 y los miembros o miembros que deseen escuchar en español, pueden participar en el canal de español por clicar en el icono de interpretación en el toolbar de zoom. Parece como un globo. Una vez que participas en el canal de español, recomiendo que se despliega el audio principal para que escuches la tradición de español. Bueno, para los que recién se huren a la reunión y interpretación en vivo, al español está disponible y los miembros o personal que deseen escuchar en español pueden unirse al canal. Para unirse, ustedes tienen que hacer click en el icono de interpretación que aparece en la barra de herramientas de zoom. Ahora parece como un globo terráqueo. Una vez que se una el canal de español, se recomienda que ponga en silencio el audio primario para que solo escuche la interpretación al español. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll. Thank you mayor. Councilmember Schwedhelm. Here. Councilmember Sawyer. Here. Councilmember Rogers. Councilmember McDonald. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present except for Vice Mayor Alvarez and councilmember Rogers. All right, thank you so much. We do start our day in closed session today with items 2.1 through 2.3. I see no one in the chamber for public comment but let's check on zoom and see if we have any hands for public comment. Mayor, I see no raised hands. Okay, and do we have any prerecorded voicemails? We have no prerecorded voicemails for closed session. All right, we'll go ahead and adjourn into closed session. I'd like to ask Charles on the Spanish channel to commence translation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear Spanish translation. Pablo, will you please restate this in Spanish? Bienvenidos para los que recién se ponen a la reunión, interpretación en vivo. El español está disponible y los miembros o personal que desean escuchar en español pueden unirse al canal. Para unirse, hagan clic en el icono de interpretación en la barra de herramientas de zoom. A este momento aparece como un globo terráqueo. Ya que se unan al canal, se recomienda que apague el audio principal para que solo escucha la interpretación al español. Thank you. All right, good afternoon and welcome to the city council meeting. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Thank you mayor, council member Schwedhelm. Here. Council member Sawyer. Here. Council member Rogers. Present. Council member McDonald. Here. Council member Fleming. Present. Vice mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. All right. Mr. Assistant City Manager, do you want to go ahead and take it away with item number three? Thank you mayor. Item number 3.1 is a study session for the Santa Rosa Civic Center Project Feasibility Analysis Review. And this presentation is the second of three for the scheduled downtown city asset study sessions covering the 2019 Santa Rosa Civic Center Feasibility Analysis performed in conjunction with Jones, Lang, LaSalle and the potential redevelopment opportunities of select city assets. And this presentation will be led by the city's real estate manager, Jill Scott. This is Claire Hartman. I'm the director of planning and economic development. And actually I'm going to kick off our presentation. So Jill Scott will also be presenting but we also have a team here that has been working on this series. We have Jason Nutt who's with the city managers office Grace De La Rosa, economic development and Alan Alton with finance. Next slide please. So as Assistant City Manager has stated, this is a the second part of a three part study session series where we're trying to create our city's downtown asset strategy. So the first session, as you know, is August 23rd and that's where we took a deep dive in our parking district assets. So not just I think for a lot of folks it was very interesting the sort of state of affairs with our parking spaces and what's available and how well it's used but also the financial aspects of our parking districts and how that might play into challenges and opportunities as an asset strategy. So today we're going to do a dive into the housing action plan, sort of how it started, how we started thinking about our downtown differently, how we started thinking about our roles and local government differently and how we play into housing production. We're also going to do an overview of an opportunity for a civic center and look at our feasibility analysis that was performed back in 2019 and we'll take a fresh look at that and essentially looking at how by being strategic about our city hall complex goals that could increase land availability for housing in the downtown. It would also be efficient in terms of consolidating our government services particularly the city services which as you know are across the city and even downtown are sort of in different buildings in different locations downtown and also a serious look at the deferred maintenance costs of all of our assets but in particular the city hall complex itself. The third study session will come October 11th and that's where we're going to give an overview of our downtown surplus lands act how we interplay with the requirements about surplacing public land, city land and the opportunities that we have what are our assets and then how do we want to manage those assets now and into the future. So next slide. So big picture talking about housing, housing production. We play one part of it, it's a small part but it's a very important part. So as you can see there's a lot of different variables and layers that all leverage each other and interact with each other and at times can be completely chaotic because there's a lot that aren't in our control, right? But we do have quite powerful tools even though we're just one piece of the puzzle and I think an obvious one that we hear a lot of permit streamlining if you could just make the process go faster we should have housing. It's a tool and we have been embarking on a lot of permit streamlining particularly in the last, I would say the last five years we've been pretty aggressive at permit streamlining and that is definitely something the city can leverage. Fees, whether it's processing fees or impact fees or even operational fees for once housing is up and running. These are also things that we can leverage of course in balance with our other needs of our community and then adoption of public policy. So with this, the state may mandate housing initiatives or make directives but we have an opportunity to be more progressive than that. So to incentivize housing through our public policy making and we've done quite a bit of that where the state requires a minimum and then we go a little bit further to incentivize it. So these are tools that we use as a government to impact housing production and it's important to know how important that role is but I have to say the most important leverage tool that we have is our political will and so next slide please. And so this political will, this comes from the council you set the direction for the city, you prioritize our decisions in terms of helping us with competing values and so we've probably gone back further than 2016 but just as a sort of a key milestone for Santa Rosa. In 2016, we adopted housing for all as a tier one priority through the city council goal setting sessions. Subsequently, we went through a series of study sessions not unlike what we're doing with the city downtown asset strategy, working through the concepts and the choices over a six month period culminating in the adoption of a housing action plan. So it was adopted in 2016 which sounds like it was a ways off but actually this is the framework that we still rely on today to make decisions and I have to say it's pretty good framework because it's so multifaceted I don't get into it in just a sec. En 2017, we switched more particularly to downtown housing and one of the reasons of that of course was post tubs fire. We lost a lot of housing, we're looking at opportunities for new housing, focus on the rebuild but where will we put our new housing? Will we put it in more resilient areas like downtown? The housing action plan allowed us to move more creatively into development agreements, at least authorizing and saying it out loud that the Santa Rosa is open to development agreements that pursue housing particularly downtown and also using downtown city property to develop housing. So obviously since 2017 a lot has occurred that has, I would say slow some of our negotiation process but has never left the conversation. So we've been working on it this whole time, these concepts but to some maybe we haven't acted as quickly as we'd like but sure things have happened locally and nationally that slowed us down a little bit. We also promoted the up downtown toolbox which has lots of different leverages some of which we controlled like I talked about and others are leveraged with things we don't control but we wanted to promote in conjunction with what we do such as opportunity zones which are located downtown and in Roseland which further leverage the ability to produce housing downtown. So all these things work together but not one tool makes it happen. And again, we continue to make housing a priority through the city council's political will housing for all has remained a primary council goal. Next slide. So housing action plan objectives. One of the things that makes our housing action plan special is that it focuses on production. It focuses on practical elements to support housing. So not just public policy making adopt some more initiatives that say we want housing but actually follow through with the partnership to produce housing all the way from entitlements to construction to supporting what we would like to see downtown which is basically transformation of our downtown as a housing designation. The other thing is that trying to be proactive and creative so not waiting for things to come to us but trying to be out there upfront with some creative mechanisms to offer up land for housing, offer up new ideas and then always, always being nimble and attentive to changes in the circumstances and markets. This is not a static one size fits all. In fact, in the course of a year a lot of things can change and they do. And I think one of our success elements of housing so far has been that being nimble and creative. And if you want to know more about housing action plan we have our website there. Next slide. So housing action plan has five different program areas. We're gonna boil down into one tonight but increasing inclusionary affordable housing. So essentially that's making sure that there are other options than paying in Luffy, right? Having it actually be part of projects. Achieving affordability by design. So not necessarily by contract but maybe you increase the diversity of units and you make them affordable because they're smaller or just the way that they're, the economy of scale. So we're actually starting to get a lot of projects that fit that bill like the old fountain grove in projects and affordable by design. Program three is what we're gonna talk about more today which is assembling and offering public land for housing development in conjunction with other things that we need. So we need to balance what we think we need for our own public land. What value does it have for us? We wanna make sure that we're covered in terms of what we need to function as a city but then where is the opportunities to offer an assemble land to help produce housing and improve development readiness. A lot of that is permit streamlining or say, we just adopted the downtown plan. It created permit streamlining on just not just a practical level in terms of land use but it created opportunities for environmental review streamlining and also some flexibility that was needed for new downtown markets. And then lastly program five, increasing affordable housing investments and partnerships which as you well know, we've been as creative as contributing to the renewal enterprise district and leveraging city and county funds in that way. And then also shout out to our housing community services team which have been nothing less than excellent in chasing all kinds of grants and funds to partner with the housing community and infrastructure info grants and even the home key funds. So tremendous job in that area and especially in this last year. Next slide. So program three again, it's about making use of public land, our land, city of Santa Rosa's land and particularly downtown and leveraging that with opportunities for housing. So the first objective in this program is about if there's development agreements or other dispositions to always think about and honoring our interest in getting in pursuing affordable housing when we have the opportunity. So not losing sight of that. And then of course, like you talked about identifying which parcels would be suitable that we feel like we do not need. So that really is what's leading into what Jill will cover next which is the Civic Center of Feasibility and where that puts us in terms of different opportunities. So Jill. And next slide please. Thank you, Claire. Good afternoon, mayor, council members. And as Claire said, I'm gonna cover the whole Santa Rosa Civic Center feasibility analysis from 2019 which we also refer to lovingly as the P3, the public-private partnership. So back in early 2019, the city staff came to council and requested to put out an RFP and $350,000 to look into hiring a firm to help us with the Santa Rosa Civic Center feasibility analysis. Council did approve it and staff did go out with an RFP and chose JLL, Jones Lang LaSol, from the group, a great group of people that were offered to us. And so during that process, JLL and the exec team at the time and staff worked to sort of work on a goal for this project which was to increase land availability for housing and mixed use development through the consolidation of government services into a denser land use and thus providing streamlined access to services while still addressing our significant deferred maintenance challenges on the city hall site which we know exist now. Next slide, please. So speaking of deferred maintenance, in 2018, our facilities group did a pretty extensive study on deferred maintenance for all their facilities and brought that to council. When we were looking at doing the P3, we also thought maybe we need to look at the deferred maintenance of city hall even closer, so do a little bit of an even deeper dive. A couple of the things that weren't included at the time in the study were on the city hall complex was a seismic assessment, asbestos and ADA. So during the P3 concepts we looked, we went out and got a seismic assessment which was significant on the city hall complex. We got an asbestos assessment which, again, was significant and would require swing space. So it would require us to remove all of the city employees from city hall while the asbestos was being removed and the structure was being conditioned or fixed. So at that time in 2019, what we came to was a little over $50 million in deferred maintenance of just the city hall complex alone. Again, that was in 2019 and we know the construction changes that we've been looking at in the supply chain issues since then, since COVID. Since COVID and since we've come back from COVID. So if you look at this graph for a little bit, it'll show you on the blue lines are historical capital expenditures, really small compared to where we should be. The green is our total facilities budget, really minute to where we should be and how we should be taking care of our buildings. And then if you look at the red lines, this is deferred capital maintenance and total deferred capital maintenance with a 3% inflation rate. And we know that the inflation rate over the last few years has been quite more significant than 3%. And as you can see, it just gets more and more over the years. So in looking at this P3 study, we knew that we were in a place where we had to do something. We either had to consider a P3 or consider how we were going to fix City Hall. Next slide, please. So public private partnerships. Everybody P3 uses that word and it's used really broadly, but what really is it? So if you look all the way over to the side under the traditional kind of a project delivery methods and non P3, most governments over the years have done design bid bill. You design a project, you put it up to bid and then you build the project. Even now in larger cities and stuff, we're seeing more of a design build aspect to government projects. And then all the way over to the other side is like the full privatization. Again, sort of leasing a building, right? Somebody else builds it, they own the land, you just pay them a leasing or a value every month to exist in it. And then everything in the middle is what we refer to as sort of the P3. So you've heard us say this, staff say this and many others say it of the time, the DVFOM. So that's sort of the full P3 menu. And that's what we, this 2019 study really looked at and that's design, build, finance, operate and maintain. So the full suite of options. There are many other ways to do this and look at it when you get farther down and into the project, but it can be sort of a design build with maintenance and