 good afternoon ladies and gentlemen I'll call the November 27th meeting of the City Council of Santa Rosa to order we have a 3 p.m. study session apologized for our lateness took a little longer than planned in closed session Mr. McLean item 3.1 review of Santa Rosa's community development block grant disaster recovery cdbgdr tubs and nuns fire recovery unmet needs assessment Dave Gwine leading the presentation afternoon council members so you might recall back in August the council approved a contract for consulting services with Hagerty to help lead us through the disaster recovery program called cdbgdr one of the tasks was to conduct an unmet needs assessment for Santa Rosa and so we have today Matt Hochstein and Rebecca Rothenberg to help walk us through that presentation thanks Dave so we have a presentation here we're going to guide you through how we came about through our unmet needs assessment and help you first understand what cdbg is I've been in disaster recovery for a long time and people still asked me about the acronyms so we felt like it was a good chance to educate on that we'll talk a little bit about the fires which I'm sure you're already familiar with and then we'll go into summaries across each of the areas within our assessment so HUD's program is really designed around housing infrastructure and economic recovery and so we'll hit on those three areas and then we'll talk about next steps at the end so just to give you some background on cdbg excuse me Matt yes let me ask you to please make sure you speak into the microphone these are not real sensitive so you got to be pretty direct with them great how about this that's better thank you very much excellent so this is a long-term recovery program designed by HUD I really focused around trying to build a permanent housing after disaster it was started in 1992 and really expanded in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina based upon the large-scale housing need as I mentioned it really focuses on three areas housing infrastructure and economic recovery the funds are authorized by Congress after a disaster and are specific to that disaster so they have to be they have to be utilized in recovery based upon the disaster that they're authorized for how many people feel that the program is probably the most flexible of the disaster recovery programs you're probably familiar with FEMA's public assistance program that's another recovery program which rebuilds infrastructure but typically that program will rebuild what was damaged back to the way it was in its original form oh sorry whereas HUD you can actually is cdbg you can design programs to meet the unmet need that is is found after disaster there are three main benefits to our goals or objectives for the program is to one to focus on low to moderate income aid in the prevention of slums and blight and any meeting in need of particular urgency or what they would have referred to as urgent needs so anything that is spent on the program any dollars that are allocated have to meet one of those objectives and lmi being really the biggest focus area moving on into the next slide the impact of the fires I think you know most of this information I think the most important items here to to hit on our as a part of our analysis we found using city damage assessment data that over 3,000 homes were destroyed we'll talk about that later in the presentation on why that's critical but that number is actually different from what FEMA initially found using their data and that will be a key part of the assessment and then the other point I'll make here is just in terms of the 1.2 billion total loss we are looking at roughly 300 million across the three areas that I that I highlighted in unmet needs so that's basically a remaining number after FEMA small bit SBA and the other recovery programs that are available after a disaster are already allocated excuse me mr. Huxing would you repeat what you just said so we're clear on it I want to make sure I understand that of the 1.2 billion 300 million is in those three areas on the previous page that's correct so we will highlight each of the breakdown for each of those areas in later slides so you can see what the damages for the housing area what the what the reported damages for the business on the infrastructure side but that will be after especially on infrastructure that's after FEMA's dollars are applied thank you so moving on into the next slide again you know this is just highlighting the the structure of the program in terms of the housing area we're really highlighting what HUD is looking to do is design a program that's impacting low to moderate income so that was part of our analysis is to look at those populations within the city in terms of the business area we're really looking at small business and we're using small business administration loan data to try to calculate what the unmet need is for how those loans were allocated and what remains and then on the infrastructure side we're looking at FEMA's programs what the city has used in using their calculate all of their project worksheets under that program figuring out what FEMA's going to pay for to rebuild on the infrastructure side and then what remains after that across a variety of different FEMA's FEMA's programs and particularly in this area really focused on the cost share that the city is is on the hook for for FEMA's programs but then also we're looking at resiliency and so this is through some of other FEMA's programs hazard mitigation but then also we spoke to a variety of folks around the city to talk about resiliency projects that potentially could be funded under HUD so with this I'm going to turn it over Rebecca Rothenberg was our lead consultant and developing the report and she's going to walk you through the housing and the business summaries to give you a little bit of background on unmet needs for CDBGDR it focuses on how HUD views unmet needs and within the federal register they have their own approach and a methodology that they describe and it's standard for all disasters I should note that wildfires are a bit unusual for CDBGDR it's not as well documented as flooding and so they they have a slightly different approach but going forward I imagine that their methodology will change a little bit over time for our purposes we followed their methodology as a first step and then added information that we had locally to improve that information HUD likes to rely on local data but we need to have a place to start I'll also say the first assessment of unmet need is always just an estimate because we don't have enough data so we work with what we have and we make estimates following what is standard practice according to HUD but HUD realizes that these numbers will change as you get better information and significantly if you find an unmet need that is beyond just sheer damage so unmet need for rental housing price surges or difficulty in workforce housing or some of these these other types of unmet need where you just don't know what the impacts are quite yet we have laid the groundwork to figure that out without actually having a calculation of it because we don't have the calculation yet so that being said just a an overview of the housing damage HUD determines significant impact as a category of damage major to severe damage and they have rankings of it so considering that we have roughly 4,000 homes that had major to severe damage or can be considered having significant impact the neighborhoods that had the most impact or coffee park fountain Grove and then three mobile home parks particularly journeys and what I I noticed through multiple interviews and research was that there was a severe shortage of affordable and moderate income housing prior to the disaster and so losing roughly 5% of your housing stock created a dire shortage in emergency and so it's not just the the fact that there were houses that were lost but there were long-term impacts of not having sufficient housing to house people to return and then also had a pretty significant impact on the rental market because you had such an influx of homeowners moving into the rental market and what we know anecdotally but without substantial information yet is that the shortage of rental housing is having an impact on the economy so this is from interviews with economic development and health care and in the tourism and service industries and that's causing some type of impact with economic recovery. Mr. Rothenberg can you explain the discrepancy between the 3,000 homes that burned the number that we've been using for the last couple of years and the discrepancy between the 3,000 homes that burned the number that we've been using for 13 or 14 months now and the 4,000 homes that have significant impact. So there was severe damage and then significant impact this was based on the information that we got from the field surveys so we ran the numbers based on that on that data. Are these additional 1,000 homes were they damaged in the fire? Were they damaged by fire? From my understanding it's based on your inspections. Went through block by block and documented housing that was damaged and that was the number given for some level of damage. So it may be it. Just to staff should we consider this an updated number of the homes? That number is the number of homes destroyed was the 3,000 home number. This is the finer graining in this conversation and again where we have to go back and have a potentially a further conversation about unmet need. There are impacts and again I think the term is significant impacts to those properties. There were 3,000 homes destroyed. There are another 1,000 homes that go through this process and we understand significant impacts to those properties. Just one more step. Does significant impact mean that these homes are uninhabitable or were uninhabitable for some period of time? I don't think so. That does not mean that they are uninhabitable. They just had a significant impact associated with them. Thank you. Please go ahead. So I mentioned that HUD has their methodology described in the register. HUD acknowledges that FEMA when they do their initial inspections greatly underestimates the level of damage they do to those properties. So they have their own process for inflating the cost estimate of damage. That's described in the federal register. We apply that to keep things standardized. So they look at how FEMA ranks damage and then they give ranges of cost and then they apply numbers. Going from 1 to 5 on the level of damage based on what FEMA's estimate is. And then they have an average amount of damage per category 3, 4, 5, which is major low, major high and severe and apply that average to each home that received major to severe damage. So we use that. And we base it off of the FEMA individual assistance data. So all of the folks who applied for FEMA assistance and the database had, I think, roughly 12,000 applicants. So not all applicants lost their homes. And so out of that number, HUD estimates that it's roughly over 1,000 that had damage. But in the local field surveys, it's roughly 4,000. So there's a discrepancy there that we note in the unmet needs assessment, which is pretty significant. And as I mentioned before, the process for estimating damage for wildfires isn't as refined. And so this is something that I believe will come up with HUD for this disaster and certainly for the most recent disaster. So here are the numbers for HUD approach. I'll state that while FEMA had quite a large number of applicants in the comparison between the city's inspections and HUD's estimates, or I should say FEMA's estimates, FEMA gave a value of zero damage for many homes that were completely destroyed. And we don't exactly know why, because this is the first time that we've seen this to this scale. So we updated those figures based on the local inspections, which is near 100% reporting. I hope you had some real experts doing those inspections to see if the houses that burned down were damaged. Sorry. And here you can see this is still using the HUD approach where we apply the scale of one to five and apply the average damage amount. So we're still in the lane of HUD methodology, but we're just using better data. And with this better data, we see that it's close to 4,000 homes with major to severe damage. And this also makes sense because if we go back one slide, we see that the homes that were owned that had major to severe damage are really low using the FEMA IA data. And we know that to be inaccurate. We can go forward again. So I think that's a good point. And I think that's a good point. Those numbers, the version two, make a lot more sense. So I think we... Oh, okay. So did we have any questions about the numbers? So now I'll get a little bit into the methodology for unmet need. It's a little bit technical. And again, it goes back to HUD's process. Can that be the case? There may be homeowners with insurance who still have unmet needs, but following HUD methodology, we applied this to the calculation. HUD also wants some type of discount on unmet need for higher income renters. We didn't have renter income information. So we looked at the affordable rental units in the census tracks most impacted. And the affordability of those units was roughly 49%. So we applied that to the rental units that were damaged. And then we used HUD's standard average cost or unmet need estimate for the different categories of the three, four, five level damage and applied that. Yes, go ahead. May I clarify? You specified the units as being unmet need and not the renters in the units as having unmet need. Is this specific to property damage? And there isn't a category of unmet need for the occupant who has lost all of their tools with which they work, for example. So if we're talking about housing, the renters have a personal property loss estimate through FEMA, but they don't receive any compensation for the damage of the unit. So then it is the owner of the property. So we talk about unmet need for units and not renters. And then it's different for owners. And the assumption is that the FEMA reimbursement for renter does not leave a gap that there isn't an area of unmet need there. Yes. And I have not seen a disaster recovery program through CDBGDR that provides support for renters themselves for their property that was lost in the event. Thank you. So when we run the numbers using HUD's version without any update using local data, we see substantial discrepancy. It's more than double. So using better data, the unmet need is close to 100 million for housing. For the business unmet need, just to step back and reiterate that HUD's approach to unmet need through the CDBGDR program focuses on small business and their methodology is to look at businesses who applied for an SBA loan and didn't receive it either because the application was withdrawn or denied. Different communities have different ways of applying this. We're using the application or the process of looking at the applicants who were denied or withdrew their application. Now, there may be unmet needs in business that are difficult to calculate at this time, as we mentioned, because it's too soon after the event to have sound data. But in the narrative of the report, we describe what those issues may be, particularly the lack of workforce rental housing and the loss of tax revenue because of businesses not being able to staff and reopen, which may have an impact. And usually there are multiple tranches of CDBGDR with a disaster, so this leaves some flexibility and opportunity to discuss it in future allocations. So that's something to be mindful of, if that's something that you believe is a strong unmet need that you find out in the next year. So based on the SBA loan data, there's an unmet need of 10 or 9.5 million. And again, that may be an underestimate based on other economic impacts. Based on the surveys, phone surveys and in-person surveys, the workforce housing and lack of child care and health care came up is pretty significant. And also, the businesses that physically lost their equipment and structures tended to be commercial buildings in the north. What isn't documented are the businesses that were running out of homes or garages, these micro businesses that may not have even thought to apply for an SBA loan. And we've heard anecdotally that there are folks who ran small shops out of their garage or had child care businesses who were bakers out of their house or catering that were impacted and we don't have any information on them. But again, that's something that you may want to track at some point if it seems that that's a significant issue. We have a question here. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Rebecca. I was hoping you could define unmet need a little bit more. It'll be a lot easier to try to shape a solution at the end of this conversation when we know what that is. For example, when the fires had just come out, this council was hearing pretty commonly, but I think there's about $40 million under insurance amongst property owners who lost property. Actually, I think that was specific to homeowners even. So a question would be, is that still a prevailing concern? You kind of answered my question on the business piece, which is, why did the SBA not approve these loans? And if we're thinking of using our funding to try to fill that gap, is that a good use of the funds? Because usually, in my understanding, the SBA loans are quite lenient in what it is you can apply for. Could you speak to that a little bit? Sure. They do have requirements on credit worthiness. And depending on the loan requested, your assets at hand. So denials are quite common for the SBA program. For this tranche, HUD is focusing on housing recovery. So the opportunity to invest in business recovery is somewhat limited. But again, it's worth documenting what that is, because I imagine the second tranche will be more flexible and include business recovery. Going back to the question of what is unmet need, are you speaking specifically to business or...? No, the home's piece. Okay. Unmet need, the first step for unmet need is, what is the cost to restore, rebuild, and improve resiliency for that which was damaged minus the money they received from FEMA, SBA, insurance, and well-documented other sources, like grants? In addition to that, the CDBGDR program is somewhat flexible in that they also include unmet need that is specific and unique to a community. So it may be additional workforce housing development because of price increases. It may be different mitigation programs for areas that are at high risk. It may be specific to different age groups. And in general, it is a focus on low and moderate income households and those with the greatest need. One area of unmet need that is constantly in flux and being defined by HUD is the unmet need for increased resiliency. And if we get into the details of that, the idea of relocation and buyouts is an interesting topic and also different construction methods to improve the resiliency of properties to mitigate against future events. So that is now considered a part of unmet need. Can you explain the buyouts piece? Are you talking about? Areas that are at high risk for future fire damage may be eligible for relocation. And that relocation is a different element of CDBGDR outside of reconstruction. So you would use CDBGDR funds to buy that property and return it back to natural vegetation? Potentially, if that were a program. Thank you. I appreciate it, Rebecca. And I think that's it for the business. Can I do? Go ahead. Thank you. I just, I'm trying to really... I'm not beating a dead horse. I'm really trying to understand where the boundaries are in unmet need. So things associated with a loss of income because you've lost your place of work. Does that include folks who are, for example, landscapers, gardeners, the maid who comes to somebody's house, the dry cleaner, because the properties aren't occupied so the people aren't taking their clothes to their local dry cleaner. Is any of that within... Yes. Those services are within unmet needs. So business interruption... As you turn towards this part of the room, you need to take the microphone with you. Please. Okay. Thank you. Apologies. Yes, business interruption is included in unmet need. And how do folks document that they have been doing that work? The family, for example, is not at the house now. They may have not been paid in anything other than, for example, cash. So how do people document unmet need? Are they eligible if they are undocumented? It depends on... First, it depends on if there's a program designed for business interruption. Okay. And then it would be... Those details would be designed specific to the program. So most likely that would be... Those details would be designed by the state through an application process. Okay. So do we ask the state to include those in this process or does the state offer? I mean, what's our process on making sure that those folks are included in some way? So I believe what's gonna... As is the way this... The process works is the state has to make a... The state gets an assignment from the federal government through HUD. If the state is gonna amend what has come down to date, the state will need to make a request. I believe as we go through the presentation, you're gonna see that there is this significant gap between what was funded and what was allocated and what the need is. And potentially, as you've heard, the need is an ongoing assessment process. And so when we get to the second half of this conversation, we're gonna need some guidance on, frankly, a commentary on what you would like us to request, staff, a request of the state moving forward. But the state has to make what's abundantly clear in this conversation is we have an allotment. The allotment falls short of what is actually taking place. So you're gonna have to deal with the current allotment as it stands in the assignments. And then there's gonna be a request, I suspect, for us to ask the state to request additional resources based on what we see. And it may not be the only time that we request additional resource as we learn more about the impacts of the disaster from last October. So I hope that gives a little clarity. There's an assignment of dollars. Those dollars, the state has proposed a plan. You're gonna comment on that plan. But those dollar assignments do not meet the total unmet need. That's why we brought Hagerty here. You will then have to, if we're going to request additional action, we will have to work through the state. Our federal electives have made that clear to me that a request needs to come from the state to the feds for that to move forward. And I suspect there'll be an opportunity with unfortunate other fires that have happened in 2018 to make a request and an additional request there. I think now would be a good time to make clear to the council and clear to the public how we're doing this tonight. There's two elements here. We've got Hagerty talking about their unmet needs assessment. Later on we're gonna be talking about the state's action plan. So maybe we can talk a little bit now about how these two go together or don't go together. So I think that this is our space that we've occupied as a city many times in this process, which is we really appreciate the help and assistance that we got from the state and the federal government. But we intend to, as staff, verify everything. And this is the verification process. So you're getting the consultants team presentation at this time, which is about what we've discovered as they've discovered as the unmet need that the community is facing. That unmet need, as you're hearing, does not match what the federal government was using to make decisions about allocating resources to the state of California and thus to the city of Santa Rosa. So this is our presentation on what the unmet need for the city of Santa Rosa is. So that's what the study session is about. And then later today we will have a report item which will address the state's action plan about those dollars that have been assigned. So this is the city's unmet needs assessment to date. There will still be gaps as you're hearing in that knowledge base. But the big, I think the big message here is that the assessment done by Hagerty has demonstrated that the federal program did not meet the unmet needs of the community. And I think that while the numbers may be different, the theme of both of these is going to be similar. For instance, the state, in their report, they talk about FEMA and HUD's assessment of unmet needs statewide, or I think it's 922 million. But by the state's alternate method of looking at it, they come up with two and a half billion dollars of unmet needs. So two and a half times what the state is talking about. I don't know if the factors are the same for ours and the states. But obviously what's being presented, what's been allocated for this disaster falls far short of what the needs are. We're just going to deal with that and then keep pressing for more. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to follow up that I have a strong interest in making sure that loss of income because of the loss of the property should be included in unmet need. Cleaners, landscapers, et cetera. That seems to be a group that might get missed. I'm going to hand it back to Matt Hockstein to go through infrastructure. So I'll cover the infrastructure piece. Again, this is the third leg of HUD's methodology for looking at unmet need. And just that we're getting a lot of questions, I think just to reiterate in terms of what we're trying to do here is we're looking at unmet need through the eyes of eligible HUD reimbursement as well. So these are items that you can actually use the HUD money to allocate on. So just understanding that, because I think we're looking at, we're talking about some gray areas and while there is, there's always going to be additional unmet need. What we're looking at is how the programs can be designed and where this money can be allocated using CDBG dollars. So with that said, infrastructure is another one of those categories. We have four buckets here of unmet need that we've calculated. The first is the local match for FEMA's public assistance program. So this is the rebuilding of infrastructure after the event. There is a 10% cost share associated with those funds and that's where the 20.7 million comes from. The second bucket we're calling other infrastructure. I believe these projects are in appeal status with Cal OES and hopefully eventually FEMA, but they're still under review. So we are including those in the unmet need as if they are eventually denied, there's still items that the city needs and wants to carry forward. The big discrepancy there is just, I believe the city is still calculating. I think an initial estimate was around 30 million for the first bullet of Coffee Park sidewalks. And I think now we're looking at a 13.5. Number. So again, this slide is fluid and will change as these programs evolve. The third bullet is FEMA's hazard mitigation grant program. This is a competitive program at the state level. So these funds can actually be used for non-disaster related damage but to rebuild infrastructure in a more resilient fashion. The city's got a number of projects that they've put forward under this program. So we've included the entire universe of those projects until we find out what are actually approved under that competitive process. If they are, if they are not approved then they would continue to be in unmet need or just the city share in these projects would be included in that number. And then the last piece is other resiliency projects. These were gathered through interviews with department level staff. These are items that would increase resiliency across the city. You know, an emergency operation center is one. Actually having one that is readily available rather than moving parts. We talked to the emergency manager. We calculated about 101 million there in proposed projects. This bucket will likely not be in the 124 million in that first tranche of money. This will be in the 88 million. We're going to position these projects in that bucket for that particular part of the HUD program. So that's coming down the road as we go forward. And just for clarity's sake, there's a hundred and, in the 212 million dollars that were allocated to the state of California, 124 million was assigned to unmet need and then approximately 80 million was assigned to a category that HUD has yet to define, which is mitigation projects. And again, that's why these projects may be things that the council wants to at some point consider in those mitigation, as part of that mitigation portfolio of projects. But those dollars are still, while they've asked us examples of projects such as a fire station relocation project, they have not, they're looking across the country at needs as it relates to mitigation and they have not detailed what would be eligible at this point under that program. They've asked a lot of questions, but they have not delineated what the rules would be for mitigation projects. Through the mayor. Thank you. So following up on the mitigation projects, I thought I heard someone mention that something like the New Orleans lot next door project could go under CDBG mitigation. That's kind of a buyback or relocation type project. Are we discussing that here or at another time? Is that included in our discussions with? I could, as of right now, I don't believe a buyback program is included in the state's action plan, so that would not be an eligible program. Okay, so in order to be included, we would ask the state to include it. We would, yes, you would need to ask the state for consideration, either in this program or in a future program. Okay, and is there a possibility of assisting with improved construction methods or construction materials within this set or the state's set? Additional resilience measures? Yes, so for example, there's events that make a difference. They cost a little bit more, like $25 event. If we wanted to assist families in using the better events, could we put that here under resilience? Is that something that, and is it here or is it in the states or not? So