 Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to today's study session. Mr. McGlynn. Yes. Item 3.1 review of fiscal year 2019-20 general fund budget condition. Chuck McBride, Chief Financial Officer, presenting. Before I turn it over to Chuck, I just wanted to introduce this item and commend the council, the community, our partners in recovery, which is the state and federal government, and a staff especially about the work they've done to begin the recovery process that this community is going through. You're going to see that through the efforts of everybody involved, we've been able to make an incredible headway on restoring our reserves amount. And with the offering that the community, the support the community has provided us through the recovery and resiliency measure, they've bought us some time to really start to tackle the structural issues that the community is, that the city is facing. And I think so it's a good news, and I really thank the council, I thank the community, and I thank staff and our partners on the federal and state level. Chuck. Thank you. Honorable Mayor, members of the council, this, the purpose of tonight is to do a workshop to kind of set the table for what we'll be talking about on May 21st and 22nd when we actually get into the establishing the budget for fiscal year 2019-20. So to do that, a couple of things we're going to talk tonight. We'll real quickly look at what the council goals and priorities are. We recently had a council goal setting. We're going to look at the long-range financial forecast. I'm going to couple of slides on that. And then we're going to look at where we are actually this year. This year has been interesting from a financial standpoint. We've had a lot of one-time revenues that have come in that we were not able to project. A lot of those are related to the fires you would imagine. So we're going to look at what the current year's financial situation looks like and how that affects us going forward. And then we're going to focus a lot on this year's budget on financial stability. And we're going to, we're going to talk about some of the steps that we would like the council to start thinking about and giving us guidance on in order to meet our goal of financial sustainability. And then we'll have some concluding comments. So city council goals, these are kind of the bedrock goals that council developed a few years ago. Number one, to ensure financial stability of city government. Hopefully that's the path that we're on starting tonight. And then in the last goal setting, the council set their tier one priorities and the first one's financial stability. Again, the focus of tonight, recovery and resilience is something that we'll talk about a little bit as we work through tonight's workshop. And then these other bottom three tier one priorities that you see will probably be more addressed when we get to departmental budgets on the 21st and 22nd of May. And then tier two initiatives. One of the things that we'll look at tonight is how we address deferred maintenance. We hope that in this budget cycle that will start to start to set up a plan for addressing aging infrastructure in the city. So we'll start with the long range forecast. So you're used to seeing this picture. The bottom line there in blue is our revenues, the top lines, the expenditures. And as we showed you last year, we've got a deficit. One of the things that you'll note is the first year there's 1920. That's next year. We have a $1.8 million deficit, which is markedly improved from the last picture you saw. And I'll show you a comparison to our last forecast. But one of the things to keep in mind is that as the city manager alluded to, Proposition O was passed in November and that money is included in the revenue side of this. So we're getting about a $10 million or plus bump out of that revenue source and we've actually added that in the forecast. That assumption is probably not a valid assumption and we'll talk about that a little more later in the workshop. We've built in everything that we know into the expenditure side. And that means that any of the negotiations that are ongoing right now with labor, if we are fairly certain that those are going to come to fruition, then we built that into these slides. And then we built in CPIs for both salaries and for maintenance and operations into the slides. Revenue side is looking pretty good. We'll look at some of our major revenue sources, our property taxes and sales taxes are going to do well into the coming year. We think transient occupancy tax will continue to do well too as we add another 400 rooms to the stock at the end of the next fiscal year. So that will improve our revenue picture going forward. One of the things that you see on the revenue picture there is that it drops off in 24-25. And again, we'll talk a little bit later about what the expiration is on three of the city's temporary sales taxes that we have. But those start expiring in 24-25. Two of them drop off in 24-25 and then the other one drops off in 27. Kind of one thing that I forgot to mention on the expenditure side too is that we're not really focusing on it tonight. But on the expenditure side, PERS continues to be our biggest challenge. So in the next budget cycle, you remember that PERS is taking their discount rate down from 7.5% down 7%. And in this coming budget cycle fiscal year 1920, that's the second year of the step down. So that's putting upwards pressure on our unfundal liability and upwards pressure on our annual required contribution to PERS. And what we're seeing for this coming year, fiscal year 1920, we see a 22% jump in the PERS cost due to that and then 19% jump in the next year. And that's going to continue for several years. That's going to keep climbing. As PERS takes those rates down, the rates are implemented over a period of five years. So you're going to see those increases in PERS for several years and then we assume that PERS keeps the rate at 7%. That again may not be a valid assumption. And if I can segue right into that conversation, again these assumptions are based on a return rate of 7%. Current PERS return rate as it was last reported in the February time period was minus 5.5%. So again, these assumptions are based upon a 7% return. PERS is currently underperforming for the year. So we always get asked how we compare to our last forecast. So the top line here, that $1.8 million deficit climbing to that $41.6 million just represents numerically what you see here on the graph. So that's our current forecast. And I would also like to point out that this forecast is still being worked on. So these numbers may may be refined by the time we come back to you in May. But there's the old forecast. So if you overlay that, the forecast that we had from last year in 2020, we expect an $18 million deficit. With the new forecast, it's only a $1.8 million deficit. And then we take a look at what happens if we remove the temporary emergency funding that's measure O. So because we have two measure O's in the city, we're trying to find another term for that to eliminate confusion. So we're experimenting with TEF. But if we remove that $10 million out of there, then we still have a deficit of about $12 million compared to the $18.4 million before. So the variance is not quite as much if we take that source out. So that's how we're looking for the coming years. What I want to do now is kind of turn and kind of do an examination of what we look like for this year. Because I'm going to show you much improved revenues. And keep in mind, when you first see them, they're going to be shockingly improved. And then we're going to start tearing them apart. And you're going to see that a lot of that is one-time money that's not going to come in year after year. So we're hoping that that money will be used for one-time purposes. I'm also going to show you that our general fund position, that being the unassigned general fund balance, that's improved also. So that's helping us out. So overall, the fiscal picture is better, but the challenges remain. So as I said, I'm going to shock you here first. So our revenues for this year, we're expecting them to come in $21.6 million over what we forecast for the year. Okay. And we'll walk through some of this. So property taxes, we got some backfill there. We got a lot of backfill there, $2 million. So that's bumped that number up quite a bit. The other thing I will say about property tax is that when we work out these projections, we made our assumptions based on the fact that we've lost about 5% of the housing stock in a number and a lot of commercial stock. So we expected that we would take that down by about 5%. That didn't happen. So not only did we get backfill, but our property taxes remained strong. And I'll talk about that more here in a moment. Sales taxes, we took down by a lesser amount, about 2.5%. But those sales taxes remained strong. We just met with our consultant from Uniservices last month. And for the third quarter, that's the period that ended in September 30th of this last year, our sales tax are up 7% year over year. They're actually looking pretty strong. As you would suspect, a lot of the strength in there is coming from things like construction materials, about 28% business to business up. So those things that were kind of a result of the fire are helping us financially in those sectors. And again, I think that that's a testament to the decisions made early on, leaning into recovery that have enabled us to move at a rapid rate to bring about half of the entire stock back into the development process. And that is, again, those steps that the council took early on and supported staff to make those decisions early on. Yeah, and that actually goes into our thinking on property tax projections for the next several years, too. So not only do we think the baseline property tax will go up, but we also factored in about 25% of the housing stock being reintroduced per year for over a term of four years. So that's how we did our projection on that. The $2.3 million there that you see for the temporary emergency funding, that's measure O that we just passed. So we had not put that into projection. And then a couple things to point out here that the labeling is just unique to how we do it in finance. But we have other taxes, and you're probably wondering what that is. That includes a number of things. That other tax category is one of the ones where we did not do as well. The big ones that are included there was the cannabis tax. We've come in about $1.7 million under projections on that. We thought we do about $2.5 million. We came in all over $800,000. That's what we're projecting by year end. We also have transfer tax in there, and transfer taxes are actually down by about half a million dollars, which is kind of surprising to us given how much the property tax has gone up. So there's some of the things in there. Let's see. Intergovernmental, that $3.6 million will break that down here in a moment. But as you would imagine, most of that is FEMA and OES money. Okay, so pulling that $21.6 million apart, a little bit more dissecting it. So this shows you $15.2 million of it. And as you're going to see, these are things that we kind of could not project or control. So as I mentioned, FEMA, Cal OES has given us about $3.6 million. This has gone to the general fund. It's one-time money. We've received about $8 million to the general fund in insurance overall. In this fiscal year, we received $600,000. So in our hierarchy, that doesn't go to unassigned fund balance or reserve. That goes to an assignment because it has to be used for the specific projects that it was assigned for. We also talked about that property tax backfill. So the state gave us two years of backfill and that amounted to $2 million. We also had backfill for vehicle license fees and that was $600,000. And then as we mentioned, we passed the temporary emergency funding or measure O in November. We had not built that into the forecast. So that was about $2.3 million that we'll get from April through June. And then we had fire recovery fees. And those are in relation to the resiliency center that we have. So we didn't project these fees, but those fees are tied to a contract that we're using for that, which is a bureau veritas, I believe. So as you can see, we've got about $2.3 million in ongoing that was unaccounted for. So this is kind of our explainable variant. So that's because of the passage of PROPO. We've got $12.3 million of this that's one-time money from those different sources like FEMA and the property tax backfill. And then we've got an assignment that's untouchable of $600,000. So continuing on with our analysis here. So the purpose of this slide now, I kind of showed you what was kind of the kind of the variances that were out of our control as far as projections and how a lot of that money is one-time. So we'd expect that to be put towards one-time uses or replenishment of the general fund unassigned reserve. This is the actions that we took as finance in our projections. So you can imagine after the fire, we assumed that we were going to take some hits to the general fund revenue sources. So again, property tax, we took that down by $1.2 million. That's about a 5% takedown, again based on what we'd seen in lost property values. That's what we expected. And as you'll see in the next slide, that is not what happened. Sales tax, we took down by about 2.5%. And I think that was a reasonable projection. But again, sales taxes has remained stronger than we thought for a number of reasons. Measure P is just driven by the same drivers as sales taxes. And then we had the utility users tax. That we took down by 10%. We thought that would be more effective and that's a tax that consumers pay on cable and telephone service and those types of things. That, if we could go back and change it and just leave it completely alone, it would have been spot on. Shouldn't have taken that down at all. And then the vehicle license fee, we took down by $600,000. Business taxes, we took down by $200,000. Transient occupancy tax was another interesting one. We lost, as I mentioned, about a quarter of the room stock in Santa Rosa. Lost a whole over 400 rooms. So we expected that to come down. But again, as experience showed, I think what happened was that occupancies probably in the remaining rooms probably went to 100%. ADRs went up. And we really didn't see much of an effect on transient occupancy tax. So this is what actually happened. Property taxes, you see on the left there is the budget column. That's what we had budgeted for, given those changes in projections I just showed you. And then the projection there in the middle, that's the updated column. And then you see how we came out with actual revenues. So property tax came out $4.3 million above. And as I mentioned, two things happened there. We got $2 million in property tax backbill. So that's one time. And then we also saw property tax assessed values go up by about 4%. Which was unusual. Still having a hard time explaining exactly how that happened. Sales tax, as I mentioned, we took it down by about 2.5%. We've actually come in about $1.3 million ahead. And again, in those sectors that we talked about where we see a lot of strength like construction materials from business to business. We've actually done well on sales tax. Measure P, as I mentioned, just follows the same drivers as sales tax. Utility users tax, that came in if we had not changed that estimate and left it at $10 million, we would have come in spot on. So we shouldn't have taken that down at all. Utility user tax didn't change. Vehicle license fee came in $1.1 million ahead. But again, $600,000 of that was in the one-time backfill that we got for VLF. And then business taxes and occupancy tax actually came in right about where we projected. But occupancy tax, even with losing 400 rooms, we still beat budget. So just kind of another slice at this. This is kind of taking that $21.6 million and slicing up as to what we can use it for. So in yellow there, we have things that are kind of caution. We have one-time money. So $12.3 million of one-time money. I would not by any means recommend adding $12.3 million to the ongoing operating budget. But we do have other uses we'll talk about for that. The temporary emergency funding, measure O, that was $2.3 million just for this year. And as I'll show you later, that's going to be about $10 million when we normalize that in a full year of getting that tax revenue. And then we've got that assigned reserve from the insurance returns about $600,000. And then the other revenues, which I will call our miss, was about $6.4 million. And the reason that's in green is that at least some of that should carry forward and is carrying forward into our projections for next year. So we've seen the property taxes weren't affected like we thought they were going to be sales taxes weren't affected. So we reset our baselines and then we start building the projections from there. So that's part of the reason that your ongoing forecast looks a little bit better. That and measure O. Sorry, TEF. So and then another thing that I wanted to touch on here. So you've, so last year when we talked to you, we told you that your fund balance, that unassigned general fund reserve, was $6.5 million. And that's the number that you've had. That's what you that's what you should have had at July 1st, 2018. So we've closed the books since then and we've adjusted this figure too. So we actually adjusted the beginning fund balance up by $12.2 million. Now again, there were a lot of things that were one-time funds that came in in 1718. So the last fiscal year that weren't accounted for. So one of those things was $2.8 million that we got in in fire recovery revenues from our resiliency center. That wasn't something that was planned on. We also got about $1.3 million between cannabis permit and cannabis industry fee. And again, those weren't projected or counted on for 1718. So those dropped to the bottom line. And then we also had funds from the Roseland annexation about $2.2 million that came in. So that also dropped that to that adjusted fund balance. So when we made all these adjustments, our fund balance is $18.7 million. Now we're still not rough math. We should be at about $26 million to meet our 15 to 17% policy level. But that definitely helps. And the things that we just talked about where we've beat projections in this fiscal year, that's going to help even further. And I'll show you how that works out here in a few slides. So now let's kind of turn and talk a little bit about financial stability. So that was Council Tier 1 goal. And so we've been probably nothing new under the sun here. But these are ways that we want to start working with the Council and getting guidance on how we go ahead and set up financial stability going forward. So a lot of these are one-time solutions. So the first thing we want to do is replenish the general fund reserves. And as I'm going to show you here in a moment, you're already there. We're good on general fund reserves, assuming you want to keep the same limits that you're at now. And then we got a fund fire recovery efforts. So we've got local matches that are associated with the fires, with that FEMA Cal OES money. So we're going to have to fund that so that we're hoping to use one-time money to do that. We're also going to have some operational impacts of the fire. So at the end of the slide show here, we're going to show you a couple of things that we're thinking about going forward that we... So I want to just backtrack to fund fire recovery efforts. So example of that is a relocation of the fire station. We're still wrestling through with our partners on exactly what they'll fund in terms of exploring a more appropriate location, not just to address the areas underneath in the Fountain Grove area, but also to support potentially the high-rise development that Council is looking to explore in the downtown. So we're looking at that, but there is potentially a gap in that funding from what FEMA will give us and what we're able to actually afford to move that particular project forward. And as you heard just recently, there's a continuing gap around even such things as Coffee Park, a significant funding gap. So there are... I just want to point out that that's what we'll be talking about, is that you still, while we're in recovery, you still have significant infrastructure needs separate from your regular infrastructure maintenance, but particularly to recovering the community in those fire areas that we may see some additional money from partners, but we may not as well. Those become long, laborious conversations and sometimes communities have elected go at its own because they don't see that can't get the asset back online, working with the timetable that the other partners are going for, even if they fully fund those additional projects. Through the mayor. If I may, I'm just aware that this list doesn't include that we have an ongoing emergency situation, that we have a declared homeless emergency. So I'm not sure which of these, if that's considered one of the other opportunities that we have for these funds. Well, we're going to be asking this exact question as we go through the process, and I believe that that's at the end of the presentation. What other things you want us to consider in this conversation? I will say fund infrastructure work is part of that conversation. We have assets that need improvement, some of those assets under consideration from a different funding source, but we haven't had a final determination on how that those are going to be supported. And so we need to, it is part of our infrastructure conversation, but there may be more explicit things that you want to ask us to consider as we go through the budget process. So as the city manager mentioned, we also will look at infrastructure work. There's been some presentations council on the on the state of our infrastructure, and we've tried to capture some of that in the general fund budget. And I just want to add to that conversation. We still haven't done, when we've done it, we've done a facilities assessment that doesn't take into consideration a lot of other infrastructure, including regular parks and their needs. The staff is gearing up to try to bring that forward as its own assessment. So where there's still, there are still assets that the city owns that we haven't formally assessed. We've assessed our facilities. So community centers be been assessed, but the playing fields may not have been assessed with that community center. We need to do that work. As I mentioned, pensions remain an issue that I think we're going to have to deal with in order to get our long range operating budget back under control. And then we'd, you know, ultimately if we can get through those top kind of tier financial stability concerns, at some point we'd like to start setting money aside for economic uncertainty. So, you know, councils alluded to the coming recession. If you read the governor's budget message, they see a recession coming. If you look at data from people like UCLA Anderson forecast, they see a recession coming 2020. We know a slowdown's coming. We know that's going to impact volatile revenue sources like sales tax, probably not as much property tax, but sales tax DOT, those kind of things are going to are going to get affected. And we haven't built that into the forecast and, you know, we don't really have a plan for that. So at some point, and it may not be in the next budget cycle, but at some point once we get these other things taken care of, it would be nice to set money aside so that when we hit a normal economic downturn we can just dip into a fund and keep providing city services without interruption. So another thing that we'll be talking to the council on oncoming workshops and talking to the long-range finance committee about is this temporary emergency funding measure of that 10 million dollars. So that's a full year of measure O that goes on for six years. So we, you know, right now we have that all plugged into the operating budget and we're assuming that all goes into operations and that kind of plugs that hole and gives you that kind of very small deficit. But again, I'm not sure that's a realistic assumption. We probably need to look at using some of that funding for one-time sources. We're going to have local matches from the general fund for those those FEMA Cal OES projects. So we're going to need a source for that. We've got, as city manager talked about earlier, we've got a fire station that we have to rebuild. We don't have a funding source for that right now. So, you know, this is a place that we might want to look and there's going to be some recovery management in the operating budget that we'll talk about. So we may actually have to hire someone to manage that, the actual operational financial side of that recovery and all of that stuff that has to be done with FEMA. And then there's also one of the things we may be talking about in the 21st, 22nd workshops is about what we do with the EOC and what potential improvements we make to that in the operating budget. So you're in a, in on, I believe on April 30th, you're going to have the after-action report and there's specific recommendations about, about what we may need to do and investigate to make sure the city is prepared in the future. Additionally, we're in regional conversations to strengthen our preparedness and response. And those may require investments from all of the participants in those conversations. So those are unfolding opportunities, I'd like to say, but they will probably have cost centers associated with the MS. We try to become the most resilient community we can. Okay, so our goal of financial stability, the first thing that we would like to get to is where we adopt a balanced operating budget instead of reaching into our reserves and using those to get us through year by year. So we will be looking at a combination of revenues and cost savings. As I mentioned, the first, we're obviously going to have to use some of those new measure funds to fund services for the next several years, just keeping the back of our minds that that funding source only lasts for six years. We did, in January, bring forward to council some recommended funding or FDE cuts that would have been about $6 million. One of the things that we're going to do is bring that back forward, back to the council, because we think we still need to make some cuts. So some portion of that deficit has got to be addressed through actually rightsizing the FTEs and getting our operating budget back into back somewhere in the neighborhood of what our revenues are. So the good news is I think we're working through right now with the city manager on what the priorities are for those cuts. We probably don't need to cut all 49 of those positions, and that's one of the things that we're going to look for input from the council on. There's some things that we had in there. We had cut eight sworn personnel out of there. Six of those were firefighters, then we had two officers. So some of those things may be areas where we don't want to cut. So we're kind of going back through that list and seeing if we can call that down a bit under that $6 million figure, and at least though get some budgetary savings out of that so that we can free up some of those measure O funds to use for so we're going to be looking specifically based on council input prior public safety and planning and economic development. Those are the two areas that we're going to be looking first at. There may be additional recommendations I said about that expand beyond those, but we're taking that input that was provided earlier and when we come back with a proposed budget, those are the items that we'll be looking at moving forward to ensure safety, but also that we're strategically preparing for future economic opportunities and some of the larger planning conversations that council has engaged in. And then we're also going to be looking for long term solutions. So this obviously when you have a structural deficit like this that just isn't going away, it's going to take us a while to get all of that under control. We can kind of take steps, but it's going to take several years I think until we until we start getting long-term costs down. For example, you know, we talk at nauseam about CalPERS and CalPERS is the grill in the room. But I do think over time we can start developing some sort of a policy or a solution start paying down some of that liability in a way that gives us a little bit of a weave annually. So we're going to be discussing that with council too. Step two in our financial stability model, there's only two steps, is one-time revenue solutions. So we want to get the first we want to get that ongoing structural deficit taken care of. And then we've got number of one-time solutions. So want to get the general fund back towards reserve policy levels, set aside funding for infrastructure, disaster recovering CalPERS and the rainy day fund. So the first thing we want to talk about is the general fund reserve. So we have policy levels set at 15, 17%. And as I said, kind of back at the envelope math there, I'm looking at $26 million is where we should be. So our reserve now at the end of this fiscal year, so June 30th, if everything goes the way that I just talked to you about what we're projecting for the remainder of this year, we'll come in at $32.4 million. So we exceed our $26 million. So that gives us some opportunity there to maybe reallocate some of those reserves to another one of those one-time needs. However, I think we probably have to have a discussion with council too about whether or not we think that 15 to 17% range is good. That's kind of old GFOA guidance is basically based on floating yourself for two months is how the 17% is derived two out of 12. I would probably argue that that's not enough. I think the city manager made a statement and council goal setting that were one disaster away from insolvency. I thought that was pretty good. So I think the lesson learned out of this is that we had about 25% in reserve when the disaster hit. And that freed up council and staff to make decisions that have resulted in us being able to respond the way we are. I think council needs to have a discussion about this about the appropriate level what we're trying to accomplish and based on experience. I mean the experience is obviously the biggest teacher in all these conversations is at an appropriate level. So we intend to bring that back to have that discussion with council and see where we want to end up as an organization whether 15 to 17% is the appropriate level or needs to be marked at a higher level to withstand the tide of trauma this community were standing. I think the proof is having that amount has enabled this community to recover at a much faster pace than other communities that have been impacted by similar disasters. Another area we'll be talking to the council on is on infrastructure and we'll get a little more in depth into this on the 21st of May but we've been working with transportation and public works to come up with some of these figures. So you've seen the presentations that show what the state of our infrastructure is. So the way we derived $18 million and I fully realize that we're not going to put $18 million aside probably in the next fiscal year but again these are targets that we're working towards. So that current demand was derived from a couple of things. We had $5 million in need for the just for facilities and then we had another $4 million in need for our parks and then $9 million of that figure comes out of needs that we have for the roads. So that's how we came up with the $18 million figure and roads. Needs and roads. Right. So we're going to be looking to potential funding sources for that and right now we can, you know, as I said, we could take some of that general fund access reserve, use that or measure of funding and again this is kind of a hierarchy. So we're going to have to determine how much goes to each one of these things or some of these may just not be funded in the next fiscal year but they may be funded in future fiscal years. And then disaster funding. We're going to need to get council decisions on how we're going to fund that. So here's kind of how our disaster funding is looking to us right now. So in bridges and roads we've got total estimated costs of $5.1 million building equipment at $1.7 million in recreation parks at $12.8 million. So we're approaching $20 million there on obligated projects. The local share $7.4 million. So again, you know, this is putting strain on even though I showed you that we've got a lot of one-time revenues and one-time sources available, there's going to be a lot of demand on these sources. And again, if we can go back just real quick, Chuck. As we've, as again, as we've learned through this, this can unfortunately fluctuate depending on where we are in the process with FEMA and what they deem is ineligible or ineligible and other discoveries. So I just, this is a point-in-time snapshot. It can be fluid and it has been fluid. As the city manager mentioned earlier, we are also looking at a rebuild of Fire Station 5 and that right now does not have a funding source. So we got $2.8 million in insurance proceeds for that facility. However, we had to put those proceeds in trust. As Fire Station 5 was part of the Courthouse Square Bonds, the Certificates of Participation. So we had to put those back in trust. So right now, we're looking at ways to pay for that. And again, you know, you will get a source like TEM for Measure O. That's probably a good source for that. Overall, we have $20 million in road and sidewalk repair that we're going to have to figure out a funding source for. And then we've got hazard mitigation projects totaling about $13.5 million. And some of those, I don't think have been absolutely decided yet, but those are things like a new radio system to address future emergencies, speakers to announce, removal of damaged trees and those kind of things. So if we actually get obligated for those, we'll still have a city share of $2.1 million. So again, just. And then I have a couple slides here just on the temporary sales tax measures just to kind of remind council that these things are going away at some point. So we've got two measures that expire in 2025. So we'll lose about $20 million in 2025. That's both of the measure O's new and the old. And then we have the general transaction use tax measure P, which I think now is measure N. Another quarter percent, $10 million that expires in 2027. So, you know, some point we're going to have to make a decision on going back out to to re-up these. And then, you know, when you kind of zoom out and look at the regional picture, keep in mind that you've got a cap on your on your sales tax. So you can you can you're capped at 2% above with the base wide statewide sales taxes. So you're capped at 9.25. So if you run your eyes down that list there, when you put in all of the all of the other local measures that the county has, you're at 9% already. So, you know, just kind of keep in mind that we're going to have these things expiring and that we're going to be competing against other agencies as we start to as we start to hit. And this doesn't include some other conversations that are out there inactively and we'll try to encapsulate those as much as best as possible. There is a conversations about a fire sales fire support services sales tax. There's a conversation about mental health sales tax initiative. So there are a variety of things that I'm sure there will be more that will be asking that folks will be asking the voters to support. So this is just a snapshot of what's there. It doesn't include I don't think anything that's potentially going to be there. It's not. One thing too that I'm just meant to mention to you also that that parks measure at the bottom there measure M. The other thing that's about $2 million a year to the city. That also is not included in this budget. So we've not programmed that money into this so far. So purpose of this slide is to kind of show you what you have available and sources and then kind of what we have and needs. So as I mentioned we have $10 million in the temporary emergency funds. The new measure O. I've got about $7 million and I'm just rounding in an aside general fund balance. So remember I showed you that we were over that $26 million number so we could take that and use that for one time sources. Staffing solutions we've still got that $6 million in the 49 frozen FTEs that's sitting out there so we can discuss that. And while I don't think we'll take the council we'll probably want to take the full $6 million. We could talk about some someplace where we want to land in there. One of the things that I did not put in here and it's going to come back when our discussion about PERS but we also have some funds left over some proceeds left from a pension obligation bond we did a number of years ago. I think that's about three and a half million dollars so that could be something that we use for that specific purpose and again that's to you know start bringing down that unfunded liability and go after one of those client items maybe give us a little bit of annual operating budget relief. And then the gaps are on your right there so general fund policy reserves