 Good afternoon, folks. Welcome to today's meeting. We're just going to take a couple of minutes here before we get started. Make sure that we have a quorum of council members, but we'll start the meeting in just a few minutes. All right, Roberta, I just got a message from a council member that they're just running a few minutes late. So we'll go ahead and get started here with our informational items only until we establish a quorum. We won't be able to pass anything or give formal direction, but especially at the beginning of the meeting, we can go ahead and get started and get things rolling. So we'll show that the other two, the other two council members will be joining later. And we'll start our meeting. I'll call us to order here at 406. I'll start our meeting here with our public comment for non agenda item. So if you are part of the public and you'd like to give comment on items that are not on today's agenda, but within the purview of our climate action committee, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your zoom. See, we'll start with Chris. I'll ask the host to share her screen for the three minute timer and give Chris Gunther permission to speak. Co host for able to share your screen. It looks like it might be having some technical difficulties. I'll just allow Mr. You can go ahead. Hi there. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Excellent. Well, hello, Mayor Rogers and others. My name is Chris Gunther. I live with my wife and two sons in the Montgomery Village neighborhood. And I just wanted to, to speak quickly to say I listened in last week to the city's presentation of possible traffic safety improvements along Montgomery street and the fourth street corridor. And I support many of the proposed changes and appreciate the work that went into generating proposals. But I wanted to say I was discouraged by what I saw as an overly narrow approach to street planning. Not only was the working group charged with investigating only a few stretches of our city's roads, ignoring the stretches that have injury and fatality rates just as high or higher. But they were also tasked with updating the roads only for safety purposes. Left out of this analysis where the potential equity and climate impacts of reforming our streetscapes. And this is really contrary to recent statements from city leaders that we should consider climate impacts and equity outcomes and all the decisions we make. As one example, they took the number of cars on the roads under this understudy to be a fixed quantity. And therefore a constraint they had to work within rather than starting from the premise that good street design can actually help to reduce the number of cars on the road. Secondly, they took the preservation of for street parking spaces on Harmon Road, just north of a parking lot is more important than dedicating a couple feet of roadway to allow for a buffered bike lane. In Santa Rosa we have streets that make it easy and convenient to get from point A to point B only if you drive a car. This is a choice in our urban design the choice that drives up our injury rates increases our greenhouse gas emissions, and really disadvantages those who cannot drive whether because of their age economic means disability status or other. And I think until the city starts making different choices, meaning until we start making it safe to get from point A to point B on bike foot or bus will simply not meet our climate commitments or equity commitments or our traffic safety goals. And I wanted to just say it's it's really time to start building our streets for the future. This is a coalition of Santa Rosa residents from all over the city who want to see the city strive for a step change in urban transportation specifically by investing in a quick build low stress bike network integrated with pedestrian and bus infrastructure to make it possible for anyone to get where they need to go in town safely and conveniently without a car. Thanks to your attention tonight because in your roles as climate stewards on the city council, I hope you'll actively champion these ideas to your fellow council members, and in the future include them in any directives to staff who work on issues of street design. All right, thank you for the comments Chris and I can definitely take that back and work with staff. Let's see if there are any other hands for public comment for non agenda items. Mr like up to talk, go ahead and can you. Can you hear me. Oh, thanks so much for your time. I just want to dovetail on the comments that previous speaker gave. I'm a lifelong cyclist and member of the snow my county bicycle coalition and we even if you look at them revived 2018 updated master plan. There's really no continuity and bike trails. The example he gave was for the changes on four street and Montgomery street. And in the text that was at that meeting the goal was to create comfortable, convenient and common bike paths. Well, what does that mean means different things to different people. So all the multitude of surveys regarding what would make more people get on their bikes and ride them for utility purposes. 75% plus indicate protected bike lanes is really key to that. As I see it, all good investment in bike infrastructure is good but why invest monies in our existing bike lanes as they are but you're just supporting the existing riders and we're not bringing more riders along to scale that we really need to mitigate the issues and vehicle miles traveled so I couldn't agree more with looking at our problems more holistically you draw an urban designers engineers fire police. They sit at the same table you come with a solution and they go. Okay, how can we make this work. Now each department has their agenda and they say well this won't work because there's always a qualifier. I'm going to leave it at that and I know you've probably heard this before, but this is so vital to get more people on bikes of all levels that I offered to low cost strategies to start with to north and south to east and west protected bike lanes that would really do the job and never got any feedback on that so thank you for your time. I don't see any other hands. So I will note that we've established a quorum with Council Member Natalie Rogers joining. Let's move on to item number three that's our departmental reports. Thank you Mr Mayor, I have no reports night other than that I will be serving as your staff liaison instead of Tasha right wash was on vacation. Alright I appreciate that Peter I will note that I think Tasha still watching the meeting. So hopefully she's enjoying her vacation somewhere while watching. Move on then to our new business item 4.1 star gas station prohibition prohibition ordinance update. So bring on Amy. Thank you Mayor Rogers and Council Member Rogers and members of the public good afternoon. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Sorry about that. Is everyone able to see the slideshow presentation. Okay, great. Yes. Okay, so the presentation today will focus on a draft gas station prohibition ordinance and my name is Amy Nicholson I'm a senior planner with the planning and economic development department. Before we review the existing regulations and some proposed changes, I wanted to touch on the history of this effort so far. As the subcommittee and members of the public will likely recall we did have a study session on this item back in May of last year. And at that time the subcommittee gave direction for staff to pursue a draft ordinance to prohibit the construction of new gas stations within the city limits. We did have last year the regional climate protection authority, also known as RCPA and its board adopted a resolution supporting jurisdictions to prohibit the construction of new gas stations. And then over the fall and winter of this last year, planning stuff coordinated with RCPA staff to map the locations of the gas stations within the city limits. So we would like to overlay that information with the city's equity priority populations and areas. So the purpose of today's presentation is just to report out on what what we've learned proposed some amendments and then hear from the subcommittee and members of the public. So this slide includes a map of the city of Santa Rosa and we see the city limits shown in the pink color. The locations are shown as the orange circles, and there are a total of 46 within the city limits. They're primarily concentrated around Highway 101 and Highway 12, and then many of the regional streets which intersect with those highways. The blue areas on the map represent census groups with the highest concentration of people of color within the county. This is the top 25%. And then the yellow areas on this map represent households, the highest concentrations of households in poverty within the county. The green areas on this map are considered equity priority areas because that's where these two demographics intersect. So we can certainly see here that there's really I think 44 of the 46 gas stations are either within these areas or they're right on the border, which we know is an environmental justice issue as gas stations contribute to poor air quality. Thank the trees. She's a planner in our department who's been doing a lot of equity work and so she was able to help provide us with this information, which is really important as we're making policy decisions. So this slide here shows what's currently in the zoning code and this is just a refresher so that we can see what exists now and what would change should this ordinance be adopted. So these gas stations are a defined land use within the zoning code, which is what regulates all land use and development within the city. And the zoning code defines a process for these gas stations and where they are allowed. So they're currently allowed in the majority of our commercial zoning districts and then two of our industrial zoning districts by a conditional use permit. So this is a discretionary approval, which requires planning commission action, and then a conditional use permit may be appealed to the city council. The zoning code also has specific standards for gas stations and they're shown here on this slide but to summarize gas stations need to be cited on parcels that are of a certain area and dimension. They can be located next to residential zoning districts or residential uses, and then there is a concentration requirement, although there are exceptions to that. If the gas stations are located within 50 feet of highway 101 or highway 12 intersections. There's also a requirement for the physical removal of a gas station. If it becomes non conforming and is abandoned. And so I just wanted to take a moment to talk about what non conforming means because that's an important part of today's presentation and discussion. So what non conforming means is when land is being used in a way or structure was constructed in a way that was legal at the time. And it's been maintained, but now the zoning code has changed and that use or structure doesn't meet the requirements. So in this case under our current regulations, a gas station could become non conforming if a residential project developed right next door. And then if that gas station were abandoned for a period of six months or 365 days within a two year period, it would be required to be removed. This slide shows a screenshot from the zoning code, which is a land use table for our commercial zoning districts. And this table shows a variety of different land uses and the different zoning districts and then if that land use is allowed. And if it is how it is allowed. In this case we currently show CUP which reflects conditional use permit. And so, looking to the draft ordinance, if we want to prohibit the construction of new gas stations, we would show a straight through line here which would indicate that the use is not allowed. The column on the right hand side reflects those specific use regulations that I referenced on the previous slide, and we would recommend keeping that in the table as it relates to the gas stations that are currently existing. This slide shows or references that specifically in use section. And really here the change would be simple we would want to ensure that it was clear that the current standards in the zoning code would apply only to existing gas stations, just reinforcing that new gas stations would no longer be permitted. So back to the non conforming use discussion. If these amendments are made to the zoning code and the 46 gas stations become non conforming uses. We would want to make sure that it's clear what modifications if any would be acceptable. I've suggested language here that an existing gas station and associated infrastructure may be modified for certain purposes, aesthetic purposes safety or environmental purposes. So long as those modifications didn't intensify or expand any of the fossil fuel infrastructure. So this slide is intentionally blank, but it includes a number of topics that I would appreciate feedback on as we move forward in drafting this