 Can you hear us there we go we have connection we have a roll call, please Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member tidbits Thank you, and we had no closed session items mr. McGlynn item 3.1 before I introduce item 3.1. I would just like to Welcome Stephanie Williams back to the city. She is the city clerk Congratulations Stephanie and thank Dina for her service as interim city clerk. She did a fabulous job And thank you both item 3.1 evergreen study session David Gouin assistant city manager leading us off Thank you, and good afternoon Meers, sweat helmet members of the council today. We're going to talk a little bit about our the evergreen Option this is comes out of the council's goal-setting process which identified climate action as a tier one priority And in that there were a number of elements that the council asked the city to the staff to look at over the year This is one of the final items that we're bringing forward to you as part of that process in this current year It was to evaluate evergreen and what that meant for the city to move towards evergreen off of or what we're currently Using for energy cost so today We're going to give a study session about what that means an overview of some clean powers evergreen service what that means in terms of green House reductions We're also going to talk about the cost the cost of implementing that I mean the other thing we're going to do is break down our energy costs city-wide into three different buckets city-wide We use energy for water we use it for facilities and we use it for transit are the big uses And so we're going to talk about each of those areas in what we're doing in those areas in terms of energy efficiency Reduction to to leverage to get the best bang for our buck for how we use our spend money on energy And then at the end we're gonna have a conversation about where we go next How do we want to look at each of these look at each one separately look at them all together? How to move forward as we move into the budget process so this was presented to the subcommittee early on this year We got direction from the subcommittee to bring this to the full council for discussion and part of the reason for bringing it Now again was to tee us up for if there was any budget implications that we can incorporate that into the budget moving forward So with that I'm going to turn it over to Amy Nicholson who is our senior Staff planner on on this project And to go over the overviews and then we'll cycle through the different sections Thank You David and good afternoon Mayor Schwedhelm and members of the council So as many of you know Sonoma clean power is a not-for-profit public agency it's operated by various cities within Sonoma County including Santa Rosa and also those within Mendocino County and the County of Sonoma and County of Mendocino Sonoma clean power sources clean energy from a variety of renewable resources throughout both Sonoma and Mendocino counties and This higher percentage of renewable energy results in reduced greenhouse gas emissions for customers who are subscribing to these services Sonoma clean power has two power sources one which is clean start this is the Subscription that the city of Santa Rosa currently has and we switched from PG&E to Clean start in 2014 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also to obtain cheaper energy Clean start is comprised of both renewable and non-renewable energy sources and 90% of it is carbon-free In addition Sonoma clean power offers evergreen as a premium service and evergreen is 100% renewable It is comprised of 84% geothermal energy and 16% solar energy Just a little bit more about evergreen which staff Looked into prior to the study session again. It is 100% renewable and it is also 100% locally sourced it Again is mostly comprised of geothermal energy and this is an efficient energy source because It can be generated while the Sun isn't out so at nighttime or during cloud cover and also when there are high energy demands The solar again that is used for evergreen services is from all local installations And in 2018 evergreens emissions were approximately 53% lower than clean start emissions This graph compares GHG emissions over a four-year period and this is just related to the city's municipal energy usage and it shows What the actual emissions were under clean start so that's that orange bar in the center What the emissions would be had we continued with PG&E and what the emissions would have been had evergreen been subscribed to And again as you can see the emissions from evergreen are Substantially lower than that of clean start both of which are substantially lower than PG&E You'll note that the 2018 numbers don't include any PG&E numbers and that's because PG&E hasn't released their emissions factor to date As you know the city has an adopted climate action plan There's the community climate action plan and the municipal climate action plan both of these plans speak to prioritizing renewable energy The municipal plan directs staff to purchase cleaner energy from either PG&E or another source And so a switch to evergreen would be consistent with these policies in these plans so a Change to evergreen service would come with an increased cost this chart shows or graph shows costs if we were to be subscribing to evergreen services for the past five years and one thing it certainly shows is the division of Funds from our enterprise accounts like water versus the general fund so the city has about 25% of our Electrical usage comes from operating our city facilities street lights traffic lights and the remaining 75% comes from our operation our water operations including the Laguna treatment plant So this chart shows the yellow section which would be the cost increase associated with The water operations and then the blue is the general fund and there's a small bar that you can't quite see which is the enterprise enterprise fund of parking So this assumes The premium increase of two and a half cents per kilowatt hour and then and shows what the energy usage was For each year that is up on the slide there It does not account for any additional efficiency gains that might be made in the future So if we're looking at an average increase of about a million dollars a year with evergreen That doesn't consider any changes that Would bring that cost down due to any sort of energy audits and and upgrades to our equipment Now I'm going to turn it over to Claire Myers in water. Thank you Good afternoon, Mayor Schwendhelm and members of the council So prior to Purchasing more expensive greener energy We recognize that it's important to minimize the amount of energy that we are currently using Santa Rosa water has long had goals of reducing energy usage energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions As well as moving towards energy independence To meet these goals over the last several years the department has developed energy optimization plans for our systems One for water operations and another for our regional water reuse system these EOPs serve as roadmaps for the department to systematically and strategically Optimize energy usage within our systems In addition to saving money and reducing greenhouse gas emissions The EOPs also support city council's goal to promote environmental Sustainability and that Santa Rosa protects and improves the environment through its policies and actions So I'd like to start by just walking us through our general process for analysis and planning Working with our consultant Kennedy Jinx the first thing the plans did was to memorialize What energy efficiency and renewable energy projects have been completed to date the department had already done a number of measures And we wanted to capture that Second was to evaluate What is the efficiency of our current systems and practices so that we get set a baseline and then third to identify What are cost-effective measures for us to enhance efficiency reduce demand and increase renewable energy generation? So a measure the measures identified in the plants might be an operational change we could make to our system It might be a behavioral change or it might be a capital improvement project So for regional water reuse we started with four system audits We looked at the operations at the Laguna treatment plant biosolids and composting reclamation and geysers And based upon the results of those audits We then did five deeper investigations looking at waste heat at the treatment plant energy management software Irrigation system optimization solar photovoltaics and mechanical digester mixing between technical 10 technical memorandums that were written Summarizing these investigations we looked at 61 different potential measures That we could implement And of those six were identified to pursue for further investigation Nine we were able to implement and either are complete or in planning you know something like the UV system upgrade 25 we chose to not pursue at this time Either because of operational infeasibility or increased risk of permit violations Or because we tested it and didn't work And then 21 were not recommended generally because the capital cost outweighed the projected savings For water operations. We had a similar process We did a system audit of our water and wastewater systems And based on the results of this audit and a brainstorming session with staff We decided upon seven deeper investigations the utility management systems Optimizing the pump sequencing looking at pump efficiency skate a programming solar photovoltaics Looking at our variable frequency drives and then optimizing time of use rates of The nine technical memorandums that Emerged we were able to look at 38 potential measures Ten we would like to pursue for further investigation Four we have been able to complete or are in planning nine or four We will not pursue at this time and 20 were not recommended for implementation So bringing this back to evergreen As Amy said evergreen would come at a price premium of an extra 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour Based upon historical usage of not taking into account future energy reductions from the EOP For water this results in an annual increase of electricity costs of between seven and eight hundred thousand dollars or so And you'll see I broke it down between Regional water reuse and water operations and the majority is for regional water reuse. It's about 83 to 85 percent And that again is because the treatment plant is the city's single largest user of electricity So that's in the blue and then the remaining 15 to 17 percent or so would be for water operations and that is the orange bars To accommodate a cost increase of this magnitude would require a rate increase Of about one percent for wastewater rates and about point two percent for water rates The calculation based on those increases for an average family of four based on usage would be about 90 cents per month And again just a reminder. These are costs based Slowly on historical usage and not based on future electricity consumption or that actual costs would be subject to future consumption and utility rates and one more thing We wanted to note too is that it's interesting that evergreen Could change the desirability of some of the projects identified in the EOP For example solar energy projects that have been cost prohibitive in the past might become cost-effective As the cost of electricity goes up at a certain point it becomes cheaper to produce our own Electricity via renewable sources such as floating solar Thank you We think you're going to go through all different sections and we can ask questions at the end Assistant city manager net is here as well since all these areas fall within its portfolio So we'll be able to help answer questions throughout the process. So next is the facilities and I'm going to turn over to Doug Williams for that Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedhelm members of council I'm speaking on behalf of the general fund facilities and What we're looking at is We're about 25 percent of the total cost from the enterprise fund the general fund is 25 percent of The electrical cost the facilities represent the pools the rec centers public safety building City Hall And that represents about 45 percent of the general fund The parks we're looking at about 10 percent That's going to be just lighting and irrigation street lights and traffic signals is about 45 percent now with the street lights and the traffic signals we've Converted a lot of those over to LED already. So we've done a lot of the energy savings on those Previously now we've come up with several strategies for GHD reduction We've already completed a facilities assessment in January of 2018 But that doesn't let us know where we can save money And we can help with the greenhouse gas emissions And energy it just lets us know the condition of our fixed assets We're looking at an energy audit we figure it would cost for the general fund about 200 to $400,000 based on what Santa Rosa was able to do Santa Rosa water. Excuse me we've looked at Using the facilities assessment and an energy audit and we would be able to target with pinpoint accuracy how we can replace some of these failing assets and Reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and save energy The energy Excuse me public-private partnership. It's similar to what we're talking about with a Public-private partnership for a whole facility, but we could do that with individual fixed assets like an HVAC unit The assets would be owned and maintained by the private company and we would lease it back from them a PG&E on bill financing the city would borrow money from PG&E and That money would be paid back from the savings the energy savings that that we would That we would receive so essentially with a The PG&E on bill financing is that they would come in we audit the system they are able to keep our electricity bill at the same rate and The difference between what we save and what we currently pay that would be how we would pay back the loan It's the same way with a with an esco There's energy companies that come in do something very similar to that as the PG&E on bill financing and actually today I Just had a meeting with the energy and sustainability with Santa Rosa water and there's a program called energy watch And I just learned about this today, or I'd have it on the slide And it was previously a program with PG&E and the county for Commercial buildings, but now they're including municipalities in that. So I'll be looking into that Doing a little bit deeper dive into that When when I'm able to we're going to be setting up a meeting not next week But the week after with a representative for energy watch and For and that is what I have for the general fund And I am going to turn it over to transit Nuri Kosselin will be presenting this item Mayors White Home Council Presenting on how the evergreen Switch would impact transit. So we're at this point. We're not Use we're using very you know, we're using just our building electricity. We have zero electric buses but with the CPC use CP See the the carbs innovative clean transit regulation which requires transit electrification by 2040 We would have there's some potential electric significant electrical impacts in the future You know, we were awarded 2.9 million from the FTA for the purchase of our first four electric buses And recently we have a there's a statewide department of General services contract which will allow us to purchase off that which will be returning to council to authorize that purchase Additionally We have just completed the battery electric bus planning and engineering study for city bus Petaluma transit Sonoma County transit Mendocino transit that was sponsored by Sonoma clean power There this report provides insight into the existing conditions and available technologies recommended for transit fleet electrification over the next five years and then in in December staff received the Invitation from PG&E for their EV fleet electrification program This program will extend the electrical vehicle infrastructure at stony point for the buses that we expect to be purchasing And They there will be PG&E will be covering the costs for bringing infrastructure in and then Providing rebates for the chargers and then the infrastructure costs to connect the chargers Once the city once the city is able to approve this contract with PG&E as well as Create the purchase order for the buses which council will approve then we'll move forward with PG&E on that engineering design and construction For for that for the charging stations at stony point So the impacts on of the you know the CPUC recently approved PG&E's commercial EV rate which provides commercial electrical vehicle fleets with a super off-peak rate, which is typically In the in the morning so early afternoon and then there's an off-peak which is the overnight rain Which we can expect to use because we'll be charging at our depot at that at stony point So You know shit the the commercial EV rate Shifts the bulk of the bill away from demand charges and towards energy charges This will provide much more certainty in our costs for charging our electric vehicles or electric buses These charts here represent a similar transit fleet of a similar size to city bus and show similar diesel costs along with the cost of electricity for the commercial EV rate And so we can expect Switching to let elect our electric buses we can expect a 20% reduction in cost From the current diesel equivalent In summary You know we don't the commercial EV rate. Nobody's operating on it right now We're not sure of how that exactly interacts with the Evergreens rate and how those are going to play out So we're not clear on the exact cost, but we do know that we expect four four of electric buses will use a similar amount of electricity as The 25% of the electricity that facilities uses Thank you, and so That gives a summary of the different elect just electrical uses throughout the city We wanted to put this slide up here as a discussion point on some of the items We wanted to talk about was does the city council want to look towards moving towards off of clean start on to evergreen or remain on ever clean start Look at if we want to start engaging in facilities assessment as you heard from facilities in terms of what can be done That hasn't been done yet And if we do look towards switching to evergreen addressing the timing the funding and if it in coordinating energy efficiencies with that effort So those are the discussion points that we came up with and we pitched and we talked about it the subcommittee as well That we want to bring to the full council. So with that I'll turn it over to the mayor Thank you for those presentations. Okay, so again, we'll start with questions from council Then we have many cards For comments from members of the public and we'll come back for the discussion after we get all the questions So Mr. Dowdy have a question First I wanted to state That I have been on The chairman of one or another of the Sonoma Claim powers advisory committees It's voluntary and non-compensatory But I have learned a lot by participating in Helping that organization move forward the one the question that I have at this point while I think this report is well done I Was caught by the fact that I Believe there are standing state goals that have been established to reduce GHG's 20% 50% below 1990 levels and whatever and it's it seems always be changing but my point in bringing that up is This presentation shows the additional cost to the city And its various departments But I believe there's gonna be a mandate from the state that we have to spend some money reducing GHG's anyway and so if some of these things like going all evergreen Part of that is good is a mandatory requirement so this this shows a million dollar additional cost and I don't think that's accurate because of those Mandated state goals Who's like to comment on that? Sure. Yeah, I'd be happy to So you're absolutely right there are a reduction and there are goals that the city has a climate action plan identifies a number of those Steps to take towards reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to try to reach those goals We're gonna be looking at potentially updating that climate action plan. We're gonna be talking about it at the subcommittee this week But this is one element of the overall reduction strategy, so there's reduction strategies on Facilities on the on the municipal side that we're talking about today And there's reduction strategies on the community wide that we're also going to be talking about as a community That we talked about during the all-electric policy and others So you're absolutely right there is there are reduction goals. There are a number of ways to get to that goal This is one of those from a facility standpoint from a municipal operation That we're putting out there because there is a reduction that there was a slide We had it early on the beginning that showed that reduction compared to what we're currently using As a city and how that would affect those those future goals And if I can just add in I think part of the issue is as Councilmember Dowd you're absolutely right I mean we are being forced through state legislation regional legislation to begin moving towards a more renewable energy source for a host of Issues to reduce greenhouse gas emissions I think the question that we're part of what we're asking here is is how do we accomplish that goal? If you remember back to slide two or three it showed the difference between the clean start and the evergreen clean start is a renewable mechanism for providing clean energy evergreen simply is a more More Has more GHG reductions because of the sources that it's specifically pulling from so so as assistant city manager You and mentioned it's a function of how deep we want to go one still accomplishes the goal of reducing our GHGs We just may have to do more Facility adjustments in order to meet our goals in the future whereas evergreen with that additional investment may help Us accomplish that at a faster rate Thank you miss vice mayor Thank You mr. Mayor my question is for miss Meyer Can you come back up to the staff table, please? So what struck me is really interesting about this whole proposition is that three-quarters of the of our energy usage is through our water department and of that it seems like three-quarters of that is through our regional reuse Department or arm and that is an enterprise fund in many ways. Can you speak to the non Santa Rosa? municipalities that utilize this water reuse service Thank you for the question. Do you mean in as far as how we would pay for the cost increase or I'm trying to get out Here is did we what assumptions are baked into these projections? Did we assume for just the Santa Rosa portion of the water reuse? And not account for the fact that we're not going to be able to use one kind of energy to process Katati's wastewater Versus Santa Rosa's wastewater and I'm trying to understand here when we talk about spending our taxpayer dollars on What seems like a really great cause? Are we talking about spending Katati's? Tax dollars as well as it you know What are the assumptions that are baked into the projections? So the what the done the data that we have from Sonoma clean power and PG&E is just based strictly on The meter data that we get so it's a kilowatt hours for the two meters that are at the treatment plant and then the Hundred or so meters around the city, so it's not the data itself I have not parsed out into the various and I apologize for asking such a detailed question I see director Burke coming down here Thank you vice mayor Jennifer Burke director Santa Rosa water so The the charges would be to the entire regional Enterprise system and then those would be allocated out and part of the rate that we charge to Katati to Sebastopol to the county and to run a park So what percentage of our water reuse and it's okay to be ballpark it for me So so Santa Rosa is about 78% or so between 75 and 80% Runner Park is somewhere in that 19% and then Katati's possible in County are really small So we're looking at about a 20% of our wastewater Is coming from non Santa Rosa? Payers and so would it be reasonable to assume that of this one million dollar price tag? Maybe 10 to 15 percent of it would be covered through our enterprise so so The rate increase that we we anticipate to cover Is specifically for Santa Rosa so the impact to Santa Rosa's bill? And then what would be allocated out? Are the other the percentages would be charged to our partner agencies as well So it has a rate impact to them as well But we specifically parsed out what it would mean to Santa Rosa only the piece that would apply to us of that 750,000 roughly and that results in a 1% rate increase just for Santa Rosa customers That's very helpful to understand the last question. I had having to do with that is with those rate increased pass-throughs be consistent with the contracts that we have with these other jurisdictions So We are starting our budget process And as part of that we meet with our sub regional partners. That's what we call them for the treatment plant We're providing them information. We let them know that this was something that the council was Contemplating and could provide direction on and that that would be factored into their budget going forward So once again, we'll drop will then job by water Mr. Sawyer, do you have a question? I do. Thank you mirror Something that Confuses me somewhat. So I have to assume that well, maybe not. Is there a is there a direct line of power that helps? operate our pumping stations directly from The calpine is it still calpine? It may have changed it's still calpine. I thought I thought there was a direct line to put to our pumping stations Sorry, so yes for the geyser system. Yes Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. Yes So calpine does provide the power to the pump stations for our geyser system, right other than that direct Power delivery the rest of the power that's generated by that geothermal Steam field just goes into onto the grid. Does it not correct? Thank you. So Indeed we are because of the contract we have with the Geothermal plant we are in a sense participating at a fairly high level for Producing renewable energy Yeah, so our it's a great point our recycled water does Provide recharge to the geyser steam fields and I believe we anticipate that it provides energy for about a hundred hundred households For a year, sorry a hundred thousand households for a year Sorry, thank you. So So the other part of my question is what I don't understand given that it goes on to the grid is The increased cost that we would pay by going to From clean start to evergreen is that for the ability of the of Sumo clean power to develop renewable energy production What is the nexus between the million dollars and and and the what is the extra cost go to that's what I'm that's what I'm curious about Because it's it goes on to the grid and we say that it's coming from renewables And we've got a big plant up on the hill giving us renewables power What is the nexus between the million dollars that we would be paying to storm a clean power other than a line on our bill? I'm Nathan Kinsey. I'm the commercial accounts manager with snow clean power. So essentially The premium that's going to be associated with the power that would be going to the city Would be related to contracts that we have to sign directly with calpine the geysers So that the power that is being serviced to the city right now would then no longer be The source and so we'd have to Negotiate new contracts with the geysers to facilitate this power. So that's where the the premium or the cost increases associated Does that make sense or in kind of a smoky way? Yes? Okay? It's still it still seems like Phantom figures to me. It's electricity unless you have a very very large battery setup The power is on the grid and it's produced and it goes away It doesn't sit anywhere waiting for us to use it from a particular source. So I guess I'm having a little trouble and I think part of my concern about spending a million dollars for this Smoky figure is that is my desire to look at the possibility of doing our own energy Generation which would which could indeed be a direct asset to us Creating our own power which has aligned directly from that generation to a Receiver which might be a pumping station whatever it might be. So that's I'm trying to justify Or figure out how anyone justifies spending an extra million dollars on energy that That's because of a contract we sign as opposed to the actual Delivery of that power to the city of Santa Rosa to our various needs Sure sure and I understand that I mean I think one of the things to think about is the fact that that power source is basically representing a new supply into the grid Where an old supply that might have a larger greenhouse gas emission factor associated with it is no longer going to be on the grid And so when you're increasing that renewable service, that's new power going into the wires I understand that you know the electron is just sitting on the wires regardless of if it's Generated at that source or it's generated down in Southern, California You know all power is put on the grid and as electron it just sits there moves around so it's difficult to To to physically see this source is tied to this region. It's tied to these accounts That that is the way that it's going on and really the way to think about this best is that you're supplementing and removing that non-renewable source of power and Taking it offline and putting this new power into the grid so that new contract that would be executed would Facilitate more geothermal being produced at that location on behalf of the city Thank you, and this might this next question. I think it's probably my final question I'm not sure who to answer it may be maybe it's Maybe it's you So indeed that million dollars that we're spending could indeed we could purchase Solar a solar array or part of a solar array That could directly feed energy to one of our users or we could pay synomically in power another million dollars To sign up to have show on a contract that we're getting cleaner power So they could either be direct or somewhat indirect in a in a way in a way of saying Correct. Yeah, I that is correct and what I'm the way that I'm viewing that I'm sure the city staff would have Their own opinions in terms of how that's going to look so or it might even be in energy audits and upgrades Yeah, so councilmember sorry, that's that's exactly what Claire was mentioning earlier when you think about the waters portfolio the concept of increasing To evergreen may cause us to actually spend money on more renewable sources that we're generating to reduce the actual Amount of kilowatt hours that we're buying from synomically in power. Does that make sense? So so I think the more energy that we produce locally on our properties that Service our own facilities and reduce the demand that we take from synomically in power Then you're offsetting the costs associated with increasing going from Going all the way to evergreen part of why you're hearing the facility side of the house say we need to do an energy audit First as opposed to just jumping straight in it is partly this reason because we think that it we may have more Symmetry in investment strategy if we do some energy improvements as well as generation Combined with the increase in cost for going to evergreen We may be able to balance the cost out and double the amount of GHG emission reduction that we have So so we want to be strategic waters on a fantastic job of sort of leading the city in this way They've already done the audits They've already evaluated where the bang for their buck is when it comes to reducing their commitment to fossil fuel type of generation and that's allowing them to say You know, we think it's only a what we're pretty confident It's only a 1% increase in order to jump to evergreen and if we do that Maybe we'll strategize and use that investment a little bit differently So so I mean they've done a great job of being a model And what you've seen in the three different portions of the organization that presented is they're all at different stages And and it's this is kind of an exciting opportunity for us to really think and strategize how they will all Move differently through the system. I appreciate it's very helpful. Thank you in real quick I was going to say You know one of the things to think about is in terms of the timeline that I would take so Capital improvement project for the city could take Months if not a year plus your guys a switch to evergreen could happen as soon as you guys were to elect to do so And then as soon as we get that information over on our side, we can make that switch upon the next meter read So it's it's very quick. Yeah, that's one of the one of the important or one of the Attractive pieces is that it could that that's that Change in the production words or the source could be immediate and and we love our partners that sonically empower But they also are not managing your fiscal Agency and remember that while it is a quick switch it also might prevent some of the other work that the The part of the organization facilities part of the organization is requesting you to consider happen because we are a Very tight organization in terms of having resources to apply to these opportunities And that's why water took the approach. They did so that they could be ready to accept this this particular opportunity You know I respect our colleague for snow and clean power But he's not looking at our books and not looking at the flexibility that you have To do that type of work So it is a quick switch But it might prevent or delay some of that efficiency work because you may not have the resources to do that efficiency work Mr. Rogers Thank you, Mr. Mayor Just on this slide David, maybe you're the right person to ask this just from a fundamental understanding Why if we switch all of the municipal buildings over to green energy? Why is our ghd reduction while 53% is great? Why do we still have that? 799 in In 2018 where does that? carbon impact come from If all of the energy is going to be renewable energy Yeah, so the 799 is really associated with the the source So there is fugitive emissions that come from the geysers facility And so that's directly Reflected in that data. Okay. I mean it's a very small proportion of Emissions by comparison to other sources, but it is a reality of the sources. So it's basically it is emissions That come from the creation of the renewable energy correct, right and then Back to to councilmember Sawyer's question Does the PCIA or the indifference charge does that play in at all to the increased cost for the city? Put another way does snowmoclean power pass some of that charge on to the local jurisdiction In the evergreen premium. Yeah, no, okay No, the the PCIA Is a real cost and I recognize that but that is not something that has been attributed to the development of the price that we have That we've signed for this contract sources Directly so no, yeah, and if you could just really fast for the public's Benefit could you explain what the PCIA is? Yeah, so the the power charge indifference adjustment is a fee that pgne imposes upon entities like snowmoclean power to Basically have the customers that have taken their generation Business away from from the investor owned utility and moved it to a different entity like snowmoclean power So pgne has signed long-term contracts Some have recently gone online some have gone online 15 years ago and are expiring soon Some are yet to go online So that's why there's volatility in the price And it has increased over time And that's something that we're always trying to get more definitive information about I haven't seen nor do I think our staff has seen calculations definitively that that really show How that cost is coming and how it's going to change But it's essentially the the contracts pgne have already negotiated and as a result of customers departing load pgne would be left to cover those costs And the cpuc has approved pgne to recover a certain fee from their customers associated with that And do we pay some of the pcia in clean start? Is that a benefit to evergreen that we no longer As a jurisdiction to help shoulder that load or is in both clean start and evergreen Do we not have that charge passed on to our customers? No, the the pca fee is something that is explicitly within pgne's scope of charges So it's not it's not something factored into to our rates at all great. That's helpful. Thank you so much We just usually try to communicate about the pca cost to our customers holistically so they understand that Charges, I mean if the pca didn't exist our rates could be 20 30 lower We like to factor that in when we talk to customers about the fact If you're to be with us on clean start or on evergreen that cost is associated with it and our rates are still more affordable Yeah, and I know that that's uh baked in by the legislature some of how that works Is there a possibility as Sonoma clean power has been established longer and longer that some of those contracts that you're talking about would have expired Therefore the pcai will go down and and lower the overall rate Yes, I do believe that that will be a case A matter of the pcai Reducing I think that time frame as to when it's going where we would actually see it start to go down could be Years and years away and there might be times where it's going to increase in the future But I do think that over time it would go down, but that could be Years, right. Thank you. Sure. Any additional questions, mr. Alvarez Thank you, mayor. I was wondering if there's any other information or discussion that was had at the subcommittee That might be helpful in today's discussion Not more than this. I mean, I think the whole emphasis was let's bring it to the entire council So I think all seven of us need to hear this information Do you have anything else you wanted to add? Yeah, I think that the discussion and it was uh the mayor and I were the the two council members At the subcommittee level the discussion was entirely around meeting our our climate goals And understanding that there might be other opportunities to look at where we do our own Generation that also come with them an associated staff cost Of having staff have to do the research and do the drive and so one of the things that was very attractive was the ability for us to Have somebody else's staff shoulder the load and we reap the benefit from it And the other team with our subcommittee is climate action So we're really let's push in that action part rather than talk about it at several different subcommittee meetings Let's bring it here and see if we can take some action. Thank you Mr. Vice mayor One more question that I uh thought of while I was listening to council member Sawyer talk is that and this is kind of a philosophical question. I don't Have a specific expectation of director net or excuse me city man assistant city manager Not you being able to answer this question but We as a as a city I know have tremendous amounts of facilities that we are challenged to maintain And we talk about that some of the pain of spending this money on evergreen might help us to build and maintain facilities I'm I'm guessing that you don't have a number in mind of what it would cost for us to develop the facilities and infrastructure to Produce the amount of energy that we're purchasing from evergreen in the city of santa rosa No at this point. I don't and that's part of why we want to undertake that energy audit We want to understand clearly what our options are not only to either compensate and be fully Fully sourced on site Or to minimize the amount of power we may have to purchase moving forward Or if just purchasing evergreen does what we need to be able to accomplish our ghg goals and Do energy efficiency improvements throughout each of the facilities? I don't have a number right now and that's and and we we'd like to try to understand that more clearly And I'm not expecting that you would have an answer but I would I'm looking forward to hearing from my council members after we hear from the public about the the difference between our Commitment to our facilities and being energy independent if that's a direction that the public and our council wants to go versus Doing something immediately for which the price tag is high But the responsibility is low and I welcome the public to comment on this and be very interested to hear what you think Thanks any additional questions. Do we have cards on this item? Thank you. Okay, uh for those of you that weren't here the last couple weeks We have two podium up there or you can come on down. There's a microphone right behind the staff table there You're welcome to choose any of those three locations. First up avani Barton followed by Ella Crenshaw Good afternoon members of the council and mayor schwedhelm My name is avani and I am here as a sophomore at sonoma academy To ask you to help our city move to 100 renewable energy by committing to the evergreen program As a sonoma county as sonoma county residents and students have seen firsthand Climate change has affected our community so drastically This last october we had to miss school from multiple days because of the bad air quality from the fires And I noticed increasing anxiety in my little sisters Ramona who is seven woke up every morning scared to go about her daily routine because she didn't know When she'd have to get up and leave her home Rigby who is three was upset because she had to miss preschool and not see her best friend leo for almost two weeks But the hardest part was not missing out on my normal routine or not being able to see my friends The hardest part for me is watching my little sisters view this as the new normal They've known nothing but polluted air and climate anxiety I don't want this to be what they picture when they think of fall in sonoma county I don't accept that this is our future and neither should you So I want to thank you for all the work you have done on the behalf of the city of sanarosa And I ask you for the health of our city and more largely our world to please commit to the evergreen program Thank you. Thank you. Ella Crenshaw followed by nancy carter My name is Ella and I'm a 16 year old who is a concerned resident of sanarosa I'm very worried for the state of our planet in my future and my children's future Most scientists agree that at the rate which we are producing greenhouse gas Our earth will heat to a point of irreversibility by 2050 at this rate Sanarosa could be 15 degrees warmer than current temperatures by 2100 At this point my children's generation will barely be adults These gloomy facts and more about the state of the environment are constantly on my mind Every day I face anxieties about my future in 20 years Will I have a healthy planet to live on or does my future hold dystopian like realities? Will I get to enjoy hiking skiing and running in the parks that I love so much? Or will the air be so polluted that I can't even go outside? These questions haunt and stress me daily. This is a generational justice issue Climate change will disproportionately affect younger generations and it is the biggest issue of our time I find hope from these thoughts when I see what the city of sanarosa has already done to combat climate change I greatly appreciate my city's efforts to increase electric cars as well as declaring climate emergency While these steps are going in the right direction. We need more urgent action Our climate is near a tipping point and cannot support any more greenhouse gas emissions For this reason I want to urge you to switch to the Sonoma clean power evergreen program Last year I got to work with my school to change our power source to the evergreen program And we officially switched to 100 renewable energy in july We did this because we see how urgent climate action is needed And this is a huge impact change that can be made right now Furthermore, my school wants to be leader in sustainability and a model to other schools of what we should strive to achieve The city of sanarosa can do the same If we switch to the evergreen program, we can become a model city in sustainability As well as taking a swift and effective climate action to protect future generations The evergreen program is also 100 local renewable energy So the switch would support and produce local jobs in renewable energy While the upfront cost is expensive It would save money in the long term through lessening the effects of climate related disasters As climate change worsens it will increase the deadly effects of natural disasters and the cost of them For example, it is estimated that the tubs fire cost 1.2 billion dollars in damage Please consider my future and the future of younger generations and switch to the evergreen program. Thank you Thank you. Nancy carter followed by satema of rojas Mayor schwedham and members of the council. My name is nancy carter and i'm a teacher in sanarosa um, thank you for holding public comment again on this issue and attentively listening to students as they express their concern for a changing climate I know you share their same concern I wanted to take the opportunity to appreciate that this council made the wise and bold decision to elevate their climate action plan to a tier one priority level Also, boldly passing the ban on natural gas and new construction and declaring a climate emergency All of this is a testament to your commitment to a livable climate for current and future generations We see you Thank you for being climate champions Sanarosa is poised to become a national leader in the implementation of a climate action plan The evergreen program is an extremely unique cca to offer 100 local renewable energy It is the first utility in california to do so We are currently the only county in the state that has this option It's essential that we participate in evergreen to demonstrate to other cities and counties in california and others nationwide A model for boosting local renewable energy while creating jobs and supporting our local economy Switching to evergreen is the number one thing you can do to make the biggest impact in meeting your climate goals right now And this is the case This is also the case a group of students at sonoma academy made to school board members last year The board agreed that switching into the evergreen program was more cost effective to meet its greenhouse gas targets than capital improvements But also because the board knew is the right thing to do Because more small incremental change in the face of our impending crisis does not protect children Action must be bold in the city of sanarosa right now has the opportunity to lead I've brought more letters from high school students who couldn't skip their class today to be here These letters joined the others that we submitted to the climate action subcommittee this fall Please join the cities of sonoma, sabastopol, katari and others to make the switch to the evergreen program. Thank you Thank you. Fatima rojas followed by calling fernald Hello members of the council and mayor schradho. My name is fatima I am a 15 year old resident of sanarosa and I am concerned about how my future is going to be affected