if we maintain a 15-17% policy level we're good. We don't have to add anything to that right now. We've got the deficit of 12 million dollars that we have to deal with. So again that's after I pull that TEF measure O money out of there and assume that's not all going to operating budget. If you do that we got 12 million dollar a whole that we have to fill. Infrastructure the needs 18 million dollars as we discussed disaster recovery seven million dollars and then we've got some other things we've got resiliency we've got a couple of ideas that maybe necessary in the operating budget and I think I have a slide on this following and then we've got the pension question that remains out there so you know right there you've got 37 million dollars and you've got 23 million dollars to to solve that 37 million dollar problem. So we always enjoy a challenge and then some future dates on Thursday this coming Thursday at four o'clock we'll be meeting with the long-range finance committee and our order business or these fiscal policies that we're showing you so we're looking to get some guidance on where we want to go with these things and how we want to do these things what the form is do we want written policies on things like CalPERS funding and all these other fiscal stability policy issues 21st, 22nd we're coming back for workshop on the 21st we plan on spending the whole day talking about fiscal policy so we're not getting into departmental budgets on that day we're trying to solve kind of these overarching problems get our fiscal house in order and then we're coming back on the 22nd for another workshop we're going to we're going to spend part of that day kind of wrapping up on fiscal policies and then we're going to spend some time on departmental budgets so you can see that the budget cycle this year is a little bit different we're not spending two days just going through all the departmental budgets are those workshops here at the council chambers yes council member do they start about nine o'clock or eight o'clock that's the norm is nine o'clock okay and just to kind of foreshadow that too we've met with departments on their budgets and for the most part departments really aren't asking for much new in this year's budget so should be a an easier conversation we also have a date of May 28th the following Tuesday set up for department budgets if we don't finish up or whatever else we have to talk about and then if all goes well on June 18th we'll meet back here for the public hearing and do the budget adoption and as I said there's a couple of things that we're going to be looking to council for guidance on in the operating budgets as I mentioned departments didn't add a lot this year in their general fund budgets however we do need to talk about those those fte's the 49 fte's that we brought in January and see where we want to land with those as far as attrition solutions and then we could have some additional appropriations in the operating budget as I mentioned the E&Y is wrapping up their contract I think in May and there's probably going to be an additional staffing need for somebody to manage that process for the next couple of years so our idea right now is to bring forth a limited term probably two or three year fte's that would manage that and then we're also looking at adding potentially some cost for the EOC so that limited term position would be to manage the public assistance conversation because we really do need someone dedicated if we're going to lose the support for from Ernst and Young long term we're going to need to manage that conversation long term and so we're going to be looking to add a limited term position to manage our public assistance portfolio as we move forward in this conversation and I would say what we're looking for is some guidance what we heard back in when we brought the conversation about the positions forward on the what we were considering of the attrition was a great deal concern about public safety a great deal concern about planning and economic development that's what we heard we want to make sure that that's the message so that as we go back and we revise a proposed budget that's where we're adapting to that we would like to know if there's anything else that the council is concerned about on that list but we would also like at this point so that we have some time to handle it is to get into potentially a potential appropriations conversation things that you might want us to consider as we go through the budget process as you heard departments are extremely busy they're not asking for any additional a lot of additional resource at this point they're asking you know we're working through to to take the goal-setting ideas that were brought forward to tier one priorities we have a meeting with the ad hoc a week for Monday I believe it's one to three to go over a work plan to so that we can we can bring that to council as quickly as possible and start to implement the council goals that were the tier one projects that were decided in the council goal-setting process so again to me the biggest question is you know this is an opportunity for council that doesn't have to be the only vehicle we're happy to receive some additional questions like have you we'd like you to look at this type of program or this type of expenditure that can be communicated to us the obviously the more advanced warning we get the more complete our report out can be when we get into that conversation the structure is a little bit different because we are trying to tackle this fiscal sustainability issue so that we can get over deficit budgeting and get into a better more sustainable way to operate this organization I believe that can be a really productive conversation not only for the council but for the community at large and also to address start addressing our infrastructure conversations I think again the needs going to outstrip the ability we still need to do additional work and analysis on parts of our assets but as you heard we've got an immediate need on our assets that's in the vicinity of five million dollars but we have ongoing issues and ongoing maintenance right now as an organization we expend only $375,000 a year around this that is obviously not enough to maintain our assets we need to do a better job and we believe that through this process the strategic process will start to be working with council to develop that opportunity so we're looking for input right now but again I don't want to say that input has to be limited to right now but if you could get us any inquiries in the next week you can forward them to Chuck and I and we can work them in and evaluate them as part of the budget process that concludes the presentation this time we can take questions comments thank you Mr. McBride for that information council questions for staff Mr. Davis thank you mayor what was the the total you mentioned that the transfer tax was I think you said up $500,000 what was the total amount it's actually down a half a million dollars down a half I'm sorry and it was actually down it's down from about $3.9 million down to about $3.4 million okay thanks that's it for now oh yes that's it you share your last chance I think that that maybe we are obviously looking closer at that council member as to why it's down but I suspect that that has to do with the economy of recovery and that there was a need to provide rental spaces and that might have limited transfers but we're obviously we're very interested as to why that has changed and we're looking into it because to me that's not what's adding up is you know seeing that property tax revenue so high Chuck and you're kind of saying well I wonder what that is I was wondering too but I think it's because we saw high volume of people use insurance money buy out people who aren't affected but that would also increase the transfer tax revenue well but people may there was a new marketplace for renters in this environment and so that may have cushioned some of that there's a lot of questions that come out of that council member I would just say this is the learning curve we're all in and that's sort of where we're at we'll try to get a better understanding of why that's gone down but I would not be surprised that it is not tied to the economics of recovery okay so and if I could just jump on because it is that that is the issue that's really the head scratcher for us so we kind of went back and we thought well property tax tax so what we did see is in 1617 transfer tax actually went up by 9% and then they went up I think all under 2% the following year so they kind of had a little bit of a bump there but then they tapered off so that may be what it is too we are you know if you look at the national regional statistics on housing we're definitely in a slowdown so it probably from that perspective is not horribly surprising the transfer tax will start falling in this year a little bit well that makes sense wouldn't mix you pay the transfer tax the point of sale and then you pay property tax so you're later would you answer our budget cycle exactly that's why we were going back and looking at it because we're trying to see if we had an explanation in previous years because that's that's exactly it's a timing issue so I mean thank you mayor I have a number of questions one is at what point will we get down in the weeds I have questions around just for my personal edification and the edification of our tax-paying public can we explain what the the fiscal benefits of the reserves are beyond weathering a disaster in terms of bond ratings and and other abilities for our long-term financial success we can get into that yes it's obviously I mean one of the things that's that's I think kept us with a double A ratings because we did have adequate reserves so I think if you do have reserves you know that that we said that GFOA recommended level that helps but I do think you know as far as disasters goes we saw with with this where we lost just five percent of housing stock and you know in a major fire we we really depleted those reserves very very quickly and we went through them fast so so I think I think councilmember what we're going to plan to do this is the reason for the reformatting is exactly to answer these questions to talk through what the ramifications why the reserve that's why we want to go back and have this conversation about the reserve policy we're having an updated experiential but also running through these weed issues but that's the that's the fiscal policy conversation and we'll be prepared to come back and have that at that point my next question is about a long-term financial strategy and I'm assuming we'll get into this in the workshop but what my main concern is and it appears to me that that has been considered and coming back to us around funding for safety and and planning and economic development also want to recall that last time you mentioned that if we were going to maintain those wreck wrecks for for pet that we also needed to consider a wreck for legal services for our attorney so that we can have someone who processes specifically cannabis related permitting but what I'm trying to understand here is that we know that there are a lot of things that contribute to our long-term economic success whether that's investing in planning and economic development or libraries or childcare and so I'm wondering if we will have a holistic long-term long-range plan that also includes an affirmative strategy for paying down our pension liability so that our next generation of council members is not sitting in this position yeah councilman we will be having that discussion because it is it's hard to fund additional services before we address things like PERS so yeah I think you know like I said we have options in the short term to maybe reduce those PERS costs with some Romanian proceeds we have from the bonds but I think long-term we have to figure out you know how much we're taking from any surplus that we can create that we can that we can put towards PERS and start bringing that down thank you my my my primary issue is this is that we don't just address this through a plan of attrition attrition is a not an acceptable strategy to me it's a strategy that's very kind and and nice and unfortunately I don't think that that's going to matter in 30 years to the next generation of people we need to have made leadership is about making some difficult decisions and I want to make some difficult decisions so that people have easier decisions to make later on and we appreciate that council member that's exactly the plan that we're going to come back with I think that's the reason we showed that there is a limited window for us to operate in because one of these measures was specifically to provide emergency relief we're going to track that expenditure plan differently than we have in the past so we're not just going to flood it into the general fund we're actually going to track this proceeds and the investments that you make but that's exactly where the difficult conversations going to be I think is they've given us a limited opportunity to address recovery resiliency and financial sustainability we've got to take that opportunity and those are going to be some tough conversations and we're preparing for that thank you Ms. Gomes thank you so sometimes when we spend a dollar now instead of spending in the future it's cost effective so for example with roads letting a road deteriorate into worse condition can mean that in the future it costs two to seven times more to fix that road so one of the pieces of information I would like to have come back is how do we understand what the future cost is in relation to what we need to pay now so a dollar in roads today saves us considerable money in a deteriorated road that requires more rehab in the future roads is an example but I'm certain that we have other issues where spending or not spending a dollar now actually is costing us in the future so I'd like to have that being made more clear it is of interest to me to know which departments and possibly even which FTEs within departments have cost recovery and at what percent so that it makes doesn't make sense to me that if we have somebody that has an 80% cost recovery position that we would reduce that position as a cost savings because you're not getting very much cost savings from that I think planning and economic development has a number of positions that are like that I also have a concern again about the prevention of future costs I think we're making an investment when we put money into our parks and when we put money into transportation public works so I want to be clear that I'm choosing or not choosing and how much with regard to the investments I personally have a philosophy that we should first serve the people who are here now and who are invested in our community now and who have acted now to support and strengthen our community and to give them priority over people who are looking to come here that's my own opinion I would love to hear more about that from the public but sometimes we look at how we fund things and it looks like what we're talking about is what can we do to be more attractive to people attracting people here when I would like us to look at how to be attractive for the people to hear now I want to agree with my colleagues on the concern about making sure we're looking at the right people in the right places as opposed to using attrition I am aware that many of our city services are dependent upon speedy action through the city attorney's office so where another office is necessary for the actions of an office we need to look at how not funding there in the long run hurts the other department that we're trying to support I'm also interested in we have in our goals and our primary and secondary goals some new initiatives coming forward one of them close to my heart involves the rental inspection program at times we are told that program while it is will be self funding needs initial startup costs so looking at our goals and our strategies and making sure we have the funding available for those programs we have targeted as new initiatives to make sure the special startup costs are there I would like that information in order to make good decisions and again we have declared a declared emergency so if we're looking at infrastructure infrastructure that impacts homeless services and housing matters to me a great deal because that emergency hasn't gone away and we don't get FEMA funding for it so we have to figure out how to fund it I want to thank you for this because there's a lot here that we need to do that we just can't afford to do it all so let's let's figure out how we make those decisions and I again we'll be listening carefully to the public about their input on that thank you Mr. Rogers Thank you Mr. Mayor I just wanted to I think it's a little bit easier for me and probably for some in the public to use percentages on some of the numbers that are much if we're shooting for 15 to 17 percent and what I heard was our projection is we'll be at 32.4 million at the end of the year I think that's 18.7 percent but can you give us the real number in case my basic arithmetic is wrong okay and what I'll be interested in when we have the discussion about policies is not just an apples to apples comparison of what is our policy and where are we now but where were we when the fire hit because I think that that's an important component for us to talk about is yes our reserves were able to help us to get through the initial emergency as well as investments that we needed to make to be able to recover as quickly as we have but I also seem to remember that at the time we were somewhere a little bit north I think it was about 19 1 percent of our reserves and so that would be a really instructive number for I think the council to understand when we talk about magnitude and I also understand that that doesn't include some of our other demands and I appreciate you listing them out for infrastructure for disaster this is more of a comment than a question but I do also want to make sure that we're keeping an eye on keeping the promise to the public that we would make every reasonable effort to right size the ordinance the organizations the way that we put it so that in six years we are no longer relying on that 10 million dollars from the TEF and so I would like to see as we go forward a step-by-step plan on how we're going to wean ourselves off of that 10 million dollars as well I know the city manager has already started it I just want to make sure that while this is a very rosy picture we kind of are being floated by that 10 million dollars even as we begin the process so thank you so much for your work and I will have additional comments after public he took my question for that I was going to first pose the question and put it in a context so I think that 18 percent is key so the city manager mentioned we formed a council goal setting subcommittee where we're going to be very specific so I would ask in preparation for that meeting and I invite the public to show up that meeting tells us what should we be shooting for because what I'd be interested so let's say the desired we want to get to 25 percent 20 percent versus our current 15 to 17 and I'm looking over a two-year time frame where the seven of us will be in place till December of 2020 and so it'd be interesting seeing from a financial standpoint what would be realistic so over a two-year period do we increase it you know if that's going to be the goal so that's the type of information in the context that I would like to put it on so at the end of this fiscal year for 18 if our goal is going to be let's get it to 20 let's start working towards that so just giving you a little forewarning is the way I see the conversation going on that 22nd many of you are aware that on April 17th we have the leadership council meeting and I know the city has made some recommend or some requests for funding for some of our homeless services and the current recommendations are not to fund those should that end up being the case on the 17th how would those goals or interests that this council has said we're interested specifically Benne Valley Senior Center and the roof on Sam Jones Hall how do you see that playing into the discussions and the timelines that you outlined earlier so we I mean part of this is we're going to be very care we're going to be very carefully watching what happens on the on the 17th obviously if they're certain it would be incredibly disappointing that the community at large does not see these as community-wide assets because they are community-wide assets we are the we own the facility that is the largest single shelter in the county I would hope that the community would see that as the place where investment needs to happen because that would only alleviate our ability to do some other things but if that is not the case we will be closely watching that and we will bring back recommendations based upon that outcome thank you and I just want you know anyone listening or here in the audience that that is part of our conversation also that there'll be choices to make after the 17th and whether it gets added or if it gets funded it's a moot point but that is a moving target that was was not on here and just to echo what Vice Mayor Rogers said about the measure O the most recent measure O I'd also like to have measure P factored in there I know that was on one of your slides but those of us that are on council when we went before the voters then that same thing it was supposed to be a temporary measure to get us over the hump so that's probably closer to 15 to 20 million versus just the 10 million so again strategy for right sizing the organization I think that needs to be part of the conversation on the same vein on slide 12 if you could pull that up I would be interested to seeing what caused let's say the additional generation of property tax and or sales tax in the geographical area of the city of Santa Rosa almost like what some of us on council got with the urban three presentation because previous councils had invested a lot in our downtown reuniting the square chamber was filled got a lot of feedback and I think the majority of us were saying this is an investment in our downtown if the sales tax increase is partially due to some of our investments in the downtown I would like to know that to see that wow our strategy is working maybe continued investment just using that as a simple example and or our incentives to build whether it be downtown or in some of the other areas it would be helpful for me to see geographically have our efforts paid paid off because that tells me overall that's great but that's 45 square miles of performance versus what part geographically work because we've been very strategic I think in some of our investments and additionally with the the revenues forecasted Mr. McBride how do you factor into our resilient city ordinance in some of our incentives of the downtown we have a certain amount where we've reduced our fees to incentivize the building if those reductions work out we will I would see multiply whatever that impact fee investment would be in the increase in property taxes how do you factor those measures into the forecast moving forward well we work with with pet on those to try and figure out what our permitting activity looks like so if we know how much stuff is moving through the entitlement process then we can grab that and and put a multiplier onto it for to develop what our revenues are so the same thing with developing the sales taxes if we know or tot you know if we know that we've got 400 and some odd rooms coming on the next year we we have a way to to apply an ADR and a vacancy rate to that and come up with a revenue factor so that's that's how we look at those okay and I would just for one to be very helpful for me if you could tie it into when council made this decision about filling the blank whether you know incentivizing the downtown this is what it looks like you know your policy decisions have resulted in this type of movement on some of these figures it'd be very helpful to do and if we can do the cause and effect because I know it's usually just not one policy decision might be a variety of them but that's kind of the theme we've been doing with our housing for all strategies just tie it back into some actions that we've been doing so so we're we're actively trying to to bring some alignment around these conversations I will say I can't promise that by the time we get to May June that we'll be able to answer all these conversations but that is the ultimate goal is being able to correlate back policy decisions to impacts and where they're where they're going to be need and conversations we can have with the community that absolutely is the goal and I know the team is working on that right now great thank you council any other questions Mr. Vice Mayor so just a quick question on the property tax for folks who have rebuilt and reoccupied their home I know I know every property that was burned was reassessed temporarily by the assessor's office down to the value of just the land and not the the home being on it as homes have been rebuilt I believe they go back to their original prop 13 number plus a certain percentage would that account for some of that increase could account for a little bit of it but we we haven't seen I don't think we've seen that many homes that have come back on that would bump that up like that I mean not to the not not to the tune of 4% so I think it's it's a remember when we budgeted we weren't sure that we're going to get the backfill at that time so it's a combination of factors of not you know frankly making a clear case statement that we had lost 5% of our housing stock not sure where that revenue is going to come but we have additional questions so we're looking at that right now to try to explain exactly what the variance is but it's probably going to take a little more analysis to get it but we'll we'll we're working on it and I appreciate that and I do you know I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that I've had a number of conversations with folks from Coffee Strong and who are in the rebuild process who continually reminds me that folks who owned their home typically after a disaster end up gaining wealth while renters end up losing out and so I was just wondering if that's something we can keep an eye on and see if there's a way to draw a correlation between not just how are we doing as a community rebuilding but if there's a distinguishment between how homeowners and renters are doing at the end of the rebuild great we have several public comments here first up will be Mike Mullins followed by Reese Foxen full three minutes this time Mike is this one on yes it is good thank you thank you for your time I I came today really to thank you for the partnership that we've been engaged in for the last year year and a half we've handled over 300 housing cases through the attorney that you have provided with our contract with us and I wanted to piggyback a minute on Councilwoman Coombs is comment that you spend a dollar today you save a dollar tomorrow you spend a dollar today on homeless prevention you save five dollars in the future you save law enforcement money shelter money food assistance money and mental health services so we've handled 300 cases with that particular contract now cases like the case of Margaret Margaret was a is a single mother of two she was homeless for a while she found a place to rent she got in that place and later found out that the furnace didn't work there was no heat for herself and her two children the mold was growing in the place and the water heater worked sometimes she withheld rent the landlord predictably tried to evict her she came to us because we had habit habit habit ability issues we managed to save that apartment for her we got her reduced rent and we stopped the eviction so that stops homelessness right there in its tracks and it will save money in the future thank you for your time thank you for your support thank you Mike Reese Foxon followed by Dwayne DeWitt good afternoon council members the end of this month I turned 78 I've spent slightly more than three quarters of a century in libraries at four years old my grandmother took me to work with her she ran a lending library and a market basket in ECLA I had a really important job and that was stamping the books as people checked out checked them out I stamped them with the overdue date from that point on I was always going to the library every week or two problem was as I grew older I couldn't read in the sixth grade I was in the library with my classmates and I had picked out a couple of books and I was sitting there not thinking I would ever be able to read and I opened a book and for the first time in my life I read a whole sentence one from beginning to the other and then I read a second one I was so excited I was just I couldn't tell you how joyful I felt I was reading I wasn't reading fast but I was finally reading high school I became a page in our local library I started by putting books on shelves I mended books then I began checking books in new books in when they arrived checking them against the invoices I got to answer reference questions and I even helped open two new branch libraries I worked in the libraries at Willamette University in San Jose State during the school year and clerked at my local library supplementing the college funds during the summer might wonder why I didn't become a librarian well at the time there was a language requirement it was also the time when they were shifting from the focus on reading and writing which I had managed to finally master to conversation and I'm also auditory dyslexic I can't even say it so I couldn't hear and language was out way beyond me when my husband returned from Vietnam we had to deal with PTSD so I went back to work in the library again but things changed after the divorce and I became homeless with my kids but the libraries didn't leave my life because at that point in time they became something different they became a safe place for me a safe place for me to take my children a place to keep learning and that's what stabilized me through that period my kids are all readers today they're avid readers I returned to school got my degrees in psychology and ended up working with people which is what librarians really do they work with all kinds of people with all kinds of issues with all kinds of questions and today three quarters of a century later I stand before you as chair of the Sonoma County Library Commission to thank you for keeping the library in tier two and to ask you to support your community by honoring our request of $150,000 towards the Rosalind Library I'll remind you at my last appearance three and a half to five and a half dollars return on an investment and that's not just the investment the $150,000 you put in but it's a $600,000 that the library puts in remember you're investing in your community and people people who are like me thank you thank you doing to it followed by Pat Kuda 2020 vision is what's required now and I'm hoping that you'll have a hard-headed fiscal oversight with a bit of a soft heart more reserves would be something that's helpful less layoffs of fire and police this is really important we want to make sure that we don't lose any of our support for those departments if there should be any types of layoffs I would always advocate chop at the top and keep our parks maintenance workers at the bottom those are the folks who are keeping things as nice as they can as well as the road workers the people that make our city livable so please even if you have to begin these cutting of staff keep in mind those that make the city the livable place you want it to be next please rebuild Coffee Park first and foremost they're the ones who've suffered the most and others can wait for things to come their way now maintaining the park citywide I just mentioned that and it's very helpful I'm hoping that you'll help the homeless so they won't be using the parks as their home parks are for everyone to visit for recreation and a break the homeless should be helped by helping Sam Jones Hall and what I knew as South Park School now folks call it Bennett Valley Senior Center however it turns out that could be a spot to help many people did not support Measure N because they felt that the high cost of sales tax were already burdensome to us personally people that I know including myself didn't support it because they felt it would all go towards Burbank housing which is essentially a bit of an inefficient and overpaid government organized non-government organization not doing as well as they could look at how you could help the homeless without it always being them now as I was looking at these numbers and hearing what was said today not a lot has gone into the unfunded liabilities of the pension that's going to be the big bugaboo so I'm hoping that you start right now this year trying to deal with that especially because many of these fire folks here may be retiring soon and we've got to deal with all that Rosalind Library yeah I want one a nice one I don't know if you can help whatever you can give might be nice for us thank you for your time thank you Dwayne Pat Kudlow followed by Stephen Zulman hi I'm here representing the Rosalind Library coalition and we have over 795 individual and organizational supporters and our numbers are growing I'd like to wish you a happy national library week each year during the second week of April our country celebrates the crucial role libraries play in our communities the Sonoma County Library with its four branches located in our city does so much to help our residents discover, learn and share but we can't do this without community partners like the City of Santa Rosa supplying the necessary infrastructure we appreciate your decision to keep the Rosalind Library in a prominent place on your tier two list and we urge you to commit $150,000 a year to support the uninterrupted library services while we work with the city private donors and community partners towards a permanent solution for the Rosalind Library please include the Rosalind Library in your infrastructure projects list during national library week what better time to reaffirm your public commitment to a free public library in Rosalind thank you thank you Pat 7 Zulman followed by Adriana Arizona good afternoon my name is Steven Zulman and I have the honor of serving as the Library Commission's Rosalind Coalition's liaison I have the equal honor of being able to read this statement from Amy Jones Kerr who is the Rosalind School District and Superintendent who unfortunately was not able to gather we make a difference and the ability for our community to assess knowledge one of the key one of the three key components of the Human Development Index as described in the portrait of Sonoma County's report our partnership work is just getting started and we have the potential to do even greater things together as an educational team we urge you and implore you to help keep the Rosalind Community Library open the Rosalind Community Library is more than just a building with books it's a lifetime in the community it's a lifeline in this community it provides skills resources and wonder entertainment and education from the child who's learning to read to the child who needs a quiet space to do it's to do their homework to the junior and high school who is studying for the SATs to the senior and high school who is applying for college to the single mother who wants to start her own business to the young man who's trying to find employment to the exhausted family members struggling with the loved one's dementia or substance abuse or doesn't know where else to go according to the Pew Research Center lower income Americans are more likely to see libraries as community anchors to close this library would be to close a door on this local communities members further the Brookings Institute says that libraries have become front line in the fight against social issues such as homelessness which we've heard here today and unemployment and allies in helping people improve their job skills find housing and secure legal or financial aid to close the library would be to close off access to those who need it most the Roseland School District believes strongly that the Roseland Public Library plays an important role in supporting the students in ensuring that each and every one of our students have the opportunity and voice to attend college and to become positive contributing members and in turn become leaders of our community we urge you to recognize the work and opportunity that exists within the Roseland Community Public Library please consider choosing to support and keep the doors open for this greater good of our community and I will just say personally I am a former San Francisco juvenile public defender libraries have saved the youth that I've represented from getting system involved either in the dependency system the juvenile court system or eventually into the adult system this is equally important for this historically marginalized part of our community who most of which are undocumented this is a safe space for them so I urge your continued support thank you thank you Adriana Arizona followed by Raquel Gomez hi good afternoon my name is Adriana Rison I'm the former Cinema County Public