ordinance and so I'm going to raise a few questions. And I would love to come back to the slide after this presentation just to focus today's discussion. So one is permitted modification so I just talked through some allowances for the existing gas station so aesthetic safety or environmental modifications. I would appreciate feedback on if that seems appropriate if if any of those should perhaps be removed or if there's anything that should be added in as acceptable. And then you know to go further into this. A fuel pump breaks at an existing gas station. Would we allow that to be replaced, or would we say no, because that's not technically an expansion, but it is. It would relate to the fossil fuel infrastructure. The question relates to the removal requirements so I spoke earlier about the requirement to remove an abandoned gas station. If it if it's abandoned for a period of six months or 365 days in two years. So given that these gas stations would become non conforming. Would we want to adjust that number in any way, or does the six month or 365 day time frame still seem appropriate. During the May subcommittee meeting I heard that there was not any interest in adding language related to electric vehicle charging. And I just like to confirm that that is still the case. And as it relates to the effective date, we did have some discussion about pipeline projects so that would be an application that's currently being reviewed by the city, and how a draft ordinance would affect that that project. So as, as we currently go through the ordinance adoption process it takes 31 days from the second reading by the city council. And so any project that is processed after that effective date would need to comply with the current zoning code standards. We do have the option to add in some language if that's of interest and just to provide a little bit of data we have one gas station application under review currently. And then the last piece relates to community outreach and we tailor our community outreach depending on what the proposal is and what the policy is. This is obviously a citywide effort, and we would certainly like to engage the community as we can and so I would appreciate if the subcommittee has any specific recommendations as to how they would like to see community outreach occur for this ordinance. So this last slide here just reflects next steps. This subcommittee meeting will help us to get all the details to complete the draft ordinance. Following that draft, we would move forward to the planning commission for a public hearing and following the planning commission recommendation would take this item to city council for action. That concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. And then we can go back to the feedback slide if that helps for discussion. Okay, thank you so much Amy and thank you for all your work on this. I have two primary questions. One is just about the process. Is it anticipated that with direction from the subcommittee today that you'll be able to then have your next step at the planning commission, or was your intention to bring it back to the subcommittee one time for review of the draft ordinance. I think we can get enough detail today just because our questions are focused to proceed to the planning commission without returning to the subcommittee. I think that was that was my hope. So I'm glad to hear that the second for the one application that's pending. If you could just let us know or remind us where is it being proposed and does it fall into one of the equity priority equity areas. Yeah, I, I can. This gas station is located at the intersection of highway 12 and middle rink and and I can what I can do on the side is just put that plug that into our mapping system and make sure that I have the location right with our equity priority layer and report back in just a few minutes. Yeah, I don't, I don't think it was. And I think it is not one of them, but I just wanted to confirm for the discussion and maybe what we'll do is after Natalie gets a chance to ask any questions she has maybe we'll go to public comment first and you can look during the comment period as well. Sounds great. Natalie any questions. No questions, just ready when we do the feedback. Okay, we'll go to public comments then. So if you are interested in providing comment hit the raise and feature will start with Woody, and we'll go to Michael. And co-host are you able to share the timer screen. Who has the screen. The amador is our co-hosts. She was having some technical issues but I have a time on my phone to contract that way so Mr. Hastings I'll allow you to speak and go ahead and unmute. Okay, can you hear me. Okay. Okay. Hi, thank you. My name is Woody Hastings. And I am here representing the coalition opposing new gas stations thanks for the opportunity to speak. I'm glad this is back on the agenda I know you're juggling a lot of priorities so really appreciate it being back on the agenda. Thank you so much for the presentation it looks like things are generally on the right track, you know, a prohibition and a prohibition of expansion of fueling facilities at existing gas stations. I do want to just mention that there's actually two we track gas station proposals in Sonoma County really closely. There are two proposals within the city of Santa Rosa the other one is that correct the one is at 43 middle rink and road it's an existing and existing 711 and they want to put gas pumps in there the other one is at 874 north right road at the far other end of the city on the west side. Okay. I think the Congress actually has an appeal filed on the on that on that proposal from the subdivision subcommittee in the planning division from December 2019. Anyway, I'm moving on. I'm wondering is, can the city do what both Petaluma and runner park did which was to adopt an urgency ordinance, imposing a moratorium on any new applications coming in that really gives staff and the city council and other stakeholders a good time to craft a good, you know, a good ordinance on that works for that works for everyone and, you know, I just think that that might be a good idea it's what Petaluma did is what runner park did on January 25. So I think that all other points really quick here from some of the things that were raised I think you know the removal of gas stations is a very, there's a lot to that and remediation of the leaking underground storage tanks that typically do leak those underground storage tanks. So that's a big part of that regarding EV charging. The