by climate change We've made choices that affect the environment without thinking about the consequences Climate change is a generational justice issue. Our youths are going to suffer the worst part of these consequences unless we act Future generations might not even be able to go play outside in the park because of the poor air quality Even though impacts related to climate change can be seen all over the world. We don't have to look far This past october the kinkied fire caused great loss Even the wildfires are common california climate change intensifies them therefore causing much more destruction During the fires most students cannot go to school due to the poor air quality and evacuations These natural disasters don't just cost money, but quality of life I am here today to urge you to switch to the sonoma clean power evergreen program Switching to 100 local renewable energy would not only help improve our local economy But also create more local jobs the evergreen program actually removes greenhouse gas emissions by promoting local solar projects Instead of relying on existing hydroelectric power in the clean start program Our sustainability leadership group at school worked with our board to switch over to the evergreen program Even though it costs more santa rosa is all doing is already doing great, but For example the climate action plan in the increase in people using electric cars and choosing evergreen is the next step If we switch over to 100 local renewable energy, we will be an example for other cities across The united states even though making the switch to evergreen might seem more expensive Investing in renewable energy now will save money long term from climate related disasters I ask that you please take great consideration into switching to the sonoma clean Power evergreen program. Thank you. Thank you. Colleen for an all followed by dwayne duit Good afternoon everyone i'm the mother of a sonoma academy student who's not with us charlotte molinari And charlotte would tell you I was just like gretta The girl who's times person of the year ever since you knew me Because I saw soiling green in 1973 and they used the word the greenhouse gas effect So i've been standing up for this For a long time So much so that after 9 11 i created this sabastable sustainability conference and festival Through that we created the sabastable clean power and you adopted it for sonoma clean power not The one that isn't municipally owned it was the cities looking into it Your former council member and mayor jane bender selected me to represent you When the climate action protection campaign was putting forth the community developed your climate action plan And I have some really important questions to ask you about your decision What Return on investment. Do you get from renting your power? Your real estate or anything? With regards to climate changing gases pure water vapor Is a climate changing gas Which is what comes out of the geysers except is it pure? It's your wastewater It's where there are severe contaminants. They wouldn't even have power for wasn't for yours Who built the pipeline up there? Why doesn't the city of santa rosa co-own? that And have you ever done the analysis on what those heat trapping gases of gesture water vapor are doing to change the climate Did you slow down your contributions to the atmospheric river when we were being flooded? These are important questions that were never asked or answered except I asked them So What good does it do? What happened to charlotte animal and our issue came with me the day before 9 11 to what where smud was keeping the lights on When we were being enron and pg&e'd which by the way is a criminal entity Now in bankruptcy The lawyer lobbyists for sonoma clean power the same lawyer lobbyists for pg&e and station casinos So you want to rent more power? to create unknown consequences Hereby increasing thinking that the geysers is green because you've not done the analysis because no one listened You need to listen and what else is in that is it just water vapor? Are they having metals? Is there anything left over from wastewater treatment? Is it really good idea where their seismic activity? To increase the risk with the pressure of inserting that wastewater there all these other factors around emergency protection When really you could have solar on every Parking lot you own and every other Dwayne Thank you for your time sir. My name is dwayne do it I appreciated the comments that mr. Sawyer had made and his question about asking what does the one million dollars? Do and what will it go to? I think it's important as we consider this type of a topic that we look back to 25 years ago when the topic was about moving water From here to the geysers Spinner or later that contract has to come up for renegotiation Mr. Dowd may remember that I would come before the board of public utilities and ask them To see if they could get Money because water is a commodity Just a pinning per gallon for what we stand up there Would raise a substantial amount of money and it would be able to pay for some of these things you're talking about here I'm uncertain if you need to switch to a different power company In a different approach If you were to work with calpine at the geysers You could perhaps find a way to do that totally 100 local energy production for sonoma county By having it done there at the geysers and distributed in sonoma county with us getting back A financial return Because we had that commodity of water which we sold instead of giving away So I hope that they'll be looking at that if they do any type of an audit. It's an important point Water is a commodity even if it is a bit contaminated And we've given away billions and billions of gallons of that water Just putting a pinning on a gallon And having it be in some sort of a financial negotiation with calpine And energy production Could actually help to lower rate payers costs And the city's costs and allow you to go forward With what appears to be answering an unfunded mandate from the state I've heard here that you're being required to do that and the state isn't funding you to do it So I hope you'll find a way to get Compensation reimbursement for the commodities that we give away at this time And then find a way to generate energy within our community such as these students wanted with 100 Local energy production for sonoma county. Thank you for your time. Thank you dwayne Bring it back to council any additional questions from any of those comments, mr. Rungers Yeah, either director ewin or or director burke excuse me assistant city manager ewin or director burke What's the average water rate or water bill currently for the city? So if we're adding if if this is the direction that the council wants to go and it was It looked like 90 cents a month would be what would be added to the average water bill What is the current average water bill? Thank you, you know Councilmember rogers. I don't have that information right on the top of my head. I apologize But we can get that back to the council. It's we've calculated bills about what the average family of four would Would spend and we can get that back to you but on of that For this particular piece it would be an additional 90 cents, and I'm sorry. I should have had that information with me No, it's all good. I just I'd be curious to see that Because we do talk about How many folks are struggling to pay Their bills in the in the community, and I know that we do have a low income Program that we try to do as well It's I'd be curious to see how that would impact things And we do have our h2o program which does provide for offsetting the fixed charge for those that do qualify and we have looked recently We've updated that program to provide for the entire fixed charge whereas before we were providing 50 50 percent of that So so that program still is available for those that qualify Mr. Dabby had questions I want to respond to the comment made by Mr. DeWitt and I was The chair of the board of public utilities when we were going through trying to find a solution To remove a cease and desist order that the subjewel system had for a raw sewage spill at the laguna treatment plant in the winter of 84 85 it took About 14 years to get an eir approved for the project which Was selected and that was the geysers There was discussion at the time by the board and the city council To consider Various options which one of them was should we buy into the ownership of the geysers which was then controlled by unical And the decision was that probably wasn't a good place for us to go as a municipality and a general partner in the subjewel system Because of the risk of getting into private business is what it really amounted to and our real Issue at that time as we had to get off the cease and desist order that was costing our ratepayers significant money and the geysers came out of The blue And they offered to put 50 million dollars into their system to receive our water and they have Constantly paid for the power from the alexander valley up the mountain to the myacoma steam field. So It's not that we couldn't see the agreement Trend in different directions over time, but that's not an issue before us at this point And I I think looking at today's study session agenda We have a responsibility to look at ways to reduce ghg And do it economically and effectively And I see in my own mind that it's probably a combination of moving towards evergreen as the studies show it to be Meaningful and economic and at the same time look at our own facilities to generate our own power We have a lot of land out of the laguna treatment plant where we could put in solar systems on the ponds or on Irrigation areas that we use so I think there's I think the proper solution in this is to continue pushing this concept forward And eventually probably get to evergreen and also provide more of our own energy Okay, any additional questions No, um, mr Going so this is a study session So you're just looking for some feedback from the council could you Reframe the feedback that you would like from us then we'll go through each council member And he or she'll give you feedback. Yes. Thank you So I think the the feedback we're looking for as as we're hitting in the budget cycle is what Would the council like this the staff to look at as we prepare the budget in terms of Remaining on clean start shifting towards evergreen Identify engaging in audits through either the facilities or others And if we do switch to evergreen any input on timing And coordinating with energy efficiency efforts And if I can if I can add and and if you have any Questions that you want us to come back with if we bring this at the budget cycle Great Sure, miss vice mayor I just wanted to clarify when we talk about it being a million dollars We're talking about and in the context of the budget is what you're asking for clarification about We're talking about a quarter of it being not funded essentially by water So are we talking about 250 thousand dollars to our budget as an impact? That's the estimate at this point Yes, so that's a very different number than a million correct. Okay Okay, mr. Rogers. Why don't you start the feedback opportunity? Yeah, thank you, mr. Mayor And I did have a chance to see this and push this forward at the subcommittee level I think we saw it twice if not three times to have discussions For me, uh, I I completely Support moving forward with this if you look at the city's budget Including the enterprise fund is four hundred and thirty nine million dollars That means that the full switch over to evergreen is point zero zero two percent of the city's budget If you look at just the general fund The 250 thousand as the vice mayor just pointed out it's point zero zero one five percent of the general fund I know that those are big numbers. I know that we have been struggling But this is a tier one priority for our community And if you told me I could spend point zero zero one five percent of the general fund And end up coming out of it with a 53 percent reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions I think that most folks in the public would see that as as a victory now what I am open to in the budget is if What i'm hearing from from mr. Nut is that he would like to do a facilities Approach to it first on that side To go through and find efficiencies and and do the audit On our buildings before we make those switches. I'd be open to that in the budget conversation That would mean that we would still end up seeing a 75 Switch Through san rosa water which has already gone through this approach of trying to find efficiencies I'd be open to that. I do want to see us get there sooner rather than later though of doing the full evergreen Implementation and then to councilmember soyer's point We also need to continue to drive forward on other types of infrastructure that will lower our usage Which will also end up lowering the rates long term on the public as well to me It's not an either or to me It's a yes and as it usually is with issues that address climate change And so i'll be looking for that in the budget for sure Mr. Down I I concur with the councilmember Roger's statements and that We we move in this direction of Getting towards it being an evergreen participant with synomoclean power at the same time We are looking at our facility to see where there's other things that we can do To overall reduce the cost of our power Mr. Olivares Yes, I would say absolutely we need to look at how we can get there I think we've always been a big leader in doing more than what is required as it relates to Climate and the environment So whatever we need to do to get there I fully support if it means we have to engage in some type of audits to get there that's fine But I think We need to start moving forward without real without any significant delay I think it is a priority for us So uh, let's certainly get that Information that we need for the budget and even our discussions with our goal setting as well Thank you. Mr. Sir Thank you, mayor. I agree with councilmember olivares about the expedition to this We do need to be to move as quickly as possible I kind of flip a little bit on on the priority. I want to make sure that whatever we do After energy audits and upgrades and energy efficiency efforts That we are responsible and highly effective in in how we move forward. I see the Sticking with with with clean start for the for the time being i'm seeing the evergreen as a Kind of a A capper If you will after we decide what is really necessary what we can do ourselves For all nine know we may be talking about our own Energy company, I mean, I don't know. I mean hilsberg has one so or they they have their own program um It's those kinds of conversations actually that I think will take us Well into well into the 21st century and So i'm i'm looking for uh for the for that For more information. I'm not sure What part of our energy use needs to come out of evergreen? But i'm willing to with with that dedication to a to expediting these studies Wherever we can the audits and upgrades etc And then keep in keep in mind always the The option of pardon me The option of of engaging Stomachly imperative to give us the the evergreen ultimately To fill that gap. It is attractive the the being being able to just to to Kind of make a phone call and make the switch it does have an attraction to it But I am concerned about how we can most effectively use the funds that we would be um expending Immediately on the on that program even though it is less than that than it was before I mean the million dollar figure is Perhaps not exactly accurate. I mean it has it Depending on the way you look at it, but um I'm very much interested in doing some more analysis and being really responsible Even though it is not that expensive to our rate payers to make the change I might want to be using to go to our rate payers and ask them for even you know $2 to get some really important work done. It will bring us into the future. Thank you Ms. Vice mayor Thank you, and I echo the vast majority of the sentiments of my fellow council members And had written down yes and before a council member rogers said it so yes and two times The way that I look at this is that it's a ready-baked public-private partnership We have the ability to flip a switch and not bear the burden of the infrastructure for getting one of our tiered priorities done For a cost to the city of a quarter million dollars We spent a few million dollars just a few weeks ago on police radios and we're quibbling about a major initiative And how it's going to get done for a fraction of the cost I mean when we think about public safety when we think about our future generations Energy sustainability has to be part of it and absolutely We do need to look at audits But I don't believe that our children and women and children and elderly people are the most impacted By this climate emergency. We cannot wait So when it comes to the part that's the city budget The non-enterprise bit of $250,000. I think that that's an absolute no brainer When we get to the water side of it I'm fully in support with the caveat that our water billing is this is going to disproportionately affect lower income families And that when you live at higher elevations your water has to get pumped one two three times And that sucks up the vast majority of the cost of some of these water rates And so I I really do question the equity That is baked into our water billing system and under prop 218 It is not against a lot of charge people what it costs And I hope that as we go forward and as we continue to lean on our enterprise funds to fill the gap That we really do so with a mind toward equity and fairness for our lower income families that live down the hill. Thank you And I also Full steam ahead with the evergreen. I get balancing it. You know, you look at this building here from 1969 If we did the audit of this building it'd probably be scary, you know When we started the medium seeing employees on top of the roof So I get the city's infrastructure has some big needs. So I think you know where the council where we want to get there Let's do it as smart as we can as quickly as we can but we can't drop everything else But I think this is a big priority one of our mottos We want to be leading the north bay, you know There's other cities that have been mentioned, but I think we do need to walk our talk and this is important So I do appreciate a the presentation and the direction that this council is going moving forward. So thank you very much for that Did you get everything you need? That's perfect. Thank you so much Tune it up for you. Thank you for giving us that feedback. Okay. We are going to take Approximately a four minute break. We'll reconvene at four o'clock We have to keep a little thing up Are we on again? Okay. Let's reconvene today's city council meeting. Santa Rosa city council Madam city clerk who we have an announcement of the roll call Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member tivots Great. Thank you so much. Uh, there is no Close session, uh, mr. City Manager. You just want to do a quick report on the city session Great. Thank you. All right proclamations. Is there a mr. Paul crone in in the house? If you'd like to step down here, sir, and I It's really my pleasure to read this proclamation For me having been part of or watching down in southern california the Too previous cardal newman high school football teams that played for the state championships not quite as successful as this team did So it's really an honor privilege to recognize this Before I read the proclamation. I also want to make Just some comments that uh due to your leadership paul Currently on our santa rosa police department. There's at least seven different former players of years that are now serving the city of santa rosa I know we have two of our female police officers are also graduates of either senator cardinal numan So it sets the stage. You know mr. Graham rutherford here is here But the community the commitment to the community from cardinal numan is just beyond reproach So thank you all for being here and it's my privilege to read this proclamation Whereas the cardinal numan high school football team when the california inter scholastic federation division three a state championship The northern california regional championship The north coast section division four championship And the north bay league oak championship of the 14 and one record and whereas the city of santa rosa especially celebrates The rock and 33 santa rosa resident players and coaches who dedicated themselves to hours of practice Study travel games and service work and whereas the city of santa rosa Which is to recognize the accomplishments and contributions of all those involved with cardinal numan high school football Including head coach paul cronin for exceeding the 200 win mark in his coaching career And whereas the city of santa rosa acknowledges the difficult past three years for cardinal numan high school in overcoming fire damage smoke disruption power outages a coin flip And loss of homes now therefore be resolved that i tom schwedhelm mayor of the city of santa rosa on behalf of the entire city council Commend cardinal numan high school and recognize their accomplishment as the 2019 cif three a a state championship football team I thank uh mayor schwedhelm and the council for honoring our team I would like to point out that 13 and one was not the record So i don't know if they get an amendment that that it's a 14 and one just to be right but um I will say that we're trying to get all the police officers to come from cardinal high school So I get less tickets throughout my Next 20 years here, but thanks a lot. I really appreciate it and I'd like to commend this Group of athletes that spent so much time and hard work and their tremendous kids and young adults They should say and their parents and we're blessed to have you guys in our community Thank you And this is just our first time so you're all welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting We'll probably go until eight o'clock tonight. So feel free to stick around Thank you so much Uh, we have our next proclamation. I think mr. Sawyer you have that You want it? I'm sorry, I was looking at that trick Nancy are you going to come down up to receive this proclamation? Okay, you can so you two can it's kind of uh come forward Nancy don't make us start calling like the unambulance or anything Will you be careful over there? Okay Okay, so whereas the redwood empire chinese association is holding their 20 2020 chinese new year celebration at the veterans memorial building of santa rosa california on february 1st 2020 and whereas we would like to publicly recognize the importance of this intercultural organization In the fields of cultural education by offering community participation organizational networking public interactions with intercultural activities And there are many additional events which bring members friends and families Into social contact and understanding with governmental agencies and diverse people through events such as their chinese new year celebration public socials Multicultural poetry reading and many additional cultural events And whereas we acknowledge the outstanding work done by the redwood chinese redwood empire chinese association in providing programs to children and youth By giving presentations to local schools from elementary Due college levels for providing lion dancers who perform with with three dragons And for providing opportunities for children to perform at community events as well as for providing an active youth group Which focuses on teen Self-esteem and positive community involvement and for the reca's annual scholarship for sonoma county high school seniors And whereas we also acknowledge the benefits of the redwood empire chinese association's adult programs Including the adult chorus adult tai chi club the reca's community involvement in assisting governmental agencies businesses and schools With when with requested assistance in matters concerning chinese and asian cultural and language issues Now therefore be resolved the tom schwedhelm mayor of the city of santa rosa on behalf of the entire city council To hear by acknowledge the success of the redwood empire chinese association signed by the mayor on this date. Congratulations Thank you Looks like it's so honor every year. We're here to receiving parker mation. I really appreciate I'm sorry. We cannot bring the the lion thing today because the kids is in the school I know we have a few concert already respond coming to our event. I'm really glad I'm sorry tom. You cannot be there. Also john. You have to be phoenix It's okay every year. You are there support us. I want to bring our new member Also, it's going to be active in our RECA the rear and harry huang Um, so today I invite him to coming to receiving the these proclamation with me Thank you. I hope The public and know we already know this new year event 600 people with our wonderful cultural program and the dinner too I brought a little bit candies And nancy your event is this saturday corrected the vets building six o'clock Tickets still available We have a three carl noman chinese students coming to our event doing the volunteer work great. Thank you so much, nancy Thanks, nancy Mr. McGlynn, do we have a fire recovery and rebuild update report? Yes, I'd like to invite mr. Osborne down and We'll go from there Good afternoon. Mayor schwedhelm and members of the council I'd like to take the opportunity today to provide a brief update on the permit status and the rebuild As well as some operational changes that we've made recently to the permit center The last update we've provided a council the last substantial update on the rebuild status So it really took place in december and at that point we were talking about the bureau veritas amendment And we talked a lot about the service delivery in year three and the focus was really placed on tracking the service delivery with the volume And what we've seen we're really in the early stages of this year, but we continue to actually see fairly significant volumes So the total permit count so these are the number of units that are either in The plan review process under construction or our final is two thousand three hundred and twenty two And how we're seeing that breakdown is about 1300 of the units are in coffee park and around a thousand are in fountain groves So the coffee park percentage is 96 percent are in some phase of the permit process and in fountain grove That's about 72 percent that are in some phase of the permit process So when we really look at the delivery of services We like to track that with the amount of permits that come in monthly to see what those trends look like And in the last quarter of 2019 we started to see permit volumes that were roughly around 30 to 40 a month We saw a significant spike at the end of the year, which is usually the seasonal spike of 80 And now we're seeing more in the 10 to 12 range. So when we see that permit volume It's reducing the foot traffic in the permit center and it's reducing the call volume It's reducing a lot of things that are really the upfront service So in response to that we relocated the permit center from room six at city hall to room five That actually provides two benefits the amount of space they had up there was much more than they needed to provide This with the correct service to the customer. So it's better use of space at city hall And the second benefit is it actually incorporates that process into our room three service And as we create that better interaction between our two different teams And as the rebuild progresses and we start having less of a reliance on consultant services It'll be a good transition to carry those services over to our regular room three team This will not change any of our commitments about turnaround times. Those will stay the same. There should be no impact to that It also doesn't change any of our contact information email addresses phone numbers are still the same I mean, we have signs that direct people from room six to room five So that completes the update. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have council any questions Ms. Fashmere So i'm looking at these numbers at 96 percent in coffee park and 72 percent in found growth When we've seen other fires like the tunnel fire, is this typical percentages of people being 20 let's say, what are we 28 months out? Is this typical or is this slower or faster than previous rebuild patterns From the research i've conducted is significantly faster When we first started a lot of the comparisons where the oakland hills fire different time But what we got out of the gate and and we learned this a lot from actually our interaction From united policy holders because they deal with a lot of these communities and how people get up to steam up to speed excuse me quick Is that it was our year one was pretty dramatic? We saw a lot of activity in that year one and I think what happens in a lot of situations Is in the first six months there's more of a trying to figure out what to do Where we saw significant volume two months after really the the fire occurred So it got out of the gate much quicker and I think it progressed at a normal trend We just got a much earlier start than I think most So I want to say a special thank you to you and your team and the wisdom of the previous council and the city administration for making that happen so so I think they're I think mr. Osborne's being a A little self-deprecating on this the the word is although I don't think there's a study that this is a tremendous amount of activity in a very short window and people have Have noted this about santa rosa and that's why this team keeps continually being asked to go around the State and the country to discuss This approach that they took and the benefits of it. Well, we certainly appreciate that you're not an understated person But thank you very much to you gave compliment stands Mr. Rogers Thank you, mr. Mayor sort of on that note. I noticed that we are quickly approaching 1 000 structures completed Are there ways that that we are continuing to uh celebrate? To show the progress that's happening. I know we were very good about that especially early on With the the key chains for folks when they started to move in Do we have anything planned as we hit some of these other mile markers? It's an excellent point. We hasn't of yet. We're we're trying to treat each individual success as an individual success Right um and but at some point you have to have a discussion about how the community did this as a whole And I think that's the important point. It wasn't just us It wasn't the building community. It wasn't the residents. It was everybody coming together to do that So we haven't really pinpointed that it's as yet But we're coming up on those markers fairly rapidly. So those are discussions that will be happening in the future. Great. Thank you so much And I just want to have my thanks to you last night at the coffee strong meeting You left the meeting to a round of applause if I recall that correctly That was you right first time ever it was awesome though and I Having gone to many of those meetings with you the information that you provide And you're just you don't sugarcote you tell like it is and I know it's been the same experience when I've gone Some meetings up and found growth. So your efforts are very much appreciated by all in the rebuild process. So thank you Mr. Greenland is there more to this? That is that is it for this evening. Okay. Thank you. Uh, mr. City manager. Do you have a report for us? I have nothing to add at this point And madam city attorney I also have nothing to report this afternoon. Okay Are there any statements of abstention by council members on tonight's agenda? Wow seen. That's the first for quite a long time. All right council members reports who would like to start Okay, mr. Rogers I mean, I guess I'll I'll go ahead and kick us off here. Uh, so last week, um As the council is aware, I I serve as the vice chair for the league of california cities environmental quality committee We had our first quarterly meeting Of the year it was the new mayors and council members Which I know a number of us were in attendance at but specifically we meant to talk about what the scope of work would be for The the committee the environmental quality committee throughout the year and not too surprisingly rebuild And resiliency Came up as the number one issue for that specific committee It is one of the top three as I've reported before by the mayors and council members association So you should see significant work on that front. I wanted to Plug one of the discussions that we had and put a piece of legislation on the radar of the council Specifically it's sp 378 It's a bill that we as a council are going to be asked probably repeatedly to weigh in on given our experiences This bill would require utilities across the state to address public safety power shutoff issues that have been identified Many of them from this council in our letters up to sacramento and through our delegation Specifically the bill would call for greater transparency And would require utilities to do an assessment of their existing infrastructure To identify where they have vulnerabilities and for the first time really put that out to the public Alongside a number that shows how much they are spending to invest in their infrastructure to keep up that maintenance So those will be public for the first time if this passes It'll create a reimbursement program for customers and local governments And it will implement a fine $250,000 per hour for every 50,000 residents that you have if the california public utilities commission Deems that the shutoff was not necessary or was not done appropriately So obviously this is going to be a huge conversation in sacramento I wanted to make sure that the council had it on their radar again. That's sp 378 Any other reports All right, actually I have a rather lengthy one here Let's see first of all we had our long-term financial policy and audit subcommittee meeting on january 16th We discussed much of the information That believe assistant city manager mcbride will be sharing on item 14.1 I along with I think there's three other council members attended the county's Community meeting out of the burger center in oakmont on january 17th talking about the temporary shelter out there Great opportunity to talk to some of the residents about their concerns and working with the county on that ongoing project And then last week also attended the rotary club of santa rosa's public safety awards chief gosner and chief navarra were there Um, it's great hearing the stories about some of our employees and on the police side detective Noggle was recognized for his work on a couple of investigation involving fentanyl in our community It's one of those things everyone's writing the paper about the number of deaths of this dangerous material and he did some standout work Not only arresting folks but confiscating a lot of fentanyl and other illegal narcotics from our community And then fire captain michael alcazar was Recognized for his efforts not in the city of santa rosa But he happened to be on vacation in mawai and saved someone who was having an epileptic seizure Swimming and without his efforts. She never would have made it back and what was great is that michael's father tony was a recipient of the same award in 1999 Also this weekend participating chops teen club youth empowerment and leadership conference It was quite exciting. Uh over 60 middle school students were there It's been a while since I had that many middle school students running around But it was great all the work that chops is doing on that And then in this chamber on saturday we hosted a class from stanford university Revolving around our wildfire Joining me on the panel of city employees included chief navarro chief gosner Assistant city manager david guin and assistant fire marshal paul lone fall Adrian merton's greatly assisting the coordination this event along with julie guzzi very much appreciated The class it was very well received after the class the professor wrote us yesterday was a complete success The students were and are abuzz with questions research topics and admiration for the city of santa rosa and its leadership And I love this next sentence he added As I commented yesterday fema has so much to learn from santa rosa and its leadership team about wildland fires I just hope they listen. So it's very nice that he recognized that And a little bit of what I understood too many of these students were Engineers and when they learned of the history of mr. Goan. He was like a rock star. They crowded around him They wanted to talk about water and engineering. So it was really a very successful day So thank you mr. Goan for being who you are And lastly, uh, I welcome to statewide statewide organization of santa rosa the california police activities league Their statewide conference is being hosted in santa rosa this week So I made some opening comments along with chief navarro and violence prevention manager jason carter But they were also very impressed with all that santa rosa had to offer and I don't think this will be the last time They'll be coming to santa rosa for their annual conference All right on to approval minutes We have the minutes special meeting minutes from january 7th and regular Mr. Mayor where you can also make an announcement related to the adjournment of today's meeting I will had did you want to introduce? No, no, I would ask you to do that Go ahead mr. Goan I failed to indicate that I will be abstaining from voting on the january 7th meetings because I wasn't in the council at that time So the motion can be made on separates then I will vote on the 14th. Great. Thank you Yes, no, I know what you're saying. I was just going to do at the end Earlier today, I learned of the loss the city of santa rosa loss clave ronard stalin Who was a 20 year veteran of santa rosa police department retired a couple years ago? Passed away yesterday, so we'll be adjourning this meeting tonight in honor of his memory and All of our thoughts and prayers are with lin and his two daughters in this challenging time So thank you for that reminder Okay, so back to the approval of the minutes the january 7th special meeting minutes Mr. Dowd will be abstaining. Were there any corrections to those? Seeing none, those would be accepted January 14th any corrections updates to those? Seeing none will also accept those Consent calendar mr. McGlynn so um as as I announced a couple council members before 12.2 will be Rescheduled, so I will be skipping 12.2 this evening 12.1 resolution third amendment to general services agreement number f 001621 with creams dismantling Incorporated dba creams towing item 12.3 Resolution approval of general services amendment f 002066 Park and garage steam cleaning and power washing services Item 12.4 resolution resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa Proving the third amendment to professional services agreement number f 001539 for governmentjobs.com Incorporated dba neogov item 12.5 resolution resolution of the council of the city Of santa rosa amending the city classification and salary plan to move the classification Of city clerk from unit 11 mid-management confidential to unit 10 executive management The salary range for the city clerk is 99 914 to 128 128,233 dollars resolution 12.6 resolution Authorized to participate as a joint applicant in two grant applications to the affordable housing sustainable communities ahc Ahc program for the roseland village housing project and s rjc student housing and sustainable transportation project Item 12.7 ordinance adoption second reading state legislation zoning code text amendment ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa Amending title 20 of the santa rosa city code by modifying zoning code sections 20 20.0 20-22 .030 20-23 .030 20-24 .030 20-26 .030 20-36 .040 20-42 .050 20-64 .020 20-70 .020 File number rez 19-011 Madam city attorney, you did you get it right? He did I followed along very closely and he got everyone correct very well done. Thank you, mr. City manager Council questions on any of the consent calendar items Do we have any cards? Okay, madam vice mayor you have this Yeah, I wanted to uh say that i'm going to move all items on the consent calendar minus 12.2 But that wanted to give a special thank you to rachel edin nancy adams I know that it may not sound glamorous a resolution authorizing to participate as a joint applicant La la la la la la, but if this goes through and we get this It's going to be not only in support of Our climate emergency our tier one goals transportation economic development There's really nothing that this doesn't do and the amount of time and effort that these women and this department these departments have spent On these grant applications and working well with other municipalities is really tremendous So with that I move items 12.1 12.3 12.4 12.5 12.6 and 12.7 and wave Well, I'd like to see him read it one more time, but I'll I'll wave any further reading of the text second We have a motion a second any additional questions your votes then And that passes with six eyes. Thank you Not being five o'clock. We'll go on to report item 14.1 Item 14.1 report financial update fiscal year 2019-20 Chuck McBride assistant city manager presenting Good evening honorable mayor vice mayor members of the council We're starting off the 2021 fiscal year budget process We'll be coming back to you in the spring to start doing workshops I'll be doing goal setting march So what I wanted to do tonight was just take a little bit of time and Lay out the same present presentation that we did for the long-range finance subcommittee and talk a little bit about what we're seeing In the kind of macro economic environment and then talk a little bit about what's happening with the forecast for the city of santa rosa So the first thing we looked at when we were doing the forecast is the economic environment And this is kind of a national overview. So I look at two main sources one's beacon economics That's chris thornberg. So if you've ever been to any of the league events and seen an economist speak He's probably the most entertaining of the economists. I've seen and he's very well very well thought up And he's looking at the economy and seeing that we're going to continue this kind of moderate to to To good growth in the next two years. He's looking at over the next two calendar years He's seen two percent growth in 2020 and two and a half percent in 2021 UCLA anderson is the other major source that I use So they have four main economists there that that uh that look at um what what their forecasts are and again They also look at a two-year horizon. They're a little more pessimistic. They see 1.7 percent in in this calendar year 1.9 percent in 2021 It was interesting that they've been Calling they've been ringing the bell that are recessions around the corner It looks like they've backed off that a little bit They they said in the report that there's a significant risk risk of recession in 2020 But it's somewhat less than we previously thought Which is about as much optimism as you get from UCLA economists And then another focus area was the wall street journal economic forecasting survey And they they survey economists throughout the country and kind of gauge what their thoughts are on what's coming in the in the economic outlook and About one third of the economists that they gauge think that we have a recession coming the next year But keep in mind that's against when they did this last year two-thirds of the economists thought that so again Kind of looking looking a little bit better. And then if you saw the governor's preliminary budget that came out this month It's they usually are always very pessimistic about About the economic outlook and they're actually a lot more optimistic this year, especially in the state of california is doing very well So why they're Feeling a little bit more optimistic a lot of things are going well In national and state level you do see record tight labor markets So the unemployment rate at the national level is down to three and a half percent That's the best it's been since 1969 and the labor participation is 165 million Americans working So if you look back to 2008 we went through the great recession that dropped to about 135 million. So we've added 30 million workers to the labor force since the recession. So that's that's good and it seems to be Continued strength if you saw the bureau of labor statistics report for november we had another 260 plus thousand jobs in the nation So that's that's very strong and that's you're seeing some bleed over of that into Into compensation for employees. So earnings are up across the board One of the things that chris thornberg at beacon economics sites is that if you look at people in the workforce that Do not have high school degrees Their actual earnings have gone up by 15 percent since 2015 and that's double the rate for those who have college degrees So it seems that in all kind of strata's of the economy. You're seeing You're seeing positive effects from from these tight labor markets Interest rates those those the fed rates are down. So they were 2.25 back in july they're now 1.5 to 1.75 So that's good for us from the standpoint of you know consumer loans And mortgages and having people spend money in the economy And then housing continues to be relatively good There's about 1.25 million housing starts in the u.s in the last year in 2019. So for comparison purposes In when we had the major booms in the late 90s, we're doing about 2 million units So it's not at boom levels, but it's but it's healthy And then if you looked at k-shill or s and p data The markets overall are up in the united states price wise Although one of the areas that that went down a little bit was actually the san francisco bay area metro service area So the economic environment a couple things just to keep an eye on You keep hearing exports, which is a part of gross domestic products are down Some of that may be some bleed over from from some of the trade policies we've adopted But most of that's coming from a really strong us dollar. So that suppresses That suppresses exports an interesting thing that That ucla anderson talked about was this kind of auto credit bubble that we have and they kind of likened it to the bubble that we had in 2007-2008 With the housing markets and what's happened is that Lending standards in the auto industry have been very relaxed over the last several years So now you're seeing terms of seven years and sometimes more But what they're what they're more concerned about is there's this trend for people to carry negative equity in their vehicles onto the Onto the next loan. So you sell a car that's worth 20,000 Dollars or and and you've got a 30 dollar note on it You roll that remaining 10,000 dollars onto the next note with the vehicle So you wind up with a vehicle that did you have 10,000 more than what the vehicle is worth on the note? So ucla foresees Legal or legislative come up into the next year and they think that that's going to put some pressure on auto sales So they think that's going to take um auto sales from 17 million units