operations. It can be a design build with only financing. It's sort of a menu of options, but for the purposes of this feasibility study we did look at the DVFOM series. So the DVFOM basically utilizes an availability payment. And an availability payment is like most of us what we would consider our mortgage. It's our annual cost to do this. So the land would be still owned by the city, but the improvements are held by an SPV. So a special purpose vehicle and usually a nonprofit. So, and then it's constructed under some sort of DDA, a development agreement which the city's used in the past for many of our own development agreements. And then it's some sort of ground lease or some sort of agreement in that way. And then after maybe a 30 or 35 year and we're even seeing 40 and 45 years now term, then the building and everything reverts back to the city. So it is a little more technical than that, but that's the basis of what a P3 is and what we looked at for the feasibility study for the 2019 study. Next slide, please. So what were JLLs deliverables? JLL, when we went out for the RFP, what we asked them for was visioning and goal setting, a development of overarching and specific goals. They gave us a market analysis and surplus strategy. They did a lot of site analysis, a menu of real estate options, potential costs. They also had architects and an engagement team. They did the test fits and the feasibility analysis and then they did affordability and a financial analysis. So what would our debt service payments look like? What is that availability payment or mortgage payment look like for the city? And then we also worked with PFM at the time, which is our outside financial analysis, to work out methods or look at methods. How do we pay that availability payment? Where does that come from? And then the summary of conclusions was due back to the city on February of 2020, which it was delivered. We presented that to the Economic Development Subcommittee and then the Long-Term Finance Committee and had planned to come to council and then COVID hit. And it was put off and here we are today. Next slide, please. So we added this map into the presentation. This is a map from the downtown stationary specific plan with a few additions. And while we added this was two reasons. We wanted to show that we looked at multiple, we had JLL actually look at multiple places downtown and do test fits. Where would city hall fit? What could we redevelop? What would give us the most community benefit and take care of these deferred maintenance issues that we have? So we really, they really looked at all, at least nine sites were studied. And then the other thing that we're looking at is that the downtown stationary specific plan was being developed at the same time that the study was being done. We were pretty far along in the study and in the test fits when the downtown stationary specific plan changed to a FAR ratio. And so previously we had not, we had gone by stories. We hadn't gone into FAR ratios. So some of the things that you will see, the options you will see presented today, there's three options. We'll show a little bit lower FAR than what we would like to see at this time or in the new downtown stationary specific plan. But our architects have assured us that the sites that we're looking at could present those FARs and we would just need to, those FAR ratios. So we would just need to update this plan to be able to show that. Next slide, please. So program test fits. And this is, again, I keep saying this, but it's back from 2019. So things were, it was a little bit of a different world then. Things were different then we needed, we wanted more office space, a little bit bigger of square footage than maybe we want now, but this was what we looked at. The general government facility that we, which is sort of the admin staff for all of the city, we looked at what we have now, which is about 299 gross square feet. And just so everybody's on the same page, gross square feet is a little bit different than just square footage or net square footage, meaning that that takes into effect like wall-to-wall, floor space, utility closets, everything. More of the standard at that time in 2019 was about 260 gross square feet. So our program assumptions included 260 square feet, grossing at about 124,300 square feet for admin staff for general government. We included the central library and all of our options in West City Hall. And at the time we looked at 20,000 square feet for the central library. The downtown central library we know is significantly larger than that. But the library staff at that time and exec staff at that time were envisioning more of an urban size library, which may not be the vision at this time, but that's why you'll see the 20,000 square feet for that. We did include public safety, police and fire from the Sonoma Avenue public safety site and all of our conditions at about just a little under 63,000 gross square feet. At the time we were talking with the school district about partnering with us and leasing some square footage for a little bit of offset to the general fund. And we looked at about 37,000 square feet and then the county. So you'll see the county mentioned throughout the presentation because this is a presentation again from 2019 when the county and the city were both looking at their own P3s and had talked about potentially co-locating in an area. So not in the same building, but on the same area such as the city hall site. Since that time, we know the county moved away from that idea, looked at some buying or leasing some land from the city. And then of course we all know they looked at the Sears site and pulled out from that. And then at this time, we think they're looking more at their administration site. So although you'll see the county mentioned several times, probably not a reality in today's world. And we would probably look at more of a housing or mixed use in that area rather than the county. Next slide, please. So this is the first option that we looked at and we call it option A urban core. And I just wanna mention again, 2019 study, this is not a design by any means. No design here, it's just blocks on a page for test fits to see if it will fit and what we could do. You'll also notice that throughout the three options, there's other developments mentioned or housing or mixed use, other amenities. There were many things on the table of what that could be. And so we tried to leave it kind of general because if we were to move forward with something like this, the next phase is really a lot of public engagement internal and external that would really tell us, you know, inform us on what would go here. So we left it very general throughout for the next process. So this option moves City Hall to the White House site, which is a lot seven, I believe. It's about 194,000 square feet and the FAR shown here for the White House site is 3.3. Now we know today in our downtown station or specific plan, we'd like to at least meet a FAR of four, an FAR of four, which we don't in this particular study because of the timing, but as I said before, the architects have ensured us that the site itself could meet that ratio. There's just a couple of things that would make it difficult. Having the fire station moves there, fire stations are not usually more than two stories. So we may would need, we could potentially move the fire station to a different facility or a different location. Also this looks at about six stories for City Hall. We know if we go over or from what our studies informed that if we go over really seven stories for our facility that really changes the cost of construction quite a bit. So those are things that if we were to move forward with something like this, we would wanna update. And then this leaves the police station at Sonoma Avenue would go out to Municipal Services Center South in which a few slides later, I'll go over with you. And this is option number one. Next slide please. And then option B, which they called the City Hall Gateway was a rebuild of City Hall on the current City Hall site. Every, everything that we looked at on City Hall would do two things. Most of them would close off first street to traffic and would also open up the creek. So we know Prince Memorial Greenway is open to the West but goes underground and around the outside of City Hall to the East. All of these options would open up the creek and create pathways and open green space. Also address any kind of flooding concern that there could be from that. It would do a six to seven story City Hall facility. And then as we said, we said other mixed use, other developments at the time we were thinking other developments could potentially be the county but this could all be housing, it could be mixed use, it could be civic space. Again, open to public engagement and councils and council. This was, let's see, 960,000 square feet and an FAR4. Next slide please. Apologize to jump in but it also might be helpful if you could just explain for folks watching in the public what the FAR is and why it, how it's calculated, why it's significant. Yeah, and I'm actually going to turn that question over to Claire since that's really her area. Yes, thank you. So, yeah, FAR is floor area ratio. And I'm going to explain it in as most simple terms as I can because I think actually that's more helpful than the technical analysis of all the different things you can do with FAR. The idea of FAR is flexibility. So instead of having a set height, like eight stories or whatever it's going to be where everything is building up to the same envelope, it allows lots of flexibility. As you can see on some of these diagrams, some areas of the lot to be not disturbed with building and others to be a lot higher. So by going with floor area ratio, for example, if you have an eight, that means that if you covered your entire site 100% from property line to property line, you could go up eight stories. That's one model, but the flexibility of using FAR and you would say, oh, you have a eight foot, or yeah, eight story height cap, but FAR allows you to be much more flexible. So if you only wanted to build your building on say half the site, then you could save half your site from building. You could have open space or plazas or whatnot, more creative space, and then it would give you the opportunity to go up to 16 feet on the second half of the site. So again, 100% coverage. FAR of eight means eight stories. If you have a FAR of eight, but you only do half the coverage, you can go up to 16 if that helps explain in general how that flexibility works. And of course, and as you can see in these modules, everything in between is possible as well. And it really helps our developers because, or any further development because it creates custom design as opposed to a uniform thing that happens across a streetscape. So that's what that is, I hope that helps. Okay, thank you, Claire. So I'm not sure where I was on this, so I'll go back a little bit. We looked at, I think we looked at all of this, but a city hall of, again, of around six stories, potentially seven stories, open the creek, and of course, other development, which could be housing, mixed use could be anything you can really imagine. Next slide, please. And then here we are at the last option, which is option C, which was the Civic Service Hub. So this is moving all of the city services and rebuilding them on the current city hall and city hall annex site. So this puts the city hall facility at about seven stories, opens up the creek, again closes off First Street, moves public safety and fire, and a warm EOC, Emergency Operations Center, includes fleet parking, and then also leaves room for other development, which could be housing, could be, again, anything that council and the community wanted to see in this location. And just for reference, option A, which was moving the city hall to the White House site at the time in 2019 was the preferred option and the recommendation of staff. Next slide, please. So I spoke to you a little bit earlier about moving the public safety building, or excuse me, the police operations center, the main police station out to MSC South, which is off the Stony Point Road on city locations. There were two locations at the time in 2019 that were identified. This would leave a substation at the main downtown facility and then the main offices out here. And by far, these two locations, the one on the bottom and the red hatch was the most preferred by staff and police management at the time, which has changed since then. But that would take the MSC South, Municipal Services Center South Building and rebuild it to a two-story police administration building. It would leave fleet and staff parking for police and also visitor parking. The second location, which was not the preferred location, but is shown on here, would be to create the police station what is now the existing Westside Transfer Station and reduce the area of the transportation and make more of a bus turnout rather than a whole transfer station. It would have police fleet parking and visitor parking, but really left no staff parking and would move it down to the UFO, which is not ideal. Next slide, please. So here is the conceptual cost comparisons that we looked at. So again, really, really important. These are 2019 estimates. This is prior to COVID. This is not taken into consideration the construction cost increases. It does not take into consideration the supply chain issues. And it also does not take into consideration under the potential offsets of land that land costs have increased. But we have not seen an increase in land costs that would cover anywhere near what we are seeing in construction cost increases. So these prices that we're looking at will give you an idea of what it was in 2019, but would need to be completely updated for 2023 numbers. And so just for explanation purposes, we'll look at option A, which was moving city hall to the White House site. The total estimated project cost in 2019 was about $283 million. We had potential surplus sites and we just put everything on the table. Central library, because we've been moving the library with us, public safety building, because police and fire would be moving. We looked at parking lot 10, parking lot 11, and then the city hall campus and the city hall annex for redevelopment. And at that time, the land costs were estimated at around $22 million in offsetting capital, which would have left us with about a $261 million project to finance. The debt service or the availability payment on $261 million over, I think it was a 30 or 35 year period was about 15.1 million per year. The 0.8 million and the 1.9 million you see below that were some offsetting costs that could have been potentials. One could have been for any kind of enterprise fund that would move into a general fund building and would lease space. The other could have been the county or the school district that would lease space from us. That left to the remaining payment at the time at 12.4 million. But for today's purposes, we're not going to count that and we're going to really look at the debt service for about 15.1 million. Plus we need to add in our O&M costs. So if we had, we looked at the true DVFOM, so design, build, finance, operate, maintain. The maintenance, the operations and maintenance would be done by an outside company and that payment, that capital payment would start at around 2.5 million a year, but of course would increase as the building gets older and more expensive to maintain. So for conversations sake for today, we're looking at debt service in 2019 of somewhere between 18 and 18.5 million. So that's the annual mortgage payment basically of what it would cost. Next slide please. So we put the timeline in today because we've shown this timeline multiple times to council as well as some of the subcommittees and long-term finance, economic development subcommittee. We have only as a city completed a very high level test fit feasibility study. And that's what this is, very high level, would this work, can we do it? And what do we think about it would cost? We've completed phase one, which was 350,000 a feasibility study and a financial analysis, which I just presented to you. To move forward to phase two, if council wanted to move forward with a project like this, we would need to update our financial analysis and in order to do that, we have to update our options and what we were doing on each lot. We would move into an engagement process, external and internal. We'd look at revenue options and do research, project programming, transaction structure, we'd look at procurement strategies, which procurement strategy are we going to go with and we'd actually draft procurement documents. To complete that process, we're looking about six to $700,000. Next slide please. And then here's the fun slide, nobody ever wants to talk about the fiscal impacts and the challenges we have to doing these amazing projects. So one I talked about already, we would, the next steps, if council wants to move forward with something like this, we definitely need to update all of our financial analysis and probably our market sounding as well. And then two, which the next two and three, I'm just going to go over