only thing I'll say about that is that nothing in the city's code I think should impede the expansion of EV charging and the places where they make sense where people are already parking for, you know, a length of time. And I think that is everything I wanted to say. So thank you very much. Woody, before you're completely gone. And I'll ask if other people want to address this as well. One of the questions Amy asked that we'd like the public to give feedback on is things such as the replacement of the broken infrastructure that's technically not an expansion but it but it is a replacement. So, I'll give you a chance to answer that would if you want and then for folks who have your hands up if you have an opinion. Feel free to share that in your comments. Thank you. I had thought about that. And, you know, I don't think that we would really oppose. I don't think that that is something that should be in the city's code to prohibit replacing a broken pump. The concern would be is if there's some kind of gas station reconstruction where they're talking about installing underground storage tanks that that are specified to last for 40 years. It seems like a that kind of magnitude of a of a change would be something that would be problematic. And of the 46 gas stations operating I'll bet you a lot of those underground storage things are leaking and so there might be a project to replace those and I think that would be a really bad idea. I think that a broken pump is something that we probably would not, you know, suggest should be prohibited in the code. Okay, thanks buddy. We'll go to Michael followed by Jenny. Can you hear me okay. Thanks so much for your time again. I just want to reiterate what would he said I think that it's so obvious when the Council passed climate emergency resolution, a little over two years ago. It's really incongruent with your climate objectives to really permit new gas stations on its face it's it's so obvious. So, and I also agree with setting some sort of moratorium while you're getting the final draft and order. So we don't see a big rush for new permits. As the word gets out. I think that's really important piece. And lastly, it's both a question and a comment and that is, you know, for the non conforming and broken gas stations that are abandoned. The new pays for remediation. Often it falls back on the taxpayers. And, you know, that that I think has to be fixed and a quick example of that is, I had in, it's not in center Rosa but in in San Francisco had a medical office building on South Main Street empty lot next to me, nor be about the property to build live workspaces, which I really was behind and advocated. In the process they found hidden gas tanks. They had to dig down 40 feet, had a mound of dirt, at least that high and my whole building was always full of dust, and spent months to kind of clean it up then the city and county comes to me as a next door neighbor and says, we'd like to put in a monitoring table in your parking lot. And, you know, I do environmental medicine, and I had no clue this was going on that perhaps it can reach into my property, because the ground tables water ground table and so basketball is pretty, pretty high. So we asked, they monitored for three years post cleanup and still found toxic loads that really impeded my ability to sell my property devalued my property because of that. It's just a backstory it's not nobody's problem but I'm sure there are many other folks out there who've had a similar experience so the cleanup who pays for it. And long term, you know, if we're going to save this planet, we can have gas stations. They're great ideas about converting those to electric charge stations aesthetically, a whole variety of things so thank you for your time. And we'll talk to you later. Alright, thank you Michael will go to Jenny followed by Mark. Mr Mayor, I have a copy of the timer to try to share my screen and run it. Hello, can you hear me. This is Jenny. Okay, thank you very much. Yeah, Jenny Blaker I'm also co coordinator of the coalition opposing new gas stations. Thank you very much for bringing this back. Thank you so much to Amy Nicholson for her presentation and doing all the background research. I would say I have four specific comments one is to keep it simple and clear and focused on no new gas stations, and no expansion of existing gas stations, i.e. no new infrastructure like new pumps, etc existing ones. EV charging has nothing to do with it. Don't mention it. EV charging should be where people already park their cars for any length of time, like where they live where they work with shopping centers, medical center, sports centers. Nobody wants to be charging their electric car while they sit in a gas station breathing in the fumes and we don't want any link between the two. It's a completely different thing. I would say if some sort of replacement of something broken like a broken pump is needed for safety and environmental protection, then yes it should be fixed. But what we don't want to see as Woody mentioned is something like a new tank being installed, which is designed to last 40 years and prolong the life of that gas station for another 40 years. I would call that was expansion into the future, so I hope I hope that helps with some of the comments and I think that a lot of people. We have a lot of people on our congas mailing lists and I believe from the discussions we've had with our steering group and others that pretty much everyone we've spoken to would be in line with, you know, with what we're saying. And I'd say, sooner it can go to the planning commission the better. But if it would be a good idea to have an urgency moratorium right now as soon as possible to give staff time to work out the exact wording and details for a permanent prohibition. That would be great. Again to stop to stop sort of last minute applications sneaking in just before you, you pass the prohibition the permanent prohibition. Thank you very much for all your work on it and the time to comment. That's it. Thank you for joining us Mark, followed by Alexa. Thank you. Oh, ready. Thank you. Yeah. Good afternoon. And thanks for the opportunity. My name is Mark Mortensen district five resident. I'm going to keep my mark short because I don't want to be repetitive here, but I just wanted to thank the committee for placing this resolution gas station prohibition ordinance on the on the agenda. And I urge the committee to prioritize the city councils adopting this gas station prohibition ordinance as