down to 15 million units The only reason I bring that up is is here in santa rosa We're Pretty heavily exposed in our sales tax to auto sales about 15 of that comes from new new auto sales So that could have some effect on us and we've already kind of seen that in our in our sales tax numbers This last year we actually saw auto sales down about seven percent in the second quarter And then federal deficits are a problem will rain about a trillion dollars a year federal deficits in a 4.7 trillion dollar budget So that's not that's not good and it's not going away anytime soon And then again the political environment in washington is um a little a little mucky right now and uh Probably not focusing on some of the fiscal policies that they need to be So now we'll turn um specifically to santa rosa. We did something a little bit different this year We always do a 10-year financial forecast, but this year we uh contracted with management partners and they have a Forecasting model that they use so they took all of our data. Um all of our salary data. They interviewed PED and talked to them about what they see coming in economic development what they see coming in development Of homes and commercial properties and they they re ran all of our numbers and then we sat down with them and kind of Discussed the assumptions of the model and uh, and this is this is what their model came out with Um Overall what you see is you see the expenditure line on the top there. That's that orange line And it's a pretty similar picture to what we've shown you before Essentially the blue lines there the revenues are basically at or below those expenditure lines. So we have this deficit Uh, and that just deficit continues out there till 2024 25 when you see those lines diverge And then that deficit kind of grows and the reason it grows there is that we have two temporary tax measures Uh that fall off in 24 25 and then we have an additional one that falls off in 26 27 so that's why those lines start moving apart The model one of the things that management partners was able to do that we've we've never done in our modeling is they modeled a recession So that solid blue line that you see on the bottom is the recession line And we'll talk about some of the assumptions later that they made in their recessionary scenario And then that dashed blue line we went in kind of Modeled what would happen if we took out their recessionary assumptions and everything kind of went along just fine And that's what that dashed blue line is so you see that what happens is that We we wind up almost in balance for the budget out until 24 25 before we start diverging again Is those um is those revenue sources fall off and then we were able to also take their model and um and Make some different assumptions So again the previous slide is a little more pessimistic because we assume that three Quarter-cent sales taxes, which is 30 million dollars in revenue to the general fund fall off and that they're not replaced Um, so we we ran a separate model where we said well What if two of those measures are uh successful at the ballot? They're um re-implemented and they don't sunset and then just one of those uh falls off So essentially the bottom end of the day we lose 10 million dollars in revenues and you can see that While we still maintain this um this this deficit scenario, it's not nearly as bad Is what you saw in this previous slide and that gap closes after 24 25 And that was one of the recommendations of management partners is that we start looking now at uh at what we do about these About these measures that sunset in the future years So we'll talk a little bit about some of the assumptions um That management partners made uh in the model they assume that the recession begins in 21 22 So the next fiscal year after this after this budget year and then that uh We we kind of come back from that over two to three year period depending on the revenue source And then that recession recurs every seven years. So they assume the seven-year business cycle Which is is usually what's in what's in um Was the history that we see so you can see with sales tax. I just kind of put up our major revenue sources here For the general fund the sales tax baseline is 2.9 percent That's about right when we go back and look at look at our history with muni services were about 2.6 to 3 percent But it's very volatile. It just depends on what year it is So what they did in the recession scenario is they assumed that sales tax would drop by 5 percent So we'd actually get a contraction of 2.1 percent in our recession property taxes They assumed that we were at a baseline of 4.4 percent Which probably ordinarily would be a little bit high, but you consider that we have a lot of Permits that are they've been issued for the homes that we lost And then we've got addition to the inventory that's coming on. So that's 4.4 percent is probably about right That's about what we saw last year So in a recession scenario that drops by 2 so your property taxes remain positive They just lose 2 of their growth rate Again, probably a pretty valid assumption for recessionary scenarios is those property tax revenues are kind of dampened by prop 13 We don't see them fall as precipitously as we do with sales tax and tot And then that last column there is transient occupancy tax on the baseline You're probably thinking it's pretty high at 12 but again That's assuming that we're adding those rooms back into the inventory about quarter of our inventory that was lost during the fire So that's what's giving that baseline a bolster up to 12 percent in a recession That goes down by almost 4 and contracts to about 8 growth rate during the recession So those were their baseline assumptions on those and then the next thing I wanted to look at was um We using the new model uh and putting some of these new assumptions in there And now that we're halfway through the fiscal year We we now are starting to get an idea of where we're at for our actuals So what you see up here is in the left column where it says budget That's for the year that we're in So those are the numbers that we gave to you when we came to you in june adopted the budget That's what we thought would happen this year And then the projected column is where we are with all these revenue sources And then the right column there is just what the difference is So it's kind of a report card and you can see overall We projected 181.5 million dollars in revenues for the general fund We came in 1.7 million dollars ahead or we're projecting to do that as of june 30th So that's that's pretty close. It's not too far off the property taxes Are coming in 1.2 million dollars higher. We've got About 55 of those revenues in through december So we we think we have a pretty good idea on how those are going to end the year up And then sales tax coming in about 400 000 higher The two measures that are measured and measure p Are coming in right about on par there about 100 000 higher on those 10 million dollar revenue sources Everything else is pretty much where we expect it to be And then we've got the transfers of 2.8 million dollars those are primarily some Gas tax transfers and measure m money for roads that we have that we transfer into the general fund for work So we're looking pretty good there. We'll talk about some of the individual tax sources and what management partners did with some of our data So this is property tax the solid bars that you see there in green Are the actual revenue sources that are associated with that scale on the left side of the graph there And then that blue line that you see jumping up and down Is the rates that's associated with the with the rates that you see on the right side of the graph there So you can kind of see in 1819 How the rate for property tax spiked up Almost 10 and then it's kind of settled into this ban between two and four percent Which is about what we would expect for property taxes So you can see in 2021 next fiscal year they expect property taxes to come in relatively high about five percent and then and then they drop down over several years as that procession hits in 21 22 What they assumed was that they took most of our Properties about 97 of the existing stock and they assumed that was within that that prop 13 ban So it's growing by about two percent of years the california cpi by that Prop 13 restriction the other three percent they assumed would change hands So that gives about a 40 growth rate any properties of the change hands because then they they mark back up to market And then they took into account The fire permits that were talked about earlier tonight How those are getting put into the model and then they assumed that They looked at our rena numbers and they assumed that over Over the over the 10 years of the forecast we'd add about 500 units a year for residential stock So that's what's what's driving these numbers for the for the property taxes Next thing they looked at is sales taxes And as you can see sales tax are a lot more volatile. So again, you can see that that blue bar there This jumping between negative two and eight percent depending on what year it is And that's that's in keeping with the history that we see with sales tax They see growth rates over the past 15 years We're about 2.4 percent and again, we look in the kind of shorter window with our muni services data We see about 2.6 to 3 percent. So I think these rates are about right you do see in 21 22 there Where that where that blue line drops off sharply? That's that recessionaries Scenario that we talked about where we actually get some contraction in sales tax We're starting to see sales tax slow a little bit now We got data through the second quarter our sales tax data revenue lags by quite a bit But we saw growth overall in the city of about 2 percent But then it depended on where you look so if you looked at restaurants You saw some growth in the sales tax, but then as I mentioned earlier if you looked at new auto sales You actually saw about 7 decrease. So um, so we're starting to see a little bit of maybe stagnation in in sales tax And then transient occupancy tax is a uh is is a pretty bright spot for us We've had high occupancies nady ours in uh in our hotel taxes And then what you also see happening this graph and the reason that blue line hops up so high there over 10 percent Is because um, again, we're adding back in those the lost room stock that we have uh within the next year So that's that's driving those revenues a lot higher. So t o t kind of like sales tax will expect to jump around more It'll be a little more volatile But we expect that to remain a bright spot For our revenue sources over the next several years And then I just kind of broke out a couple of the other ones we have property transfer tax Uh revenue that we get from that right now is about four million dollars Um, you see pre recession growth rates. They assume we had about three and a half percent in growth per year And then when the recession hits that falls to seven percent again, that's what you'd expect We'd expect housing sales to fall off Pretty pretty noticeably during a during a market recession. So so those look about right franchise payments We get from another number of sources Garbage utilities and we get about 10 million dollars a year in that Our pre recession growth there's two percent and that's two percent whether it's recession or not those are very Very stable source of tax revenue and then business taxes about 4.6 million dollars that we bring in You'll see two percent base rate and about a 1.7 percent contraction and a recession And then other revenues were License the citizen or fund charges and some of the things that just don't fit neatly into those other columns And those are basically when you blend them all together about a 1.4 percent growth overall No impact from recessions and those are some of those things too like rec fees and those type of things So we'll turn and look at how we're doing on the expenditure side. So overall we projected we would We would we would expend 189 million dollars in general fund this year We expect that to come in about 105 million dollars To the good side to the low side So just walking through this quickly is as As we've seen before the biggest chunk of the general fund expenditures is on the personnel side So we projected 135 million dollars that'll come in about 134.7 So breaking that down real quickly salaries are about a million and a half dollars high But a lot of that is in our overtime So we budget about 5.2 million dollars for this fiscal year and overtime within the general fund That's going to come in about a million and a half high. And again, if you think we've already had two psps events with a fire You know, those are the things that are going to be drivers That are going to be kind of unknown variables for our overtime Costs. So that's what's driving those a little bit high retirement is is spot on to where we thought it is Again because we get those numbers from purrs. Those are highly predictable when we're forecasting Health costs or where we where we thought they were 14 million dollars And then other again a couple of things going on there others just Is just those personnel costs that we can't Fit neatly into those other columns so you can think of things like vision dental And some post post employment benefits The reason that there's a variance of two million dollars is that is Municipal partners when they did this they our management partner, sorry What they did was they built a two million dollar vacancy savings in there. So we're never at full staff We always have some some static vacancy during during the during the year So what they're doing there is plugging that in there and taking that number down by two million dollars to account for that So that's why you're seeing that two million dollar Negative there in the other column and then operations and maintenance. That's just everything other than personnel Contractual services fuels all those things that we use to do daily operations for the city That's expected to come in about eight hundred thousand dollars under Pretty much though what we expected and then transfers down there just things like capital projects capital improvement projects We transferred about 12 million dollars this year That transfer tax that we talked about four million dollars that all gets transferred out So that's what's in that transfer line. So again coming in pretty close to what we expected A couple key line assumptions On the right is management partners assumptions on the left is what what we used to use in our model So this is kind of what we agreed to through our discussions No major changes there our baseline salary assumption Is the same at two percent Obviously we're in negotiations with all bargaining units this year. So So that number may or may not be a valid assumption What means Management partners did was built in a quarter percent for step increases So that is employees that are just stepping up in their rates through longevity So we agreed to that health insurance based on our history They took it down by one percentage point again does not make a major difference within the modeling One of the things that we uh did agree to was to add two fte's full-time equivalent positions Into the forecast um for those 10 years And our rationale on that was that we've cut the the workforce substantially since 2008 I think we've cut to 200 fte's about 15 percent of the workforce Just last year when we were trying to address this this ongoing budget deficit One of the things that we did was cut 40 fte's out of the budget So that's probably not a sustainable model in perpetuity. So we we thought that it was actually a valid assumption to to To address that in the model and say that we're going to have some growth within the workforce over the Over the course of the next 10 years So Usually we talk about the pensions. Um, it's always a dark cloud. It continues to be a dark cloud We have a 340 million dollar unfunded liability. It's substantial However, uh, one of the interesting things that that came out of management partners work was this look at what our long term Our long range pensions are looking at looking like Um, and so you can see uh as you go from uh from present 2019 20 there and you go up to about 2028 you can see that those those rates go up Very steeply and the scale there what you're seeing that 30 40 50 60 percent That's the percentage of payroll and that's the that's the rates that include the unfunded liability So that's the normal rate and the unfunded liability So you see those are going up really really fast and that's kind of by design So you remember purrs took the rates down from seven and a half percent down to seven percent So we see that really large Increase in our annual costs and they they feather that in they don't do it all at once They they they do it over a period of five years So that's why you're seeing those really big ramp-ups there until about 2025 26 So on the top there you can see police will reach about 60 of payroll Fire plans that red dashed line will reach about 55 and then miscellaneous employees will reach about 35 percent The good news here though is that as you move out to the right on this and you get out to about year 11 These costs actually start bending down and then they stop start dropping So that by the time you get out there to 2046 Which we'll probably still be dealing with the uh, you're you're going to see those those rates come Come down below where they are nowadays Are now and so what's driving that is that we have a lot of those PEPRA tier three employees coming in so the new employees that are coming on and replacing those older employees They have a much much lower benefit and if you remember the state changed the changed the laws in 2013 So we're starting to to see those actually coming to the workforce. So in the miscellaneous group, which is the largest Largest group within the city. That's about 900 of your of your 1200 employees are in that group Already a third of those are our PEPRA employees. So that they're much cheaper. They have a much lower retirement benefit Employees were about 16 and in fire were just over 20 21 percent That we're seeing those PEPRA employees. So that's that's some good news on the first side I will say that there's there's a couple of things that are that are built into this so management partners Assumed that over I think 25 years purrs is going to bring the rate down from seven percent to six percent With their risk mitigation strategy There is a chance that When purrs gets to set the purr we're at seven percent now they may decide to take that rate down Like they did before so they could decide to go from seven to half to to six and a half percent If they did that in a three-year period you're going to see again Impacts like you're seeing on the left side of that graph where we where we get those rates Pushed up again and and they're they are looking at an investment market That's about six point two percent So they do think that they're still a little bit high on their investment return assumptions So the only reason I bring that up is just to say they're we don't know what purrs is going to do But but if they do things like they've done in the past we this this This model could change substantially Um, so fund balance real quickly, uh, we talked to council last year and we we aimed to have a 15 to 17 percent general fund reserve We were at that at 20 28 and a half million dollars We're actually a little bit above our um 15 target So during the year we've had a number of budget adjustments. Uh, so We had police radios. I think for 3.8 million dollars Um, we had a haggardy contract for about one and a half million dollars We had a the Bureau veritas contract for about 900,000 dollars So adding all those kind of adjustments that we make throughout the year on things that council approves We took about 6.2 million dollars down So that brings the estimated fund balance down to about 22.3 million dollars And then you know, we had we still have we still have the rest of the fiscal year to deal with So, you know item 14.2 will be talking about how to pay for fire engine and that that will come out a general fund reserve So just something that we're we're keeping an eye on We do at some point, you know, I talked last year about addressing our general fund reserves and seeing if we're at the right level Still a conversation we we want to have but I think we need to look at some other things too Like how much we're funding our infrastructure's pensions and those kind of things So real quickly, um, we have some uh, some We talked about we have we have those three quarter cent sales tax measures That are about 10 million dollars of revenue apiece one's measure. Oh, that's the measure that was passed in 2018 Temporary emergency funding there at the top and then the old measure. Oh that supports safety and violence prevention Those two expire in 2025 and then two years later. We have measure p Expire so those are going to drop off Um, we can go to 10.25 percent within the city We have a 7.25 state base rate and then we're allowed to add on 2 top of that And then Sonoma's got legislation that allows us to go another percent. So that gets you to that 10.25 percent Right now when you add in all these other measures that we have there for the county So you've got measure m at a quarter percent The new measure in for parks that was a eighth of eighth of a cent Measure f which was ag preservation and core percent and then we had a library measure of an eighth percent And then measure q which was a smart measure that when you add all those up We've got nine percent. So that kind of you know moves us towards that cap of 10.25 on the bottom There are our proposed measures that we're aware of and again, these are just sales tax measures We haven't discussed property tax measures that could be coming down the pipes too But we've got measure g for fire half cent tax and Mental health that's being proposed by the county at a quarter percent And I think measure g actually goes in march. So those those would bring that to 9.75 So just something to kind of keep in mind that we're starting to edge towards towards that cap And then issues and opportunities again, um, you know, the unfund liability We looked at perv's valuation reports look out to 25 26 So we see substantial growth there You saw that in that graph that I just showed you we're increasing 34 percent in miscellaneous as a percentage of payroll 48 percent for police and 37 percent for fire So those are are built into the model. We're assuming those in the forecast. So we know those are coming But again, when you look at uh, when you look at the long picture with pervs And you see those pepper employees starting to starting to kind of fill the fill the rolls That's going to start bending those cost curves down Infrastructure continues to be something that we look at we added 7 million dollars in for infrastructure last year But um, we do have We do have some infrastructure issues and deferred maintenance issues and those begin to become a lot more costly as you As you let those things go so management partners brought up the scenario of Of roads and one of the things they point out is that if you slowly seal a road It's four dollars and 75 cents a yard if you have to go in and replace it's it's 80 some odd dollars a yard So that so is you know, if you let things if you let deferred maintenance become a big enough issue It starts to really become a much bigger financial issue and then org structure is organizational structure is something that we continue to look at within the city we we uh Removed a number of fts last year for savings But we also rearranged the way the portfolios within the city are done and we continue to look at Look at that for potential cost savings so That's kind of where we step off now As we as we start thinking about the the budget for for 2021 We uh We have public hearing on budget priorities on february 25th. So that's to get public input And then uh council goal settings will be two days starting on march 12 And then we'll come back to council for the first budget study session on april 7th And then in may we spend two days with the council Going through all the department budgets and putting together the annual budget And then if all goes well, we'll adopt a budget on on june 23rd. I will say right now We're we're thinking that this year is probably going to be a little more of a status quo budget because you know Like I showed you those deficits that we have they're they're still there that the picture remains But it's you know, it's it's it's starting to look like There may be long-term solutions But it's going to take us some time to work through through those and see where we can get savings to finally Get those get a long-term balanced budget in place So that is my so before before we go to questions One of the things you've seen is the staff has done really intense work on the revenue side what we Assistant city manager McBride said where we still have all this A Large task ahead of us is on the expenditure side They do not sync up and we've got to have that conversation One of the things we will talk more directly in goal setting about is the fact that right now Unfortunately, we're we're pretty much a If last year holds true a 10 month year 10 month a year operation Two months of the year are now being pulled out In the the work that Is being referred to now is the Fire season and the investor owned utility shut off period The governor has changed the nomenclature Around power safety shut off and so that's what we're going to be Dealing with but the the real the real factor in here is that come the fall we based on last year's experience We could lose two months of planning and exercise work So right after the budget process where we typically get geared up for the next year The staff is going to start engaging in that long-term financial Work and we're going to need some assistance through council to do that work in the summer and into the fall And in because we can't get stuck in a place where we haven't done some of that work on the expenditure side So we're prepared as a as an organization to begin that work july 1 So the staff is probably going to grumble with me a little bit But and it's going to be happy new year to us. We're right back in this But that's I just want to give that Operational perspective is that we got through the revenue part of this and you're seeing the the results and the The depth that staff has gone working on the revenue side. We still have a lot of work to do on the expenditure side All right, thank you Chuck for that information. Mr. Sammy and for your information council questions. Mr. Rogers Thanks, Chuck really appreciate the the presentation um a couple of questions first The the slide on the pension obligations side 15 In order to produce this graph There had to have been an assumption about how quickly Employees were going to be replaced by the new PEPRA employees that are at the lower rate Uh, how did we build out that assumption and does that actually track with what we've been seeing over the last couple of years in terms of replacing retirees with this new lower rate Yeah, so Basically councilmember we we just took the the experience we had so like we've seen that you know since 2013 We've gone to you know a third of our miscellaneous employees Our PEPRA so we just assume that that rate is going to continue as it is that you know that that might be actually a little bit I guess pessimistic because you know if we have an older labor force, you're probably going to see retirements You know in the next you know five years they're they're going to accelerate that a little bit We we just took it in straight line what those assumptions were So if we if it's taken us from 13 until present to get to 33 percent We assume those same rates would continue for miscellaneous police and fire Yeah, I appreciate that I would be curious to see whether or not particularly in police and fire as folks get to retirement Where they're eligible to be able to retire what we think that those assumptions will look like So i'm assuming that same third rate is what was informing our long-term financial forecast the slides five and six Yes, okay Through your presentation. I Always look for the dollars trying to track where they they might be For expenditures that look like we have spent 1.5 million less than we expected to As well as for revenue. We've had 1.7 million more than we expected to So 3.2 million that is a change from our budget from last year But on the long-term financial forecast for 2020 2021 it shows a 1.4 million dollar budget surplus Where did the rest of it go? Not not sure i'm following so if if our expenditures and revenue for this year Results in a 3.2 million dollar Net savings or net addition to the city in terms of fewer expenditures and and more in terms of sales tax and property tax coming in But we're only showing a 1.4 million surplus on slide five Where did the other 1.7 go so it doesn't really go anywhere because some of those aren't ongoing so like you saw 1.7 million dollars additional in property tax That doesn't mean that you'll get an additional 1.7 million dollars next year So remember when we talked about those and those buy year rates that we looked at for the different different major revenue sources Those kind of go up and down depending on what's happening so You know you may see property tax rates flattening out a little bit and maybe we don't get as much property tax As we're looking at next year same thing on the expenditure side Just because we had a million and a half dollars in additional expenditures this year For overtime that may or may not happen next year or may may be exacerbated So we kind of go back to what the baseline is when we go out to the future for for 2021 So you don't necessarily carry three million dollars into the next year again a lot of that is probably one time Right, so then the one-time funds would have been rolled into the general fund balance Exactly So if we add additional if we wind up with three million dollars additional at the end of the year That's exactly what would happen that would go back into the reserves Okay, so we won't I guess that answers my question right there that additional 1.7 million that is an account or Excuse me three point two million that isn't really accounted for We'll go into the general fund balance unless we choose to do something else with right But but and just to double on this remember that we're we're dealing with projections right now We're not dealing with actuals and this so so we'll we'll true up when the actuals right now We're we're looking at where those revenue projections are tending us as we see it right now Yeah, I know a couple of years in anticipation of When we might actually have revenue that true ups at the end of the year We had talked about a specific system where 50 had to go into we called it buckets whether it was pension obligations long term maintenance requirements or the the reserves Do we have that in place for the discussion or is the council going to have to have that discussion The council is going to have to have that discussion And we'll be bringing that to the long term finance committee as we talk about how to how to manage this going forward. Yes, okay What's our bond rating now I think we're double a we are double a Okay, and so one of the things that i'm curious for us to track and we don't need to get into it too much Today is how our deferred maintenance as deferred maintenance goes up What's the threat to our long-term bond rating and obviously because then that makes Borrowing money more expensive for us um And then just as a reminder the 15 percent requirement for the general fund reserves What was that number again that we need to make sure we maintain to meet that 15 percent? Obviously fluid since we don't have an actual Budget but based on projections. You talking about the dollar number. Yeah, correct So if we're looking at 180 million dollar budget, you're looking about 26 million dollars. So where that should be, okay So there might be some work that we have to do on that come budget time Yeah, and I think that's Yeah, there is work that we have to do there It's the you know what we talked about last year was if that uh, if that 15 to 17 percent is even the right number I mean that's based on two months of Of reserves if we hit, you know an event where we need that You know if you look at guidance from some of the financial officer associations They they recommend if you if you know based on how volatile your revenues are or how much risk you have to You know events like fires and those type of things that may not be the right number We may need to bump that up But but again, I think our our kind of priorities here are first to to address that long-term deficit And then we can start kind of kind of messing around with with things like the uh, like the the levels at which We're keeping reserves because I think we have we have you know Things that are related to the reserves that we have to address for like fleet replacement Infrastructure which we started to address last year. We started to address Stabilizing our our pension rates. So, you know those conversations are all kind of tied together It may not just be a question of what our reserve levels are Yeah, no, I really appreciate that and just as a note For the public. I just want to say what a fantastic job our team has done We were around 19.1 percent in terms of our general fund reserves when the fire hit in 2017 Nearly exhausted it and now they've been able over the last Well, I think we said earlier 28 months to be able to build it back up to be around that 15 mark. So really great job. Thank you Mr. Art, do you have a question? I do I suspect we'll have a great deal more work and information About this but how does this presentation factor in potential for FEMA and OES funds coming in as a result of the fire damage that this community has encountered and And obviously we've had some significant damage done to our city owned infrastructure How are we going to reconcile that as we move forward through the budget and how is that accounted for in this if at all? So councilmember it's it's not really accounted for in this last year We got about eight million dollars from FEMA and one-time monies that did go to the general fund We have little in excess of 30 million. I think that we're still pursuing But that's not within this presentation because it's focused on the general fund most of that money is going to go towards specific projects that are that are outside the general fund However, we did last year actually Council set aside money about three million dollars Just to start to address Any of the of the city's portion of those projects that we're going to have to rebuild because it's it's not all FEMA and cow OES money. We have a local Contribution that we have to make too so we had started to do that and that's kind of part of that conversation I was talking about with the reserves. We're going to have to come up with that money at some point so but the effects of the of the Revenues that will get in from FEMA for fire damage are are really not reflected within this within this presentation Thank you Any other questions I had a couple just going back to what mr. Rogers was talking about because we had talked about those different buckets So I what I heard the city manager say we'll start those discussions with long-term Financing financial and audit subcommittee because I'd be interested And just see how that timing would work with our goal setting because I think You know we may be able to recommend but there'll be some decisions that the whole body's going to need to make some priorities on So I have a big interest in that and then on the local sales and use tax measures slide 17 Is in my understanding that there's a bay area transportation tax and is that a sales or a property one in So are you are you referring to faster? Is that what you're referring to? So we're having colleagues Come up on the 11th to do a presentation, but that is not factored in here We're on your our understanding at this point is that we require legislation to Advance that but it is a 1% One of our one of staff's concerns is that There seems to be some discussion or or that the magical number is 10% when you start to go over 10% in terms of Tax it's going to be difficult to maneuver So a concern about that tax for example would be if you haven't addressed your internal Issues and you know your two your two measure o's out there You have or your measure o and your measure p however you want to look at it and all of a sudden you have 1% on top of that It may not degrade your capacity But the idea of going out and soliciting support Over the 10% marker is probably a legitimate threat that the council needs to consider But we will have that presentation on that particular measure Coming on the 11th of february. Great. Thank you Okay, mr. Rogers And just as a point of clarification while we're on this side, I do believe that the state legislation That was passed to raise the cap from 9.25 to 10.25 actually was for very specific Issues so if I remember correctly and just for the public's education We wouldn't actually be able to use that 1% for city services. Anyway absent I think it was only fire, but there might have been one other thing that was in there Okay, no additional questions. I have one card on this shelly brownie Hello So, uh, I'd like to thank you senator city council for endorsing our public banking Bill ab 857 as you probably are well aware it did pass Santa Rosa was among 17 cities and counties that endorsed the bill. I don't see my time here. Sorry kid I see, okay So the bill does state that only 10 public banking licenses will be issued Over a seven-year period with a maximum of two public banking licenses per year Currently the cities of san francisco la sanaclera long beach and san diego are moving forward with feasibility studies and business plans for the development of public banks I I looked at the city's monthly investment report for the city for the month of december And we currently have investments in 17 different banks nine of those banks are on the 2019 fossils Excuse me fossil fuel report card and that shows the top 33 banks in the world that are financing the fossil fuels We have an investment Currently the investments are approximately 360 million for santa rosa. We have 28 million dollars In the banks that are the largest financiers of fossil fuels Which reflects nearly eight percent of the city's entire investment portfolio The friends of public banking santa rosa would like to recommend a few items First of all that you agendize divesting from all banks that are the major investors in the fossil fuel industry Sonoma county board of supervisors did just that in the month of december with the unanimous vote We also asked that the city amend the city's investment Investment policy to state that would allow the city to deposits. It spawns into a public bank And we also asked that the city draft a letter to the city of san francisco Encouraging them in their efforts to establish a public bank and let them know that the city of santa rosa would be interested in considering making deposits into the bank of san francisco once established so we begin to Establish some joint collaborations We'd also like to ask that you guys begin to communicate with elected officials in surrounding counties On the possibility of establishing a regional public bank in northern california I can tell you that the counties of napta mendestino lake Humboldt are all very interested in this and we're really awaiting discourse between elected officials And and just imagine what we could do if that 28 million that we have in the banks Financing the fossil fuels were invested in a local public bank instead It would give us the opportunity to invest our public funds locally and such things as infrastructure renewable energy Rather than in the large banks that are and financing the fossil fuel industry We would not have to be so reliant on increased sales tax and bond measures to fund the needs of the city. Thank you Thank you Colleen, do you want to make a comment? Yes, I did turn a card in And uh Are your pensions fully funded? Lean in you do want to hear because i'm your Officially unofficial risk mitigation strategist So I heard your staff report. Um talk about concerns with predictions that you have analyzed there on exports Um being something that you think that would be a benefit. I'd say not so much Think about the greenhouse gas emissions and things being shipped all around the world Think about us making america great again by making it a maker Santa Rosa a maker california a maker United states we make it here. We trade with ourselves as much as possible social equity environmental sustainability Also, I heard concerns about the federal deficit Oh Trillany year Will you have a study session with the high schoolers about the power you gained when you swore an oath to uphold and defend the constitution You know the one that says congress has to pay the debts Are you doing anything about making them pay the debts? If you were working united with all the cities in the state the county the states across the country Think of your power, right? You can do it Additionally, what if what you were making is clean energy? Let me talk about the power of municipal power Let me talk about the power of your investments right now with calpers. Are they toxic? Do they put us at risk socially or environmentally? What if calpers world's largest investment pool the entire world's largest investment pool Partner up with calsters who seem to get shafted on their return investment and invest in what? california own businesses What about taking over pg&e city of santa rosa calpers calsters Clean energy that you can trust that you can rely on cut out the graft cut out the organization Crime think about the savings your pension Make that your vested interest and the rest of it will follow through really well so Power sit down with the high schoolers talk about how you do it invest in yourselves safe energy reliable fully vetted Join the power with the rest of them Calsters how many of you are there? Don't you have some powers individuals and then collectively as a city and then the bargaining power? We know the calpers has done a lot of dirty work And they worked to try to clean up the board and investments, but you could demand a lot more So if fifth largest economy in the world took the largest investment pool in the world And you invest in california own businesses. Where would we be? Perhaps the world's largest economy Can we call the shots and not be beholden to criminals who don't uphold their oath and cause us to be in so much distress In so much bankruptcy and in such risk Think of the power of your oath think of the power of municipals And Thank you any additional cards? That's it Um, do we need a motion or anything or we just received the report? Great, thank you Okay, we'll go back to a public comment on non-agent items. Do we have any cards? First up will be michael franz followed by calling for nall Is michael franz here? Or maybe frank hi mr. Mayor council Mr. City manager city clerk city attorney Uh, I've appeared here a few times over the last 12 years Dealing with the issues of the boy scout sex abuse cases Asking for support in the community and be prepared for a time when we're going to have some success As you may or may not know governor newson recently signed into law An open three-year filing period With no statute of limitations that don't just extend to the boy scouts it extends to universities summer camps athletic camps the churches and other institutions And it also allows for Claims to be filed against the third party interested parties Which are again your service organizations and it's big and This area Has many many cases moving forward or going forward as does marin county. It's kind of what I call hodl liner country It's where a lot of things started It's been a long battle and what i'm Asking for and want to alert the city too is that Your police departments your fire departments have been very active In a lot of the programs that have been going on in this area with especially with keeping information In the area wi-fi et cetera The information isn't just here anymore and people have to understand that the information Has gone full circle And i'm asking on behalf of any of the claimants that will be coming forward The community supports them Uh My advocate is tim mincecombe People want to know what tim's been doing He's been very active and Sometimes you don't know this until it pops up The fire department has been more than amazing and the police department also Um, i'm going to be going in with some additional reports pretty soon and try to Close the gap on some of the information i have to bring the police department into Uh perspective also So that any third parties or interested parties Uh, like propelsbury law firm in san francisco. I was adopted They handled the adoption. There were many agreements Uh I'm changing my name pretty soon. I'm adding my mother my given name or her birth name Swanson to the record and hopefully Thank you calling for an all followed by dwayne duit Last time I was here was in may And I spoke very deliberately about the role that the city of santa rosa members of the council the staff police department department played In the second degree murder of my daughter charlotte anna molinari potentially the first degree murder of her as well I said very clearly you never get away with it But if you never had a life after this one and you had to clean it up in this lifetime Even if you're not convicted you don't get away with it till you clean it up I also said a mother's heart knows And one of you lost your mother Two weeks after that My mother's death was preventable It happened during this last fire No one would listen to me once again I don't know if it was murder. I just know it was preventable My mother was vice president of rw lynch Randy lynch Is that ring a bell been at lane winery is that ring a bell Your fire here two years ago can or however long it's been tubs Cal fire went along with pg knee and said oh, yeah, it happened down the road on private property owners Heard roi miller the attorney who I knew from work on the phone saying oh no on benelay winery There's security cam footage of pg knees pole Uniting the fire and then pg knees conduct for the next 30 days My mother helped him get really rich through the personal injury attorney network Have you been injured in an accident disaster capitalist? So he had money for a race car and a winery Where's the jury trial on the actual cars of the fire? It seems like the attorneys are just interested in keeping pg knee solvent So they can get their big payoff and we're not getting to the truth Of at least one cause of that fire Let alone the really interesting expose the bohemian did on the fire recovery People in the aftermath those same people with lawyer lobbyists for pg knee station casinos and on the queen power There is a lot to be looked into with this And my mom didn't get to hear me sing happy birthday to her because they pushed her in a home and the home was filled with her purse and her phone Didn't get to hear me sing happy birthday