at high level, but RCFO will be available for questions after this and can talk about this in more detail. But currently the general fund does not have the capacity to pay a debt service, a mortgage payment of 18.5 million a year or anywhere near that. The funds to cover the deferred maintenance costs at the current city hall complex that we discussed, we also don't have financing for at the time, but if today council decides that they don't want to move forward right now or put aside a P3 for a few years, council or staff would recommend that council bring back a really detailed presentation on the state of the city hall complex and potential financing options to fix that. And then three, the debt service, to pay the debt service, the offset would be just incredible. Revenue offsets of that magnitude would be extremely difficult for the general fund and expenditure reductions would have just a really a crippling effect on the general fund operations at this time. When we originally looked at this option, all these options with PFMR financial analysis in 2019, the recommendation at the time was sort of a menu of options, but the biggest option was to float a infrastructure bond for public service and for the civic center needs, which may not be something that we would consider at this time, but at that time, that's what we were looking at. Next slide, please. So moving forward, where are we? City staff held the White House site. And I know from our last downtown city asset development strategy study session that we did several months ago, a lot of council and public wondered why we were holding the White House site. We held the White House site from consideration of redevelopment until we could bring you this full feasibility study and analysis so that you could see the potential for the White House site if we were moving forward with the P3. So today, what staff is looking for a couple areas of direction. The feasibility of moving forward with the civic center project at this time. And then two, whether staff should release the White House site for consideration for redevelopment in the third downtown asset strategy study session that we'll be doing on October 11th. Or if we can should continue to hold this for some future civic center need. Next slide, please. Next steps. So as Claire mentioned today, we're doing the second, today is the second of three downtown city asset study sessions. The last and final one is scheduled for October 11th. We're gonna cover the review of the surplus lands act because that affects development downtown and also informs us how we need to go about looking for development on our lands. And then we're gonna incorporate any council direction that we got from the first two study sessions. And then the majority of that session is gonna be staff providing an overview of all the downtown city assets and then requesting direction from council on how to move forward with suppressing any of these assets and in what order you'd like to surplus them for redevelopment. And along with a conversation on each if they're parking assets regarding replacing parking versus non replacement of parking in the downtown. And then Sandy, I'm sorry, could you go back one slide please? I just wanna reiterate today for council what staff is hoping, direction we're hoping to gain for today to inform us for October 11th again. So again, it's won the feasibility of moving forward with the civic center project. And then whether staff should release the White House site to be considered on October 11th when we look at the downtown assets for redevelopment or if we should continue to hold it for a future civic center. And then that is the rest that is the rest of our presentation for today. And we have the whole team available for questions. If you could please promote Jason and Raisa and Alan at this time, we'd appreciate it. And we are available for any questions you have. Great, thank you so much Jill and Claire and team. I'll look to council to see who has questions to begin. Council member Fleming. Thank you Mayor Rogers. I do appreciate the level of work that goes into this. And I think that this is one of those things that would lend itself well to a community walking tour. So we could actually see on the ground. I know four years ago we did one in the downtown and that was really helpful. And then there was also the facilities maintenance one that happened I think in early 2019. But to that and a couple of my questions are one around the flooding concerns. I'm really grateful that you brought that up. And I'm wondering if any one of these, I think that they all look fairly similar in terms of being able to protect us and enhance our security and disaster preparedness. But are there any differences in any of these that would better protect us against what we are expecting to be these megafluds coming to the community? I think probably Jason might be better to answer that question than myself. But I will say that each one of these that we look at in the redevelopment of City Hall daylights the creek. And that is extremely helpful in the flood studies that Jason did you have more to add to that. Thank you councilmember Fleming for the question. Realistically the challenges we have with flooding in the downtown on Santa Rosa Creek occur further upstream. And therefore the project of day lighting the creek actually does improve conditions. It gets us into a situation that we have better control in the downtown proper. It does allow us also to begin experimenting and working with those property owners where the actual restrictions exist to start to demonstrate how we can make improvements on their properties as well. But none of the proposals that JLL outlined and evaluated make conditions worse. They do make it better. But it doesn't relieve the two or three pressure points that exist in the downtown because those are on different properties. I understood. I was curious to know though to that. And would we be able to if we were to select one of these options condition the parts of the creek that are daylight or would be open for enhanced infrastructure to rebuild habitat that would be more resilient like let's say marshes or native grasses. I know this might seem a little out of left field but when I'm talking to constituents this is the flooding of downtown is something that I'm hearing more and more of a worry about. And so that's where these questions are coming from. Certainly understand. And there are definitely aspects of the creek flood study that are currently underway. I know the center was a water department and our creek stewardship team is actively working on looking at how we can best influence not only improvements to the flood issues in the downtown but also enhancing our community environment, enhancing the creek stewardship and making sure that it is a sustainable ecosystem moving forward. Thank you. My next question also about safety is have our chiefs weighed in about which of these models would make them feel more prepared to fight natural disasters or for them at our human made disasters whether where they're located and where their fleet is located. Our previous chiefs did weigh in on it. Everyone was included all. We had a attack team including both of the chiefs and in 2019 as we went through this process. And we did not include anything that they were uncomfortable with at the time. Now we have new staff and changing conditions now. So if we updated the study you could potentially see something different. Do we have a preference from our chiefs about any one of these models? Not from our current chiefs, no. At the time, the first analysis that we looked at which moved City Hall to the White House site and put the fire station there and the main left a substation for police at the City Hall facility and moved out to MSC was one of the favorite ones. Also the last option which I think rebuilds everything at the City Hall with fleet was also one that they had liked at the time. Okay, thank you. And then are we still in conversations with the school district about pairing our resources and because I know they use our City Hall, our Dias and so forth that they had all interested in working with us to have a joint community center. Last we had talked to them which has been a while, yes they were. And I'm not sure if anyone else has any more current information than I do. Right, because that leads into my last question which is with our new city manager and our new CFO is anybody feeling comfortable with the numbers? And oh, you mentioned we'd have to redo our projections and our general funding that we're not prepared to service that sort of debt liability or mortgage payment. I'm just curious to know where our city manager and our CFO stand and perhaps our assistant city manager might be interested in answering that question or if Mr. Alton is on the call, he might be able to help us out with that. Council member Fleming and members of the council. Yeah, the numbers are very large. Obviously, as you've seen the old numbers from 2019, they would only be worse now. Honestly, we couldn't afford it back then, we can't afford it now, so I'm not at all comfortable with it. So what you're saying is that we've got a big need that we cannot fund at this point in time. Is there a point at time in the future when our pension obligations start to come down where you might start to feel more comfortable? Obviously, the costs of everything will likely continue to rise, barring a recession, which none of us would like either. Is there a sort of an XY graph where you can say maybe in 2029 or 2032 you might feel more comfortable with this, given current projections? Right, well, our pension obligations are just one small part of all of this that we have to deal with with budget. And yes, while we do have some mitigating tools into help with that, we will always have pension payments. We will always, our hope is to be able to stabilize the increases to those payments and to be able to not impact operations based off of increase in pension costs. But what we see, if you look at the whole picture though, in the general fund, it's just there simply is not enough revenue that's coming in that can support a $12 to $15 to $18 million annual debt service for 30 to 40 years. It's just, it's just unless we had some sort of offsetting revenue to be able to back that off, then I just, the math doesn't work out. Right, so last question I hope is to that end. Have you worked with the long-term finance and audit committee to see if there might be a financial vehicle that could get us there or economic development to see if there's anything that might help us? I know the order of magnitude is pretty strong, but anything that might be useful in helping us to make this pencil if this is the direction of the council. So since the initial presentation to the long-term finance of committee back in 2020 or yeah, I think it was 2020, we haven't brought this back to them. These are things that we look at. I do work with our financial advisors to look at these types of things. And again, it gets down to, we don't have a debt capacity issue. We have a very solid credit rating and not a lot of general fund debt. So that's not the problem, it's the affordability part. And so that's where we struggle. We are looking at whatever options that we can have from a district standpoint, district financing and all of those. Those are ongoing and we anticipate regardless because even if we didn't do this, as Jill mentioned earlier in the thing, we have a number of city facility issues that we have to deal with. So those are things that we will be discussing, especially with the finance committee going forward. We haven't yet, but we are doing work at the staff level on that. Thank you. And thank you to everybody for your patience with me. Councilmember Schwedhelm. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just talking about the financing, Alan, you had talked about my takeaway from what I heard you say was we don't have the funding in the debt service to be able to deal with any of this. But when I go to slide nine, the deferred capital maintenance, do we have the money to do what on that graph is the deferred capital maintenance compared to our total facilities budget? How do we address that funding gap? So that is a big challenge that we have ahead of us. And it was actually something that I believe we have a finance committee meeting next Thursday and I was talking to the city manager this morning about taking a high level view of some of the impact that will be getting the general fund coming up over the next couple of years. Obviously the facility, the deferred maintenance and that is a big part of it. I think that there are areas that we may be able to be creative in terms of how we are able to pay for some of it. I think also it comes down to when we get to the point where we finish down to our books each year and when you look at whatever funds are left over that those need to be scrolled away and do accounts to help address these financing needs as we go forward or these maintenance needs as we go forward. The challenge though is that it's a very large number. And when you're looking at those really large numbers which everything seems to have the highest priority that we need to deal with because we've been deferring them for so long that it becomes just too much to deal with. So part of the work that I think we'll be doing at the staff level is parsing through what we can do now, what we can do in the near term, the midterm and then the long term and how we can go through any creative way of having the grants or any other vehicle to help pay for most of that work. But in the short answer of do we have funding available to address $100 million of facility issues? No. That's what I was assuming because sitting here it's kind of like we don't have money to maintain status quo and we don't have money or funding sources, solutions yet for some of the proposals before us. And I'm not sure who would answer this. I saw part of the staff report we had the seismic report for City Hall built in 1967. Is there a similar review of the public safety building which was built in 1982? Because again, that factors into the whole safety of our employees. I don't believe we have a seismic assessment done on the public safety building as of yet. We, the facilities assessment study was pretty comprehensive from 2018 but they did not include a few things which were seismic assessments, asbestos assessments and ADA work. Okay. And then on option B that was presented Where does fire station one go in that scenario? I'm muted, sorry. In option B, fire station one is at the current public safety building on Sonoma Avenue. So both, then it would be step. It would stay at fire station one, on Sonoma Avenue, fire station plus an EOC and police station would go to municipal services center south. So since the majority of the square footage for the PSB is police, what would we do with the excess square footage there? Because such a small portion of it is engine one. Fire needs to expand and then we were gonna do a warm EOC at that location. I would anticipate this capacity if we do go in that direction, capacity for additional services even with the warm EOC. But okay, thank you. That's all I have for now. Any other questions from council members? Council member McDonald? Thank you. And I apologize if my internet is unstable but I had a couple of questions regarding the creek. Were there any considerations of actually not opening the creek and just having that property to have available for affordable housing or for additional housing? I don't wanna be un thoughtful about the potential of what that could bring to the environment but I know it's currently would be probably pretty expensive to be able to uncover the cement and actually rebuild that creek. So I'm just wondering if that would help mitigate the cost if we were able to actually develop that land and not open that creek because of the potential cost if that could save us or if it's not going to help us with flooding potentially because of those areas that you mentioned, Jason, would it be maybe something else for the council to consider another option that isn't this was done in the past before I got here so perhaps I'm missing pieces of the information around this. Yeah, I'm happy to chime in here council member McDonald. Thank you for the question. I'll let you know that there was at one point in time a conversation that went around should we just simply utilize the entire parcel in its current format given the goals that the council had at that particular time, especially around environmental preservation. Opening the creek has been one of the primary primary targets that we've been wanting to to take on, not just from the standpoint of flood protection, but also from the standpoint of continuing to enhance the there there that's part of the downtown, which is the principal Memorial Greenway. We know that that's been a fairly significant centerpiece in the downtown and we wanted to make sure that that continued. So there was a very brief discussion about whether there was value in maintaining that particular space and utilizing it in its as is condition and building over the top of it. But between the environmental