Library Foundation President a member of this community but most importantly a single parent that got her education later in life so now a county is rich it's rich in organizations dedicated to improving the lives of its residents particularly those who face barriers to living freely chosen lives and opportunity however disparities persist in concentrated areas of our community a local county report that measures school readiness in children found that children that visited the library were 1.25 times more likely to enter school ready to start school ready then children that did not visit the library we know that libraries have been at the forefront of local and regional initiatives across the nation to proactively change the policies practices and systems that create barriers to prosperity and well-being for people of color and limited opportunity while all parents hope their child will enter kindergarten ready to start school not all parents have access to supportive high quality early learning opportunities or access to resources or education for themselves to support their children evidence shows that access to higher education health and a standard of living are dependent on income race and geography access to libraries should not be in 2015 the Roseland library opened its doors to the public and great things started to happen one Spanish speaking mom that signed up for the adult summer reading program at the Roseland library branch asked for information about books and other formats other than paper books she was helped by the staff there to download and navigate a program called Odillo into her phone which is a digital content marketplace in multiple languages featuring titles from publishers worldwide this parent was extremely excited to learn about Odillo because she had access to a new world of information and education in the palm of her hand this answer and will also help support her children parents are their childs parents are their childs first and most important teachers we know that parental education home language frequency of reading are key factors that influence school readiness according to this report paraphrasing paraphrasing the late Cesar Chavez I can say that you cannot and educate the parent who has learned to read you cannot humiliate the parent who feels pride in their community and of course it goes on the city's mission is to provide high quality public services and cultivate a vibrant resilience and livable city I would invite you to include demographic and racial equity in your vision because it is the only way that we will have a just and fair process in which all including all racial ethnic groups can participate prosper and reach their full potential anywhere that they may live thank you thank you very much thanks Raquel Gomez followed by Gregory Firon that is my four-year-old daughter her brain has grown already 50% that's what it's going to grow so to make this place more attractive one of the ways you can make the more attractive to all the people that live here is to keep our libraries okay and then we have if we don't have no more library and I mean I go to the Roseland Library all the time take my daughter take my nieces take friends who can't get to the library I bring their children there too and if we don't have library we have no more reading to our children no more librarians reading to them no more our children reading to the dogs it is easy to judge us and tell us to go down to the downtown library lots of parents don't have transportation it's easy to say take the bus it's not a really it's the realistically it's a hardship to take two three children on the bus and take them to the library extra time extra money it's um we need to have all that time in our own library okay is um it is not fair that one library in the same county has is so unequal in our library is one has a 3D printer it has high tech technology and Roseland is basic is struggling for basic needs and just struggling to keep our doors open I met a lady who said that she has been going coming to these meetings and she had come to the meeting when her child was young and now her child is in college and we still don't haven't seen that promise we're seeing the promise fulfilled but we don't want that promise to be broken so I just I just urge you I mean I have so much to say and so much to feel and so much that I've seen and you know it's like I just urge you to keep our library open and I guess my daughter wants to say something do you want to say something my love? well thank you so much for considering us and we do want that promise fulfilled and we don't want to wait another 20 years and we just we need more than just our library to be open we need them to be open in good hours for our children to be able to go because lots of times I've gone where the library is open right after the kids get out of school I mean it's nice to have them because I was able to take my daughter when she was little and there's so many people that cannot afford preschool and this is there's preschool those librarians are awesome they helped me we don't want to get rid of that comprehension that the kids need and everything that their brain needs those kids that say I don't get it maybe they didn't get that learning that they needed when they were early stage where their brain needed to grow if you're you don't have that library and a lot of kids need their brain might not grow and they don't have the same enzymes they don't have the same growth and those kids really mean it I don't get it and that's not good thank you Greg Afiron followed by Brianna Pocca thank you I'm Mayor Schwelthelm and members of the council I'm back and this may be one of the few times that I'm actually get to stand in front of you because of a prior commitment on Tuesdays beginning in about three weeks the next time you meet I'll be somewhere else at this time but I'll still send you emails and I'll still attend every other meeting and I can because like many people I love what you guys do thank you council person Fleming for asking the key question and that is the one that San Rosa together has been asking for quite a while which is and to which you've brought several experts in which is what makes the city strong and what makes them capable of surviving the next emergency well the answer is clear to all of us and it should be clear to you it's strong neighborhoods it's strong infrastructural support it's having the city and the community work together so in that respect because the budget hearings as I remember a few months ago were pretty dire you had no money and you were about ready to go down the tube so I'm really happy to hear the city is stronger financially and in that light I want to renew all the commitments all the requests that were made who probably didn't think they have a chance to you now to say think again about the kinds of things that make the city strong we asked Santa Rosa together for a strengthened partnership between the city and us and others to be able to build participation in the general plan update that's going to take a while but it's very important to the city to be able to have neighborhoods know what they want in housing what they want in other city facilities and to participate in that process so please put some money into the department of planning to augment the minuscule but strong efforts to get citizens involved I hear from David and others that you're going to begin that in July and we are very very eager to be involved so please help us by making sure there's plenty of good staff to be there with us plenty of time plenty of noticing I'm really glad you have an ordinance later on in this thing we'll tell everybody about those hearings and there are a couple more things I just want to quickly say putting my homeless action at bathrooms downtown come on you've got to find some money I think a city is strong because it helps everyone with its needs and I think both for that request and the request that you work actively with the homeless with the Sonoma home leadership council work together collaboratively build a team that addresses the issues provide local matching if they can't provide it provide it yourself for things like Sam Jones like Bennett Valley come on let's do a better job because I think you've heard that you can thank you thank you Greg Brianna followed by Mr. Kanini hi so with the transient occupancy tax my first question I don't know if you talked about this while I was out of the room but I don't know if you are including Airbnb in that and other websites that offer homes here for rent for hundreds to thousands hundreds to even a couple thousand dollars per night and I don't think you are so if you could add Airbnb to your transient occupancy tax you could make up for the 400 rooms that were taken away if we could have wherever find out where our our pipeline is stuck where our I forget the word I'm using trying to look for but where we have our permit operations are not going through as smoothly we're not able to approve as many permits as we need to to keep to get ourselves on track to where we have enough units and enough recovery done to our parks so if we could update our revenues in those areas uh similarly sorry I got off track the homeless people could help a lot we want to there's builders in the community a lot of people were displaced by the fires were renters who got screwed out of whatever and and or we're looking for housing at that time and are just destitute at this point basically just trying to hang onto their lives basically trying to you know get to the hospital is even a difficult thing wound care is a difficult thing nobody can wash their hands so by simply utilizing this the resources that we already have that are very cheap the land we already own that we're not doing anything with right now or buildings we can help people just stabilize themselves hopefully within that number could dwindle and the amount of spaces that we're taking up could dwindle people could find you could stabilize themselves get wrap up whatever they need to do here and move on or in other words contribute back to the community have some stability so that they can get jobs and contribute back to the community in a full complete way so don't know what to do with all this time but yeah there's ways that people can contribute back and we can create more revenue so if you could look to other places like San Diego Santa Cruz that are using more creative ways to increase the revenues and help their homeless people that'd be great thank you thank you Mr. Kenini followed by George Uberti Mr. Mayor ladies and gentlemen okay in regards FEMA the federal emergency management agency you heard the term today public assistance so be very clear public assistance is to public entities not the general public public entities government agencies and quasi government agencies including homeowners association they are eligible for public assistance if they know how to go about getting it individual assistance is another program that's where the FEMA deals with you directly as a private citizen FEMA has many many programs and I don't think you've been using them all I could be mistaken but it seems to me during this last federally declared emergency you do not hire any temporary people FEMA pays you 100 percent for your temporary employees 100 percent as you know your city workers FEMA will cover the overtime cost and only the overtime cost they'll also cover benefits and such as that FEMA has several mitigation programs maybe five of them it's my understanding you're conversant with 406 that's following a disaster there's also 404 I've talked to some public officials and they were not aware of 404 404 doesn't need a disaster it's available all the time you could apply for it anytime to mitigate any suspected hazard and here's something you may find useful when you do a benefit cost analysis which FEMA may require and you got a big benefit for a small cost say your ratio is 0.3 add a bunch to the mitigation you can push that up as long as you stay below 1 now is that clear you're going to mitigate something you're going to spend a certain amount to improve it but you got a huge benefit cost ratio add a bunch to the mitigation but keep it below 1 maybe you can use some insider information homeless huge problem not being there but one thing is people realize the homeless problem is because they were thrown out of the institutions the homes that Reagan closed people understand that but the politicians have not acted on it and there may be enough support for reinstituting those programs the mental health hospitals we're paying for it remember that young lady officer police officer killed by someone with psychological problems we're going to pay for that keeping those people out of those homes that need to be reinstituted and you could help push Washington in that direction thank you thank you Mr. Keney and Georgia Baratee okay you know I I love listening to the public speakers um from what I can hear the number one interest that they have is really investment by this city council and by this city to reflect the priorities that we have which is investment in ourselves right uh we are interested in a city that provides us with the services that it needs right I heard a lot for the public library right and I would like to suggest kind of a taking a step back right and using a little bit of the perspective that governance requires to really think about as we move forward with our budget really think about what it is we want to use our money for and not just what we want to use our money for but how we really want to use it to that effect I would like to raise the issue and suggest that it be the utmost priority for this council to invest in a public bank which is something that I first heard about when I came to one of these meetings and I listened to two lovely young ladies discuss the need for a public bank how much money it would save us the in carrying costs alone every financial issue that we have would be affected and would be affected in a positive way by the keeping of public funds in a public bank there's absolutely no reason to allow private organization to benefit through the holding through the management of our money is ours we create it we collect it we manage it and I mean what's more we have an investment pool as it operates right now right the only difference now would be that we would be holding the funds that we're already investing we would be reducing our carrying costs we would just be more financially intelligent and it would enable us to every single priority that people have come up here and spoken to you about and told you that they want to see you investing in public libraries right public transportation mental health all of those things benefit from having the perspective to take the responsibility for our own money and stop offsetting it into you know private institutions who don't have the public in mind when they invest our funds they have themselves in mind when they invest their funds right and so I just I urge you all to really take a step back really think about what we want the future to look like and really think about not just which decisions we will make right but the structure of how we make decisions financial decisions in particular right money is a value statement right and I'm coming up here to tell you we need to think about what we value and how we value it it's very very important thank you for your time thank you those are all the cards we have counsel any other comments or questions for staff seeing none Mr. City Manager or Mr. McBride any additional feedback you'd want from council no I think that's we've got what we need thank you very much counsel thank you very much for that presentation it's very thorough okay let's move on to the regular council meeting madam city clerk announcement a roll call please that director show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Oliveris thank you report on stay session Mr. McGlynn nothing to add thank you and closed session madam city attorney yes council met earlier this afternoon on items 2.1 2.2 and 2.3 in closed session and provided direction to staff on all three items great thank you no proclamation staff briefings Mr. McGlynn 7.1 do I report nothing for tonight on 7.1 okay how about 7.2 2019 Earth Day on stage festival good afternoon Mayor Schweltam and members of the council my name is Tasha Wright I am Santa Rosa Waters energy and sustainability coordinator and our team is wonderfully blessed with the opportunity each year to put on this amazing event so we are here today to let you know about some of the details and thank you for your support and also thank all the departments that come together to make this event the amazing event that it is each year so I'm going to turn it over to B. Amador who is this year's event coordinator and she's going to provide you with all the details good afternoon Mayor Schweltam and city council members so I'm I'm very excited to be here today to formally invite you all to Santa Rosa's 10th annual Earth Day on stage festival this year the event will be held on Saturday April 27th from noon to 4 pm at courthouse square Earth Day on stage is a free family friendly festival that brings our community together through fun activities live performance great food and inspiring exhibits that raise environmental awareness so this year we are proud to present several workshops that we hope will provide resources for our community members some of the workshops include the California Native Plant Society Renewable Sonoma Sonoma County Waste Management Sonoma Recology doing a garbage recycling and composting at home and community soils will be showing how to work compost bins for the backyard as usual the stage will provide a showcase of Santa Rosa's performing arts scene as sponsored by Rec and Park and performances includes a Japanese drumming Earth Day skits for kids and Dijin a band which is described as world music including R&B, blues calypso and latin styles and they perform their songs in French, English and Spanish this will be our second zero waste Earth Day event the event will also have free valet bike parking local food and drinks and a beer and wine booth hosted by Land Paths our mobile hydration station will provide ice cold Santa Rosa water to event goers and stormwater and creeks will provide pollution prevention tips and the water use efficiency team will be on hand with water smart tips rebates and sharing their programs classroom safari will return again this year to provide education about wild animals and conservation and they're bringing several of their rescue animals including a sloth and a hedgehog in addition these great offering to these great offerings there will be eco-friendly activities for all including the always popular kids section that will feature seed planting nature discovery tables smoothie making with a bicycle powered blender so we hope you'll join us for a fun filled day and for more information please visit our website and I've brought some postcards with information if any of you would like that thank you thank you so much for the presentation it's always been a great event I've always been thrilled to see the amount of community members that come out here now that we have this reunite square because we used to have it right on the street over here a couple years we did on first when they were reuniting the square right yeah so it's a wonderful event you guys have put in reservations for a nice sunny day on the 27th of course sweet okay council questions Sina thank you so much thank you for the presentation Mr. McGlynn do you have a report for us today I do not and madam city attorney nor do I statements of the distinction by council members everyone's in for the duration council members mayor council members reports who had something to report Mr. Vice Mayor thank you Mr. Mayor a couple of quick things we did have a cannabis subcommittee meeting last Thursday I don't need to give much for report on that you can read the press democrat if you want to know how that conversation went we also had a smart meeting we have them every two weeks and two of the the positive discussions that we had in this workshop were particularly around the bike path construction receiving an update from smart as well as a pretty handy graphic that shows where the bike path has been completed and when it where it hasn't that's both available that picture is both available on social media and check out smarts page as well as the documents for that particular meeting that are that are public I think it's actually really instructive to take a look at the other thing that we talked about was the potential down the road to join a low-income rider program that is set to be launched by MTC so that'll be coming back before the board and then the general manager did float something that he's been working on that we'll be bringing back to the board where potentially families will be able to ride on the weekend where kids will ride free so taking a look at where we're at full capacity typically during the commute hours and looking at where we're lower in capacity and finding ways to get people onto the bus or excuse me get people onto the train and then the bus in certain areas but one of the things that we noticed was having a family trip down through the smart line was cost prohibitive so finding solutions there final thing we have the Sonoma County Transportation Authority meeting yesterday one of the things that SCTA will be launching is a one-year pilot program where individuals will be able to log on link their PG&E account if they'd like to otherwise answer a whole bunch of questions about their energy usage it will pop up with low-hanging fruit ideas for how to lower your climate impact as well as some more substantial ones and it creates a point system and a competition system where you can create a team of up to 10 people to see if you can lower your impact more or more so in terms of percentage than your friends I'll warn the council that I threw down the gauntlet that perhaps the council members would want to do a team of seven eight if we include the city manager and challenge the other cities if they were willing to see if we could do better than them at reducing our impact on the environment I know Katadi is gunning for us once the United States bring it Ms. Combs without going into more detail are we talking about reducing or are we talking about hitting a line that's lower you take your baseline and then it's based on a percentage of reduction okay I'm in I think I had an error on my bill so I have a massive PG&E bill right now so I think it's a good time to join that party I'm concerned that we have one of our tier two items that previously was voted by council to be heard last year in the fall that has not moved forward yet so I'm making a motion for a date certain for an item study session on a 15 dollar minimum wage ordinance to take place before the end of May it has been part of our vision that we are leaders in the North Bay but we're seeing other cities like Sonoma Petaluma and Sebastopol move this forward more rapidly so I'm bringing that forward I think it's not clear to me if we need the one vote I mean the two two council members at this point because I'm just trying to set a date certain since we missed it in the previous round so I mean I'm happy to second that thank you because I think a date certain is going to help I mean I think the whole motivation around that minimum wage study was to actually implement it at a time that you know beats the state law and bring some some alleviation to families but I don't want to do it necessarily ahead of what Tom and Chris you guys are working on so if your subcommittee is working on it and you come back with this thing scheduled to be you know relatively in a similar timeframe I'm happy to support that route too but just for the sake of continuing the conversation Julie you have my second and for clarity I'm not on the subcommittee oh you're not I'm sorry Victoria then I understand that there's a subcommittee meeting that will take place around the 21st 22nd yes that they may take this discussion up but that's still gives us time to have a conversation by the end of May thank you and if it's helpful Mr. City Manager I'm sure there's at least one council member that'd be happy to do the presentation so we don't impact staff you are not staff and so I will just say that that I'm not sure that I will turn to the city attorney I'm not sure that that is a solution set so Mr. City Manager as you and I have spoken with this it is my intent to bring this up it's April 22nd to discuss this so that the city manager could respond if since this council chose it as a tier two priority we're setting specific goals for tier one priorities being one of my reasons for doing that so that we're all very clear staff is clear the community is clear and so the city manager could say that if we want to do this item here's the impact that's going to have on tier one priorities now not saying that I don't know the amount of time and so I'm interested here from the city manager given the time specific I mean I think I think we can get into a conversation on the 22nd about when to bring it back but it's going to I think it's mostly impacting the city attorneys I think right about that blanket yes actually what we have before you right now is a motion and a second which is all that takes to move it forward it'll come back to you at a later council meeting in the meantime since our next council meetings not until the 30th you'll have had the April 22nd meeting when it comes back to you on the 30th or or thereafter that's when you can have the discussion about about the dates actually that will actually be the motion to whether to put it on the agenda and when to put it on the agenda and that'll take place at that date and I think that timing works well for me thank you thank you for providing additional information and not a wet blanket I appreciate that Ms. Gomes are you done with your report Mr. Tibbets did you have a report Ms. Lemmy yesterday on behalf of the Santa Rosa City Council and the residents of Santa Rosa I attended the water advisory committee where all eight water contractors unanimously approved the rate increase for this fiscal year we also got a tour of rainy collector number six and other facilities including the Mirabell facility and saw a bunch of the flood damage I wanted to thank the staff at the Jennifer Burke and the staff of the water agency for all of their assistance with this matter thank you thank you in range just for information you wanted to talk on 10.1.9 there was not a report on that so I invite you to speak on item 13 same topic thank you okay approval in minutes we have none consent items Mr. McGlynn yes item 12.1 resolution second amendment to general services agreement number F is 001393 with Smothers Parts International Incorporated item 12.2 motion contract award Cooper Drive slope stabilization and drainage improvements item 12.3 resolution road repair and accountability act of 2017 Senate bill 1 SB1 transportation funding fiscal year 2019-20 project list item 12.4 resolution transportation development act TDA article 3 grant application for fiscal year 2019-2020 item 12.5 resolution professional services agreement with McCain incorporated for advanced traffic management system item 12.6 resolution adoption of memorandum of understanding unit 2 firefighting represented by the International Association of Firefighters local 1401 effective July 1st 2017 through June 30th 2020 item 12.7 ordinance adoption second reading ordinance of the city of the council of the city of Santa Rosa admitting title 20 of the Santa Rosa city code sections 20-50.040 20-50.050 20-52.030 and 20-66 020 to modify public noticing requirements file number REZ19-001 thank you council any questions for staff seeing none I have one card on this item 12.7 Gregory Furron thanks again and basically I just want to say thank you to the members of the open government task force subcommittee president and past and to chris in particular but to everyone who's been trying to get citizen engagement in the city I think the noticing ordinance change will encourage more people it will certainly inform more people about what's happening in the city reaching out beyond the 300 foot level at this point to six and the rest of the ordinance it actually will engage people better and I thank you very much for it thank you Greg Mr. Rodgers you have this item thank you Mr. Mayor I will move items 12.1 through 12.7 especially 12.6 and we'll wait for the reading of the text second we have a motion to second your votes and that passes unanimously all righty we're going to take a 20 minute recess because we can't start until five o'clock for public comment all right it's five o'clock we're going to start with item 13 public comment on non-agenda items first up victoria yones followed by rain hello thank you for this opportunity my name is victoria yones I'm with homeless action and I'm here to thank Julie Combs for bringing up the issue of homelessness in the budget study group that we just had here we are going again another winter has passed and there is no place for people to stay thank you also Julie for mentioning that it's an emergency emergency declaration has been passed and yet I don't see anybody acting like it's an emergency and rather than the money go to infrastructure we would rather have individual people housed even if just temporarily so we asked that the city council urge their heap representatives to the leadership council that they reject the funding for the roof at sam jones and rather than that make sure that the money's used to house people immediately the other thing I wanted to say was that we since it's been declared an emergency cannot the city council keep the police from arresting people and taking them to jail for camping can't they just give them citations do they have to take them to jail and hold them for 12 to 14 hours thereby being judged jury and hangman at the same time because they just go pick them up take them to jail and then cite them out and we think that that conduct needs to be led up in a humane society if you're going to cite them for whatever homeless crime you think they've committed go ahead and cite them out but if you're not going to keep them in jail why take them over there just so that they lose their belongings and have to start over again when they get out of jail because 14 hours is a long time for a homeless person to be in jail thank you very much thank you rain followed by Elizabeth Nelon let me start with saying what I'm going to usually would say at the end civilizations don't have homeless grandmas so for two years I followed about 200 disabled women that are chronically homeless and I've become good acquaintances with a lot of them and this morning one was arrested is what she's also talking about who refused to go into Sam Jones she has seizures she has a head injury she has heavy medications like gabapentin and other pain medications so she gets treated like a junkie by the cops but she's a rape survivor who had her head smashed in and we treat her like that she had five police interactions in 72 hours I witnessed all of them stacks of tickets over 72 hours because she wouldn't go into Sam Jones so she has PTSD from being rape attacked while she was at work as a caregiver she was a good person a working person before she can't remember anything anymore she didn't remember what you said about one minute earlier so she has a stack of tickets she's like what day is this one from I'm like today today and it was just like three hours ago that kind of memory and she's on this treat all by herself to be attacked again but she'd rather be there with PTSD than in Sam Jones because she was actually attacked there so we do need a safer place to put the people with seizures that are from rape and domestic violence if they have severe traumatic brain injuries they need a safe place to take them which is not Sam Jones or jail neither of those are safe places those are not safe places so I recommend that you guys use if you have some resiliency funds if you have some homeless funds if you have some HEAP funds or other state funds make two one or two houses just little houses that are for the traumatic brain injury survivors that you know are not going to remember those housing lists there's no way she's going to remember a five-year housing list she doesn't know where she got her mail this week and she doesn't remember if she got a ticket today or yesterday because that's how hard her head was broken she was in a coma when that injury happened and I don't think that she should be out there unprotected and I don't think the cops should be treating her like she's a junkie because she's slow because of gabapentin so I watched her I was there with my daughter this is what upsets me as my 13-year-old daughter watch somebody that she's seen off and on for two years get arrested for disorderly conduct because we're not giving the camping match disorderly conduct for not going to Sam Jones for doing nothing but trying to sleep we're not talking about excessive mass she wasn't mouthing off she wasn't being in polite and all of her citations over the last couple years are related to homelessness how is she supposed to get housing anyways assuming she wasn't brain injured how would she get a job or an apartment with a million arrests how would that help them they're not going to ever get an apartment if they have five million arrests every other day their criminal record is going to be like a huge stack and someone's going to go I'm not going to rent them an apartment anyway not even burping so where is she supposed to go you guys need to make a place for the domestic violence survivors because I think they're just as important as head injured vets because no one cares about these people's why I was tracking them these are people that nobody cares about but since the baby boomers are retiring you're going to be swimming in grandmas I haven't said this for three years you're going to swim in grandmas thank you Elizabeth Nealon followed by Judy Kennedy hi everybody I'm Elizabeth Nealon some people think I'm obnoxious I don't think I am I've been a socialist since I was 10 years old I like to sing I like to dance and I'm a little bit dramatic I like Gavin Newsom I like the way he took off and went down to El Salvador thank god for decent people among the rest of us bathrooms public telephones and the old clock back at the transit mall I have a friend over at the transit mall said are you going to speak again at city council yes would you tell them about the clock it's a beautiful clock they took down when they remodeled the transit mall and it really apparently is sitting in a box somewhere should be put back up let's see I'm not I don't think I'm going to sing today I'm not I'm in a singing mood of course but I don't I think I've got too much to say right now so I'd like to share the couplet I wrote when the ugly one was elected president it goes like this so Obama was a pretty man articulate and funny Donald Trump is a patriarch from the beasts underbelly and when I say the beast I mean the war machine the ugly war machine and so corporate empires are poisoning our air our water our food and our minds since they own most of the media I don't watch that corporate stuff but you know the corporate media is lying to us and telling us that 40% of Americans like and support Donald Trump I'll tell you what the real statistic is less than 20% and those people are probably as just as psychotic as he is so anyway billionaires are not nice people and they really don't belong in government let them take off and live in Paraguay or somewhere else where they can enjoy their money and not affect the rest of us in such a toxic way let's see is there anything else here I like the children thank you for coming yeah we're gonna be at Earth Day we the raging grannies of Sonoma County we'll be at Earth Day and we'll be singing in a very very sweet melodious way and then we'll also be at international workers day the May Day Parade God willing I like the goddess of course Christ supremacy white supremacy and male supremacy are blasphemous ideas although Christ might have been an ascended master there certainly were many others so I'm glad to be here thank you thank you Judy Kennedy followed by Brianna Pucka good afternoon Mayor Schwenthelm and council members my name is Judy Kennedy I live at 620 Oak Street I'm here today to discuss the bathrooms in Juilliard Park I attended the downtown subcommittee meeting last week and one of the presenters was Dean Hamlin Park's crew superintendent I was thrilled to learn that council had finally decided to demolish the bathrooms in Juilliard Park as you know those bathrooms are not used by the general public but are a hangout for bad actors drug dealers sex workers and any number of young men in black hoodies with cell phones with the bathroom doors open and the lights on these nefarious characters ruled the corner of Juilliard Park Drive and Santa Rosa Avenue I subsequently contacted Mr. Hamlin by email about the demolition apparently there is no set time for demolition yet the bathrooms remain open to business as usual for the hoodlums that gather there when I asked Mr. Hamlin if he could lock the doors until demolition he wrote since council is interested in