soon as possible. For all the reasons that have been given so well by public and, and others. Maybe, you know, the intent for the eventual ordinance could be more quickly accomplished by, I guess, like Jenny said, adopting an urgency ordinance such as Petaluma and I think Ronan Park it was such an ordinance could place a moratorium on the city accepting any new gas station permits applications. As the full ordinance is being developed. I'm wondering if at some point here we could get a rough timeframe for the proposed ordinance. Lastly, I guess I just suggest that in order to expedite expedite action here that the city council stay focused on the prohibition of new gas stations and not get into into how existing gas stations could be modified. And so on, except to limit expansion of increased feeling. I think the market will probably dictate how gas stations eventually where which way they go. So that's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much for your time. So much Mark, go to Alexa followed by Steve. Hi everybody can you hear me. Yes, again. Thanks so much for your time today and thank you Amy Nicholson for that very clear presentation and for all the work that went into compiling that data. This is a, this is a step that the city could take that's really important to my family and especially to my very climate concern children who are looking to leadership from the, you know, from their city leaders to help transition to a more sustainable future. I especially appreciate the intersectionality here of racial equity economic equity and climate equity, and I appreciate the mapping you did to show the local impacts but I also just wanted to remind everybody that the inequitable impacts of gas go down in Richmond are fueling stations there's a trail of environmental injustice with the refining and the drilling as well and I'm sure our neighbors down in Richmond, many of whom I work with on community organizing would appreciate not having their air spoiled by the refineries as well so this is a long term transition that we need to make for an equitable society. I just wanted to mention that I support what people said before about a urgency moratorium on accepting new applications until the city council has had a chance to finalize whatever is going to be finalized. And in respect to your particular question Mayor Rogers. You know I appreciate what a gray area that creates about like okay what about this, this part of the pump or you know like, what exactly can you replace and I'm wondering if there's anything that could be done around like case by case. You know, update applications or if that would be overly complex, I think I would prefer getting it done over making it overly complex, but if there was a way to say you can replace this much of the gas pump but not an underground storage tank, etc, or if there would be an appeals process for you know if there was an environmental hazard with a tank, obviously you don't want to leave that untreated so that would be my concern there. Thank you so much for your time and you're really good work on this. Let's go to Steve followed by Mike. Thank you Mayor Rogers and Natalie. I really want to commend the work that's going into this, both by the staff and by witty and Jenny. I have walked around all these issues. I think enough. It's time to move forward. And I just want to affirm what you're doing and move as quickly as possible to get it done. Thank you. Mike, followed by Christian Tom. Hi, this is Mike Turgeon I represent the Friends of the Climate Action Plan. I won't repeat anything. The, the speakers have covered the issues quite well. We are in full support of moving this forward as quickly as possible. And, but I also would like to say how much we've appreciated the last few months with the sub committees work in that casting forward agenda items has been quite helpful and helping us prepare for comments and issues as they come up so we really appreciate that. Thank you so much. And I'm going to go to Chris and Tom. Hello, this is Chris Thompson. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. Yeah. Hi, thanks. Hello, everybody. I live out here in Oakmont in Santa Rosa. And I do support adoption of the ordinance. And I do support consideration of their urgency ordinance to impose a moratorium on the city, accepting any new permit. I do want to say, let's stop building new gas stations. We in California know what it means to witness and suffer in the teeth of the climate catastrophe. We have personal experiences with fire, flood, wind storms, heat and drought. We bring the power of our pain and the courage of our recovery to this planetary crisis. As we go forward, we must lead by sharing with the world real solutions wherever and however they exist. And this is one. Thank you. And I'll just say, I think my wife said it better than I could. How we feel about this. I'm Tom a model also live at Oakmont. The only thing I would add is if you look at the map with all the gas stations. It almost looks like, gee, you don't have enough gas stations on the our side of town, but the reality is in Oakmont, I could drive five minutes in either direction and be at a gas station. And you're using that that crowded. And then like to go to the gas station that's proposed to 12 admission, I go by a third gas station so it's like, we have more gas stations that we need. So why would build more and again, I think this is my wife was pointing out sends helps to create momentum around we need to move from fossil fuels to to renewables. So thank you for all your time and energy you put on this. We really do appreciate the work of the subcommittee. Thank you. Thank you, Chris and Tom, plus hand I have so I'll bring it back. So, my pleasure. Do you want to kick us off with comments. And Amy, do you want to pull up that slide one more time. Yes, I'll do that now. So, for permitted modifications, I was going to say that modifications. I don't think I'm not sure about modifications, but I think that if something is broken that it needs to be able to be fixed. So, I do want to, I do want to say that. And then, removal requirements, I don't have enough expertise to talk about removal requirements, EV charging stations. I think that there should be a fast EV charging stations at gas stations. And I think that that is for convenience for people who are traveling especially on certain corridors, I think that it's important. But that's just, I don't have enough expertise to talk about that either. That would just be my own personal