that would typically be in the program design. So after the action plan, the state would develop the specific program requirements and guidelines, and that will be included in that, but it would make sense to mention that in advance. Okay, it seems like we should talk about it sometime before we go and say, where is it? Thank you. And I have one other question about infrastructure. We put a lot of material in a landfill we hadn't planned to put in the landfill. So we've lost landfill material time. We've lost time on our landfill. Is that a infrastructure need that we can request here? So I believe that part of the ongoing conversation with the state that the county is leading is asking for forgiveness, and this is a multi-county effort on the debris hauling. I'm not aware that that has been resolved at that point, but if you do want to mention it as a comment, we're happy to include, if the council wants to move that in the later report item, we can note that. It has not been contemplated to date because it was working through a process of, as I said, of forgiveness on the useful life degradation of landfills that had to take the material from the fires. Okay, so maybe at the next point, but not at this point. Thank you. Right, just to clarify, these are items that we would be talking about in our later discussion about the state action plan. Thank you. So that really concludes the presentation. I hope it was informative. That might help the discussion for the following item, but we're happy to answer any questions. Further questions at this point? I just want to reiterate that it is staff's intention to work on a request of the state. And those conversations actually started yesterday when Hagerty and the state's consulting team sat down to formulate an additional request for additional dollars based on this analysis. And I just want to make sure that I'm doing my math correctly here that we believe we've got about $300 million in eligible unmet needs at this point and that about $97 million of those are housing needs. Is that correct? Correct. Thank you. We've got a couple of cards on this. Terry Shore, followed by Gregory Furron. Good evening, Mayor Corsi, city council members, staff consultants and members of the public. My name is Terry Shore. I am the regional director for the North Bay for Greenbelt Alliance. I did provide some detailed comments that I emailed to you shortly before the meeting. So I will summarize those. I will start out by saying that I did attend the public hearing last night by the state of California HCD and one of the representatives is here tonight who will be giving you your presentation was very, very helpful in understanding more what was happening here. So I would like to comment on two things which is on the allocation of these disaster funds for housing. The number that I heard last night for multifamily projects from the state was about $38.5 million and we urged the city council to ensure that that funding goes to mostly low income housing and we urge you to consider spending criteria that is similar to what we had in measure N which was 75% of the money going for housing for people up to 80% AMI and 25% of it going up to 120 AMI. Projects similar to the Caritas Village project and the proposed Journeys End project that Burbank Housing is moving forward on. We would hope that you would prioritize those types of projects and also to include the green standards and environmental principles that were associated with the measure N funding proposal. The second part that I'd really like to focus on is the unmet needs or the appropriate area for funding related to one of the items that the consultant mentioned and supervisor Coombs mentioned as well. Greenbelt Alliance would urge the city of Santa Rosa to begin to have the difficult conversations about land use policy because we know and have known for a very long time that the highest risk for loss of home and life is due to housing density and the location of the homes. It's a higher factor than any of the other factors we're familiar with like fuel load, topography, defensible space and building construction. The highest risk factor is location of the homes, rural sprawl and the wooey. And we've known this for years and I wanted to present a book to the city of Santa Rosa through the mayor called Wildfire from 2006 which talks about options for land use including buyouts and providing voluntary opportunities for people to move out of the zone and do that with some of this funding maybe do a pilot project here in the city of Santa Rosa for Fountain Grove. So I'd like to present this and bring this down to the mayor. You can leave that with Julie upstairs there. And also my comments. Gregory, if you're on. Mayor and members of the council and I want to double down my name is Gregory Farron. I'm here representing homeless action. If the consultant could put the second slide up I want to refer to it because I think the three points that were made about what this was aimed at I guess it's one more than that. There were three points. One was low and moderate income. There it is aid in the prevention elimination of slums and need having a particular urgency. From the homeless point of view obviously it's a property report it's not a people report. Renters and homeless are not even considered in this and we really think that those two points benefitting low and moderate income persons and in particular your highest priority of homelessness ought to be considered and given strong priority in the allocation of these resources. We understand that the society and most of the reimbursement that you're getting is short. The state is getting less from the feds than they expect. You're getting less from the state than you expect. It will be hard for you to prioritize when you have such giant need but I want to remind you that from our point of view the need for homeless and low income I would really ask you to go beyond low to very low and extremely low. Those are categories that aren't even up there and are the most vulnerable so I'd ask you to please consider that. Thank you. Thank you. Thomas Ells can we get that microphone? Thank you. Go ahead. Oh it says right there. Thank you for the opportunity in coming right on the heels of the housing authority meeting where we were given this information $38.5 million coming possibly from the state but directed to multifamily primarily and so I would also like to call your attention to the very low and extremely low income portion of the housing component. These are people who may have, I mean there are many people who are renting and I just came back from Paradise and Chico and so on and seeing those folks that there were many people here who were maybe renting but not on a lease and if you were not on a lease you did not get any help from FEMA and that happened here and there are many people that are homeless from that and they would not be included in these components because of their incomes as we already know that 80% of Sonoma County ins pay 50% or more for transportation and housing so much of their budgets and they really don't fall into any of these categories so it takes two and three people to actually rent a place so please consider the extremely low and very low income and just taking out a small chunk of this $38.5 million can produce really really large results in that area particularly with regard to the safe parking which is coming again in these tiny homes these things, villages, these things can really produce a great benefit for those people who are homeless or particularly in these areas who could be homeless or are homeless let's put it that way because they're in these very low incomes considering all of the rise in rents and so on due to the fire so it is a fire and if you will everyone is being affected by this people will just take the last few seconds is that people in butte County are being shipped out of the county they don't have any housing there they didn't have housing before they were in 1% like we are and they're being paid to go to another county even shelters they don't have shelters in butte County they've been sheltering I can't recall the name of the county right now but they've been moving them out of the county and the reality is those people that have been moved out of the county they no longer have a 10% rent cap because there's no declaration of emergency in those counties so if there's no declaration then they have no rent cap so they can be stuck this is a tremendous problem across the whole state so please consider this people here thank you Peter Chernef well thank you regarding using what funds are available for the homeless I'd like to give a thumbs up to both the last two speakers we're all homeless we opened the promised land of Israel which is beneath our feet and I'm going to give a call out to all true hearted warriors all California vets on this topic knowing that 74% of all revenues nationally collected by the IRS and the Fed comes from California and since there's no question that these two usurist thieving institutions be illusory deceiving, murderous treasonous operations whose time is over I am Peter I am addressing you and I'm telling you all that this debt of the federal debt is over it has gone it never existed it's all based on treason and murder it's done we owe nothing and to the vets who watch their friends die on the field murdered by vaccines who are angels among the homeless kicked out of low income units in favor of non-americans veterans who are aware that Billy Bob Clinton Rockefeller sold a portion of the Long Beach Port to the communist red Chinese military seriously they're oath to the U.S. Constitution veterans who comprise 50% of California law enforcement and as Green Beret Lieutenant Colonel Beau Grice stated veterans got one more hill to take and as Capitol Hill and the reckoning be beckoning and so unto you veterans I ask, I task I command, I pray arise, arisen you have more power you have all the power that's required to take this nation ever higher the time is now to join with the rest of us and simply getting off the fence pay no more money, pay no more rents what are we doing? we're maintaining the very insanity and as I have said more than a few times these people up there are trying to do the right thing but they cannot do what the veterans the workers, the labor with which the McGrante's can do together which is enough to change the weather the supply and demand by whose command the bankers I'm not here to be slaves to them the 40-day strike extinguishes their insanity and government is not reason nor eloquence it is force like fire a danger in servant that will be mastered and put to its knees with the 40-day strike and so the McGrante's will support veterans as we shut down this holiday of the massacre of Christ by this one call Satan aka Santa and shut down the West Coast till DC and Wall Street is thank you bring it back to the council any further questions or comments from the council on this mr. Tibbets thank you mayor so one question I had is is when looking at these funds one understanding that I'd become aware of is that it probably is going to have the most bang for the buck going for multi-family housing now a CDBG DR in any way restricted for being able to be used as a local match for a lot of these funding sources newly approved proposition one I mean what I'm seeking is the best use of the money to create the most amount of housing it can be used for local matches that's its intent and we've already confirmed by the state that it could be the local match for prop one prop two that just passed on the ballot okay thank you thank you very much move on to our regular council meeting musical as do you want to announce the role please at the record show that all council members are present with the exception of vice mayor Rogers Miss Gallagher would you give a report on our closed session today yes the council met and closed session on item 2.1 and gave direction to staff thank you we have no proclamations or presentations mr. McClendon is there staff briefing on the fire recovery not this evening thank you yes miss combs I have a question with regard to the current fire that has been going on in butte a number of our residents were affected because their children had to stay home from school so they had to either lose work or have to pay daycare or some of them also had medical expenses associated with the the stuff in the air that caused the long issues are any of our residents eligible for reimbursement through FEMA because of that fire I will we will take it under consideration I do not have an answer this evening thank you thank you mr. McClendon any city manager report tonight yes I do have a report I want to I want to thank the city employees that I'm going to acknowledge tonight they either have or are in the process of serving as mutual aid or responders around the state first off Neil Bregman who was down assisting the city of Malibu during the Woolsey fire Adrienne Mertens the following folks are all have all assisted in butte County and in association with the campfire or in the process of doing so and many of them gave up their Thanksgiving to do so Adrienne Mertens of the city manager's office the Larry Peterson Jack Thomas Stefan de Porto and Paul Lowenthal from the fire department Jake by Bayless from information technology Jason nut from transportation of public works David Gouin and Riasa de la Rosa from planning and economic development and Melissa Riley and David Dahlman from the police department that concludes my report thank you mr. McClendon thanks to those employees for for the mutual aid work we benefited from folks from cities around the state last year when we were in our disaster and it's good to be able to pay that back this gallery do you have a report tonight nothing to report this evening thank you any statements of abstention from council members tonight yeah mayor I was absent on the 16th so we abstain for those from those minutes thank you and we'll move on to mayors and council members reports anyone want to start with that anything down here miss comes thank you mayor I'm going to pass out some materials on the most recent CASA elements summary as you may recall CASA is the committee regional committee to house the Bay area that was put forward by MTC and a bag and is working on creating a compact that is likely to go forward through to likely to go forward to the legislature in January and things have been continuing to move right along several items several items have been you'll notice that it's a two-sided page it's gone from 17 items to 10 items there's a brief summary there of the 10 items that are currently together in the compact and there's an overlay that shows how SB 35 affects inclusionary regulations in each area right now and there's a strong discussion of whether or not to make changes to the way SB 35 is amended so that's going forward there's a lot of conversation about and what I thought was an interesting phrase from the legislature which is called double joint in the idea is that one one can't go forward without the other element so there are some very sweet elements for streamlining lowering costs capping fees improving the the environment the economic environment for developers it is talked about double-joining those or double-joining those with tenant protection so that they both go forward together so that's sort of the the direction things are going right now and I will be going to New York City with the group the end of next week in order to see some some details with regard to housing policies that New York City has moved forward successfully I continue to make the case for our community that there needs to be a geographic overlay that recognizes the economic differences between cities so for example a requirement of a 15% affordability for all projects might it be no problem at all for San Francisco to get it not affect their market at all but it might cause a problem here or 20% or 5% if it's a very or very low so we're trying I'm trying to work on getting an overlay to make sure that we're using a scalpel and not a hammer as we're working through some of the economic aspects and I have one other question I had the good fortune of having that first meeting on the leadership body for the homeless which you call it a COC I guess it's sort of JPA like COC with my colleagues and it looks as if we will be making a major decision on December 10th regarding allocations into buckets we don't have to be specific about how these different buckets of money will be spent tranches perhaps but we will need to be saying roughly this much or this percent of the funds goes into this type of homeless service or construction or this this different area there are a couple of different buckets that HUD wants to hear from us and we will need to make that decision on December 10th we aren't going to have time to share with you all of the information between now and then and I'm and there will be more detailed decisions being made in January so I my colleague and I are sort of bringing it to the council do you want us to go ahead and use our best judgment with regard to how the buckets are allocated and aligned or do you want us to bring back to you what those choices are how do you want us to behave with regard to larger dollar decisions and what do you view our authority to be I think that because this is not on the agenda that that's what we're going to need you to do is use your best judgment I there is kind of an opportunity to have the conversation the first week of December and then there would be another opportunity to have it after the initial buckets are decided when we're doing more fine detail work so I guess we would need to bring that forward if we want to have the conversation we'll look at that thank you your options appreciate it thank you and if I may the materials that you provided to the council on Casa can we make sure that there are copies also available to the public yes and I have extras thank you thank you any other council member reports seeing none we'll move on to item 10.2.1 library commission joint city county commissioner appointment and this is going back to early September when we had interviews with potential library commission appointees I apologize for the confusion between myself and the chair of the board of supervisors over how a joint city county commissioner is appointed I think we've got that straightened out myself and board of supervisors chairman Gore are recommending the appointment of Karen Schneider to the city county slot on the commission she was the council's first choice and we need to ratify that at this point tonight so I would move that the council approve the appointment of Karen Schneider as the city county commissioner to the Sonoma County Library Commission to serve a four-year term second thank you mr. Tibbets in your votes please and that passes with six eyes thank you moving on to 10.3.1 the wasn't there a second seat also or is that cared for there was and on September 4th we voted to make David Cahill the city appointment if Karen Schneider became the city county appointment that is a done deal we don't need to do that again so our appointees are Karen Schneider and David Cahill moving on to 10.3.1 mr. Tibbets this was a request from you to put this on a future agenda and what we have before us tonight is to vote on whether to put this on a future agenda I've got a stack of cards here from people who want to talk about it in the past we have not taken public comment on this particular action of the council to put something on a future agenda I don't think that we're going to change that tonight so thank you for your input I believe we've received emails from a lot of people on this as well mr. Tibbets do you want to introduce this yeah thank you now so I ask that you support gaining more information from staff on what a certificate of participation using our PTT funds within the general fund could do to help the council advance its tier one priorities spurring the creation of affordable housing and ending homelessness if we can identify a path forward for an RPTT funded certificate we could provide up to an additional 20 to 30 million dollars for housing taken together with CDBGDR we could create a local match opportunity of up to 68 million which if leveraged with existing state funding including recently approved proposition one and two funds could grow Santa Rosa's affordable housing pot to roughly $500 million for affordable housing and homeless dedicated housing based on the current Alameda experience of $8.50 in return for every one dollar in the local match mr. Tibbets can I stop you for just a minute I'm I'm asking the public to refrain from commenting on this this is a simple yes or no are we going to put this on the agenda in the future okay I don't think that you know I arguing the point is is proper at this point so I just want to get because from the two of you I've spoken with and and you know consideration of the Brown Act I did one of the questions that has come up as is it possible and I want to answer that question very clearly yes it is the city council did a certificate of participation to actually create old house again mr. Tibbets I think that if we can put this on the council agenda we can get staff input on this and we can have a robust discussion at the council level today it's just a matter of whether we're going to do putting it on the agenda or not is there a second to mr. Tiles second we have a motion and a second there are further questions your votes please and that passes with six eyes we'll get that agendized in the future if I may and I appreciate the need for speed perhaps the city attorney can review the creation of how this system came into effect because I believe there was a concern at the time it was created that the four-part vote had the opportunity for discussion and that that's how it happened so I just want to confirm with the city attorney if that's correct or not at a future time and you can always review these policies your post policies at your discretion and I would suggest at goal setting that that might be a topic for conversation thank you moving on to I'm 11 approval of minutes for October 16th October 23rd I believe mr. Oliver as you said you're abstaining from October 16th any other questions revisions corrections we'll accept those as submitted moving on to the consent calendar mr. McGlynn yes item 12.1 resolution professional services agreement with diets and bahat a urban and regional planners downtown station area specific plan update and I apologize if I butchered names 12.2 resolution professional services agreement with Carl Macy incorporated to provide landscape architectural design services to prepare a master plan and construction documents for coffee neighborhood park item 12.3 resolution measure oh choice grant program cycle nine year two funding recommendations and authorization to approve funding agreements item 12.4 resolution approval of second amendment to the professional services agreement with Renee public law group LLP for labor and employment services item 12.5 resolution approval mutual nondisclosure agreement between Sonoma County on solve LLC and the city of Santa Rosa to allow use of certain Santa Rosa water customer data for emergency notification purposes item 12.6 resolution approval professional service agreement with EO for EOC software with Buffalo computer graphics incorporated item 12.7 motion second amendment to the agreement number f001360 with day dreamer cinema LLC DBA culture pop films item 12.8 resolution extension of proclamation of existence of a local emergency due to fires item 12.9 resolution extension of proclamation of local homeless emergency questions on consent items miss combs yes I have a question with regard to the item 12.3 should I just go ahead and ask it yes okay with regard to the Salvation Army double-punches boxing club I want to confirm that we are doing this in accordance with the American Pediatric Association no sparring for children under the age of 14 years of age my head injury has become a large discussion within football but has been well known within boxing mayor council members Jason quarter with the partnership the funding for the Salvation Army double-punches is not for the boxing program it's only for the home working tutoring help for this for this funding year that's not what it says in our in our description of the program the description of the program says enhancing fitness development through the medium of boxing that for the organization itself but our money specifically goes to the towards the tutoring program do they do boxing with are they sparring with children under the ages of 14 not with any of the measure of money that's not our money but they're doing it elsewhere yes but our money specifically does not go towards any of the physical components of the organization I would like to pull this item because I cannot in good faith vote for an item that includes children hitting each other in the head we can vote on that separately thank you any other questions council yes mr. Shwetam item 12.6 hi Neil Bregman emergency manager thank you for being first off we part of the selection process because it mentioned four people were one from the fire department but I wasn't sure were you including that absolutely great so can this software communicate with the county's EOC so right now this the county doesn't have any software but ours would even if the soft this county doesn't purchase one we could give them a read-only version so that they have a user names and passwords to see everything that's going on on our side of the EOC if down the road they choose to buy this software another one one of the advantages of this software has the ability interface with anything the county might purchase this one on the back end not being technical I'm told is sort of open source in that way and we can share into things like the EOC which is one of the ones that's before you throughout the state so will that be a future conversation or was there a conversation from the city asking the county about to buy this so there was brandy Lincoln mr. Hamel can help with this too we left an option as part of this RFP that the county can with proper review actually purchased the same one using RFP process but I'll let Brandon not only for the candidate obviously that's the most common one in any city as well any city right in order to facilitate a proper procurement for FEMA guidelines as well you have to have inclusivity within the entire process we invited one of the members of the buying and purchasing division of the county to actually attend and assistant facilitation in phase two of our product and I am speaking regularly with my counterpart Linda Rodenkamp she's eagerly awaiting the acceptance of this agreement so that they can look at it holistically and we also included the language to ensure that it's not only piggybackable by the county but also by other local agencies towns cities within the state great that's very helpful and then in what other ways will this software be utilized because it also talked about different events and I'm just thinking I know it's been police barbecue did some active shooter training or whatever like local high schools with this will this software be available for those other departments and if so how will they be using it absolutely so there's unlimited users on this so we can essentially have a login username for every member of the city certainly for anything emergency management public safety training wise that needs a software that allows for common operating picture and situational awareness big or small planned events like parades or otherwise this software is available again back to you were asking before about its ability to communicate with other softwares we will also be working with it as we stand up city works there are pieces for city works that will feed into this so that again we'll be able to map out or say city assets are and no kind of what's going on with that but it has multiple uses and we intend to use it on day-to-day basis to the extent that's possible as well not just for EOC because a paradigm of EOC software is not to just use it in the emergency try and use it every day so people are familiar with it and are used to using it before the emergency that's exactly my point so I guess my question for the city manager would be safe to assume that there will be an expectation that other departments will utilize this software to maximum ability yes and in addition we're in evolving conversations with several local jurisdictions and in the county about the long-term plans about response and preparedness and and so those conversations I expect over the next few months will take in to become more concrete and we're as I said as the as Neil said it's our our goal to have a resilient and interoperable system across the county great thank you other questions council I have a few cards on these items Gregory if you're on followed by Peter Chernef one sec there you go thanks on 12.1 I'll also defer to miss spelling or mispronouncing the name of the consultant but we did try to contact them this is the station area plan and as you know Santa Rosa together has been deeply involved with trying to build bottom-up planning for the next general plan update we view the station area plan and the effort to try to determine what kinds of housing and how high the housing ought to be downtown is vital to have civic engagement involved with so Santa Rosa together spent a little time trying to identify how we could communicate with the consultant it wasn't easy their website didn't really allow it very much but we did finally get a hold of the way in which we could communicate but we still haven't had any response so I guess I'm making a public acknowledgement of Santa Rosa together's eagerness to work with the consultants to build a strong robust civic engagement component for the station area downtown plan and we hope that they contact us thank you thank you Peter Chernef followed by Anita Lafellette thank you in addressing 12.9 regarding the local homeless emergency I hear now bind all corruptions illusions in every realm I am Peter I am at the helm explain here and now