keeping restroom assets operational system wide I'm not sure who would okay locking them up at this point council I am here this afternoon to ask you or the city manager to have the bathroom doors in Juilliard Park locked permanently as soon as possible and the building boarded up until demolition thank you thank you Breanna Pockoff followed by Fred Krueger somebody forgot their pen um well if we lock bathrooms up where people gonna go they have they you know people people stop drinking water so they don't have to pee as much I hear that a lot I tell people to drink more water because they're constantly sick right and they're they're and it's good for your mental health as well to drink a lot of water not too much but um and they say oh I can't drink enough water because then I'll have to go to the bathroom and it's just those basic functions that we're stealing from people by literally saying you have no place here when like plenty of people even on you know I'm sure you're all familiar with Airbnb or do we need to go over email no we're familiar with Airbnb okay so um people can reserve tents to live in to for days you know it's a it's a destination not only could we be facilitating the needs of people with that we need to be facilitating by law requirement need to be facilitating their needs section 1700 of the welfare and institutions code as our lovely Victoria brings up and if we just simply help them we can reduce our policing costs we can reduce our oh and and if we reduce our policing of our need for the policing of homeless people by giving them an address and giving them a place to be and so our social workers I asked a social worker once um who uh how much time does she spend looking for people and she said 60 percent of her time and we have hundreds of social workers in our community and um they I mean they make more than teachers but um obviously not too much I mean I don't know but I mean 60 percent of their time spent finding people um just to get them help that we really need to get them and so much money wasted on policing them when we could be catching people that are speeding speeding tears up the roads and kills people and causes and then we have so many people just out and about with their cars again I keep bringing this up because I've read it right over in that room over there you can go look at our environmental impact and again 50 percent of our environmental impact contributing to our climate change contributing to our lower ability to these fires vulnerability to flooding vulnerability to all of the other natural disasters that are going to come um and get worse and our seasonal issues with so much rain and so much heat and less temperate weather we're not going to be able to grow wine um already in Napa they can't grow some warm weather why or some cold weather grapes anymore um so our vitality as a community is at stake thank you Frank Kruger thank you very much good afternoon I'd like to address the unintended consequences of city policy on housing I think the thing that stands out probably more than anything over the past 10 years is that while we've had substantial housing growth we have not had a proportional increase in the infrastructure to support the population a recent issue of psychology today suggests that when we do this we increase the pace of life for individuals impatience grows blood pressure increases in individuals there's a higher risk factor for heart and kidney disease and a series of anxiety disorders which can lead to a heightened state of delinquency particularly among young people but in no can no area of society where does this show up more than in traffic congestion and when we look at the growth of traffic congestion in Santa Rosa that brings about adrissional stress on the population there's an inability to estimate travel times because of delays of various kinds there's greater fuel consumption and pollution it addresses climate change road rage begins to grow we see that in the the Sebastopol road and stony point area we've had three fatalities in the last three months and this is an indicator of our inability to adequately address the traffic problems because people begin to speed up they cut through the yellow light into the red because of the feeling of greater pressure so we need you to help us by developing infrastructure that is proportional to the growth in population if you don't have both in partnership you have an eotrogenic condition now in medicine eotrogenic medicine is when the physician causes harm but that same term applies to city planning and city decision making too much emphasis on one without a proportional increase in all the infrastructure to support the population causes harm more than help so please reflect on the wholeness of the needs of the city for instance no area is as under parked as the roseland area and yet there's not much emphasis on trying to address this problem so we have serious problems that go unaddressed they're sort of like the collateral consequences of a failure for adequate planning so please help us to provide a whole city for a growing population thank you thank you those are all the cards we have we have no report items we'll move on to our public hearing and I'll first give an outline for everyone in the audience about how we'll run this public hearing before I hand it over to staff so staff will introduce it I'll ask council for any exparte communications they've had with any of the parties involved in this action then we'll have a staff presentation chair of planning commission will make some comments the appellant presentation appellant will have 10 minutes for that presentation and again these are all maximum times you don't have to necessarily take up all the time the applicant will then have an equal 10 minutes I will then open the public hearing public comments will be limited to three minutes and again you don't need to take all the three minutes we'll close the public hearing applicant will have an opportunity for a rebuttal council then will have an opportunity to ask staff any questions council member Sawyer has this item he'll be making a motion if it gets a second we'll have a discussion and then bring it to vote so with that Mr. City Manager would you like to introduce this item yes item 15.1 public hearing appeal of planning commission decision to approve a conditional use permit for foxtin incorporated a cannabis retail and delivery business in an existing building located at 4036 Montgomery Avenue unit B Santa Rosa, California assesses parcel number 013-284-012 file number CUP18-076 Claire Hartman leading the presentation so Claire would it be your preference that we do expert take communications prior to your presentation or after prior why don't we assert Mr. Sawyer thank you mayor I met with the representatives for the applicant and then with the owners of the trailhouse and I did watch the entire planning commission meeting online that I haven't heard anything yet that would be opposite what I saw during the planning commission and what I learned during my meetings Mr. Vice Mayor thanks I was out on the site with both the applicant as well as then the owners of trailhouse watched the planning commission meeting read every email that came in from the public and obviously the staff report for this Mr. Tibbets I met with both the applicant and the trailhouse folks thank you Ms. Fleming I met with the applicant and the appellant and Ms. Collins I've met with the owner of the warehouse the owners of the trailhouse I visited the site myself I have had telephone conversations with interested parties including a former council member I have read the emails that we've received as well as the package of materials and have no additional information related to the materials thank you and I've also visited the site both with the owners of the trailhouse and Fox Dan I've spoken with two planning commissioners to the site visit and read the number of emails phone messages and have the material that's been supplied all of which are a public record so with that Ms. Hartman all right thank you so the way we have organized the presentation this evening is that I will give an introduction on sort of where the city of Santa Rosa came to develop its cannabis retail ordinance how it relates to the current project before you and then Bill Rose is going to go over the specific project that's on appeal so as many of you know the city does have a comprehensive cannabis ordinance that we developed over the course of a couple of years one of which introduces both regulations for personal use but also for commercial use in all aspects of the cannabis industry including retail which is highlighted here which is the subject of tonight's meeting which allows dispensaries and delivery cannabis retail is essentially a dispensary it's a retail facility that sells cannabis or cannabis products and may also have delivery services as the ordinance was developed over its time it was determined that there are seven available zoning districts throughout the city of Santa Rosa not in any particular quadrant throughout the entirety of the city where these commercial industrial districts are and the subject site is one of these commercial districts in addition there were some limiting factors for where cannabis retail could locate one of them was a definitive setback to K to 12 schools I can talk a little bit more about that in a minute another factor that limited where cannabis retail could locate was in proximity to each other so one of the interests there in our ordinance is to address the issue of over concentration too many cannabis retail on any one block or in any one neighborhood and so the standard that was set was 600 feet to another cannabis retail facility and then lastly a reliance on the highest level of land use permit process that the city can offer which is a major use permit which requires a neighborhood meeting if there are residential uses or districts in the vicinity it always requires a public hearing with the planning commission and they are the review authority for the conditional use permit but it also has the highest check system which is an appeal process to the city council which is being exercised tonight the ordinance itself the premise of the ordinance is to mostly treat cannabis industry like their non-cannabis counterparts but with some exceptions because of the product type and so there are specific requirements that don't relate to general retail but to relate to cannabis retail so one of which we have an express allowance for deliveries and if they have deliveries they have to make that an explicit component of their use permit we don't allow for drive-throughs but there's none proposing with this application and we do set hours of operation we also have proactive standards to address some of the things that we all learn through the public engagement process security odor mitigation lighting noise those are things that are there's direct standards in the code that they must adhere to if they're cannabis retail and then also they must address in their permit request if they have on-site consumption this application does not so proximity to a school is an issue that's related to the subject appeal and I wanted to spend a little bit more time on how that was developed so the state law does have a default setback standard to sensitive uses for cannabis businesses and in fact it's right here right out of the state law it says that no cannabis business is allowed within 600 feet of a K-12 school but also includes daycare center or youth center but it completes that sentence with unless a licensing authority or a local jurisdiction specifies a different radius now the city of Santa Rosa in our process we developed a different standard and we did select ultimately a 600 foot standard to a K-12 school and did not apply the same standard to daycare centers or youth centers and because we chose something different we wanted to be very clear and upfront about that so it's specifically in our ordinance that says city of Santa Rosa is asserting it's right to have something different and we want to protect the academic setting and that's why we had selected the K-12 and not daycare centers and also the emphasis being on the public review process that is in place which is this conditional use permit process again the highest level of use permit review the city can offer a land use and the reliance on these six conditional use permit findings so here's the first three one is compliance with the code so you have to comply with everything I just talked about and more parking and everything else that's associated with land use permits consistency with the general plan which as we know is a balancing act of sometimes competing policies finding three is compatibility with existing and future land uses the other three findings that need to be made to grant a use permit is that the site's physically suitable for the type density and intensity of the use that the use will not constitute a nuisance as presented as condition and that we adhere to the California Environmental Quality Act so with that that's the setting upon which these applications are are tested basically and run through the public review process we have 13 sites that were approved by the planning commission since the city is embarked on this journey a couple of them have been the subject of appeal council acted on one at the last meeting and we have our second one tonight and we have 11 more sites that are under review that are pending being scheduled with the planning commission so that's just an update and a setting and now I'm going to turn it over to Bill thank you Claire so as Claire mentioned the retail dispensary is a conditionally permitted use within this zoning district specifically the state license is a type 10 with this proposal the total square footage of the commercial space is just under 1800 square feet and that's split across about 900 square feet of retail and just under 300 square feet of lobby and then 560 square feet of ancillary support functions office storage etc with regard to project history the application was submitted in April of 2018 the project went through its normal review process the neighborhood meeting was held in June some additional application material was submitted later that month ultimately the project was deemed complete in July the proposal had a name change operator change it was originally called Soulful and it went to Fox Den Incorporated in October January of 2019 the public notice went out shortly thereafter the planning commission meeting was held it was a unanimous approval of the planning commission there were five members that night and it was a 50 vote so the site is located to northeast Santa Rosa it's just east of summerfield road on the south side of Montgomery Drive as we come in closer you can see here it's part of a general plan designation block of properties that are similarly designated as commercial office and then the zoning corresponds to that office designation it's a commercial neighborhood zoning this is a site plan the trail house building it's a standalone building up at the front of the site Fox Den is located in the rear building the project was reviewed against a number of development standards parking noise odor security lighting the project complies with all of the required standards there are no exceptions or variances proposed and this is a floor plan the site a little unique in that it has an interior parking configuration this graphic shows that the circulation functions it has adequate backup dimensions and turning movements are appropriate and you can see where the lobby and dispensaries located the and similar uses spaces are at the rear this is a parking tabulation what this shows is parking for the whole site so it includes the calculations for the trail house use as well as Fox Den essentially the required number of spaces on site 22 are provided the hours of operation for both the retail and the delivery are nine to nine daily and this is consistent with the zoning code staff has received a number of public comments proximity to the Howard Park potential impacts for children visiting there potential impacts for nuisance problems also people have raised concerns about incompatibility with the trail house the circulation could conflict with the cyclists that frequent this site many bicycle oriented events also events for children and also issues concerning its proximity to the Kiwi place preschool playground and specifically safety concerns as well as having children being exposed to cannabis the appeal includes three points listed here we have received additional information subsequent to the the drafting of the staff report these three points focus largely on the use permit findings so the first one is indicating an incompatibility with surrounding uses the point two is indicating it'll increase traffic which will then result in an unsafe environment for children at the site and then lastly the issue is raising a concern with potentially the cannabis use being detrimental to the Kiwi's welfare as Claire mentioned there is a 600 foot separation requirement to schools the nearest school is the Herbert Slater middle school and it's approximately 1500 feet to the south as we look at the aerial photo you can see trail house at the front of the site the building to the rear is the proposed foxten Kiwi pre-school is behind that property it's separated by the playground this is an aerial photo foxten is to the rear of the site where the roll-up door is located as a discretionary action the project was reviewed pursuant to Sequa it qualifies for three exemptions negligible change in use negligible change in the building as well as the infill exemption so it is recommended by the planning commission that the council by resolution deny the appeal and approve the conditional use permit for cannabis retail dispensary and delivery business for medical and adult use at 4036 Montgomery road unit B I should note this slide is different than what you'll see in your packets as well as what is online the online version was a carry over from the planning commission action this will be updated online available to the public within 24 hours I conclude staff's presentation happy to answer any questions as mentioned chair of the planning commission is here as well the search site and I've council any questions for staff Mr. Rogers thank you Mr. Mayor a couple of questions particularly around the parking if you can go back to the slide on that and if you want to advance to the the site map yeah so one of the questions that I heard a lot about was about the adequacy of the parking on the site that you've got the five that are inside and we can talk about those in a minute you have the one additional one on the outside and then the remainder of the other parking spaces and one of the letters said that there's only really 20 parking spots on the site when in fact there's 22 that are required can you talk a little bit about the history of the parking on that site I know that there's some back history from when trailhouse was first pursuing this as well yeah so when trailhouse moved in or was proposing to move into that front unit there were different uses there was some vacancy in that back building that they wish to occupy the warehouse component that you see to the north there well the north of this slide that's probably the east the fox den parking garage their retail area and their office area that was occupied by electrical engineer company so it was different situation when trailhouse was moving in they came in through a zoning clearance and the city has a retenanting incentive when something's been vacant for a while and this is this front unit was vacant so they received the opportunity to move in with some parking deficiency it's allowed by right through the zoning clearance process I don't recall I can look up but so for example they had to study the site to see what the deficiency were or if they could comply with the standard parking requirements and occupy the site with a slightly more intense use they were able to do that by providing a summary that's attached to part of their zoning clearance and in essence they received a by right parking reduction to move in with 17 total spaces required for the whole of the center based on trailhouse use of the front the warehouse and the at the time the electrical engineer industrial use to the to the south there so flash forward to this application we review it anew and subject to at least what we do is we review the proposal for the new tenant and see first if they can meet their parking requirements and they did comply with the standard and they didn't request that parking reduction and I think that's the crux of some of my questions on this front on the parking which is is there precedent in the city where you have had a business that has a variance and then a second business that tries to come as well and in particular part of the concern is if the parking is deemed adequate for fox den there is still an additional cumulative impact between fox den and trailhouse and typically when we have these sorts of discussions do you only look at the fox den portion or do you look at the cumulative impact so what we would do is look at the entirety of the site and make sure that it functions adequately and so because fox den essentially got the reduction through its re-tenanting it was deemed that the number of spaces fox den is required is adequate for the use so the new use came in we did an analysis we compared it not with an exception but just directly to the code requirement it meets that code requirement so the analysis was really that we started with a baseline of what fox den was previously allowed to have they still have that excuse me trailhouse and then fox den was simply evaluated against the code requirement so we didn't look at it for any further exceptions or reductions I just want to make sure I'm clarifying so that I understand you look at one project at the time that the project comes in and then you look at the second project do you ever look at the cumulative impact of multiple projects as you go through it I think yes that's what we did so our baseline is saying that trailhouse has adequate parking as they indicated when they requested the reduction so that's where we're starting from so we're not adding any more to it we're looking at the new use we're saying what is the required parking it meets that so there's really no further analysis beyond that we feel that both uses have satisfied their required parking together okay I think I understand what you were saying I think the answer is both you've looked at it as a project to make sure it has adequate project parking for that project but then in the totality of that shopping call it a shopping center there's enough parking to satisfy both businesses that's correct okay can we talk a little bit about the five spaces indoors so did you have a question want me to just go ahead describe a little bit yeah so we definitely looked at this in in great detail as I mentioned we don't see this too frequently this came up early on in our pre-application meetings the chief building official was instrumental in those discussions this project as I mentioned it has been evaluated for circulation so are there adequate backup distances are the turning movements going to be safe the determination is yes that will occur the other thing is that when the project comes in for a building permit because it's an indoor parking facility it will require additional ventilation that you wouldn't otherwise have in an outdoor area we've invited the chief building official he's here tonight so if you had any further questions he's happy to address those as well in particular my questions are one is there an ability to make to make it a requirement that cars cannot back out of that facility because that is one of my biggest concerns is folks who come in and have to then back out and the diagram indicates forward movement through there the second is are those spaces sized adequately for larger vehicles I can't be the only one who parks in the compact space my car's a small car and gets annoyed when there are larger vehicles that clearly don't fit in the space next to me so as far as the circulation goes the graphic is indicating that it appears that the cars can come in and they can head back out I can't see the dimensions I'm happy to look at those further they look like they're all compliant nine foot wide by 19 deep so that's a compliant dimension it's not a compact space okay can you talk a little bit about the ADA access both the proposed space indoors and also the impact on the site the spot that is existing for trail house surely I'm going to actually defer that to Jesse Oswald chief building official hello thank you Jesse Oswald chief building official the the there is a slight change in the design I believe from what you're seeing here we've worked with the design professionals to refine it to ensure that the accessible parking space meets all necessary requirements one thing that is different than what you would normally see in a parking space for accessibility is that someone will traverse an area not quite behind their car or other cars but there is a door accessing to where they can enter the building right by the access aisle for the accessible accessible spot so for the existing spot from trail house one of the the letters discussed that if there was the additional parking spot added at the far end close to fox den that it would need to be restriped through the parking lot to make it adequate sizes on all of those and that might impact the ADA spot by moving it in a way where a disabled individual would have to come behind the car behind an additional parking spot can you talk a little bit about that correct yes so there is a specific requirement that a an accessible space occupant can't be required to walk behind another vehicle other than their own so if reconfiguration has to happen in any of those exterior spaces we will have to address that through compliance so if this moved forward and they had to make that shift they still would not be able to get their operating permit if they had not addressed the ADA issue and the parking issue they will have to meet accessible accessibility requirements prior to issuing that building permit we have to get compliance before we approve okay what are the other big concerns that I heard was about the flow of traffic and in particular safety for bicyclists who are coming in on if you go to slide 15 on the north end of the trailhouse site they come in one and Adele is that direction but two they come in through the the opening that's on the the back end of trailhouse on the north side and it creates a blind curve as folks are coming through the parking lot has that been contemplated and is there a way to mitigate that concern so the the proposal along with the accompanying traffic study was evaluated by city staff our city traffic engineering staff in particular and Rob Sprinkle is here as well so I'm going to defer this question to him. Welcome Rob. So thank you I'm Rob Sprinkle city traffic engineer city Santa Rosa I want to try understanding your question correctly so as you're entering through the the west of your side learning entrance cyclists rounding the curve going around the building is that the the issue yeah so whether from folks first coming into the parking lot or folks exiting from foxtend they come up through that corridor that is a little bit tight and they take a left in order to be able to leave bicyclists are typically coming into trail house around that corner and it's a little bit of a blind corner can you talk about impact and if there's a way to mitigate that impact so to me that's a separate issue then I mean that issue will exist regardless of this application there I'm not sure if there's a way to actually mitigate that other than having people drive slowly through the through the parking lot it's with the building situated where it is so close to the drive aisle there will be a site limited around that corner hey yeah and I do I understand that there's there's traffic issues regardless of the proposal there's traffic there's traffic flow issues regardless of the proposal I'm kind of asking about cumulative impact so with with more vehicles there will be more of an impact to to the location one of the concepts I had considered was actual well the reminder I don't think that would actually help this specific situation the bike parking location for the trailhouse is located it looks like is it located there to the east of the trailhouse or is the bike parking located maybe having the bike parking location basically closer to the front as close to the front of the building as possible will help mitigate that issue I'm not sure if that's where it is currently I'm I don't know the site layout specifically for the trailhouse so if if that's where it's located I can see that that would help mitigate the issue of vehicles not seeing cyclists with the one-way circulation it's very predictable on which way vehicles will be going through a site so that is a plus the way the layout is currently and I apologize I should have asked this earlier for you before we got to to council but do we have any data on any either existing problems where we've seen collisions there whether at that corner as cars are going through the parking lot or exiting from the trailhouse as it exists I have been not made aware of any and I haven't received any complaints from trailhouse relating to that and I haven't heard anything from the police regarding that okay and then obviously a substantial amount of the meeting the planning commission meeting was in regards to concerns over impacts to the preschool can you Bill can you talk a little bit about what in particular the concerns were about what impact would happen to the preschool and understanding that the preschool is not accessible from this proposed site was it general concern or were there specific concerns the concern from the preschool yeah well they are the appellant tonight they haven't had a chance to make their own statement I think we should let them make their own statement all right I would hope that they would address that any other questions Mr. Tivitz thank you mayor just two quick questions Vice Mayor Rogers touched on one of them for me and that had to do with the ADA when I did the site tour one of my concerns that did come up was the fact that I guess and under our code it's a 12 to 1 ratio for ADA as far as sloping is concerned and it looks like there is a pretty steep slope going up to the ramp of boxed in and my concern here and I don't know if we can speak to this because we're not the ones hiring the construction team or the ones doing the upgrades but my concern is that there is going to have to be an uprooting of the parking lot if you will to try to level this thing out and when looking back at the requirements you know it says that we're not to make anything that's materially injurious to surrounding businesses and to me that would be a clear one that would have a pretty big impact on existing parking on people's desire to go there on a Friday night park their cars and have a good time so from your perspective Mr. Oswald do you think that that slope is going to require major reconfiguration of that parking lot? So I want to clarify from vice mayor's question as well the existing parking spot the accessible parking spot may not have to be addressed this new occupancy will be providing their own single brand new parking spot so this parking lot as it exists so without seeing the full submittal I don't know that we're going to have to even do any work in the parking lot from this project's perspective. Okay thank you as for one of the other concerns that I hear coming up is that this is a family atmosphere and the trail house has kind of become a bit of a family atmosphere from what I can tell you know I think the implicit concern there is that people are going to buy cannabis inside and maybe go out in the parking lot and enjoy it do we have any fines or any kind of recourse in our cannabis ordinance today that would allow us to basically take measures to stop that kind of behavior but where the burden is placed on the on the retail outlet yeah so there's specific code requirements about no loitering and no there's no on-site consumption on-site within the building or on the property allowed it's not proposed as part of this it's a land use so if there are issues with operation of this permit as presented and conditioned it's a code enforcement issue so code enforcement can be called this is a managed property so we would our first step would be to work with the property owner and the tenants to resolve the issue and it can go all the way down the line to more penalizing processes to finding of nuisance and potentially revoking their permit if we had no compliance whatsoever but the first step is to work with them and also to be very quite clear about what we expect so you're telling me there is in fact recourse in the event that bad actions happen I just want to kind of get that out there because I wasn't too sure what our recourse was and I want to make sure that some of the people in the audience understand that there is recourse for them yes there is and the state license also requires compliance with their rules as well and so part of that is having security on the site and monitoring so there's a lot of layers of protection my third and final question recognizing that this is in fact private property and that the parking spaces are on private property on the use permit can we actually control who parks where for example is it a possibility to limit parking within the facility only leaving the outer parking spaces to the existing tenant so yes the decision maker in this case the city council does have the ability through the use permit to effectively reduce parking reconfigure the parking okay thanks these columns thank you mayor I have a couple questions I think can we see slide I think it's 15 there we go my understanding is that well first let me just ask is space labeled one considered a parking space and is the space outside the door of the warehouse which says warehouse on it considered a parking space and if they are they're unusually shaped spaces and the warehouse door opens into that one parking space so it would make the warehouse not functional to park there are they included in our count of spaces are you referring to the surface parking spaces both labeled as one one of them is labeled as one a surface parking space at the entrance to the indoor parking but not indoors and the other one is immediately across from that one where it says warehouse there's a there's a space yeah there's a I think it says number eight you go over from that one at the top it's the most upper right space by the word warehouse so it looks like you're referring to the parking spaces there in closest proximity to the building both the warehouse at the top of this slide yeah those are parking spaces they are counted as parking spaces although it would be difficult to use the warehouse if a car is parked there because of the configuration of the doors yeah so the car when it's parked there it will be close to where the roll-up door is but there's still adequate room to get into the warehouse okay and space number one is shall we say highly sloped and narrow that also meets our parking space requirements so the evaluation that we've done through the use permit process is to look at the number of spaces the dimensions of the spaces and to make sure they circulate safely the specifics as it relates to ADA requirements will be evaluated at the building permit base I'm actually not anticipating that one would be designated as an ADA related space but it is a difficult space let's put it that way it concerns me and I would like the traffic engineer to talk to me about it looks to me as if the door that you would enter with your car into the facility is a single door in other words that there's not room for two cars to pass each other entering the parking space in the enclosed area and so I'm trying to figure out how the traffic flow works if there's somebody in there trying to come out while there's somebody outside trying to come in how does that how does that work and did we did we look at that when we analyze the parking and traffic flow situation because it doesn't really look like there's room for in fact in the picture there's a car waiting kind of outside while their cars are backing up inside it appears to be about a 16 foot opening which is the same that you'd have for a standard two-car garage a standard car I've seen the scrape on my car so I'm not saying it wouldn't be tight and okay so you considered common common courtesy would be to take turns especially with the turning movements that the vehicles will be taking to get in and out of the location and how many cars are we thinking will go through that circumstance in an hour within the traffic studies during the peak hour time there'd be approximately 20 vehicles that would visit the site okay so we're talking about 20 people being polite to each other coming and going through this doorway I believe there's two other sites also or two other parking spots also designated for this the the exterior so right the one at eight that has the doorway so there yes so that it wouldn't be all 20 going in okay I