Didn't get to have me come there and say goodbye to her Was it murder? I know it was preventable And I know until you're willing to get to the truth About everything from the conduct That led to the murder of my daughter Led to that fire ongoing fires ongoing disasters ongoing threats that are unmitigated Thank you. Dwayne DeWitt followed by Cornelius John Shea Those are uh sad comments to follow. So I'll take a moment to prepare here My name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from roseland and I wanted to thank you For two weeks ago when you heard the roseland residents come and talk about The roseland neighborhood that we've been working for a long time to preserve and protect I have here a poster of the unknown soldier's tomb in washington d's fee with Soldier from the third infantry brigade marching guard duty And below it says remember me and vote I bring this up because yesterday Some american military people lost their lives It happens more frequently than we think about and It'll get overshadowed sometimes when a celebrity dies or something happens But it's been ongoing now all through this century since 9 11 happened And I think that Last two weeks ago when that meeting occurred There was a disconnect some of the veterans that came and spoke They weren't polished speakers and didn't um know how to stress that they were trying to Talk with you about the opportunity To be doing the veterans healing garden and the veterans grove along roseland creek Now this came up because during the planning process the city of stanter rosa told The neighbors in roseland. They had to have a community garden So we veterans have stepped forward and said we would do that We would take it upon ourselves at no cost to the city And we would be the ones to maintain whatever was required So I bring that up also because you did the climate emergency resolution And I had mentioned during that the idea that urban forestry is helpful If you invest in urban forestry parks and other green infrastructure you get a return And that was shown by the city of minneapolis and that was in your report I just wanted to bring that up because essentially if you would begin to work with the veterans now this spring And let us begin to do some positive things there along roseland creek It could be helpful The youth from roseland university prep high school On the 22nd of february are doing their own Self-organized creek cleanup and they recently informed me of that and i'm so glad for that That's what this is about. We hope that the youth get the chance To not be as affected by the climate emergency as they feel they're going to be We veterans would like to lessen it so Remember this year vote And help the youth. Thank you, sir. Thank you, dame quinealis. John shay followed by kevin conway So first of all, let me thank everyone on the city council for being here and Taking comments. I have a complaint here About a notice that was given by this city And it is a notice about Let's see. I should put on my glasses for reading And this is in regard to Notice of action of public action Live oak tree removal So You know, I feel a little less ambitious than the other people here talking But this is my neighborhood at spencer and slater in this area and there are two trees that have been decided to Remove and cut down And so today when I found this notice I have a property on spencer and slater And so I received two notices the notices Were very unspecific and quite frankly very confusing the language is just horrible You know as as an english professor I was appalled at the first sentence and in fact the planning director that I One of the planning people that I saw in the city today because I was going to make an appeal Excuse my sloppiness a man by the name of adam Raw a city planner had a difficult time with this He didn't understand what was going on because it was He wasn't sure what when the 10-day period had started and if you read the first sentence of this notice, it's you know, it's just It's not clear. So I also talked to the Declare Hartman who is a Deputy director of planning and might complain about this whole situation here is these guys are gaming the system They took a tree out About five years ago with some bogus attitude about I was going to ruin the foundation and it just wasn't true So today I was going to appeal this And I was just kind of blindsided but what happened to me. So let me ask you a question and these are for all the city council members How much do you think the scheduled fee For my appeal would have cost me today. Does anyone have any idea? Yes, no So we're just listening to your comments. Okay, so I I thought I'd like a response, but I guess it's just one way they want 500 dollars For me to appeal this to find it and for More than our you know, so I need your help Thank you Thank you, sir. Kevin Conway Council members, thank you for this opportunity to speak tonight as almost all of you know I worry about what science is telling us about methane and the fact that natural gas is 80% methane And I'm aware of the lawsuit around the all-electric reach code that the city's pursuing I have no idea how much of an impact this is going to have on the time frame for actually implementing that kind of a reach code I know the city is taking on this challenge in a very determined way and they're optimistic about it And I'm very grateful for those two things I also listened tonight to the report pointing out that we're about at a thousand homes that have been built Since the climate change related wildfires Devastated our city I want to point out that if the council had passed an electric ready Ordinance about two years ago those 1,000 homes would be future ready right now And those people that wanted an all-electric home or may want one in the future would have the capability of achieving that goal So I'm speaking tonight to put a bug in your ear that if the lawsuit Or any other roadblock that might pop up is going to significantly delay the all-electric reach code That you consider again immediately passing an electric ready ordinance a much easier lift It wouldn't trip up the continued push for the all-electric reach code And it would move the needle to having future ready even grid ready block of homes immediately in our city. Thank you Thank you, kevin All right, we'll go back to the normal agenda And just for those of you in the audience will be taking item 14 2 And 14 3 will be taking a dinner break as many of you've been here as long as we have it We started at 230 so 14 4 and 14 5 will be taken After our break so mr. McGlynn item 14.2 item 14.2 report Authorization to purchase a replacement tractor drawn aerial tda ladder truck tony gosner fire chief presenting Good evening mayor and council members. My name is tony gosner. I'm the Fire chief for the city of santa rosa to my right is battalion chief jason jankins Sea ship battalion and also in charge of our fleet Also with this we'll have chuck muck bride if there's any questions regarding funding and and brandlin from purchasing is here If there's any questions regarding that but essentially today, we're here to Ask your approval to purchase a ladder truck the ladder trucks are different than fire engines ladder trucks are the long ones with the big ladders on the top the city currently has Two first line ladder trucks with one reserve And what we would like to do is purchase a new ladder truck replace one of And remove the reserve that we have as it's outlived its life with that I'm going to turn it over to jason jankins and we're going to run through a few slides and then answer any questions Mayor and council members, uh, thank you for attending in letting us present this today Currently we have a 22 year old tractor drawn aerial The useful life for this type of a piece of equipment is typically 15 years The vehicle that we're talking about replacement has replacing has a long history of mechanical breakdowns A lot of the issues Revolve around the suspension. We've had ladder cracks Torx box issues, which basically the support structure that holds up the aerial ladder in the waterway And it's been a long problematic vehicle over the last few years In total amount of down out of service days in the two year period. It's been out of service for 345 days When that occurs it forces us to staff a rescue In its place, which then doesn't have the complement of ladders and an elevated master stream for fire operations The fire department is incurring large repair costs and the operational downtime Frequently repairing the vehicle What is proposed is a utilization of a hgac By contract for the purchase of the vehicle The price is 1.432 million This would be purchased outright for cost savings to the city That cost savings is nearly $50,000 by purchasing outright The replacement vehicle would result in reduced out of service days And greater operational ability serving the city It is recommended by the fire department that council approved by resolution The purchase order to golden state fire apparatus In sacramento california for the purchase of the tractor drawn aerial ladder truck in the amount not to exceed $1,431,717.18 Through the hgac by cooperative purchase program The contract number is fs 12-19 and to authorize one time appropriations Of 1.432 million from general fund reserves to be added to the fire department's fiscal year 19 20 budget There's any questions. I'll be happy to answer them Great. Thanks for that presentation council any questions Mr. Rodgers Thank you, mr. Mayor Just a quick question if this Trek has been having issues over the last couple of years Why didn't we see this expenditure in the last budget? Or why are we bringing it now as opposed to seeing it in the next budget? Yeah, we have seen this it has been discussed but with the fire and the money we've spent on recovery It was our plan to extend as long as we could to give the city some breathing room before we came up with this purchase It was just a big number When we were seeing other costs that so we're trying to defer that or to lengthen it out for the city Additionally, we're working on getting these big apparatus into the vehicle replacement fund and that's ongoing work. So a lot of these Vehicles have been Effectively leased and so we're moving from leasing to purchasing outright And moving these vehicles into a replacement fund And so that's one of the big transitions happening behind the scenes and you're going to see more of that in the formal budget process Great and the hgac by contract. I assume that that's uh many jurisdictions buying in bulk Together to get a discount the other way understand it is for governments. It's uh, it's a joint Conglomeration of companies that that come in with lower prices. So instead of doing i'm gonna i'm gonna Love the the chief fund this one, but i'm gonna ask the purchasing director to come down to explain the details on So long as tony can translate after Here you go good evening Brandolyn tremel purchasing agent for the city The houston galveston cooperative is actually a nationally vetted organization They specifically do national procurement for big volume purchases like this And we did the analysis to make sure that the not only the line might impressing But to save the cost on the actual individualized procurement saves the city thousands of dollars to go through It's also a widely utilized um contract for this kind of aerial truck nationally Okay, that sounds good. Thank you You bet Any additional questions? Chief i'm just waiting for the sirens every time you guys make a presentation There's always coming by but let's see if you can last uh, I think our vice mayor's got this item Yeah, I have some more questions. Uh, it's all right to the mayor great So the $50,000 savings does that i'm assuming come from not having financing on this We just heard what the great market there is for financing on vehicles Is this one not able to be financed in the same way as auto or other autos? It's able to be financed the savings comes from paying if all right, right? We're see that's Okay, and I was just curious Are there additional savings? Do we know about how much it's been costing us annually to in the last couple of years to maintain this vehicle? Yeah, the cost to to maintain the vehicle is well over a hundred thousand dollars over the last two years We had an it's pretty significant repair cost where there was cracks noticed in the actual ladder itself the large hundred Foot ladder and so that bill alone was nearly $50,000 That there's been a lot of related costs to That we weren't able to do here that we had to send out Very technical specific repair costs that had to be be dealt with in the central valley Okay, so we would be saving ourselves not just the Cost from buying an outright, but also the repair costs Would the new truck would it have a warranty on it? Would we be or would we be on the hook for all? Is it similar to a consumer vehicle where you get a few years of service? Yeah, there's typically a year warranty And in longer in some areas with a warranty the ladder for life There are some definitely good enhancements with this manufacturer that should reduce the overall costs of maintenance And with this purchase this will allow us to to send that vehicle Off to auction and then the reserve behind that that is currently in service today That vehicle has got a brand new drivetrain brand new motor So we're hoping hoping that the maintenance costs of that vehicle will be much less than what we've currently been facing Yeah, that was my I was just curious where did these trucks go for retirement? But I won't take up any more of our council's time and Oh, we I'll cede my the floor to the mayor Okay, we do have one card on this item tom conlon Thank you, mayor members of the council tom conlon sierra club sonoma group. I appreciate the comments from your dais about Just having some good questions about this procurement proposal Um for just a $50,000 finance savings We are on the verge of the electrification of heavy trucks And other kinds of vehicles and this particular decision strikes me as being something we do want to scrutinize a little bit I understand that the bus industry Is transformed quite rapidly. It's much more cost effective to purchase electric buses now That is happening also in garbage trucks I've just recently received some information about the transformation of the garbage truck industry And I know that in the bay area there have been at least one Uh jurisdiction that has explored the possibility of using fully electrified fire trucks. I realize it's a risky decision to make To to completely make an electric fire truck purchase To be the first ones to do it in the bay area or to do it tonight But to commit ourselves to it lifetime purchase Through a bulk procurement like this Is it's a weighty decision. I would I would ask you to consider it seriously without just a A consent calendar like rubber stamp to this proposal from your staff. Thank you for consideration of my comments Thank you. Those are all the cards we have. You have this item Yeah, um I move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa approving a purchase order to golden state fire apparatus Inc for the purchase of a tractor drawn aerial ladder truck in the mount not to exceed 1.431 million dollars 717 dollars and 18 cents and authorizing 1.432 million dollars to be i'm getting this wrong 1,432,000 To be appropriated from general fund as an assigned reserves and we further reading of the text second With a motion to second any additional questions You vote's then And that passes with five eyes with mr. Soros stepping away from the dice. Thank you so much. Thank you Mr. We're glenn item 14.3 Item 14.3 report the santa rosa zero waste master plan joey hinowitz administrative analysts presenting Good evening mayor sweat helmet council members. My name is joey hinowitz administrative analyst for the transportation of public works department here in santa rosa I manage the solid waste agreement that we have with recology and sometimes Referred to as the garbage man here between city staff I'm joined by garth schultz who's here with our three consulting tonight as well as claire wilson over here So we're excited to bring this forward to you tonight. It's been About a year and a half two years in progress to develop this plan Ultimately the zero waste master plan before you tonight aims to address pollution caused by solid waste And alter the way in which we view trash Additionally, the zero waste plan is designed to help guide the community in diverting waste from the landfill And institute sensible strategies to help reduce santa rosa's ghg emissions in carbon footprint Actually the impetus for the santa rosa specific zero zero waste master plan actually came from the community here in santa rosa during discussions for our rfp process for our solid waste hauler which ended up Was chosen as recology and we heard loud and clear that the community input suggested desire for tangible zero waste action here in santa rosa and in the local community As such in fall of 2017 city council approved a professional services agreement with our r3 consulting group to develop this santa rosa specific zero waste master plan A few years later During goal setting in 2019 the city council identified implementation of the city's climate action plan as a tier one priority And recently passed a climate emergency resolution Adopted in 2012 the santa rosa climate action plan aims to reduce the impacts on our climate by lessening greenhouse gas contributions Addressing solid waste pollution is actually one of the central strategies of the santa rosa climate action plan And accounts for about 25 of the local ghg emissions here in sonoma county Our santa rosa zero waste master plan expands upon the climate action plan and outlines actionable strategies For implementation over a five-year timeline Furthermore it should be noted that not only is addressing pollution caused by solid waste the prudent thing to do In california, they are increasingly stringent laws around waste diversion causing the industry to have to adapt and evolve Many of these regulations are identified within the staff report before you And will be briefly touched upon during the presentation here tonight Uh, lastly it should be mentioned that the zero waste plan was brought before the climate action subcommittee in july and september of 2019 After initial review and after initial review in july The subcommittee requested that we come back with more information around funding and staffing needs And also with the truncated implementation timeline not to exceed five years. Originally we had it about 10 15 and 20 year time periods After these adjustments were made the climate action subcommittee approved the zero waste plan And recommended bringing the plan to the full council for potential adoption. And now we're here before you tonight Without further ado i'm going to pass this off to garth schultz to go into the the plan itself Thank you joey and thank you honorable mayor and council members um I want to thank the community for providing a lot of input and feedback and really participating in this process And we'll describe what that looks like Some garth schultz with our three consulting group We are a solid waste consulting boutique service has been providing some services to the city over the course of time We exclusively work for local government entities. We are not a promoter of a specific Garbage contract or solution. We don't work for the private companies. We work for you and for ratepayers interests into advance Your objectives as a community Tonight in in our presentation We're going to address a few main points that will help you in your consideration of adoption Including answering what is zero waste? How did we get here in terms of this process? Why does this matter? Really what why is it important? What can the city do in response and specifically a recommendation of a goal? We'll cover our community engagement process that we developed over the course of the project We have five priority recommended strategies in the plan and we'll cover the details on those We'll highlight the connections to your climate action plan and then Brief you in the end on the estimated cost to implement in the timeline for implementation It's important to note as we get into it. However, we're not asking you to appropriate any funds or take specific action The request to the council is adoption of the plan Future funding requests and implementation actions would of course come before the council as appropriate as you move forward Now first, what is zero waste? The way I like to think of it is it's a continuous improvement of managing the resources That we all use and consume wisely and responsibly. They're all valuable Um, and we think of garbage and trash as just stuff that goes to the landfill But there's a lot more that can be done with those materials With the context of the city's goal, it's it's not an absolute zero zero waste is more of a concept and a construct Achieving absolute zero isn't something that we see as being completely feasible within, you know Any cities immediate near future or time frame? But there is a lot of improvement that can be had even with existing programs in the field This will detail Essentially the the process that we came through in order to be able to present to you this evening There was a robust stakeholder engagement and we'll show you what that looked like We reviewed all of the city's current agreements and policies ordinances Conducted modeling Analyzed alternatives Presented a draft zero waste plan And then actually put that out to the community for extensive public comment, and then of course joey covered the subcommittee meetings Now let's start with I'm sorry Really why does this matter, you know Folks have a three bin system out there black for garbage blue for recycling green for your yard waste and food scraps Which we'll refer to as compost or organics And folks put the materials in their bins seems to be working fine. What's the problem that we're solving here? What this chart shows on the very top line is the amount of waste material that is Put into either landfill or recycling or organics for composting by santa rosen's And as you can see on the top line roughly 60 of that material currently goes to landfill for disposal It's a hole in the ground. It's put into the ground. There's no additional recovery of that material There aren't folks sorting through that stuff for you. If you put it in the black bin it goes to the central landfill Below that chart. So that's overall for the city Below that chart shows kind of the breakdown by various sectors a single family Multifamily commercial and then the cell fall sector is really those materials which are brought to landfills But not by recology into your franchise agreement with them And what this shows here is that the single family sector is a relatively large contributor to the city's overall waste streams, whether it's landfill or recycled or composted But they're achieving around a 50 percent average diversion rate Which is you know a bit better than the overall for the city So as a sector they tend to perform fairly well and this is true in other communities that we've worked in Your multifamily sector doesn't develop too much waste, but it is only recycling 10 percent of it overall Your commercial sector generates almost as much waste as your entire Single family sector and is only recycling around 24 25 percent of it And the materials that go direct to landfill have some recycling potential, but do just get landfill So contrast that prior slide against this slide What this slide shows is simply the contents of the current materials going to landfill So this isn't showing what's currently being recycled or currently being composted But of what's going to landfill now without further sorting, what's in it? Well, it's largely recyclable or compostable materials that could be recycled or composted in the current programs that are implemented throughout the city Roughly 70 percent or so of those materials could be recycled via one means or another And roughly 60 percent of that could be recycled in your existing three cart curbside system You can see below that the kind of breakdown again by sector here So within the single family sector of that amount that does go to landfill All roughly 60 percent of that could be recycled curbside In the commercial sector of the material that goes to landfill almost two-thirds could be recycled curbside This is an indication that you have the programs that you need But folks either don't have an understanding or an awareness or a motivation to be able to participate by putting the right materials in the right bin Um, and as a side note here We conducted a number of community engagement meetings with the public prior to the rfp that led to the city council selection of Recology is your current waste hauler and we had a number of folks saying I don't know what to do I have a phd and my wife has a phd I don't know where to put this stuff and that's because it can be confusing. It changes city to city It changes over time. It changes in response to market contexts So what you'll see is we present here the objectives of this plan are really to help folks primarily get the right material in the right bins Before we get there In the plan before you we've proposed a goal for the city's waste achievement to achieve that Continuous improvement and this goal was developed both within the context of other goals that have adopted by city Up and down the state of california But also goal policy recommendations that have been developed here in sonoma county and have been adopted by other communities Um, you know, there's a little bit of jargon on the slide and I apologize I'll look to define it here for you But the goal is to reduce landfill disposal That's the material that I just showed you that goes into the ground to less than one pound per person per day A franchise to material meaning the material recovered by recology that recology collects for your community So one pound one pound per person per day contract is the goal right now Generally on the average you have about two pound 2.8 pounds per person per day The reason we selected this metric which we call per capita disposal is this is what the state measures In terms of overall a sonoma county solid waste achievement under state law, but it's also easy to track and monitor over time We also established sub-goals for diversion of materials So unlike per capita disposal which measures how much goes to landfill per person This is of all it could be recycled such as that as I showed on the prior slide How much of that is actually being recovered and therefore diverted from landfill moved into recycling or moved into composting So the goals that are suggested are so shown on the slide that progressive over time You should note that you know, these this is a long term plan 20 year plan For goal achievement the recommendations in the zero waste plan don't get you all the way there They get you a portion of the way over there over the course of the next five years And to get past that 75 percent and beyond really requires not just better recycling and composting But actual overall waste reduction and that's something which santa rosa can contribute to but it's also a part of our overall economy And that we're really looking to state action and other governmental action or even individual Manufacture action in order to reduce that waste stream. That's the stuff that right now just can't be recycled via your current programs In developing the goals and the recommended strategies are there before you We did a whole suite of community engagement activities with a lot of response to an online survey Several workshops focused groups lots of individual meetings with stakeholders We really sought to get input from everyone that we could during the development of the plan both in english and in spanish now for the meat of a presentation after all of the analysis and community engagement and the Modeling of really what what are we trying to solve for here? We have five primary strategies and there are others a year zero waste plans that have 40 50 60 strategies and i'm certain that there are folks in the community that are wondering why we advance these over others There's two reasons that we didn't put 40 before you We really feel that focusing on five key areas or a limited number of key areas is really most appropriate for Santa rosa's action If you have too many strategies you can divert and dilute your actions and the impacts of those So we're really focusing on high impact strategies targeting a number of different areas So first is to make participation subscription to recycling and composting mandatory via municipal code Right now folks are required to subscribe to garbage service But they're not required to subscribe to recycling or in a grant organic service That's one of the barriers to that participation in those programs If you don't have the service you're not going to put the recyclable and compostable materials in the correct bin So it's one of the recommendations we have it is a best practice It also turns out now that it's going to be required for at least commercial and multifamily Customers under state law here very soon under sp 1383 which is listed here I will cover what the state laws that are shown on the slide AB 341 says commercial businesses must subscribe to recycling maybe 1826 says commercial businesses must subscribe to organics But that's at the state level via this action. We're really looking for the city council the city Code to enforce or to implement and put that into the city's actual expectations of customers not just from the state And then sp 1383 is a new state requirement Which will essentially seek to bring all of that organic material out of the landfills and get it composted or recovered Second primary strategy And this is really the the biggest overall lift This is your zero waste strike team These are the folks on the ground working with commercial customers multifamily customers residents and businesses to make sure that they have the knowledge the tools the awareness And to overcome barriers to be able to actually participate in streams the right way So the first phase of this would be to leverage your recology agreement You do have a number of these actors already engaged in the field Waste your specialists that recology has We want and recommend that you utilize them first and really maximize their utility in the field But beyond that There's an opportunity to really supplement those funds either with recology or through separate contracts or any sort of way Whether it's through city council or sorry Through city employees or a contract or a third party Regardless, it's about boots on the ground folks actually working hand in hand with those businesses Not just one flyer here or one brochure coming into their bill insert But really meeting with them face to face motivating educating and even doing something as simple as saying You can actually put this bin in the front of your kitchen rather than the back of your kitchen in order to get maximum participation from your employees That's going to have the overall greatest impact and it is one of the overall greater costs within this plan A third strategy that we're recommending in the plan is to Increase the requirements for recycling in your construction and demolition debris recycling ordinance You do have an ordinance like this in place now It does require certain amounts of recycling by those who pull building permits To recycle their waste from their demolition or construction project But in a stage of rebuilding it's important to look even harder at that and there are best practices including Mandatory requirements for source separation on a project site Not just throwing it all in one bin and shipping it to a facility that'll sort it out But separating your organics from your concrete from your wood And there are even communities that are implementing deconstruction requirements or requirements to just to get your project evaluated for Deconstruction opportunities We have specific recommendations in the plan itself But really this is to get at that self haul sector that I showed on the prior bar These are not necessarily materials that are all collected by recology. They can be self hauled by An individual homeowner or a contractor or other third party haulers that are allowed to do work here in the city A fourth strategy is to support and to lead the culture change element We have essentially developed into a very wasteful society and What we're looking for in this strategy is for the city both to lead by example To support Greater requirements for zero waste recycling and diversion and city events to support education in the school districts And also to Support community efforts that would be supplementing zero waste. This is not something the city can do alone It's not it can't be achieved by Just government action. You really need partners in the community and this is a way of recognizing that they both need to Support the city in developing these goals, but also for the city to be able to support them And finally Oh, i'm behind on the slide. I see that that might be a little bit better Okay, the the final strategy that is recommended is to really get at the upstream route of a part of the problem There's so many materials that could be the subject of a strategy like this But there's already movement to foot here in Sonoma county and elsewhere throughout the state To limit some of our most wasteful products such as food wear to go containers Straws is also a subject that comes up in a number of areas But this is essentially to say these wasteful materials that we get whether we want it or not From other food service establishments. We need to find a way to be able to Provide reusable alternatives or more recyclable or compostable alternatives through that This is a regional level effort. There already is a movement to foot through zero waste Sonoma in order to put forward a model ordinance And it's iterative So this would be Rather than just getting folks to participate in the programs the correct way This is about getting to the upstream source of the problem Now given all of those strategies We wanted to be able to highlight how these strategies are meeting the city's already established goals for waste reduction within the climate action plan And I'm not going to read the slide and there's a lot of information here This is simply to show you that you have a number of strategies identified for waste reduction in the climate action plan The strategy is presented here in the zero waste master plan address all of them So this is essentially helping you advance your progress towards your zero waste emissions reduction goals And it's worth noting that roughly a quarter of all the emission goal reductions by 2035 Projected in the climate action plan are waste related. So this is this is consistent with already adopted city policy To that end we modeled the potential reductions From the waste reduction activities that would occur in ghg emissions. These are in co2 equivalents Per ton and you can see what the equivalencies are in terms of the overall reductions here So it's meaningful in terms of greenhouse gas emissions reductions In terms of implementation and the next steps We modeled costing for this averaging to around $600,000 a year Much of that is in the the strike team the folks on the ground the technical assistance slide that we showed you And this would be over the course of the next five years after which time we recommend that the city Evaluate its progress and reevaluate the next steps towards zero waste And in terms of how that staffing there's a variety of staffing models that could be Evaluated and potentially implemented and I mentioned those already This is a little hard to read I apologize, but this is essentially the the proposed timeline for each of the activities And then this is the estimated impact if we were if the city council were to direct funding of this through the solid waste rates It is common to fund these programs through solid waste rates Either by having recology as your provider provide the services or to have some sort of a City fee within the rates that would be able to recover the revenues You do have a revenue recovery ability is the point and it amounts to roughly 30 to 90 cents per month for most of your residential repairs So this time staff is recommending that the city council Approve the zero waste master plan and we are want to thank our project partners who engaged with us on this and Open to any questions you might have Great. Thank you for that presentation. It's better every time I hear it Council questions Was that a yes, mr. Go ahead mr. Deb. Well, mr. Rogers was thinking I would like to ask the presenters This all sounds good. Where else is it being done and how successful has it been? Very good questions. There are roughly 30 communities throughout the state Growing every year that have adopted similar zero waste implementation plans And and they are successful When funded and staffed accordingly and I'll give an example here It recently presented back in november to the Santa Monica city council who originally adopted a plan back in 2014 But didn't fund it and dedicate staffing to it They did not have a lot of progress during that time But they doubled down on their investment and actually are moving forward with a very similar set of strategies to what's proposed here City of san francisco City of menlo park They they are seeing meaningful movements in Both waste reduction and moving material from landfill into recycling and composting What's important to note is no one's going to stand up and say we achieved our zero waste goal because this is really about continuous improvement over time When you look at your cost estimate, it doesn't seem to be particularly punitive Um But I don't want us to incorporate a program that everybody has to comply with that's just a fairytale Absolutely, which is one of the reasons why we recommend the on-the-ground actions You can specifically measure document and monitor changes over time in people's behaviors through those on-the-ground steps Uh, just blanketing advertising or blanketing flyers out in the community. Absolutely I would agree with you that would be money that you could not tie back to Meaningful reductions in waste generation or the amounts to landfill But when you have folks on the ground working with businesses working with multifamily dwellings and with single family residents They can actually show how we changed your subscription level for garbage from Six cubic yards a week done to one cubic yard a week And we've increased the amount that we're collecting in recycling and organics and that is the demonstration of meaningful change Thank you Any other questions Mr. Vice Mayor Yeah, I'm curious to know if we have had Outreach with our city schools I remember when recycling came on when I was a kid That I think that I was probably the biggest pest in my parents who were not at all interested in it at the time Who are you know a vowed recycler at this point? But I know that a kid bothering you In at least my household is one of the most effective things to getting something done So i'm curious to that end how we can get our our little list advocates on board and and what steps we might have already taken So speaking from the staff angle, I can tell you at this point there hasn't been much outreach to the local schools It is something that is on my to-do list After we hopefully get the approval of this plan It also should be mentioned that it is contained within the zero waste culture change strategy recommendation on number five Obviously, we would have to have a partnership with the santa rosa city schools as they are their own entity But I think that that partnership would be fruitful. I think they'd be willing to to work with us And just to note as well during the community engagement sessions That was also one of the things I was highly recommended from the public is that they wanted to see that upstream investment They wanted to see The outreach to the city schools just for that exact reason and I'd be interested to see us because there's all of these elementary schools that are not encompassed in the santa rosa city schools and really offer and invite our school partners to come on in a true partnership The other benefit of young people is, you know, we don't have to pay them So we we don't have as much pension liability on that front and they really will pester us it turns out So I look forward to hearing from you about what kinds of things we're going to be doing to bring Bring our young people along with this and I just should mention on that while the city hasn't done a whole lot of outreach Recology as our solid waste taller they have done presentations and they do do outreach to the local schools here in santa rosa Any other question mr. Sawyer Thank you, mayor and thank you gentlemen. Um, it's a lot of hard work here How I was very pleased to see the small increase to our residents on their garbage bills potentially How dependent are these rates to the markets for recyclables? Not very dependent There is a change that they will have there's an element of the annual change in rates that is dependent upon the markets But that I think the impact of that has already largely been seen Unless the recycling markets take more of a dive than they have over the last couple of years We should be kind of getting to a point of stabilization And I would assume that that a good part of the educational which is key and vital To the community because it is confusing And we've been you know our this community has been recycling for many many years And it still is hard to know sometimes which bucket to put that thing in So i'm i'm the the educational piece is is so important and I assume that that's why it's so important to have a person or people working on The behalf of the city to try to get people to understand their responsibilities And answering those questions about where do I put it? Absolutely, and it's really it's a difference of passive outreach versus Versus actively engaging folks where they're making those decisions about Whether and how to dispose or even how to reduce their waste overall The typical approach over the course of the last 20 30 years on a statewide basis is just let's just provide the passive outreach The industry is shifting towards active engagement because we we know at this point in santa rosa is not alone in this That the passive outreach really has reached its limitations Thank you Great, we have uh several cards here first up calling for an all followed by uh will bach Thank you, um vice mayor phleming for sharing your personal story my Dearly departed mother a few years ago had sent me um poster. I made about littering and she took the time to Mount it and laminate it It was um really sweet uh additionally When I lost my daughter I Wanted to further her legacy with a project Of the pollution prevention puppet show So I want to encourage all the cities and the county Recology to partner with me on that it's something that Henry trioni had said that He would be a benefactor of that. I am still continuing to pursue I also want to ask you to partner with maybe your sister cities in japan I understand and I don't know which city it is so you could ask them They are human just like us, but in some of those towns they have 23 different levels of separation for their clean We can manage three if they can do 23 go ask them how they're doing it And uh, I agree that uh treating all materials as valuable resources except maybe not all materials Um when the dump was totally full and we had problems with the gravel mining from the river I'd come to the mic here or water advisory committee or bpu meetings and say How much of that hard scrap in your trash could be Rubble for a road base to offset the need of gravel And people would look at me like i'm crazy, but then years later. There's miles ferris your public utilities director saying Hey, you know when we gave you that low-flow toilet for free and we took your other one back You're driving over it right now because they broke them down and turned them into road base So I know it's a good idea to come here with your big ideas and see how they get implemented Now I don't think that human waste is to be recycled or used as fertilizer We are too toxic so go back to japan Where I saw a working demonstration up at soul fest that's going to be coming again in hoplin all great ideas They incinerate it And you can put it into cement like they do with the fly ash from coal plants But it's too much of a risk to turn into fertilizer So we also have a problem in the regional recycling centers being closed down and we had the benefit of Financially in home challenged people being the cleanup crew unlike the children, you know to take care of that So how can you facilitate more easy access? Redemption recycling centers So you're not just throwing away the money that you just paid for the deposit And creating income and a way to help facilitate those who have housing challenges transportation challenges But let's see how we can work together as a team all of us at taking care of this and then other Ideas that look like a problem The board of supervisors paul kelly talking about the dump and said, oh no methane licking out That's a nice one harness it. Thank you calling will block followed by guy till it's in And Will box renewable sonoma sonoma compost Let me first state that I fully support the zero waste master plan as presented out here I've been serving on the local task force for probably about two decades now Participated in the zero waste subcommittee that was formed out of there I truly understand the complexity of the Zero waste plan that has been put forward and I commend the staff for having put this together um I hope to be your future Compost organics recycling server And as you saw in the slide, it is the largest proportion of material that can be diverted from the landfill Um, the state has a mandate for a 75 percent diversion They are counting for enlightened counties like sonoma county to actually do more than 75 percent and strive for 80 percent Renewable sonoma sonoma compost would be 100 percent there to help the city Meet that goal. It's in our interest as well as in the cities and their Residents of sonoma's interest. Thank you Thank you. Guy tell it's in followed by laura niche Council members, thank you very much for taking our comments I'm in very much in favor of the zero waste ordinance And I want to compliment the city leaders who put it together and also recology for doing such a fantastic job In all sustainability campaigns We have to invest early and then the return comes and investing in Higher garbage rates with recology is already yielding such wonderful education awareness and progress We have So many elements of our county coming together. There's a there's a synergy of positivity and youth energy And great ideas and santa rosa certainly is going to be a key player In making our county zero waste. It's kind of like It's kind of like The race has started in some of the smaller cities such as winsor and sabastopol and sonoma Have passed the ordinances and got off the finish line But we all know that santa