why Americans remain homeless especially veterans and their family members out in the rain and to our McGrenthey Mexican population know this that the so-called illegals in California and in Mexico were freely weaseled into serving in the military but when they are killed their family members receive nothing they receive nothing maybe a letter and why are these high rents going on it's supply demand yet by whose command by the command of the usurus bankers the bar association with their 300,000 bar lawyers in California in the Silicon Valley electronic gaming industry that is what creates these fabricated high rents there is no answer within the system as I've emphasized many times these people that are up there on the dais even if they wanted to they can't fix this that's why it's up to the people it's up to the veterans it's up to the McGrenthey's it's up to the family members it's up to our labor but somehow we have this stock home syndrome imposed on most remaining fear frozen and you'll end up burnt toast like a chimpanzee so blinded refusing to see the answer to this social cancer be the prophecy of the 40-day strike like a chimp locked into a 4x4 cage its entire life poked prodded and poisoned his reality has been reduced to strife sometimes he'll protest with rage within the cage throwing food and feces screaming to shout the concept of freedom long been requisitioned after being conditioned by futility so much so that even when showed the open door refuses to walk out and while the grown chimp be strong let us address why the vegan gorilla 4,000 pounds can bench press the path of almighty power requires of all blood flow we be free of and pure this is how we become the cure for powerful angels have heard the commanding call by the sea as they have commanded the oppressed who be truly possessed by great spirits light to cease paying all mortgages and rents ceasing the slaughter house and industry of oil for this is how Californians rise up the faithful arise being royal as the true children of Israel which is beneath our feet we are the power the time is at hand abide ye now this command pay nothing no shopping nothing to the system that's how we arise as an almighty piston thank you sure enough Anita Lafellette followed by Pat Nicholson sorry I can't see you gee we're so far away I'm not going to tell you what I did this afternoon I'm soaking wet I was out in the rain trying to help those homeless people they have no place to go and so we're not going to build our way out of this so you can put as many funds as you want to into housing I saw a whole bunch off of Fulton there's a lot of housing out there there's a lot of apartments but they're not available for people to use I won't tell you why now the CDC authorized another sweep of the Joe Rado to trail it was a horrific sweep in this pouring down rain and the people tried to get under the eaves and the police wouldn't even let them stay there and so they made them walk on the sidewalk out in front because they couldn't get a ride over to Sam Jones even if they want to go to Sam Jones okay because we needed trucks to take their things they couldn't leave their things behind I mean that's the only things they have so is there no way to ever appeal to the compassionate soul of the city of Santa Rosa because I'm really doubting it the cops were obscene they threaten to arrest people and they threaten to arrest me can you believe that because I was standing in front of the store the Dollar Tree I was standing in front and that is against the law because I was loitering I was loitering I was trying to help the people get somewhere rather than wander around in the down pouring rain how can how long can a human being last in the down pouring rain that's a good question because you haven't thought about it you were the ones that approved this week right and they're gonna I'm going to make a personal complaint the city of the the the police department because I don't think it was lawful for them to threaten me with arrest I don't think that's even human when I'm trying to help the homeless people find a place for shelter sure the host team was out there you know what they said there's no room at Sam Jones they told me that so where were they gonna go thank you miss no one's listening thank you Pat Nicholson quiet followed by tell me Pat Nicholson I was also at that location this morning and was told that my presence there was trespassing although if that's true then I'm good I'm good I'm good if that's true and I was trespassing that made it a crime scene no because the only thing I was doing at that point was standing there talking with the cops who were there and that was the totality of the threat I presented at that time and I was told that I was escorted from the location where I was so I was told I was if I were to stay I was trespassing and I needed to leave and it was a crime and I'm trying to understand what it was that made it the crime scene was it because there were homeless campers there or is it because it's off limits now to us the people who live there until the development starts all there's going to be as a defense because we are no longer allowed access I suggest that the current policy you folks follow concerning the homeless doesn't work that everybody seems to lose behind it and it would be so much better if everybody could consider a way that we could all win behind it and instead of us telling you please do something to change this we could go thank you you change this and it's better and we're really glad you did that because what you're doing now doesn't seem to have that ring to it and maybe I'm right because I've been up here before and told you things and I was right about them and you really didn't listen at that time and then you found out that yes I was right so it is possible maybe this policy that you currently pursue could be changed for the better and instead of us being unhappy with things we could change the entire picture because I believe it's possible and it's been done and being done we're not currently doing it but we could and maybe somebody else would like my half minute that's left that's all I really have to say thank you Thomas else thank you for the opportunity to speak and I dearly hope you do pass these resolutions for the local emergency for the fire and local emergency for homeless emergency I was just in paradise I tried to get as close as I could paradise in Butte County and down in Chico and so I'm gonna relate both of these things homeless emergency and fire emergency I saw where the fire went where there was burn areas that have been since the trees have been knocked down cut down sawn down those trees didn't burn there were tons of greenery on those trees there were there was manzanita that didn't burn there were there were dead trees that didn't burn there were many trees that that did not burn right in and I don't mean missed by the fire they were scorched by the fire they were on fire even even these trees that had greenery their bark burned so the bark burned and it was flying all around and it looks like the trees on fire but then the tree goes out so this is exactly what we want with the fire we want the fire to go out on the trees we just don't want it to blow all around like it was so it's happened similarly here a lot of trees they're not dead they're not dying they're they're gonna live but I saw manzanita plants and other other kinds of things that normally completely become a Roman candle and they did not burn and even though they were scorched we definitely have a local fire emergency because of the housing situation and that presents itself with the housing and homeless as well and there's we had the count last year 20,000 people and the couch surfing 10 to 11,000 of those are due to the fire so those people are on the verge of homelessness as you know as I said I was in in Chico and but they're they're concentrating the people at gridly everyone's gonna be moved to gridly to the to the fairgrounds it seems to be an adequate place but as was just being mentioned by by miss Nicholson was that you've had a report recently that maybe this homeless policy isn't working so good and I don't think that was on the minds of the people who went out to to Roseland and to behind the dollar store but they were there and they were evicted today in the rain and there doesn't seem to be like a whole lot of reason for that there is nothing going on there there is absolutely no work going on there is no preparation for anything thank you thank you George have noticed a lot of exasperation in the people that come up here to speak to you know it seems like we're past a point where we can say realistically that you all are confused about what needs to be done right or that anyone in this room is really confused about what needs to be done you know there's reports on reports that's not an issue I think what is an issue is we all know what to do we all know what the right thing to do is and we all know that you know that and you're not doing it I don't think again I don't think anyone here is I think we're confused maybe about how we can make you do it but not about whether or not it needs to be done homeless people need a place to go we don't give it to them we're killing them you declare state of emergency and then enforce a state of emergency for two years enforcing a state of emergency is killing somebody that's what it is you'll hold some wins head under you're enforcing a state of emergency I'd like to read from a report very quickly that was issued it's called the voice of the voiceless report again I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't know but I do want you to have to look at it right in the eye the physical and mental health of homeless people is threatened not only by the harsh weather and physical vulnerability but also by discriminatory incarceration homeless people routinely receive citations for minor offenses such as sleeping or drinking in public like those in the Jim Crow south such laws serve to control and manage groups of people when a homeless person is unable to pay a fine or manage a court date they become subject to warrant and immediate arrest approximately 30% of inmates at Sonoma County jail are homeless yet there has been no attempt to quantify or address the number of homeless people of color who are currently jailed under the sub or under the supervision of probation the Sonoma County Human Rights Commission passed a resolution in August affirming that homeless individuals are singled out and fined for nuisance infractions such as loitering as well as other minor offenses contravening the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination which declared that criminalizing homelessness and its associated activities when people have nowhere else to go constitutes cruel inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of United Nations article 9 the resolution calls for establishment of a safe camping area the Sonoma County chapter of the ACLU has also made a statement that homelessness in Sonoma County is a human made disaster that has reached crisis levels and threatens to go further in the next two years they noted that repressive actions against the homeless are continuing and support of both safe camping parking and establishment of the sanction village with small shelters no safe no no safe parking safe camping where sanctioned village site is currently on the agenda of either city council or city officials thank you thanks live with yourself today people seeking political asylum for horrendous conditions that we created have been brutally attacked some of them are on our southern border some of them are right here under our noses in the newly annexed southwestern corner of Santa Rosa as as as George just pointed out that's considered in inhumane treatment is cruel and unusual that's been determined by the UN it's been determined by our own commissioned for human rights here in Sonoma County local national and international human rights organizations have have called it inhumane the report you just got from your very own police auditor strongly implies this inhumane and points out very clearly that it's ineffective out here in this rain people were threatened with arrests who were scattered again for seeking asylum when you provide no adequate alternative that preserves people's dignity and their liberty compared to living on the streets this is terrible and you're going on with business as usual as people are being abused before you point the finger at Sonoma County at the county government you provide your police for this service you don't have to it's unconstitutional it's inhumane and strong precedents have been set that just following orders so much of this is on them as well when doing so is abusive inhumane unconstitutional and violates human rights is not an excuse do better captain finnegan well good afternoon everyone i don't have any prepared remarks but i do want to point out that actually right now i'm feeling lower than a snake in a wagon track that's from a song i know and the reason it has to do with what's going on in my hometown now and so there are two things that are disturbing to me one is when bob erenson made his report to your displeasure i don't recall that even one of you said something about well you know we may not agree with you about your assessment of our policy but we are concerned about police morale i don't remember that one of you bothered to even mention that you might be concerned about the morale of our officers i'm concerned secondly has to do with the eviction that was was taking place today in the driving rain i was there watching people with no rain gear not even a jacket soaking wet in the driving rain trying to pack up their tents and i'd like to know if there's any reason on god's green earth why this couldn't have waited a couple of days until the sun came back please you are responsible for this you are responsible and i'd like to know what you're going to do about it thank you thank you bring it back to the council um in the absence of vice mayor rogers i will move items 12.1 through 12.9 with the exception of item 12.3 second your votes on 12.9 or 12.1 through 12.9 with the exception of 12.3 sorry i was late on that can you reset those items past 6 0 move item 12.3 can we separate 12.3 so that it includes everything except the double punches because the other programs are fine to move forward it's the it's the double punches program that i would like us to vote separately on it's the only one with the it's in the staff it's in the more detailed report not in the presentation there's a chart of the other items okay sorry about that i think we're looking to you if we can do that yes in terms of you you can vote to exclude that um that award for the salvation army double punches if you so desire i would ask if you could separate that one out so that we can vote unanimously for the other right do you want to suggest an amendment to my motion i'm suggesting the amendment i'm suggesting is that uh you initially moved 12.3 with all the items included except the double punches item sir second for that i'm not sure i heard a second from mine either i will accept your amendment to my motion is there a second for that not hearing a second double punches could could we make the amendment so that um we approve all the total package uh and make our funds conditional in double punches on those under 14 years of age don't do head sparring i appreciate that there is a homework study program in addition to the boxing program but they are i don't clarify for me how many children don't box or spar but only do the homework anyone that's 14 and under does not have any type of head contact that's funded by measure of funding i understand that we are not funding it we are funding the afterschool study piece of this but they still in order to do the afterschool piece of this take part in the boxing program no they're separate they are completely separate and you can be in one program without the other program correct and how many children do that i don't have that answer but i can get that for you okay i would like that answer um i i have expressed this concern about subsidizing a program where children under the age of 14 can sustain head injury through sparring and we have not had the cooperation of this group for stopping sparring under the age of 14 uh the americans pediatric association says children under the age of 14 should not be sparring um i i'm having a real difficulty i understand that there's great friendship and camaraderie and good outcomes associated with this program but those good outcomes are mitigated by recurrent concussion opportunities that really we we should not as a council be funding um and i i understand that somehow we figured out how to subsidize the program so that there's there's some separation of the funds uh it feels wrong to me i'm sorry i'm if we can't separate it out i'm still going to have to vote now all right i didn't hear any support for separating it out i'm happy to separate it out so she can take a vote of opposition if that's what we're talking about here i'll offer a second for that thank you all right that was that was the motion that i amended originally that didn't get a second but now it has a second um your votes please i'm sorry mr. mayard could you just clarify what the motion is please we're voting on the choice grant item um all of the choice grants except for the salvation army grant in this vote it will so there would be a do the salvation army grant in the next round so there would be a second a second motion to cover you certainly are welcome to do that further clarification what i'm what i'm seconding to be clear is giving julie the opportunity to pull 12.3 out of the consent call calendar and oppose it should she choose to that's all i'm saying we already did that i'm trying to i'm asking that we allow me to vote in favor of the other items that are going forward under 12.3 because there are a set of items going forward so that we just pull double punches and vote it set okay i apologize to the council for complicating things but i do think do believe julie has the right to to vote for the services she believes in so let's proceed and i'll do the best i can to follow the motion and the second are to vote on all of the choice grants with the exception of the salvation army grant your votes please thank you and that passes five to one with mr schwell schwedhelm opposed now i'm going to move that we approve the salvation army choice grant second your votes please in that passes five one with miss combs opposed thank you gentlemen moving on to public comment on items that are not on tonight's agenda very brief here on followed by peter churnoff peter churnoff followed by miles bergen i was never a big fan of the rolling stones but uh i like that one part where he said who killed who after all who killed the kennedys after all it was you and me just somehow above the comprehension of what that means to most of you there's a guy a long time ago pogo he says we've met the enemy and the enemy is us the un and the aclu are bogus and unamerican as far as i'm concerned almighty in the us constitution be where the power resides in the aclu and un want to make sure that the us constitution was never and never will be the law of the land and yet it's a beautiful document gifted by a matriarchal society known as the iroquois so whether you're houseless or not you most powerful people on the planet here in california especially the faithful among you free yourself of all association of the system human freedom will be granted after you free those who cannot free themselves the animals and the earth spiritual law be far greater than man's limited perceptions and apparently law enforcement somehow knows this that as i have shared requires for all sentience we first and foremost show that we cared and besides cops spelled backwards is spock the logical one spiritual providence overcomes confusion and yes cops are in the middle of this spiritual riddle and they abide by spiritual law you want to complain about them then know this law enforcement abides by the very system that the likes of you who complain are all financially supporting by supporting the flesh industry the insane phone industry the the computer industry so go ahead keep doing as you're doing and you're going to continue getting what you're getting but you have the option to abide by spiritual law i am peter and i am hell bent in heaven sent and the power of the kingdom resides in each heart so start to deny me be to deny yourself therefore denying the living lord the only authority that lays down the sword the sword of the israeli and u.s military so to the harsh reality the homeless endure that slaughterhouse bound sentience would gratefully change places with you in a second the ones that you all we all maintain this insanity of 14 million murders a day and as i've shared earlier that's been two three minutes already no way so the bottom line is the mcgrantes and the veterans to shut down all the shopping that maintains the the shopping of the chinese products of slave labor and thank you miles bergen you guys i'll give you two minutes miles mr churnaf mr churnaf mr churnaf please sit down mr bergen mr bergen you have the microphone you have the microphone please there you go good evening mr mayor and members of the council i'm miles bergen i live in southwest santa rosa earlier in the month north bay jobs of justice released a report entitled a state of working sonoma in which the starting reality of the economic conditions in sonoma county were late bear currently in our county one in four people live in poverty in the last 40 years real wages for the bottom 20 percent of earners had dropped by more than 10 percent middle-income earners have seen wage stagnation and nearly all of the wage growth has gone to the top 30 percent of earners the most shocking finding of the report however is that this income inequality is expected to get worse 75 percent of the projected job growth in sonoma county over the next 10 years is expected to pay less than $20 an hour this at a time when a family of four in our county must have both parents working full time at $23 an hour just to afford basic expenses without relying on government assistance so what can we do to answer the growing existential crisis of income inequality things like building more housing investing in reliable public transportation and decreasing the cost of health and childcare the first solutions to jump out and many of these are already being thoughtfully and urgently addressed by the council but there is one area where i think we can do more than that is focusing on small business small businesses have a huge positive effect on our local economy on small business saturday last weekend our assistant city manager posted a graphic on facebook showing that a hundred dollar purchase on amazon would only result in one dollar coming back to our community that same hundred dollar purchase at home depot let's say would net us 14 dollars meanwhile a hundred dollar purchase at a small local business with a 48 dollars driven back into our community meanwhile these big box store chains pay poverty wages and hoard their profits and offshore tax havens while driving out local businesses my question of the council then is if small business is four times more valuable to us than box stores why do we have a flat business tax and why do we allow large corporations to dodge all taxes on their revenue above the three thousand dollar maximum tax we charge them i think this is backwards and i strongly address the council to address the business tax code by one instituting progressive business tax rates two significantly raising or eliminating the maximum general business tax and three significantly raising the level at which taxation starts from its current 25 000 a revenue i would also urge the council to consider using these revenues to fund programs like small business loans to foster entrepreneurship and subsidies to help our small business handle a much needed increase in the minimum wage if we are ever going to truly address the issue of income inequality and a mass extraction of wealth from our community then we must build pathways out of poverty we need to provide our citizens the means to go from employee to employer we need to support those who want to do the right things by their employees but can't afford to and make those who were some in income inequality pay for it members of the council we need to progress this business tax thank you very much mic turgeon followed by bob hanson good afternoon council members mic turgeon friends of the santa rosa climate action plan and i just came to make remarks regarding the study session where we got to a point of looking at a ordinance for all electric ready construction and my general assumption was that we would be seeking a way to come to some resolution about this in a timely manner um and so i come uh that study session was october 23rd and since then we've had the horrific fires in paradise and so um i guess i'm a bit confused our report item it looks like got pushed to february 26th which is four months away and in light of the new climate studies that have came to light in the last few days it just seems that a low hanging fruit type of measure such as this it's the least that we would ever ask of the city of santa rosa is to provide a few wires that could prevent people from having to spend thousands perhaps later when they have to retrofit their homes when california goes toward all electric homes it just seems like pushing it four four months away is a bit confusing to us since we kind of sense that there was a lot of momentum to get something done between now and then so i'm not coming to be contentious and i apologize if my remarks are construed that way i'm just seeking perhaps if there's anything in your power to to move things up in light of what we're experiencing all around us and it's on everybody's mind although people sometimes don't have the words to express how frightened they are about the climate crisis and it's the impending things we'll all be dealing with so thank you for hearing me out and i appreciate working with all of you i guess i'm just coming out of a bit frustration thank you thanks mr turgeon bob hanson followed by adrian lobby good evening everybody my name is robert hanson 3 3 1 7 4 8 7 for me if i'm aware of a problem i don't address that problem i'm as guilty as the offending parties we have a problem in sonoma county marin county and i suspect every county in the state of california and that's our family court system this is a court system where our children under 14 have no legal rights parents have no legal rights across our country grandparents are providing the financial resources for our children they are providing the moral clarity gained through experience for our grandparents for our grandkids in a world gone insane moral clarity is important for our grandkids i grew up in a world where there was no homeless the homeless we had in our country were hobos and they chose that right now our family court state family court system is abducting our children i've got an 11 year old granddaughter sady rose for the first six and a half years of her life her father had no contact with her after a year and a half of court ordered custody with her father she refused any further contact with this man drinking and driving with the kids spousal abuse family abuse justified causes for no contact years of reunification therapist after reunification therapist after reunification therapist that's the name of this game in this state family court system could not break the spirit of my granddaughter she refused any contact with this man my daughter missed a court date on august the 15th i was in the va hospital judge robert boyd ordered a 90 day custody coupled with a 90 day communications block on a 11 year old little girl no communication between her family her friends that order was reapproved on november the 15th another 90 day custody no communication block on a 11 year old girl what kind of man does that two and 11 year old little girl judge robert boyd did as i sat before judge boyd on october the third and he was denying my request for grandfather visitation i looked the man in the eye and there was nobody there thank you mr hanson there was nobody home mr hanson i need you to wrap up i'm sorry for your troubles we those are my troubles those are all of our troubles understand thank you very much thank you mr hanson thank you adrian lobby followed by kevin conway good evening everyone i have spent the last couple of days witnessing and supporting a group of homeless people many of them elderly many of them ill who came together to help each other survive knowing that the rain was coming having been moved off property by the chp that they had been camped on a block of them they they have had it basically they just said we need something different and they went back to property that was behind the drawler store and started calling us to say can you help us we're here it's been it's been a real reality check to see what kind of misery people are having to live in because of our policies and our inaction and i made a point of coming here even though i'm a bit tired because i wanted to say that i stand with bob erinson and i want to praise bob erinson as an independent police auditor he did what we want police auditors to do he told the truth as he saw it he had the guts he had the nerve and that is exactly the kind of thing that we want in someone who audits the police now you may not agree with his opinions you may find police officers who disagree with his opinions i have heard police officers say the same thing which is yes this policy is not working and too it is bad for morale on the police force but you may not agree with that however i think you really need to support someone who's willing to tell the truth as he sees it about police in this count in this in this city it's so critical for all of us i want to support the extension of the prohibition on rental housing price gouging because obviously that affects homelessness on every level and i want to invite you all to an event on saturday from one to three