consideration and the flood considerations, we we moved beyond that and went and looked at opening the creek almost exclusively in every in every option from that point. There was at one discussion also working with the federal building, even though it's not our property, but work with the federal building to do the same. They've chosen at this point not to move forward with any of their redevelopment projects. But but this is going to be a continuous theme that you'll see as properties that have covered portions of Santa Rosa Creek. We'll be looking to see those opened up when development occurs moving forward. And as part of the studies that are being done on the creek, since you mentioned briefly that it actually won't help with the flooding portions. Do we get anything that tells us how much it's going to cost us to actually uncover that creek when we're looking at the debt service that we might have to absorb is doing that? I'm just curious. And then another part of my question is around property that the city might own. Is there any other properties that we consider selling to be able to develop the things that we need to? So I'll continue with the discussion about the creek and then Jill, if you want to chime in on what other evaluations for other properties. So the study that Jill presented, she's showing you pretty much one page of the financial aspect of this. And the study itself is quite quite detailed, even though it's a high level study, they did insert a dollar amount for the opening of the creek and what that would incorporate as part of the overall construction. So if we needed, if asked, we could pull that information out and return back to council with that information at a later date. But that was known at the time in 2019. There was a number inserted specifically for daylighting the creek. Jill, do you want to talk about other properties that we talked about? We didn't talk about selling off any other property, except for the property that we'd be using that we wouldn't be using in a downtown. So when you look at that one slide that shows the offset, Councilman McDonald, they have, we list for each one, other properties we wouldn't be using that we could sell off for those costs. For instance, if something changed and we didn't use MSC South, that is property that we could sell. If we moved recreation or parks from one of their other facilities and put them in City Hall, that is property we could sell. So there are a few other options, but not a ton. We looked at mostly everything in the downtown. And that number, because of the cost of construction going up, so astronomically specifically over the last couple of years, I think it's important to note if it's from 2019, what will the cost of that be now to remove those types of things? And so that's my concern, is that we're basing a lot of decisions maybe on numbers that aren't as current. And so that gives it as a harder trajectory for even Allen to guess on what's the best mode for us to be able to move forward fiscally so that we were able to meet those obligations, whether it's a bond or if we're going to be able to offset that in another way from the city. So those are most of it, but other than that, the presentation was really well done. I appreciate the staff reports and also the feasibility analysis while it was quite intense to read through it yesterday with all the different options. I do appreciate that information being included in the report. Thank you, Council Member. And I'm going to piggyback on one of the questions you asked, one of the elements of the P3 that's not particularly pronounced in here is the partnership aspect of it. Have we created any type of a consideration where an individual who owns land in the downtown who might have a more suitable site can bring that to the table for discussion? And we basically say here are our assets, whatever you can do to make the project work with your assets and leave that door open for discussion. That's a great question, Mayor. When, and I should have said this during the presentation. So my apologies. When we looked at this in 2019, we looked specifically at city owned properties. We didn't go to privately owned properties. Since that time, we've had several people address us with property they own that they would like to build a city hall on their site and we would buy the property and lease the space. That was not considered in the 2019 study. So those types of studies would need to be addressed if we were to update the study. So if we update it to today's figures, we would look at things like outside parcels. We would also look at reduced, reduced space, reduced office space. We could pare down the project a bit. But with the increase in construction values, it's not likely we're gonna see any kind of reduction. Understood. All right, council. Any additional questions? Councilmember Spadal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I forgot to ask one question. Can I just get confirmation on the property to the west of MSC? Is that undevelopable? I believe they used to be ponds of some sort. I'm thinking even non-necessarily building, but parking lots or is that just totally, we can't do anything with that city property. I think Jason knows more about that one than I do. It's probably dying to answer. Not dying to answer, but thank you councilmember Spadal. Those are former treatment ponds for the wastewater facility that was once there. Some of those facilities are still in use today as overflow for the good treatment plant. And at this point in time, under the current configuration out there, there is no functional usable space out in that undeveloped area to the west of the corporation yard. There could be potential in the future, but under the current conditions and the current operations that the treatment plant uses, it's not functional at this point in time. Great, thank you. All right, let's go ahead and go to our public comment on today's study session. If you're interested in providing comment, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. All right, I see Natalie has a hand up. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Great, good afternoon. Mayor, vice mayor and council members, do I send in a letter to you guys at this point? Super late. So I don't know if you've been able to see it, but most importantly, I did want to touch on the fact that we believe it's extremely valuable to keep the White House slot as future housing, so to not move forward with option A, which puts the City Hall site on there. Any housing that's built on the current City Hall site, no matter how much, un tiempo para llegar ahí, como puede ser entendido con la construcción de un nuevo sitio de ciudad. Entonces, nuestra idea es que, si dejamos el hogar white-house a través de la desarrollación de hogar, tienes la posibilidad de obtener un hogar en el próximo termo. El desarrollador puede venir y actualmente construir un hogar ahí, en un par de años, si la ciudad quería eso en el sitio de ciudad. Y esos cambios que pensé que escribí en mi carta, la ciudad actualmente ha tocado en ellos. Entonces, cambiando el país, no incluyendo el uso de la ciudad, obviamente, para los precios obviosos, y luego cambiando el desarrollo o el uso de la construcción de hogar, además de un par de otros. Esto podría llevar la opción B para tener solo la producción de hogar, es la opción A. En el pasado, cuando teníamos discusiones, decíamos que la opción A podía dar más hogar sobre todo. Así que, debido a que ha cambiado a un FAR y que las historias pueden ser aumentadas mucho, creemos que manteniendo, creo que en los términos de hoy, lanzando el hogar white-house a través de la consideración y permitiendo que sea considerado para el futuro hogar... Perdón, mi computadora. Para el futuro, el desarrollo de hogar sería ideal para el objetivo de las ciudades. Y para tocarlo, cuando veo esto, los dos primeros goals de las ciudades, como entiendo, es construir un nuevo hogar y desarrollar un máximo de hogar para la ciudad tan rápido posible. Entonces, nada más, que lo que es relocar la estación de la estación, la estación de los precios, yo entiendo todo eso. Hoy, en el mundo de hoy, cuando necesitamos de hogar, parece que la opción que puede mantener como mucho o producir como mucho hogar es posible en downtown, y creando un nuevo hogar de ciudad sería la mejor opción, y creemos que sería la opción B con algunos cambios. Y, de lo que estoy escuchando, no sé si parece que vamos a elegir una opción, pero eso significa que debemos ver el hogar white-house para que pueda ser desarrollado para el futuro hogar. Gracias. Gracias mucho, Natalie. Vamos a Calam, seguido por Evan. Buenas tardes, Mayor Rodgers, Vice Mayor Alvarez, miembros y staff. Mi nombre es Calam Weeks, y soy el director de la generación de hogar donde vamos a mover más, más diversos, más afortunados en la ciudad. Me gustaría empezar con las elecciones electas y las consultas que ayudaron a catalyzar este proceso y ayudarnos a empezar a mover un gran sentido de urgencia, de la imaginación y redevelopamiento de Santa Rosa para una propuesta superior y más sustentable. Primero admitiremos que esta presentación y la conversación que se convirtió me ha ayudado un poco por sorpresa. No estoy sorprendido que esto es muy complicado y hay tantos desafíos y constraintes que nacieron de la pandemia COVID-19. Lo que estoy sorprendido aquí es que hay muchas constraintes, limitadas soluciones, que están en la mesa, en el que están ahora. Y creo que, y perdóname si me ha perdido en la presentación que, seguiendo la tercera sesión de estudios, el consejo dará la dirección a, si vamos a mover el sitio o no, si vamos a mover el sitio, ¿cuáles son los sitios que prefieres sobre la publicidad privada, etcétera? Y de ahí, conducta un nuevo análisis de visibilidad que ayudará a informarnos sobre esto o no. Y yo, por uno, sería muy interesado en, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, y, El uso en el land es already utilized para el preto de la protesta y el guardia. Y si el chef de Cregan apretaría себе un idea bonita para relocear ahí, y utiliza la estación de avión de których lo lastimos, para otros por su iş pretendido. Y continuamente, estamos muy muy cansados de escuchar la acción de las escaleras de las calles, y願 brightestas, y no está持ada a la mesa mientras la acción se acerca. de manera que la ciudad de la ciudad de mirias que se les parece un gran largo termo de la ciudad vitalidad, incluyendo, creando un parque natural en la ciudad de la ciudad de la ciudad. Y, como nos notamos, hace pocos días, será genial ayudar a la budista y a la red de movimientos artificiales. Con eso, me reservé las preguntas y cosas más y luego me seguiré. Y me gustaría agradecer al Council y al staff para todo el trabajo. y no solo por la y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y y intercambiado sigo por responder no es solo deslizando el parque, pero realmente mirando en una gran oportunidad, no puedo pensar en ningún mayor error en el plan de nuestra ciudad que paga sobre nuestra principal natural water source, todas las grandes ciudades y ciudades, todo el mundo celebrar y revolver en sus Naturales Bodies de Water, que sea un río o un bay o un barco, un lago, y para pensar que nos pago sobre lo que considero la vida natural de la comunidad, creo que es una travestía histórica. Creo que es una oportunidad terrible, así que mi demanda a la ciudad es para no solo deslizar el barco, pero realmente verla como una oportunidad, y no como una gran naturaleza natural para deslizar el barco, pero realmente celebrar y ver algunos ejámenes en otras ciudades y ciudades a través de América y el mundo, que han creado como un punto celebratorio de la ciudad, donde las personas pueden ver el barco. Creo que me acercé a ustedes para abrir ese espacio y liberar el barco. No puedo pensar en algo mejor para Santa Rosa, así que gracias a los staff para el aeropuerto, y no puedo esperar para ver el barco libre. Gracias a ustedes. Gracias, Evan. Vamos a Adrián. ¿Pueden escucharme? Aquí estamos. Gracias, mayor, el Council y el staff por la oportunidad de hablar, como las primeras palabras, fue sorprendente y sorprendente ver esto en la agenda y ver esta conversación moviendo adelante. De nuevo, mi nombre es Adrián Corre, vivo en downtown, local de Santa Rosa, Yimbi. Creo que a lo largo de todo, estoy muy emocionado de ver los planes movimientos para desarrollar este sitio. Esa es una oportunidad tremenda para Santa Rosa para mejorar nuestra downtown. Como la primera llamada, Evan, lo que quiero mencionar es la oportunidad aquí con la luz de Santa Rosa de Creeks. Estoy muy contento de ver todos los propósitos, todas las opciones, todas las alternativas, incluyendo la luz de Santa Rosa de Creeks entre Santa Rosa Avenue y D Street. Así que, espero que eso no se vuelva un afterthought en Washington de la redevolución, pero realmente se vuelve un centro de la oportunidad aquí. Y un par de otras opciones que he notado, creo que todos los propósitos incluyen bloqueo o rompe el primero de la calle. Y creo que eso podría ser, deberíamos ver realmente a lo largo y a lo largo de eso. Creo que en el pasado, bloqueo y rompe el grado no ha funcionado bien, así que, a lo largo de todo, podríamos ver que bloqueando para carros y manteniendo este camino abierto para cadestros y bicicletas, ayudaría a mantener el flow de la habitación, y al dar más caminaje para la residencia del futuro. Sé que muchos de los propósitos que hemos proponido son muy early stage, pero tengo que mencionar que la opción A fue la única que incluyó la casa en el sitio. Así que, realmente apoyar y relocar los servicios públicos sobre un punto de estonio que parece que es muy conducido a sus operaciones. Y si eso frea más tierra para la habitación de la habitación, así que nuestros mercados locales de la habitación tienen más clientes y potenciales de trabajadores, que pueden accessar y patronizar esos estados y mercados sin tener que usar carros. Eso es un gran ganador para la ciudad de downtown. Y también, me noté en los planos, el barrio 9 es muy grande en todos los planos. Es ahí arriba, adhesivo de la propiedad. Y en el contexto del reporte de la inventación de parque recientemente, mostrando el surplus extraordinario de parque, les recomiendo que el Council mantengan esta oportunidad en mente con los planos, con la oportunidad de redevelopar algunos de los sites de parque surplus y cómo el barrio 9 podría fit into that. Con eso, muchas gracias por tener mis comentarios. Gracias mucho, Adrienne. Vamos a ver si hay otras manos. ¿Tenemos alguna voicemail pre-recordado? No tenemos voicemail pre-recordado en este item. Great. I'll go ahead and bring it back. And Jill, if you could just one more time remind council what pieces of input you're looking for in today's study session and a quick preview of what people can expect in our October 11th study session. Sure. Mayer. Happy to. What direction council is staff is looking for from council tonight is the feasibility of moving forward with a P3 or moving forward with updating the P3 as the first direction. And then the second direction should we open up the White House site for potential redevelopment when we come back to you on October 11th. So on October 11th, which is the last of the series of three study sessions, we'll be going over the surplus lands act because the surplus lands act has specific requirements for us to redevelop. We have to surplus property. So we'll be going through that will be including any direction that you gave us from the parking, the first parking study session and then tonight. And then we'll be spending a lot of time, the majority of the session looking at a map of the downtown, all of the assets that we have in the downtown going over each individual location and then asking council for direction on should we surplus this land to look for redevelopment options on it and put it through the the whole SLA surplus lands act process each individual asset. And so that's where why we're asking tonight for direction on the White House site. Should that be included in those assets on October 11th? Or should staff continue to hold that aside for a future civic center? All right. Thank you so much, Jill. I'll go ahead and start on Zoom. Councilmember Sawyer, do you want to kick us off? Sure. Thank you, mayor. And I'm going to bounce around a little bit. There's a lot of issues that need to be dealt with. And I find myself dealing with a conundrum here. We can't afford to do nothing. And everything that we appear to need to do, we can't afford at this time. And so I think we really have some need for some real painful conversations about our fiscal reality. And, you know, when we talked about development of the downtown, there were conversations around being able to take a site, not unlike the White House site, which I would be willing to. And there's a lot of compromise that's going to have to take place in the future. I understand that that's the nature of the beast. But I would be willing to remove that from consideration for part of our P3 and consider it more for housing. But we'd also talked about the possibility of being able to offer a reduced cost or free land as, you know, to, although not totally free, but as an incentive to be able