also have a question about and I'm not sure I don't I don't think it's you I'm not sure who it is how do we define what the entrance is that has to have the view from the street for safety reasons if you've pulled inside and have parked is the entrance the door you've pulled through or where you go in after you've parked the code requirement that the dispensary entrance be visible from the street is the is the retail lobby entrance so okay so it's the retail lobby is can we see the earlier slide other direct can we see the retail lobby entrance I see the doorway for the cars but do we see the retail lobby entrance I don't see a mile so just to the left of the roll-up door about right there yes is where the front door of the lobby will be and that takes into account that you need to ramp up and have a five by five ramp there for the accessibility parking space going across there right so you have inside the building you have the accessible parking space then you have a personnel door so they have to come out the personnel door there has to be a five by five turning radius there that's in the parking space that is very sloped I'm just trying to understand the path of travel this looks a little different from one that I saw which had a door where the striped area is allowing the door opening and the exiting of the wheelchair so you pull into the wheelchair space you go into you're in the hashed area that's the landing then you have to exit a door that's in that area and go out where there should be a level five by five space which is in parking space number one which is not a level space then you make a turn you have to go across and go up to and have a five by five turning radius up there and we've checked that you can do that in those dimensions because I'm not sure you can do that in those dimensions so the actual dimensional needs for those spaces has not been evaluated they have not applied for a building permit so that's when we get into weeds okay so just sitting there with what you know if you're coming out a personnel door where the hashed parking space is it's not clear to me which way that door is going to go but it can go either way but you have to have a five by five level landing just outside can you have a five by five level landing in a parking space for the turning radius of the wheelchair before it goes up the ramp generally no okay so I have questions about whether that's really a parking space there will be some work and pencil sharpening by the architect that's going to be tough to do and that space slopes toward the building this way quite significantly I mean I wouldn't park a motorcycle there because it'd fall over yeah okay just I have I have a and just to be clear as the people are going in and out of that space some coming in and some going out 20 people maybe in an hour at peak a person in a wheelchair has to go across that doorway the the roll-up door yes there has to go across the roll-up doorway from this configuration that's what it appears so if it's so the people in parked inside can't see them as they are exiting from the building they can't see a person coming across I mean that's that's pretty tight line of sight for that person I would agree okay I just just making sure I understood that I have a question for the city attorney when I look at uh the c up findings c d and e which I'm not positive what the page number is on those it might be seven eight or nine maybe eight or nine the page 10 is marked but on our version yeah so there it is c d and e I have some concerns about c d and e and it's not clear to me that the basis of the appeal speaks to those items if I have a concern about the findings and they don't match the basis of the appeal what what's the what's the consequence do I have to make my determination on the basis of what the appeal specifically says on page 20 no you you you can look at those um six findings okay so I can look at c d and e yes and make a judgment for myself yes okay so I will be interested as public comments come in with regard to c d and e as well as with regard to the basis of the appeal on 20 thank you miss line thank you mr mayor so this question is probably fairly rudimentary but I'd like to understand how it is that it came about that that trailhouse needed variance on their parking requirements but that the proposed that the applicant which would likely generate more vehicle trips per hour than the existing tenant would not need one I think that the it's a difficult thing to understand and that's a good question well part of the what's different with this application than trailhouse is they're converting what was leasable space to a parking garage so that made a big difference in terms of their ability to comply with parking if they haven't convert converted that warehouse space to the five space parking garage it would be here with a parking reduction request to fit into the site but they are meeting their parking requirements by converting leasable space into parking and I'm curious to know in if this has happened before or how we deal with this when you know you and I spoke and you mentioned that trailhouse has a popularity problem that you know it's a great business and you know they're fantastic and they're really knocking it out of the park how do we address this type of situation where somebody is comes in and you know is the existing under item c you know so they are the existing use and they are exceeding their proposed parking limitations but they are beloved in the community I'm wondering if this has been addressed and how you go about dealing with it yeah so they they are very successful and we want them to be successful and at some point in time they may need trailhouse may need to reevaluate you know what they need to make their customers have a good experience it's a great problem to have parking is a resolvable situation if they have employees that are currently parking on site they can have an employee parking program or passes and whatnot there's a lot of things and we have staff that will help them find some solutions but similar to if it becomes a nuisance just like we talked about with this proposed use if there's a nuisance then there is code enforcement process but obviously we'd like to be proactive and work to solutions as opposed to looking at penalties the last question perhaps this is a question for the planning commission and I'm not sure thank you for your patience is there a way to holistically evaluate these these applicants and appellants rather than only using the criteria the six criterion laid out here because I can see how you could find for each particular one or not and you know depending on your perspective but I'm wondering if there's any accounting and forgive me for being a social worker but for just the feeling of the situation well the use permit process is to balance fit and compatibility and these use permits are operationally specific so you get to know what is proposed how it's proposed there's an ability to condition it to resolve issues potential operational issues and so that's the way the use permit process is set up is to make sure that a land use that we take pause with that's why we trigger the use permit process and it's not by right that we know that there may be operational issues that might have an impact if they go undiscussed so this use permit process allows the greatest public forum to discuss those potential impacts and to resolve them by either how the project's coming in coming forward or how we condition them and that's how this works thank you very much my last question is is there a way for the council to as we're not the the planning commission and don't typically deal with these types of issues is there a way for us to give direction to see a resolution specifically of the ADA issue and the safety issue in terms of the blind turn around the corner of the existing use and give direction to come back before we grant approval well issues of code compliance in terms of building compliance that occurs after the use permit so the what's being considered tonight is the land use is this a appropriate land use for the site assuming it will move forward through the process and through construction drawing review and plan check review it'll meet all of this city and state codes for safety and ADA and the like but this is the bigger question is whether it gets to land here and if it gets to land here by approval of the use permit then they move on to the next step and do the detailed work that Jesse's shop will run through with them and if they can't make it work then they may have to make adjustments and they may be back in a use permit amendment process but we will do everything we can to help them make it work so that they can continue thank you thank you for this I have a couple parking questions also so I heard you the responses to the vice mayor's question about by right to incentivize occupancy of that building by right they could have a parking reduction is that a city of Santa Rosa decision or some other entities decision the by right portion are you talking about the parking reduction that the trail house received so it's a it's a staff determination it's a parking reduction that the code allows the director or his designee to enact and so that evaluation was done there is a zoning clearance and the particular zoning clearance actually goes through and it explains the evaluation process the calculations and how those that result was achieved so if we did not need to incentivize the occupancy of that building what would have been the parking requirements just for that same type of business if we didn't need the incentive if they didn't get the reduction it was a 10 space reduction so that it was reduced by 10 spaces correct okay you've read a lot more of these parking studies than I have but it's the first time I've read where they are encouraging the first fox stand employee to park in one particular space which to me is kind of a red flag if we're all being equal why would they want an employee to park in one of the specific seven allocated spaces it sounds like that may be a problem spot can you share with me your thoughts on that well it may be a problem spot it may be a solution opportunity as well and so one of the things that we look at when we're looking at parking reductions we often will look at other factors that support that parking reduction proximity to transit operational characteristics increased bike parking trailhouses of bicycle oriented use so by its very nature it is likely to have more bicycle patrons arriving via bicycle other infrastructure that would encourage walking things like that you also have a scenario here where you have one property owner with two buildings and two businesses and so perhaps there are operational characteristics that between these two businesses and this landowner they may result in something that would achieve a workable parking solution off-site parking transit vouchers there's a number of other ways they might be able to to get there if you pull up slide 15 I think is the best view of it they talked about the line of sight on the exit side so the east exit ramp and they talked to cars are parked there and it sounded like there was a suggestion well if you just read curbit that will give you a much better line of sight and that kind of concerns me for safety concerns it sounded like the traffic consultant was saying as you're exiting you don't have that clear line of sight onto Montgomery and again I recognize that that hasn't been the case with trail house but we're increasing the number of trips by almost a thousand percent and I'm just wondering how you interpret that and excuse me I actually have a solution potentially for that that would go through probably the building department when it comes through is to actually change the circulation direction to go the opposite direction and the only reason for that is that as you're exiting at the westerly if you were exiting at the westerly location there's already a hydrogen and red curb at that location so that would mitigate the problem without deleting the parking space so that that's a potential was that discussed at the planning commission that was not those are all the questions I have stand by Rob I just want to follow up on that thought so if if the traffic circulation made the opposite way then the car going into the lot into the internal parking structure has to make a left turn in to get in correct they would have basically a better view of all the stalls that are there prior to making a turn okay that's interesting thank you okay any additional questions for staff Mr. Tibbets really quickly one of the things I thought of too is a potential solution for and I'm this is me asking your opinion Rob is installing speed bumps in the back and could we make that a condition of of the permit somehow is there or I mean how would that translate into the building permit process because I mean it's already there cars are already going around it pretty quickly and they could use them now frankly but it could be it could be something that could be suggested I'm not sure if that's to the building through Jesse's operation if that's on site specific would the I think the council could include that as a condition of approval or it could be a suggested condition where staff is to examine the feasibility of installing the speed bumps okay okay with that thank you staff for the presentation thank you Madam Chair of the Planning Commission for hanging with us here would you like to make a invite you to make a presentation good evening Mayor and council members Patty Cisco Chair of the Planning Commission here to tell you about our process on this item the Planning Commission heard the item on January 24th we had five commissioners present all had visited the site as was done here Claire Hartman began our staff presentation going through how our ordinances came to be the specifics as to the 600 foot setback from schools and zero setback from preschool so we typically get that narrative for the education of both the commission and the public in presenting the project the applicants representative made the following kind of key points that this will be the furthest east dispensary that it's a small-scale project fit for the neighborhood commercial zoning there's no on-site consumption there's it's a women's business the representative cited our economic vitality policies so making the point that not only does it comply with our land use policies we're furthering general plan policies for economic vitality for land use and livability by placing the business in an area that's walkable pedestrian friendly transit-oriented and obviously bicycle friendly the representative described work his work with the neighborhood concerns described you know what you've heard here in order to accommodate the parking sacrificing internal square footage to accommodate the parking talked about the neighbors concerns particularly the preschool's concern about existing security issues with homeless the negative activity along the alleyway alleyway in the back part and that the applicant representative is making sure that the security plan for this project also takes care of that and they make the whole area secure for for all businesses around there public hearing was about one and a half hours members of the public citing concerns of the proximity to the Kiwi preschool traffic and parking issues the concerns pertinent to you tonight on appeal issues of crime concerns of impact to the trail trailhouse as a community focused business conflicts with their very community-oriented family-oriented events other members of the public spoke in support of the applicant vouching for her integrity challenging misconceptions about the clientele of foxten and noting that cannabis businesses are also very community community focused post hearing the applicant representative responded to public concerns by noting that a lease agreement negotiated with trailhouse allowed the right of first refusal to that warehouse space which they did wave and they were made aware that it was going to be leased to a cannabis use and that there are items in that lease agreement I think you have a copy of it that lend responsibility to the landowner to appropriately mark what trailhouse parking spaces are sort of to help modulate who's who and what's what the representative noted that this project does have code parking and the trip generation to and from the project is less than significant and likely to be even less than reported because of the delivery service he cited that on an anecdotal basis I think they're trying to get cannabis businesses at large are trying to get more statistics to to show that it's the delivery services actually reduce vehicle miles traveled because you have your customer come in once decide on their product and then the delivery services can be you know one car coming and going to to make those deliveries and the applicant representative also cited that the applicant herself is very community minded and socially responsible indicated that the property and the school would benefit from the increased security and when staff before and after the public hearing re-recited how ordinances came to be that our ordinances are in compliance with state law regarding the setback choices that we made during our commissioners discussion commissioners acknowledge the emotion in the room that dislike or disagreement with the setbacks as established but also and noted that you know it's tight parking but we're making their findings that the the project met the policies for the city for the land use policies we had similar questions about the ADA the slant et cetera and and like you we were told that those are coming at the building permit level and that you know we were looking at our land use responsibilities so again the planning commission noted the considerable outreach and review and adopting the policies that we have that it that it's our job as commissioners to be applying the policies that we have and we noted that putting these businesses in place has been a city council priority and to have the businesses equally distributed throughout the city again this was the furthest east that we have only the second east application that we've had at that point and that it was a particularly walkable transit friendly area we found that there was really no exposure of the business to the Kiwi preschool as there are no doors or windows on the rear of the building that would give the children any exposure to that business even without the setback being a concern and agree that there will be increased safety to the school and the area in general so the planning commission could make all of the findings and we voted unanimous from the need can't talk unanimously in favor of approving the conditional use permit so if you have any questions be happy to answer them thank you chair so let's go for the presentation counseling questions for the planning commission or no thank you patty you have a question for staff one of the interesting features of this application that I think did come up at planning was the interest in being delivery or delivery only it's my understanding that we cannot say it can be delivery only at this time because of some earlier policy decisions is that correct yes that's correct that's not a land use type that the city decided to permit is delivery only retail I would hope that the subcommittee might reconsider that thank you Mr. Isamir thank you Mr. Mayor and on that note I know that there was state law that was passed that I think addresses this and I think we have on our work plan for this year to revisit it to to bring that into compliance I'm not sure if Claire if you can can speak to that well the as the ordinance was developing the state law was it's a moving target exponentially changing and we're we were moving forward kind of concurrently with it but one of the acknowledgments through the process was just the various forms of cannabis retail enterprises and the different license types that we're formulating at the at the state level there are three distinct retail well maybe there I guess there's four there's the cannabis retail event that we have at the fairgrounds that's a different type of retail event retail license that's unique we have the type 10 which is the storefront dispensary which may have delivery or may not then you have a a micro business which we do allow which is allows retail on site in conjunction with and under one operator other land uses like manufacturing distribution so sort of a maker space type of enterprise and then also the delivery only model and some cities chose to go that route but the city of Santa Rosa evaluated those options and at the time we wanted we did not permit the delivery only model and the the reason in terms of discussions that I can recall was that we we were looking to have this industry sort of out front with storefronts like other retail establishments and so we were sort of emphasizing that as a characterization and at the time we did not include that that license type but it's something that the city can certainly look at when we eventually we will need to make sure that our ordinance is in total compliance and is exact fit for our city so I can see at some point in the future we'll revisit our ordinance and make some amendments and I appreciate that and I know the chair of the committee is not here tonight but he'll obviously hear these these comments as well I do know that the state law and it's a little bit in flux is whether or not cities have to accept delivery from facilities so I think that that'll be something that we look at Claire could you talk a little bit there was a mention of the right of first refusal and I've heard varying through letters varying issues about whether or not the trail house folks signed off on it knowing that this was what was coming yeah I can speak to that hopefully public comment or in the appellants presentation that'll be addressed hey there being no further council questions at this point this will go to the appellant presentation Kiwi Preschool and Child Care Center Mr. Mayor if I may just one quick clarification there was a question about the dimension of the parking spaces interior of the building and it does look like three of the spaces their numbered three four and five are at the compact dimension size eight by sixteen great thank you so if you could please identify yourself you have 10 minutes for your presentation Pamela Stevens attorney for Kiwi preschool and daycare and we first wanted to thank you for the time that you've spent on this as we know you were provided a lot of materials some of which was very technical prior to this evening's hearing Kiwi's appeal addresses a lot of new issues for the city and we understand that there's not a roadmap we appreciate the staff's efforts as it surely must be challenging to evaluate a proposal that has been amended so many times such as this one the parking the traffic and the A to A issues that have never been effectively addressed by the applicant is what is the major concern for Kiwi and the surrounding businesses including trail house now you will hear from an architect and a traffic consultant that are both very familiar with the location you'll also hear from trail house owner Glen Phant who will describe how FOXSTEM's high-intensity operation will overwhelm the location I do want to quickly clarify for Councilwoman Combs that Kiwi's appeal is brought on those standard C, D and E I apologize in our written materials I think it was confusing because we listed it as one, two and three but that is in fact the basis for Kiwi's appeal it is an admirable goal for the staff to try to make this work but due to the serious unresolved issues you will hear further about tonight Kiwi's appeal should be granted and we are happy to assist you during your deliberations if you have any further questions that's why our experts are here tonight and the first one that you're going to hear from is architect Michael Schwartz I'm Mike Schwartz I'm the architect that worked with Trail House in 2016 to build their project can we queue up slide 15 you talk about that in a minute I'm familiar with this site which is small and has intensive bicycle, pedestrian and vehicular activity my concern is that it's not a good fit for a second retail use and I'd like to start off by thanking the City Council members who visited the site personally and met with the Trail House staff it's one of the best ways to appreciate the unique characteristics of the location and its use this site has non-compliant features that predate the Trail House use the Trail House made some site improvements to mitigate many of these deficiencies but they were not completely eliminated and the impact of these shortcomings will be magnified with the presence of a second retail use Foxton currently has four design variations in their application they do not address issues including accessibility concerns that I think would need to be resolved to meet code requirements now normally these issues might not be addressed until later in the project development process but on this site it's my opinion that it's important to identify them early in the process and propose solutions that communicate the design intent I'm just going to call attention to a few of them that I think are bigger ticket items such as building entrants and egress accessible path of travel and other maneuvering concerns that have not been adequately addressed it's noteworthy that pedestrian path of travel has not been provided from Montgomery Drive to Foxton and that's evident on this slide they're not showing how anybody gets how pedestrian gets from the street to the primary entrance to Foxton on an accessible path of travel if we go to the next slide this floor plan slide 16 this floor plan does not show the floor plan that's predominantly used in the updated drawings the updated drawings have less vehicular circulation space in the lower parking space than what's shown here and the walls actually encroach on that turnaround space another thing that's not addressed in this plan this is the only plan that indicates a second egress which would be required by the occupant load and to have an egress through a parking garage they would need a 44 inch minimum with aisle with fixed physical barriers which is not indicated there this parking garage is going to functionally alternate between inflow and outflow which has been discussed but that's also going to have an impact on onsite congestion and shut down circulation on the windway drive aisle which would impede access to the entire site so in closing trailhouses become a force multiplier for the outdoor community in Santa Rosa and a neighborhood gathering place this unique business in a neighborhood currently impacted with traffic and parking issues is on a land parcel that cannot support another retail use is currently proposed I'd be happy to answer any questions during deliberations and would like to introduce Colin Brigette who is a traffic engineer from TJKM thank you Hi Colin Brigette TJKM Transportation Consultants we're consulting from that work extensively in this area we had an office in Santa Rosa for about 15 years longtime on-call consultant to the city I'm going to focus on parking in terms of how it's going to operate as you've discussed the five parking spaces are indoors and the most unusual aspect is that that's a dead end parking aisle which is very unusual for a business use and it's especially unusual here because of the high rate of turnover that's expected given the traffic volume each of those parking spaces with those five inside spaces each one is expected to turn over every 15 to 20 minutes now that's a high rate of turnover even compared to other retail uses the only comparable type of business that really has that rate of turnover would be a a convenience store like a 7-11 so if you can imagine a 7-11 with five indoor parking spaces in a dead end aisle it just wouldn't you wouldn't see it right the dead end parking aisle is something you'll sometimes see with an office use where people park for four to eight hours you might see it with apartments where people park for eight hours but you wouldn't see it with turnover 15 to 20 minutes the second point I'll make with regard to the number of parking spaces the the provision of seven spaces is based on the city code and it's important to note the city code requirement is not specific to this use originally when the city adopted the the cannabis ordinance in 2017 the the rate of four spaces per thousand was simply the default retail rate it was not based on any data for how many spaces would be needed for this type of use because at that time there simply wasn't any data today in 2019 there actually is data and it's cited in the appellants letter the the actual number of vehicles expected would be about double about 12 spaces minimum for peak demand and potentially up to as many as 30 vehicles Hi, my name is Glenn Phant I'm the owner of the Terrell House I want to thank you guys for coming and making time today I've come today to speak out in support of the business my family and employees have built in May of 2018 I made an agreement with my landlord to let them use their warehouse for a cannabis related project the size and scope of which was significantly different than the current plan before you today the current project poses many serious traffic parking and safety concerns that I would not have agreed to at the time it's a completely different plan with Terrell House we created something unique the community center never yet seen an outdoor retail my business and our city has gained international recognition for it we combined a successful bicycle sales repair and rental business with an overwhelmingly popular tap room and cafe Terrell House does not fit in any model in any book I've seen the traffic reports and rebuttals but has anyone bothered to observe our parking lot I have and it is continually busy and usually full throughout the day our neighborhood will be unduly affected by the vehicles and traffic created by a business brings hundreds of more cars a day through a parking lot I appreciate that you all visited the site how many cars did you see how many bikes did you see how many kids did you see did it seem safe add the traffic from another busy business to blind 90 degree corners a narrow one-way drive in an indoor parking garage and this is a recipe for disaster I want to be clear I'm not anti-cannibus but this new enterprise's financial heft and sensational sensational media shouldn't override serious practical impacts to the safety of our community this project is about my landlord trying to shoehorn a busy retail business into a commercial warehouse with limited public access and parking combining up to 200 visits by bike per day with an additional 400 visits by car this project will create an incredibly dangerous situation I urge you all to consider the problems associated with this project and encourage the applicants to find a more suitable property in Santa Rosa thank you is that the end of the appellant presentation yes it is thank you council questions for any of the appellant presentation I had one question for Glen you said the second amendment to the commercial lease agreement it was vastly different than this project can you share with us how it was different we talked loosely about a delivery-based service and never about a parking garage and that's what we talked about you know I that was what Scott pitched to me and that was what was discussed I was okay with you know I don't think either of us knew the rules or laws in Santa Rosa yet at that time and it was that's what I was agreeing to I was okay with it I mean it makes sense if it was delivery only to try and put this behind us is is insane I mean we we are the parking lots full almost all day long I just I don't I don't understand where the car is going to park thank you do you have a question also council member combs I believe the traffic engineer I have a question for in addition to private vehicles and small delivery vehicles supplies and materials and product has to be delivered can you tell me it was that addressed in the did you do any looking in the dress the impact of delivery in terms of a larger delivery vehicle well the so the data on the number of vehicles that becoming and going would include delivery vehicles and so in the peak hour of operation for this site there'd be expected 25 vehicles entering 25 accident so that includes delivery vehicles it wasn't taken into account in terms of needing a specific parking space I think the expectation would probably be that if a large truck needed to make a delivery they would have to either park on street or perhaps block an aisle okay thank you okay any additional questions okay thank you so I'll move to the applicant presentation Fox 10 representatives you have 10 minutes thank you Mr. Mayor I'm going to attempt to address some of the concerns that we've heard and then lead most of my time to questions and then hopefully public comment again thank you all for your service I know it's been now almost three years since we've started working on cannabis and Santa Rosa and many of those hours have been spent here in this chamber fundamentally this is a small dispensary with a 980 square foot retail sales floor that is focused on a delivery service model where customers are able to come in see and work with a bud tender on choosing the products that they like and that they want to be able to order and have that direct personal interaction but then be able to sign up for reoccurring delivery services so whether they're disabled and it's inconvenient they have kids and we prefer to order or the myriad of professional reasons that we can't always make it to the store this is intended to be a service model that is delivery focused it's under 1700 square feet and total square footage at the time that the lease addendum was signed in May of 2018 there was a clear understanding on the city's rules they existed we knew exactly what they were it was very clear in the lease addendum that trial house signed that the treatment term of agreed usage and I'm quoting here means the use of the waived space as a recreational cannabis dispensary a recreational cannabis dispensary in the city has always been a storefront we didn't have our first delivery operation until alternative started using delivery in 2018 with the creation of that license type by the state we have been able to gather additional data on the traffic of our existing dispensaries in Santa Rosa that data shows that the it rates that the original trip generation memo was based on were higher than what dispensaries in Santa Rosa see and and also that delivery service did see a reduction in trips as we were presuming at planning planning commission we would see all that data is included in there and when I'm done with my comments I'll have Daly and Whitlock our traffic engineer available to answer your questions as a part of the neighborhood focus the Fox and applicants did significant outreach and asked me to do significant outreach we attempted to contact the Kiwi preschool upon receiving no responses to our outreach we sought to find their approved plans make sure that there was good integration with what they had said to the city that they were doing in their operation and then after the planning commission hearing through representative for seas we were had a meeting scheduled to sit down and talk about their concerns which was also canceled after tonight if we're able to move forward that commitment to outreach and working with our neighbors doesn't end as a company we believe in good working relationships as an industry we believe in good working relationships with our neighbors and I believe that you have seen that prove time and again by the operators currently in the city of which the ownership operates one the largest manufacturing facilities in the city and has proven the ability to work with the city and their neighbors that same commitment will happen after tonight regardless of where the council is at or where the city is at because that's the right thing to do when you're a neighbor in a business is to work with folks we've worked with trailhouse to come up with parking solutions the lease addendum goes all the way into the details and making sure that THC and cannabis infused products are not going to be considered a competing product to trailhouses products that they serve in their cafe and pub that isn't just a please sign off on this lease that is a real effort to make sure that we anticipated the integration of these uses on the same site I do want to address some of the items that came up from council's questions one to confirm the door the roll-up door for site lines is not 16 feet it's proposed at 20 feet so larger than that double card space four feet larger than was responded to by traffic the traffic department we're very interested in the reverse flow idea this is exactly the type of conversation that we like to see in the building permit process where we can have the engineers and engineers and the building officials work with our team in order to come up with these types of solutions and we look forward to getting to that point but we that is a significant expense to an applicant to do prior to knowing that the land use and the entitlement is appropriate here we have submitted