in this chamber which uh councilwoman julie combs has sponsored and this is going to be a bit of an upbeat thing because we have about four million dollars coming into the city on a state fund and the state has very reasonably said there's a housing crisis we're going to throw money into the cities and the counties and you all figure out the best way to take care of this crisis for your neighborhoods your community so this is a a meeting to say what are some ideas for doing that how should that money be spent and i invite you all here three uh it's a free event from one to three on saturday thank you kevin conway followed by merlin davis good evening mayor and council members i'm here like mike turgent to just express some uh disappointment and perhaps some confusion uh despite what seemed to be some genuine enthusiasm to have a formal council discussion about an all-electric ready ordinance and despite an article in the press democrat that reported that the city's staff was drafting or at the very least looking into drafting uh such an ordinance and despite the fact that a majority of the council members seem to feel it's an easy lift and especially despite the litany of ominous media reports on recent climate research findings someone has made a decision to put this discussion on all-electric ready building off after first being scheduled for january 29th it's now listed as pending and will not be on any council agenda before february 26th and perhaps even later than that i don't know the logistics behind a decision like this who makes it and why or if and how this kind of a decision can be reversed but whatever the process is if there is a process for reversing it i feel that should happen the process doesn't demonstrate any urgency about the climate crisis it doesn't demonstrate any genuine respect for concerned citizens who want to participate in open government in a collaborative way and it seems to fly in the face of council goal number eight which is to promote environmental sustainability most importantly as more and more permits are processed more and more citizens are being denied the benefit of a future safe home so i want to repeat that as more and more permits are processed more and more citizens are being denied the benefit of a future safe home and after what we're all experiencing and going through with these fires i don't understand it i hope someone will have the sense of urgency and leadership that's needed to get this ordinance discussed sooner than late february or march it's hard to imagine a problem that deserves more urgency than this thank you erlan davis followed by keith woods this comment is about general political engagement and it's kind of hard to make both our allies and our oppressors need accountability and sometimes the line between the two is a little bit murky most of our city council is reactionary it makes no qualms about being on the side of big business and a business in general uh but julie words are one thing and votes are one thing and action is another it's great that you spouse you know positions that stand up for us it's great that you vote progressively on issues but you're also horse trading with people and doing business as usual when there are gross human rights violations right in this very chamber and out there on the streets and i think we've given you uh too much credit here publicly without saying a little bit about it but i'd really invite you there are so i just read an article a couple weeks ago about two city council members who stood with their people against big business and got arrested by their own police forces it is possible to stand with us to instead of doing business as usual down there with business people and police to be up here with us to use your bully pulpit to lead and to get hundreds and thousands of people behind our movement to improve material conditions to improve our politics to improve our democratic participation to empower our communities and ourselves individually and not just a privileged few it's great that you pester people about getting safe parking on the agenda often as often as possible as early as possible but then you participate in the vote for opening making public parking free outside of our local businesses here as in during the holidays which as far as i know has no provision for any kind of safe parking for the poor it is an obvious business subsidy you're up there doing business as usual we need to be disrupting things that oppress us we need to be standing up strongly against human rights abuses join us on this side please don't just say it do it thank you keith woods you know mayor corsea members of the council um thank you my name is keith woods i work with the north coast builders exchange but i'm here wearing a hat as president of the north point corporate center owners association i think my timing is exquisite to be here tonight to just say a belated thank you to so many within the city that helped us out with our problem and hopefully found us found a solution for those that were in the homeless encampment that we had in our property for over six months it was a terrible situation not only for employees out there property owners but for the poor people that became our neighbors for a while that um frankly i might my heart went out to them because i could see how difficult life had become i want to single out a few people for addressing the problem with respect with dignity for not only those of us who worked out there but the people that were our temporary neighbors out there at the risk of leaving somebody out i want to single out all of the people in the city manager's office the city attorney um kelly kajkendall and uh david guine the david who doesn't look like a really smart accountant uh i mean that david just to be clear uh and the police department had a difficult difficult job and i know you were hamstrung for a while and what you could and couldn't do and i learned a lot about the whole situation what we're faced with homelessness in the area two things stood out for me that i want to share with you one the homeless issue as i got to know so many of them across the street and in our neighborhood i began to realize homelessness is not your problem it's not just government's problem this is a societal problem that we've got to do something about it's gotten so serious not just for people who are affected like business owners like us that's not the problem the problem's got to be addressed not by just you but good nonprofit organizations the business community groups like ours we've got to fix this because i met more nice people across the street that deserve better than the life they're leading and it's not your fault it's all of ours for what we've created the second thing i learned it is grossly unfair to refer to the homeless as if it's one big amorphous group it's made up of individuals most of them were really good most of them were really good people in our neighborhood who were as uh troubled by the few that caused problems as we were uh let they're not just the homeless they are people temporarily without shelter and they deserve our respect and help for years to come and we want to be a part of that anyway i'm just here to say thank you for the attention you gave to us and in particular kelly david jenny linholms the catholic charities and the police department so let's all work together on this problem thank you brianna i just wanted to um say that everybody here seems to be saying the same thing week after week and um while i don't feel like julie should be the one who goes to prison for this um it is arguable that you guys are all breaking the law and you should be resting your head in a cold jail cell tonight um it's sad that we can't we as a society which i use that loosely because we're not um doomed these people to to have their stuff stolen by either the cops or more aggressive people and have all their stuff thrown away that they've torturously spent weeks and months trying to just gather from what people who spend days and all of their hard-earned money trying to give to them as charity so we have this farce of charity that's going around and then just taking all that stuff away from people and and leaving them out there in the cold to get punched and have their stuff stolen in the middle of the night which happens every night the buddhas on monday gave everybody backpacking backpacks they gave out like a hundred of them and it was amazing um but like to 30 of them were stolen overnight in one night and then you have nothing again with all of your stuff that you got so yeah it's it's it's a little sad that we have this composting problem we don't know where to send our composting but we could have farms of people dealing with our yard waste here in Sonoma county keeping more money selling that compost um collecting the recycling off the side of the road forest management um it's really ridiculous that you guys have this farce of a business um and uh 48 dollars staying in our in our county when 52 go out you know at the very best so we can be making more stuff and being a better Sonoma county that the rest of the world looks to for agricultural and cultural um you know just moving forward it's it's that progress um we're not very progressive right now we're regressive and it's sad and again my favorite word is disgusting um it's really disgusting to see what's going on in Sonoma county right now and yeah again you could you should arguably be all jailed tonight unfortunately thank you moving on to uh our report items 14.1 mr mcglenn item 14.1 report review and comment on the state of california community development block grant disaster recovery draft action plan and provide direction if san aroja should request and negotiate a tubs nuns fire recovery state sub recipient status dave guine director of housing community services presenting council members this is an mouth full of a title of report but this follows up on the study session from earlier this afternoon so you heard previously what the city of san aroja's study shows as an unmet need post disaster this is the this is a draft action plan provided by the state on how to take the first steps to address the recovery and so we're going to walk through what is an action plan what what's it contained and then close with a discussion on whether we should seek sub recipient status or not based on some fresh information we have from late last week so matt sure thanks dave so first word uh define what an action plan is and and what is in front of the public right now for comment essentially once congress authorizes funding under cdbg dr community development disaster grant disaster recovery a federal register is issued so this goes out outlining basically the relevant disaster the methodology that will go into actually spending the money and also calculating unmet need which we covered earlier the grantees and the associated allocations that will make up the grant so in this case after the event the state of california was one of these grantees under the federal register and essentially hud requires an action plan to be developed as part of this program so hcd housing community development at the state level has gone through this process and has come up with essentially an action plan or what i would call a blueprint for the grant it is not going to give you all of the answers as to how the the program will run it is basically a starting point for or a strategy for how that grant will operate it will tell you where the money is going what programs are eligible and it will give you some initial guides and rules and regulations on how the grant will operate it'll also tell you where the national objectives that we mentioned earlier so how it's going to impact low to moderate income blight and urgent need and it's also an evolving document it's going to change over time through an amendment process and as the recovery revolves and there's a lot of different reasons why amendments can occur but it's definitely a living document throughout the course of the recovery as part of the process there's a public comment period so once the federal register is initiated the timeline starts essentially grantee has 120 days under this federal register to produce the action plan within that timeline 30 days are required for the document to be out for public comment and this would to basically incorporate any comments that are coming in from the public that could be coming from individuals or could be coming from bodies like yourselves but essentially anyone is able to review and comment on the document hcd will then review those comments adjudicate them and determine whether or not they're going to alter the document based upon those comments received all those will actually go in in some shape or form so you'll see those but they will certainly be adjudicated not all of them will impact the actual draft that will go to HUD for approval in terms of the actual action plan for this event they're in within the federal register there was a geographic distribution for the most damaged or distressed areas and basically that what that means is that 80 percent of the entire grant has to be spent or allocated in those areas which the city was one there are a number of different zip codes there but I think as you saw in the earlier presentation the city was certainly majorly impacted in this event as it relates to the other areas within the state that are eligible under the under the grant but 80 percent of the funding has been in this in the action plan allocated across those areas essentially there were three major programs that were designed in the action plan again this is the initial blueprint for how the grant will be spent there was an owner owner occupied program that will be run administered and implemented at the state level 46.47.6 million there was a multifamily housing program of 67.7 million and then there was also an infrastructure program of 3.5 million which was set aside to be solely used for the local match through FEMA's public assistance program. Mr. Hochstein excuse me just a minute folks can you take your conversations outside so we can hear the presentation thank you. In one last note if you're if you're doing math on this there'll also be a 5 percent administration fee or administration set aside to administer the program the state that which the state is identified in the action plan so that's that is the ceiling for what HUD allows for the grantee to set aside for administration of the grant and this is you know your grant management and compliance and monitoring but that's also part of the the overall allocation in terms of the city and how this impacts specifically in terms of the owner occupied program that again will be state run state implemented that will be application driven so individuals that are impacted by the event can apply for this service and the state will will design a program set up an application process for people to apply for that program and they've set a program cap of 150,000 for each of those applicants essentially so that what that means for the city is that there's no specific set aside for this program but city residents can apply based upon their need in terms of direct allocations the city was identified as for 38.4 million of the multifamily housing program uh so the uh hcd essentially had a a calculation using the FEMA individual assistance application data to try to develop or understand where the volume was coming from in trying to make that determination and so that's detailed in the action plan but the city's portion of that particular allocation is 38.4 million and then on the infrastructure match program the city was not specifically called out the county was allocated 1.2 million of the 3.5 million and again that was based upon this hcd's unmet needs that they did as part of the action plan process so we inserted a slide summarizing the san rosa housing trust affordable housing pipeline just to make a point that this is based on the most recent notice of funding availability the housing authority ran this past july there were nine projects remaining totaling just over 900 units in a local match need of 45 45 million dollars and so this is in addition to two projects that the housing authority already funded that would be lantana 48 units and parkwood the acquisition of 56 units and it's in a it does not include the crossing excuse me the crossing on astens with the dedication this thursday but we just wanted to include this to demonstrate that with this resource we can move some of these projects forward thanks just a quick question on that um do we need to identify the projects that this would be used on in advance no it would be staff it would be staff's recommendation that when we execute our standard agreement with the state to receive this this resource that we would meet with the council and go through another notice of fund avail funding availability process and ofa based on basic criteria that you seem important one key factor would be project readiness developer expertise expertise and then the level of affordability but there could be other categories the council may want to consider and that would be your decision whether you wanted to run the process yourself or dedicate that to the housing authority thank you so this slide is designed to try to identify some of the advantages and challenges of of where the city will sit as it relates to how the action plan was designed so as i mentioned that owner occupy program would be state run and implemented and administered but in the action plan the city is identified as a sub grantee or sub recipient those are interchangeable terms in terms of HUD and so there will be some responsibilities from from a city perspective as it relates to that status some of the advantages are as Dave just pointed out you'll be able to select the projects where you want to use those fund those funds and not actually be told where to spend them so that's that's definitely an advantage there is also your you have an allocation a direct allocation that is communicated to you and that will be part of a standard agreement that the city will enter with hcd and that dollar total will be locked in so you won't be necessarily seeing reductions or things like that over time which can occur if you're not in that particular status the last point that we have up here based upon i think Dave's going to talk a little bit about the meeting that we had with hcd will probably not hold i think hcd is planning to serve in that administration capacity but the city will still be responsible for monitoring compliance as based on so hcd will come in in a monitoring compliant role evaluating assessing that the city is is meeting the the letter of the agreement and so that that can be in other cases that we've seen the subrecipient can't have that role but that will not necessarily be the case here the big thing on the challenge side just from implementing this piece is capacity just making sure that you have the resources the skills to manage the the 38 million and anything that comes through the infrastructure program over time and so that's a you know typically a five six-year timeline so that is a significant can be a significant burden from a capacity perspective and then i also just mentioned once you enter into this agreement once the city enters into the agreement you are subject to that monitoring compliance and that can create an additional burden on the city in terms of managing the overall dollar total so typically once we go through that we're we're asked how's that how's that funded and so HUD through this program does have a ways to pay for services depending upon how the subgrantee designs their their program or how they're going to implement the program but there is typically a maximum of five percent of the total award that can be set aside for administration costs hcd has identified that in the action plan and i think the plans to serve in that capacity across all of the programs this city however in this case with the subgrantee agreement we'll be able to categorize up to 15 percent of of the 38 million for what would be called project delivery so anything related to the list that was just shared in terms of getting those projects up and running you'll be able to use a 15 percent fee set aside essentially to pay for those types of services so there's there's really no you know out of pocket if you will the program is designed to cover services related to actually implementing programs unfortunately in all of these cases that detracts from the total dollar amount it's not on top of anything that has been allocated it comes out of the allocation to pay for those services so we have a two we have a two-part recommendation the first is with the mayor's help collect the city council as a legislative body any any comments you wish staff to submit to hcd regarding the action plan and then also the consideration and discussion of whether we should request subrecipient status and since this went to print and in further discussions with hcd and we have a representative here tonight is is that of the three programs we you just saw owner occupant housing multifamily housing and infrastructure where the city of santa rosa would be treated as a subgrantee for multifamily and infrastructure in other words we would receive a agreement with the state to operate multifamily and run our own program system so long as we follow the block grant rules which we know how to do and we could apply directly for infrastructure projects related to water and water recovery so it would be just the owner occupant program that you would be considering tonight and it would be our recommendation that we work with the state to help them be successful that our local residents are made aware of it when that program is rolled out and just monitor it from there and if there are issues come back and have that discussion at a later point so that concludes our presentation be happy to answer any questions thank you let's start with questions mr. tibbetts i'll go all the way to the end thank you mayor this is great dave i want to ask you on slide six if you had kind of a rough idea of how many units all of those projects combined represent currently based on their performance it represents 981 units 981 units that's fantastic i'm really excited about that okay include the delivery project delivery is that another term for administration administration costs correct yes and just as a note we have five years to expend the money on multifamily projects and infrastructure projects okay that's my only questions i have some comments later but thank you mr. schwedhelm thank you miss mayor so just on while you're on slide six 981 units what is um because this is federal money are there restrictions as to let's say there are some undocumented residents that would be moving into some of these locations are there any restrictions from hug saying no no it if you're not eligible to apply for federal funding would it limit the the type of folks who could actually be occupants that some of this funding help produce yeah we're told it would not be limited to that so long as the rental units are constructed within the city limits to help city residents renters who were displaced as a result of the fire so who's going to be occupying those locations would the city of santa rosa be selecting who those renters are typically we have the property owner do the selection and qualifications of the income eligibility and are those names provided to hud or fema if the renter registered for fema individual assistance we would have that information but it is not a requirement for these projects to go forward so let's say if they didn't is there any reason that the city would provide a name of someone and again i'm going back to our undocumented population that we know were affected by this and we're not eligible for fame of funding if some of this this funding actually built multi-family housing and i know there's a concern that those names i don't you know some members of our community don't want the federal government to have know where they're living would we be obligated to provide that name the hud rules as they currently stand is at least one member of the household has to be a us citizen in order to qualify for a rental unit and so you're saying that would also be applying to this i believe yes okay if we could get clarification on that because i know there are some members of our community actually with our set aside housing vouchers where i know at least one case where they have not accepted that because of that very fair well well i just saw a nodding head from manager from the state hcd so pretty confident okay and then regarding the owner occupied so the application process do we have any idea how the the state will be prioritizing who gets the funding and it's my understanding that once the money is gone it's gone so how is that prioritization going to be established and when would we know i i will invite manzier i i'm going to slaughter his last name i'll let him introduce himself to go through that part good evening mr. mayor members of the city council my name is mazi our movisage from the state housing community development department the state is proposing in our draft action plan to prioritize the owner occupied program in four tiers so the first tier would be residents that were living in the most impacted and distressed areas which covers sonoma county and are also low moderate income individuals the second tier would be anyone in the covered regions for the two disasters covered by these funds that are also low moderate income the third tier would be residents that are living in the most impacted distressed areas of all income ranges and then the fourth tier would be any of the residents living in any of the geographies covered at any income level the one caveat is that we will also prioritize a family that has any family members with accessibility issues to the top of the tier they qualify for so if there were a tier one individual or household accessibility would move them to the top of the list and the goal is to spend the money down as we go and down these tiers until we run out of money so could theoretically tier one criteria extinguish all the funds we don't know sir we don't know that's why part of the state's action plan proposes to do a survey to get an understanding of what's the lay of the land right now what is the real demand so until then we won't know and then i believe i read words up to 150 000 are there other dollar amounts and how is that going to be decided if it's not the maximum amount how will that be decided it's a particular calculation of ensuring no duplication of benefits this is a federal requirement so we start with whatever your gap is and then reduce whatever a FEMA or SPA or personal finances you'll be able to put in and that identifies your gap okay and then in regards to the infrastructure when will we know how that process will be set up who makes the decision i don't know if it's for hcd or the the action plan is a prioritizing infrastructure needed to develop housing that's the fema pa match we're proposing in the action plan so one point million is not that far with what i believe the need to be in sonoma county so how would they be prioritizing if the state of the county has got something in the city and the city of sonoma they all have equal needs in 1.2 millions and i'm not guessing will go very far this is one of the issues that we're going to have to work on as we move forward there are very limited funds we want to acknowledge that these dollars are not going to be able to make everyone whole everybody's methodology is identifying a billion dollars worth of unmet needs and we're talking about 124 million so the state is prioritizing putting roofs over folks heads and the pa match for infrastructure is intended to support that so in the in the public comment council member i'm hoping that the council will um emphatically urge the state to look at the data that we've we have uncovered in the gap between what was allocated and what the need was and go out and request additional funds to help address these categories across the board and so those are the two separate conversations we're having here because this by the 124 million it's basically how do we want to cut up that by and then what i'm hearing you saying you're anticipating an interest on the council say that we need additional funding to meet the additional unmet needs of our community correct great those are all the questions i have right now thank you miss combs thank you i appreciate it um so if i've understanding correctly with regard to the owner occupied housing program there's tiering does the multifamily housing program have similar tiering for example would a tenant who was displaced in santa rosa have a priority over a tenant who was displaced somewhere else in an affected region the action plan currently does not speak to tiering in the multifamily program when we come back to the council on a draft notice of funding availability and the council wanted to add some additional conditions we could certainly do so at that time it mentions low to moderate do you intend to include very low extremely low when you say low or are you saying low because you're using that low as a term of art again we could do and target anything with the notice of funding availability preference for homeless individuals extremely low typically when we rate and rank applications for the housing authority we look at the level of affordability the depth of affordability in the type of client okay the vulnerability index i beg your pardon do we use the vulnerability index as well we haven't in the last nofa we had we did not okay i would be interested in that and in making sure that our santa rosa homeless and our santa rosa displaced have higher priority than others without eliminating them completely do we have plans to provide assistance for applying for the owner occupied housing program i've i've seen programs where individual homeowners are expected to know and understand how to do something and that can be really tough i'd be happy to take that one in the state's draft action plan we're indicating that um but there will be case managers to actually