to have some of the housing that we were hoping to gain. So it looks like our fiscal condition would not allow us, unless there was some creative benefit or profit for the future, in addition to property taxes, has narrowed our options as far as some of the incentives that we might have liked to be able to offer. I think that not deliting the creek would be a mistake that we would, that if we were still alive to regret it, people in the future would be damning us for continuing that mistake. And I understand that Councilmember McDonald's concern about the value of that land and how we might use it potentially for a more profitable use. But it was a mistake to cover it in the first place. And I think that it was, it's part of what our community has been expecting us to do. And quite frankly, the council, former councils have always hoped to be able to daylight the creek and as far as hydrology and how that would help in the future with potential flooding. I would be very curious to be able to have that conversation so as to bolster the need to go ahead and daylight it. I would love to be able to update the P3 at the same time. If we can't afford to move forward without that conversation, that fiscal conversation, then why would we update the numbers? If it's going to take us X number of years to move forward, the numbers will again outdate and we would potentially find ourselves in the same position that we find right now. So I would be very curious to know about the potential for surplus, what would really, what would give us the most value, what we could actually sell for a profit to be able to help. That's only one-time money. I mean, that's always a very tricky equation when we're dealing with funding mechanisms and future funding. It is one time. Once we sell an asset, it's gone. So that would be a very important conversation to have. But I think it really comes down to that painful fiscal conversation about what we really can do and how we can best access resources either now or in the near future, because, again, I'll just finish with, I hate to go through the process of updating our numbers. If we don't have a, if we can't plug in some major ability to pay for what the P3 might suggest as an alternative, we could pick A, B, or C. And I noticed that for the most part the numbers are pretty much the same. But I think that fiscal conversation needs to take place before we move forward. I'll leave it at that. Thank you. And I do appreciate, this is a lot of work that the staff went through. And it's unfortunate that there's not an obvious answer here at this point. I would love there to be, but I don't think that there that there is. I would love to be able to say yes, get that $700,000 and move forward with updating the numbers and the feasibility analysis. And without that, without the financial conversation, I'd have a hard time making that recommendation at this point. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Let's go to Council Member McDonald. Thank you, Mayor. I really want to say I appreciate Council Member Sawyer's comments specifically around opening the creek or daylighting the creek, as you're saying, and the benefits to that. And that is helpful in the context of my questioning and my line of questioning, because I am always looking at the bottom line of how much it's going to cost us and would it be worth it to just develop and the need for housing specifically in the downtown area, which we've all said that we're really committed to. My instinct is to go ahead and move forward with housing in the White House area. I think that's what it is, the White House area. However, I feel like some of this is we're putting the cart a little bit before the horse because we don't have all the numbers. And it's hard for me to have a full picture of what we're going to do until I have all the pieces of the puzzle. So I feel like we're kind of grasping at should we do this, but I don't know what we're doing over here. And some of it's just coming in a little bit late to this game of what you've all been talking about for several, several years. And so I apologize for that, for not really being able to give you a really thoughtful response specifically on this. But I think my biggest concern is we need housing. I find that that specific area might not be as disruptive to our downtown businesses, but actually could help be a support to them. And I know we continuously are putting it off because we're worried about how we're going to pay it, but the longer we're going to put it off, it's just like looking at our roads. It's just like looking at what we need to do for our infrastructure is it's just costing us more in the future. So I'll be curious to see what the rest of the council says specifically on this lot, because I think they probably have a lot more experience and direction of where we want to go on this. Those are just my first thoughts on this. And again, thank you councilmember Sawyer. I really value what you had to say about the the creek and and everybody's comments specifically in public comment tonight around that. So thank you. Thank you. Let's go to councilmember Sweatham. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I really do appreciate staff all this work. And as I think John had mentioned, wouldn't it be nice if this is a black and white issue where there's clear direction which way to go. And so the first question you're looking in for feedback by the feasibility of moving forward the civic center project. Some of us prior to 2019 did visit the city of Long Beach and look what they were able to achieve with their city hall site using the P3 model. And that's what really motivated me in the presentations that have been made to council with that. As other of my colleagues have said, that's the biggest net to crack for me. How are we going to finance this? And until we figure that one out, it's really hard to give direction as to what we should do. I know some options are out there go out to the voters when that makes me think about, you know, on this ballot, we've got measure H, which if that does not pass, you know, we may have another crack at that one. But that is a big concern. We also have another quarter cent sales tax floating out there. And so where are we going to get the funds to make these projects go? I just keep going back to that Long Beach. They made the P3 project work. But if it doesn't work in Santa Rosa, then let's figure out how do we get it done? Because I think we do need to continue with the Santa Project. I'm not suggesting that it's got to be a P3 because other cities have been able to complete civic center projects without P3s. So I think more research needs to be there. But I don't think we can stay just with status quo. I'm a big proponent, which, you know, options B and C had. Well, actually, all of them did of opening Santa Rosa Creek. The question I do have that I'm not expecting to be answered now, but we're not the only jurisdiction that covered the creek. That big building that the federal government owns is also covering the creek. And is that another partnership opportunity that not, you know, my hope that they would care? But if we're going to open it up, might we be able to leverage some federal resources that they may want to do the same thing? And then I also look at the state building. Every time I'm in there, there's a lot of empty space there. Is that an opportunity for some collaboration? And again, my first choice, when we started this discussion a couple years ago with the United States Postal Service Building there, that could be a better use, but that's not part of this discussion. But I think if we are going to be opening the creek and start talking, we ought to be talking with our federal partners. Again, just more feedback by the public safety site. Again, I like some of those potential movements to the west side of town because I do believe the current Sonoma and Brookwood site would be ideal for housing. But again, there are some other challenges with that. And lastly, regarding the White House site, I think housing is a better use of that site right now. And so if it would help with staff opening it up and seeing what other options are available there. My one hesitancy is that if there are developers, it's always great to say, yeah, let's open this up for housing. Is there any development or developers out there who are willing to actually redevelop that into housing? Sounds great. We can do our part, but we need to find those partners. So thank you. Council Member Fleming. Thank you, Mayor. And it's amazing to think that it was three and a half years ago that I think I sat on the RFP committee where we selected JLL and they came back with these solutions, which at the time seem to be really hopeful and make a lot of sense. And the first question Ms. Skah, you asked this is, do we think this is feasible? And it seemed pretty clear to me from what you and staff told us that none of this is feasible, but also that doing nothing is also infeasible. And I am not in a position to be able to pick which of these things is most feasible since we cannot afford any of them. But I will nonetheless opine on some of the aspects of these things that I do and don't like. One is that I am certain that wherever we move, we ought to not only daylight the creek, but we ought to make sure that we are working closely with economic development in order to maximize the making, the place that is there, there, and using it as a draw to our downtown space. I liked what one caller said about having some filtering for bike and pedestrians on First Street, if at all possible, whether it's something of a much smaller street or walkway. I know that we all go to the corner at Santa Rosa Avenue and First Street every time we want to cross the street here. I know I'm not being serious there. I think that's not a safe place to have cars coming back and forth. I am in favor of opening the White House site. I think that we have expressed over and over again as a council that we want to have housing. And given that it doesn't seem that we'll be moving into choosing any one of these options today that we ought to move forward with looking at that for the Surplus Lands Act, I am in favor. I'm of two minds. I think operationally moving our safety services over to Stony Point makes a lot of sense. It's just going to be safer and easier for operations. But one of the things that I think that having our safety department close by is that it allows for stronger collaboration. And so maintaining some office space here for if it's a satellite site or something like that in the downtown I think would be really critical for making sure that our city continues to feel integrated in that way. And then finally, what I'd like to see is that if at all possible, I know we've talked about infrastructure, increment financing and other sorts of vehicles. I would like to see us come back with some suggestions around how and when we might be able to finance this and I'd like us to come back with a partnership proposal. I know that I can't demand this of any other jurisdiction but I'd like to see as Council Member Schwedhelm mentioned us coming back with the federal government if they're at all interested if our congressmen would be at all interested in moving that forward also the state and the schools. If we could have four jurisdictions potentially coming together. I mean you look at this building we're in right now I can count I don't know less than 10 people in this room and they all work for the city or our elected officials. We don't need necessarily this much space 24 hours a day. We need it a few hours every other week. So what can we do to maximize our space and I know that my comments are not particularly helpful because you're probably looking for me to say A, B or C here but what I would say is that if I had to pick right now what I'd like about B is that it allows the White House site to be developed for housing and that all of them daylight the creek. So I know recognize that my comments are not particularly useful but I do think that they encapsulate some of what is essential for us to move forward. Council Member Rodgers thank you mayor So to answer your questions I think we don't have enough information. I would love to say move forward with the P3 but I can't really do that right now. I would like to compare what it would be to actually stay here and make improvements versus building new even if it's just a rough comparison because I think that that really will give us when we're looking at numbers sometimes people think if you stay somewhere that's existing it will be cheaper but a lot of times depending on the repairs and what we've seen it might actually be more expensive for us to stay at our current site and then as far as the White House site is concerned if we are going to build any time in the near future in government time that's probably some years I think that would be actually a good site and for us to incorporate housing in our mix use development that we're planning on having so with that being said I think oh oh grocery store can we look at getting a grocery store and then a partnership with that and in favor of daylighting the creek could I ask a clarifying question of you councilmember rogers go for it when you said White House site and housing were you saying that you want to open up the White House site for a housing development or you want to relocate city hall with housing on the White House site I'm sorry I wasn't clear I would like to relocate city hall and wherever we build to incorporate housing I thought that that was a pretty cool idea to do that yeah so I would not be I'm not ready to release the White House site at this time Mr. Vice Mayor Thank you Mayor for myself I definitely want to see the exploration of the White House being converted for for housing I think for a long time city council and our predecessors have spoken about increasing housing and how that can support the businesses that are here in downtown Santa Rosa so I definitely want to see that being explored there's a lot of issues here that are beyond my knowledge but what I can say is when we speak of the pride of of Santa Rosans it is our Santa Rosa Creek and I would definitely like to see that being exposed explored I think that would be a great asset to to showcase once again not only to to our Santa Rosans but also those that come visitors from afar in regards to partnership I think my colleagues have spoken to the possibility of great partnerships from our federal partners here beside us to a grocery store and and beyond so I would definitely like to see those being explored as well and I think that concludes my comments thank you Thank you Mr. Vice Mayor so I was talking with the city manager earlier about this and the challenge of the cost of doing nothing and the cost of doing something both being out of our reach and it reminded me a little bit of the stories that I've heard around when the city was trying to figure out what to do with its wastewater decades ago and the feasibility study I know as the story goes included shipping the water up to the geysers and injecting it and that was deemed to be sort of the non project that was infeasible and at the last minute folks swooped in and said actually we think we can do that and the rest is history and now we have a very innovative way of creating clean energy here in our community I recognize the challenge and what I'd like to do is to continue and I'm going to sound like a broken record continue to engage the folks who actually put these projects together to see if there's a mirroring of our aims and our assets in a way that we have not contemplated yet that perhaps would work financially and would become more feasible by saying these are the assets that we have here's what our expectations are in terms of deliverables for the city you tell us how you would use those assets in conjunction with assets that you have or not whatever makes the project work and bring us a proposal talk to us about what what you can do to help us to meet the vision of what we're trying to do in our downtown I think that our city has been very clear around what our focus is and what our tools are and we've worked really hard to develop those tools I think that the White House lot is one of the many components that should be included in that discussion I don't think that it should be on an island by itself I don't think that we should only be asking developers if we if we put the White House lot on the table what will you deliver I think it should be part of an entire package where we say here are all of our assets in downtown what can you do with these assets to partner with us in the true sense of a p3 to deliver for the community I love the idea of daylighting the creek I love all of the things that we've continued to articulate in many different plans for me it's now just a question of bringing those folks to the table to solicit either their ideas their projects see how they put the jigsaw puzzle together or even some unsolicited proposals that we know are floating out there of how other people would utilize what they have with what we have to deliver for folks that clear enough direction Jill great direction can I just make two quick comments