rosa is such an important part of our county that once the legs get going It's going to be tearing down the track For victory, but we're all together on this Um, I appreciate the plan. It's a fantastic plan. And um, I hope to do everything I can to help the city succeed in zero waste. Thank you. Thank you Laura niche followed by a needle off of that Hi, i'm laura niche. I'm a resident of santa rosa and executive director of 350 bay area And 350 sonoma is part of 350 bay area and just wanted to lend my Sincere congratulations and thanks for coming up with this plan and investing in it and we're very excited to see it past and uh, very very much appreciate the The city council of santa rosa stepping forward on climate. Thank you Thank you. I need a lafellette followed by jed parker Thank you for looking into our garbage program and as it looks like to me That it's a day late and a dollar sorry because it's been years since we lost our compost It was outlawed remember and no one In my complex does recycle I see Cans and bottles and Electrical equipment and furniture in there Nobody does and so they really ought to add a community education program to this also You know and I know that We are not recycling wine bottles like was promised to us years ago when we started recycling coke bottles That has never been put into place And um, we can't there are only a few places you can recycle Cans and bottles anymore you used to have a recycling place to do that In fact, we used to be able to take them back to the store since we're paying for that Also, um, you probably haven't seen all the pictures of the whales And turtles and other wildlife that are dying from plastic bags Because people throw those in the landfill and end up in the Wetlands and out in the ocean Yeah, we're killing our ocean. I hear So I want to recommend a fix it program like they had over at the library That was very nice and people could maybe Start fixing their electrical appliances instead of throwing them away and buying a new one It's uh been years since yeah, I said that okay So otherwise I wanted to let you know that the pictures you have up there are beautiful There's no names over here on the table. It was Paco strawberry. I think that did those they're very Charming and I hope everyone enjoys them um, I don't see Anyone sticking around when it's public comment time. I just want to notice that Where is jack tidbits? How come he's not here now? I know he can't sit there during so any please comment on this topic No, I can comment on what I want. No, you can't. Okay. Turn me on then we will Jed Parker followed by Courtney Scott How do you do? Uh, I'm gonna honor your um Need for dinner. So this will be brief. There's two reasons. I'm supporting this one is that uh, it's doable Great strategy great plan and I it supports all the other positive planet positive Programs and things that you guys have been doing over, you know For quite a while. So that's it's a great piece of that The other part is that my lovely wife Abigail Zoger asked me to do this as her birthday president, which is today Courtney Scott followed by zincy tan Good evening. I wanted to thank staff and council for hearing this item and all the work that they've done over the last years This item is extremely important for our future on this planet And I fully support it. I would also like to remind you that zero waste sonoma has already drafted a model ordinance for the foodware disposal It's called disposable food service wear and polystyrene foam ban Many other jurisdictions have already passed that or are in the process of it And I hope that if this passes tonight that can be agendized as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you Zincy tan followed by sonny gallbreath Hello council members. My name is zincy and I work for zero waste sonoma A joint powers authority of which san rosa is a part Our agency fully supports the zero waste master plan presents it today Some of the steps detailed in the master plan include adoption of certain ordinances Aimed at increasing landfill diversion and our agency staff is prepared to provide some assistance on that front During the presentation one of the strategies discussed was the reusable and compostable foodware ordinance which my colleague Courtney Mention our agency calls it the disposable foodware model ordinance So this model ordinance is ready for the council to adopt and I as Courtney also mentioned Other jurisdictions such as sabasable heelsburg and pedaluma have already adopted it One of the other policies mentioned in the presentation was sp1383 Which I think most of you are familiar with sp1383 is Something that a lot of jurisdictions are concerned about because it requires all commercial entities to divert Your debris and food scraps from the landfill and it incurs heavy penalties for jurisdictions that do not comply So you can see how this fits within the zero waste master plan Although zero waste sonoma will be taking on many of the responsibilities prescribed by sp1383 The state agency call recycle has made it very clear that jurisdictions are individually responsible for Implementation and will be the ones penalized for non-compliance This legislation as well as a zero waste master plan are both very ambitious And it is pertinent that sanarosa provide appropriate staff and funding to carry out necessary tasks. Thank you Thank you. Sunny galbraith followed by carla malonado Hello, my name is sunny galbraith and i'm from your sister city sabasable and I appreciate councilmember dawg's question has this happened other places and we have Passed the disposable service wear food ban food service wear ban And we also actually wrote a zero waste Events plan that we passed as well and it's going swimmingly I'm on our zero waste subcommittee. We've have a ton of community involvement a ton of students We're now doing friendly outreach visits to businesses about the polystyrene Disposable food service wear band and there's very positive reception and it's zero waste is a wonderful Community-level activity and so there's a lot of enthusiasm around it and a lot of positivity and a lot of places for students to get involved And so i'm thrilled that sanarosa is is joining into this effort and I really urge you to back this by Significant funding and staffing to really make it happen and successful To choose climate action as a tier one priority and implement the zero waste plan as part of this priority And then to pass the disposable food service wear and polystyrene phone ban And the young people that I work with are just very very passionate about this and some of them are here with me tonight And I want to invite you all this disposable food service wear ban will be part of our second annual climate action night at the s r j c april 17th Councilmember Fleming or sorry vice mayor Fleming was there with us last year on the panel and we hope you will all be there this year Senator Mike McGuire is going to be there this year as well And students will be presenting on this issue and on state-level issues related to zero waste and climate change so Yes, go zero waste Thank you Karla malnado followed by lisbeth kubaru vias My name is Karla malnado. I am an ap Spanish student at rosen university prep And we are going to make a project about climate change And participate in climate action night Our project for this class is to urge senorosa to pass the disposable food service wear and polystyrene phone ban ordinance My name is Elizabeth Torres in our class along with other Spanish classes have been postcards That are brought here today encouraging the council to pass the disposable food service wear and polystyrene phone ban ordinance Thank you. Then we have uh elondra lopez followed by angel santiago Hi, my name is elonja huerta and I am a student at rosen university prep and I am I am taking ap Spanish with my teacher meslangan and she has taught us about climate change and one of the topics I have brought up For our project for ap spanish is the pose is disposable food service wear for polystyrene phone ban ordinance. Thank you Hello, my name is angel santiago and I'm an 11th theater currently attending rosen university prep And I'm in support of the zero waste master plan And um, this is because I much like my peers in ap spanish class have learned about the impacts of non-biodegradable containers and um These these are impacts that By supporting this I hope to reduce or maybe even bring to an end Great. Thanks for joining us Liz uh bordelotto followed by kasey williams Hi there This is kind of low My name is liz bordelotto and I am a member of the local task force ab 939 local task force I'm also a resident of sonoma, uh, santa rosa and i'm also a member of the um Impact 100 here in sonoma county and also the sonoma county forum So, uh, I can tell you that there are a lot of people in those groups that are very very concerned about our current waste problems And want to take action and don't know what action to take and also are of course somewhat confused about What's recyclable and what isn't and so I highly urge you to both support this master plan and appropriately fund it because most people really want to Help with some of the problems which they read about every single day which is Plastic proliferation Climate change, you know species destruction, etc I also urge you to please consider when it comes up to pass the disposable food service wear and polystyrene foam band model ordinance When I was a kid. I knew it was crazy to Buy things use them and then stick them in a hole in the ground somewhere and um during all that time we haven't made The kind of progress we could make because our economics don't support it We absolutely need you our elected people To take strong action so that these changes can actually be made. Thank you. Thank you Casey Williams followed by Celia Ferber. Thank you. Mr. Mayor Like my jacket says I do work for Recology Sedoma Marin Um, and I've been in the materials recovery sector since 2005 But more importantly, I've lived in Santa Rosa my entire life and I love this city and that's why I'm here I grew up in south park in the 80s and we didn't waste anything back then and I'm really proud to see this happening I've got to say that joey henowitz and r3 have done a great job at putting this together I attended several of their workshops and the community engagement and the input from stakeholders was right there Everybody had their voice And we aren't just talking about an ordinance here. I think what we're talking about is a culture change A change away from our single use society. So I think passing this Putting this out there sends a message to our community That um This is the future. This is our future the future of san rosa. Thank you. Thank you Celia ferber followed by Anita migliore Good evening. My name is Celia ferber as it says, and I'm the waste zero manager for Recology Sedoma Marin It's been a pleasure working with city staff and r3 on this zero waste master plan It's been a truly collaborative effort the whole way through Um, I'd like to note that plans like this and the more stringent ordinance is detailed inside They really help our recology boots on the ground Um When we're working with customers, it helps to be able to say, you know, if we're working with a customer That's not quick to take action. It helps to be able to say that the city supports this It's a priority to the city. You know, we need to we need to either comply with this So adopting the plan will definitely help our efforts Recology fully supports the city uh in adopting this and we look forward to being a partner in its implementations should council Use that direction. Thank you very much. Thank you. Anita migliore Good evening council. Um, I just wanted to also lend my voice. I'm also a recology waste zero specialist I worked for the san francisco company for 20 years and I saw a huge change in that time period Just of the awareness of you know waste and what we're doing it with it Obviously it makes more sense to be doing something constructive with this material instead of throwing into a hole in the ground And it's been uh, I don't know if you're aware, but san francisco is at an 80 percent diversion rate I understand we're about 40 percent here in san rosa. So we've got a lot of work to do I'm working 10 to 12 hour days most most weeks Working evenings doing presentations for community groups. I also lead public tours. So once a month we have The public is invited to come to our Recycling facility and see how it is That we're processing the material. So that's open for anyone that wants to come. It's a free program We want to be transparent and show you what it is the challenges that we're dealing with Like silly had said it's it's behavior change. This is our hardest thing, but we are making great strides I'm working diligently with the schools. Uh last year. I set up Rosalind University prep and then this week I'm working with rosalind collegiate Prep and also piner high school just started their program as well And we're really we're trying to have the children being powered in this That's my goal is to Try to encourage kids to take the lead of gretta thermberg and say look, this is your future We need to really all make a difference The teachers and the custodial staff obviously have very full workloads and we really want to empower the children To do this. So please be assured that we're we're really working as hard as we can To make some really positive changes in our community. Thank you. Thank you. Logan harvey Hi, Logan harvey, uh Sonoma, california. I won't take up too much time I'm also a waste zero specialist with the Recology Sonoma Marin And I just want to inform everyone that yes, we're absolutely out there. We are regularly attending Events that we have in santa rosa and within sonoma county to educate people on what's appropriate to put in which bin We've been going to schools. I recently set up north valley school. They have an excellent Composting program that they got there and really really great school where they're they're Serving fresh hot lunches that they make right there. So it's real easy for the kids to throw it right in the composting bin So we're trying to educate children early get them on board with the plan Help them educate their own parents We we again table at events and and we have a lot of restaurants that are really engaging and and contributing to the program and and and becoming a part of it I think one of the really things that makes one of the really great things that makes santa roses Program so successful is that composting recycling is free. It makes it easy for businesses to move into that kind of That space where they can easily switch over bring that bin on and and bring the program That's a light. So I appreciate what the city is doing here City of Sonoma recently started moving forward with the polystyrene band. I could encourage you to start that as well I think zero waste Sonoma has an excellent Kind of plan that they have Uh for the polystyrene band Very very good. So thank you very much Thank you. Is that all the cards we have on this item? Great council any additional questions? I did have one just um, I did take a tour of the recology site a while ago and I was amazed and actually Disappointed with a number of sharps needles and syringes that come through that people just discard And I'm talking with the general manager There are some programs that other communities have done to try to limit that not only for the safety of employees before our Environment thoughts about that or is there anything in this plan to address that specific discarded item? Yes, I believe there is I just don't recall it off the top of my head right now I know that's a comment that came up during the climate action subcommittee and I believe that we've sought to address it here Um And I believe we may have an answer wanted to give her an opportunity to participate. Thank you Claire Yes, so there is actually a state law that was passed during the process of the sarah waste master plan development sp2 12 That requires all pharmaceuticals and sharps to be Taken back by the big pharma So that is in the process of regulations and is but has been passed into law There are a couple things you can do in the meantime and a couple grants through Different nonprofits that you could work with But that state law has been passed and it's been you know, I think five to ten years in the making so At the point of sale. Yes I guess I you know We'll say how the conversation goes here, but for me it's all about education You know just learning that a lot of people think it's okay to put them in your milk carton is just not okay So hopefully a little community education might help with that so Any additional questions? All right, uh, mr. Sorry, you have this so what I'd like to do is let's get a motion out there It'll get a second and then solicit counsel for any additional comments Thank you My pleasure to introduce a motion to approve the center of the sarah waste master plan and wait for the reading We have a motion and a second Anyone like to make any comments mr. Oliver's do you have anything you want to add? Okay, mr. Sorry, I just want to say thank you Mr. Hannah witz and mr. Shaw's ms. Myers. Thank you very much and since like I said before it's a great deal of work And anything that our community can do To to lengthen the life of our waste disposal site Um Is really great not all the environmental issues everything everything combined is so important down the road Trying to place a new Solid waste disposal site in this county or this state perhaps even in the country By that time will be Incredibly difficult if not virtually impossible so hopefully technologies will change people's attitudes will change and Get down to the business of creating less waste and has not putting it in that hole in the ground So thank you mr. Dowd any comments you like to make mr. Rogers Thank you, thank you, mr. Mayor so Little less than a year ago The council made climate change a tier one priority as you heard since that time We put in place a climate action subcommittee. We've moved forward the all-electric reach codes We did evergreen today. We've now done the zero waste Which hopefully will go through here in a moment I only give you this quick recap because the mayor of sonoma is in the audience and I want him to get on our level It has been an incredible journey And thank you to all of you who show up consistently to our climate action committee meetings who have picked which aspects of our climate Our climate action plan both the community and the municipal We can move forward together so that sometimes climate change addressing climate change and and addressing the environmental impact Doesn't feel like too much of a burden if we take it in small chunks I'll just leave you with two quick little tidbits because plastic reduction has been a really important One for me every piece of plastic ever created is still in existence And even plastics when they break down they become micro plastics and over 70 percent of breast milk tests positive for plastics We have to reduce them not even just recycle them. We have to reduce our reliance on them Otherwise, we're going to continue to see health impacts from that The last comment that i'll make is uh, I would like to in the future see an addendum to this plan It it focuses on multifamily and commercial and single family And we also know that there's a significant population in our community who don't have homes That they don't have a bin that they can put things in that I know also still want to be a part of addressing Both our waste reduction and our climate goals. So I would like to see that in the future as well Ms vice mayor Yes, thank you, and thank you to staff and our community for coming out I echo my uh fellow council members comments and just wanted to add a couple of things one is about Working with our businesses that create I I have one particular grocery store that I find quite convenient that I have a ton of plastic waste from and it's really frustrating And I'm hopeful that we can band together whether it's through league of cities or national league of cities To work with these manufacturers on envisioning ways that we don't have so much so that we don't have to have convenience Come at the cost of the health of our children and our oceans and so forth So that's just one comment I know that's a little bit outside the scope of this But I I hope that we can continue to reach further on that And the second is that it wasn't until I toured the that the recycling facility that Recology has just outside of the center of the city limits that it became clear to me exactly how things Were and were not recyclable and were and were not compostable now that it's a compost site, but that That it it's really really hard to wrap your mind around it And I'm hoping that you know, we all get that thing in the the our mailer that says You know what you can and can't recycle and then you go and you argue with your spouse about what's What's recycled, right? I'm like this yogurt tube is recyclable. No, it's not Right, but it sure is convenient. And so, you know, it'd be really good to have You know the home depot did this a while back or loads did this a while back where they had this Funny ad about one of their salespeople being kind of like a family therapist or something I think that we need to have it be a little bit funny I think we need to bring some of the humor into it because we have all argued with somebody over what is or isn't recyclable If you're in this room right now, I'm guessing so to that and I just want to thank you guys for doing the work and For the education that Recology has provided to me I wish I could pass that along to everybody because I sure know That you don't put a whole bunch of sharps in a milk carton and send it along with your recycling Not that I would have ever done that but anyway, thank you And I want to echo my thanks Joey and Mr. City Manager excellent appointment You're a rock star when it comes to this anything regarding any of this every question I've brought to you or any concern from community members You're all over it. So thank you for doing all that you do and really again If this is the third time I've seen the presentation I learned from everything every every time Could you put up slide five because that one the first time I saw that it really had an impact on me Because when I see slide five what could be recovered that is our potential and when I saw those numbers as part of that education It's like holy smokes again going to what you're talking about these community conversations that my wife and I have had I talked with a general manager of Recology saying you may need to visit me because sometimes my wife doesn't listen to me But the potential is there and that's what I see That's what I see what this community can do by working together not pointing fingers getting educated doing this We're all in this thing together again. I'm glad Sonoma's here Sebastian's here. This is a regional issue And I think we all do this together and we could be the Model for communities across the nation and do what we're doing here So with that we have a motion and a second your votes, please And that passes unanimously. Thank you very much As I mentioned earlier council is now going to take a brief 15 20 minute dinner break. Thank you It will reconvene tonight's meeting. Mr. McGlynn item 14.4 Item 14.4 report ordinance introduction adding chapter 18-50 Rental housing inspection program to the Santa Rosa city to code David good presenting Presenting Good evening, mayor members of the council Good evening, mayor members of the council. This is asking you to consider a proposed rental inspection program We're going to go through some overview and background to Provide some context So in october 22nd you held a study session on this item for council members were in attendance due to some potential conflict of interest issues We are returning tonight with your feedback as well as the feedback from our outreach with stakeholders on this program We also provide a program model and a fee estimate if you were to stand up this business enterprise What would it cost and how we would staff it If you wanted to proceed we would outline the next steps and we close with recommendation and discussion So by review, these are the components you you saw at your study session We broke them down into core components and some optional components Um of these listed will go through them But there was the optional component of local representation And there was a question by council wanting more information about that when we met with California apartments Border realtors property managers. They said why basically they weren't supportive of that If there was an inspection program They felt that that they should be the ones to figure out how to attend an inspection And not have a local representative beyond their property management company So we did not incorporate that Into the ordinance So you asked for a community engagement that is for education and promotion of the program So we contemplate that in our staffing model You said it should include all types of rental housing and so that is single family dwelling duplexes triplexes and units of four or more You asked to exempt units that are 10 years or newer Units that are owner occupied rentals. In other words, you own a house and you rent a room to somebody and to exempt Units that are occupied by the section eight voucher holders You also provided feedback that the program should inspect property every five years You wanted to allow for self-certification And so you'll see we have an inspect in an eight-year cycle and this is at the staff discussion We had a discussion. What would motivate someone to self-certify if the program is designed to inspect every five years Well some communities you don't you're not allowed to self-certify your unit until you pass An inspection what we contemplate in this ordinance is that you can self-certify Anytime you would like and your unit is inspected randomly And if it you if you do self-certify you have an eight-year inspection cycle rather than a five we can talk more about that Council wanted some flexibility with required permit. We call that a time penalty waiver So for example, we come on a property and there's a accessory dwelling unit an ad you and we can't Find if there was any permit for that so we would allow time for the property owner to get in that into compliance There's also some interest on the council's part to establish a relocation displacement fund this is in the case of having to have a Resident vacate the unit immediately due to health and safety property owner may not be Present to help with those relocation costs and we're at risk of being homeless So we built that into the program for your consideration and allows us to help that person until such time as our legal department can pursue remedies And you also ask not to outsource the program and so we look at it as a staff model within the city But you'll see the only thing we suggest we outsource is the billing and collection function So with that we did another round of stakeholder feedback and I summarize it here on this slide Property owners are not supportive of the program. They cite a lack of data to demonstrate the need to set up a whole new inspection system Part of that came from the study session and follow-up conversations where code enforcement opened 214 Substandard housing cases in fiscal year 1819 out of an inventory of roughly 35,000 rental units They also make the point of to use existing City inspection services such as code enforcement the neighborhood revitalization program the housing choice of voucher inspection And also the fire department They do safety inspections for fire safety for properties that have three or more units annually If you were a member of a resident organization You were very supportive of the program The feedback we got is that if when you set this up to be sensitive to minority populations our entry level neighborhoods So they understand what is expected of The city government coming in to inspect the unit no confusion with ice or other things And also really want to emphasize the education rights and responsibilities of both parties So with that feedback we built a program model So we would have a halftime program manager shared with code enforcement We figured this would be split equally between code enforcement and rental inspection program We would hire a halftime community engagement coordinator based on the feedback to do all the outreach and marketing and promotion We feel to do the inspections. We'll get to the next side. We should have 3.5 inspectors if we want to Um inspect the units every five years A support staff person and mentioned billing and collection vendor in the city overhead So with that working with our finance team i information technology We estimate an annual program cost of just under nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars And so how do we pay for the program? It's broken down here under our fee estimate and again, this is fee estimates You're not being asked to adopt fees tonight. Just consider the ordinance Fees are set during your normal budget cycle fees for all city programs But based on what we know, this is our estimate. There would be a one-time registration fee Of 45 dollars per property owner not unit owner And we estimate that if we exempt 10 units, sorry units that are 10 years or younger, there would be probably 14 000 roughly owners There would be a one-time payment of a relocation displacement fee of 750 dollars one time and that number is admittedly arbitrary We're trying to target A budget of around a hundred thousand dollars. And so that's where we came up with that number to use for that Then there's a per unit inspection fee that's estimated to be a hundred and seventy two dollars It includes the inspection of roughly 20 of the total units 555 4500 units a year There are a total estimated 27 540 units that are under the 10-year exemption And then there's a billing inspection fee 13 dollars and 50 cents per property owner not unit So for example, if you owned a foreplex, you would be paying roughly 680 dollars for the inspection in a one-time fee of 13 dollars and 50 cents to bill and collect for that service Then there was discussions about uh ab 1482 state law that was passed since the study session And in that law exempt units that are 15 years or younger from that particular Set of rules that include rent increases just cause evictions things like that So the request was what would this program look like if we exempted units that were 15 years or younger? And so you can see the difference in unit counts. You can see the different in the number of property owners You can see the registration fee increases by a dollar, but the inspection fee would increase or decrease by three dollars And so those are again staff estimates to stand up the program So again next steps if you wanted to proceed we would first hire Program manager trained staff We would certainly conduct a fee study to confirm the estimates and reminder that the fees would be set at During the budget process we would begin conducting an education promotion campaign And if things go well with recruitments, we would be begin inspections in the fourth quarter of the calendar year So with that it is recommended by the department of housing and community services that the council introduced an ordinance adding a rental housing inspection program as chapter 18-50 to the santa rosa city code Be happy to answer any questions Begin the discussion. Thank you. Mr. Wine for that presentation Council questions Mr. Dowd do you have a question? I would like to ask the question. I I've seen it in the In the material that we have been presented, but I didn't see it in this evening's presentation On an annual basis What is the approximate number of units found to be not in compliance? With the appropriate codes The if I understand it correctly Question the the data point we have is through our code enforcement law division And in fiscal year 1819 we had 214 open substandard housing cases That's the that's the number that I had about in my head, but yeah, and That's my problem with this quite honestly is that We find 215 to 125 Homes that need to be taken care of and haven't been appropriately and we're charging 27,000 homes I have difficulty Mr. Rogers questions As a point of clarification Apologies when you say 219 open cases What does open mean does that mean that it's been judged to be at a level that requires intervention from the city? Or does that mean that the city is looking into whether or not it's substandard? It's the it's the former so code enforcement is a complaint based program So we would receive a complaint about some standard living conditions We would go out and verify it if verified then we would open a case. That's where we come up with the 214 number. Great. Thank you Any additional questions? Mr. Sorry, thank you just for clarification In october the Unit count was 35,000 and now it's 27 plus Why the difference and what is it closed is 27 450 or whatever it was Which is most accurate? Yeah, so the total Estimated rental units in the city limits is 35,000 But if we exempt units that are 10 years or newer And we exempt units occupied by voucher holders. We come down to that 27,000. Thank you Oh and and secondly, sorry one more question the I assume that there was a lot of work that went into the development of this Program, was there a city that was used or a number of cities and As models and if so, who were they? We looked at the city of conquered richman San Luis Obispo, but primarily the city of sacramento So much of the modeling of this ordinance is is based on sacramento. Thank you Miss vice mayor Yeah, I want to follow on with the complaint based Program in terms of enforcement and ask a question about the proactive arm Which i'm assuming that 214 number doesn't come from the neighborhood revitalization program That is the not native or head for vitalization program of those homes that get inspected every year Do we have a percentage or a number? That we can infer based on how many are inspected that do come up with code violations. Sure. Yeah, so By way of background the neighborhood revitalization program nrp Selects focus neighborhoods based on windshield survey The condition of the property calls for service and then we proactively inspect just multifamily And based on the age of the housing stock we we get about a thousand units inspected annually And at least 70 to 75 of those units fail that initial inspection So with a proactive approach, we're looking at 750 out of a thousand homes failing In multifamily, obviously, you know, it's difficult to generalize that to all of our stock But when you compare 214 versus, you know, 27,000 we're We're looking at quite a difference when we are proactive versus reactive. Would you Yeah, and this this is our in our focus neighborhood. So apple valley poppago west ninth Aston avenue things of that nature. Thank you for the clarification Thanks, Dave. I have a question regarding nrp because we've gone through different iterations That I think it used to be much more robust a couple years ago What is our current how robust is nrp? Can you explain what resources we have? Yes, uh, right now the nrp program is a limited part-time rental inspection program Based on one code enforcement technician And a fire safety inspector As many have been on the council for a while over the course of several budget reductions nrp went from a multi department Full-time effort to now as simply a rental inspection program Okay, and then the other side from code enforcement who handles these 214 complaints What's the staffing model of that and what are What are their assignments? Are they just focused on complaints? Or do they also have some co-compliance in other parts of the city not related Oh, yeah, the code enforcement division has Six people with the senior and they respond to any and all complaints regarding commercial properties residential properties Things like that that nature and so these are the same folks just and I know a lot of the rebuild areas When people are talking about let's just say a burn tree that may be an issue of a vacant property These are the same folks that look at those as the code enforcement. That's correct. Great Mr. Alvarez do you have a question Thank you, mayor on the 214 Open cases that want to confirm open cases mean that there were potential violations violations were found and the case was being investigated That's correct. So do you have a number for the total number of complaints that were received? I can get that for you, but I don't have it with me tonight. Thank you Mr. Rogers Yeah, just by way of process sue Last time we were here We had to literally pull a name out of a hat to make sure that four council members could be present at the desk Can you just give for the public and others watching at home? Can you give a little bit of background on why now there's six of us up here? Just figure that might be helpful As an explanation before we even delve too far into the policy Sure After our last um or at our last Meeting when we had the study session we were requested to Check with the Fair political practices commission the fppc which governs conflicts of interest and can give opinions And if we get a written opinion written formal opinion That will protect any council member from a future Uh enforcement action from the fppc fpbc also issues informal opinions and prior to the Study session we had obtained an informal opinion Those are done quickly and the answer came back from the informal on the informal Opinion the recommendation that council members who had Either owned or rental Or rented under a lease or Rented a room in their home that those council members recuse themselves out of an abundance of caution Until such time that a formal opinion could be Could be had When you do an afford when you request a formal opinion the fppc legal council Researches all the regulations looks at the facts that you've given them And then they write up a formal opinion. So we did Following the study session in october we did ask for a formal opinion from the fppc And we received that late yesterday And the conclusion was that all of the council members can participate in this discussion because There is a although there would be Could be a potential financial impact on those council members That are either landlords or renters under a lease The impact on the council members was no different than the impact on What is considered the public generally and the standard is whether the For purposes of this ordinance the standard is whether The ordinance would impact 25 percent or more of residential housing units In within the city of santa rosa We have run all those numbers and we are well above The 25 threshold which puts us into the generally Public generally exception and therefore All of the council members may participate and again that was based on the formal Legal opinion from the fppc And that's thank you for that clarification. Okay, we have several cards here First up calling for an all followed by lisa thomas So i lost my housing because sabastopol in 2016 was not keeping up with the city of santa rosa in just cause eviction issues And i want to tell you something from my Residency in santa rosa on escalaro marble street stanislaw way mold is Devastating to human health On s on um escalaro no on stanislaw way. Unfortunately that home was bought my in-laws Before closure they hadn't been fixed up where smokers and pets using the carpet that was Not renovated before our family moved in there No one listened to me once again until It got severe. We had major health problems. It got the air sample. It was the worst possible kind So finally they had put the work into doing this certified restoration specialist A lot of money paid to remediate They returned my vacuum to me completely untouched. So you got to watch who's even doing the work inspectors Because on escalaro on that home The person doing the work was replacing with moldy wood in the shower. I called your police And they didn't help me. I said this is an environmental crime and I wasn't helped as a renter tables got turned in bad results happened on that address So in your city, I've had experience with toxic mold Where my daughter was last living in an apartment building where they weren't listening to me when they're Bath tub was dripping down to the people below and the manager's not listening And that mold was so bad that after she's murdered They had to rip the whole face of the apartment building right over on my bride off To remediate it that child suffered Repeatedly Because of landlords including our own grandparents didn't pay attention to mold So I want you to use every possible force and effectiveness to get your housing stock cleaning And in those cases where you got a remodel Maybe you can consider Letting the restrictions change so maybe going up a second level to have more housing stock instead of more sprawl Would be an option where there might not be room for any of you or wherever But these problems can be opportunities Provided that everyone's invested in the outcome of healthy affordable housing stock Torrent to own whatever it is So when I see money coming to the jc for building, I'm going where's the green part of your building That's what we need to be implemented in here Because what price can you put on your health, right? And if every breath that you can take doesn't have mold or toxic soft gassing That's priceless, isn't it? So it's worth investing in landlords And Thank you. Thank you. Lisa thomas followed by keith becker Good evening. I'm here as a landlord having bought a duplex about a year ago, which i'm very excited about I think i'm a good landlord. I take care of my property and I look after my tenants like many if not most landlords in this city I do not want to see any substandard housing for anyone And I appreciate the city has a responsibility for enforcing housing laws But I think we're looking at a sledgehammer to crack a nut There are only 214 complaints in a year 39 of those come from property owners with four or more units But the vast majority of people that are going to be subjected to inspections are single family dwelling and duplex triplex owners So this is a big thing to rain down on all of the landlords in the county when it's a small problem Relatively and confined to an even smaller population of landlords. So I don't see that this is really an appropriate solution 0.006 Percent of all units are subject to as complaint and you're talking about spending or asking us to spend Over a million dollars a year to subject ourselves to these inspections That seems a little bit of overkill for me As a realtor, I also think it's a big disincentive to property investment in rental properties I sold three properties last year that were rentals people leaving the rental stock and selling them as single family homes because Rental issues are too difficult for most landlords to deal with here. So this is not okay We only have 35 000 units in the rental housing stock in santa rosa right now. That's tiny We need a lot more housing. That's part of the problem with homeless It's part of the problem with low income It's part of our problem here And we need to focus on how to solve that problem And I really don't think that the solution to that is to drive more private property owners out of being landlords And the more imposition we have of regulations There really are not needed and don't make sense just increases that So you're going to vote On whether you want to add a million dollars to the city budget and carry an overhead and create a bureaucratic system That's going to weigh down On 35 000 people who own over 35 000 property units. I strongly urge you to say no to this Let's go back to the drawing board and come up with something that's a little more clever and really addresses the real issues Thank you. Thank you. Keith becker followed by susan correll Good evening council members I can't imagine that you as members of the city center of the city council have the opportunity to speak with housing providers In any sort of depth what I do and I speak with hundreds of them and 2014 15 16 the different efforts to institute rent control in santa rosa And now we're talking about ab 1482 and sp 329 And sp 644 and all of these other alphabet soups of regulations and my clients and housing providers are like Okay, okay Okay, and depending on how this conversation and your vote tonight goes I will be communicating with my owners and my clients tomorrow morning and explaining them what has happened And at some point we reached the tipping point I have one very savvy client who owned four properties all of them single family residences all of them in santa rosa And over the course of the last three years. He has divested himself of all of them Not to get out of the business He took his money and has left santa rosa and bought properties in oregon and oklahoma and idaho Because there's opportunity and it is becoming increasingly difficult for owners to look at having opportunity here The numbers there are so many people who have said this and will say this about the number of violations and the number of overall properties I don't want to get into that But what I do want to say is the solution this inspection program itself is is overkill If you want to really make a solution one Do provide some sort of protection for whistleblowers because there are people there are tenants who are fearful of reporting substandard housing because they're worried about somebody mentioned about ice for example Provide whistleblower protections for people who know that they can report problems in safety two Make it financially impossible for slumlords to operate in santa rosa The penalties if somebody is in violation make a prohibitive three We need to bring back Scrims or something like it An advocacy group that basically provides information for both owners and tenants to make the industry better for everybody. Thank you Thank you. Susan carel fall by chris lupin He made this Good evening and I'm very glad to have the opportunity to address this and I appreciate lisa thomas's remark. She's right on the money there I am in a front row seat of the rental housing market When I read your proposed ordinance with this Housing inspection program. I was I was horrified I am the owner and broker of my own property management company and it's been in business since 2007 We manage about 125 single family housing properties all over sonoma county with the majority of them being in santa rosa Um, I live in oakmont and my business has been there since 2012 and I have two employees So I do really understand the rental market I'm very much in opposition to this passage of yet another housing program That creates additional burdens financial not to mention the laborious paperwork and nuisance I wonder how aware you as a city council are Of the impact that the price gouging Penal code 396 And the rental caps that have recently been installed as of january 1st I wonder how aware you are of how this has set the rental market into topsy-turvy crazy land. I mean it's It's it's been hideous to have to deal with these As he's referred to the alphabet soup legislation