additional variations on our plans because of public comment as conceptual site plans and conceptual points to show that there are options and that there will be solutions that we can work with there's space to make the surface lot wider so that the slope the council member combs is referencing that the parking spot and one of our attachments that was sent over the weekend shows that we can adjust the planter for that that will cause other changes and adjustments that need to be made for pedestrian flow and ADA flow and that back and forth in that conversation is incredibly important and we want we look forward to getting to that point where we can submit building permits and actually work on those details with the building and planning department here today though we're talking about neighborhood commercial property we're talking about 1600 foot dispensary with a 980 square foot retail floor that intends to provide delivery services hopefully serving the communities of Oakmont Bennett Valley and the other eastern neighborhoods when people come in they're going to be professionally greeted they're going to have a nice clean safe environment they're going to be showing products they're not going to be allowed to consume and then they're not going to have to return because they'll have the delivery service to rely on I do want to reference that there was reference to a thousand percent increase in the trips on the site we did address that in our response memo that was solely based on the warehouse occupancy not on the site as a whole the increases to the site is well below 50 percent in overall traffic when you consider all uses on the site so I do want to call that to attention that is covered in our response and I believe that was all of my notes that I gathered from the council at this point I'm available for additional questions daily in Whitlock with W trains available to ask I answer any specific questions about our traffic memo and I I just want to end by saying that there are lots of alcohol serving uses in this area there are at least two that serve alcohol on the same parcel as the Kiwi preschool including trail houses a pub cannabis is not an unsafe mix of use but we're not even talking about a consumption operation here we're talking about just a simple retail operation where you come in and you buy and you leave and we are hearing about parking we're hearing about traffic I think one of the key things that we're also hearing about is fear and the best way that we're going to be able to educate folks and give them the experience that this industry is not dangerous to them is by them having the opportunity to experience a compliant retail facility that's able to operate provide a safer environment and show and prove through actions that cannabis is not something that should be feared but should be welcomed as a new use in Santa Rosa does that conclude your presentation yes it does council questions miss Gomes can you have the traffic engineer address the same question with regard to circulation entering and exiting the facility and the larger delivery truck that services the dispensary so the deliveries for this particular use are all going to be smaller vans if you stop and think about what the product is you would have in a large truck you would have such a tremendous financial investment in one truck that's why they probably don't use them but it is just going to be just like a Sprinter ban so there are no large trucks anticipated for the use so the circulation is basically the same as it would be for somebody driving a suburban which is a passenger vehicle so the loading and unloading time consideration in that yeah as a matter of our operation the receipt of cannabis product deliveries will be done not when the store is open we don't like to get too into detail and security plans for the for public purpose but we do have a unique opportunity with the parking situation to be able to handle deliveries differently than other retail outlets and so they wouldn't be done at the same time as customers and to open hours Mr. Javits thank you mayor nick thanks very much for your presentation and all your work you know sounds like you are trying to be for the most part of delivery business but give people the opportunity to come in and have an experience in the dispensary and look at things I mean realistically how many hours of operation does it take to to kind of fulfill that goal and the reason why I can I'm asking is you can probably infer from my question is we it's it's pretty clear to me that we are dealing with some pretty significant traffic and site impacts as a result of this and you know and I do want to get to a place where you know both parties are satisfied and moving forward but I think it means we may be doing some some chopping up here so the for hours of operation we need to be open as much as available under the code for the convenience of of customers when they want to come what the delivery operation does is it reduces the overall demand across all of those hours for folks that need to attend that come to the facility to actually see and work with a bug tender so we still want to be open during the convenient hours for people when they're getting off work you know during the day basically follow the code for hours of operation how it works out though is that then they come they experience it and then they're able to sign up for delivering they don't have to come back again so similar to flower delivery operation or a pizza parlor you don't you don't always go back when you're ordering your your your next order of flowers or pizzas you're going to make the phone call and do the convenient choice and I'd say a lot of folks have gotten used to that we chose to sacrifice interior space in order to meet the city's parking requirements because a parking reduction because of the parking reduction already received by trail house seemed to be a step too far to ask for from the city and because operationally at seven spaces you know we had good faith that we'd be able to handle our employees and have plenty of parking available for customers that were coming to experience that sales model we looked at traffic and you know very early on made sure that we were meeting the standards by this by the city and in part by sacrificing an interior space for parking it also makes a smaller retail facility which generates less traffic demand which got us down to the far under 50 trips that the city considers to be a significant impact meeting the code was important for this application because it's also any side proposal that's going into an established neighborhood and and we knew that by meeting the code it could add a extra layer of confidence that we weren't going to be getting away with anything or causing any undue impacts because we were actually meeting the standards and didn't need the same reductions that the neighboring business is needed this one me yes thank you I'm curious to know you say that people will likely end up signing up for the delivery service and I do hope that you're right about that I know from my own experience my pharmacist would deliver medicine but I am too I don't know busy to get around to signing up for it has your client proposed a plan to incentivize or make it more besides the convenience factor get people really encourage them to use that service and instead of driving once they and functionally work toward making their business more of a showroom than a retail outlet we haven't discussed specific operational incentives from an operational standpoint however delivery customer takes less staff time and less resources to serve so those types of operational considerations and incentivizations are definitely going to be a part of their business plan and marketing what we have been able to do and a daily and can speak to this in a little bit more detail is actually get some real traffic counts between from between a dispenser in Santa Rosa that doesn't have delivering a dispenser in Santa Rosa that does that dispenser does offer delivery doesn't offer any incentives for their delivery but you can already see in the data that they have less traffic generation than the one that does not offer delivery so you know starting from there that we see in the data that there's a trend in that direction adding marketing incentives is something that we're definitely committed to doing because that's the model we're heading towards because it's more efficient way to serve our customers thank you I just want to follow on that one because I was also the assumption I'm hearing you're making is that delivery will it's easier than people having to show up and I know there's probably some proprietary information with this but are you planning on charging for delivery because to me that's the cost benefit analysis some people say well if you charge and I have no idea what there would be in some of the industries that you mentioned some new charge for it some of this included so the intent for in Santa Rosa deliveries with because we're the furthest east to Napa we haven't fully discussed things outside of the Santa Rosa area for this but the intent in Santa Rosa is not to charge delivery fee okay thank you Mr. Vice Mayor thank you and just as sort of on that same line of questioning will folks have to come in to sign up for delivery or will you have an option for them to do that on online they'll be able to use phone or online council any additional questions all right thank you for that presentation okay we've got several cards here and I'm probably going to butcher some names so I'd like to ask that we all consider that all pronunciation is original and correct so I will open the public hearing and everyone will have three minutes first up Travers Ebling followed by Nick Allen and if you are starting to move up both podiums are allowable Travers thank you guys for your time today and for considering this issue I suspect it's pretty challenging to be in your position making difficult choices deciding between competing interests my name is Travers Ebling I run the Wolfpack Trail Riders Club this is an after school kids mountain biking club community sponsored rides that gets kids age five to fifteen on their bikes out exploring the trails of Howard Park Spring Lake and Anadel these rides less started about three thirty the last two to three hours and the kids in the adult trail guides regularly ride five to twelve miles it's pretty impressive for seven eight-year-olds out there doing it they have a great time and they clamor for more the trail house has been a really gracious host for this mountain bike club they loan kids bikes they perform safety checks they fix flat tires all at no charge kind of speaks to the community minded nature of the owners the clientele the trail house is really the home to the Wolfpack I won't really speak to the irony of that the Wolfpack home might be right adjacent to the fox's den you can just imagine you know how that's going to work out and but I'm not really even here to talk about kids and cannabis I mean that's a whole big cultural conversation I don't think anybody here is really anti-cannabis what this is really about is you know making good choices for a city following the rules that your commission has and you know I think the planning commission did you guys a disservice bringing this question up to you they didn't seem to follow their own rules and the required findings of D and F you know specifically says it's even in bold that you would can't grant a permit if it's going to constitute a nuisance or be injurious to the public interest or materially injurious to persons property or improvements in the vicinity as someone who frequents the trail house runs a kid centric club out of there I don't see how moving forward with this conditional use permit is not going to be material injurious to trail house the site's unique in its access to the North Bay's mountain biking trails allowing a traffic intensive use at that site whether it's cannabis whether it's pizza or donuts or whatever is really going is radically going to change the feeling function of trail house I don't see how the thing that I do there it would be able to continue in that situation I'm not trying to be sensational I just don't see how 20 30 cars per hour is compatible with a bike shop and kids bike shops people who do most people ride their bikes but when you show up in a car you usually have a bike with you that you have to unload in my case I show up with a van and I have five or six bikes to unload five or six kids you take that through the parking lot into the trail house it's total mayhem just as it is now so it's it's going to be a problem it'll probably kill the thing that I do you know a dispensary is also not your average parking lot my experience I visited a few those places are traffic intensive too as the traffic engineers said there's lots of turn lots of turnover it's about excuse me it's much more like a 7-11 thank you Jeffers I appreciate you guys Nick Allen followed by Kimberly Mullen my name's Nick Allen I'm a special education teacher here in Santa Rosa and I have a child a four-year-old that attends Kiwi and I'm very concerned about this this youth permit I keep hearing tonight that Kiwi is in back of this facility that is not true but the playground of Kiwi goes beyond that southwest corner I stood in the my daughter's playground and brought my tape measure this afternoon it was four and a half feet until I could touch that southwest corner of the building I just don't understand how the city ordinance in 2017 included youth facilities and schools and by 2018 it was the wording was changed just to schools and only included K through 12 you know I don't understand where my where my daughter is less deserving of safety than an older child I know that one of the council's goals throughout this this process has been to more closely align the cannabis rules with other state county and other city ordinances and I just feel like this you know accepting the the setback but then allowing it to be a zero foot setback does not it's a giant leap in the wrong direction as far as alignment with other with other cities and the state the standard seems to be a thousand foot setback to youth facilities schools and daycare and I also would urge the city attorney to look at the tender recipients portion of the state law which requires a quarter-mile distance from any daycare school or you know older person's home site care site I'm not concerned about the the people going to buy stuff at the dispensary I'm concerned about about the crime it brings in we all know that this is a cash only business and a five minute search of the press democrat and local articles brings up many stories about daytime armed robberies abductions homicides you know especially with delivery services so I think the confined indoor area of this site this proposed plan as well as the delivery service creates a great risk as far as violent crime and robbery not necessarily patrons of the of the service I just think you know we've heard a lot about the other meaning how the the proposal is neighborhood focus and caring of the neighborhood if that was true the first time they visited this site they would have realized that this is an inappropriate site for this business thank you thank you Kimberly Mullen followed by huya clifton thank you for your time and service my name is Kimberly Mullen and I'm a 20 year resident of Santa Rosa I'm a mom and I'm also a volunteer for a high school mountain bike team of about 30 plus riders I'm here to tell you tonight that I'm not afraid of cannabis but I am afraid of traffic and I am opposed to this business going in behind the trail house I'm concerned about the traffic flow parking lot safety and how the trail house business will be impacted by this dispensary the parking lot is barely functional for this thriving business and it's difficult to navigate the traffic flow is not actually predictable there and even less predictable are children who are on bikes I'm worried about safety of young children and high school students who often meet at the trail house to start in their rides in the parking lot before the trail house came along my family and I would actively go to neighboring cities to spend our leisure time and our money sorry I'm very emotional about this we don't feel comfortable at many Santa Rosa locations but we do at the trail house since trail house has come along I've found a place in Santa Rosa where I feel safe and I enjoy spending my time my children start and in their rides from the trail house where they have access to a bike mechanic and the opportunity to gather and talk with accomplished cyclists I don't know if you've spent much time there but the trail house is a very special place it's an important part of our community I've observed co-workers knitting groups college students elderly citizens hosting grief counseling meetings business meetings everyday athletes and world-famous cyclists at this location I've also met women who come from all over all over Northern California to join the well attended bell joy ride I've seen these out of town women return to Santa Rosa to host their own meetings and bring even more folks to our town which generates revenue for our city from athletes to groups helping each other in a time of need the trail house is a valuable resource for our community of people working their best working hard to be their best self please put safety first don't move forward with this dispensory at this location thank you thank you who we had Clifton Pope followed by Nancy Richardson yes mayor and city council members my name is who you pop I'm the owner of Kiwi preschool under the current plan Fox Stan would share a boundary line with Kiwi's playground I understand that K through 12 schools in Santa Rosa are provided with a 600 foot setback from cannabis retail operations Kiwi simply requests the same 600 foot setback as any other school a setback of 600 feet is necessary due to traffic and safety concerns Kiwi's been in operation for 28 years has educated more than 2000 of our community's children our license was issued under the state of California and permits Kiwi to have an attendance of 90 students our teachers are credentialed in early childhood elementary and high school education Kiwi teaches a standard curriculum which includes transitional kindergarten school age I'm extremely concerned about the safety of Kiwi's children based on Fox Stan's traffic study that I saw which estimates that Fox Stan's business is going to generate an additional 400 plus car trips a day I do not see how this will be possible under the layout of the existing parking lot and there is there is already not enough parking for example after close observation it has become clear that many patrons of the trailhouse bike shop use our private parking spaces in front of Kiwi I know this because they have bikes on their cars we enjoy a good business relationship with trailhouse and do not make an issue about this typically but it concerns me that there will be a severe shortage of parking as the existing parking spaces clearly are not sufficient to accommodate the existing businesses in this location I do not understand how Fox Stan's traffic study states the anticipated increase in traffic of 400 more trips a day is not viewed as being significant I also do not think that Fox Stan in its report to the planning commission demonstrated that it will be a safe enough business to have on the property line of a school housing up to 90 children from age two through 12th grade the mere fact that security required at all times clearly implies this business has the potential to be an unsafe environment no other business surrounding Kiwi is required to have security personnel and alarm security present this is a strong message that cannabis dispensaries are not compatible with Kiwi preschool my research has shown that since 2017 and 18 cannabis dispensaries have been approved in Santa Rosa two men robbed a dispensary near the Santa Rosa airport at gunpoint on 8477 another dispensary was robbed on 51618 thank you for your comments Nancy Richardson followed by Greg Pope my name is Nancy Richardson I find myself in a somewhat strange position at the age of 74 being an advocate for Kiwi preschool no I do not have any grandchildren at Kiwi but I do have a granddaughter at Montessori school on Summerfield road and I do know a thing or two about the difficulties that young working parents have finding quality preschool for their little ones after the public comment section is over today and when you begin to deliberate I really hope to hear your positions on one whether or not you think a preschool is a school and whether you think students at preschools are a protected class of people to be clear I'm asking you to state your views in public during the deliberations I think the owner of Kiwi who just spoke the parents of the Kiwi students and the many citizens who signed their petition deserve to know how you feel what your position is I hope you realize that this is a community concern as evidenced by the fact that over 400 people signed Kiwi's petition in a relatively short period of time I support Kiwi's appeal team in everything that they said I look forward to hearing your positions thank you Greg Boat followed by Andrew Kramer thank you council I'm a third generation Santa Rosen and I was very fortunate to grow up here and living in Montgomery Village and riding our bikes everywhere Howard Park was our playground Spring Lake was our playground and we were afforded a community of family and safety we are concerned if something happens we may not be compatible with Foxden there is no way Kiwi can relocate so the community will lose a child care service which is desperately needed if you think you have a shortage of housing in the community you ought to try finding commute or affordable housing for a child care center which needs playground accessibility I hope that you guys will consider that future generations will still have the safety that I was afforded as a child I still remember the slogan Santa Rosa was the city designed for living I hope you will consider that when you make your decision thank you thank you Andrew Kramer followed by Noelle Tomba hello my name is Andrew Kramer and I came to kind of speak in support of Foxden I live over in the east side of Santa Rosa I can have been at Valiary to be specific and if I want to go find cannabis my medicine that I've had a prescription for since I was 18 years old if I want to go I have to end up going all the way to Roseland I have to go all the way to Sebastopol I would just really like to have access close to where I live I also was kind of curious too because I noticed there are really aren't very many over on the east side or any that have been approved yet and I noticed that the median income is over 25 percent higher than pretty much all the other areas they've been approved of so I just kind of want to bring that to everyone's attention as well I've been to many different dispensaries over the years and I you know I mean you could bring up a couple cases where you maybe have heard something bad but in all actuality I mean having on-site security especially with Kiwi Day School and they're talking about all the homeless people that they'd had kind of in the loitering in the area and how they'd already had safety concerns I'd think that having you know having security cameras and having on-site security guard all the time would help to mitigate those a little bit so just basically just kind of want to speak in favor of it also you know I could see where people you know definitely want to protect your children make sure they stay safe you know having them ride bikes in a parking lot is the most safe place also but just wanted to kind of speak in favor and say that I could imagine them being good neighbors and yeah thank you thank you Noelle Tomba followed by Evan Conklin hi I'm Noelle Tamba I am a parent of a kid at Kiwi and basically the whole reason I'm here is because we're in a unique position in terms of the fact that my daughter just moved from Maryhill preschool over to Kiwi Maryhill just closed due to other issues and the fact that Kiwi is here you know I think my assumption is that the reason that that ordinance doesn't include daycares is because basically parents assumably have a choice and you know in Sonoma County as was mentioned earlier there's really not a lot of child care options and a lot of people are in a position to choose what's close what's there my daughter is doing really well at Kiwi but putting a dispensary that close bordering the preschool makes it really difficult for parents to make a decision and there are parents that are going to look at this as a stigma whether you like it or not I have no issues with dispensaries it really makes no difference to me but I don't know if I'm in the majority or the minority in that opinion and my concern is also the safety of these kids and there has been a lot of armed robberies there has been a lot of things because these are cash based businesses and I am a compliance attorney in the banking industry and until the banking industry wraps their head around the cannabis industry and figures out a way for them to not be a cash based business and not have so much cash on site there's going to continue to be this crime and that has nothing to do with the people that go to this place that has nothing to do with the owners of this business I have no concerns with that my concern is the fact that inherent in this business there is crime it does turn into a new sense there is a safety issue for these children and that is not addressing all the traffic issues I've been in and out of the parking lots it's not an easy thing to do but I think or my assumption is when the city made the decision to hold daycares out of that ordinance that they did so because there is some sort of choice that parents have you're not required to send your preschool or to a preschool you're not required to go to the school that's closest to you you can send your kid wherever you want the problem is is that's not really the case especially with such shortages in child care Kiwi is necessary and this new business is going to directly impact that preschool and part of the things you guys are supposed to be reviewing in those six steps is what impact it has on the current existing businesses and it will have a big impact in my opinion the other thing like I said is safety and basically just trying to make sure that these kids are looked after so that's the whole reason I came today and thank you for your time thank you Evan Conklin followed by Carlos Perez hi everyone Evan Conklin parent if you couldn't tell I am in a unique situation prior to Maryhill preschool closing I was following this topic rather closely my wife and I have been longtime fans of trail house love it we try to walk there because the parking there is horrendous if you didn't know and we were put in a unique situation that 8 30 a night we get an email from our preschool saying hey don't show up tomorrow we're closed and we quickly had to scramble and find child care and a preschool for our children and Kiwi preschool had only two spots open and we managed to get one of them so we're very fortunate with that we're super happy that we got in there we heard great things about it and the fact that a marijuana dispensary is going in was a bit of a concern of us so I started looking into a bit deeper and I was surprised to hear that the city staff decided to focus on quote unquote education with changing from the state standards of including preschools and not including them I don't know if anybody on the city staff has children but education starts before you go into kindergarten and that's not just a personal opinion I think there's been quite a few studies on that I also think that there's a number of items relating to trailhouse that are or sorry the the spot and how it affects trailhouse that should also be looked into I'm not just saying think of the children I do not think that another high traffic spot would go in there very well for retail purposes the fact that they had to kind of push five parking spots into a building to make it work smells kind of fishy to me and for everybody here that has a house with a garage I don't know about you but I can't park any cars in my garage and if I'm running a retail shop and I get a bunch of boxes in I don't want them taking up space on my my showroom floor so I'm going to find a place to put them momentarily of course I'll get back to it next week and unbox things but I think that's something to be concerned about and I know that the lawyer for the people wanted to put in the dispensary made up a point of there's been talk of bums and transients going through the alleyway behind Kiwi preschool which is a concern of mine but when push comes to shove I'd rather have a straight bomb rather than a straight bullet behind my kids playground so thank you thank you Carlos Perez followed by Anthony Keaton Hi my name is Carlos Perez I am a local business owner in Santa Rosa I'm a friend of Glenn Fance and we're also business partners and co-board members on Kingridge Foundation a non-profit that we founded several years ago for to serve at-risk youth our businesses together have done a lot of work to raise awareness and money for charities in Sonoma County to date that's been over 3.2 million dollars that we've given to both at-risk youth organizations which is our primary focus as well as victims of the firestorms of both the Valley Fire and the Tubbs Fires one of the biggest fundraising events that we ever had took place at Trail House in a setting where in the situation that's being proposed today would not have been able to take place what Glenn's created is an answer to a community need it's a gathering place where it's created opportunity for people to come together in a way that they never have been before and it has the potential to live on and thrive in that way and to see something come in and potentially impact that in this way with the traffic that's being proposed in this space just makes no sense and it makes no sense whatsoever that we can look at those diagrams and not put motion to it and reason with the fact that you can't double the traffic going into that space it's impossible if you've been there on any given day you know that you can't add more to it you know the reality is you're going to have people trying to figure out how to park in a cramped space it's tough enough as it is already you can have multiple cars coming in and going out and now you're going to be backing out into the street you know I fully support the arguments that the preschool has because I've got kids myself and you know I run a nonprofit with several others that supports at-risk youth and it's a huge problem in Sonoma County and nationwide you know this this is not the community that I think we've worked really hard to to build here is to not take into consideration the hard work and effort that's gone into creating something like this and try to fit a square peg into a round hole you know trying to argue that a delivery service is going to take over visitation doesn't make any sense if I were running that business I'd want to have both and I would have no incentive for prioritizing delivery over having people come when I can have the best of both worlds I don't think that that argument holds water it's it's a nice play to try and solve that idea but I don't think it's going to work out that way so thanks thank you Anthony Keaton good evening I'm followed by Shane resume and good evening I'm Anthony Keaton thank you mayor and members of the city council I'm a lifelong resident of Santa Rosa I'm also a small business owner and homeowner and I love Santa Rosa and the community that we have here everyone was in that community and I support Kiwi in the trail house and agree with the statements by Kiwi attorneys and others in support of this appeal the trail house is a community hub for hikers bikers beer coffee enthusiasts and just your entire family my family frequents the trail house since we discovered it last April when we all started mountain biking together and it was a place that you could easily fit in and visit with everyone as everyone was welcome there it's also been featured in several articles as one of the best places to visit here in Sonoma County as we do have some of the best trails in Annadel and Howard's Park and Spring Lake it serves Santa Rosa and it also serves travelers from far and wide you'll see it featured in several YouTube videos of very prominent members of the mountain biking community who do come and visit this area as it is right now it is very busy at the trail house during its entirety of its operation I went there today with my wife and son we happened to walk there and it was very busy it was the parking lot was already full and it just adding another business to this area is just going to further impact their ability to conduct their business and it's also going to create safety concerns for those frequenting that whether it's pedestrians bicyclists or people who are coming by vehicle as mentioned earlier by a gentleman in a non-related matter he was talking about the pressure of traffic concerns that we need to address within Santa Rosa it also speaks to this increased traffic pressure you're talking about adding more pressure to an area that already has traffic as an issue there on Montgomery Drive and also within this parking area and more traffic does correlate to more accidents within the area and that could be vehicle versus pedestrian vehicle versus bike or vehicle versus vehicle or vehicle versus property it could greatly impact your traffic congestion within the area and we already have talked about the parking the suspensory is not a good fit for this location there are plenty of other locations on the east side of Santa Rosa that could fit and would allow them to serve the east side of Santa Rosa as it has been mentioned that it needs to be done I do ask that the applicant and the representatives reconsider the decision to continue to push forward after how much community has come out against this proposal and if they do not I ask you the members this distinguished city council that were elected by the community and for the community to disapprove the suspensory at this location thank you for your time and consideration thank you Shane followed by Frank Armariata Hi my name is Shane Breschen I'm the general manager of Trailhouse I'd like to read a letter from Johnny Egger who is a 25-year veteran with Jolotti construction and helped bring the proposed property into compliance for Trailhouse my name is Johnny Egger a union construction foreman who has worked for Jolotti construction for 25 years these statements are my own and not the concerns or views of Jolotti construction company I'm writing to you in regard to the conditional use permit application for Foxten at 4036 Montgomery Drive Sweetby the following are my personal opinions about the projects which were obtained as a worker on this site Foxten will face accessibility issues on this site specifically regarding accessible path of travel from the public right-of-way Montgomery Drive sidewalk to their entrance with difficulty regarding the American Disability Act based on my knowledge of this lot and the slope leading up to the warehouse at the rear of the site it will be at worst impossible and at best and incredibly invasive to the existing tenants Trailhouse to remedy additionally traffic circulation and parking on the site are already strained with one business it is difficult to see how a second business can coexist on this site without increasing the danger of collisions between vehicles pedestrians and cyclists the impact review needs to be re-evaluated to prevent a serious accident which is in everyone's best interest I urge you to reconsider this use permit based on site sustainability and keeping projects to the high criteria of the city designs and standard books thank you Johnny Egger Jolotti construction thank you Frank Arminata followed by Forrest Johnson thank you for hearing my thoughts here council members my name is Frank Amarata just a couple of things I'm actually in kind of a unique position only in that I know the applicants a little bit and I'm friendly with them and I can understand their their perspective a little bit I'm also very good friends with the owners of Trailhouse I've known them for years I'm also a regular visitor there but I just like to say just a couple points number one is if this weren't the type of business we're talking about let's say I had an application for a bakery and it's going to be delivery and it's going to be an onsite place and it's in that exact spot and it's going to be hundreds of visits a day plus all the traffic and I only get those five parking spots inside the garage and I get the other two and you really need to tell me that that would even ever even get to the application process that would have been denied immediately that's just not there's way too much traffic way too much density furthermore that size of that garage my understanding is something like 2,300 square feet so it's about the size of an average U.S. home so you mean to tell me that dozens of cars an hour possibly hundreds of visits a day that they're going to go in and out of a spot that's essentially the floor size of