like if I'm traveling somewhere. That would be convenient to get the fast ones if I'm not parked somewhere effective date, I would say as soon as possible. As soon as we can get it put in place correctly. And until then, I think if we can get something to stop anything else from going through that would be great. Because this has been pushed. The back burner isn't really a great phrase to say but it has been pushed back a little ways. And community outreach. I would say education education education indefinitely education around alternative means of transportation in different different ways so for me not necessarily talking about gas and gas stations but also what can you use in lieu of different rebates and things that families can use to maybe purchase alternative forms of vehicles and things like that because I think those are things that people don't know. So they don't explore things. Or they don't explore alternative alternatives than what they know. If they don't know anything else. So if we can educate the community that would be great. That's it. Okay, thank you. So for me, the permit modifications, aesthetics and safety, those are the, the no brainers from my end, absolutely don't want any type of expansion. One of our things. If the main purpose of us doing this is to make sure that we're not having folks put in infrastructure that is going to be hopefully completely phased out within 20 years. And then I get the concerns about the new storage tanks underground. And so that might be one area where we craft this to say it requires some form of level of urgency or some form of special condition to be able to do that on a case by case basis. But I'm going to leave it up to staff to make a suggestion to the to the planning commission on how we actually word that. For the removal requirements for six months or 365 days in two years. That seems reasonable to me. It seems to have worked fine so far. So I don't know that we need to mess with that portion. I'm all for easy charging stations across the whole city. I think that anxiety is definitely a thing. There's targets 110 miles to a charge. And so I get that. But I don't want to cloud this ordinance and so we'll work on the easy charge station issue separate from this. The effective date, I agree. We've had discussions at this committee numerous times. So I don't want to overload staff. So I know we're particularly busy. But my, my answer would be work with the chair of the planning commission to figure out how soon you can bring this to the planning commission and let's get this across the finish line. Would love to see it done. Before people are seeing the, the spikes and gas prices again later this summer would be great. But I don't know what staff capacity is. So I'll just say as quickly as possible. I'll work with staff if staff doesn't see any legal reason, not to, you know, with the two applications that are pending to bring a urgency ordinance to the council pending the discussion. I think that should be on the table as well. And I'm happy to work with the city attorney on that. Finally, for community outreach. I'm normally all for community outreach and continue to be. And also this one has seen so many public public hearings already from us in terms of our subcommittee. I'm great with us going to the planning commission and going through our normal outreach process through the planning commission on city wide issues. And an opportunity for folks to, to give input. But again, going back to the premise of, let's get this moving as quickly as we can. And with that, do you have the direction that you need, Amy? Mayor. Go ahead, Natalie. Clarification. Mr. Hastings, I believe it was mentioned that 874 North right road. I just wanted to ask for clarification. I believe that that gas station application had been removed or withdrawn. Is that not the case anymore? Thank you, council member for asking that. And I appreciate that was raised during public comment. It was deemed expired. And I think the latter part of the year of 2021, but they recently resubmitted. And so I was looking into that after I believe what he raised that during public comment so that that application is under review in addition to the one on middle rink and in highway 12. And I did confirm that the middle rink in site is not within any of the equity priority population areas, but the right road site is for high concentrations of people of color. Just for some background there. It just has a point of clarification on the graph. Because it is really interesting for me for the high concentrations for people of color and the high concentrations of poverty. You said that those are one of the quartiles based on county wide data in the, is this from the portrait of any revamp that was done. Those percentages come so it's census groups and then that top 25% is relative to the entire county. I don't believe the information came from portrait of synomics I know we had it prior to that being released but we actually have the trees available and she, she knows a lot more about this than I do so I'll let her speak to it. Thanks. Excellent. Just want to know how to talk about this with the public and make sure that I'm accurate in the representations that I'm making. Hi. In relationship to your question. Mayor Rogers, the information we're getting is from the census 2020 so our information is updated. I am not exactly sure if all the information from the Sonoma portrait is 2020 information I might think they have a former data set. And it can be American Community Survey 2019. That will be my, my guess because they, they took more time to finalize that report because it's way more comprehensive. But to your, to the point, I think we have very updated information. And the difference with the, with the portrait of Sonoma is that we have smaller spatial and geographical areas. We use census tracks. We're using census groups because we want it to be very comprehensive about the specific locations of not only gas stations we were not only thinking about that when we designed this work. It was thinking about policy and community outreach so it's smaller geographical area that will be the only difference with the portrait of Sonoma. That's helpful. Thank you. Any other, Natalie, any other direction. No, thank you. Cool. All right, thanks Amy we really appreciate it and we'll be looking for this on the planning commissions agenda next. Thank you so much. It's on to item 4.2. Peter you're going to take this one. Yeah, that's correct. Let me share my screen here. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Rogers and Councilman Rogers. Pleased to be before you tonight to present this item. I am providing update on some of the new requirements surrounding recently passed legislation state assembly bill 841 related to contractor certification requirements for electronic vehicle infrastructure. It was signed into law in September of 2020. It made several changes to utility repair funded electronic vehicle charging infrastructure investments and the deployment of those. It instituted new labor requirements which we'll speak about tonight for publicly funded EV charging infrastructure projects. And then it established a new program at the CEC to fund, you know, appliance plumbing and HVAC heating and air conditioning upgrades to schools using repair funded energy efficiency and centers. So, specific to the city. So, of interest to this committee that was brought to my attention are the new electric vehicle infrastructure training program requirements. It does require that after January 1 of 2022, which is this year. All projects funded or authorized in whole or by part the public utilities commission energy commission or the state airport. Essentially state funding that install a charging port supplying 25 kilowatts or more to a vehicle that at least 25% of the total electricians working on the crew for the project at any given time. And that's called what is called an EV ITP electronic vehicle infrastructure training program certification. A little bit about that certification, it is an 18 hour training with a one and a half hour in person exam. Those in person exams. My understanding are offered in two locations one in Northern California and one in Southern California. To be able to pursue the certification must be a California State certified general electrician. The course is of course 275 dollar fee for the exam course and certification. There will be some continuing education requirements, but you know, this is directly from the EV ITP website. The benefits are that it provides a safer quicker and more efficient installation of the infrastructure by having EV ITP certified contractors working on these projects. So, in terms of just what that means today. We are currently requiring project contractor EV ITP certifications for city projects, specifically where funding is received from state funding. An example is the recently approved design build contract for the EV bus electrification project that contract was awarded in April of last year with Cupertino Electric Incorporated CEI. The city and their union affiliates, you know, provide this requirement as part of, you know, their contracting for this job, and the city has, you know, asked for that certification as well. I should mention to that that project is funded by a program through PG&E's program it's called the EV fleet program. It's actually kind of a longer title but yeah it is a PG&E funded program that we are receiving funding for for that project. So, in preparation for this overview today, I did do kind of a cursory review of other municipalities and what they have done in terms of either adopting ordinances or policies related to these EV ITP requirements. One locally is the city of Petaluma, also the city of Maywood and the city of Carson as well. So, for an example here locally with the city of Petaluma, they adopted an ordinance recently that at a minimum one job site supervisor or job site foreman, the revised EV work would be required to be EV ITP certified. And further, a minimum 50% of the state certified general electricians on performing the work on each city funded project will be should be EV ITP certified. And then of course, records of those certifications should be made available to the city or the EV ITP program themselves upon request for the purposes of ensuring quality assurance checks throughout the projects, the life of the project construction. And then the city of Maywood and the cities of Carson adopted similar measures. They were policies, not particularly ordinance. The city of Maywood did include requirements like the city of Petaluma with one exception. It applies only to projects funded by the city that cost less than $60,000. The city of Carson, again, same requirements as city of Petaluma with one exception. The records requirement was not explicitly stated. But both are policies that are specific for contracting with the city for city funded projects. Obviously the difference is, this is going beyond the requirements at ABA 41 and applies to any city funded project, not just those that are state funded per the legislation. So yeah, just a consideration of potential policy and ordinance. You know obviously kind of the state of benefits are out there the EV ITP sets a consistent contractor training standard for new EV infrastructure installs. There was some cost considerations raised with some of the other cities when they evaluated this ordinance. Right now for instance that they're only showing eight certified EV ITP firms in the North Bay at this time, but more expected in the future. And then of course, there's a possibility that city staff may desire to receive the certification to as well. And they're pursued and oversight of various projects. You know, just as I pointed out earlier that some of the municipalities have gone above and beyond some of the requirements in AB 841 that being specifically the 25% contractor requirement or the minimum one journey level contractor requirement. They do not specify the 25 kilowatt requirement. I'm not sure if that really matters in this regard. But and then it just, you know, obviously applies to all municipality funded projects and not just fun state funded projects. So, just to note, any grant funds or state funded projects cooperative agreements from the various entities that were named in legislation would have specific ABA 41 certification requirements as part of the requirement of receiving that funding. So, you know, any kind of contractual agreement for a grant or something, of course would have this requirement built into it as well. So yeah, just I think for the purposes of what's being requested, the subcommittee today, you know, definitely giving you an intro and an overview of this legislation. And really just sort of identifying what the subcommittee would like to explore in regard to meeting this requirement long term. And, you know, I obviously work for the water part of it, I wouldn't be taking it this forward but I do have believe some folks are available