help the homeowners walk through a very complicated procedural process is that does that fall to the state to fund or does that fall to the city to fund the state this is part of the centralized owner occupied program okay you mentioned that the fema infrastructure match program in our notes initially says allocated jointly to sonoma county in the city but later mentioned the 1.2 million going to the county so is it going to the county or is it in some way coming jointly again i think it's it's it's ambiguous in the action plan i would request that the council um uh direct this direct the state to take into consideration damage within the within the city limits as when directing this particular resource okay now i had mentioned previously i'm having a little trouble telling what i was supposed to say at the earlier study session and what i was supposed to ask about here um i had asked at the earlier study session with regard to infrastructure about our landfill which has had so much dumped in it because of the additional waste that we have significantly shortened the life of our landfill is that taken into account when fema does the infrastructure match program no okay i would i would like to urge that we um look at a variety of gaps including that one because that seems to me to be a substantial cost i'm not seeing in here where i thought i would see resilience or mitigation measures is that which category has the resilience and mitigation measures the resilient and mitigation measures are coming out under a separate federal register set of instructions for the 88 million we anticipate that to be out in a month or so so then that's where that uh discussion would lie so i thought cdb gdr included resilience and infrastructure is this a piece of cdb cdb i believe council members you could give instruction to the state to take that into consideration what the state has proposed is an action plan to meet um uh the particular program which they've identified as the most pressing as the individuals tried to to struggle with rebuilding um so that is that is open i believe for consideration there will be additional monies to to address mitigation or resiliency but you could at this point provide instruction for the state or comment on the state to include that in a individual home i would certainly hope that the state would look at hazard mitigation programs like um buyout or relocation as well as uh improvements in building materials and ensuring uh better fire safe construction uh the the typical example is the special venting system um that costs extra um because it doesn't seem to me to make sense to speed up to build houses that will burn down as easily as the last set did uh that doesn't make sense to me it makes sense that if we're going to have additional funds coming in let's mitigate and make more resilient while we're doing it um thank you very much i appreciate it mr vice mayor thank you mr mayor i actually wanted to start by picking up a thread that council members what elm started uh you mentioned the four tiered system for the funds and council members what elm asked specifically whether or not you could exhaust the funds in tier one and never you actually even have a chance to go down to tiers two three and four uh there's an implied question there about timeline because i can guarantee you if you gave us enough time we would be able to exhaust any funds you could allocate to us within each of those tiers is there a timeline that you're looking at for the delivery of these funds and for projects to be identified to spend those funds on we have a total of six years to spend these dollars whatever's left over goes away so um we will be diligently monitoring where expenditures are happening and moving the monies around i think this is what matt was referring to as the amendments to the action plan um we are um learning from our compatriots in florida and texas that have done this quite often that um you know they're up to a dozen amendments to their action plan and they're only a few years into it so this is one of those evolving things that's going to go on we have to see what the demand is um before we can move any of those monies around and if you could just for a little bit of clarity six years to have the funds allocated to the city to have the shovels in the ground or to have the construction done six years to spend the money so spent not just encumber i want to uh get back to the five percent really fast uh for owner occupied housing uh does the state take five percent from the administrative fee as we would be able to spend out of it for multifamily and for the third category for the infrastructure does the state take that five percent whoever spends the five percent for admin is for general program purposes but if you are actually working on a project then you can use the project delivery cost which is like a much higher percentage at this point the um the owner hoc program will be run at a centralized level but the infrastructure and the multifamily will be run at the local level so that's where we anticipate the funds are going to be made available okay great no that may make sense i appreciate that uh when it comes to uh the two sections where we are potentially requesting subrecipient status i heard that the state will still have oversight uh and uh compliance over the project does that mean that the state then takes on the liability if something is out of compliance ultimately we've heard horror stories where six seven years down the road fima comes back and says we actually shouldn't have given you those dollars give them the give us the dollars back who has the liability if we are out of compliance in that scenario the HUD team has made it very clear that the book stops at hcd so if there is a non-compliance issue and repayment issue it's at the state level the state might then take action but we are fully responsible for every single dollar of the dr money great i want to echo my colleagues comments uh towards resiliency the landfill and possible i believe what was quoted earlier in the conversation was the neighbor program and lot next door program i'd be interested in us having a conversation about that as well i understand that that is likely to come with the 88 million for resiliency but i'd like us to have that conversation and then my final and i keep asking this of staff is obviously this is a very imperfect plan it's a shell which is great and we've got to get moving on it understanding that we'll be coming back and asking for additional resources later and this is more of a question for the city manager does this put us in a position where it's possible for the federal government or the state government to at the end of this this a great the most affected areas have accepted what our plan was we're going to move on to other disasters that have happened or do you think we are actually still in a strong position to be able to continue to argue for additional unmet need i think earlier today and it was and again i i think i said earlier i think what would be very helpful is the council would give explicit direction based on the unmet need analysis that hagerty has has put forward for the city to direct staff to work with the state to request additional resources based on our findings and unmet need so i think that these are too concurrent these are two parallel tracks that we need to engage on and i think frankly because of the likelihood of in the next few months additional dr money might be becoming available because of the disasters unfortunately in the northern california and southern california area that that that would be helpful for us and provide clarity to the state that that this is exactly where you want us to go great thank you so much a couple questions on the the mitigation 80 million dollars separate second that's going to require another separate action plan from the state to use that money and what's the timeline for that we don't know yet until the federal register is published and gets the clock going we've gotten some indications that it might happen in mid december okay and that would be a similar time clock as to what the hundred twenty four million dollars was we're assuming that yes i just remind council that we for the august action plan we had been told throughout the summer that would be may june july august yeah i would not be surprised if it does not go into next year so it's been suggested that we request the ability to implement programs such as buying buying property and and not rebuilding on it to to prevent future fires if we were able to do that would be would we be restricted to only buying properties from people who met the income criteria 70 of the funds must be spend in a way that benefits low moderate individuals so there is a little bit of a wiggle room more importantly these funds can only go to pay for documented impacts from the disaster so i think it's a it's a double con combination of who was impacted and then an income level okay there's also a suggestion that we put certain requirements on multifamily housing that we had included in the in the goals that we had for our our measure in bond housing bond that failed in november such as transit oriented development income restricted net zero energy those type of things would we be able to put those restrictions on on housing that's created by these funds absolutely for the multifamily part this is locally driven the locals are going to select the project with the criteria that they see fit for their community so we will follow your lead on that what we will be checking for is the project is compliant with cdbg dr requirements okay and we would do that through the nofas as you were saying before all right any other questions at this point i've got a few cards here george uberty followed by peter churnoff is george still here well he is one second oh man uh thank you council members y'all doing your best but this chamber to sleep i don't know that it's gonna work though um i don't know if you were listening to the public speakers they're very upset they're very upset i heard jail time and i heard accountability and then i was listening to the experts from the state about the cdbg funds i am so glad we're talking about it because i also heard things like cap you know five percent cap on what you guys can pay yourselves to deal with the homeless problem you know 70 has to go to the homeless has to go to people who actually need this money right we cannot just pay a bunch of bureaucrats to administer something that never actually ends up helping anyone uh now to that effect i've got right here this is from housing opportunities for people with aids right that's a cdbg program this is from february 22nd of this year right now this money has a cap on it 15 percent public services uh 10 percent planning and administration right uh right here i see 249 520 and 31 cents that's 56.63 of the funding that's capped at 15 percent going to planning and administration i think i also heard compliance did i not that did i hear that monitoring and compliance let's see i'm also got public services 198 980 that's 42.76 for something that's capped at 10 now subtotal for housing 16 791 that's 3.61 housing opportunities for people with aids who do you think benefited the most from that the people with aids that don't have anywhere to sleep or the people who are supposed to administer that program i don't think it's a mystery and i don't think that the people who are supposed to administer that program are confused of all did we accidentally pay ourselves 52 percent of this money i don't think anyone in this room is confused about what those numbers mean i heard jail time from these people i heard these people no longer worried about hurting your feelings no longer putting up with this good cop bad cop a little show that you're putting on for us right there is no way for you to not know what happened to this money i think you know exactly whose pocket it went into and i think we need to stop pretending like you're the good guys all right january 26 you guys want to do something about this january 26 at the arling francis center i've looked up the police organizations that you can call on these people it's taken me years to do it but i've done it you want to get something done about it january 26 arling francis center show up let's put these people behind bars peter turnf followed by steve vertebal okay i'm here to voice my opposition to this uh fema and federal monies i mean we're talking a treasonous murderous userist run fed an irs that steals billions from california then offers us a pittance by comparison and take a look at the area down there that table right in there in particular one two three four five people we're not allowed to go down there we're not allowed to use the bathrooms that we pay for but they do and these five people probably make more money off our taxes than most everybody here in the audience put together twice these are the type of people that will buy these homes and then rent them out and mexican families but two to three or four families will split one house and be charged up the yaya the way they are now nothing changes financially we give away our power and financially most of us are on fumes while the thievery system operates by deception and none of this money this 124 that million is going to be for those in the most need right so a plan that works pulling corruption to its knees i am peter i'm the brother with the keys all my grunt days all vets all sonoma county all law enforcement be commanded to cease paying your mortgages and rents for a minimum 40 days if not for two months after 40 days after two months then we all agree that will pay 25 percent of what it was before the system has no recourse law enforcement will not arrest you they'll probably applaud you and sonoma county warriors will lead the way for all california so that all teachers all city courts city county state workers can then go to a 20 hour work week and make more than they did before we just opened up 340 000 new jobs and the Mcgrunt these are not stupid people they know about oppression so do veterans cease purchasing at the malls and the stores that have chinese slave labor products we're maintaining our own oppression cease the corruption maintaining all war both foreign and domestic arise free of all compromise and be overcoming being truly majestic for what does christmas represent the massacre of christ the power the true power and the light that the world has sought the heist it's a well gonna hand the rail no mass trabajo no master schools and show the world we're no longer their fools we're the most powerful people on the planet it's time to stand together and be standing on granite and then the city council will be able to do the right thing and law enforcement under the u.s constitution will be able to do the right thing and be glad for it and i've given you as long as Leonard paltier stays in prison without the 40 day strike and the u.s constitution you all remain in this mess thank you authority is mine to say as i do because the authority is yours to make it come true thank you mayor corcy and members steve thank you mr turnoff mr burlbel mr burlbel we're gonna take a five minute break can we let folks back in i'm gonna call the meeting back to order thank you everyone for your patience we have a lot of a lot of items on the agenda tonight a lot of important business to do we would like to get through this i'm sure all of you would like to get through this and i just ask that everyone show a little patience and courtesy to each other and we will get through this agenda tonight mr burlbel you were speaking on item 14.1 and i invite you to proceed thank you mayor corcy and members steve burlbel with the transportation land use coalition we favor compact growth downtown transit oriented development appeals to us and we're glad to hear that it's part of this program i was a little concerned when you raised the question about the split between city and county funding and that that has not yet been resolved we are concerned that in response to the displacement of the fires a lot of people have moved away from the city center and they're tempted to locate in the county we would not like to see these funds promote that sort of a response we would like to see people relocate back into the city as soon as possible so that that concern that that has not been resolved bothers us a little bit and hope we get it resolved quickly thank you thank you it's all the cards i have on this i'll bring it back to the council and i'll just start with asking question related to mr burlbel's statements there my understanding is that the 38.5 million dollars for multifamily housing is for the city of santa rosa there's a separate um allocation if you will in the in the state's action plan specifically for sonoma county is that correct that is correct thank you um mr mcglenn you're asking for direction from us on two items here one is the decision to be a a sub recipient for the multifamily housing funds 38.5 million dollars approximately and the other is to provide direction on um what we should be asking for within the action plan itself and for the future uh i know you've been taking notes uh i think that what i would like to suggest is that we ask for what we believe is the unmet need in santa rosa and and just to get clarification again that unmet need as determined by our consultants who have done a lot of work on this issue is 300 million dollars is that correct that's the figure yes that's correct then that's what we should be going after uh you know i know that that funds are tight all over but we have an unmet need the programs are designed to to fill those unmet needs so let's go after every penny that we can for the residents of this community i'll just finish my my own comments here and that's that i think that we should be sub recipients on the multifamily funds i'm i'm okay with the the state taken on the responsibility for the single family home portion of this and the infrastructure part of this i i think that the infrastructure portion is is woefully underfunded but i have a hard time trying to find money elsewhere which would have to come out of housing funds to to do that so i think that infrastructure we're going to have to be looking for the next next round so just just a point of clarification the the the sub recipient status extends to the the the small infrastructure pot as well oh i'm sorry right and and so what i would just be urging is that that that be better defined and reflect the actual damages and if it's going to be tied to housing and housing starts that that be reflected similarly to the what was allocated in the multifamily conversation so that that's where we would like to have some instruction to the state to to consider santa rosa's placement as a sub recipient on the infrastructure side not just the county okay and i'm fine with that too and i'll let the rest of the council weigh in at this point mr oliver's yes i just wanted to say besides what the consultants have provided us and council has also made some comments and uh can ask questions is there anything else from your perspective that we're missing you've been living this uh every day breathing in every day what else is missing well i i think the the no i i believe that you know this is an imperfect conversation staff will be monitoring uh how exactly the state in implements the single family home program and we'll be reporting back on the results of that to the council um frequently uh because we may be requesting consideration from the state depending on how that develops in revisions so um we're not going to be stepping away from that where there's still going to be staff time and resources devoted to um as i said earlier we trust our partners but we often have to be in a verification business as well so start with mr rogers thank you mr mayor just one more quick question on the infrastructure piece uh have we do we have any movement on sidewalks and trees being included as eligible measures in infrastructure um one of the things that we're going to be debuting very soon and uh the ad hoc there were rebuild and recovery ad bar got a little preview of this is uh the um the dashboard around those particular issues they are still in the appeals process we've had we had a constructive conversation with fema i will say constructive and instructive um but i won't say that it has any bearing on the final determination those are still still in an appellant position at this point and so for the 300 million that the the mayor quoted does that include sidewalks and trees yes it does include that great uh then i'm i'm fully supportive uh both of the subrecipient status for those two categories as well as asking for the additional funds this comes thank you does the 300 million also include the landfill or um any of the mitigation programs we might have been discussing again the landfill is something we'll have to evaluate we can we can look at that and bring it back for future conversation as i said before the last conversations had been involving the state um and and we'll provide an update to council um and then as we get closer to the mitigation uh monies obviously there's going to be another action plan that's required out of the mitigation and um there are some topics of conversation to be had on that funding pool so within housing our unmet need within housing alone was 97 million or roughly 97 million i'm having trouble seeing what's being offered i'm trying to figure out what the gap is i'm seeing 3.38.4 million for multifamily um is is that where the gap is is it the 97 to the 38.4 or does the does this not it how do i include the owner occupied housing program in trying to figure out the gap there so we we think we have a 97 million dollar need and i'm not seeing how to how to get there yeah so the 97 million is calculated using hud's methodology so we when we walked through the the damage uh categories there's actually a multiplier uh in the federal register that we used against the totals in each of those categories to calculate that number um so that's the unmet need how the 38 million was allocated is a separate methodology that's in the action plan so for owner occupied housing do i subtract the 97 from the 38 from the 97 to get an idea of what's likely to be i think i think you could do that but i would i would say this is an ongoing conversation i know the consultant teams with the county the city and the state had a conversation we would just like some ability to come back and and craft a statement about that need that we'll share with council but in its totality um it this is an iterative process and the first stab at it is to get to the 300 million dollar marker and potentially widen this as a statewide ask i think those are the part of the conversations that are going to need to unfold as i said we are surely not the only entity that has been significantly mis underestimated and i think you know once again as you heard this afternoon earlier um the nature of of how fema does its calculation on on um flood and hurricane is the most frequent um ways of doing business for them unfortunately we're playing catch up in and this community unfortunately is setting the standard um through which other communities are going to be able to take advantage of this of what we've learned in the experiences that we've brought to the table so it really behooves us to do it very well for the people who are following in our footsteps in our unfortunate footsteps absolutely thank you and um i am i am um neutral on whether the owner-occupied housing program should be state-run or not that's fine i like that the multifamily housing program would be city-run i hope that we at least include input from the housing authority if we don't make the decision be the housing authorities decision i understand council might like to be making some of these decisions but i think we need to have input from our housing authority um is it possible under the multifamily housing program to include um tiny home villages or something similar to that um briefly yes if in the NOFA we can describe what our priorities might want to be okay so i think it might might be a good idea um and again i i want to be clear that i think we have to have clarity on if the allocation is going to the county for infrastructure or not and what's coming to the city the city has significant infrastructure needs separate from the county's infrastructure needs and uh i don't know this million doesn't doesn't even buy us a mile a road thank you mr schwedhelm thank you if i can just get clarity mr. mayor i heard you say two separate things and i thought there was like three things one the 38.5 million and the 1.2 million comments on that subrecipient status comments on that and then those unmet needs the difference between um this amount of money in the 300 million that we've identified with a haggity report do i have that correct and i'm asking because i think i'm i'll be making those motions is that your understanding of that that's that would that would be a we'd become staff would be very comfortable with that motion those three separate items okay and then um david with the project name these different projects here i think at least one of them is permanent supportive housing are any others permanent supportive housing and again i'm thinking with we have the heap funding that councilmember combs and i'll be having part of the discussion and there is some crossover with what i think we're hoping to accomplish with this right one of the projects caritas village is considered to be permanent supportive housing there are some units set aside uh proposed to be set aside at ridge point to be the same but again with the notice of funding availability if that was a priority for the council to develop more permanent supportive housing we could make that known to the development community so right now again given the short relatively short in building things six years to spend this money are there other permanent supportive housing projects in the pipeline that are not here not to my knowledge okay thanks that's all i have it for right now now mr tibbitz thank you mayor i apologize is anybody from hud here tonight no okay well i want to start off by just saying thank you um this is quite a gift i don't think it's every day that 38.5 million dollars drops into your lap for affordable housing which we all know that we really need i also want to thank you sir from hcs for for being here and helping us with what is an ongoing issue in this community um 988 units in this pipeline is is no small amount of housing and i think that if we can clear that pipeline uh we're gonna have a noticeable positive impact on our community's housing crisis and i think that that overarching goal needs to be what this council strives to do not only is it what the community needs to be a huge achievement for this council uh if we need to find additional funding to supplement that amount we need to do that um but or as council member schwedhelm said really looking at some of the heap funds and making sure that we're not um having overlap in funding but it seems to me like it's an achievable goal as far as the funding is concerned i'd really like to see us focus on multifamily housing uh for the sole reasons that um i think that's how we are going to achieve the most number of units constructed and probably return the best return on investment for this local match dollar that we're going to be putting forward um as for the state of california uh i would really humbly request to the state that they do provide more support not just to this community but other communities throughout the state that are disaster ravaged um i'd like to remind all of us that the state has a 14.8 billion dollar reserve right now and to me governments have reserves for catastrophic events we used our reserve for that very purpose and um and i would hope that uh since we are a part of their jurisdiction that they will take that into consideration when we ask for that additional unmet need um so i just want to thank the folks for putting this together the consultants this is going to be good for santa rosa i'm sorry mr schwedhelm you you do have this item and i'll put it back in your lap okay thank you so let me try doing it uh three separate motions let me start with the first one um i'd make a motion that the city uh encourage the state to grant subrecipient status to the city of santa rosa for both the multifamily housing and the female infrastructure funding source based on their action plan second do we need to vote on each of these this caliber that would be the most helpful to to to vote separately any votes please and that passes unanimously and then make another motion to accept and encourage or start with the words here basically to accept these um the state of california housing and community development department's draft action plan um as it pertains to the city of santa rosa and funding coming to our jurisdiction second is that open then to a future amendment as stated um i think that that you should you might want to add that that caught us all would you as a friendly amendment consider absolutely as possible with possible future amendments with the anticipated future amendments there another question another question mr tibet i just had a quick comment it doesn't need to be an amendment but on the process side of things i too am glad that the city is going to be the ones administering this 38.5 million david but um i would ask that you include the council in the NOFA process and setting the criteria as well looking at you know pda downtown those will be important i got to do that when i first joined the council it was a great experience so just a friendly suggestion we have a motion in a second your votes please is that motion clear to staff um i i heard council member tibet so i'm not taking that as part of the motion right now i'm taking that as a comment yes your votes that passes unanimously and then make a motion that we draft a letter requesting the state of california's housing and community development department to increase the funding for the city of santa rosa based on our haggity report and the processes included within that report so i