looking at all of our assets and seeing what developers could put together I think is a fantastic idea I would recommend that we do that in a full solicitation though to really get performance from everyone out there that may be interested so that would be something great to consider in the in the future for us and then I just wanted to mention that there are some things related to price and value and purchases we may or may not make that we can discuss in closed session after the next session and some of those things might be values of land the federal building and the state building so we can look forward to those conversations coming soon yeah I appreciate that and I do want to actually punctuate what one of my colleagues said specifically about the radigan building through the pandemic and even still a lot of those agencies are not fully staffed and don't need as much room as they had and it does strike me that Governor Schwarzenegger tried to one time balance the budget by selling off some of the state properties and that was one of the ones that was on the chopping block there might be a partnership opportunity there whether it's with schools or the state or the federal that is a huge chunk of land that perhaps could be better utilized if we have that partnership in place when we move forward and stuff is to reassure you is looking into that as well as the federal agencies are doing a large surplus action our building is not in the first phase of that action so we are following that closely and working on that as well great thank you so much with that that'll conclude our study session we will take about a 15 minute break and we'll come back at four o'clock for our regular council meeting let's go ahead bring ourselves back Madam City Clerk can you please call the roll thank you council member Schwedhelm here council member Sawyer here council member Rogers here council member McDonald here council member Fleming here vice mayor Alvarez present mayor Rogers here let the record show that all council members are present alrighty we just finished up our study session Mr. Burke would you like to do a report out from our closed session sure thank you Mr. Mayor so on items 2.1 through 2.3 no final action was taken and direction was given to staff and council excellent thank you so much we'll move on to our proclamation for today it's pollution prevention and creek week I'm gonna throw it over to council member Rogers if you'd like to read the proclamation thank you mayor whereas throughout the United States the week starting on the third Monday of September is recognized as national pollution prevention week whereas throughout much of California cities counties and other stewardship organizations are recognizing the third week of September as creek week and whereas the 238 creeks and approximately 350,000 residents of the Russian River watershed are connected and mutually support each other making the Russian River along with its tributaries and associated features important resources to the people of Sonoma and Mendocino counties and whereas pollution in the form of trash and debris chemical from industry and other everyday living and sediment from construction and many land uses and activities all have the potential to degrade the quality of life and quality of resources within the Russian River watershed and whereas the city of Santa Rosa strives to protect our land and waterways through ongoing pollution prevention outreach to raise awareness of the harmful effects of pollutants to our natural system now therefore be it resolved that I Chris Rogers mayor of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council ask all members of our community to support efforts to protect and enrich our watershed health by participating in many pollution prevention week and creek week activities and to take active steps to reduce pollution and care for our environment throughout the year and do hereby proclaim the week of September 19 through the 25th 2022 and the week of September 17 through the 24th 2022 as pollution prevention week and creek week thank you so much council member and we've got a contingent from our great team here you guys want to jump on the mic there and go ahead there's a button to your right that can raise that platform up make it a little bit easier for you can you can you please speak directly close to the mic so we can hear you and it is recorded properly thank you is this better do we have the microphone on test test there we go get get right up against it is this better test a little bit better I think it needs to be higher I can yell into it if you'd like per test okay thank you mayor rogers and council member rogers with all of our creek week activities being held virtually for the last two years our storm water and creeks team es muy excited to be hosting in-person events once again for creek week our first event will be taking place this saturday september 17th where we'll be leading members of the public in a creek cleanup along the prince memorial greenway on sunday september 18th our environmental specialist and natural resource specialist will be leading a guided nature walk along santa rosy creek starting at flat rock park we will also be hosting two downtown underground tours one on tuesday september 20th and one on thursday september 22nd to explore the culverts that convey santa rosa creek and matanzas creek beneath city hall on thursday september 22nd city staff are invited to clean up the creeks near our municipal buildings we will have cleanup stations with supplies and staff to guide the cleanup along the prince memorial greenway at santa rosa creek at stony point road and at the laguna de santa rosa at the laguna treatment plant finally we will be ending creek week on saturday september 24th with tours of the laguna laguna treatment plant for anyone that cannot attend one of our in person events we would also have a number of at home activities available on our website at srcity.org slash creek week thank you for your time and we hope to see you out on the creeks great thank you so much council any additional comments thank you so much to the team and we'll be out there with you thank you let's go to public comment on this item mr. dewitt i think we're going to do a photo after public comment if you guys want to just hang tight hello my name is duane dewitt can you hear me yes we can thank you kindly i'm from near rosland creek the rosland creek census district in the city we want to thank allister blyfus the previous employee the creek stewardship program who did a lot to help us as we did our creek stewardship in that area waiting to be annexed once we were annexed into the city we were looking forward to seeing city staff come out to that rosland creek area also it's a really good thing when you have pollution prevention at creeks one of the dilemmas on the west side of town without as much attention as those eastern creeks as we get transients coming into the creek beds not just camping there but leaving their debris and their human waste which then washes out into the laguna de sanarosa and to the russian river watershed hopefully we can get this new team these folks to come over here to rosland creek it's a beautiful area do some walk through with the community they'll show you what we've been doing for over 20 years stewarding that creek now in the city of sanarosa and actually there's a new housing project being built right next to it next to stony point road and it's not the delineated 30 feet or 50 feet from the creek banks like it's supposed to be according to sanarosa waterways advisory committee guidelines so we're hoping these employees will come out and look at rosland creek all the way from west avenue perhaps mcmin avenue for sure where the city owns the land now and goes out to burbank avenue and then out to stony point road so hopefully these nice folks get that chance to come and work with the community do some creek walks there and basically welcome us as much as flat rock and all those other nice places get all the best to you folks thank you so much for your efforts thank you doine any other comments i see no hands do we have any voicemail public comments there are no voicemail public comments on this item all right we'll go ahead and take a quick recess to take a photo with the proclamation we'll be right back if you want to come on down all right thank you council i think we are able to get uh john soyer and diana mcdonald's heads in the background for the photo well i really appreciate that mayor i was thinking it was just council member soyer's big head i saw it on there so i take that lovingly thank you all right mr assistant city manager let's go on to our staff briefings thank you mayor uh item 7.1 i will be providing a covid-19 response update a few updates there's an updated covid-19 booster shot specifically formulated to protect against the highly contagious omicron variant and they are now available in sonoma county the food and drug administration has authorized the fiser booster for anyone 12 years of age and older and the maderna booster for anyone 18 years 18 years and older also in sonoma county those who are eligible for the new booster can obtain a shot either through their primary care physician a health clinic pharmacy as well as sonoma county's vaccine clinic at the roseland community center and also the lhi clinic at the roland park community center and keep in mind that supplies may be limited initially but sonoma county expects to receive additional shipments in the coming weeks as of today sonoma county has reported an overall case rate of 9.8 per 100 000 residents which is a decrease from previous weeks and it is also important to note that vaccination remains the most effective means to protect yourself from getting seriously ill and being hospitalized due to covid-19 and for more information about the status of covid-19 in our community testing locations and vaccine information for all ages please go to s o c o emergency all one word dot o r g thank you mayor and with that we do have one more update item 7.2 which is the community empowerment plan update i am going to ask the clerk to promote our deputy director of community engagement miss mcgally tell us and mcgally if you are on you have the floor good afternoon everyone good afternoon mayor rogers vice mayor alvarez i'm going to base here to provide the community empowerment plan update starting with the multicultural roots project the multicultural roots project exhibit will continue to be on display at the finley community center until september 25th this is a collection of items pictures and stories featured in the multicultural roots project i would like to note that we've received so much positive feedback from the community whether in person at the opening reception for the display or via social media and emails on how impactful it has been to see our BIPOC leaders highlighted and recognized for their contributions to the community and how significant it has been for our youth who many are already leaders in their own right and this month we will be featuring balacai morgan who you all recognize recently and he received a proclamation from this council en recognition of becoming the reach programs use of the year and just lastly on that item our team would like take this opportunity to thank this council for your continued support in elevating and supporting this important work moving to the her community hub we've had a great turnout on august 20th as we launched the first of series of community input sessions to hear directly from the community what their vision is for the her community hub we'd like to thank and recognize principal connie marx for hosting us at the rosen university prep campus which was a perfect location for the event we'd also like to thank vice mayor august for coming and contributing as well as other city staff and we'd also like to extend our gratitude to our partners at the sonoma county library who brought the pibilio bus experience to the event which ended up being incorporated into the input process as well because the pibilio bus provided reading materials for all ages in english and in spanish which touched on planning and building elements thank you to the children's museum of sonoma county who also provided our youngest and smallest community members the opportunity to articulate their vision through art and various materials it truly was an event for the entire family our next invitation is for saturday the 17th so this saturday coming up we are going to be meeting at rosland creek elementary school which is on 1683 burbank avenue from 10am to 12pm where we'll continue the conversation and continue collecting the community vision again the whole family is invited there is an opportunity for input for all ages we're working on securing meeting venues for future meetings given the belview school district to host some of the upcoming meetings and we just completed an interview with ksro a few minutes ago to talk a little bit more about the project and the continued work we're going to continue working with various media sources to make sure we're getting the word out and keeping the community updated we also will have ads on the radio that have the communication team has recorded recently so you'll find them both in english and in spanish inviting the community to this project to participate and for more information please visit let'sconnectsr.com slash hern hub project where you can continue to ask questions and provide input thank you to those that have already started submitting questions thoughts and ideas currently we have a little over 115 community members registered so that they can continue to receive information to provide opportunity to provide feedback in person or virtually online lastly we are starting production on our civic engagement 101 video series this month and we're going to have a series of videos that are going to outline how community members can get involved in the civic process on how to make public comments what some of the items that have been council meetings and really topics related to becoming more participatory and ways to participate in our local government and that is the end of my report thank you thank you so much deputy director let me see if there's any questions from council members let's see if there's any public comment on the item Mr. DeWitt hello my name is Duane DeWitt and I'm very glad to see that the community empowerment effort is underway one of the most important things is to also not alienate those folks who are not on the internet it's wonderful that many people feel the internet is the answer to everything and you can get a phone that'll connect you in but in many communities just having some posters up at the supermarket having them on the front door of stores and businesses that informs a lot of people just as much as your social media thank you to the team that you've hired and the efforts that they're making but an example of how things aren't as well publicized might be the word back on the first of september the city of santa rosa was using roseland schools gymnasium for a meeting of what was called the hern hub stakeholders and it was a pretty important meeting nobody that I knew in that whole roseland area knew about that meeting I only found out about it by chance because I was parking there to go across the street for something else when I looked in I saw that there were a number of highly paid city staff there there were a number of people that are quote called stakeholders because they're from organizations and groups that this city community engagement team works with but there weren't any just regular people from the community there I was told you could not participate you could watch I was able to have a snack thank you very much to the city and the taxpayers but there's an old saying if you're not at the table you're on the menu and that's what's happening a lot of times with these community engagement situations is people are having these meetings and doing these talks without really engaging a lot of the community want to thank some city staff who've been coming out to roseland now and of course our elected representative who's been making it a point to come and talk to people in the community more and more and that's a very positive thing we still need to have this opportunity in which we can get people actively engaged that's what community empowerment is about whether you disagree with them or not they're taxpayers they're trying to be participants and our participatory democracy style of government which i definitely support much better than the soviet style and the things that are going over in russia and ukraine right now we are blessed to be here so i definitely want to say to you thank you thank you mr duit mr frazier yes thank you this is eric frazier with the greater cherry street neighborhood association and i just had to follow my friend duane just because he is articulate about public participation and how we can inspire people to be part of the civil process through their civic involvement and it is really frustrating when you work from the grassroots up and you're looking to first of all get information participate in dialogue over that information which you would