There's an awful lot of it in place and most owners don't even understand it They need to be educated about it I don't know the details of this program. I didn't see them until I looked at your presentation But I do know that there were less than 200 and well, there are 215 tenant complaints and again, this is like You know Killing, uh, what did Lisa say killing a mallet using a mallet on a on a nut Um, if there are 25 000 rental units, then you know 200 is less than one percent And I just don't understand why you would do this If you impose additional fees and restrictions on rental housing You will create consequences that you're not even aware of Landlords will sell their properties because of the hassle. They will be Which will in effect reduce the the rental housing inventory when you're trying to Achieve more rental housing inventory And you will create a distance center for developers to build more housing here And they will simply look elsewhere to invest their money as key suggested And where is the money coming from to support this program that's in fantasy land? I mean You need a million dollars to support it and you're and your Budget person this morning. They're this one was wasn't this morning I believe he said quote we have a lot of work to do on the expenditure side So I think this this ordinance is insane and I hope you'll agree with me. Thank you Thank you chris lopin followed by adrian lobby Thank you for the time council. My name is chris and my wife and I own 26 units out of your 37 000 we are the extra small business here but I've read this proposal three times and and I got to tell you i'm a little nervous that yes, there are no fees There are fees suggested but not set and i'm just worried that This million dollars is just going to keep growing to be a bigger and bigger chunk And it's coming out of our pocket You know, we have we guys talked about zero zero based The the whole trash thing and and our trash has gone up 250 percent in the last two years Our insurance has gone up over 20 percent in the last two years and now we're adding more fees into this industry We can only absorb so much and The only result is that the rental price has got to come up and that's not what we need right now guys We got to keep those rental prices down and adding more fees is is not going to help us do that There's an expression throwing the baby out with the bath water guys we have Less than one percent is is what our issue is based on those numbers and we have We're penalizing the 99 percent to pay for that I have customers. I don't have tenants. That's the way I look at it and on march 14th We're actually have two license handymen going through each unit our own. We do it every year We walk in we check everything We re-cock the bathroom even though somebody doesn't know how to use bleach and take care of the mold and we do all that stuff Because we want our housing to be clean and and above par I think if we add in this government oversight in these fees It's just going to be detrimental to the industry and I urge you To look for another solution. Thank you very much. Thank you adrian lobby followed by carol lexa Good evening, and i'm here as a member of the intersections coalition Well, I guess I want to start with some history because I was also here when the hone avenue Problem emerged where we found tenants who are living in extremely substandard housing and to everyone's surprise And that sparked a tenant renters movement that almost passed rent control here I've also was here recently where an older motel up on mendicina avenue was condemned suddenly And a whole lot of renters were faced with sudden homelessness The people the 215 people who complain are They are not part of a rent. They're they are random complaints There some of them are people who have the courage just to complain about their landlords That's a very small group of people because under the rental hospital rental situation we have now You don't want to complain about your landlord. You don't not want that to happen So back in the rent control I was in this chamber And I heard many many landlords and owners and apartment owners saying look don't we don't want rent control That's just at draconian. We can't handle it. It's way too much So let's do a rental inspection program This what this initiative came out of that. It was a compromise So now I'm listening to people say well, there's not enough data or it's just too much I'm on a section eight voucher. I get my house inspected Now they put it on a two-year cycle. It was on a one-year cycle It's not really a big deal to keep your property up. You have to make an appointment. You have to show up It's not a big deal So the other thing the owners said is that when you do a rental inspection program It levels the playing field because everyone has the same set of standards And you don't actually have the random neighbor or the random person who doesn't like you Complaining and bringing in code enforcement Everybody gets inspected if your unit is good But I do want to mention the faces that are looking down at me today, which are faces of homeless people in in Sonoma county And appreciate the exhibit and the photographer who made these things Obviously, this is our community The tenants and the homeless community have an enormous overlap And we want to keep people in their houses and we want to keep people safe in their houses And I highly encourage you to vote vote for this Thank you Carol, I'm not sure the last name could be lexa If it is okay followed by uh clayton angstrom Thank you. Good evening council mayor sweat home I'm carol lexa. I am this year's president of the north bay association of realtors So I do speak on behalf of realtors in our community and we do remain deeply concerned about the proposal before you the policy itself and The process by which we arrived here It is comprehensive citywide massive costly And it is punitive to property owners Especially without worthier data to support it this City currently already spends Multiple dollars perhaps millions of dollars on code enforcement and has the neighborhood Revitalization program to support it inspecting About a thousand units annually It's necessary to fund those systems that we currently have And ask ourselves what problems we're trying to address As numerous people have mentioned that the numbers of the properties that have complaints Are relatively low. I would ask you to continue to use that program Investigate where there are problems and make sure that that housing stock is brought up to code The process by which this came before the council Is somewhat troubling In that it was driven by a former council member And direction was given to staff They brought forth a proposal and has come back with actually a more costly and more stringent proposal So we urge you to take pause collect additional data on complaints and find out how your Current programs are functioning and if those programs are actually funded properly Please fortify the neighborhood revitalization program Before considering a comprehensive model By making ownership of rental property more expensive and onerous There will be fewer homes to rent And rental properties are necessary to keep people in our homes Here in san rosa And not exacerbate the problems of home homelessness that we have So please be careful With your decision And keep it so it's possible For the good landlords to continue to provide rental housing. Thank you. Thank you. Clayton angstrom followed by force jinx Thank you, mayor schweilhelm schweilhelm members of the council. Thanks for indulging me. I'm sorry. I'm here tonight Let me tell you i'm one of the 214 Guess what the neighbor called on my tenant I've gotten this notice for several years probably three times in the last five years. I've got a absolutely marvelous tenant Well, maybe not to the neighbors, but he is a wonderful gentleman. He's a disabled vietnam vet Started there with section eight. Some reason he lost his section eight continue to raise his family there I work with him on it. I've raised that rent twice in two in 20 years Uh, he's a great guy. He is a horrible housekeeper. Absolutely horrible So these three notices I get them. I go over to him now. They're charging me money for the code enforcement aspect of it I have asked him to pay for this. He cleans the place up Kind of goes away. I gotta tell you on my other rentals. This is every five years I've had two rentals that it took only two years from the time that these things were brand new spanking clean new Two years to absolutely trash them to over $8,000 in damage So let me express to you that when it's so funny that We're having a discussion about bad landlords Which let me express to you. I have no tolerance for these units need to be cleaned up Mold is a huge four letter word for us as landlords Code enforcement needs to do their job And whatever needs to happen there and whatever cost recovery has to happen there That's where it needs to be but I gotta tell you if the inspector goes into my house Where my wonderful 20 year Vietnam disabled veteran is and his Three generations are living in the house currently I will probably have to vacate the unit in order To to clean everything up out of what 1482 I'll be paying him one month's rent And we will shake hands and say goodbye to each other And I will probably spend whatever it takes to renovate that house I will not be putting them up in a hotel for the three months And it's going to take to renovate the place And I'm just expressing to you that if your problem is 214 And I'm one of them That was my problem was easily solved by me going over there And having a conversation with him and he took care of it And I'm telling you what's happened to me three times in the last five years That's how tenants are you're trying to make it like it's a landlord problem It probably isn't but I can tell you the unintended Consequences as removing really really good people From these rentals to go find something else. Thank you. Thank you force jinx followed by jennifer colman The forest leave jennifer colman followed by lisa baden fort Thank you jennifer colman santa rosa I agree with everybody Landlords who are my colleagues who have spoken about the 214 number that keeps coming up You know I come here with good intentions But the one of the things that crosses my mind is that this number is so low It's less than 1% That I I can't help but think why is the city of santa rosa taxing landlords to fund code Enforcement under a different name called the rental housing inspection program That's the first thing that occurs to me and I I do also agree that Landlords and tenants it takes two to tango. I really keep my properties up. Well, but I gotta say that They're the basic wear and tear and I'm a tenant as well for 20 years Comes from me. I take really great care of the property that I rent In fact, I left my my unit better than when I took it over when I was Displaced four years ago. I'm sorry two years ago And it's a lot of wear and tear but I do my best to keep the properties up And I do my annual walk-throughs and then every three years We have a building inspector go in he's an independent unbiased. He's no skin in the game He's usually what you use when you want to buy a home You have an independent inspector go in there and Let you know they do in the crawl space to go on the attic and look at the electrical plumbing everything and tell me What's wrong with it? So I do that on top of it I self-regulate and when I do my walk-throughs with the resident tenants and they are my customers as well Um, I always ask them, please tell me what's wrong with the house so that I can fix it I don't want deferred maintenance. Don't be afraid to call me Excuse me, I'm just looking Um One of the important points is If there are process concerns with this Provide anonymous systems to report those complaints to code enforcement to the neighborhood revitalization program And please don't reinvent the wheel revamp the wheel that you already have and save money Code enforcement is a good process. So let's use it and find a way to fund it But please don't find a circuitous way or I'm sorry not a circuitous But a roundabout way that insults my intelligence to fund it By calling it the revital the home reinspection home inspection program because really in the end It's all coming down to just dollars that you're generating that you're passing on only to landlords If you really need to raise money to inspect homes for code enforcement because you've only got one guy on the job Then tax everybody. I don't like taxes, but don't don't hand it down just to the landlords You're slapping down the small percentage of of homes that are one percent and One last thing when people are displaced. I require a tenant liability insurance And one of those things are loss of use and it's a valuable tool to have I have it if i'm displaced by mold Or any other things I have lost insurance Where my insurance will pay for me if i'm displaced Thank you. It's very cheap. Thank you Thank you Lisa badden fort followed by erin george Thank you. Good evening. Um, lisa badden fort. I live in ossea avenue and district seven I come to you as a 15-year renter and a fairly recent homeowner here in the city of san rosa And this comes at this really relevant time for my husband and I and my family um This is kind of part of a growing list of concerns for us Um after living in 15 different rentals in sonoma county most all in san rosa Um, we finally became homeowners after saving for a very long time Um, it's a dream come true. It's pretty frightening endeavor frankly But we're looking currently at um, we've always wanted to keep the house as a rental if we could As we look to move how do we keep that? Um as part of our portfolio and part of our business plan As we look at the costs and the risks and the alphabet soup of it all Retaining the home Is looking uh as a rental is looking less and less possible um A program like this really is frankly quite burdensome and unnecessary for An owner such as myself it would cost hundreds and require hours of coordination All to inspect a home that was built in 2000 Um, then I maintain impeccably. I say this not as a poor me situation but to highlight how this affects Thousands of landlords independent mom-and-pops the majority of your landlords in san rosa Um own fewer than four units so combined with Other recent rental property laws the cost of owning and renting out our home It's almost a wash and I just wonder how many other owners are in the same situation Deciding to sell their rentals instead I also really want to express that in the 15 rentals that I lived in In this city as a young financially Challenged applicants and renter I've rented many below market rate. I have had to contact my landlord many many times for repairs and upgrades and leaking this and broken that and I didn't love it But it was my responsibility to do it and I have never had one landlord respond negatively not once If anything most address the issue much faster than I ever expected and thanked me for notifying them Even when it was my fault. I've never been asked to replace the screen door that I broke Or a b and cnd. We have a fantastic landlord community and I have been grateful for each and everyone Please reconsider this proposal Thank you. Thank you. Aaron george followed by daniel weinzig Thank you, mayor swedhelm and the rest of the council members. My name is Aaron george and over the years I've been a property owner and provided units available for my tenants As you know the ownership of property comes at a great expense to property owners Not only that but responsibility and also risk My goal has always been to provide an excellent housing Maintain not only a nice relationship with my tenants who are taking care of my properties but also communicate And keep communicative relationships with my renters And I believe I've been successful on that I encourage my tenants to report any issues that have come about In their property because again it is our investment. It's time I'm Prepared and happy to take care of those This ordinance is substantial. It's not only substantial to the property owners But it's also substantial to the city of santa rosa as well I would urge you to please take a look at Reallocating these funds not only to code enforcement But also to affording more affordable housing available out in the community Which i'm a firm believer that this will cause the cost of housing to go up especially for our renter pool Thank you so much. Thank you daniel weinzig followed by anita lafellette Good evening mayor members of the council We're all here tonight because we want a healthy thriving community I myself i'm a landlord in the jc neighborhood And I am highly involved and invested in both my property and my tenants health And on the surface I am against the idea of paying more fees to regulate something that I Immaculately manage and maintain myself But I think a proposal like this we need to think deeper than the surface level reactions I've seen the unhealthy conditions that my friends my colleagues and my clients live in this city The impacts on their health that are inhibit their ability to contribute to our community It impedes their ability to become financially stable because they're sick. They're dealing with issues So a rental inspection program in my eyes does not just provide a safety net for the most vulnerable it also allows us to Gather the data that we need about our rental units and our landlords to help us better analyze With this data we can better analyze policies and We can make better informed decisions going forward right now. We don't have enough data. We've got 214 Cases that are open, but we know there's probably a lot more out there that are not reported As you know housing conditions are directly connected to individual and community health And living with improper plumbing or in a mold infested unit creates unsafe conditions for our most vulnerable So I'd like to thank you all for your continued effort To protect all members of our santa rosa and all the work that you're doing to create a healthier future for our community Thank you. Thank you. I need a lafellette followed by brian ling I I really don't understand how it is that you can be making this decision since I know that you all are Landowners or Yeah, probably Investing all your finances in the housing market, right because that's the only way you can make money these days is flipping houses, right? so I know that you Have a loophole whereby you all get to make this decision, but it doesn't seem like it's legal to me Heaven knows you should make any kind of a financial burden on any of these Landlords my goodness gracious, uh, let's not take on the landlords who Charge Exorbitant rents and apartments. Do you know that there are many apartments available in santa rosa now? as there are homeless people and if everybody Just lowered the rent. Maybe we'd put all the people into houses. Wouldn't that be interesting? That's what they're doing there in oakland, right? and We do have an emergency proclamation. So You did say there was no gouging allowed, but in fact They continue to raise rents. They continue to charge high rates and in fact nobody can pay them That's why we have the vacancy rate that we do So has the da even ever prosecuted anybody for gouging? No, nobody's even calling anybody on gouging I know because I pay too much rent and it went up not because the rent went up because it's affordable, but The utility is exorbitant that you can't pay. Yeah so I think um, if you, uh, should not discriminate Against house section 8 too. That's another thing that's going on a lot. It's still going on In fact, they're putting it in papers and I don't see Any district attorney following through With those rules you made a long time ago against discrimination against section 8 Thanks for listening Thank you, brian ling followed by ananda suite Thank you, mayor and council, uh brian ling executive director sonoma county alliance First I've voiced a concern to a few of you about the trend in recusals the past couple years and I just wanted to say thank you for taking another look at that and I totally appreciate The fact that you you've reconsidered it and got some other opinions and To allow the additional participation tonight, which frankly is what we all elected you for so thank you for that Um Our group and myself were opposed to the proposed inspection program As an alternative as it's been mentioned to continue to take full advantage of the city's existing inspection programs and your existing assets To to deal with these problems The the net result Of an program like this It may or may not have a significant decrease in the rental inventory in this town, but surely it won't add one unit And that's really what this gets to the community Scream from and human cry is we need housing We hear housing the housing need is up here every day every tuesday in this council. It's up here The human cry on bad landlords is somewhere way down here I think that's really answers the question. We can't continue to put increased regulations On housing we need to pass rules that will encourage housing investment. This isn't it. Thank you Thank you ananda suite followed by isabel fisher Good evening. Mayor sweat helm members of the council. My name's ananda suite I'm the vice president of public policy at the santa rosa metro chamber I want to start by thanking you for moving decisively over the past two years to enact innovative policies to lower cost and barriers to new housing development And encourage desperately needing housing stock in santa rosa We urge you however to reject the proposed rental inspection program as it would do the exact opposite It would cost significant time and financial resources to create a new bureaucracy That would be expensive and punitive for good landlords and discouraged development Resulting in lower housing stock and increased rents There are several currently approved multifamily housing projects that are finding it difficult difficult the pencil And issues like this or initiatives like this could be the tipping point to stop a project from moving forward The city's worked really hard to convey recently that it's open for business To development however actions such as this when viewed through the eyes of developers and investors Sent exactly the wrong message from a community that desperately needs to increase its housing stock When this conversation started a fear of retribution was one of the key points that was made But tenants just received tremendous protection from the rental protection act from the state of california as of january 1st State law ensures strict protections and strong legal system to tenants who need it Locally in sonoma county We have an active and skilled legal aid organization and a strong panel of lawyers to take tenants cases on contingency Rather than creating a new bureaucracy the city could dedicate a fraction of the proposed resources to enhance existing successful programs like the neighborhood revitalization program It could create an information campaign so that tenants understand what their current rights are These types of solutions would eliminate the negative outcomes of the proposed program At a greater effectiveness and dramatically lower cost. Thank you. Thank you. Isabel fissure followed by briana Good evening council I'm isabel fissure. I'm the chair of north bay organizing projects housing task force um, if I remember correctly at a previous meeting a council member said that becoming a landlord is a choice and another council member has said that Having a tenant is more than a financial contract. It's a social Contract. It's a relationship And if you're if you're not prepared to treat it as a social relationship with another human person And provide them with a healthy home, then you shouldn't be a landlord um, so I strongly urge you to pass this ordinance For several reasons One I want to respond to a lot of the comments that have been made and just say that A lot of tenants are too afraid to report uh Repairs that need to be made to their landlords for fear of retaliation. That's that's the truth and uh the Protection for whistleblowers. That's called just cause eviction And if we had just cause eviction for all units all rental units Then tenants would feel safe to report any repairs that needed to be made And so only units that needed repairs would have to deal with that And so until you're ready to pass just cause eviction For all rental units. We absolutely need a rental inspection program to Identify those health hazards the tenants are too afraid to report uh, secondly Sometimes the tenant won't know if there is a health hazard in their unit until maybe they start showing physical symptoms Like I might not know that there's mold in my walls until I start having asthma and so An inspection someone who is trained to identify Signs of that kind of thing would be really helpful Not only to catch them Early before a tenant starts to have health problems, but before they do too much damage to the unit So it will be easier to take care of and finally, uh Related to catching something early before a uh a Hazard can do too much damage like mold If it's caught early and can be dealt with without having made too much damage improving that unit And making that repair will increase the value of the unit So thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Um, and also We're in a housing emergency crisis. So if we could have the housing items higher up on the agenda No Thank you Brianna followed by thomas else What a beautifully timed um sound effect. Uh, so um We have a lot of people here who are landlords and um like the young lady just said It's not a thing to be taken on lightly. You're responsible for people's livelihood and lives and um Uh If you're going to let someone live in a house with mold that Takes the certain level of some sort of discare for the other person Um, which is a mental health issue and then a lot of the bad renters quote-unquote who Have hoarding issues or whatever it may be uncleanness issues. That's also a mental health issue. Um So, uh, clearly there's a issue in the community um with not understanding that and um Addressing that as such otherwise the problem is just going to continue Um, so I'd encourage you all to Look into that. Um, I forget my other point Okay Um, that's it. It's just to remember that it's a mental health issue often Thank you thomas else followed by alex coffin Thank you for the opportunity to speak and thank you for addressing this. I support this measure. Um One unit does not One bad unit out of 20 something units as I understand does not make a slum lord But that's a slum lord have a lot of units not one unit, but if there's more than one unit That's a slum lord. Uh, leona helmsley very rich wealthy woman many units She was a slum lord. She went to prison. She belonged in prison um We have 75 000 units here In synom county Uh, excuse me in santa rosa 50 of them approximately are rental units. That's already too high a percentage Um, I understand 172 was the uh The fee for the inspection. It's on an eight year rotation. That's 21 of 50 cents a year I think my numbers are right uh If the total cost is 944 000 and there are 750 current Not code cases open, but I understand there's 750 inspections uh related to that that's a thousand to 1500 dollars per inspection or per family That would be subjected to Uh, substandard conditions and the reason for this The universal inspection is that I believe that during that conversation before It was suggested that people who were not really residents would be unable to you know, they're not They're not legal residents of the united states or california and they would not really be able to complain now I was an appraiser myself and I did appraisals. I did 27 appraisals of rental units in one complex Which was a condo, but they were used as apartments and um, the owner told me inspect these three because They're empty go ahead Looked at the three Everything's perfect. Everything's really good. I said to do 27 appraisals I've got to look at the other ones and he said, oh, they're all the same They're exactly the same same square footage same same plan, you know, three different plans for the 27 was Oh, they were three different plans, but Uh, the point is they were all in different conditions Every one of this all three of the ones that were empty were all completely Rebuilt and all the other ones were lived in and every one of them had leaking rooms and mold and Moisture inside of it and there's a terrible terrible conditions Every one of the 24 other ones that the owner didn't want me to inspect so I inspected all of them My point was is that out of those again, that would be about a thousand dollars To provide a $1,500 a lot less than the medical costs or the lifetime costs for those poor people who would be injured by living in those conditions. Thank you very much Thank you, don't us alex coffin followed by eric frazier Good evening, mr. Mayor madam vice mayor members of the council alex calif with the california partner association Thank you for the opportunity to be here in comment on this item as your staff mentioned um We have worked with the city for the last few years on this issue um, and I would Love to be up here saying that we are in full support of this item But unfortunately there are way too many issues that we do not support in this ordinance what seems to be happening here is that There is an overall belief that somehow the folks that spoke today from the landlord side are not folks that are actually providing the housing Most of the folks here are doing the right thing. They're are maintaining their units yet We are punishing them by subsidizing bad behavior of the ones that don't And that to me just doesn't seem right No one here is in support of substandard homes. I'm Sure of that and if they are they shouldn't be in the business but to put the entire burden of The units that are not up to code on everyone that does the right thing is just not right um, the other issue that We have with the ordinance is that it seems to be very vague in in the sense that we don't really know what is being inspected What is going to happen? What are we looking at? What happens when Staff person enters the unit. Um, it would be nice to know what those things are I think that's a big issue. Um, I I also believe that there is just some other issues Relating to damage. I mean if we're ready to have a conversation. I think we should there was a comment that said We should think deep. I think we should there are instances where the damages are done by the tenants What do we do about that? Do we put that on the shoulders of? The landlord what if they have multiple tenants to do the damage then what? It's becoming more and more difficult to Have a property and manage it in the state of california And this adds another layer potential layers of fees, which quite frankly while they're Called out in the ordinance and I appreciate that they're not really set tonight We could have a conversation at a later time and talk about different set of fees That also makes it very difficult to plan ahead and to understand what your expenses may be There's just An incredible amount of new law that's coming down and there will be more this year So if you want to address the issue, let's address it efficiently. Let's focus on the problem properties I think we know what they are And address those I think making everyone pay the price for a few folks that are not behaving is not the right approach Thank you. Thank you. Eric Frazier Hello city council Thank you. I appreciate your time this evening and recognizing me I have a long history of being both a renter and a property owner in the county And I have to say my Experiences as a renter were really quite bad. I had to raise my family here and I had to suffer through Inhabitable conditions on a couple occasions But that was hardly the last straw I mean, I've had my security deposit illegally absconded with so many times Most people just sort of forget about their security deposit and assume that it's never going to be returned My point is that the problems are much larger than what's addressed by this ordinance This ordinance is in fact a mallet that's striking down on the nut It's it's going to have the opposite effect of what you intend. It's going to increase the cost for tenants You're only going after a very small slice of problematic properties. It's not below one percent Let's get serious that number. It's wrong, but it's not 70 percent that number is wrong It's probably somewhere certainly in between probably 10. It depends on if you're standard a state law Or if you're burdening everybody with additional regulations and considerations If it's state law, I would say that an overwhelming majority of properties here would probably pass with flying colors because the state law isn't that onerous Now there have been changes to state law when it comes to unjust evictions and other things that haven't really been contemplated in the construction of this ordinance And that's also a big problem Well, frankly a million dollars a year Could be better spent on a risk abatement pool a risk abatement pool for everybody Could offer landlords the relief that they need with problematic tenants trashing their place which does happen And it could also alleviate the burdens of security deposits and credit application fees if administered properly It would be welcome relief to both sides of the equation And that million dollars actually wouldn't be spent. It just sits there as an asset our study indicates that in risk abatement pools that are applied to section 8 housing That the redemption rate is somewhere around 1% to as payout for problematic tenants We need to think out of the box and this continued approach of creating Controversy and creating stress where it doesn't belong is not good for anybody and however my heart is with the tenants But understanding what it takes to run a business And to be sure that we have the housing for tenants I would say that this ordinance is definitely in the wrong direction Thanks for your time Thank you. Those are all the cards we have council any questions After hearing public comment Mr. Oliver's Thank you, mr. Gwine. There was a Question asked about what an inspection process would look like. Can you elaborate on that? Yes, so the we would model it after the international property management code It's a universal inspection tool forms and noticing and all the administrative details would be rolled out as part of the program promotion Any additional questions mr. Rogers? Yeah director just two quick questions one is How long would an inspection like that typically take? Depends on the size of the unit we estimate between 15 to 25 minutes Okay, and does the tenant have to be present? We encourage the tenant to be present, but they do not have to be the property owner or the representative does Anything else Okay, uh, mr. Dad you have this item if you want to Put a motion forward Yeah, the first I I will not My recommendation is Not the motion that is before us But a motion that we continue to look at a way to more economically and feasibly take care of Rentals which are not adequately taken have not adequately been taken care of I don't support this particular recommendation about the housing inspection program Okay, is there anyone? Who would like to make a motion? Go ahead and it's vice mayor I'll move an ordinance of the council the city of santa rosa adding chapter 1850 rental housing inspection program to the santa Or the city code and wait for the reading of the text second All right, we have a motion in a second Any additional comments mr. Sorry anything you want to Thank you, ma'er I wish I'd had an opportunity to be here on october 22nd because in my comments this evening would be um Perhaps a bit of a repeat um I am I feel that this Well many hands have touched this ordinance many eyes have seen the ordinance And many voices have provided input into the ordinance So I I honor all of the effort that went into this. I know that it was not easy a great deal of research was done to um To come up with it But I believe that it is a solution looking for a problem um, I am I was very um Encouraged by the words of keith becker who mentioned um, that there needs to be In no uncertain terms major protections for whistleblowers our tenants Need to have then a to have a safe harbor in which to Convey substandard conditions to the city senorosa um, whether that needs to be um, whether we need to to enhance what already is in place legally or by education I'm I'm not I don't really know what the answer is. I'm looking for really to go back to the drawing board and As much work has already gone into this um, I just don't believe That spending a million dollars a year in this way is going to benefit the um the tenants And I think that this the way this is written is onerous and I can't support it There are elements of it that I I I understand the frustrations of the of the tenants But I have a feeling that those tenants that are frustrated Are have been victims of bad landlords And I also liked what what mr. Becker's mentioned That we need to make it very very expensive if not impossible for slung or lords to exist in the city And make and find ways whatever in whatever way is necessary to identify them and go after them with every um every ounce of of legal ability to To either find them um One way or another that to help support other programs for for tenants um to perhaps approach Some of the concerns that they have Without going into this kind of comprehensive Rental inspection program. So most of most of what I am concerned about was voiced by the by the landlords this evening Um, I am a landlord. I have one house with a studio apartment So I'm not a big landlord But I know what it takes to Keep a property in good shape And I think that this this would be Unnecessary addition to the requirements already Being placed on the landlords by the state of california And I think that the protections Right now there are the protections the necessary protections are in place for our tenants But I would go after the slum lords As as as much as we possibly can because I think that they need to be eliminated from our city Thank you, mr. Rogers any comments you'd like to make Yeah, thank you, mr. Mayor. I think that whenever we run into these conversations we Uh always run into What are the good landlords doing and what are the bad landlords doing? And that's what makes it the most difficult is when everybody acts as positive towards their tenants as Some of them do that actually tonight. I think it's the first time we ever had a landlord stand up and say I was one of those uh that you're talking about I think that that's a first for this chamber um And I think john I think you just hit it on the head about Where the neighborhood revitalization program Fails and and that's first and foremost It it's underfunded period and then the second one is that lack of protection for whistleblowers that And and those of you who we've had conversations know that I've struggled with this particular item because I can see it from both sides Having been a long-term tenant I didn't want my unit inspected. I was under market And I knew that and I knew that my landlord would have taken care of it If I asked him to if there was an issue, but I didn't want him to come into the unit I didn't want him to see even things that I thought I could take care of I didn't want to ever risk that my rent was going to go up or that there was an opportunity where I wouldn't end up In in housing I thought somebody also pointed out that the issue that we're really talking about here that the challenge that we're talking about here is that That whistleblower protection isn't there even under the state's just cause ordinance that it doesn't apply to every unit and that scares people Particularly when we talk about our undocumented folks in our community who for them one Mistake one report really changes everything for them And so we need some form of anonymous system And whistleblower protection for those specific individuals That don't have any type of protection from retribution and even some folks who are undocumented who are in A unit that would be under just cause eviction We know that there's still that threat that if a landlord really wanted to get rid of them could call ice And we have heard those stories and we've heard that story from from employers as well If the council decides that this is not That the rental inspection program is not the direction to go We need to come up with some way to protect people so that the The neighborhood revitalization program can be effective that they can know what what's happening And so I would urge us that if the motion fails to go that direction as well in the meantime. I will support the motion Mr. Any additional comments you'd like to make Well, I I appreciate the comments that council member Sawyer's has made and council member rogers I don't think we have a perfect rental environment in santa rosa I just don't think this is a proper road to go down But I think we need to look carefully at the code enforcement Program that we have in the city Uh whistleblower protection However, we can Do the things that renters in this community need help with I support. I just don't support this particular Program. Thank you. Ms. Weiss. Do you have any additional comments? Thank you, mr. Mayor. I I do believe that this is it can be one part of our overall housing goals Uh, and even though we again, we're playing around with some numbers and some unknowns We talk about the 214 open cases. These are verified cases again. We don't know how many complaints were received We don't know how many people have not complained for the reasons that have been stated before Uh, and that's one barrier that I would like to to eliminate I I believe that our landlords do and should understand and know what codes are Within the city of santa rosa related to a a residence or a rental Tenants don't they don't understand what's what's the code. What's not they could there could be Electrical violations that they don't know anything about they don't know that it's that's right or wrong Uh, so I think that burden is is on us to help protect that Uh, again, I don't think we we will able to accurately Survey and identify what the the magnitude of an issue like this unless you're out there reaching out to all Tenants anonymously to give them a chance to weigh in and talk about what's going on as far as their own Rental experience But again, I think that this is something that can be a part of our overall efforts to provide adequate housing to all Santa Rosa residents Ms. Vice mayor Thank you, mr. Mayor I'd like to frame this conversation in terms of power dynamics. We are From what we hear here is that landlords Are at some in some way disempowered by Regulation and I've heard testimony from so many wonderful landlords tonight who I imagine care about their tenants and our excellent business people and as such This this fee and this small amount of regulation to me is Not if you're as good as you say you are and if you're as good a business people as you say you are I think this is very similar to We all make choices You know when you make a choice to buy a car you're gonna have to go to the dmb On a regular basis every five years or so Sometimes more frequently that's just how it is and we have taken it for granted in a lot of senses You know but the other thing too is that it's an investment You know when you make an investment when you buy a stock There are risks associated with it and one of the risks associated with this type of it With this type of investment is one it's damage and I feel for you and that is terrible and we should look into that But again, it's an investment and it's a choice Nobody is making anybody become a landlord unless you inherit a property or something like that Which you could dispose of pretty easily so you're asking us to essentially Put the risk of your investment onto people who are inherently less powerful than you are If you're here in santa rosa and you own a home that you're living in and you're renting out a home You have a significant financial advantage Over your tenants in general not to each of you and not to every tenant And that doesn't mean that I don't have great respect for my landlord. I've been a landlord in the past I've been on both sides of it and I think that what we have to do is we have to stop conflating a couple of things one is The complaint based system with the neighborhood revitalization program One is for people who have enough empowerment to feel comfortable calling and making a complaint and even though Our director here at the outset said that 75 percent of homes in the neighborhood revitalization program don't pass the inspection a number 7500 out of a thousand each and every one of you landlords came back and cited that 214 number And so what we're really doing is we're not being very logical about it What we're doing is we're saying we don't want regulation because it's uncomfortable and it's burdensome I'm all for streamlining the burdensome nature of it And I've been batting around ideas with staff around how to make this less difficult for landlords Last thing we want to do is make it more difficult But I'm unwilling to shift that burden of your investment onto our most vulnerable residents And so I'll be supporting this motion enthusiastically So this council has had plenty of discussions about this topic and seen this final product You know some things have changed for me namely, um, ab 1482 And then seeing the price tag at that 944 thousand dollars the cost benefit analysis, you know It's concerning to me and also is concerning to me and it's and it's we own the responsibility those of us that were before us In our current council with our investment in nrp and code enforcement because I think this is a little bit Some folks in the audience made comments about the city's open for business Concern that I've had and I know one speaker mentioned it here today I've heard others where people are getting rid of their housing stock because they don't want to deal with the rental game here in santa rosa And I just um, that is great concerning to me and I believe this ordinance may Have greater unintended consequences I for one want to see what the positive effects of ab 1482 will have on that So with that we have a motion in a second your votes, please And that motion fails with three i's and three nos myself Mr. Sawyer and mr. Dowd voting no Mr. Rogers Yeah, mr. Mayor, I'd like to make a motion that in the budget process We bring back a revamped neighborhood revitalization program that includes with a whistleblower protection In some level of anonymity to it and increased fines for substandard housing second Motion second other comments Comment, I'd like to make on that because what I was hoping for we have a variety of different Priorities and yes, this is a priority but to take it on a one step I'm very supportive of getting more information But to take it out of context because I think we just passed the evergreen We're gonna have to find some 250k for that and there's other needs in our next presentation There may be some additional financial concerns for that So, um, I think during