would urge i think what i would say is urging the state of california more more than just hcd um to pursue additional funding on behalf of the city of the santa rosa based on our unmet need report exactly what i was going to say second can you vote please that passes unanimously thank you all very much mr mcglenn 14.2 item 14.2 report memorandum of understanding with sonoma county junior college district and scjcd associated students for city bus unlimited access pass program for santa rosa junior college students urie coslyn transit plan are presenting thank you council good evening i'm urie coslyn transit planner for the transit division within transportation public works um we're here before you tonight on this matter the srjc students in 2017 passed the student transportation fee to pay for unlimited transit ridership programs within the sonoma county transit mr coslyn pull that microphone down just a little bit so thank you sir the srjc now has agreements in place that allow srjc students to use not only city bus but sonoma county transit and petaluma petaluma transit by simply showing an srjc id to the driver when boarding the bus council authorized a pilot program for the fall 2017 spring 2018 and summer 2018 and fall 2018 semesters the program is grown to provide to providing 4500 rides per week during the car fall 2018 semester the proposed mo u would initiate a new agreement moving the program out of its pilot phase and extend the program benefits to the srjc students through june 2020 with an estimated revenue of 194,000 for city bus at 84 cents per ride um this is broken out into about 59 000 for spring 2019 fall 2019 and spring 2020 semesters and then 17 000 for the summer 2019 semester we anticipate a maximum loss revenue by the city to be 25 000 if ridership exceeds expectations that being said srjc student transportation fund has may may have unobligated revenue that the city may be awarded additionally for uh for reimbursement for additional rides this graphic graph before you displays two pieces of information first it displays the weekly ridership for our three current unlimited pass programs there's the veteran unlimited ridership program that council initiated in july 2018 that's averaging about 630 rides per week and then there's the paratransit unlimited access program um this is a program for persons who are eligible to ride paratransit but due to their physical or cognitive ability um it can't rot may not be able to ride fixed route for all of their trips so this program has put in place has been in place for many years and is considered a best practice and provides riders a low cost trip option while reducing the city's overall cost ridership in this program is about a thousand per week finally the graph displays the semesters in which the unlimited program has been put in place and you can see that um in fall 2017 we were about 2 500 riders a week and again here in 2000 in fall 2018 type of there we're at um about 4 500 rides a week finally the benefits of the program um include reducing greenhouse gas emissions it's a one of the uh goals within our the city's climate action plan it provides the college college the ability to provide access to educational services for some of the county's most economically disadvantaged students it reduces parking demand at the srjc increases student access to the campus helps recruit and retain students and reduces the overall cost to attending the srjc the ridership uh through the program has uh caused city bus to have about a five percent increase at bus stops near the srjc um finally it is recommended by the transportation and public works department the council by resolution approve the mou with the sonoma county junior college district and the scjcd associated students establishing the city bus unlimited pass program for san rosa junior college students through june 30th 2020 thank you and we're prepared to answer any questions also uh the deputy director rachel leads available great thank you very much are there questions mr rogers thank you uh really quick question we had talked a little bit when we implemented this program that giving greater access for folks to ride could also potentially increase our federal funding because it increases ridership uh with this five percent increase for the the stops near the jc and overall the ridership going up have we actually seen an increase in federal funding come in as a result uh well the federal funding will lag uh a year or so we report our data and then there's a year or so lag between when your ridership hits and it has any influence in the formula but we did you know when you first raised that question we dug into it a bit and looked into the federal formula um the passenger miles traveled is a key factor that influences the funding and you you get that by uh you know um multiplying your ridership times your average tripling so it definitely has an impact but that's only about uh over about 25 percent of the funding formula and we're so small that in the global scheme of things in the country if la metro has a one percent ridership increase that's going to have a far greater impact on our uh our allocation appropriation than than anything that we can do um at that sort of lower percentage level so I think in general we would expect this increase to get washed into you know the the federal distribution of funds throughout the country um that said there are other funding programs we have where ridership is a factor uh it increases our productivity and in terms of passengers per hour on the routes the students are using and productivity is a factor in certain other funding formulas so it does help us I would say with many of our funding programs to have a ridership increase such as we're seeing from this program so understanding that you're not a research institution uh have we tried to quantify at all dollars the increase versus dollars being spent I'm not sure I totally understand the question part of the reason I ask is where where there's potential increases for as you said other places in particular where dollars are coming in based on ridership uh we obviously we've looked at veterans we've looked at students we're looking at paratransit yeah I'm interested in if we can show through some data whether or not additional investments in public transit that bring down the overall cost actually makes up for itself in bringing in additional dollars from other sources sure so we could look at that more globally over our funding sources off the top of my head and I don't want to speculate too much here but I think the caution in that is for a lot of our funding sources our big funding sources at least like federal funds and tda from the state there are other factors that are driving that form our our our funding more than our ridership so for example tda is based on sales tax so what's happening in this county with sales tax receipts is going to have a far greater impact so it can be very difficult to try to isolate the impact of our ridership uh on on some of these funding sources but happy to look at that beyond the federal funds we did dig in pretty far on that and we actually had um a consultant it's working for us another project take a look at it and the feedback was you know we're such small potatoes in the grand scheme of things that with these big operators in new york and san francisco in chicago it it becomes an exercise that you really can't pinpoint the effect but we can look at our other funding sources to get back to you with an answer yeah I understand and with the I mean with the caveat that uh I know that there's an intrinsic value to public transit and it doesn't need to be a dollars for dollars comparison I just think that it's an additional talking point about the importance of investing in public transit if we can also show that statistically sure absolutely thanks mr slayer thank you mayor um missy could you explain or remind me how the student transportation fee functions I'm actually going to turn to urie for that he's more of an expert on that than I am yes it's uh for it's a dollar for every credit so a student I think they max max is a ten dollars uh in a fee per semester for a student so if they if they're taking three credits I think it's a three dollar uh fee if they're taking 12 credits it's a ten dollar fee okay excellent thank you and did you mention that it was that there's a net cost to the city right now as far as how much are we losing I mean are we are we getting 25 000 are we losing 25 000 what's the I gotta got lost on the information highway here with the with the uh with the staff report I kind of got lost on the numbers absolutely we've tried to estimate we have an average fare box revenue so it's total revenue that we take in divided by total riders and that's about at that 84 cents 83 cents it was about 77 cents so that's what we're saying it costs uh how much money we take in for each each rider and so that's what we're charging the SRJC so by that calculation and by our estimates of number of riders uh we've identified a ceiling of 59 000 for a semester is what the SRJC will pay us because they have a limited they have a finite amount of funds um so we may provide more rides than what 59 000 will pay for them okay and that's the potential loss revenue okay I see so it's Monday the buses are still moving there's you know they're the students are getting where they need to go and it's just and we're it's this is a calculation that's what it is exactly because I was concerned about the sustainability of the program and that's real I you know it's really hard to pull something back it is disappointing to pull something back once a program is in place and people get used to it especially something as positive as this so I just want to double check on the sustainability of the program I just I'll just make one comment I think one thing we can do I mean if ridership continues at the current level if we've sort of plateaued then I think the the the financial sort of risk over the 18 month period is closer to about nine ten thousand dollars uh in terms of revenue that we wouldn't receive for rides provided um the 25 000 gets gets to be if the ridership continues to increase if we haven't plateaued yet um one thing I'm keeping an eye on is you know in the spring we apply for some uh formula funds we received from the air district this type of program fits very well within the the guidelines for that program if we get to the point over the course of this fall where we're continuing to see that ridership increase we we could build into um that grant program a piece to support this program so that we would essentially be made whole with the addition of those grant funds so when I look at this from an overall financial perspective in terms of our fair revenue I do think there are other resources we can potentially leverage um to add to what the jc can provide so I think it's very low risk I appreciate that and I appreciate the creativity of your department because that's really what it takes to to run a transit system thank you Mr. Tibbets thank you Mr. Mayor I I soon recall to when this was coming before the council about a year ago there was discussion I think largely spearheaded by nbop at the time about looking at k through 12 ridership and has any conversations happened with kind of the school districts administration about this sort of thing I mean I'm kind of looking at the success of the junior college students here and about how they you know agreed to a self-imposed fee to make this thing happen and is there an opportunity to do that with k through 12 schools and then further increase our ridership numbers and I'm also thinking about the tangential benefit one thing I hear talking about affordable housing all the time is well what about traffic and this is just you know directly running against increasing traffic it's a great program yeah we haven't had any recent conversations with the school district about that I know that that's been something that's been of interest to the community and the council for some time and it's certainly something we'd be happy to work on and look at and we'd be happy to reach out to the school district to see if there are any possibilities to move that conversation forward I think it's also something we can keep an eye out for creative ways to fund you know right now we're sort of just pulling ourselves out of our own financial challenges so you know we're getting back to a point where where we might be able to think a little bit more creatively about how to get something like that done so happy to do that and keep you posted thank you any questions I think this is a great program I don't I don't mean this question to take anything away from it at all but can any of this additional ridership be attributed to decreasing headways and increasing frequency of buses along men's senior avenue you know I certainly could I mean we provided a higher quality of service in that corridor at you know shortly before this program was instituted and I think that's been a really nice synergy and also a really nice thing that we've been able to offer the Santa Rosa junior college students a much higher level of service than what they had before in exchange for them providing this revenue for their unlimited access one thing that is is really interesting and I'll also say this you know it's a little hard to then track the impacts because we did change the whole system right in the middle of all this but you know when we look at the bus stops right around the junior college and and we see about a five percent increase this is for September year over year compared to what we had in September 2017 prior to when this program was instituted you know I think you know what I see is there's that increase in a year where partially because of the fire disaster and the newness of the new system we had about a six percent you know decrease in ridership if we're seeing an increase in those bus stops in the JC vicinity when system-wide we've had a decrease you know that's telling me that there's probably something else happening there where the benefit of the free rides is is a promoting additional ridership beyond what we have system-wide so I can't give you a forensic answer to that but that's that's kind of what we see from the data okay there wasn't any data available post reimagine free free rides that indicated any uptick well I mean I'll say this I do mean in terms of just the success of the the the new system on that corridor yeah so you know it's been an interesting experience because we implemented the new system in May 2017 right as school was getting out we had the summer we only had folks back in school for one month and then we had the fires and ridership was down 40 percent year over year in October so it's I feel like now is the point where we're starting to get back to a place where we can really make a comparison that's a legitimate comparison to make and and what we're seeing is positive so you know what I'm seeing in October 2018 is that we're back at the level we were at at October 2016 and that's that's a good thing because the downward pressure on ridership throughout the Bay Area is something that many many transit operators are seeing in terms of the ridership on route one the previous route one was caring about 10,000 riders a month the current route one is caring about 30,000 riders a month and so that a lot of that is a testament to the restructuring of the route it's a stronger design now it also has twice as much service and we're we're reaping the rewards of that on that corridor for sure so that that's very clear regardless of the reasons this is a this is a success story I have a card here from Robert Ethington Mayor Corsi members of the council it's pleasure to be here tonight to just say thank you for the partnership my name is Robert and I'm the dean of students SRJC and it's been a pleasure to work with Rachel and Yuri on this partnership it's one of the positive things there's a lot of things happening in the world right now but this is one of the positive things that students are just excited about staff and faculty so on behalf of the board of trustees the college president faculty staff and especially students thank you I walk around campus all day long and there are always students we estimate 10% of our students are using city bus now that are thankful and for our most vulnerable students this is their the reason they're in school is so that they can get back and forth using city bus and we also have a program with county so you put those two together and it is a it's a win-win it's lowering our carbon footprint it's taking pressure off our parking lots freeing up roads as as councilman Tibbets was talking about and so thank you thank you to the transportation department and your collaboration and for your support of this mou thank you thank you mr. anything to further questions or comments mr. Tibbets this is your item move a resolution of the council of the city of san rosa approving the memorandum of understanding with snow mccounty junior college district and sc jcd associated students for the city bus unlimited access pass program through june 30th 2020 and wave further reading of the text second your votes that passes unanimously thank you very much moving on from the yin to the yang 14.3 14.3 reports suspend parks march shuttle pilot on march 1st 2019 and use transportation demand management strategies to connecting downtown smart station railroad square with downtown and city parking garages yuri and rachael are back for this one good evening getting council yuri coslyn transit planner for the transit division with transportation public works prior to the initiation of the smart train the city of san rosa as well as other entities along the smart corridor we're implementing first and last mile solutions to provide the public access to the smart train to the senate council initiated a circulator shuttle through a contract award to mv for an initial year cost of 180 000 what we call the park smart shuttle started service on december 13th almost one year ago for those that haven't ridden the service it operates twice an hour from the start of smart service at 4 20 a.m until the last train at 9 38 p.m with gaps in service outside of commuter hours while also providing some coverage during the lunch hour it services six bus stops the park smart shuttle lists the south and northbound train departures and ensures that park smart riders meet the southbound train while providing connections to the northbound train the service was branded as park smart staff engage in an extensive marketing communication plan the logo as you see here was placed on vehicles signage at each bus stop there was banners at the garage 1 and garage 12 the major garage parking garages that served at the entrance within the brochure the and the sidewalks outside the the downtown smart station as well as the garage on 7th street had a large system map placed on on the concrete so that riders could easily see and find their way to where they were headed on the service staff hand delivered schedules to businesses along fourth street and downtown and railroad square schedules continue to be handed out at the smart platform and delivered to the visitor center smart ridership at the san rosa downtown station is thus far generally in line with the pre smart service estimated estimates cited in the metropolitan transportation commission's smart integration plan ridership on park smart has trended upward since service started in december 2017 with most recent october 2018 ridership slightly back down to about 15 riders per day in order to take a deeper look at the ridership staff reviewed the ridership by hour this graph displays many interesting elements in the service first displays that early morning and evening service is not productive with less than a rider an hour on average second the ridership during the 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. hours is low due to the fact that service is only provided for a very small part of that hour the service was originally designed around meeting the needs of the smart commuters based on the recently published survey data of smart ridership the peak usage in down in downtown san rosa station seems to be the midday smart rider getting off at the downtown station not not the not the commuter pattern this can be seen in the noon and 3 p.m. park smart ridership is where the spike is on those charts at first glance it appears that there may be an opportunity to reorient the hours of service to better meet a higher than anticipated smart midday ridership arriving at the downtown smart station although there is a spike in ridership during the noon and 3 p.m. hour it is rather underwhelming at about 2.5 riders per hour and it's significantly below our own benchmarks and other comparable services prior to the start of smart staff set benchmarks to gauge the success of the service in this chart you can see the first column the march through june 2018 average month is that's the park smart data so you can see the average passenger trips per month at 295 the average or passenger trips per hour at 1.2 average interest passenger trips per day and the cost per passenger trip and cost per hour and then across the chart you can see those same the same figures for paratransit oakmont and our fixed route city bus service and then to the right you can see the benchmarks that we set in the srjc srtp in 2016 there are two sets of there's two primary benchmarks related to park smart one is related to linking smart to public parking downtown of which the parking division has identified two parking permits that were originally purchased for garage 1 and 7th street to access smart via the park smart shuttle both of those permits are no longer active the second benchmark relates to the productivity of the park smart shuttle itself specifically ridership and cost as can be seen in the chart park smart service is far below city bus ridership and is even below the oakmont service the oakmont service operates in the oakmont community monday through friday even if we go back to the last slide and we see the spikes during the noon and three p.m. hour with a 2.5 ridership per hour it is still lower than the overall average ridership of oakmont which is at 3.6 per hour this suggests that even if staff reoriented the park smart hours of service around the peak smart service park smart ridership will continue to underperform the oakmont service the low ridership drives the cost per passenger trip calculation as a transit planner when i see service costs per hour that is that is the cost more than per transit service it indicates to me that this service is underperforming and that there are other lower cost solutions that could serve these limited riders based off the stop level data we can see that very few people are using the service for circulation downtown specifically looking at the santa rosa plaza and third and wilson and the courthouse square ridership on the positive side it appears that existing transit and parking services could significantly serve most of the most of the popular stops at the smart station people appear to be boarding the shuttle to get to downtown but half of those riders use other means to get back to the smart station the ridership at garage one and seven street suggests the riders are boarding here parking their cars and returning via park smart if the city were to recommend incentivize parking at a different parking lot it would seem that these riders may follow this guidance the fact that more people are getting off park smart at the transit mall maybe because it is the first stop in downtown but it also may suggest that smart riders may be comfortable using the existing city bus service the existing city bus service could serve these riders currently there's 10 city bus trips per hour that operate on third street within one to two blocks of the downtown smart station additionally transfers within a two-hour period from smart two city bus are free using the clipper card allowing smart riders to travel into downtown at no additional cost on the return trip if a rider pays for their city bus ride with the clipper card they receive $1.50 credit towards their smart fare staff have identified some reasons for poor performance of park smart and have used these as clues to suggest future transportation pilots park smart is a slightly redundant service meaning that the public could use city bus to make these same trips or utilize parking within the railroad square or the first street garage of the transit mall rather than parking at seventh street in addition the public can utilize the existing sidewalk and bicycle infrastructure and the availability of taxis lift or ubers within the downtown area all these factors likely contribute to the low utilization of park smart based on the mtc surveys of park smart of sorry based on the mtc surveys of smart ridership as well as informal conversations with smart staff we understand that smart riders are getting to the downtown smart station by walking being dropped off or driving and then parking followed by biking and then and then follow behind that by you taking transit the santa rosa's station area is a dynamic is in a dynamic phase the city is embarking on an effort to increase density smart ridership is likely to continue to increase and transportation demands within the downtown area will mature accordingly considering these dynamic factors staff seek council's approval to continue to pilot different transportation strategies to connect the railroad square and courthouse square areas while improving access to the downtown smart station staff recommend placing the replacing the shuttle by piloting different strategies under the umbrella of the park smart program one would be to offer a discounted transit commuter parking permit pilot program for garage 12 this would allow people to park near the transit mall and pay half price for parking if they consistently used smart city bus golden gate transit or sonoma county transit the parking division will bring this this modified modified pricing before council for approval number two identify public parking under highway 101 is the closest day parking to the smart station number three promote city buses 10 bus 10 buses an hour in each direction from 6 a.m to 8 p.m between downtown and the smart station through improved signage number four promote reciprocal transfer credits between smart and city bus through the clipper card five investigate the feasibility of using parking garage lot receipts as transfers on city bus and implement if found to be beneficial in order to encourage the public to park and move around downtown on transit finally promote the sonoma emergency ride home program for commuters they are busing using the bus train carpool van van pool by schooling or walking to work these strategies if approved will be in place prior to the suspension of the shuttle service staff expect the transportation options with the downtown to continue to involve beyond the proposed initial program recommendation staff will further investigate and develop the following strategies as part of the park smart program and promote and support the sonoma county tran transportation authorities expected 2019 implement implementation of a bike share program number two investigate a program using lift uber or taxi vehicles to provide first last last mile connections to the downtown smart station there is a program in place that the transportation authority of marin has with lift where there's a five dollar coupon once after the rider pays two dollars and it provides service to the smart stations within marin with the first year of program just completed tamacy strong ridership and a program cost of under ten dollars per trip and finally staff will continue to optimize city bus connections with smart looking both at out of the box solutions as well as relying on solutions that were presented during the reimagining planning effort finally it is recommended by the finance department and the transportation public works department the council by resolution direct staff to suspend the pilot park smart shuttle service effective march first 2019 and further develop a park smart transportation demand management program to pilot TDM strategies strengthening the link between railroad square and the downtown smart station in the downtown area i mean if you have any further questions thank you mr. cousin before we get to questions i want to make an announcement to the folks in the room when you use my prerogative as mayor to shuffle around the agenda after this item we'll go to item 14.7 which is the the price gouging issue so we'll do that after we get through this item council are there questions yes mr. schrader yes thanks for this report i have one question on slide 11 regarding the public parking underneath highway 101 the time of this is my understanding that well i know councils approved a project for a hotel that will be using that center there how would the construction of that project either enhance or interfere with this initial program recommendation yes that's a i was referring to the other lot two lots that are under the 101 so the parking study that was initiated took into account the construction of that hotel and so even with the construction of that hotel it's anticipated that there is sufficient parking in the railroad square area even with the displacement of those spots that are currently being occupied that is what the study suggests great thanks this comes thank you my document has a page 14 that has some alternate solutions i don't know if you have a slide with the alternate you do okay i'm not clear which if we were if we wanted to substitute an alternate solution which one would we be doing it are we able to do the suspend the pilot shuttle service or do we need to do the reduced to minimum level of service a lot under contract first our recommendation staff recommendation is to suspend the park smart shuttle service effective march first the additional slide 14 is if council decides to go in a different direction that would that provided some additional options so can we do one until march first where it's suspended completely i'm just trying