-agenda matters item 13 duane dewitt from roseland i wanted to thank you you hopefully the council because of the peers at southwest community park some of that open shillings that was there has been moved or uh some new methods are being placed there to keep people from uh urinating and defecating in public on the eastern side by the parking lot that'd be a great spot for one of those porta potties that our parks over here are so famous for and the more porta potties the better i think it's better having those people out there in public view or the school kids conducting that how school can see them taking their dumps and pain in the bushes that's sad that shouldn't be happening but one has to wonder are you folks going to perhaps really get into utilizing the facilities the taxpayers have paid for when restaurants are built i know at the olive street park that restroom is open and the one across from city hall on santa rosa avenue is open plus that new quarter million dollar uh portland new as you call it has been open there is a need for a greater oversight at the parks in santa rosa you've gotten some money you're uh discussing how you'll spend it your way what the employees want i'm not involved with the people from rosen to talk about how qualified census track it's the most disadvantaged i've ever served an overburdened in the entire community could have an opportunity from the arpa funds the america rebuilding program that would be wonderful for rosen but nobody i know has heard anything about it but we do know that you have an office of community engagement now maybe some of those people can come over here and talk to the longtime residents and taxpayers i haven't seen i haven't seen that lady that got hired a year and a half ago it's not once it's pretty whole on the end of the age to feed that with men there tom schvill that was outside never seen her over here in rosen so how about you folks spend some time helping the folks in this disadvantaged area of rosen which you heard and created county island 25 years ago and made it worse during all those years the four years we've been in the city all we've heard about is all the survivors from the fire what about the survivors from the racism and discrimination and the other problems that santa rosa politics and city employees forced on the people of rosen here that concludes public comment on item 13 non-agenda matters okay we have no report items tonight let's move on to our first public hearing item 15.1 mayor rogers and members of the city council item 15.1 is a public hearing the matter before the council is the density bonus ordinance and possible amendments and andy gustafson our senior planner is going to be presenting the staff report on this item. thank you very much and good evening mayor rogers and members of the council like to present a ordinance amendment to the density bonus and other incentives developer incentives this ordinance was amended last by city council in january of 2019 and tonight we have an amendment that basically will implement some key changes in state law that have occurred over the last year next slide please so in 20 january 2021 state law was changed to implement a number of changes that have come out of several years of legislative activity in the housing arena and the state density bonus law has been subject of a number of provision changes that are mandated by the state i'll go through those changes individually but i also want to note that those changes in state law also affected our supplemental density bonus program which is a program that the city instituted to further encourage density bonus incentives here in the city and then finally there are some technical changes so what is a density bonus a density bonus is an incentive that the city and other jurisdictions use to help to encourage developers to include affordable housing in residential development this is an idea that's been around for decades and basically the idea is that when a developer commits to providing a percentage of the total allowed units that would be permitted according to the zoning or the general plan if those are committed to affordable housing we reward or incentivize the developer by allowing them to build beyond the number of units that would be ordinarily allowed this incentive or this bonus also includes waivers from development standards so that developers who do commit to providing low and very low income housing in their projects can also get reductions in setbacks and height and other development standards next slide please so the main areas of the new state law that was changed in january of 2021 was that the threshold or the level of affordability that a developer needed to commit in a project was lowered so it made it easier to qualify for density bonuses made it more available secondly the maximum amount of density bonus allowed by the state was increased from 35% to 50% so now a developer can get nearly half as much housing on a site than formerly was would have been allowed into the general planner zoning and then finally a new provision was added to reward developers of 100% affordable projects which allow them which now allows them 100% density bonus nearly doubling the number of units that are allowed on site and also for the first time moderate income rental units may be included in in the density bonus mix this this helps with project affordability next slide there were several other changes by state law and I'll go through these quickly part of the feature or or framework of the density bonus law was that it also provided incentives and as I mentioned to reduce development standards those previously were not limited in terms of number that could be claimed now they've been limited to four the city does have the ability to grant more if it's so wishes secondly the density bonus provides a number of remedies or excuse me parking reductions and such when they're located within a half mile of a major transit facility that access or that radius had to be unobstructed and the terminology for obstructed was clarified in this new law and then this new update to the density bonus that by the state eliminated parking for age restricted rental housing that lie within that half mile radius of a major facility where that is served by paratransit next slide so all these changes in particular the increase of the density bonus law to allow now 50 bonus impact that our local density bonus program recall in January 2019 the council adopted a supplemental density program with with the idea that in specified areas of the downtown downtown station area plan and also in the north station area plan we would allow more of a bonus beyond what the state would allow up to 100% or twice what would otherwise be allowed by the general plan this ordinance amendment does not increase the total number we still keep the cap that a project that uses the supplemental density can achieve there so we don't change the absolute number of of units that could be built on the site under the density bonus supplemental density bonus but we do change the the entry threshold or the point at which the supplemental density bonus is triggered so we can see here at this chart that for the 100% or the the sites that are designated for the maximum supplemental density bonus there would be the the developer would have to first exhaust the state's 50 density before they can go into the supplemental density bonus and limit it at it still be limited at 100% i'm happy to talk about this program how the state's density bonus and the supplemental density bonus work together but we've just basically made the adjustment to ensure the current maximum density that can be achieved under a supplemental density bonus this remains the same next slide the environmental quality act does require review of a project and an ordinance amendment such as this and at the time the council adopted the environmental document for the amended ordinance in 2019 it was established that the project would not have any significant impact and thus a negative declaration was adopted this amendment that's before we before you this evening does not require subsequent environmental review because in this case there was no increase in any previously considered impact that might result from the density bonus and also there was no new environmental circumstance or effect that has come into place in the city or areas affected by the density bonus that would change the conclusions of the council's original adoption of the negative declaration of 2019 so next slide so it is recommended by the planning commission and staff that the council approve this ordinance to amend the city code chapter 2031 density bonus another developer incentives to be consistent with the state code section 65915 density bonuses and other incentives i'm available to answer questions um thank you so much all right thank you so much do we have any questions from council okay seeing none i'll go ahead and open the public hearing if you're interested in providing comment on this item go ahead to hit the raise hand feature on zoom and i see none madam deputy city clerk no public comments there are no uh advanced public comments okay then we will go ahead and close the public hearing bring it back to council are there uh any comments all right council member swedhelm this is your item thank you mr mayor i'd move an ordinance of the council of the city of san rosa to amend city zoning code chapter 20-31 density bonus and other developer incentives to be consistent with state government code section 65915 density bonuses and other incentives file number re-z 21-003 and waive further reading the text second motion from council member swedhelm second from the vice mayor let's go ahead and call the vote council member swedhelm hi council member soyer hi council member fleming yes council member alvarez vice mayor rogers hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with six eyes with council member tibbet's absent great thank you so much andy we appreciate all the good work thank you we'll move on we have no written communications let's see if we have any additional hands for our last public comment period of the night and i am not seeing anybody raise their hand we already did voicemails so we will go ahead and adjourn thank you everybody