to on the zoom call from, you know, both planning economic development as well as, you know, the planning official Jesse Oswald has worked quite a bit on the streamlining permitting requirements for, you know, the charging infrastructure that came around last year as well. So that concludes my presentation and I'll start to take any feedback. Great. So start Natalie do you have any questions or comments. I just think that the more the more training that people receive the better, especially if they're going to be. I mean, in this line of work, the more training that they receive the better so I would definitely be in support of exploring not only meeting but maybe expanding it to 50% of people out there that are certified. I think that that would definitely be be a good thing. It sounds like a, you know, to get people to really know what they're doing and to ensure that they are putting correctly, and it all boils down to me to safety. So to making sure that the workers are safe and also it is durable too so if the city and people are going to be using it, it is going to be durable and it's going to be long lasting so I think that if it's putting correctly that that will happen. My interest in bringing this forward is now that Petaluma has done a lot of the legwork, the legal analysis and has the drafting of the ordinance. I'm not sure we would need to bring the ordinance back to the subcommittee, but really looking to check in with the subcommittee and with the folks who'd be involved in bringing this as a as an item to the council. So I'll go ahead and go to public comment and see if we have any thoughts from the public on this. If anybody's interested in providing comments, go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom, or if you're on your phone, a couple folks on their phone, go ahead hit the star nine, I believe it is. Okay, we've got one caller. The number is 4,000, it will enable you to talk. Oh, you have been unmuted so you can unmute on your. Hello. Hello there. Hi this is Bernie caught here, the National Co chair of the electric vehicle infrastructure training program. And I just called in to see if I could provide any information or resources to any of the members of the council or the staff on every IPP. I appreciate that. You've got three minutes here with our typical public comment. What I'd say is it'd be helpful to hear what the biggest benefits of increasing the percentage like Petaluma did would be. Yes. So, to address that in the short time available, I would just say that the basis of EVITP, which was put together by a industry collaborative, EVIA industry collaborative, now about nine years ago, which included the auto industry and the EV charging infrastructure companies and first responders, utilities. The interest of that consortium, which established EVITP as a non-profit, brand-neutral volunteer-based organization was safety. It's all about electrical safety, protecting the safety of the inhabitants, the workers, the people who are around EV infrastructure, and to make sure that it's installed safely. It works safely. We don't overload circuits. We don't have fires and all these problems. So the advantage of having 50% over 25 is that, first of all, the 25 is really a minimum. It just says, well, we'll at least have somebody on the job. But the more trained and certified EVITP electricians who are on the job, the safer that job is going to be, but not only that, it's going to be more efficient and we're going to get better performance and better maintenance, better durability of that equipment because it's done right. All right. Thank you so much. Do we have any other comments from the public? I think then I'll bring it back. So Natalie, it sounded like, and tell me if you disagree, it sounded like you're in favor of moving forward with Petaluma's ordinance as a model and bringing this issue to the city council. Definitely. Yes, sir. Okay. Me too. And I understand it won't be Peter, a man of many talents, but it doesn't quite follow on your portfolio. I understand that. And so we'll work with staff and we'll put together the ordinance and figure out how to bring it forward here. Yeah, I can follow up with staff that would be involved and I do have Bernie's contact information passed over to me by Petaluma. So I can provide that too as well. Perfect. Any last thoughts, Natalie? Just wanted to thank Peter because he's just such a natural, didn't even seem like this wasn't his, you know, his forte, so he's such a natural. Thank you so much, Peter. Thank you for that. We'll move on to our future agenda items. Peter, are you presenting this one as well? Yeah, so we do have a couple items coming up in March related to the update to the general plan and coordination with RCPA. We're the staff and the coordination team that supports this subcommittee are working very hard to populate out a little further on that, you know, date list as well. But, you know, definitely have some good content coming up for the subcommittee over the next few months. So cool. Any questions, Natalie? No, sir. All right. And I will also remind the public that in a couple of weeks we have goal setting for the city council and that'll help outline not just the work that we do from the council days, but also push things forward at the subcommittee level as well. So be involved in that. Let's go to public comment on the item. I see David with a hand up. OK, I'm unmuted, I think. Yep, you are. OK, well, you're bringing up priorities and I just wanted to lift up the fact that the capital improvement budget got a lot of money in it. And, you know, it's a bit of a job to look at the capital improvements and see whether they are really aligned well with our priorities. And I just want to remind the council in this priority setting in getting alignment between where we're spending the money and these goals is important. And I would encourage you to continue that evaluation to see where we're spending our money in ways that most advance our climate goals. Thank you. I appreciate the reminder. Thank you, David. I don't see any other hands with that. I'll bring it back and Natalie, anything additional to add before we adjourn? Probably just very happy that we got the gas station. So moving along. I'm really happy that that was on here and we got it moving. So. Better than that. No, no mayor. All right. Thank you again to staff. Thank you to everybody for participating and helping to push things forward. We will adjourn for today and we'll see you next month. Thank you.