to save the dollars on the program between now and march yeah internally staff looked at that and we found that the cost of reproducing the brochures retrain the drivers getting the consultant on board was was was a lift that would extend the time before we could suspend the program so that's we're not recommending that okay i wanted to understand why i wasn't getting that recommendation thank you very much other questions mr rogers thank you uh so i actually i'm privileged to be able to walk to the smart station from from my apartment so i actually don't know the answer to this where do people park i don't know that answer i do know that there are some that do park at garage one on seventh street and i've heard tangentially that there is parking impacting the neighborhoods and we know of public parking like that under highway 101 that i would assume people are using we also know that the primary way people are getting to the smart station is being dropped off and walking we know that from the the mtc surveys that that were conducted on of smart riders um but i don't i don't have that exact answer for you we could get back to you kim kim may have a little bit more insight on that yeah i'm particularly curious because when we talk about the last mile or the first mile it would seem like the most critical component is figuring out where that mile starts in order for getting people onto the train um and it's unfortunate to see i you know i really think that this would have been more successful had we not launched it right after the fire when a lot of the advertising that we were doing for folks was drowned out by additional information that was much more important that was being put out there but i'm particularly curious in the future when we talk about solving this last mile first mile problem to look at where people start that that mile from and additionally looking at smart's data on who actually is taking the smart train because to me when i look at the the first year report that was put out by smart and the average demographic was an individual who was i think it was in their early 40s makes $88,000 a year and has other public transit opportunities that doesn't necessarily always jive with me with the folks that are going to most benefit from this type of free public transit and so is there a way that we can tailor this and maybe it's something that we just can't look at until smart increases their capacity and brings down their overall rates i really do think that that's a large component of it is that the average person who would benefit from the shuttle is not actually taking the smart train because it's too expensive so i'd be interested as we bring more strategies for integrating our downtown with public transit to really look at those two components of where people come from and what those people look like and in particular if a commuter commuter solution for the last mile is actually going to be effective if that's not the people who are taking the smart train one thing i'll just offer we can check with smart you know the surveys that urie's referencing are also origin destination surveys and they've just been recently published so i'm not even sure how much smart staff has been able to sift through but there may there may be an ability to look at an origin point for riders using the santa rosa smart stations to help us better understand that market so we can certainly ask that question and see if we can provide some data yeah and i think uh from the data i think santa rosa's downtown stop was the third most used or third most utilized depending on when you looked but had a higher peak on the weekend and a lower peak during the weekday which would suggest that it's more folks coming to enjoy downtown on the weekend and not commuters other questions have a couple cards daisy pistiline and steve portable hi my name is daisy pistiline i'm the executive director of sonoma county conservation action we were involved in the drafting of the city's climate action plan and the downtown station area plan which was discussed earlier tonight for update and in the campaign that got smart passed about a decade ago and the this shuttle is something that is helping meet goals of all three of those plans and it's really important to remember that the goal of reducing our carbon footprint reducing car trips getting people out of their vehicles and helping create a well integrated transit system throughout the downtown area should be the goal of any new solution i'm glad to hear that you will be exploring alternatives and using different forms of transportation to meet the need of getting people to the train a few things to think about i have never seen one of these shuttles that i'm aware of and i've asked a few people sitting around me in the audience and and very few people had ever seen them um i've also never heard any marketing for them so i wonder how the marketing money has been utilized and whether it's been utilized in the best way possible it might make sense if the program is going to continue to think about how you could better reach the public and both people who are on smart but people who aren't yet on smart through maybe radio or newspaper ads or other ways of getting people and also thinking about um other free shuttles out there like the emory go round in emoryville it's a very brightly colored bus that has a very unique kind of signage on the outside that really stands out so when you see it go by you look at it and you say oh what's that i wonder what that is and you realize there's a free shuttle i think very few people in santa rosa are aware that there's a free shuttle linking these two areas um as we know from the downtown station area plan one of the goals of the city is to try and link railroad square with the downtown better and this can help achieve that goal um to echo what vice mayor roger said i think one thing to take into consideration would be that there are many people in the city who may not be riding smart but who could benefit from public free public transportation as is evidenced by the earlier item on the jc ridership um and so thinking about perhaps finding a solution that also integrates into the um pattern of transportation usage that people who could most benefit from free transit would also be utilizing and thinking about a more kind of um systemic solution um rather than just a one-off solution for smart alone that could best serve the community at large so thank you steve brutal well thank you mayor mayor carcane member steve brutal bow and this time i'm going to speak for friends of smart um first of all i really want to appreciate what the city bus staff is doing to look at this months ahead of the time they want to terminate the service i think the very publicity that you're getting from this conversation may change things a little bit because once you talk about taking something away people sit up and take notice and think well maybe i can use that so in the next two weeks we may find out more than we found in the last six months uh but that's just speculation uh we want to be part of the conversation for the solution here and i think there are a lot of other people that would like to be part of the conversation and i'm really happy to see the number of options that are being studied here because uh there are lots of ways to to uh to accomplish this i've ridden park smart uh about four times i've been embarrassed by being the only rider along with the driver most of those times um but uh it is a nice service uh it can be duplicated in other ways that are probably uh more effective so it's nice to have this conversation started now and uh we look forward to a fruitful solution thank you tomas else thank you and i uh echo steve's comments about the analysis um and very forthright in terms of future projection recognizing that this is a little expensive at this point um i would point out that there are projects down in the railroad square area those projects the mayor and the uh and the railroad square station property that's going to be sold and that's going to be developed and when that happens then the parking in that area from st. Vincent de paul all the way down you know is going to be impacted in the neighborhoods so the people that are riding smart and parking there and i know for a fact that that's where i park uh when i ride smart uh it's going to be impacted and there won't be that street parking available and and people will be going so i know you're going to revisit this as time goes on and as those developments occur i would just point out that maybe there's a way to do those kind of things though that if if you were to keep uh parts of shuttle or to try them would be to look at i think it's rosy the trolley thing it's very apparent you know and everybody knows uh or maybe even there are people that utilize and they're very effective just rickshaws so there were a few rickshaws that you had and people would ride the bicycle and pull that and millions of people ride those in a day and the reality is it could be done in a way that's that's uh comfortable and yet very inexpensive so i i would think that there's a couple more items you could look at thanks thank you i'll bring it back to the council um for the questions comments Mr. Oliver so you have the ad thank you uh before i move the resolution do we get frequent complaints from riders who can't find a place to park to ride smart is that a common thing i see some hit okay thank you i move a resolution to council city of santa rosa authorizing the suspension of park smart shuttle services effective march 1st 2019 and the initiation of other pilot transportation demand management strategies to strengthen the link between the downtown smart station and downtown santa rosa through june 30th 2020 and wait for the read of the text second your votes council member tidbits thank you that passes unanimously as i said earlier we're going to shuffle the agenda here and move to 14.7 before we get started with that uh we've got about an hour and a half of of commenters who've signed up on the cards and i am going to uh shorten that by limiting your comments to two minutes instead of three asking you to make your points uh more quickly this council has been up here with a 10 minute break for actually we've been at work today for five hours with just one man 10 minute break so um the comments will be two minutes wanted to give you time to figure out how to pair them down if they're three at this point and with that uh mr glenn item 14.7 report urgency ordinance amending section 10-44.040 of the city code to extend the temporary prohibition on rental housing price gouging for the duration of the city's proclamation of local emergency due to the fires su gallagher city attorney presenting good evening uh mr mayor and council members here to talk about the price gouging provisions of chapter 10-44 and possible extension of those provisions um as you know we started um on this path back a year ago with the fall october fires when the fires destroyed 3 000 homes and created a crisis in our rental market soon after the fires the council was alerted to um potential price gouging across the city and uh took steps we followed in general um the state law provisions price gouging provisions penal code section 396 396 prohibits landlords um from increasing residential rents more than 10 in the initial 30 days following a declaration of emergency and it also allows the governor and the legislature and local officials to extend that um that prohibition and in fact on october 18th the governor did uh order that the price gouging pro prohibition remain in effect in sonoma county and of course in san aroza until april 18th and then he extended that further um near april uh 2018 he extended it then to december 4th 2018 so under the current status the state law provisions will terminate uh next week on december 4th the city adopted its own provisions um oh let me note on the back on the state law provisions um there has been a request by some cities that the governor extend that date further but so far i haven't heard anything resulting from that thus far so the city adopted its own provisions um again parallel to the state provisions that was on october 24th and again chapter 10-44 and like the state law provision it prohibits any landlord from increasing residential rents by more than 10 above the price charged immediately prior to the city's declaration of emergency on october 9th 2017 it also prohibits and i have to make a correction in this bullet it prohibits any landlord from evicting an existing tenant and replacing it with an replacing that tenant with a new tenant and subsequently renting the same unit it's not the 10 percent increase it's uh you can't rent more than the average within the 30 days prior to october 9th 2017 so this is to avoid landlords trying to get around the price gouging ordinance by changing tenants um our city provisions are broader than the state law provisions it applies to all rental units in the city state law applies only to those rental units that have an initial term of up to one year there are some limited exemptions uh in the city's ordinance that also follow state law exemptions and that's if the rental increase is based upon the additional costs of labor and materials to provide the rental unit the urgency ordinance again was originally adopted in october 2017 it was originally set to expire uh like the state law on april 18th 2018 and the council did extend that again following the state law provisions to december 4th 2018 or for so long as the city remains under a state declared declaration of emergency we're here before you tonight to propose an extension that would keep the city's price gouging prohibitions in place uh for so long as the city remains under the proclamation of local emergency so the proposal that's in front of you tonight um would tie it not to the state declaration of emergency but to our own local declaration of emergency and the proposal as it's currently written would have the price gouging restrictions both the price gouging restriction itself and the limitation on um tenant evictions both of those provisions would remain in place so long as our local emergency due to the fires is in place again you renewed that this a little earlier this evening as you well know we do look at that and are required to look at the local emergency uh within every 30 days so it does come to you for consideration and i'll note also that state law requires um that the uh council terminate that declaration of local emergency and the quote is at the earliest possible date the conditions warrant so it is within your authority as to how long that declaration of a local emergency remains in effect based on your evaluation of the circumstances that the city currently faces there are two um two items that i want to note the district attorney up until now the district attorney has been enforcing the state law price gouging provisions district attorney has not been enforcing our own local ordinance um we have referred complaints to the district attorney the attorney has investigated more than 300 complaints of price gouging since last year um i spoke with her a couple of weeks ago and then did receive um something in writing that confirms that she will not be enforcing she will still not enforce our local ordinance but she is also going to suspend enforcement of the state price gouging provisions after december 4th um she feels she just does not have the staffing and the bandwidth to continue that effort um the other item that i wanted to note is that there is a amendment to the state law that will be effective on uh january january 1st and that allows the state law provisions to also remain in effect so long as a local declaration of emergency remains in effect so if we the difference though again is that the state law provisions even with that amendment would only apply to those rental units that have an initial term only up to one year whereas our provisions in chapter 10-44 apply to all rental units in the in the uh within the city we've brought this this evening um as a urgency ordinance a proposed urgency ordinance the urgency ordinance does require five affirmative votes to pass um we have brought as an urgency ordinance given that the uh current provisions are set to expire next week and i'm happy to answer any questions council questions this to this thank you mayor um so sue one one question i have um and maybe i'm not interpreting this right but what enforcement capabilities are there if our local da's office is not going to prosecute infractions or violations against this urgency ordinance there are two avenues for enforcement um the one is that our office can handle cases in court it would be a burden uh on our resources but that is available and the other avenue would be through court code enforcement proceedings okay thanks mr schwed home thank you i had a similar question you'd mentioned the number that had uh complaints that had been referred to the da's office and were not filed or prosecuted have we referred any cases from the city of san rosa to the da which have not been prosecuted not that have not been prosecuted we have referred complaints of um price gouging to the da and it is my understand the da has investigated those and where there is price gouging uh has pursued those i have i am not aware of any particular case that was not pursued it would have been pursued under the state law and not under our local ordinance but again i have not heard reports but uh i can't guarantee that there weren't so prior to sending the district attorney's office what city of san rosa either department or employees actually investigated those complaints before sending them over we did not do investigation uh to my knowledge within this within the city we referred those to the district attorney because she had um the staff and and uh system set up uh to aggressively pursue all the complaints that were coming in at that time so again i'm trying to understand the process so the way it is now or prior to today we get a complaint we just forwarded to the da there's been no investigation that's my understanding so if we do extend this given what you said the district attorney's office will choose not to prosecute what resources or what agency within the city would actually investigate the complaint to prepare for prosecution those would would come to our office or to code enforcement we would coordinate between the two of us uh it also those those um complaints could go to the srpd as well thank you miss combs thank you and thank you for bringing this to us um i heard our city attorney couldn't could provide enforcement code enforcement could provide enforcement srpd could provide enforcement can attendant themselves go to court independently or have go to for example legal aid and ask for assistance does it have to be admit through our agencies or can an individual go to court directly no there's no there's no provision for private enforcement of this ordinance okay is it possible it is possible uh to to have um uh to create a private right of action um but that is not before it's not before us tonight okay um if the amendment january 1st um allows state law to be in effect if local is in effect um would the da then re re begin to prosecute cases since they have state law also no has there been any opinion about that um no she was we we we talked about that amendment um and it is her position that she simply does not have the resources to continue that effort okay um thank you sir mr tibet thank you mr mayor one of the things that i reached out and asked for prior to this presentation was also getting a good understanding of what the if we had any numbers or data on what's going on out there anecdotally i'd say i have a feeling that um the need is is pretty great right now um just based on folks that i work with but uh do we have information that we can start creating a baseline of what the need is out there we have only anecdotal information um i do not have any data okay is there a is there a way that we can establish a need going forward i mean i gotta believe legal aid has some figures on on some of the information they've gathered uh i don't know there's gotta be some kind of economic analysis from real estate um agencies on what what's going on in the rental market i think that um if should we move forward tonight we need to really get a good handle on what that is um yes i've been in contact with legal aid and they have provided us um information but again anecdotal information i would be happy to work with legal aid and and any other resource that um that that that would give us a path for collecting the specific data mr rogers thanks so i really appreciate it um first and foremost i want to say that if if we do end up passing this i want to make sure that we do put teeth into it that just passing something that we uh here in public session have said is not going to be enforced is not worth doing uh we've got to actually make sure we have teeth in it and i don't think that there are too many people that are going to stand up and argue that we aren't still in a crisis after the fire my question in particular is as it says as you read at the earliest possible date conditions warrant do we have any type of guidelines around what that actually means for our community i am not aware of any specific guidelines um that you know can can tell us when when when a declaration when an emergency is over um but i think it's hard it is your determination your evaluation of the facts uh you're in you know your evaluation of what's happening in the community that will um that will drive that um the other piece that i'd put into this is um that the the state um price gouging provision talks about when it's necessary the quote from that is when it's necessary to protect the lives property or welfare of the citizens so that would be the that would be the standard that i would suggest you use and i ask in particular uh because i do know when we first started discussing this there was some question about what we legally could do given the repeal of measure c and not being able to approach that policy again for a certain amount of time and what our what hoops we'd have to jump through so what i'm trying to figure out is where is our leeway for addressing a crisis without infringing on that ability two things one is that are um i do want to keep a separation between rent control provisions such as measure c or i know there was a proposal this year as well keep those separate from the price gouging provisions for a couple of reasons um one is that the price gouging provisions is its own area of law it the state law no not only establishes the state price gouging standards but it allows it expressly allows local agencies to adopt their own local ordinances that are that have the um that that that prohibit the quote same or similar conduct so we are authorized by state law to keep in that realm and again we're looking at the you know necessary to protect um life property or welfare as long as there's an emergency situation um that we are we are clear on um the rent control ordinances that have been considered and that are in place in other places that is its own body of law and has its own limitations one of the issues for this particular council is that you have on your council um three members that have tenants or rental units the price gouging ordinance because it applies across the board to all rentals allows leeway for all of your members to participate rent control often exempts certain types of rental units under state law for example single family homes cannot be subject to um rent control um homes that are built before a certain date as soon as you start carving that up the three council members that have rental units or rental rooms are going to be in a situation that they may not be able to participate in the vote so i do think it's important for us for tonight and for as long as we're talking about the price gouging to keep those separate yeah no i really appreciate it that's actually exactly where my my line of questioning was going is that uh and i hesitate to say this before public comment but most of the emails that we've received up to this point and i think i suspect from a lot of the signs that i see in the audience is that there's not much opposition at the moment of still declaring the crisis but at some point there will be uh and at some point it'll come based on uh the understanding that this 10 doesn't roll over to an additional 10 each year but whether it's two and a half years three years four years five years however you want it down the road we're going to have to have that conversation because that 10 stays the same i just wanted to make sure that we are putting benchmarks out there of what that conversation is going to look like and sort of what data or information we're going to need to talk about right um and i appreciate that and uh the ordinance the way this ordinance is written um the proposed ordinance is before you this evening this will continue in effect for so long as the local declaration of local emergency due to fires is in effect and that's that's where the time frame is council is free to set a specific time frame for that to set a time frame that requires um us to come back for the council to reexamine it um but you're right the um i know there's interest and i see the signs as well of um perhaps morphing this into um a rent control and i would caution the council not to do that. Thank you. Ms. Gallagher just to clarify we do need to reaffirm the emergency on a monthly basis is that correct yes that's true so that this will be this will our council agenda once a month for the foreseeable future that is that is correct if it is written if you keep it as it is currently written you could decide instead to again tie it as it is now to the local declaration you could tie it to a certain time frame you could do both um it is up to you but yes um the price gouging ordinance will not directly be on the on your agenda each month but the local emergency will be on your agenda every month and um indirectly. They're attached to him. Yes. Are there other questions? All right um as i said we have more than 30 cards from people who want to speak um you can take two minutes it would be great if you take less um and for those of you who aren't often in our council chambers i ask that you don't applaud speakers in between just so we can get folks up to the microphone and ready and people can hear what's going on between speakers so we'll start with kendall jarvis followed by justine toms good evening mayor council people my name is kendall jarvis i'm the disaster relief attorney for legal aid of sonoma county i'm here today on behalf of myself legal aid and truly our entire community to urge that you pass this we need to maintain this ordinance we cannot count on the actions of the state or other resources to prevent this price gouging issue from continuing it's a problem even with the ordinance even with the state statute however using the state statute and hopefully the the local ordinance will allow us to put pressure on individuals and educate landlords so that they understand that what they're doing is not correct it's not lawful and so far legal aid has been able to prevent nearly 500 individual units from being price gouged and we're happy to continue that fight we'll do whatever we can to work with you and to take on this burden but our community seriously needs this especially those of our most vulnerable whether they're fire survivors or not the reality is that this needs to happen because we don't know that anyone else is going to be able to do this for us this is our community and we need to work to protect it thank you thank you justine toms followed by myles bergen thank you mayor corcy and council members i appreciate your questions to the city manager i'm a senior who has worked for a non-profit organization public benefit organization for over 40 years and i live on my social security i live in vintage park which is a low income tax credit housing complex for seniors within san rosa for the last two years my housing cost has gone up 17 percent which is a huge bite out of my fixed income and it would have been more had not governor brown enacted the 10 percent rent increase ceiling for san rosa and other areas as you know that this runs out in december you members of the council have the privilege and honor to help your neighbors and the huge numbers of renters in this area to enact a cap on rent increases my group on i and 20 of us are here today joining me um requested you vote to extend the emergency of the 10 percent cap on rent increases please search your hearts and do the right thing for those of us on fixed incomes next year social security will be increased by 2.8 percent and this will be eaten up by medicare increases so we are all squeezing rocks to make ends meet i also want to bring up to your attention something i know you probably already know but um i i want to mention that in 2010 the census uh taken found that 46 percent of san rosa households were renters the us census uh quick facts for san rosa says that 48 percent in 2014 and 2016 are the number now and that doesn't include okay okay thank you for your consideration and please make a positive uh solution to this miles bergen followed by dorthy beaty mr mayor members of the council i'm miles bergen i live in southwest san rosa i'm gonna start by saying what everyone already knows we are in the middle of a horrible housing crisis currently in sonoma county 47 percent of renter occupied households are rent burdened and spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent and 25 percent are severely rent burdened spending more than half of their income on rent and these numbers are even worse in city limits where housing costs are higher and median income is lower than county averages since 2000 rent prices have risen by 25 percent outpacing the increase in real wages which only rose by nine percent in that same time period and when you take into account the fact that virtually all of that nine percent increase has gone to the top 30 percent of earners it's very clear that our economy is leaving our working class behind now the