the average house I just I'm befuddled frankly I don't understand how it ever got that far and also I'd invite any of the members of the council or the city employees if you have a relatively nice car with shiny paint I invite you to I will pay for your adult beverages you come into the trails you park in that spot that's in the upper top right which would be right next to where the house which is the south East spot I invite you to park your car there come on in I'll buy your beverage your choice hang out for a couple of hours and tell me if you're going to take me up on that that's the only point I'm going to make there Lastly this is something I see quite a bit I also go there to do a little bit of work on my computer and the employees they actually go into the warehouse in that same south east spot many many many times daily to go get supplies with that blind corner there I can tell you myself honest to God I've almost been an ornament twice already from that blind spot so that's with the existing traffic that we have right now now again imagine if we all the different percentages are bandied about whether it's 100% 1,000% 500% the point is is that it's already at capacity and just as a citizen and just kind of looking at this and seeing all this information I'm really frankly befuddled that this ever got this far it's just not there's way too much density and there's just simply not going to be enough room for everybody who wants to get there on the daily buses that's all I have to say thank you thank you Forrest Johnson followed by Kailin Wheeler hello there um I'm going to keep this pretty short as many of you know had gone over to the trailhouse you've you've seen you've seen what it is you've seen the traffic I'm not going to beat that up too much but as council member Fleming kind of just touched on and not to get too touchy-feely but the feeling of it all just it just doesn't quite work I know that doesn't go into the logistics and the all the paperwork at all but it just doesn't quite feel right and um I do agree with the uh I support the appeal for Kiwi and the trailhouse so thank you thank you Kailin Wheeler followed by Craig Lawson Hi there and thank you my name is Lynn Wheeler and I am a mother of Wolfpack Riders nine-year-old and 12-year-old girls um I'm also a business owner in Santa Rosa and I drive by trailhouse at least eight times a week to take my daughter to ballet in the same shopping center so I'm familiar with the the amount of cars in the parking lot and around and the rest of the parking lot there I also ride our bikes to trailhouse at least twice a week on the weekends which are so happy to have found that place and I also think that the dispensary is detrimental to the safety of not only the children but all the users of the space given the agreed upon increased use of traffic and need for more parking and even if you can make the traffic and parking numbers work it doesn't make the location safe and right so I want to close by say I support Kiwi and trailhouse and agree with the statements by Kiwi's attorney and others in support of this appeal thank you thank you Craig Lawson followed by Amber Street Mr. Mayor members of the city council Craig Lawson One Valley Lakes Place I've known Scott Bagel of the applicant for about 20 years he's a pretty special guy is born and raised in Santa Rosa he's my son-in-law and he's also the father of my two grandchildren it was interesting about a year ago when Scott came to move the idea of a distribution facility I said look if you're going to do that make sure you check out the regulations and he did he hired one of the most preeminent consultants Nick Katzen and they looked at it and did their homework he started with the process of an application in April of 2018 had neighborhood meetings in June of 2018 and finally a public hearing of the planning commission of January of 2019 staff and the planning commission determined rightfully so that the project was compliant prior to granting a conditional use permit the planning commission or city council on appeal must make six required findings proposed use with the applicable zoning district and applies with all provisions of the zoning code and city codes the proposed use is consistent with the general plan and all consistent plan the design location and operating characteristics of the proposed activity would be compatible with existing and future land uses in the vicinity the site is physically suitable for the type density and intensity of use being proposed including access utilities and absence of physical constraints granting the permit would not constitute a nuisance or be injurious or detrimental to the public interest health safety convenience or welfare or materials is the injurious property or improvements of the vicinity and the zoning district which the property is located and the project has been reviewed and is compliant with the California Environmental Quality Act for traffic noise air quality the six findings speak for themselves the complaint the planning commission reviewed this proposal in depth and agreed with a thorough staff report that this project was consistent and compliant and should be advanced I trust that you will rule the same and deny this appeal thank you thank you Greg Amber followed by Joanna Cedar hi my name is Amber Strife and I am a resident of Santa Rosa I'm here today to discuss my concerns for the traffic in parking and the large safety issues related to the increased traffic with allowing Foxden I'm the organizer of a women's mountain bike group Bell Joy Red I organize monthly women's mountain bike rides led out of trail house these rides are women specific and are open to women of all ages from 14 to 100 plus women from all over Chico Santa Cruz Lake County Mendocino County the East Bay and beyond drive to Santa Rosa to attend these rides I've been putting on these rides monthly for the past two years on any given month we have anywhere from 40 to 100 plus women who show up to participate that's approximately 1200 women who have participated over the past two years these rides have grown our women's cycling community and have brought business from all over to the city of Santa Rosa leading these rides out of trail house has helped foster a sense of community and provide women with the fun supportive and most importantly a safe environment to ride mountain bikes the safety of the woman attending these rides as well as anyone starting a ride or visiting trail house is a huge safety risk with the increased traffic if Fox 10 is approved we start our rides from the left hand corner that we were over there discussing near the roll-up door there's a blind corner as already discussed on that side of the building where someone circling through without paying attention could easily hit someone change the flow of traffic the opposite way and the building is still has the same issue as a blind corner on the right hand side it logistically makes zero sense to approve a business that will highly increase traffic volume to an area that already does not have the space to handle such volume not to mention the already minimal parking availability currently for trail house allowing this high volume storefront to move forward in this location will be putting riders pedestrians and driver safety at risk allowing this business to open under the concerns that have been addressed today is pure negligence to the safety of our community thank you Gina cedar followed by Tiffany Boggola good evening my name is Joanna cedar longtime resident of Sonoma county credentialed teacher k through 12 in social science and in health education I submitted comments in writing and I'd like to augment them here tonight I think a lot of what's going on here is based on an assumption that a cannabis dispensary is somehow incompatible with a park or a bike shop or riding groups of men or women or children or mixed or restaurants or schools but saying a cannabis dispensary is a risk does not make it so I'd like to draw your attention to a dispensary in Sacramento called a therapeutic alternative it's been in existence since 2019 it has a bunch of ancillary businesses associated with it is it is directly adjacent to a Montessori school with whom they've worked happily and gracefully over the last 10 years I'd like to also correct the record about crime the institute of labor economics printed in or published in May that they're they studied 58 counties in California and they recognize no impact on violent crime with the existence of a dispensary and a decrease in property crime they concluded that dispensaries helped to reduce crime by reducing vacancies and augmenting security even police quarterly yes police quarterly analyzed dispensaries in Colorado and Washington and concluded that they brought an increase in clearance rates which means they were able to solve crimes because of the increased security the Denver Post also reported that dispensaries were the victims of fewer robberies than banks because banks are where the money is so I would encourage you to deny this appeal I know that the proprietors of this business will be excellent community partners and I thank you for your time thank you Tiffany Baggala followed by Betty Lawson thank you Mr. Mayor and council members my name is Tiffany Baggala and I am one of the property owners at 4036 Montgomery Drive the proposed site for the foxtand dispensary I have a five-year-old son and a two and a half-year-old daughter that are both in preschool and I have friends that have children that are attending Kiwi preschool as a mother first and a businesswoman second I would never want to do anything that would put children in an unsafe environment the cannabis dispensary patrons that I know are business professionals doctors lawyers soccer moms and children using CBD to help with seizures I am really hopeful that the negative views associated with the unknown for some people around cannabis will soon change for the better my office is currently located in the warehouse where the proposed dispensary will be so I'm really familiar with the day-to-day at the property I know the location can safely accommodate the foxtand business and integrate with Trailhouse through the agreement that was made between us as the property owners together with the Trailhouse last year when we began the process thank you for your time thank you thank you thank you Petty Lawson followed by Deborah Crippen hello and thank you Mr. Mayor and Council members my name is Petty Lawson and I am a resident of the Oakmont community a business owner in Santa Rosa and most important a Grammy to three pre-school age children I have read the appeal specifically in regards to parking and wanted to share my own experience as I own a flower shop here in Santa Rosa where I have no parking no parking oh that just kind of I have very limited street parking outside of my shop we get walk-in traffic that stay for about an average of 10 minutes and the rest of our daily orders are deliveries 80 percent of our business is delivery we load our van with multiple deliveries at a time to reduce the numbers of trips that we have to take that we have to take to reduce the traffic and greenhouse emissions I also thought it is important to share with you as I am an Oakmont resident you might be surprised to know that there is a very large percentage of residents there that use cannabis both medicinally and recreationally and they are excited about the proximity of this dispensary especially especially the delivery component I encourage you our council to vote in favor of the proposed foxten dispensary Deborah Crippen followed by Leah Murphy Deborah Crippen I am a business owner at 4331 Montgomery Drive so just a block down from the trail house and the proposed foxten and I just find it really interesting that when trail house talks about increasing their traffic and their issues that no one that's not a problem but they are concerned about another business having traffic issues my business is in a shared parking lot which I have my own parking but there is shared parking there are a lot of parking issues but we work it out among the business owners we figure it out my I happen to have staff parking on my property but some of the other businesses don't I think if this weren't a dispensary there wouldn't even be a discussion here the you know I just just today spoke with one of my neighbors about the dispensary and our neighborhood on the west side and she was saying we don't have a dispensary I said yeah we do and she said I and I said yeah but you'd never notice because you don't even see people going in and out that the impact I drive by that dispensary quite often and I rarely see you know and in fact for years I thought they were closed but they're not so you know the thought of everyone thinks of dispensaries as high crime as issues and I've seen that in our case in our neighborhood that's not the issue and I would you know think that you should uphold the planning commission's decision to let this business go forward thank you Leah Murphy followed by David Harlan hello my name is Leah Murphy I'm a resident of Northwest Santa Rosa professionally I've worked in health care and public health for over 15 years does a cannabis dispensary belong next to a preschool well under the local control given to cities and counties under Prop 64 it depends on what your local jurisdiction decided within their cannabis ordinance Cloverdale and Cotati have setbacks from dispensaries to daycare facilities schools parks and libraries Sebastopol has a 600 foot setback between dispensaries and K through 12 schools just like Santa Rosa but it's also capping the number of dispensaries allowed in the city at seven so the chances of being right next to a preschool are slim and the other five cities in Sonoma County Sonoma, Hildeburg, Petaluma, Windsor and Roanart Park aren't letting any dispensaries in so it won't happen there yes it appears that within Sonoma County only Santa Rosa may deal with a dispensary going in right next to a preschool what else is happening in Santa Rosa related to the cannabis ordinance Santa Rosa City Schools unsuccessfully appealed what they saw as an inappropriate setback between a dispensary in a school a few weeks ago and in my neighborhood in Northwest Santa Rosa we're seeing over concentration well we will be seeing over concentration of all types of cannabis businesses with 47 pending and approved applications to operate with within a one mile radius well most cities in Sonoma County and in California have responsible cannabis ordinances Santa Rosa has an extremely lenient pro industry ordinance that went as far to change the city code to treat a cannabis industry the same as any other business the ordinance allows all aspects of the cannabis supply chain to operate in Santa Rosa was no limits on the number of cannabis businesses or true density caps by neighborhood and no setbacks to residential communities daycares parks or youth centers what's most surprising to me is that similar lenient ordinances similar to Santa Rosa were tried in Colorado and they didn't work out so well in fact Colorado warned California before Prop 64 was legalized to be careful and here's a quote from John Jackson Colorado Association Chiefs of Police I implore you not to become intoxicated by the projected revenue amounts and the promises made by the marijuana industry that you lose sight of the inherent community and social costs we have found it to be incredibly expensive to create from scratch a regulatory system that can adequately address public health and safety and meet the needs of the industry many residents are rightfully questioning Santa Rosa's cannabis ordinance and the lack of setbacks and density caps many of us voted for responsible legalization which I believe means yes welcoming the industry with reasonable setbacks and density caps and the slower thoughtful approach so we do not repeat the mistakes seen in Colorado thank you thank you David Harlin followed by Callie Lawson hello my name is David Hazelup Mr. Mayor and Council I am a resident of Benda Valley on the east side I'm also Bologna amputee I use cannabis medicinally and having a dispensary on my side of town would eliminate my need to drive across town when I need my medicine and having a delivery service would also give me something that else to take advantage of when I'm not able to leave my house I visited many dispensaries over the years and I feel it's important to share I feel safe for going to dispensaries as I do your neighborhood liquor store the negative stigma around cannabis is really unfortunate and I encourage the Council to vote in favor of the Fox dispensary thank you thank you Callie Lawson followed by Don Winkle thank you Mr. Mayor and Council members my name is Callie Lawson I am Santa Rosa born and raised I am from Benda Valley I am a mother of a preschool age daughter and I'm here to speak in favor of the proposed dispensary when I was thinking about this opposition the first thing that came to mind was the opposition against the SAY Dream Center a few years ago in Benda Valley the entire opposition was around this fear of the unknown fear of the unknown of what were the homeless youth going to do they were convinced that they were going to bring crime to Benda Valley this feels somewhat the same this fear of the unknown this negative stigma around cannabis I myself am an herbalist I make herbal remedies based off of thousand-year-old plant medicine and I have many clients on the east side of Santa Rosa that have to drive all the way across town just to be able to get their products some of the examples of clients I have a man that suffers from gout who lives in Oakmont where he gets CBD patches for his flare-ups a mother to a four-year-old who suffers from lupus she utilizes her CBD oil to subside pain and inflammation I also have a patient that is a cancer patient who has been fighting skin cancer naturally without having to use the intervention of chemotherapy specifically because he can utilize a dispensary to have a dispensary in close proximity to specifically these three people along with the option of safe delivery would be extremely beneficial especially for all of my clientele in Oakmont even more so having a preschool age daughter myself and knowing and understanding what this dispensary entails as far as safety measures and everything else that they'll follow the environment that they will create I would have absolutely no problem sending my child to a preschool located near a dispensary thank you thank you Don Winkle followed by Charles Font Lou I heard in the comments I heard one mention of a thorough staff report and I wanted to address that issue specifically in traffic the traffic engineer was seemingly kind of unaware of where the bike parking was but more importantly I don't think he was aware that most of the bikes are actually parked inside the trail house not outside and those bikes are they go into the trail house via three locations primarily they weren't in that was not addressed secondly I wanted to address the fact that we keep referencing the parking garage and you know it isn't really a parking garage that we most like most of us think about when we think of a parking garage it's a warehouse with some parking spots added to it so in effect it's an alley so people there's one way in and one way out so we all know that the parking lot is over impacted so it's just a matter of what degree it's uh that it's over impacted now we're going to add hundreds of more cars a day if they all come in and they exercise common courtesy and they all come in one at a time maybe it'll work out but in more likelihood it's going to come in and go in groups and what's going to happen when two, three, four, five cars are all trying to origami their way into that warehouse and um and not make it it's going to create a big mess in the back that's going to back up around the corner all the way into Montgomery Avenue that's going to create not only a private nuisance but a public nuisance which is one of the prongs on the on the approval process that we've discussed in the past so um in addition to that it's currently going to create a safety hazard it's not a matter of how much or excuse me it's not a matter of if it's a matter of just how much so that's really the decisions you guys have to seriously consider is how much risk is the council willing to take on is if they go forward with this process secondly there's been a great deal of discussion about delivery and that's great but it's it's very speculative and my position would be that given its location its most easterly location it's going to draw not only from Oakmont and Kenwood and Eastern Santa Rosa and Bennett Valley but Napa and Sonoma and Calistoga and other places and um I don't think that was adequately addressed and I think it's been the whole delivery idea has been kind of used to mitigate that idea and in addition to that the close proximity to the trail house is actually going to make it somewhat of a destination because it's a kind of a two for one spot you can go and buy whatever product you're interested do at the dispensory and also stay around and have a beer and a hot dog so that is somewhat counter to the whole delivery operation it is all about traffic and that's really the focus of this thing it isn't about cannabis it's about cars going through a parking lot thank you very much thank you Charles Fant followed by looks like Ross Bale hello my name is Charles Fant manager of NorCal Bike Sport Glen's brother I wanted to say I support Kiwi in trail house and agree with the statements by Kiwi's attorney and others in support of this appeal also wanted to say that when you have something as special as trail house in the community environment that it promotes that it should be nurtured and taken care of and I think what I could urge the council to look at that best illustrates this are the pictures of the trail house after the fires of last year I'm new to the area and I had no idea what brothers and friends were building I was unfortunately deployed overseas rack of gas someone brothers building and stuff and as soon as I saw the pictures from the community and how they came together at trail house after the fires I started to kind of wrap my head around what he was actually building and what what it was it was something that looked like what is a lot of time reserved for community center or church the people coming together in a state of emergency was really awe inspiring and I'm so proud of my brother and what he's built thanks for your time Ross Bale followed by Matt Wolfinger hello I'm Ross Bale I'm a resident of Santa Rosa I'm a patron of the trail house and I bring my kids there um it's clear from the presentation that the planning commission gave that there were a number of variances that have been granted to the Fox Den it's also clear that the character of the owner of Fox Den was taken into account and I understand that that's Mrs. Scarlett Raven I haven't heard or seen from her here nor did I see her at previous meetings that I've been to and I just think that's interesting I do however see members of the Candicrapped Corporation here and my question to the council is can we count on this group and the financial backers of the Fox Den to respect the development of this project here in accordance with the environment and the character and the safety of this neighborhood thanks thank you Matt Wolfinger followed by Clarin McCarthy good evening council members I want to speak to you again about something that I've talked to many of you about already and that is parking I actually handed the clerk some papers I don't know if they were handed out but it is basically a replica of the image you see on the screen right now Ms. Combs actually addressed the issue I want to talk about could we flip to 16 for a second so this was briefly discussed but as you can see on this particular design of which there are many that do not match there is a door that exists the parking garage directly into the parking spot there proposing outside now a point of egress from a building such as this will require a landing that parking spot does not work and I would appreciate if you could re-ask the commissioners about the validity of that particular parking space now can we go back to 15 so Ms. Combs referenced this but the warehouse and the planning commissioner who answered this had some slightly incorrect information there is a rule up door into the trailhouse warehouse but there is actually a fire door right next to it which again exits right into that parking spot next to the warehouse so both of those spaces cannot be parking spaces as this is proposed and this is in fact the third iteration of their parking plan because we have constantly pointed out their inability to create a plan that matches city code this is a third plan that doesn't match city code at what point do we accept that this is I don't want to say impossible because that's a difficult word to prove but an extremely difficult parking situation another point I want to point out about the parking spot next to the trailhouse warehouse do you see the trash enclosure right behind it that only has 16 feet six inches of backup space now center was a city code for a standard parking space requires 26 feet I would have hoped that whenever some of you were there that you could have seen that trash enclosure has been impacted three times by cars and that's not even a parking spot there right now now I know some of you there saw that people parked in that space and we try to put a cone up to stop it but that trash enclosure has already been impacted three times and that is not a parking space and it's taking into the account I think this was mentioned by the architect but the entire site exists as an existing condition there are no parking spaces on this site that would match current city code no parking space has sufficient backup space every parking space has 22 feet or less so I have a hard time understanding one how we're getting to this point where staff is actually saying that there are 22 spaces when 22 are required when in fact there are only 20 spaces as their current plan is proposed and this is their third attempt third to make that a reality so why are we trying to squeeze more parking into a plan into a site that has significant traffic issues already now we've talked about the parking and safety arguments quite a bit tonight but I I can't get over that three attempts no success thank you Matt Claren McCarthy followed by Dave Townsend Hi there thank you for your time my name is Ciaran McCarthy I've been a good friend and business associate of Dennis Hunter for many years and I can truly say he's one of the most conscientious and compassionate community members I've ever encountered I think it's very interesting to see the fantastic endorsement of driving under the influence in the close proximity to children and it sounds like you've created a very special place and there's a strong synergy between the craft brew and the cannabis community I would like to have you consider what would have happened if the reverse was the case and Trailhouse was trying to come into a very special situation that a dispensary had created and I'd also like you to consider the traffic outside of an average Starbucks on a busy morning I think if you want the cannabis industry to survive and thrive and San Rose and Sonoma County there has to be a level of cooperation and bravery and on a very side note as somebody who formerly directed a analytical testing lab I have seen the medicinal impacts in a benefit for children who have suffered for severe severe problems and their parents may greatly appreciate closer access I strongly encourage you to allow this dispensary to go forward and embrace the positive change that it can bring thank you Dave Townsend followed by Merlin Davis I'm Dave Townsend I'm a business owner here in Santa Rosa and a lifelong Sonoma County resident and a supporter of the trail house and Kiwi preschool and I just wanted to reflect on what Ms. Fleming was saying about the feel of this whole situation I'm a frequent patron of the trail house in the mornings in the afternoons riding bikes with my kids etc it's been very clearly stated that it's nearly impossible to have any retail business at this location number one but the feel of this whole situation that Frank brought up is the fact that this is a square peg in a round hole that it's just is not compatible with the whole essence of what the trail house is not only from a successful business standpoint but for the community and all the activities that occur there so I would just strongly encourage you since this is the very last time that public is going to even be able to weigh in on this it's been absolutely overwhelming in my opinion both in the planning commission meeting and here that the public outcry is to not have this or any other retail aspect at this facility thank you thank you Merlin Davis Mayor Schwedhelm and City Council thank you for your time tonight I know it's been a long evening already and you guys have withstood the torrent of comments so thank you for your time and energy I appreciate all the questions you guys have already posed to staff and the planning commission it really shows that you're hearing public concerns and I hope you guys agree that a lot of those questions haven't been answered yet or maybe can't be answered some of the things that I've heard from the public so far is that there's this concept of the fear of the unknown this anti-cannabis spiel this is definitely not the cannabis issue it's just too popular businesses going into a very tight space and they won't work together this is a fear of the known we have good ITE traffic study and good data now that shows how much traffic we're going to get at a site like this and our traffic engineer that we you know asked to review this project spoke that already and his comments are that you should expect to a site like this 12 to 30 cars needing parking spaces like that's way more than the presumed WTrans traffic study said before that was based on data from several years ago out of state in relation to businesses that were smaller or different operational characteristics so I hope you take that kind of information to heart because it's what we need to rely on is real data real known information studies done on other dispensaries and use that to translate to what you expect to see here in the proposed site and that expectation is too much traffic for the proposed usage it just won't fit on site so thank you again for your time thank you so much for waiting through the comments and trying to understand and interpret the information and really try and solve the problem thank you for your comments so those are all the cards we have you don't have to fill out a card if you want to make comments so I'd ask does anyone else want to make comments to the council please step up introduce yourself you have three minutes good evening Gary Lentz Santa Rosa I hadn't planned on speaking on this but I've been sitting here listening to this and it seems like first of all the the issue with the preschool the common sense tells me that the reason for making it so that you can't have these places near K through 12 is if the kids might be wandering around by themselves obviously with a preschool that's not going to be an issue parents are going to be picking them up they're not going to be wandering unattended in this area so I think that's sort of a moot point I've actually been to the trail house a number of times and I love it parking is an issue there at the time I was last time I was there though was when the Pliny kegs came over and it was very crowded there and it there wasn't a lot of traffic which seems to be the issue here but it was difficult to find a space but since this new business is creating their own five or six spaces it seems like maybe that's you know these are new spaces that are being created for their business and this is not something where I wouldn't think I've never shopped for cannabis I'm not a big fan of it but I wouldn't think people would go in there for 20 30 40 minutes and shopping like in a mall they're probably going in there picking something up and leaving so it's more about the traffic flow in the parking lot and like I said I was there on a very busy day a few months ago and there wasn't a lot of traffic in there it really was about finding a spot and I actually did find a spot in the parking lot so I don't know I'd like to think that these two businesses could coexist and it's not going to be you know more than five or six people in that dispensary at the same time but you know remains to be seen and then at that point if there is a problem with it I would think that the owners of the Fox then would want to move too because it's not going to suit their business to have their customers not be able to find parking so I don't know kind of tells me that maybe these two businesses can coexist and try it out and people are still going to want to go to the trail house it's a great place so that's it thanks so anyone else Ian and Celie speaking for concerned citizens for Santa Rosa I think the thing you should be considering here is the intensity of uses that in itself would argue against the reasonability of this business locating here if you look at the preponderance of comment from the public it has to do with us this fact that that it's fitting a square peg into a round hole it is the proponents have gone to extreme steps to try to make it fit in this small space and to me it doesn't work so I hope that you'll uphold the appeal thank you thank you anyone else please sir thank you I have a letter from Sonoma County Office of Education dated April 4th 2019 Dear Santa Rosa City Council community members have contacted my office concerning conditional use permit 18076 for Fox Dan dispensary excuse me located at 4036 Montgomery Drive suite B adjacent to Kiwi preschool and daycare as county superintendent of schools I strenuously object to using property around the Kiwi school for marijuana related business as the county superintendent and the county board of education we support the community standard that all cannabis operations be located a minimum of a thousand feet from a school which is the same for alcohol and tobacco retailers therefore we wish that any cannabis operations be located a minimum of a thousand feet from Kiwi school and request consideration of federal law under drug free school zone restrictions to be clear we are not anti cannabis however there is an appropriate location of space for cannabis businesses in Sonoma County and within a hundred feet of a school is not tolerable tolerable Sonoma County Office of Education firmly believes the exposure of students to cannabis alcohol or other drugs adversely affects a student's ability to achieve academic success it's physically emotionally and developmentally harmful to children and has serious social and legal consequences children are protected class and schools are expected to comply with federal standards which forbid the manufacture disproduction or possession of controlled substances including cannabis within thousand feet of parks daycare centers and schools 2-1 USCA 860 the county currently restrictions are responsible and comply with the federal standards we encourage you to adhere to the federal and county standards by setting a thousand feet perimeter around Kiwi school the city of Santa Rosa needs to continue to protect the county's most valuable resource the safety and well-being of its 70,000 students and not the profit interests of cannabis businesses sincerely Steven D. Harrington PhD Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools thank you sir could you please identify yourself just for the record could you share your name yeah I'm Greg Polt I also am the owner of Kiwi preschool got it thank you would anyone else like to address the council go ahead sir just one quick point I'm going to identify yourself yes Mike Schwartz says the architect for a trailhouse I just want to talk a little bit more in depth about the egress doors and interest doors that Mr. Wolfinger mentioned to the warehouse the pedestrian door the man door that he's talking about is in the upper right parking space which basically invalidates that parking space and that's the primary entrance to the warehouse so it's a required entrance and a required exit regardless of whether or not that door is in swing or out swing which is indicated on other drawings that's not shown at all on this drawing it wouldn't matter it's going to cancel out that parking space on the Foxden parking garage site their second exit would also exit into a parking space which is going to invalidate that space all right thank you is there anyone else who's not addressed the council yet that would like to see no one raise I'll close the public hearing now Foxden applicant has a three-minute period for a rebuttal thank you Mr. Mayor there were a lot of comments and I probably won't be able to get through them all in three minutes so do ask me any questions if there's something specific that I missed I want to start with this concept of the feeling the feeling that my clients that the applicant went through in this process was to wait for the city to come out with an ordinance to set rules to follow those rules and go through a process to find a location discover that their property