our normal budget process and during our budget priorities We can give that direction for the city manager, but I think it should be in context about the other priorities that we have so We have a motion and a second. Mr. Sawyer Thank you, mayor Well, one of the things that I did not mention in my comments was my support for the Neighborhood revitalization program and enhancing it. It was something that we Spoke to and during our goal setting Last year the the fact that it had been fact It was councilmember oliveris that mentioned Pretty clearly how it did that program had been gutted over the years Due to budget cutbacks and all sorts of reasons and I always thought that it was it was an important program And we do have a lot of of challenges with our budget coming up In the next few months, but I would like to Be able to have a conversation In with the enhancement of that program Because it was always I think it was a great success and I was always sad to see it whittled away Over time so always supporting that motion So so I do want to step in here a little bit I'm just for so that I can get some clarity for staff if as we're going through this motion Is this program arose out of exactly the deficiencies that the staff was asked to explore this program? Because of the issues facing nrp and the challenges of restoring a program that was essentially Severely cut in 2008. So one of the assignments to count to the staff was to develop a ability to finance A reestablishment of this program and I know not every council member has sat through this conversation or been able to participate So I'm I'm a you know, I just want to make sure that we understand and that that that is fully on the table Is that this program came forward as a response to the challenges that nrp was facing? And so I I just share that because I know there's been Folks in this conversation at different points the conversation started in a different council And I just I want to make sure that that you are all aware That that was one of the challenges set out for staff Was that we knew we had deficiencies in the nrp program? We were asked to to explore a rental inspection program to make up some of those deficiencies And that the the issue was is that those programs had been cut in 2008 and we were looking for resource To address that particular need. So I just I want to provide that context As we go through this and however this motion comes forward We're going to need to have that conversation again about how we structure and finance a particular item All right with as everyone clear what the motion is Okay, we have motion to second your votes, please I was looking for someone who would anyone else like to comment All right I just wanted to add that I I will be supporting the motion, but I do have an additional reservation in in addition to what Mr. McLinn has said is that The landlord community came forward and suggested this as As a solution to some other things and so what i'm concerned about is that we keep whittling away Well, if you don't we don't want this then we'll do that if we don't want this then we'll do that So let's try to cultivate our institutional memory as we move forward And make some follow-through instead of asking staff to continue bringing us forward things that we don't end up following through on Any other comments? Thank you, mayor. Um, I think what part of the Evolution of this Comprehensive inspection program was through bringing together the industry To help inform and Direct the How to advance this program so I would recommend Perhaps before our Budget hearings and we start to try to to cobble together Some enhancements to the to the nrp that we go Again back to our the industry the rental industry and ask them for some recommendations To help do exactly what mr. McGlynn's concern is is how do you if we cut it we cut the nrp because we couldn't afford it well if we Revive if we enhance the nrp that same question is going to be before it says how how will we afford it What's going to pay for it? So I would encourage the industry I know that they would be willing to come back to the table and also the this just landlords in general and Try to come up with with something that actually Will have some life to it and not be cut because of our because of budgets Because again, I think it was a very important program and I hated to see it go Or be diminished Any other comments? Okay, we have a motion and a second in your votes, please And that passes with five eyes one. No myself floating. No. Thank you Any other motions are we good on this topic? All right Mr. McGlynn item 14.5 item 14.5 report community homeless assistance program chap review Dave guine and kelly kike doll presenting Again, good evening members of the council This item is to ask you to review your community homeless assistance program. We affectionately called chap This is a program where we've years ago We invited the community to help us with this homeless issue and this is a chance to review how that program has been operating But first we wanted to set some context before we jump right into the chap program And so we wanted to review with you briefly some guiding principles by which we evaluate our programs Snapshot of homelessness in santa rosa A look at santa rosa homeless solutions and strategy and our current programs and initiatives So we want to just tee those up and then we would Get into the review of the chap program Share with you prior council feedback and look at the potential expansion of this program So the guiding principles we operate as staff is the the current capacity is not scaled to need And what we mean by that is we had ian de jong an international expert on homelessness In santa rosa in october Reviewing a few things especially all of our programs. He actually wrote a book about how to end homelessness And he basically we asked him. What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? What should we change? And his message was pretty clear. We're doing all the best practices to try and solve homelessness But the city of santa rosa this area is just not scaled to meet the need So with that we were looking at how do I we identify new funding sources? So we're not always leaning on the general fund and there's some ideas We're exploring at staff that there's current state program called h app homelessness housing assistance and prevention program It's going through the home sonoma county the chair and staff are meeting to set that agenda this week So we're going to talk through how might we access those funds The um We established the consistent regional partnership through home sonoma county We look at anything we do in our program is based on best practices and it's focused on the goal of resolving the person's homelessness So here's a snapshot of the current situation There's an estimated 1600 people experiencing homelessness within the city limits. This is based on last year's point in time count We have an emergency declaration. We're operating under The programs that like I said are based on evidence-based practices And as staff since we had the visit with the indijong and scaling our programs We've developed what we call our homeless action plan that we are vetting internally and we will have a conversation with the council Eventually on this but some examples are our outreach So that we city sponsors two outreach workers through the host team and then the county sponsors two more So that's four total people county-wide for an estimated what 3000 homeless population It's just not to scale Also our downtown enforcement team if we were to have ongoing Encampment interactions with the host we would need more officers We're also piloting a Parking program no overnight parking in two locations. And so how might our parking ordinance come into play written years ago Where it didn't contemplate people living in their vehicles as they are now And also the resources that are really working the master leasing and other housing options Your current budget to this program is 3.4 million And again, we think that we're stronger together through homesonoma county and that that's why that partnership needs to build on for these resources So a quick review of the strategy your programs are based on to g functional zero By following the housing first model in alignment with federal state and the continuum of care known as homesonoma county By moving the person as quickly as possible into permanent supportive housing where services are provided That's based on the common denominator of homelessness as means there isn't a home So that's the goal and the strategy for all your services So a quick review of your programs and initiatives are in five key areas under day services There's the homeless service center. That's on morgan street It's a multi service day center providing showers laundry telephone mail service Referrals and shelter intake all with the goal of exiting participants out of homelessness and into housing It's where it's where the homeless outreach service team is held and coordinated Any entry program operations are based at this facility You also support two low barrier housing focused shelter navigation center the family support center on a street 138 bed emergency shelter for families The center provides food clothing children's activities medical and dental care and client focused family action plans and services to overcome homelessness Then there's samuel jones hall ron finley avenue provides up to 213 year round beds 138 of those beds are for individuals with the highest vulnerable vulnerability In conjunction with the regional coordinated entry system, which includes set-aside beds for the nightingale program for medical respite It also has public safety beds plus 75 beds prioritized for the homeless encampment assistance program st. Joseph health also operates a mobile medical clinic at this location And the council approved just recently an additional investment of 1.6 million dollars For capital and programming improvements to include repurposing the large dorm room to better accommodate persons with disabilities There's also Outreach and engagement. We mentioned the host team. This is a street outreach team working to engage persons Experiencing homelessness into services and housing in collaboration with the santa rosa police department and other service providers and community partners Current city investment supports this two outreach workers as I mentioned There's a homeless encampment assistance program heap for short This is a city-wide multi-disciplinary team Focusing on a compassionate approach to address the health safety and shelter needs of person living in encampments And to ease the impacts of the surrounding communities Encampments are prioritized based on the number of individuals estimated at the site And an assessment of their vulnerability due to living outdoors Associated health safety and fire risk and property ownership There's a variety of programs for housing support. We have rental assistance in the housing first fund We have the hca family fund. That's the donor's initials which helps with security and deposits And the housing first fund provides flexible funding For landlord incentives risk mitigation housing assistance including rapid rehousing and master leasing We utilize a section 8 housing choice voucher program to provide vouchers project-based hud vash to provide permanent supportive housing And then there's the work of the santa hosa santa rosa housing trust Responses the development of permanent supportive and affordable housing for low-income persons Including our work on the former bennett valley senior site And then lastly there's the community-based solutions and that is the community homeless assistance program chat It allows for property zone for commercial and assembly uses to establish safe parking safe camping and temporary overnight shelter With access to restroom and storage facilities So we just put up here to close the setting the context This is a screenshot of the city's web page that lists all the all the things you're doing Under the homeless solutions. So if you go to the city's web page You click government You'll see boards and commissions. You'll see city council And then you'll see homeless solutions and you can go drill and get the data resources and understand more of our strategy So we just wanted to share that with the council and with the community that So far the work has been informed by your strategy and program and services and now we'll go into an evaluation Of the possible expansion of the chat program Thanks, dave. Here's a slide There is on the chat program There's a detailed chronology provided for you in the staff report. I will do my best to To recap that in one slide. So going back to october 2015 nearly four years ago Council approved the initial pilot This provided a limited scope of services and was for the winter months only In october 2016 a year later council approved an expanded chat which provided a broader scope of services And year round and it was allowed for under a declaration of homeless emergency chat Currently allows for services on properties that meet the zoning code definition for a meeting facility Which is typically churches and commercially zoned properties And the program allows for safe parking safe camping The placement and maintenance of portable toilets and access to existing bathroom facilities Provision of temporary overnight shelter and storage for personal belongings, which dave Covered briefly in the slide before this. Um, there are currently Three participating property owners providing approximately 30 safe parking spots in three locations In 2016 council approved 20 000 for chat grants to support the program The current balance remaining is about six thousand dollars Dave and i were before you last year in february 2019 providing an update on the program and seeking Your input on potentially expanding it and staff received Input from the council in six primary areas First to engage property owners to understand barriers to their participation including insurance costs And also to learn ways to increase their participation To expand the definition of safe parking to residential and public properties as i just described It's currently restricted to commercial commercially zoned properties and those that meet the meeting facility definition public property identify site identify sites public sites for safe parking specifically city-owned property and develop a budget for safe parking To adopt the state of california's housing and community development emergency building standards And ensure that any potential expansion of chat aligns with the city's housing first strategy As well as that of our homeless system of care homesonoma county, which dave discussed Moving on to engaging property owners. So david and i reached out to chat participants. So the three Participating property owners. We also reached out to faith base leaders and we received the following feedback There was definitely concern around insurance and other costs costs and speaking to the Chat participants there is one um Participant one property owner the first united methodist church who's been operating a safe parking program I believe since 2014 or 2015 and I know there's representatives here in the audience which can speak to that later They can correct me if i'm wrong They initially experienced an increase in their premium costs, but that has since leveled off I reached out to the other two participating property owners and they haven't seen any Increases in their insurance premiums related to operating safe parking I can't share with you that i've recently read new beginning safe parking program model And that's a santa barbara based safe parking program that's been around since early 2000s Early 2000 and they said that Having a host agency or operator that provides the liability coverage Is a key incentive to obtaining participation from property owners Additionally in their experience. It's not easy to ensure a safe parking program And not all companies are willing to ensure it There were also concerns expressed for meeting with these With property owners about a potential risk of liability As well as interest and capacity from within the congregation Some expressed a lack of interest and some were concerned about not having capacity to operate a safe parking program It was also expressed to david and I that It's great that the city has chapped and allows for safe parking and other services as well as the grant funds But the the drive or the will to operate safe parking has to come from within the Within the congregation its own leadership and they really need a champion within their within their congregation to decide to implement safe parking There were concerns about neighborhood objections You know, I've received very few complaints over the years about safe parking I know there were strong objections to the method is church's proposed safe camping program a couple years ago But we've received very few complaints about the the current safe parking lots There have been some Complaints or concerns about the chap grant application being burdensome And i'll share with you that the application is based off our community advisory board grant Process and has been vetted by our city attorney's office and I have since worked with our two Um Properties that receive grant funding through the the chap program to streamline that process And I think that they would share with you that process has improved And other program models we were urged we were encouraged to look at other program models and one of them was Mountain view which I reached out to and they run a program similar to What the county funded a few years ago that was operated by catholic charities Which involved both public property? So there's a county site And um churches so it was a combination of a public and a faith-based program There was interest in a roving safe parking model I haven't found a community that's actually doing that yet But I know that there's a lot of interest in in doing that out there And that would be similar to the redwood redwood gospel missions roving shelter program where Rather than a church providing their parking lot for ongoing safe parking They would provide it one night per month on a rotating basis And there was interest expressed that they might that the faith-based leaders weren't necessarily interested in hosting safe parking Or offering up their lot, but the possibility of funding a faith-based model Oh I skipped one we'll go back city participation We received feedback that Property owners wanted the city to have skin in the game and one way to do that is to provide City parking lots for safe parking Moving on to expand the definition As I discussed in the summary slide There's interest from the council to expand the definition of safe parking to private residential and public properties And this includes vehicles trailers and rvs and or rvs Our existing declarations of shelter crisis and local homeless emergency provide for greater flexibility The city also has existing urgency and resilient city ordinances that allows for the um The placement or the provision of temporary housing under certain conditions And subject to council direction. We could develop develop similar criteria for chap To allow for the placement of a vehicle a trailer rv or temporary housing on private residential property public property So potential city sponsored sites for your consideration include the family community center utility Field office. Excuse me. Sam jones hall a city hall the former bennett valley senior center and the parking district I will say that our outreach extended to city staff and davin. I met with um staff from Departments that would might be impacted by safe parking on city property And I would like to highlight that each of these site presents unique constraints as well as opportunities for safe parking Moving on to a housing focus program program And this would be similar to what I discussed with mountain view or catheterities Former county sponsored program where there's an operator that oversees and runs the program This could be implemented on public or private property We reached out to catheterities as a former operator of a safe parking program to develop a A budget for the program um per your direction And the estimate to operate an overnight scattered site program is approximately five hundred and thirty thousand dollars now For a 24 seven single site The budget is approximately six hundred thousand to one million dollars and that's based on information We put together for an item that came forward to council in february of 2018 So I just want to emphasize that these are estimates A potential scope of services includes intake and placement linkage to coordinated entry A lot monitor and hotline portable toilets and hand washing stations and housing staff so Specialized housing staff including navigators locators and housing stabilization case managers Subject to council direction. We could sole source a contract with catheterities or go out for a request for proposals or qualifications community outreach so david and I met with or presented to the following groups the community advisory board downtown subcommittee Santa Rosa together the west end neighborhood association The rotary club of santa rosa east Homeless action and their newly formed nonprofit states We also developed an informational one-page fact sheet which was distributed to cab neighborhood groups home cinema counties urgent and emergent issues task group an article Or post was made in the city connections newsletter and a newsflash item was created for the city's website Moving on to feedback received through this process We've heard that safe parking and camping should be allowed city-wide and not concentrated in you know one area of the city And then it should also be allowed in all in all zoning districts Again city participation. There was a request that the city provide city lots for safe parking There was concern if chap extends to residential residential property to what level The nearby neighbors would be engaged. So neighborhood engagement was was a concern I received feedback that expanding chap could potentially attract persons experiencing homelessness to santa rosa Costs related to insurance were also was also a concern And chap grants. So I said we have approximately six thousand available There's interest in increasing those funds and expanding the uses for that program And fundraising or match grant being able to use the chap grant to leverage other funding for a safe parking program And incentivizing participation that the city consider making changes to its general plan to incentivize Property owners to participate in chap Emergency building standards as I mentioned these were these are coming down from the state Department of housing and community development these were adopted January 1st 2020 for all california cities and counties and they allow for emergency housing including sleeping cabins Manufactured homes recreation vehicles trailers and tents So long as they're constructed or assembled in accordance with the new state codes And you have to have emergency declarations in place to use these emergency building standards, which the city does We've had those in place since august of 2016 Lastly the last point of these six key areas that council provided feedback on was housing first alignment And dave talked about that earlier in the presentation Just that whatever we do with chap that we're doing so in alignment with the city's housing first strategy Which does recognize promising practices such as chap As well as home sinoma county's goal to achieve functional zero homelessness next steps So staff were seeking direction and components of the proposed chap expansion covered in this presentation Including expanding chap to private residential and public property Whether or not council is interested in funding and implementing a safe parking program And ensuring chap alignment with housing first Just want to add that Currently our colleagues at the county submitted uh requested proposals to operate two Indoor outdoor shelters that include safe parking those proposals came in yesterday afternoon We're part of the review committee. We expect to know more about that in the next in the coming days if not week I just want to share that context with the council. So if you were considering a safe parking program You might want to learn what came into the county to do the same Just dave with that We one of your earlier slides had guiding principles. Do you know our The county's guiding principles consistent with our guiding principles for that rfp To to my knowledge Some for regarding resolving the person's homelessness, but the rest of the guiding principles. I would have to go back and check. Okay. Thank you With that i'll move to the recommendation It is recommended by the housing community services department that the council by motion provide direction on components of the potential expansion Of the community homeless assistance program. This concludes our presentation We'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you. Great. Thank you for the presentation Council questions. Mr. Sawyer Thank you, mayor. I'm curious about that the Number of vehicles in the chat program were the number of people Did I you mentioned a number earlier in your very first part of the presentation? What is the? Maximum that we currently allow under our chat program I guess that would be individual Right here at a site at the site. I can tell you that none of the sites exceed that amount I mean one site provides 20 park state parking spots There's one that provides two to three spots and another that provides 10 I'd have to look back at our chat guidelines, but I think the cap is about 30 per We've never run up against the cap. Okay, go which you know, I think part of the resistance for neighbors is Are the number of people that are that are in attendance in any one? Um program if you will so being able to keep it Allowing for smaller numbers or scattering it around the community I think would probably end up being less Resistant by the neighbors or resisted by the neighbors than large numbers So it's just it's just a thought I was curious what our cap was Any other questions? Mr. Rogers Thank you, mr. Mayor If you could go to slide 14 first So I wanted to ask you specifically about city sponsored sites And first I wanted to point out that Everything that was up there and in general the groups that you've met with are typically west of southeast street And there's a whole lot more city than just that And I think we've had this conversation before about where our service is being concentrated And how do we get a better geographic distribution across our community? And I would hope that if we are going to consider city sponsored sites that we are considering them Equitably throughout our community and not just in one spot Yeah, so when we looked at city-owned real estate, what does the city own that you could consider on public property? Well, you have parks So, you know parking some parks have parking lots and so you know where your parks are You have fire stations and so Can a safe parking program fit on a fire station lot and is that a good idea? And then there's public facilities and that's what you see listed here, which is Another consideration well as Because we've done these with our open government task force meetings where we specifically went to different locations I know that their city-owned spots out in oakmont, but I don't see them on the list Right, so I want to make sure that if we are actually going to have this Conversation about how we're going to address homelessness as a community that we're actually talking community-wide So that was the first comment that I had second for the overnight scattered sites or the 24 7 One of the questions that I always had about so can can we back up a little bit? I think I think one of the things that we're glossing over here is that City staff was looking at this also access to bus lines and services Because again, even though there might be a safe parking there may be reasons to do that So I think there are there are if they're supporting an infrastructure reasons that that some of these other locations were chosen because of that connectivity issue We're willing to look at other Considerations, but I think the one you're citing is exactly one of those issues about Some of those connectivity Conversations even you know we talk about safe parking that that doesn't necessarily mean That sometimes the vehicle can move and there are other ancillary So I think we're open to that But I think I just want to say that there was some consideration of those locations But these are some of the questions we were asking about some of those locations And I understand that and I can appreciate that but also locations like the steel lane community center is Next to public transit would be an appropriate site for consideration So I'd like to see a more full list for the council to be able to consider For the cost I've never really understood with something like city hall if we did a safe camping or a safe parking program at city hall Why it's going to cost half a million dollars? And I understand that that might be because we're layering on access to facilities Security costs I'd like to know what that actually Entails so we can have a conversation about which components do we think are vital? And especially since we're in a homeless emergency How can we do this bare bones to to provide multiple sites not just one site? So the 530,000 is not just for city hall parking lot I want to make that clear the overnight scattered site program is for up to 100 spots And the cost is 100 spots or 100 100 parking spots 100 parking spots And it would depend on the capacity of each of those parking lots. How many locations we would have got it catholic charities Prior safe parking program had up to 80 spots One location was the county site that was 50 spots and then they had the balance of the 30 scattered at 8 to 10 locations at churches So the church spots were typically small ranging from like 2 to 10 to 15 That program was bare bones I mean it provided intake and placement A lot monitor and hotline and portable the portable toilets and hand washing stations It had staff to oversee that program. The cost was about 150,000 annually, but it wasn't focused on getting people into housing It's not to say that they didn't have housing incomes And there was value in that program because it provided a safe place for people to to Stay in their vehicles overnight. However, Dave and I were developing estimates or budgets based off of Council's housing first strategy and to have a housing focus safe program Is very staff intensive and that that additional cost there has to do with the housing staff So that cost would include for example an additional host outreach worker It includes housing staff. So there's the navigators the locators and the housing stabilization case managers as well as Program management staff and the lot monitor. I'm not aware of an outreach worker specifically for this program This is not funding an additional outreach worker Okay Is would there be some capacity in this we hear a lot from the public Can't we hire somebody as a site manager who is a homeless individual Who wants to to also work and wants a safe place to go Would there be a capacity for us to build something like that into this program? If that was a direction of council, we would include that in our solicitation for proposals for this program One observation that kelly and I make is that if we're looking at A safe parking program on city real estate Run by the city it really isn't an expansion a chap It's unless maybe the community involves themselves somehow. It's really another city run program So we can build anything you would like to give us direction in and our request for proposal Okay, and then there are obviously also county sites within the city I know that they are working on their phase two now for a sanctioned encampment Is there any collaboration around this The vets hall the fairgrounds some of those sites that we've talked about Is there any room for us to collaborate with the county to do some form of a program at that? Even if we help fund it but on their on their property That's based on my comments earlier councilmember is those proposals came in just yesterday They're moved pretty fast just several weeks out with those and so we want to understand Review those and understand what the options are if you wanted to have that information to make that decision Okay, great. Thank you so much Mr. Doud I Seemed it. I I I see the acronym chap And the conversations about housing first But nowhere in this presentation was there anything about services to help the homeless with the issues that Got them into that homeless situation in the first place and Where does that fit into anything here? This this seems to me like Just spreading out More sites that look like Joe Rodota almost And Without dealing with the underlying causes of that homelessness I don't see the people moving on from that situation. No, how where does that fit in? So thank you for your questions and your comments I would say that the Joe Rodota trail is not a managed encampment And what we're proposing here is not an encampment, but safe parking and it would be managed So in my opinion it would look nothing like the Joe Rodota trail Additionally, there's staffing here to help people Address the needs and what brought them into homelessness and to move them out of homelessness In this particular program and I would say In continuation or as a continuum of the other services that the city funds and that the county is funding through Homesonoma county. Okay, so it is a piece of this puzzle then that that will be attended to. Okay. Thank you Yeah, and I would add council member that those program and initiatives we teed up earlier in the presentation Or where that rule work begins Any other questions So this is tagging on to council member rogers questions about the financing for running A safe housing encampment coming in at a half million dollars I understand that a previous council went forward with a model that Essentially requires all of these services. Is there A chance that we're allowing The ideal of perfect as in housing first which is a term of our which means we don't have barriers to housing Not that we provide everybody with housing first instead of these other things so Are we essentially handicapping ourselves by having tied ourselves to a model to which we're unable to follow through on And is there a way to maintain the spirit of it? Which is to not preclude people from housing and get them to it while not making it so expensive and cumbersome Do we have a more of a goldilocks solution? I know this is a I could see All right, all right, all right, I think all of us in the question. Thank you I mean, I think that this is part of the question the staff has of the council is The the the cost centers that you see in front of you reflect our commitment to the housing first If council wishes us to Roll that back then there are different ways to approach a problem But but we've been committed to doing this has been the protocol that we followed We're going to need direction to say that there's some other Approach that council wants us to take on these particular issues But right now you're seeing the cost centers associated With a housing first model I think there's all there's always a question of what what it is that You want to see addressed in a particular approach and we can structure an rfp to address that exact question Right now we're working under that auspices and we're working with the folks that we currently Would be quickest to deliver services in a in this type of situation But we haven't been able to canvas an rfp or receive the direction Well, I uh, I will just wonder rhetorically are we allowing our ambitious policy and our caring policy to get in the way of Of doing more caring. I understand that we were housing quite a number of people but that We're unable to serve as many people as we might like to and I don't need a answer to my my curiosity Any additional questions Yes, mr. Alvarez. Oh, mr. Rogers Yeah, I just got one more and it's along the same line What what would the practical impact be if we were to just say we're not going to enforce our anti camping ordinance on city property between the hours of 7 p.m and 7 a.m I can't I can't answer that if you want us to do that we can do that research and bring it back to you If we were to relax something like that So, I mean it requires that would require us taking that back to staff and evaluating I'm not going to put these two in the to respond to police and all those other things We need to do that assessment. We could again. We'll provide us direction. We can look at that and we can bring something back Okay, and then specifically dave. I forgot to ask you you and I had a conversation about a couple weeks ago about utilization of the city hall parking lot and sort of playing off of this Indoor outdoor shelter concept that there's the building that has 88 issues that was at first and d That's there that the city owns If you were going to look into potentially if there was something we could do there open up a bathroom or a heating center Do you need some direction from staff to look into that or How would you like to proceed with that? We would like to have direction from the council on that The the concept we discussed between us was if we had safe parking on the city hall lot Perhaps the ground floor of the former west america building could be a warming center in uncertain nights Um, it doesn't meet ADA for restroom facilities, but we could also put cleaning stations restrooms into city hall lot And sue if if you could also if the council is interested in looking at that I'd be interested to know Yes, obviously we want to come into ADA compliance, but under our homeless emergency If it's not a permanent thing, but a temporary or or occasional Thing would we still have to come up to ADA compliance to make that building accessible? Our declaration of emergencies both the declaration of homeless emergency and declaration of shelter crisis Do give us some flexibility? Devils in the details So we would have to look at the building itself. What are the What are the issues there? What's the extent of our flexibility? So, you know with council direction, we would we could look at that Okay, thank you Any other questions? I've got a couple um on slide three you talked about identifying new funding sources versus the general fund Could you expand on that a little? Sure, we're in discussions about the possibility of Retaining the services of a professional grant writer just to scour federal state resources foundations philanthropic groups to see what might be available To scale our programs up to meet the need such as outreach workers and things There's also the funding as you know through the continuum of care homesonoma county that is being discussed How might that help our scalability of our programs? That is primarily the two alternative resources right now And so absent the homesonoma county, which you know, we have a voice in but not the decision makers Is there a price tag attached to that? Yeah, we're estimating some scaling so for example to add two more um Outreach workers would be an estimated 140 thousand dollars So specifically about the new funding sources the grant writer or whatever Title you just described there. How much? Well, we would be looking at um Up to 50 thousand dollars to pay someone to bring us a work product and then decide whether we proceed with the rest of the work The reason i'm asking this is that again, you've heard me say this before it's that whole return on investment so Where are we going? We're trying to get to functional zero and if we have 50k Let's just use that as an example. What's the best investment? You know, we may or may not say that 50k for grant writers the best investment versus something You know mr. Rogers just talked about or any other council member and then on Slide eight you talked about the housing first fund. What's the status of the housing first fund? And again, i'm asking from the perspective of these are investments that the council has made and i'm looking for again the return on that investment So status are you looking for housing outcomes? Basically are we housing people and is there any money left? Well, there's money left in landlord incentives and risk mitigation and tenant assistance Catholic charities is rapidly drawing down the housing funds and we're looking at making adjustments in the budget So they can continue to move people into housing. I did look at some data today We are so i think i'd shared with council recently that last year through our city sponsored programs We housed 306 households, which is fabulous and i did look at the First quarter data for this fiscal year and we've housed across our programs 97 so far So we're trending upwards And for hosts specifically if i can see these numbers There was 42 housed in the first quarter and i'm still we have the second quarter reports But i'm still reviewing those and they're not final yet And so for members of the public mayor if they went to the city's webpage and click the data That's where they would find this information our dashboard And i really appreciate that that dashboard Because one of the ways that i look at this too you put some costs to the overnight scattered sites at 530k And then 24 seven single sites 600k to a million dollars How would that equate to let's say our rapid rehousing fund or a master lease program? How many people could potentially be housed with that same dollar amount in other words? Do we do an overnight scattered for 530 or do we house x number of people? Do we have that data? No, but we can certainly do that analysis i would be interested that's the way i would look at okay if we have and again I know the answer from the city manager because we're not sitting on a half million million bucks of unallocated We are i have to make some decisions about what's the best investment So i think that would be a data point that i'd be interested in understanding Any other questions from council? Okay, we have several cards on this calling for nalds up first followed by gregory furan calling for nald On the card there. What's my address? I said here I am one of many homeless people Cause of my homelessness is not substance abuse like a lot of people might guess is the many homeless people's reason for being in that situation You broke me You did nothing to protect me or my child from the rapist Nothing you protected the rapist you broke me My trauma remains until you're doing something about it So fix me By doing something about it right now No public bathrooms in your very expensive square For home to people or unhomed people Is there access to your bathroom here? here No staff only If I want to drink water or take a pee I have to leave the building if my name's about to be called up and speaking. That's a problem, isn't it right here What are we going to do about it? Well, you know your partners with the county and you know how people get a reduction in property taxes as they agree to keep the property in wild land or in agriculture But there's no accountability for the wine industry and how much water is taken out How many chemicals get put in and people probably could afford to pay they don't I want to see another kind of like s overlay. There's a z overlay. I want to s overlay social value Work with the county. How can you give property owners incentive to create housing that people can afford? Because general assistance will pay four hundred dollars. You're lucky to find one room. That's a thousand dollars, right? So say we'll give you incentives. You promise to keep it 50 market rates so these people can be housed Now we don't want toxic stuck and not everybody wants urban density I've had tinnitus for 25 years. You're on a solid second of peace and quiet for me So when I need a rest I need quiet not urban density I want to be in nature I want to garden I want to take care of a forest to feed my soul How could we do this? green tiny home building guild Partner up redwood empire green building council jc just got some money for construction trades. Where's the green in that? sweat equity Habitat for humanity any organization that's doing this any builder Where's the guild where we come and bring our knowledge learn taking go? Where's the Tiny home village building guild where we learn how to get along some camps need 24 facilitation Some don't need any some are totally private. Some are totally public some are a combination Let's Thank you calling Gregor ferron followed by kathleen finnegan Good evening. I'm gregory ferron santa rosa resident and board treasurer of sonoma applied village services I encourage you to act boldly I'm going to read you the first paragraph of this and jettison the second third because the staff have covered most of that But I want to tell you first of all we didn't come in here asking for a half million dollars for a whole You know for a cattle act goldilocks, whatever We came to the staff and I appreciate all of their work, but we said basically you know 30 sites or 30 spaces have been operating for three years and what have they used 14 000 This is the cheapest most effective use of your money. You could ever do to help homeless Most of the people in safe parking are Pretty self-supporting a lot of them have jobs. They just need a place to put their car Okay, let me read you the paragraph and then I'll quit I encourage you to act as boldly as you can to expand the use of chap Building on the success of the program stave submitted an application that david and and uh Your staff have said basically they are going to apply or they're going to review We applied to the county for a comprehensive Safe parking program that includes sabastopol roner park Santa Rosa and the county Because we've had people from those cities say what are you doing in santa rosa? How well have you been doing it? What's your best practices? We'd like to start some in our cities So what we're applying for is a regional collaborative Low-cost safe parking on those parking spaces all over the county We aren't trying to build you a giant parking lot in santa rosa that has you know a whole lot of cars on it We know that small village Just like people Is the best model we don't want to have huge However effective that is for having Services it doesn't work for people Um, so we submitted an application We're being considered as a qualified applicant to be able to help Expand it Not all those churches want to be able to be direct applicants for any money They would like to have their costs covered. They'd like to have best practices But somebody's got to be the glue to hold it together Saves has been operating under homeless action and When we were out on challenger way in rvs for a lot of these folks We've been the people who have been helping for at least two years And we want to do more We're going to try But we're not asking for the money you're talking about Housing first is a problem. It burdens a whole lot of people with excess cost Thank you. Kathleen finnegan followed by senali second Kathleen's gone. Okay Senali sick on