hope to be factual and verified as factual and you know so as a neighborhood organizer some of the obstacles i run into is people's hesitancy to get involved because well they've been around the block a few times here a lot of the homeowners in our area have owned their home for quite some time and even if you're a renter you've been around the block maybe you approach the situation with a lot of enthusiasm to get involved but then you're in a situation like duane just described where you show up and you get a box of raisins or something and a pat on the head for your involvement well that's got to change and it's going to change i know change comes a little slow to the snack of the woods for some reason but it's going to change what can i say but i appreciate you throwing more resources at it maybe the videotape series would work but i don't know i think you just need to have a little bit more of a management appraisal of how you're engaging your constituency if your job is to manage the people i don't know from the corporate world i don't think they would really see that you have a necessarily a winning formula maybe do you do now and you're rolling it out i'm going to stick around and be involved to figure it out but thanks again for duane for that information do we have any other public comments on this item do we have any pre-recorded voicemails there are no pre-recorded voicemails on this item all right let's go to our city manager and city attorney reports then jeff do you want to start sure thanks mayor so in your materials you have a monthly litigation report there are no settlements over $50,000 just to give you a little summary of current events we have about 20 active litigation matters roughly half of those are set for trial we do have two new cases one is a personal injury case for injuries suffered by someone who hit a low hanging tree branch and the other one is property damage caused by flooding and that's the end of my report thank you and Mr. Assistant City Manager Mr. Mayor nothing to report out at this time okay council do we have any questions on the assistant city attorney's report let's see if there's any public comment on this item and any voicemails no voicemail public comment on this item all right we'll move to item number nine statements of abstention by council members does anybody have anything that they have to abstain from tonight okay seeing none we'll go to our mayors and council member reports who wants to kick it off council member sweatel thank you mr. Mayor a couple things first going way back to last month on sunday august 28th downtown santa rosa hosted the santa rosa marathon and i got to be part of the volunteer bike crew that cleared as much as we could the lead runners throughout the course and i was fortunate enough to be assigned to the lead male marathoner i'd like to congratulate nicolas sozu it's t s o u t u sorry nic if i butchered your last name he was the first marathoner finisher he won by six minutes over his nearest competitor in downtown santa rosa was a happen place all weekend with saturday they had the 5k and 10k and then sunday's half and full marathon but it was great to see such an active crowd in downtown santa rosa last week i attended along with some of my colleagues and staff the league of california city's annual conference in long beach left that early to attend the ribbon cutting last friday for caritas village which is a great event it was a great event which demonstrates not only catholic charities commitment to improving the lives of others but also all of the community members who helped make this happen including the city of santa rosa this was a seven year project and today interestingly enough was the first day of the new drop-in center which formerly had been located at 600 morden which was a probably you know 50 60 year old building two bedroom house to the new modern facility that is catholic or that is caritas village so it's a wonderful addition or community additionally i want to uh congratulate lin maro bella who is the retiring ceo of catholic charities i think he been ceo for 14 years and also congratulate jane lind holmes who has recently selected be the new ceo of catholic charities and i think monday was her first day thanks thank you councilmember councilmember rogers thank you i was also able to attend the ribbon cutting and it was a very powerful moment because it is going to the caritas village is going to provide so many resources for our community so catholic charities has done a really good job with that and also congratulations to to jane lin for all the the work in the hours that she's going to put in now as being the head in addition to that i'm still working on the veterans day event and i would love additional input from local veteran organizations as well as veterans and not involved in organizations their family friends and loved ones so um anyone can email me and i will get back to you in order to participate and also give your input on the development of that thank you thank you councilmember mr vice mayor thank you mayor and you'll have to endorse me with quite a bit of time here as as one we haven't been in council chambers for a bit here and the world has suddenly opened up to events where we can attend in in person so with that i definitely want to reiterate the comments made by magali in regards to the event that we had our rup it was incredible shows support and attendance by our community who do want to participate in what is and what will be the hub at western it's it's it's motivating it's empowering it's it's it's a great thing to see children playing with legos and all these other things envisioning what their community center with the cultural center what the library fire station may look like so i definitely want to begin there i also want to uh mention that our police chief cregan our city manager marcia smith as well as our real estate director jill scott accompanied me on on i believe it was the 28th of august and you have to excuse me i'm very bad with dates but nonetheless i believe history was made as we were able to walk subasop a road and being that san rosa is a new addition to our rosa is a new addition to the city of san rosa this might have been the first time that such a thing happened and i'm proud and happy to say that they were able to meet with a lot of our business owners a lot of our residents and to discuss the need for police presence as well as their hopes and aspirations and becoming an asset to the city of san rosa so i'm very happy and very honored that this happened a couple weeks ago i also want to congratulate annie from glowstone who ventured into the world of self employment and what's important about this is that she's part of a woman's group uh that's headed by crystal diamante who's better recognized for our beauty pageants and i'm on my day on who's uh heading the hispanic chamber of commerce so there's a group out here who's empowering uh our our sisters to become entrepreneurs so i definitely want to highlight their efforts on the 28th of of of august we were able to or i was able to attend a concert here in at the fairgrounds and the reason i highlight this is because the world has opened once again los tocanes who's best known for la chona which has transcended languages and and dance styles throughout the world it was here in san rosa and they were able to i believe there's over 2,500 attendees at this event and it was definitely the mood of sonoma county as a whole where we are alive again which i'm very happy to report out on the 20 on the 7th i was able to travel to the the city of sacramento and i met with our mexican consulate general linda frere and discussed resources that that could complement our efforts in providing services to the underserved of rosen and and really the mexican immigrant community of san rosa as a whole and really the focus that that we spoke about was mental health services and how they can alleviate the load that falls upon us and our efforts to to address mental health issues which i'm very happy to say that the consulate general has a lot of services whether it be for the mental health or even assistance to our DACA recipients in furthering their education on september 8th i attended the lime foundation event and it's actually not for lime which comes from ticks but actually it's it's the the the presenter's son's name spelled backwards and mill which was something to learn right and this happened on one of the hottest days of of the week i happened to be in the tuxedo and the vent was great the tuxedo wasn't that great i must tell you a lot of drinking water that day they had a goal of 185,000 i'm happy report that they were able to hit 190,000 dollars and donations received and the organization's mission is to empower students or or youth into into careers that may not be college directed but nonetheless can offer them a decent living wage for them and their career and yesterday i met with about a dozen community mentors members as i saw in restaurant to discuss everything from brown fields to the hub and what they want to see there so just informal meeting and i'm i'm i'm looking forward to doing even more of those i believe on the 17th council member rogers and i have another meeting prepared or planned for that day and i also want to inform that tonight south park will be having a neighborhood watch meeting uh over at the lighthouse christian church located at 920 benny valley road so if you are a member resident or care for the neighborhood that is south park please be there and hopefully i'll stop by and and and say hi and see what we can come together and inform what i've learned through our efforts is unity definitely creates strength in the community and also is that one united voice that is definitely being heard by not only the fellow residents but us as a council which i'm very proud of uh i definitely see that that we are listening and i just tell my community keep speaking up you're being heard thank you thank you mr vice mayor yesterday we had sonoma kennett transportation authority and the regional climate protection authority meeting we released our 2020 greenhouse gas emission inventory it's a process that happens every two years it's a way for jurisdictions to track their progress on climate change some of the data ends up including the very beginnings of the pandemic and so that has some significance to it but the vast majority of the pandemic was not captured in 2020 so i'll be very curious to see some of the trends that we do find when we do our next one which will be released two years from now and we'll go through 2022 as top line data using 1990 greenhouse gas emissions as a baseline sonoma county as a whole is down 23 percent in our carbon emissions we had a goal of being 25 percent down at this point so we're fairly close but just missed it that is in spite of 22 percent of growth in the population for the county we still see a real reduction in carbon buildings carbon emissions from buildings are down 49 percent solid waste is down 50 percent and transportation even despite the growth is still down 1 percent we do see numbers that continue to track with what we have here in sonoma county transportation makes up 58 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions buildings continue to make up 23 percent although that's anticipated to drop in the next one as jurisdictions like sanarosa and others have adopted reach codes sanarosa specifically though we've gone up 37 percent in population since 1990 had a 28 percent reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions a lot of this can be attributed to sonoma clean power particularly as the city has moved forward with the evergreen program we saw a 51 percent decrease in carbon emissions from buildings we saw an 84 percent decrease in the carbon emissions from moving water which is an enormous energy suck for most communities we saw a 32 percent reduction in solid waste emissions thank you councilmember Sawyer for your efforts on that front and we did see a 2 percent reduction in transportation if we look on a per capita basis sanarosa was the second lowest in terms of per capita emissions we which we should anticipate being a denser community we were less than 50 percent of the state average for cities in their per capita and then we were also less than one third per capita than the U.S. average for for greenhouse gas emissions so we're making good progress we do have more work to do and as I mentioned given all of the work that this council has done since 2020 in particular around climate I'm curious to see what the next numbers will look like last thing we did lose two amazing warriors since our last our last meeting so tonight we will be adjourning in the memories of Maria Canas and Kathleen Finnegan both women fought for racial justice and accountability and equity across our community and will be missed so I did want to announce that before we get towards the end of our meeting is there anything else from councilmembers all right let's go to public comment on our councilmember reports councilmember mcdonald raised her hand my apologies councilmember go ahead that's okay thank you mayor I just briefly wanted to say that I also attended the league of cities conference with my fellow council members and I was able to attend a workshop that specifically talked about involvement of youth and it really brought me back to what we had talked about earlier around involvement and active engagement in their civic duties and so I'm hopeful that as we move forward and to goal setting for this next year that I'll be able to bring some of those ideas to council for consideration and I also was able prior to me going on vacation to meet with the police officers association and I just wanted to thank them for the invitation to come and speak at their meeting and for all that they do to support our community and make sure that we're kept safe and that is pretty much it for me for tonight thanks for acknowledging me and and seeing me on zoom no thank you and sorry sorry about that councilmember now we'll see if there's any public comment on councilmember reports and do we have any pre-recorded voicemails there are no pre-recorded voicemails on this item okay we have one set of minutes for consideration tonight that's our may 24th 2022 minutes did any council members have any amendments to those minutes let's see if anybody in the public had any changes and do we have any voicemails a voicemail public comment okay we'll show those adopted without objection and let's move on to item 12 our consent calendar thank you mayor and before I get started I did want to turn it over to my colleague Mr. Burke who has an update so I just want to thank you I just want to briefly mention that item 12.8 is the second read of the ordinance prohibiting new gas station land uses and I just wanted to point out that there were some minor changes made to it just to ensure compliance with all applicable laws thank you and for clarity those were non substantive changes didn't change the policy outcome correct all right go ahead mr assistant city manager thank you mayor item 12.1 is a motion regarding responses to two 2020 2021 2022 grand jury reports affordable housing item 12.2 is a resolution the third amendment to general services agreement number f001818 with nick barberry trucking LLC doing business as redwood coast fuels item 12.3 is a resolution professional services agreement with first five sonoma county for administration of the city of santa rosa guaranteed basic income program item 12.4 a resolution making required monthly findings and authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing for public meetings of the city council and all the city's boards commissions and committees pursuant to assembly bill 361 item 12.5 a resolution approval and adoption of the city's salary plan and schedule correcting and administrative era and eliminating the bus operator trainee classification and compensation item 12.6 is a resolution approval and adoption of resolution eliminating the bus operator trainee classification and pay scale item 12.7 is an ordinance it's the adoption of the second reading an ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa pre zoning the property located at 2210 brush creek road parentheses brush creek road minor subdivision into the r dash 1 dash 6 which is a single family residential zoning district assessors parcel number 182 dash 050 dash 004 and pre zoning the properties located at 2200 brush creek road and 0 bridgewood drive into the r r dash 20 which is a rural residential zoning district assessors parcel numbers 182 dash 050 dash 005 and dash 014 file number prj 2 0 dash 008 item 12.8 is an ordinance and it is the second reading an ordinance of the city council of the city of santa I'm sorry ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending title 20 of the santa rosa city code to prohibit new gas station land uses and to prohibit expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure for existing gas station land uses file re z 22 dash 001 and that is the item that my colleague Mr. Burke just spoke spoke on and I believe that that concludes all the consent items Mr. Mayor thank you Mr. Assistant City Manager and just so you know