would meet those rules for this type of use then to hold a neighborhood meeting and listen to these concerns and address them the design and character of the application asking for no parking reduction and ensuring that the traffic meets the city standards for a less than significant impact less than significant impact is an official term it's something that we use or doing you know secret review and isn't just something that we made up and there's thresholds that we used to look at those and we made sure that those thresholds were what the city viewed as not having a significant impact a part of that was also looking at level of service levels for the intersections this project won't change the level of service for this area because the traffic is so minute I know when we talk about traffic when you see these big numbers in these reports they seem drastic a part of that's because we're using standard rates that aren't based on the uses in Santa Rosa so those are the worst case scenario we've given you information about the actual rates for Santa Rosa dispensaries which show that those standard rates that we use were a worst case scenario we've also gone through the process of making sure that we reached out to and worked with our neighbors receiving even a written and signed agreement with Trailhouse on how this was going to integrate I hope to get back to the feeling in the camaraderie that businesses can create in an area to create that synergy which helps boost economic growth and neighborhood and community support and I think we'll get there fairly quickly it was happening in May of last year when Trailhouse signed off on this dispensary project being able to move forward and it'll happen again it was happening when we reached out to the child care facility to attempt to address their concerns we didn't receive a call back and they did cancel the meeting we have scheduled but we want to meet those concerns and we'll meet with them again in the future regardless of this process quite specifically I think it is incredibly important to recognize that this applicant has put together a proposal that meets your standards your guidelines and your requirements for the use and has done everything possible to reach out and work with the neighbors to make sure that it'll integrate well into the neighborhood I hope that you will support this project today as one last note the fires were mentioned and Dennis Hunter's here he opened up the KanaCraft offices to host the American Red Cross Response Center so we can ensure that the first five agreement that we have in there will be upheld and this will be a community serving business thank you Mr. Cassin Council do you have any questions for staff applicant or the appellant Ms. Colms I have some questions I think they are staff can staff clarify or address why the subcommittee used K through 12 and did not include pre-K at that the ordinance went through 20 sessions with the cannabis policy subcommittee over the course of two years went to a public hearing process with the planning commission and was followed by a public hearing with the city council it was the city council that adopted the ordinance is there a current requirement in Santa Rosa about distance between child care facilities pre-K K through 12 to alcohol sort of sales I know a lot of gas stations have alcohol sales there's alcohol sales going on in trail house so if I understand the question is if there are setbacks associated with off-sale alcohol use permits sale of alcohol or sale of alcohol to take off site either okay there are no setbacks to onsite onsite sale of alcohol like restaurants and delis and things like that there's no setbacks and there are no setbacks to off-sale alcohol use permits however there is a consideration asked in the code that as part of the use permit process it be considered adjacent other uses such as youth centers and daycare centers did I hear that there may be conversation within the subcommittee okay and delivery only did I hear that that could be coming forward or is that not yeah I'm sorry if I mischaracterized that delivery only was considered early in the ordinance preparation process and in the directives of how to shape the draft ordinance and that was considered and rejected as part of our ordinance and the draft ordinance was it never was amended to include that back through the process obviously I can't know what my colleagues are going to do if it were to pass as a continue as a cannabis use are there conditions that we can place on that use can we can we condition the reverse flow for example that the traffic engineer suggested yeah what's unique about a use permit is you can condition the permit particularly to relate to operational impacts of the land use we may suggest wording that allows some flexibility if it's not you know to make sure that it's considered and explored through the building and fire code compliance process but obviously that's not a process that we would undertake tonight but the direction could be conditioned can we condition that that and some kind of agreement be done with any neighbor regarding parking overflow I'm not following the specific well there's a fairly large property to the west I think this map is a little confusing because it would be south the way the map is shown but I think it's actually west there's a fairly large property set of parking there that particular property owner has put large signs up that say don't you dare park here basically it would be really good overflow parking I'm not sure why there's this relationship that's not allowing that there's a parking on the opposite side behind the property there's a theater that has a lot of parking is it possible for us to require some kind of an agreement with regard to overthrow overflow parking there may be but not in the manner that you described off-site parking on parcels that are owned by other entities could not be something that the council could condition and then require this applicant to pursue what the council could do is perhaps suggest if there are ideas discuss with the applicant the property owner if there are on-site management things that can be done to try to lessen these impacts okay there's one thing if I may I just wanted to reiterate a point I mentioned earlier but I'd like to put a little finer point on this which is the the proposal is before you tonight because cannabis retail requires a conditional use permit cannabis retail has a one to two fifty or four space per thousand square feet parking requirement general retail in this zoning district is permitted by right it has the same parking requirement four spaces for every one thousand square feet because it's permitted by right that means that if a general real retail use were to come in to our office we would give them a zoning clearance over the counter there's no discretionary review provided they meet that same parking requirement so you've heard staff mention numerous times tonight we we're focusing on the findings that really is the crux of the discussion of the action tonight that the council takes the use permit findings specifically for cannabis retail at this location if if I may ask several persons made it an analogy to a seven eleven is would a seven eleven be allowed to go in here by right so if it's a general retail use it's under twenty thousand square feet I believe is the threshold which this site is this business it would be if it had an alcohol sales it may then require offsite conditional use permit approval okay Mr. Tibbets thank you mayor somebody brought up some specific dates about actual burglary incidents at dispensaries and a few months ago we asked the police chief this I know he's not here tonight so I'm not going to ask you guys right now but we need I'd love to get an answer to that as a member of council because a lot of the decisions that I make relating to cannabis is under the premise that that these robberies are not occurring and so when this woman got very specific about the dates I think that's that's something I'd like to know in the future absolutely we I mean I believe we review those things regularly but we will find some way to communicate that that council miss lemme you have a question Mr. Weiss from here thank you so Claire I had the same question that council member Holmes had about how the setback ended up being removed in subsequent drafts and because I have shoddy recollection I think Jack and I had been in for about a month or two when we actually approved the final version of the regulations and I think at the time the explanation about preschools in particular was that because it's gonna sound ironic because it was such a focus of the city to have childcare facilities they were allowed in practically every single zoning type throughout the city so that from a practical perspective having a setback in every single zoning type would in essence make it almost impossible to have cannabis facilities go in anywhere in the city so my again my recollection might be a little bit shoddy but I figured maybe if I mentioned that you jog your memory well I think I think we would need to go back and do some additional research on this topic I I'm not disagreeing with the assumption council member I would just say we would need to go back and and do some additional look to to look at that in particular yeah no I appreciate that I just that's what I seem to remember okay Ms. Fleming this is for Attorney Gallagher is it possible for the council to take other action besides voting of or against the appellant tonight like can we make a specific request to come back with parking solutions and more information on why children under you know pre-kindergarten children were not considered originally in the cannabis ordinance next actually was going to be the next what our options are that I was going to ask Ms. Hartman to do you're more than happy to add to it Claire has to say but do you have any other questions other than that that one okay so Claire if you could just describe before I asked Mr. Sawyer to say something can you give and just so everyone in the chamber can also understand what options are before the council all right so the options that you have before you are to just in order we have a draft resolution tonight is to deny the appeal and approve the conditional use permit with that draft resolution which is consistent with the same findings that the commission made to approve the use permit another option is to uphold the appeal so the opposite deny the project but you would need to assert the findings for denial you need to relate the denial findings to the it could be one of the six or it could be more but you'd need to clarify the findings for denial and then the last one is to continue the the item with specific direction for what new information or changes to the project you'd need to see in order to make a decision one way or the other an alternative to deny the appeal and approve the project is that you are able to condition this this use permit this use permit is brought to you as a as a draft resolution but you are able to make conditions and attach to it anything to add Madam City Attorney no clear clear covered the options great Council Member Flaming do you have any other clarification no thank you yeah Mr. Sawyer you have this item certainly and for for discussion I will introduce a resolution of the Council of the City Santa Rosa denying an appeal on approving a conditional use permit for Fox 10 Incorporated to operate a medicinal and adult use cannabis retail dispens retail dispensary and delivery business within an existing building located at 4036 Montgomery Drive Assessors Parcel Number 013-284-012 File Number CUP 18-076 and way further reading is there a second for the second discussion I will second okay we have a motion the second then for discussion would you like to start Mr. Tibbets sure thanks Mayor you know for me this is a really really difficult one because on the one hand we did create a law and when we do that an applicant step forward and they meet the letter of that law it feels really wrong to deny them that pathway forward and that's kind of what this feels like to me but after I did have the chance to tour with some of the trail house folks last Friday night actually and and I've been going there regularly since they opened actually I haven't gone very frequently in the last couple of months but after being there on Friday it has gotten really busy there and Friday after five o'clock I mean it was packed I parked in the place next door where apparently you're not supposed to and I know a lot of people did so it's a problem and it's going to be a problem if this dispensary comes in it's probably going to lead to an adversarial relationship between these two businesses you know I'm worried about there being a war over parking spaces and calling the tow truck companies and this that and the other I'm not making any accusations but I think that's just that should be a concern that we need to take into consideration but I'm also thinking about okay so if this doesn't go through tonight which retail shop is going to come in by right next and is that going to help the parking the traffic situation it's not it's going to be the same and it's going to go in by right so we won't even have the opportunity to condition anything but that can then become the problem down the road of the existing tenants getting the information about the the traffic study with 20.7 cars coming in that was a heck of a lot that was a lot to look at so I guess where I'm at for the sake of discussion in hopes that it starts the rest of the council so we can have a pretty open conversation about this is that I think as this stands I can't support it but if we want to talk about taking measures on the conditional use permit to make it more of a delivery-based business I think that could work for me I'm open to ideas from the council limiting open hours that are there that might not be the kind of the peak hours for trail house and the parking limiting parking for Fox Den to the interior so they kind of stay to separate isolated entities and parking areas I mean this is getting really restrictive on the use permit and I'm not even sure that the applicant would want it but I'm trying to help create a path forward that might not necessarily be to the liking of either party but it is kind of a path forward for parties involved so I will oh the other thing that I have a real concern with is I still am not quite sure how we're building we're making the ADA improvements without kind of ripping up some of that that concrete and taking out some parking spaces for an extended period of time to me that's that is having now a material materially injurious impact to the trail house and I'm also concerned about the material impact to the Kiwi preschool so I didn't take that into consideration before in the appeals process is that being one of our our criterias for moving things forward but I do believe there are probably parents at the Kiwi preschool who are going to see this and for better for worse in my opinion for worse because I'm I'm looking at cannabis like any other business in this community but there is still a stigma about it with some people particularly parents but should the Kiwi preschool owners and teachers you know basically be the ones who who have to to deal with that so that's where I am I look forward to hearing from my colleagues it's filming your comments this is clearly a really difficult issue and it's made more difficult by the fact that the appellant Kiwi is um got one particular set of issues and Trailhouse has another set of issues I'm generally in support of our cannabis industry and I'm the only person on the council who has a preschool age child and I don't wouldn't have any issue sending her to school next door to a cannabis facility that being said I can't without more information justify why it is that we don't allow these schools for children K through 12 and expect other parents to feel as comfortable as I do about this the traffic concerns are about the issue about which I would you know really find um on on characteristics see the compatibility with the existing and future land uses I'd need to see actual solutions to that before being able to move forward because it's at present not compatible with existing uses and I'd like to see that it's physically suitable for the type density intensity of use and that I do believe under either it would cause and constitute a nuisance that being said you know I agree with council member tidbits I think that it's unfair to set a law regulation and have people come in and invest incredible amounts of money into developing a business in our community one that I would very much like to patronize but as such it does not fit and you know I had written in my notes square peg and round hole and I heard that echoed a number of times I would like to suggest that we condition this and find I'd like to have more information about why we don't have setbacks for children under the age of five and I would like to know how close we can get to delivery based business and if the owners of the proposed Fox then would be amenable to that and that I am sincerely sorry that this is inconveniencing them in this way it's not a decision that's been easy to make I'll lose sleep on it because I won't be able to go there very soon miss Combs thank you I think this is clear as mud the mind I want to be clear that my decision is not based on fear of cannabis or the cannabis industry I view the regulations that we used that we should be using as those similar that we use for alcohol sales it looks to me as if we have issues or I personally have an issue with regard to c d and e in our set of appeals reasons it is it is not the same set as the ones that repeatedly reference children from our basis of appeal page 20 but but mostly focused on parking traffic flow circulation health and safety issues with regard to to those elements that said I would support a delivery only at this site I don't know how we get from here to there I if we are going to move forward with conditions I have conditions but it's not clear to me if we're doing this conditionally or if we're doing this up or down again not comfortable with it the way it is but it's the parking traffic and circulation issues that are leading me to conclude cd and er issues for me if I may through the mayor I just want a caution council that to the extent that you have concerns due to the particular circumstance of this application and this location then you're exactly right you'll need to look at those six findings that you have to make but with respect to that you might prefer now to have a setback to preschools that the ordinance is set so unless you found something particular about this particular operation and this particular preschool that would distinguish it you're not going to be able to go to you're not going to be able to go there let me clarify for myself since your comments come immediately following mine that my comments are not with regard to setback from preschools okay thank you my comments and I'm going to be real clear about that I can understand wanting to ask that or read is it that but that is not the point of mine my comments exactly my comments are specific to what I believe from reading traffic reports to be because it is not the kind of retail where someone comes parks and shops at length this isn't like a consignment shop this isn't like the other kinds of retail this is a retail establishment that is more of the type that individuals come and run back out almost like and that's you know I'm not anticipating that people will be parked for long periods of time and I'm not seeing in the traffic studies an indication that people will park for a couple of hours it's looking to me like there's much more rapid turnover and for me that is a problem with this business in this setting and that creates the problems with cd and e for me and I I appreciate I may have colleagues who need to make other statements yes and I appreciate that clarification and I just like to clarify it was not was because there were several council members who seemed to be going towards the setback issue you can certainly suggest that the council or the subcommittee look again at that issue but I just want to clarify before we got too far down that road again not specific to council member combs but to the the full council that the issue of setbacks is not not may I clarify my comments first of all were you were you done with combs thank you I think I've said what I need to say very clearly but would like to add comments if we end up in a discussion of conditions Ms. Fleming yeah so my request is separate from my findings in that I would like the cannabis subcommittee I would like further clarification on how they reached that decision but that's not what I'm basing my findings on again I said I would be comfortable sending my child to a preschool in a very close proximity to a cannabis dispensary my findings are based on the parking issues primarily and that's it Mr. Vice Mayor thank you Mr. Mayor first for a little bit of clarity and this is I should have given a little bit more of a report in our council member comments but at the last cannabis subcommittee we did talk a little bit about whether we wanted to open up the setback requirement and what we did was we deferred to a date further down the road once we actually see a little bit about how the ordinance as it's been drafted has is actually operating I think the feeling from the subcommittee and John can weigh in on this as well as we don't have any data and if we're going to be making decisions we need to actually be looking at what the actual impact is not just based on fear but based on actual measurable data so John can weigh in on that if he wants Mr. McCarthy in his public comment asked us to flip this around and how would the conversation be if it was the cannabis facility that was in there first and the trail house was coming in second and part of why I've been doing that ever since this became an issue when I knew that this was coming to council I've been trying to look at it through that lens as well and part of my line of questioning in the beginning for staff about the cumulative impact is because it feels wrong to prevent a business from being able to move in because of impacts that are largely associated with the other business yes because they're being successful and that's what I was trying to look at is in every way that I can think about this trail house got a variance on their parking to reduce it and they're very successful so they're seeing more people there than were anticipated and it is not the applicant's fault by the measure but where I come down with it and again citing the same thing as council member Tibbetz finding e granting the permit would not constitute a nuisance or be injurious to persons property or improvements in the vicinity and so if this was reversed and if the cannabis facility was there initially and trail house was trying to come in with this impact I think I would deny that application as well it's not about the cannabis aspect it's about the cumulative impact on an area that is having traffic flow issues and parking issues already to begin with if we were to open up for conditioning the conditions that I would need to see on the project in order to feel more comfortable with it moving forward is addressing the traffic flow issues the potential safety aspect issues around the blind corners the pedestrian ADA access from Montgomery drive and then I do also think that there needs to be some condition where the parking spaces that are indoors would need to be forward facing as they come out because the the ability of somebody to back out of those spaces into oncoming traffic would concern me as well again when I look at the design for this facility on slide 15 if I picture it without the parking spaces being within a building indoors that looks like it would be an appropriate parking spot but understanding the existing parking lot but understanding the existing conditions of traffic flow and the already inaccessibility of the buildings I just can't make finding E thank you we'll save you for last Mr. Sawyer I'll make my comments so first of all I really appreciate staff's work on this and all the work that the planning commission did on this and this is one of those experiences where if I just read all the reports check check check it fits within those parameters but then unfortunately I can't do that because I've been to the site both before I'm visiting with both the trailhouse folks and the Fox stand folks I frequent in the business there and it's one of those things where just the get kind of tell you this just doesn't fit there because it's crowded as it is and again similar conversations to the vice mayor if you flip the rolls well if Fox stand had been there first and we had the experience of the amount of traffic in and out there I would form the opinion based on what would be that next business coming in but unfortunately it's flipped and to me this business just doesn't seem to fit there I have part of the concerns where the location that QB preschool I have no concerns about that whatsoever because the cannabis business especially a dispenser there's no on-site consumption quite frankly I have more concerns about alcohol consumption that close to the preschool than the sales of a legal product and that's what we've been trying to do this is a legal product we're putting things in place to manage that so I have no concerns about the location in perspective to the Kiwi but just seeing the traffic concerns and the safety concerns that's where my concerns are and because of that I cannot make all six required findings listed below like councilmember combs I cannot make those same required findings of cd and e Mr. Sawyer thank you mayor and I wanted to thank the entire public participation this evening it was as calm and respectful as it was at the planning commission meeting and there were considerably more people so I want to thank you for your behavior because this can be a very emotional topic where I fall on this has to do with process and the the planning commission struggle a great deal with this as well I think they saw the they viewed their role in a particular way and I view mine in a particular way I find it interesting that the landlord was willing to to put together an addendum I know my landlord would not have asked me whether it was okay to put a particular business next to mine and they didn't and they put businesses that I was not necessarily pleased with and they didn't come to me and ask me if I thought it was okay so I asked to give a lot of kudos to the to the landlord for for putting together an addendum and asking a current tenant whether or not they would be willing to to entertain a dispensary on the property and it's unfortunate that there seem to be a misunderstanding about that as well and and that and I don't know what was in the original lease maybe there was a requirement that they'd be asked about the the unadjoining business but I see a this cannabis business having gone through a very long and grueling process for over a year they jumped through all the hoops staff told them what they had to do and what kind of parking they had to come up with I think that they they did jump through those hoops and they follow the rules and they we need to have a process that is clear and consistent and fairly applied and resulting in a successful and predictable result if you if you jump through those hoops so I have a it it is a it is a difficult decision because trail house is such a special place I mean it is a very very special place I've been there numerous times the the vibe is great you know it's it it feels good and it's and that and that concept was was discussed this evening as far as a feeling but I also feel like I have an obligation to to protect the process and to respect the process and so I can see that this is not going to happen this evening I can count and I understand all of my colleagues concerns and I and I and I value their the input both of the staff and my colleagues and and the public but I'm in my opinion the applicant has the landlord has a right to to rent to the applicant and the applicant has a right to put in according to our rules and our policies and regulations and ordinances they have a right to try to succeed and that's how I would come down on this on this decision it's unfortunate that there was a a perhaps unfortunate that there was a decision to reduce the parking requirement by 10 spaces which reduced it from 30 to 20 if there were 30 spaces there we may not be having this conversation right now so sometimes our in our desire to encourage businesses to thrive and open up and make it as easy as possible we actually doom ourselves to difficulty in the future which is looks like we have done in this case once we allowed Trail House a very special business to open with a such a small number of parking spaces because they're paying the price of that too I'm not sure what the future holds for the parking as they grow and as they get more and more popular but it's not going to get better I can almost guarantee that so I think those those are my comments that there's there they're in likes the struggle thank you Mr. Sawyer Madam St. Clair could you just let us know what the I'm looking at the city attorney Madam City Attorney either one of you can you just restate what the motion is on the floor and then what a yes vote means and what a no vote means so we're all clear I could restate it if that would be easy I just want to make sure I didn't have the resolution right in front of me and George should I restate it may restate it you can restate it or or or actually in this it's unless it's going to flip and if it's going to flip then I'll pass it if I may offer one item here the applicant has I'm teeing it up for someone go ahead all right I'm I'm going to swing here we go the applicant is obviously listening to the discussion and would be interested in if the council pleases in a continuance to continue to work through these items the onsite issues the circulation issues parking issues and also try to resolve some of the issues just simply between these two businesses so I want to do that Mr. sorry you made the motion would you like to rescind your motion or yes I mean too I would rescind my motion do we need a second for that is that if no that's fine he he can withdraw the motion on his own if the seconder would like to affirm that he's comfortable with that thank you and I'm seeing it not a thumbs up on on behalf of council member Tibbets okay so so that motion is withdrawn and you are free council members any council members are free to make a new motion so I'll entertain a new motion on council mr. vice mayor I will make a motion to continue it to allow the applicant to try to address the concerns particularly the ones that I enumerated my comments as council member Sawyer said I think we have an obligation to give folks an opportunity to try to make it work if they want to keep doing that but I do know from what we heard from the public and from what we heard from the council it's going to be a really high bar to try to address the traffic flow the parking all of that but I'm certainly willing to allow them to continue to try to work with the city to try to see if you can find an agreement for additional parking off-site that'd be ideal I think as well and do we have a second for the motion to continue second is it the peace finger or the verbal Ms. Fleming seconding that motion is there any further discussion with the motion for to continue this topic Ms. Gomes I would be willing to support the continuance but I am concerned that we make it clear that there are ADA and egress issues there's parking issues there's traffic and traffic flow issues the the difference between the two traffic engineering reports is surprising and should there should be some resolution there including the discussion of how to their how the delivery system is going to be managed for delivering product to the entity and personally would hope that we would work with the applicant as a city as a subcommittee on delivery only options being coming more available any additional comments Mr. Kivitz yeah thank you I'll add to that just to reinforce my request to the cannabis subcommittee to look at that very issue because I had heard and I don't know if this is true or not that this this conceptually started as kind of a delivery driven business and if that is the case that our subcommittee helped foster that all right Mr. Sawyer comment just a kind of a question comment concept the applicant has been working everyone's spending a lot of money on this and I'm hoping that there we need to have a great amount of clarity on what it is this council is expecting the applicant to provide into fix so that we don't find ourselves back in the situation where we we go back to the drawing board create a large number of expensive solutions and then it's not good enough when they come back again how can how can we clearly identify to the applicant what they need to provide as far as an application or a proposal so it's not to continue to spin everyone's wheels because it's not just the applicant it's also there's a great deal of stress that that that trailhouses experiencing with this everyone is experiencing a fair amount of stress and angst over this so I'm just looking for a real high level of clarity on what it is we are expecting from this applicant so that we don't have them jump through the hoops again and then find that they are failing if I may you're welcome to identify as a council the particular items that you are concerned about and would like to see addressed that being said however the way that appeals operate under our zoning code you will still be free when it comes forward next time to explore other options it's really not feasible and I would not recommend you trying to tie the hands of the council that ends up hearing hearing the appeal again but you are free to give guidance as to the as to the items that you are particularly concerned about as of this evening but again you still retain the flexibility down the line of if additional issues arise and I appreciate that and my my suggestion was not to condition we can't condition something like that but but as much as we can clarify so that we give them a reasonable shot without it of course there are never guarantees and I appreciate that thank you Mr. Vice Mayor yeah and I think I'm appreciative of that as well and also aware that what could end up happening if we were to just deny the appeal is that the applicant could go back make some changes and then have to start through their process again so I think part of what I'm acknowledging is there's issues with this proposal as it comes forward that the council would not be willing to approve but also making sure that the applicant is able to have that opportunity without having to start from square one again if they can find a way to make it work so that's really where where I'm at with this is this project as it is doesn't have the votes to move forward but at the same time I don't want to have to make the applicant start at square one Miss Jones so I just like clarification of what it means if we continue because continue is a different kind of animal than some of the others if we continue do both parties get to make new statements when they come back if we continue does Kiwi have the ability to add or change to their basis of appeal as well as other parties the other party Fox Den make changes to what they are proposing what's what's the what are the what happened what are the next steps what can and cannot happen on a continuance sure and under this under these circumstances and if I'm reading council correct you're asking for additional information and particularly additional information and some additional solutions from the applicant given that you are going to want that the continuance is not simply for your own internal deliberations it's really to receive additional information then yes both sides both the appellant and the applicant would have the opportunity at the continued hearing to raise issues to address issues to try to find solutions to voice objections everything would be would be open again under other circumstances you could continue it only for your own deliberations but that's not what I understand you want this evening any other clarifying questions okay we have a motion in a second your votes please and that is six ayes and and if I may I'll just also clarify as as Claire reminding me of course the public will also have a full opportunity to weigh in at that future meeting as well and I want to thank them members of the public for attending as late as this goes and for understanding that they may be invited back again and that is I appreciate difficult especially for folks with preschool kids yeah I think the consensus of the council are just we're trying to find a win-win here that what was presented tonight didn't fit that definition so mr. McGlynn item 16 so item 16 is being continued because it I've just informed that it needed to be what's what are you I'm sorry it's that item is being continued because the agenda item was not noticed properly great thank you we'll come back madam city clerk do we have any additional public comment cards seeing none meetings adjourned