Followed by daniel windsveg I don't have statistics spreadsheets or dollar numbers to share with you What I have is a four letter word love I have personally witnessed people activated by love compassion and kindness By the community that has been coming together to support our vulnerable brothers and sisters To hold their hand to bring them a home cooked meal Folks that take their precious resources and share with them Interestingly, it's those folks that have some of the least that have been sharing the most Others are afraid that by doing so people will become degenerate That's not so People are activated by purpose It brings them to life Those that are down and out try to help those that are worse off than them Scott helps terra nicky helps the kid a young fellow who's up there looking down on us Who can barely write? Karen helps michael Them and so many more I never thought I'd find some of my best friends working with the homeless and I have Folks that share my values Folks would who would come to bat for you if you needed it And they could help Folks in this room like adrian and catherine and althea and marcos and thomas and so many more And people out there on the street Our system is ripe with inequities That contribute to this mess We are responsible for it. Not just those individuals People who have vouchers have no place to go because of high rents For others finding jobs with living wages is impossible There's a woman on the trail right now who works at sonoma valley bagel who has no place to go I spent the last week trying to advocate for one of the most vulnerable on that trail and our system is a damn mess You listed a lot of resources many of which I Intimately interacted with and could not help Among others the council on aging couldn't help because she was three years too young I never got a call back from ihss or health services nor return call from city council Alligria mental health couldn't help because she didn't sound dire enough Yet the police came knocking at my door in the middle of the night because of a call from the neighbors By the grace Of the universe we found her spot at los guilicos on the way there she shared her dream And that was to find a place that was safe for other people to come and take refuge These people want to help we need to help them Please open city hall as chris rogers has said effective immediately. Please help. We need you on our side Thank you dianiel weisig Followed by anita lafellette How do we put a price on the value of a clean restroom or a safe night's sleep? The health implications of having a safe place to call home for a night Is invaluable and chap is a much needed and very creative way to leverage latent resources to address this urgent need This program is a vital tool for governmental and non-governmental stakeholders to fill the immediate need presented by our homeless neighbors until more permanent housing solutions can be implemented Expanding chap will give more property owners the chance to participate in the program and help our neighbors access the needed services To improve their mental and physical health immediately I urge you all to continue to expand the low barrier solution that is chap Thank you. Thank you anita lafellette followed by briana Good evening ditto ditto ditto Thank you briana followed by gail simons Hey, um, okay So, um, I really appreciate you guys especially chris and victoria um Looking for good and new solutions. Um, that hopefully will Help actually help people like your staff has said This is all on your direction. You can make directions to save people If we bring it back to the last big point, um, which was the slum landlords Um, and it being a choice to be a landlord um, it's a choice to be a city council person. It's a choice to Uh be the mayor and It's your choice to have people who are um Literally sick and unable to really help themselves or they're they are able to help themselves and just need some space and Not to be attacked by your police um What you have up there On your walls is actually a wall of the photos of your victims Of the victims of your police department who will arrest them constantly and take their stuff and and um make it harder for them to Get jobs a lot of them want jobs a lot of them aren't fit to work, but a lot of them want jobs Um, and could help. Um, and if you talk about slum landlords um, unfortunately The biggest one sitting right here Catholic charities Um, if we talk about mold there's mold horrible mold at sam jones and 600 morgan street There's no mold in beautiful city buildings We go to all these meetings at all the beautiful city buildings And they're immaculate and stock to the brim with paper towels. We have more than enough resources It's a choice for you guys to make these people sleep on the streets and in puddles And it's a disgusting choice. Um It's it's it's it's criminal And you should hold your cells accountable and you should direct your staff to make whatever Um open the armory um open city hall um open as many um Like you said, it's been a year and a half that i've been asking Hey, how many people can we help with the money that we have bare bones? And you just finally asked that question and I thank you. That was my question. You're welcome. Um, Let's do it But direct your staff do it and stop giving Catholic charities money because they spend it horribly The end we have more than enough money. If we took it back from them, we could house people Thank you. Gail simons followed by adrian lobby. Thank you. Brianna I'm gail simons. I'm a citizen of east anorosa I definitely support the expansion of the chat program I support safe parking lots in at least each city district So that we'll stop having people complain that it's it's in their neighborhood and nobody else's We need multiple safe parking lots at least Of small populations 15 to 20 That's handleable We already have unofficial Safe unofficial parking lots of RVs and cars all over town without sanitation So we might as well just call it what it is and You know get help people get some organization Dave you laid out some many city programs at the very beginning of the slide program Although there are many lofty ideals in there. I may get in trouble, but I just want to share from a practical point of view That some of those programs aren't working very well at all My the safe parking program that I work with is chap supported. We have 20 parking spots We work with Coordinated entry in order to get chap funds to pay for the porta potty Last late august or september we met with chap and they promised that promised us that within a few days We'd have multiple applicants for our safe parking spots and I to my knowledge. We've had one And the reason given is that the computer systems just can't seem to talk to each other So just kind of wanted you to know that Um, so I assist at that safe parking lot. It is a bare bones safe parking lot It's not housing focused. So it doesn't cost us much money We have no security. We have a porta potty. We have garbage cans We have two to four community volunteers all women Our participants are so grateful They almost come to tears thanking us for this opportunity. They have relative safety They have a sense of community They are in a sort of a neighborhood They they have reliability and routine They get a placard with a number on it And a key to the porta potty padlock. That's what they get when they come in. They sign a small agreement to keep the peace They are so attached to parking space number five Or parking space number 12 if anybody else is in that parking space Bless them because people need to know that that's their little piece Of the world. There are three churches very small churches that operate in that small business complex Many hours of the day, then they take our neighbors in and offer them food and they're wonderful. No complaints The adrian lobby followed by alice lin Hello again I just want to mention that gail who you just talked to has also been part of the volunteer group to run this parking lot Safe parking has also been meeting with the neighborhood folks And with the owner of the facility who lets us use that facility So it's a very Vibrant situation with a lot of community that goes out beyond the parking lot into the neighborhood itself And it's all run for the cost of a porta potty cost of trash pickup Yeah, it's really nice when you have Someone who can come in And help people I'm sure that most of the people who are in that 20 person parking lot Would let to have somebody come by knock on their window and say what do you need? Can I help you get some documentation? Can I help you get signed up for services? I'm not opposed to having people help people. I think it's a good thing But what we're talking about now is survival And when and is young was in town last he made it really clear Yes, we try to get people into housing and we try to help people stay alive while we're waiting for housing to come to them Those two how much money we put into one versus the other is a community decision Our community has never really made Had this conversation. We've just gone to say oh, we should just fund things that are housing focused But clearly we have 1600 people right now while we're sitting in this chamber who are sleeping in the cold and the damp 30 percent of those people according to portence time chart count Have a vehicle live in a vehicle It's not ideal But they have some kind of shelter that is not under a bush or an awning and to give them a place where they can just go and Sleep Where they know who's in the car next to them and it's not somebody new every night Where they don't have to worry about the cops coming by or the neighbors complaining that is Well, as daniel said that is a huge benefit to people's health outcomes I would really encourage you to take care of the insurance problem I've seen many people try to step up for this kind of program and get knocked back by the Problem of trying to figure out the insurance I would encourage you to really look at the costs And and as you were talking about already try to figure out what's a reasonable cost to put into this And please open it up for uh request for proposals rather than handing it off to a single operator I think you'll find some interesting ideas coming forth. Thank you for considering it. Thank you. Alice lin followed by tomas ells Thank you, Mary ash but home and council um The united nations has a minimum set of standards For the treatment of refugees of war famine and natural disasters Described in free online UN handbooks on providing for refugees These minimum standards provide necessities for health and safety such as a fenced permitted site with security for residents safety portable toilets hand-washing and showers A private tent for each individual or household cooking and heating features We need to establish a minimum standard of care for people experiencing homelessness in santa rosa And sonoma county It should be focused on lowest cost solutions To ensure a minimum level of care for all 2 000 people unsheltered in sonoma county Safe parking as gregory ferron Like described has been and can be one of those lowest cost solutions A car or RV provides a rigid structure a roof a locked door designed to protect human beings And provide transportation for them I urge you as well to ensure a diversity of service providers So that a wide range of people can be served And to create a healthy competition Between providers to improve services for everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thomas ells followed by bob chill Thank you for the opportunity to speak and to address this question. I appreciate the Council's efforts I want to point out that in the original chat program that It included areas of assembly buildings and general commercial And that was interpreted narrowly to the specific zoning of commercial general the commercial general zone Okay, I believe that's incorrect according to that Approval and that should be either addressed or widened to the legal term of general commercial, which is all commercial properties And then you would have an expansion of that capability The recent proposals for the indoor and outdoor shelter proposals Were only for provider qualifications. They do not include sites. So there'd be no sites proposed in there So I want to address sites um I believe and I I I may not be Hope everybody can hear me up I believe that the city owns the library sites So the city owns the rink and valley library the northwest library and its site And the downtown library and its site which has parking It also owns the steel lane center city hall in the first and d I'll tell you that the Significant cost is a port of bodies Of of the costs that are not related to to services or navigation services Which are roughly the port of bodies roughly about 10 percent of the total 500 000 or a million dollars for the 24 hour sites You'd be looking at about 10 percent of that for the cost of the port of bodies for all of the entire program And then the other parts were services being provided You also have the parking structures And on those you could have you could offer passes. There's 60 dollars a month for the pass approximately But the persons by in the past they give the money back to you So there's no cost there There'd be no cost for using those sites And some of them have bathrooms bathrooms. I'll tell you the city hall has an AA or aod recovery program right over here The people come in And I guarantee you because I've been out in the parking lot and I know what they're doing out there And you have more problems here from that than you would in this a parking that they've had They've burrows over on McBride for the whole time You have more problems right now already Then you would ever have from the same parking because they're worried about their housing because it's their housing when they're going to lose it Um, if they cause a problem, so please do uh passes and uh, remember it's 10 percent would be the cost Uh, which would be just supportive bodies and and that could include the uh the hand washing stations. Thank you Thank you Bob gill followed by eric frazier Um, good evening. Good evening, mr. Mayor vice mayor Fleming. Um, thank you to the council I'd like to thank also to david and kelly for the work that your Department has done in support. I'm with the a volunteer with the first united methodist church And of course it's easy to I'd like to Say that the words that gale said regarding the You know the temperament of the of the people We call them participants and our safe parking. We've been doing safe parking at Our gifford avenue address since december of 2017 We tried very hard to do a safe camping You know as we remember When chap was first allowing when when we said safe camping is good. We said great. Let's do it and What we discovered of course is that these projects are very much front loaded with fear You know the neighbors are afraid everybody's afraid to embark in it and We find those are big hurdles and so of course once it gets going You soon discover that Like safe parking. I I'm not I don't know the statistics, but I would imagine that very few people in the neighborhood even know What is going on You know, although one of the things that it tends to do is it tends to be Targeted as say a magnet. So if something goes on over there It must be because of our safe parking right and so then the phone call may come into the city Of course, obviously those two are disconnected, but it is that again that fear So what I what I I'm certainly very much in favor of expanding this out But the reason that hits me the most is that Is that the example that's being set You know the fact that safe parking is working here in town You know should quell fears like the question of is it going to be like joh-rodo the trail? But actually the fact is we do it with volunteers No Do we have people you know Driving it. I don't I in all the time that I've volunteered a volunteer once a night one one night a week Each week I have never once found a car that's not supposed to be there Um people that are there are very much protective of this of the site in the spot And if there is somebody there they'll call us and say oh, by the way, there's somebody here. It's not supposed to be here So they're very much invested in it. I like the idea that low skill of coast Project that's going on thinking well, maybe this will be like safe camping. You know, maybe this will be a working example I think that's what we need more of so I encourage you to go the thing that we lack The biggest piece that's missing is our ability to help them move into housing And so any monies that are spent To help with that piece the housing locators Everything along that line is a would be a big help for us So thank you for Eric Frazier followed by daisy pistilin Yes, thank you again. I'll try to be brief. I know the evenings get in line Uh, what struck me though was how we can have a declared emergency a homeless emergency Over the past several years But it doesn't look like it's being effectively managed. I I hear a lot of great Uh programs. I know mayor sweat home. I've talked to you personally about the housing first model But it's undeniable when we're sitting in the audience such esteemed experts on housing solutions that there seems to be a big disconnect When figure comes forward of $500,000. I mean it it doesn't seem like the gravitas of emergency is visited upon The council I don't mean that in any disrespect because I know that The struggle for finding solutions has been ongoing But there does seem to be a business disconnect over managing What is a declared emergency? And it seems like the council is in fact front loaded with fear There's something that's making this not Fall in line with just common sense solutions people are already parking In the streets of sanarosa people are already homeless People are already going without appropriate restrooms at night their health incomes are definitely being affected by being homeless The emergency I thought was to properly manage and mitigate the impact of people That are experiencing the emergency I mean when the crisis broke out on the trail I was astounded that restrooms weren't there practically As soon as they saw a bunch of people congregating Where were the restrooms? I mean don't you value the the safety and health of the general community as well Including everybody that's part of our community Including those that are living in cars and going to work People are living on the ground and going to work or people that are also in those situations and can't work That's the disconnect for me is I just don't understand where the gravitas of solving the emergency Has left your decision-making process So I hope you do find a solution. I hope you listen to our fellow Neighbors that have obviously studied the issue and are acting with their heart and with their money And they're not spending a half a million dollars to do the impacts that they're doing So effectively but they need help. Thank you very much Thank you. Daisy Piste Lynn Good evening. I know I stand between you all and getting back to your homes that you're lucky enough to have And the rest of us that are lucky enough to have them I was sitting in my own home, which i'm lucky to have watching this tonight And you guys have tackled a lot of really important issues that are near and dear to my heart Obviously, I know that you're aware that you know zero waste And clean energy are very important to me and this is the thing that brought me here tonight Because I have been walking around this city. I was out on the redota trail recently and it is just Astonishing and horrifying to me That we have denied access to land To people for whom the instability in their lives continues the trauma that they've already experienced in their lives that has put them there If any of you have experienced The instability in between housing Where maybe you had to crash on a friend's couch for a few weeks when you're in your 20s if you could think back to that Maybe you were moving into your dorm room and you didn't know what your dorm mates were going to be like when you went to college Maybe when you were leaving college, you didn't know where you would live when you moved to a city Think about that instability That you experienced briefly probably maybe decades ago in some of your cases And imagine if that instability has been prolonged for weeks months and years in your life How impossible it would be To even imagine doing anything close to getting a job Try and think when you're going home tonight what it would be like To not have somewhere to go That would be secure Where you could feel safe Access to land has been one of the bases for revolution All throughout the americas because people understand that without a home People cannot form their lives We have public land available. We have people who are suffering every single night Now to next week when you have your next meeting that is seven nights of near freezing temperatures. These people will will experience because of the delay It's been many months since this was studied and begun And we need action to give people some sense of stability in their lives It's impossible to imagine If you guys were denied getting into your own homes until this crisis was solved This crisis would have been solved I think for all of us we could say that And I know it's a challenge It's a huge challenge and there's budgetary problems But just allowing people access to land and stability To be able to start getting their feet under themselves Is a very basic thing that I think we in the community all of us can agree is extremely important And I hope you do the outreach to neighbors to help them both get involved in these projects and understand these people Thank you. Thank you No more Right bring it back to council any additional questions for staff Mr. Sawyer Thank you mayor excuse me I'm perplexed And I'm curious What What would change? um in our strategy If we moved If we expanded the chat program Without the housing focus program piece What would change What what what about the program would Change would So negatively change whether it be expense Um, whatever it might be. I don't know. I don't I don't eat and breathe this this Subject the way so many do in our community. So I'm curious So again, you're asking for a I mean right now we have a focus targeted approach When you would change that you would be setting a new approach. We we know what the results are I would I would hate to have staff speculate on something we don't know I mean, I think we don't know the answer to these questions We've had an approach the approach is based on housing first If we change the approach and you know in council wanted us to take a different approach We would be back in a space where we would be discovering together with the community what that meant And what the results of that were so so again I'm stepping in front of staff a little bit because I think we That is the unknown question. We've seen We we get stories about some of the challenges in other communities But we don't we really don't know what's going to specifically happen here And there is you hear a lot of desire to see some change in the in the program What we can tell you is that we followed a very specific set of protocols which were developed out of When we when we initiated these protocols the what the challenges we're facing near the farmers lane extension And we've been active in that approach You know, it is it is difficult time consuming Work for the entire organization. We work as you know, we have a Hap Heap and the hat meetings on a weekly basis We've we've we've gone into difficult conversations with both community groups and advocates And this team has really spent a lot of time working on this You know, but there are there are these open questions and we recognize them, but I I I don't know what that's going to result in We're we're looking just like you to you know, we've been asked to bring this back we we have documented success in where we're working, but the question is Is is is council satisfied with that work or do we need to go in a different direction? well, I appreciate that and I think what what resonates with me is and I because I live in an area that is Where I see the and I well I lived very very close to To the end of farmers lane So I was very well aware of what was happening up on the hill Both before and after The change there what I am Also very aware of in in my neighborhood is a constant revolving group of cars RVs, etc parking on the city street night after night so The the comment about they're already there They're in the community. They're on our city streets. I'm wondering What and I I've seen some of the some of the unfortunate behavior as well, which Leaving trash, etc Around the vehicles So some of the the challenges are already there and I and I think about where where are the Well, they're probably because of the fast food restaurants around there are restrooms that are available to them and it's probably why My neighborhood is Perhaps a little more popular than than others But they are there they are on our city streets and I don't know what impact that has on our on our Public safety officials But there's there clearly is something that's not working and I've been a staunch supporter of housing first because I think it's kept us from being Hasty at times and I don't think anyone could accuse us of being hasty Because of the length of time that we've been trying to be focused And I think that by not there are the county has had a problem with being focused and They've been paying a price for it of late a pretty high price. I think They would do them good to to be a little more cooperative. I think with the city of sanarosa And they accuse us of doing of not being effective where we've housed 300 people last year and and another hundred is it are we Whatever the number is I think we've been effective Um, but I am concerned that there is something staring us in the face that is that that needs attention and I'm not sure how to go about um Resolving that and or responding to it any other questions Mr. Oliver, do you have this uh Item do you want to start the conversation? Well, I think we should start a conversation because there's really nothing to make a motion on yet because we're looking at Moving in direction of adding some components to the Chat program So I I guess there's not a motion to make but other than start a conversation about what changes of any need to be made to our existing program It's so for me and having um here Bob had to say because I think Bob was at the same meeting that I was at with dave on november 30th 2016 never forget that 150 angry people Um, but then I see what safe parking does out there on stony point Um If we could replicate that and make that part of the system That's kind of what my interest is because there are different sites that are working here How do we go there? Because what is scary for me when we see those dollars if I say half million bucks a million bucks When I know we're housing people and I know there are people that actually want to enter into these master leases You know, I'm a proponent Let's end people's homeless versus just managing them and getting those resources when you talk about outreach workers I think our number one need in this community and that's just not santa rosa But the whole homeless system of care we need more outreach workers If we've got 1600 folks in the city of santa rosa experiencing homelessness And we're only funding two outreach workers because those are the sub-matter experts that understand the system build those networks To actually get them housed. So that's where I'm a little bit fuzzy This item was for the expansion of the chat program if we can replicate some of these successful expansions of the chat That's what I you know, I'm interested in right and I mean for me I think the housing first model is an effective model to continue to pursue I think services are important and I understand frustrations that we all experience out in the community But again, sometimes we're looking for instant results But the fact of the matter is things are working. They're just maybe perhaps not working fast enough or some And we still continue to have this emergency And I think it's also looking at our probably perhaps our roles and responsibilities. What is our role as a city? We don't necessarily provide services, but we fund a lot of services We based on what we saw already that was provided by staff as we do a lot right now Within santa rosa and some of these things are working. Well, so how do we replicate some of those and expand those? And and how do we align these efforts with the rest of the county? Other communities are experiencing similar issues within their communities So how do we bring them along as well? As far as coordinated a strategy that is county-wide region-wide if you will And hopefully others will will replicate the model of chap within their own communities as well So again, how do we start cooling some of these successes? And how do we expand some of that and identify what our different roles and responsibilities are in making things happen? Mr. Rogers Thank you, mr. Mayor I think Dave hit it on the head when he talked about What we really need to do is scale up what we're already doing and I think that that's sort of what the council is feeling Is when we hear those positive success outcomes for the folks that we are actually able to serve It's encouraging to us because it tells us that we're moving in the right direction. We just don't have enough resources I think When councilmember dowd mentioned mental health services, that's really where this is a difficult conversation for us as well So we don't have a mental health health and human services department at the city We don't have the resources and generally speaking the funding doesn't come down to us for that type of approach With that said, I know that we are funding a mental health outreach worker, which is fantastic But in terms of scaling up those programs, it's going to take some additional help Whether it's from the county or especially from the state. I did want to mention Last year governor brown allocated a billion dollars for homeless services That was really focused on building the infrastructure that we're talking about whether it's repurposing Bet at valley senior senator or other types of creative solutions for permanent supportive housing We learned last week at the league of cities that he's allocating another billion this year But the focus is going to be predominantly on those mental health services to try to address the underlying causes that both Help people to slip into homelessness but also keep them there for a long time. So I think that there is some help on the way for that one I will also say when we had this discussion almost Two and a half years ago at this point About sanctioned encampments It was a difficult conversation not just because pushback from the community But I think that we all look at the housing first model and see that that is our most likely chance at lifting individuals out of homelessness and We felt at the time that it was our responsibility to make sure that we were investing our dollars in a way That was focused on ending homelessness for for people And what that inherently meant was that we didn't have anything that was focused on mitigation We didn't have programs that were designed for people who Either couldn't get into our services because we hadn't scaled them up or they weren't ready to go into our services For whatever reason and it was designed in a way to help push those the latter folks into services as well I think what i'm hearing from the community And have been hearing for for quite some time is that there is an interest in us finding Whether it's housing first focused or not a place for people to be While they look for those services while we try to outreach to those folks Because to the point they're already in our community and so that's why I keep bringing up city hall That's why I keep bringing up city land is I do think that we have an obligation if we're asking Businesses or faith groups to put their skin in the game and host parking sites It's the least that we can do as well and i'm not saying completely throw out housing first I'm not even saying change how we allocate most of our funding because I do think that we have seen a trajectory of success If we can scale that up But just something as simple as allowing the parking lots to be used so that people have a place to go And i'll finish on this. I have Recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who is fully employed is very capable And ended up homeless for a couple of days due to some domestic issues at home And I will tell you she expressed to me just how absolutely terrifying it was for her the first time she went into sam jones hall And that for her in particular She would have felt so much more comfortable living in her car living in an encampment that she knew was managed in a way Or was safe for her to be at We need a better diversity of services for places for people to go and providing Providing small places where people can park can be a component of that and i'm not suggesting spend six hundred thousand dollars on it I'm saying just tell people that they can go someplace and feel safe to park overnight Whether at city hall or benefit valley senior center or any of our community centers that we have around the community And yes, again, make it geographically representative Other thoughts miss feist mayor Yeah, I uh would like to echo everything that mr. Rogers said and Tag on to it that You know, we talk about this from evidence-based and I guarantee you that if you talked to any one of the Nearly 400 people that have been housed through a housing first policy That's the best thing ever And if we could do that and get everybody who is waiting for housing into housing and into services You wouldn't get any fight from me, but i'm the only person who's ever sat at this diet who has been Involved in direct outreach to homeless services I have been raised by a person who was homeless as a child I speak from deep personal experience when I say that housing first is a lot like saying When we do affordable housing that you have to have certain numbers or you have to pay the in-loofees If you jack it up high enough, it doesn't work and it's not because the spirit is wrong It's not because the evidence is wrong i'm getting it. It's because we flat out don't have the resources and I get choked up because there will be people who die as a result of us sticking to this decision That was made because we decided that we're going to stick to a decision That was made because we made a decision that we're going to stick with And to me that's unacceptable that we are going to allow people to suffer as a result of Of a decision that was made and had i been on the council I would have brought my experience to bear as a social worker And as a family member of somebody who's homeless who was raised in homelessness and I can tell you it shaped my life That sense of insecurity that sense of Not knowing where you are in the world And where to go and I know it's too much to ask of staff to ask you to project what would or wouldn't happen But i'm asking us as a council to be courageous in In small ways perhaps in piloting things and not to say that things have to cost a half million dollars to park and I challenge each of The six council members who can have this conversation To identify a place in their district I would love to come to you with places in district four and i'm sure I will hear about it from My residents and if I lose an election over it Oh well because this is important enough because people will die as a result people are dying people are sleeping in puddles And it's just plain Acceptable and we can say we want to partner better with the county And we can throw this ball back and forth between who's being a good actor and who's not but the truth is is that they have a Different organizational structure than we do a different organizational culture There are ways that they are good at things. There are ways that we are good at things There's ways that we all suck And the thing is is that we have to rise above throwing this volley back and forth and to say what can we do We have city properties. Let's use them. Let's all Rise to the challenge and be good council members as somebody said tonight. It's a choice Let's be strong if we lose our jobs over 96 and we get paid what 9600 and we get health care Like let's let's rise to the occasion and do something for our most vulnerable residents Anyone else like to make any comments or did you want to make a motion? I think that council member rogers has a stronger command of the policy on this matter, but i'm happy to second his motion I actually I am happy to make a motion that we accept the staff's recommendations for expansions of the chat program and seek Seek city land within each of the council districts. I think would be a good way for us to put it That we can then open up to parking in the evening And have staff bring back in the budget some form of estimates about What that could cost if we add additional levels of service so that then we can talk about This is the cost for security. This is the cost for restrooms and we can actually have that conversation Structurally around if we did nothing and just said just park here It cost this much and if we provided this level of services it cost this much if we brought with it a Host worker that was designed to go around to each of these sites and engage people how much would that cost I'd like a suite of options on that Parking program I'd like to second that and offer a friendly amendment that we also Authorize $50,000 to go for a grant writer To scour for these additional monies and Revisited in a year and if it has brought us more than $50,000 then good and if not then we can evaluate that Do you accept that? Yeah, i'm okay with that Okay, any of their comments or questions on That motion or anything else dead Yes, the motion referenced recommendations from staff. I did not see recommendations from staff I saw information provided to us to try to come up with some recommendations from the council So does staff have recommendations? It was around engaging property owners expanding the definition doing community outreach Emergency building standards Adoption and then the question was about the housing first alignment. I understand But I wanted to hear from staff if they had actual recommendations for us But we we heard the affirmation in the motion. So we understand I just consulted with the team We understand the direction and so we While technically corrects, we we understand the direction and we can we can we can come back with that. Thank you The question or comment that I would like to add to this because I know My impression when we started chap is that the city was doing a lot But we needed the community give the community an opportunity to assist with that. That's how we had some of the church sites So I would ask staff or members of the community are listening to that if there are people who would like to assist us with this endeavor because Some sites they've modeled it that it actually works. So rather than just looking at it from you know There's more of a partnership just the city generating and there's a dollar amount if we get the volunteers, you know The rest and all the other All the other attributes of successful safe parking sites Again, I would like to make this more of a community effort than this is just a city run I totally agree with city property, but it's got to be a partnership not got to be a partnership I'd be interested in hearing the information about and did we solicit the community for their support? In acceptance of this and if so, how might that mitigate and create somewhat of a partnership? Yeah, and that was a given for me in in the motion as well and with the existing chap program that my hope is that When the community sees that the city is putting our own skin in the game that they realize that That we need to have a community response and we need their help as well Mr. Holler's question or comment No, I just going back to my original comment about skin in the game We keep saying that we have had skin in the game can't say that we have not we have had significant Brew skin in the game and we have been trying to engage the community skin is the wrong term We're putting property in the game Well, I give that but again, it's the words that we use I think that are important in how we describe what we're doing Because this is an emotional issue We also need to stick to some factual information that we have two capacities And you know, I understand a suggestion about putting sites in each of the seven districts You had not all the districts are represented Which is which is also an issue that that would be uh me to be cross So this is my comments on that well and again Let's be careful with uh how we phrase things because every district is represented because we do still have some at-large representatives Do you have any comments, mr. Sorry? One or the comment too that I heard in your motion You had mentioned a host outreach worker go there at night We got two of them. So I would also ask if staff could We need up the capacity of outreach workers and you know our I'm very appreciative in the air successful outreach workers, but that's a skill. That's not a volunteer role to do that So if I heard you say part of the motion one outreach worker Well, if it's seven days a week because right now we have zero nighttime host outreach workers To me that would be part of the conversation in the budget about bare bones Just allow it to be there and then added services to it to me added services includes that host outreach worker I just want to make sure that staff will be able to capture that and come back with a dollar amount. Yes Great Any other additions or conversations? Are you from when we first asked staff are you clear on what the motion is or would you like mr. Rogers to repeat it? I have just a couple clarifying questions The first part is accept the expansion of chap and there wasn't any recommendation of staff So i'm just assuming then the motion flows to seek land in each district for possible safe parking Come up with a suite of Options for a budget with that from best basic services of security washing stations all the way up to a housing first model There's also including in the budget 50 000 for a grant writer to come back and give us some options of what grants might be available And that the community we seek community partnership to keep this a true chat program That motion sounds great Probably sounds great to the second or two right that hits mark. Okay, mr. Dowd The only thing I would like mr. Rogers to add into it in his second from Ms. Fleming is Something about look as to how we might incorporate some of the services that the homeless may need As a part of the pricing element is how we might do that Yeah, and I think I mean yes All right, any other questions or additions clarifications Okay, we have a motion and a second in your votes, please And that passes unanimously. Thank you Okay, we have no written communications. We do have a couple of public comments on non-agenda items first up margie Brunel followed by eric frazier Thank you council for your time and efforts tonight on behalf of the homeless in sonoma county um, I just wanted to mention I I spend a lot of time With homeless action and in the downtown area And there are you know people sleeping in doorways tonight down there And you know access to restrooms. I know you're aware of that. I'm also interested in the constant beep beep beep that comes from the crosswalks down there. I think it's actually a noise pollution and Um, I think we could do better with that and I'm interested in who I would talk to about Maybe changing that situation downtown It's um Very disturbing for somebody who would be trying to sleep outside Or inside actually as you can actually hear it inside the buildings downtown Um, and it's from the traffic light and crosswalks And I don't think that it's actually helpful for anybody who is disabled to be crossing the street because it just beeps Continuously so it doesn't signal whether a light is on or off So I don't know actually what the purpose of the continual beep beep beep is but it is um Prevents people from sleeping it prevents me from sleeping. I can tell you that much Thank you for listening. All right. Thank you. Eric Frazier Thank you, and I'll make my comments brief, but thank you again for your time. I appreciate that I wanted to rise and address just as you know, I'm on this ongoing project to understand and audit the tot and srt bi a situation And probably also as you've learned from me before that I'm shocked to discover the lack of oversight and Some fundamental accounting problems and other issues But I rise today not to take that whole can of worms because it is quite extensive But I did want to address one issue and that is the unfairness that's created by charging evacuees and victims of of emergencies the tot and bi a Why are we directing people into short term occupancy? Who are residents of the city or this county and subjecting them to this additional tax Especially since our research shows that this tax is not well spent. It's it's mismanaged to the extreme So for the life of me, I can't understand this additional burden that exists For our people not everybody earns six figures in this city when you have to evacuate The chances are your cost burden goes way through the roof How do you mitigate that? Why do we add insult to injury to charge this additional nine percent tot and three percent srt bi a I thought I was going to limit my comments to just that one issue, which I feel very passionate about But another development happened today in the city of san francisco Where the head of public works was arrested in a graph scheme within that graph travel incentive travel and Many issues surrounding favoritism Were addressed in the fbi charges My research in the srt bi a and the construct of the chamber of commerce visit santa rosa construct Certainly introduced as the prospect That travel incentive travel Especially connected to iron man locations and other places in the world Is being used to cast favoritism in a political process I mean these are serious issues And I can't believe we don't have suitable Accounting suitable oversight To address these issues I really am quite shocked by it, but thank you very much for your time We'll get to the bottom of this this year. I'm sure you'll hear from me again. Thank you. Thank you That's all for agenda and as I mentioned earlier I am going to adjourn this meeting in the memory and honor recognition of clay venard stalin Who is a police lieutenant and unfortunately passed after a battle of cancer? last night Clay were for the police department for 20 years and Those of you that knew him would know him as one of the kindest human beings you ever met One of the programs that he started the shop with a cop program that Now goes on an annual basis with started by clay and it's all from the heart So with that Were he's in our thoughts and prayers and his wife lent and two daughters Santa Rosa really lost an angel last night meeting adjourned