the last time we had a new ACM the first time they did a meeting I'm pretty sure they had 22 consent items to read through so you got off the hook a little bit easy here council do we have any questions on the consent calendar all right let's go and go to public comment Mr. Frazier you're up first Mr. Duit you'll go next I was working okay yep it should be on go get close to that microphone I mean the AV projector so the first item I wanted to talk about here was consent item 12.1 which was the grand jury's findings it was interesting today on the county level this is the finding F-24 we take exception to which states vacation homes time shares Airbnb Picasso homes and vacant houses reduce the number of units available to permanent residents and by reducing supply increase the cost of housing we find we disagree with that finding for a lot of reasons and it was interesting today that the county did not agree with that finding they didn't support that finding in their report out the civil grand jury offers no evidence there could there's studies that have been done in the county that refute this finding there's no statistically valid data there's no evidence that they talked to Airbnb or Picasso specifically it ignores affordable accommodations emergency housing the investment repair and maintenance the economic advantages the advantages to social equity and racism the production of taxes the affordable housing construction that comes from those taxes it does not understand the facts regarding U.S. census and the vacant housing category it ignores incidentally the use of residential spaces and how they pivot from short-term use to longer-term use it ignores the history of recreational house construction and so many other things but it's really the lack of the civil grand juries releasing any information in support of this which is most galling this is ridiculous obviamente short-term rentals have become an issue that's a flashpoint in our community and to feel that and to see a judicial function make a finding absent evidence is outrageous absolutely outrageous and you agree with that okay the other thing I wanted to report on is the ban on gas stations when we took a look at that no and it's not because we were in favor of gasoline or something like that it's not that at all it's about the professional planning necessary to transition away from fossil fuels and not just engage in virtual signaling I know that the press release is already written for this and everything sounded great but I tell you in our research a ban on gas stations is going to mean that we have depreciating assets that mean more toxicity in our communities not last we won't be able to move gas stations to locations that are better suited to have state-of-the-art equipment for dispensing and we don't know what it looks like 15 or even 30 years long again why all the jingo is the politics on these decisions it's ridiculous thank you thank you Mr. Frazier let's go to Mr. DeWitt hello Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland on item 12.1 those were very powerful comments and I hope you'll take them into consideration also I'd like to see before you make a formal response you do some sort of a citizen's survey in which you see how the citizens of the community are feeling what the future of affordable housing should be in our community this is because for many years now the city's been saying there's a housing crisis yet at the same time the city's been buying houses at the top of the market and then destroying them knocking out housing has been going on for decades actually starting back with the stony point road improvement 17 housing units were taken out there they were destroyed rather than moved and that has started to kind of a waterfall cascading effect where the city just buys houses and destroys them so please do some sort of a survey to get the actual feel of the community about what affordable housing is to them and how we can save our housing stock which city guidelines state you will be doing and then pursuing in the future that affordable housing I'm also concerned about resolution 12.4 I'm very glad you're doing these hybrid type meetings but you need to open up all of the city meetings now to the public again essentially what's been happening is you feel you're zoomed in with stuff but actually many citizens are zoomed out they're not able to go to the various meetings that used to be held in these chambers or other city offices to participate which is the vital part of the vibrancy of our local city government we've gotten to the point where the city is saying we're relying upon county guidelines well the county's health officer has said that they are no longer enforcing a mask requirement those are just recommendations and that meetings can be held with the greater public in attendance as you know perhaps some of you are even going to concerts going to events and there's people there they're packing them in now and they're looking at it like okay we're good to go the essential workers at the grocery stores they stood tall and they stayed there and worked all the way through the hospitals everything's flowing okay we're in flu season now people can get their vaccinations they can get their boosters we can move forward please end this lockout of the citizens from our public meetings please open all public meetings that were open in the past back to participation for the public to be able to come to these chambers and sit in here and participate in our democracy thank you thank you Dwayne let's go to zoom to Angie good evening can you hear me yes we can this is about item 12.3 this is Angie Dillon shore first five Sonoma County just wanted to thank you so much Mayor Rogers council members and staff my team and I are so proud to lead this guaranteed income project in collaboration with our coalition of community-based organizations and the fund for guaranteed income guaranteed income programs are intended to advance economic equity for communities that have disproportionately been impacted by poverty and wealth disparities which exacerbated by the pandemic the data is clear that financial stressors are being felt particularly by low income pregnant and parenting families with young kids most especially our BIPOC families so with the ARPA funds contributed by the city of Santa Rosa also the city of Hildesburg Petaluma in the county of Sonoma we will be able to enroll 80 Santa Rosa households who live in the 17 qualified census tracts in the city and then another 225 households across the county that are pregnant and parenting at least one childbirth of five and all those families will receive guaranteed income payments of $500 a month for 24 months starting in January the portal hosted by our partner fund for guaranteed income it opened on September 1st it's going to remain open through October 31st folks can apply at www.pathwaysanoma.org and they can also get help with applying at Capsanoma Child Parent Institute and Community Baptist Church the application takes like two minutes to complete got a lot of outreach events planned between now and the end of October doing a really strong social media push radio PSAs and all the outreaches multilingual and culturally responsive as of yesterday September 12th 695 eligible households from Santa Rosa had applied again the application is open until October 31st and then the random selection and the enrollment will happen in November payments starting in January so we're really looking forward to reporting out to the community how these guaranteed income payments impact families lives children's lives with the aim to really evolve the narrative around poverty around deservedness of receiving safety net benefits so again a huge thank you Mayor Rogers for being such a champion of the guaranteed income movement for your bold and progressive vision and thank you to the council for directing ARPA funds to this local pilot effort thank you so much Angie and thank you for your partnership we've loved working with you on this and a number of our programs that we've been having let's come back here to Mr. Hilber okay Michael Hilber I will start off by objecting to 12.8 the gas station ordinance is being ill drafted for instance the two small outdated stations on sabasco road if they were to be discontinued it would be an improvement if they were to be consolidated and move to a better location like a freeway off ramp or something like that but the way this is written it doesn't allow for that and now also on 12.3 the 12.3 the free $500 a month program I'm going to object to that that's why you probably people get referred to as free money liberals because you know how to dole it out if someone like Jack Tibbets wants some cash all he's got to do is come up here with his hand out he doesn't even need to give a rational explanation I would like to ask a question pose a question do you think drug dealers will be eligible for this I would say you bet they would be because cash received dealing drugs that's non taxable non reportable income and we've seen that type of thing go on I'll add that the portative Sonoma county is a big fat fraud the county went and put Oscar Chavez on the county payroll because they want to advance the Mexican welfare agenda and this is part of that effort do we have any other comments do we have any pre-recorded voicemails no pre-recorded voicemail on this item all right to answer the question I don't believe Jack Tibbets would be eligible to be eligible you have to live in Sonoma county thank you though we have written communications we have item 16.1 mayor we need to move the consent items and take a vote thank you so much mr vice mayor thank you thank you mayor I move items 12.1 through 12.8 and way further reading of the text second do we have any additional comments let's call the vote may clarify the second was that council member Rogers it was thank you just beat out council member Fleming okay council member Schwedhelm aye council member Sawyer aye council member Rogers aye council member McDonald aye council member Fleming an enthusiastic aye council I'm sorry vice mayor Alvarez aye mayor Rogers aye that motion passes with seven eyes right we have no report items no public hearings we do have the written communications I'll open it up for public comment on item 16.1 our state legislative update if anybody has a comment on 16.1 is this related to our written communications for our state legislative update can you hear me yeah mr. Dwayne my name is Dwayne D. Witt I'm from Roseland September 15th marks the beginning of Hispanic is this related to our written communications on state legislation my apologies mr. Assistant Manager could you work with them I think you have a public comment for non-agenda items which we're not allowed to do until five o'clock so we'll come back mr. Frazier did you have a comment on this okay we'll go ahead and take a five minute break them we'll be back at five o'clock and then mr. Duit can go all right let's go ahead bring it back madam city clerk can you please reestablish the quorum thank you mayor councilmember schwedhelm here councilmember soyer here councilmember rogers president councilmember mcdonald here councilmember fleming here vice mayor alvarez president mayor rogers here let the record show that all councilmembers are present my apologies Dwayne now it's time for item 17 public comment for non-agenda items you're up my heritage month running through October 15th I put up this poster it's from a dozen years ago a young man of Hispanic heritage a sergeant that risked his life to save five others this pictures from him leading veterans day at Arlington national cemetery or many people black indigenous people of color who've served our country are interred active duty men and women of many races and creeds have served our country and many of them are veterans here in Sonoma county we have many of them and we'd ask that you honor them on Friday the 16th of September at Santa Rosa veterans memorial building at 10 in the morning when prisoner of war and missing an action day is commemorated in honor of veterans throughout our nation here in Sonoma county Santa Rosa is the oversight body for what's called housing and urban development veterans affairs supportive housing vouchers for veterans who've basically had a bit of a hard time and need some housing assistance and these HUD VASH vouchers are quite helpful to them one of the dilemmas though is that the way the housing authority and its long time members have been handling the HUD VASH voucher system is they've been giving a lot of them out on project based vouchers and these are not going to veterans in need right now there's over 200 homeless veterans here in the county over in Roseland there's a few that I know of personally who basically are camping outside and they're not getting the help that they could get from the city staff I think part of it is because there's an ingrained approach of doing things the same old way there needs to be help for these young men and women and these HUD VASH vouchers could be put to use here in our community I'm hoping that you folks will look into this I'm hoping that you'll also come to Santa Rosa's vets memorial building at 10 am on Friday this Friday the 16th of september to honor those who've served our country those who are still missing in action prisoners of war going as far back as the Korean War and World War II so many have been unaccounted for thank you for your time thank you very much this is Eric Frazier with Truth and Tourism using the overhead please okay thank you very much so yeah I'm going to report on STR thank you very much this is downloaded directly from the city's website what this shows is just how the applications were filed what month they are filed in it adds up to 293 we see that most the applications came in during the in good standing window but there's a lot of people denied that window especially those that were hosted rentals a lot of them were closed for COVID a lot of our seniors got caught unaware of this ordinance there's will will reach out to those there's a probably about 150 of them over the past few years we go back about four years it's like herding cats it's a lot of work because there isn't big corporate control these are individual families and so on and so forth here we have a slide showing code enforcement again this is directly from the city we did a deep dive now in research we went back to 2019 we saw that there's 3,330 cases filed not against STR not at all of course over the last year it was about 1100 cases filed and about 121 of those relate to STR but over 100 of those cases are bogus they're not going to produce a revenue for the city they seem to be some sort of placeholder a lot of the property owners don't even know they exist I mean what kind of way is that to run a business the code enforcement case is not related to STRs include 33 cases of noisy roosters and there was about 11 cases with noise mentioned at STRs and so on and so forth cannabis had quite a number of them as well and of course there was a subcommittee and all the cannabis work up but not one on STRs I wanted to turn our attention now to when we talk about code enforcement this was just received today from one of our property owners a hosted rental somebody who's been collecting taxes for the city of Santa Rosa for over four years I think it is and she was caught unaware of the new urgency ordinance and so they cited her because she had some reservations she filed her application in March but they still haven't approved her hosted application six months later and so they set her up for these violations the poor deer and English is not our first language so we have to be sure that we protect what's going on there and just to go full circle to chickens because look at the code numbers here 220757 lining up with this 220757 hey they say it's about un permitted chickens has nothing to do with STRs the address is wrong this is I mean this is how you run your business it's really quite a shame and really quite a sham and it's got to be costing you a lot of money and you talk about needing a new city hall and you've put up with these types of shenanigans I mean when's it going to stop thank you Michael Hilbert southwest Santa Rosa I took some pictures of a broken down RV on herna avenue today the thing really looks like hell I have no reason whatsoever to believe is properly licensed registered and insured and I see no reason whatsoever it should not be tagged for immediately be hauled off it just it just looks like an absolute dump it's got railings around the top of the RV and you know why that is so the owner can store trash on top of the RV and it's got a huge pile of trash behind the RV I talked to the guy or he put it this way he talked to me and came off as being your typical white male methamphetamine user type that likes to hoard garbage my uh you know my sense is a the taxpaying public is not getting their money's worth and don't be afraid to get off your butt get out there and look around what you you know should be able to see right under your nose thank you thank you Michael I don't see any additional hands do we have any pre-recorded voicemails no pre-recorded voicemail all right with that council we are adjourned