council has been doing a lot of great things to facilitate the approval of construction of much needed traditional low and moderate income housing and also has been more receptive to innovative ideas to fill out the lower end of our housing stock and for that hard work i thank you but the thing about these long-term solutions is that they're long term and what we need right now are measures like this to address the current crisis that more than half of our residents have gone through we need you as our council members to take bold action to provide relief to our city's renters to prevent them from severe rent gouging and unjust evictions so i strongly urge the council to pass this resolution before you thank you dorthy bd followed by maria garcia thank you mayor coursey and council um i first like to echo what keith wood said i think it's time for us all to work together and we want to we all want to find a solution between those of us who provide housing and those who need housing and until incomes catch up with the cost to build housing it's going to be a tough slog we got a road to go a couple of things i just wanted to point out we heard 300 and 500 cases got filed we have 40 000 rentals in this town and so i'd really like to applaud all the landlords who really did take care of all their tenants they didn't raise rents and as a matter of fact i work with people in this room to try to house people right after the fire and we found places for them um and then i took a quick look at uh craigslist before i came down here and there's about 640 units available right now in santa rosa which is higher than it's been in months and just so everybody knows both rents and the value of property has been falling over the last few months but you can get a really nice one bedroom and park station for 1450 and that's cheaper than it was last year so rents are actually coming down kind of naturally not really sure where everybody's going but they are so this notion of it being a horrible thing right now is i think a little bit untrue there's a couple of things with 1044 that i think we need to think about and that is we have a lot of units right now where the rents are much lower than market because landlords have not been raising rents and as those units become vacant landlords are choosing not to rent them and rather to wait until december 5th when they can put them back on the market at current market so we've increased vacancy by having a provision in place while people wait and i think if we let this expire rents will probably go down because more units will come to market it's an unintended consequence of the emergency but i know of units that are being held off the market now waiting for this emergency to expire so they can come back on the market and if you amended 1044 to say all right good evening council members my name is Maria Guadalupe Garcia i am the lead organizer for north bay jobs with justice so Sonoma Strong derived from the tragedy of last october it was supposed to be standing for unity for the community during the devastating fires but where was Sonoma Strong when families were pleading for help in searching for a new home after the fires it has only gotten worse as you all know for those who lost their homes including renters even if they didn't lose their homes to due to the fires in search of a new home the faced price gouging and tenants even faced evictions because they couldn't afford over $300 increase in the rents so according to the new report that just came out actually so the state of a work in Sonoma 2018 nearly one in two Sonoma County renner households are are rent burdened and pay more than 30 of their gross monthly income for rent one quarter are severely rent burdened and pay more than 50 for rent families are struggling to afford living here even way before the Tufts fire Santa Rosa was expensive to begin with so my friend who i've met during my time at Chico State is first in her family to attend college she worked extensively to assist her family back here in Santa Rosa after she graduated she returned home and continued to help her family out this family was actually living with another family after they got kicked out because of the increase in rent and so it was there was two families in a single family home and so we definitely want to say that it's a home for working folks of color and not just for the rich and white so we so when wages are slowly increasing okay so just please we urge you to pass thank you and see Lee followed by Carmen floris mayor of course in council and see Lee speaking for concerned citizens for Santa Rosa I hope that my encouragement is not needed as you see a clear opportunity to prevent further trauma among the renter community by passing this ordinance please come together as a council to block for an additional interval abuses of the renter community that would be great thank you please work together thank you Carmen floris followed by Dave Ransom yeah um this i'm a member of cbi group from from rosalind community and in my personal opinion i'm gonna get a comment about the situation that we have in the community all the community have been been had this kind of problem dealing with and it's a good consideration that this issue is helping a lot to the community i would like to let you know that if there is any way you can support this and help to the community in a certain way it could be helpful and make us stronger for the ones they need it that's what the only thing i want to say to you thank you thank you miss floris Dave Ransom followed by peter Adams Dave here peter Adams followed by Irma Garcia okay well thank you um i think we'll probably begin to start and sound like a broken record but um yeah i've lived in Sonoma County my entire life and but at the rate things are going i won't be able to stay here i know i have many friends and co-workers who have moved away already um to oregon or washington i had a family i knew a family um two parents and three children who were staying in one bedroom because it was the only place they could afford both working full-time and then they moved to washington turns out they couldn't afford any there either but that's another issue for washington to deal with um and yeah and i have another co-worker who works two jobs over 80 hours a week he just i think got a third job actually um he rents a garage and lives there and like the idea that this is rents are maybe somehow going down i think is a little difficult for me personally to believe because if they were at anywhere near a tolerable level there wouldn't be so many people in this room and and this is happening while the rent cap exists and i wouldn't like to think of a situation where it doesn't exist rents already unacceptably high and we need to do other things to deal with that but yeah that's like i i i've lived here my whole family my friends and community is here and i would like to live here for the foreseeable future but at this rate i won't be able to afford to stay and that's a really difficult thing to think about so now i urge you to pass this thank you thank you irma garcia followed by dana bellwether before taking my minutes i have a question do you have translator i don't know if we have we probably have somebody here who can translate i don't know if we have anybody on staff so if i don't if i need translator can i have for a minute sure go ahead thank you i think our community is 34 percent so speaking spanish and we need to think about it we really need translation to communicate in our own language greek is my son could you please help me thank you my name is irma garcia and during and after the fires the immigrant community has suffered and is still suffering thanks to the community we are doing better but from the city state and in the community everything else has not helped even though we still do not complain about it and we are still here but what is killing us is the high cost of rent our immigrant community that produces your wine that you drink at your table can't afford rent and need to have two to three jobs leaving our children alone to help and benefit this community it's time to help our working community it's time to thank them and help them by not raising the rent 10 percent is too much and to our workers they do not raise anything the most they can get is 25 cents i'm very bad at math but if you are raising $100 in rent why can't you do the same in their salaries how can a family survive if you are raising $100 in rent but are not increasing more than 25 cents in their labor and they're working for property we need to be smart because right now you are in that spot but later will be our children and then they will decide for you because you will be old tired and sick you will not have a voice just exactly as us the immigrants do not have a voice it's time for you to speak for us please stand up if you agree gracias gracias senora garcía and thank you to your son maybe we can find a job for him at city home dina bellweather followed by christina ramirez hello please do keep renewing the cap on rents uh each month possibly until we have as much housing as we started out with why is this timer not doing anything i hope that we will in the meantime treat the homeless the way a civilized society treats its poorest members and if you're a city council member and you vote for the civilized rational fair minded mayoral candidate and instead we end up with Godzilla we will have your back if uh if the new mayor were to try to target you for having voted for someone else all of us are concerned with the well-being of the people who have been displaced by the fires and we will not stand quietly by and tolerate someone's being punished for trying to help those people personally i want to live in mr roger's neighborhood christina ramirez followed by i'm not sure it's hard read jose herrano christina ramirez good night to everyone and my name is christina ramirez i'm a worker who works in the fields and is um picking the grapes uh i work six hours for eight dollars an hour and i come home and cash a check for seven hundred to seven hundred and fifty dollars and sometimes i cannot go to work because my children are sick and they pay me less and as the rent goes up i'm not i'm not able to afford it anymore i want you guys to notice that you guys who are sitting there that as you raise more the rent you affect more with people's lives thank you thank you i think it's jose herrano followed by candida zaragoza said jose jose i'm sorry i can't read this candida zaragoza uh good afternoon to everyone my name is candida saragoza and i would like to tell you that if when you inform on a decision to think on all of us who are hard workers we are workers who work up to 10 hours and are being paid for cheap labor and it's not fair that you guys are raising the rent more than double of working we can afford i want to save place for my children it's not fair that you guys are raising the rent too much of what i can afford and that'll be it thank you thank you warlupe herrano lordess herrano jose abarca abarca loria abarca elona reitzner reitzner good evening my name is elona reitzner i'm a teacher and concerned citizen i worked and lived in sander rosa for the past 27 years as a single mother the only reason that i was able to provide for my daughter and have a home is because i live in a mobile home park and we have a three percent rent cap for the last 20 some years and that has allowed us to be able to afford a rent there i'm here today to testify for the families in our community in our school communities i heard that we have more rental units available but i think people don't realize once you're displaced you need first and last month's rent plus one other and most people do not have that money to put out so they share their couch serving or they live with other family members so maybe some units are available that does not mean that they people have the money to afford them our schools and districts have a lot of have lost families so we struggle with our funding for the schools because families have been leaving and have left the last year and we heard about 300 cases to our district attorney 500 cases i we hear about a lot of cases where people do not come forward because they're afraid of losing their home and so they pay the 200 more a month so a lot of landlords have risked the rent despite the cap so i was very glad to hear that you're also talking about how can we how can we hold people accountable how can we uh actually enforce the 10 percent rent cap which is really just a drop and i'm here to urge you to go ahead with that um we have a medium income in Sonoma County per a report from Maria Garcia that she mentioned about 13 dollars an hour and so even 1400 or 1500 dollars 1500 dollars rent is not affordable on that salary so please um help the community and keep that as a first step thank you thank you thea hartman followed by michelle misino deluca is thea here i'll put her i'll put her around a i'll come around to her again she comes back hi my name is michelle misino deluca i am a tenant if rents are allowed to go up even further who will make up the population of santa rosa do you think that people who cannot afford rent here will be able to continue to work in places like old trader joes how will our the culture of our beloved santa rosa change the average rent for a one bedroom apartment is over 1500 a month my research on the internet suggests that the average social security benefit is 1400 a month which does not include deduction for medicare how are we to live with minimum wage at 11 an hour where can families live how can we survive i am here with my neighbors from vintage park senior housing my peeps some of us are healthy some not so much as we all age at some point we become somehow disabled and are unable to increase our income what do we do not take prescription meds because we cannot afford them even if our lives may depend on it depend entirely on food bank contributions some of which is food which has expired live the rest of our lives in desperate fear of the loss of our homes and of our safety and well-being stress shortens our lives we want peace and we want to pay our bills and still be contributing citizens housing and medicine have a similar goal the well being of people if you go to med school to take up a particular specialty just because it pays well i would venture to say you're in the wrong business and if you have become a landlord just because you think the bottom line is strictly financial profit you may well be in the wrong business the bottom line of being a landlord is not money and i wouldn't deny you the right to make a profit the bottom line is people thank you thank you any acker followed by julia rapkin any acker i'm kind of on the verge of crying here it's too sad for me i also live at vintage park and it's an income tax credit place it's always been cheap affordable rather for nine years and then and everyone thought they were safe then all of a sudden it wasn't without any explanation no longer affordable but i was one of the lucky ones i was on the section eight list for 12 years and got it just in the nick of time just before the rent probably a year before the rents went up so i'm one of the safe ones but i'm passionate about the homeless and i literally take food two homeless people about every week and a half and two their dogs and clothing clothing recently for the seniors the disabled in the middle class who are no longer surviving of people are at the place of having to decide between medicine or food and we didn't have the food bank the free food bank we have i really don't think we would have food right live we would not have food and it's made up of beautiful volunteers who are dealing with their own disabilities that run this food bank and at the moment medicare is about to go up a hundred a month for their premium so whatever it is um i forgot what you call it the d premium so who can afford that on top of the only receiving 2.9 percent cola but i do let me just say one thing i'm impressed with the compassion i'm hearing from the city council and i'm very surprised by it so keep it up thank you julia rapkin hi i'm i'm julia i'm a member of sciu 10 to 1 i work for the county of sonoma and before the fires wages has stagnated for you know since the recession we were having staff staff shortages in some areas because we because wages did not compare with other counties and people weren't able able to people who grew up in the community but worked for the county couldn't afford to remain living in the county and since the fires all of that's just exacerbated i'm lucky enough to own my own home but so many of my co-workers are renters and i just hear stories about landlords raising the rent as much as they possibly can and so you know they've raised it that 10 and if they could raise it more they would and people just don't know you know they're already stretched they don't know what they're going to do if um i think um you know if if that cap is removed and um you know people having to go into more debt you know these are people you know when you when you when you work in a public sector job you usually think that um you can afford the basics in life but you know i don't know how people do it on eight dollars an hour but we have older workers supporting their aging relatives their kids their grandkids many people you know multiple generations of families living in a household younger employees want to stay and raise families here but can't afford to um uh someone said earlier who will make up the population here um i know we need to look at other long-term solutions like workforce housing there's lots of different things that are being considered along those lines um but in the short term um we're still in an emergency and um i think we need to renew this ordinance thank you thank you daisy fisty line followed by clara clara saragosa followed by bonnie petty okay daisy fisty line to know my county conservation action i um grew up in this community and i'm crazy enough to have moved back after the fires and it has taken me a full six months to find a place to move i moved back from san francisco and i'm paying rents that are near what i was paying in san francisco which is crazy to think um i have employees who are struggling to um i'm struggling to pay them enough to keep them because they're needing to find new housing and i know that this is a common situation for many employers it's what i've heard when speaking to your staff with all of the employers in the area they can't pay their employees enough to live here after the fires many people have left just like the chambers tonight many people have left who would have spoken about this issue as well um we will continue to become a community that is largely full of vacation homes and a playground for the wealthy if we don't create housing for the workers for the elderly and for the young people who want to raise families here this isn't just about rent control it's it needs to be about many solutions we need to create a more diverse housing stock we need to stop building such large homes that very few people actually need anymore and create more multifamily housing smaller units homes that are naturally affordable but right now we're in crisis when i've been in the city council chambers recently there've been four to ten people this is the most people that have been in your chambers in a long time and i hope that that's resonating deeply with each of you i know that each of you have many constituents in your districts who would be here tonight if they knew about this mr olivera is obviously your community is here in force mr soyer i'm not sure what happened in the election but i'm sure that many people who voted for you hoped that you would hold their interests at heart and understand the economic concerns that they're facing uh mayor course obviously four sevens of your voters voted for rent control thank you constituents thank you all think of this claire zara goza followed by bonnie petty hola buenas noches hola buenas noches hi good afternoon in sus manos para votar y el elegance que si sube la renta o no sube la renta que piensen en las personas que están trabajando para pagar la renta y que no les alcanza y tienen que buscar dos para poder pagar la renta i would like for you to think in your decision of racing the rent or not for you to think of those people who work two to three jobs and still can't afford to pay the rent may be some of you might have the privilege of owning your own house but some of us have to rent it to live so antes de poder votar y subir la renta piensen en los que no podemos pagar la renta como ustedes so in your decision uh hopefully you could think of uh people who don't who aren't able to pay enough rent like you guys gracias thank you thank you bonnie petty followed by linda evans hi my name is bonnie petty and i am a neighbor of mayor coursey i live in the junior college neighborhood i'm here today on behalf of north bay jobs with justice and we are a community labor coalition of 20 unions and community-based organizations which strongly supports the extension of the 10 percent rent cap for the rental properties and as well as for food medicine and other essential supplies it's it's obvious that we're still in crisis here and i think that what we're seeing is that we are now on the verge of seeing a massive displacement of local renters my own family um has members who have lost everything have given up and have now moved to rino nevada and they are not coming back and they've been here for 50 years um and and it's just a tragedy um recently jobs of justice released a new report called the state of working sonoma county 2018 which provides significant data some of which event has been expressed here tonight that illustrates the gravity of this crisis this report can be found on the website at north bay jobswithjustice.org slash reports and i hope that you will consult that report and consider it as you go forward and decide on a monthly basis should you decide to do this um as you decide on a monthly basis on the urgency of the situation my family is one of those as others have have significant have mentioned that in spite of two fairly okay incomes we pay out over 40 percent of our of our income to pay rent but i'm lucky i'm lucky because i have a great landlord and so far we can still somehow manage to pay our rent but that could change literally in a heartbeat all i have to do is have my landlord sell the place and it's all over and we're going into retirement as i said i'm lucky but luck is not a budgeting tool for renters it is not the way to live and is not how you get through life in fact lady luck has for the most part turned her back on sonoma county renters and with the october fires she has run screaming from the room please pass this extension thank you thank you linda evans followed by keith becker good evening my name is linda evans i'm a member of the immigrant defense task force of the north bay organizing project i'd like to start by saying thank you to mr quirsey for changing the order so that the community actually could be heard from i know several people have had to leave already i've worked with undocu fund as well as with the immigrant defense task force and we have conducted probably hundreds of interviews with people since the fires regarding their situation and it's clear that the emergency continues i appreciate the fact that the council seems to recognize that however our our community has been affected unequally by the fires because poor people immigrant people undocumented people in our community are suffering still are not able to to get housing are living two or three families together in a one bedroom apartment because they cannot find affordable housing it's urgent i voted for my city council to represent our entire community all of the residents of santa rosa and people in our county as well i feel that you must have the best interests of in our entire community at heart even though you may not specifically represent people who cannot vote it is in all of our interests for there to be equality in housing i think that it's critical that you also look at the bigger picture and recognize that in order for people to live here they need to have higher wages we need to have a living wage implemented by the county and the city of santa rosa so that people can afford to live here also an interesting idea through the city attorney's explanation occurred to me perhaps a way for us to find some rent stabilization perhaps a way to tie the rent increases to the actual cost of living is for the city council to implement to pass and implement a price gouging ordinance that is specific to the city of santa rosa that would actually tie rent increases to cost of living increases as was proposed in the rent stabilization ballot measure thank you what's before us tonight but thank you keith becker followed by marty bennett good evening mayor good evening city council my name is keith becker i'm a city resident and i represent hundreds of both residents and housing providers whatever you decide to do tonight speaking for those people that i interact with on a regular basis whatever you decide to do they are going to honor i receive phone calls and inquiries from dozens of people at any given time wanting to know what the intention is of the county of the city of the state what are they allowed to do what are they not allowed to do and how do they stay in compliance with the law someone earlier was saying that you know thank goodness it's only 10 because given the opportunity landlords would charge more i would beg to differ um since the fire and i did an analysis on this somebody was asking for information more than just anecdotal our average increase last year was five percent sure could be 10 we didn't on average it was five and for every landlord who actually said i can do 10 we had those who did nothing many of our properties are still at what they were before the fire our average tendency for our tenants is more than four years and we are cognizant of the fact that it is a difficult place to live as far as costs i would point out that this is not an actual 10 cap because the longer it extends the less of a percentage it is because if you do it over two years it's five percent you do it more than that it's less what i would say is i recognize we're in a disaster and the disaster will go on for a long time i would propose i would request that the council please consider revisiting this at a specific time in the future rather than tying it to the fact that the city is in a constant state of disaster and will be for a while thank you marty bennett followed by marisol angeles good evening council members my name is marty bennett i'm co-chair of north bay jobs with justice as my colleague batting petty stated our organization strongly supports the extension of the 10 percent rent cap and we can't emphasize enough that the rental crisis in san arosa and sonoma county was extreme prior to the tubs fire and has become near catastrophic now we are on the verge of massive displacement of renters and low-income residents our new report the state of working sonoma county 2018 provides the following data between 2000 and 2016 median rents increased by 25 percent in the county while median renter incomes rose by only 9 percent and the gap between rents and renter incomes has surely widened even more since rents spiked by 36 percent immediately after the tubs fire nearly one in two sonoma county renter households are rent burdened and pay more than 30 percent of their growth monthly income for rent one quarter are severely rent burdened and pay more than 50 percent for rent one in four families in sonoma county are working poor and earn less than 50 000 annually 70 percent of these low-income families pay more than 30 percent of their growth monthly income for rent our near catastrophic housing crisis minimally requires extension of the 10 percent rental cap however we think the housing crisis will only become more severe and in the future we urge the council to enact stronger measures in los angeles county that has now suffered two devastating wildfires the board of supervisors just mandated a three percent rent cap on all renter properties for six months going forward to prevent mass displacement and increase homelessness santa rosa should consider a lower rent cap comparable to los angeles thank you very much marisol angeles followed by steve burlba buenas tardes mi nombre es marisol angeles vivo en el área de rossland good afternoon my name is marisol angeles and i live in the rosen neighborhood uh i'm the vice president of the rosen cbi group we're worried about the 10 percent uh cap there's people that their rent has increased more than what they actually earn uh there's still people that haven't fully recovered from the fires there's people that lost their houses their work and they were affected physically and mentally y no hay que agregarles más estrés y que continúe con con la la protección de vivienda let's not add another stress to them and continue standing up 10 percent cap thank you thank you steve burlba followed by tomas ells thank you mayor carci and members um as i listened to people describing their situations i tried to put them put myself in the shoes of someone that it doesn't have a fixed mortgage for years i knew for the next as long as i wanted to live in my house i would be paying a fixed rate being at the mercy of a market particularly one that has been as disturbed as the market here has been is a serious disadvantage and it's not just a disadvantage to the people that rent it's a disadvantage to the rest of us because a community only survives if it's got a wide variety of price points i agree that we shouldn't be living in a crisis forever but we're not out of it right now so extending this 10 cap for at least the next six months is a good idea thank you tomas ells followed by merlin davis so uh thank you again i'd like to read you the california criminal code law legislative info of crimes against the public health and safety 369 a to 402 c title 10 enacted 1872 369 a the legislature hereby finds that during the state of emergency a local emergency including but not you know that goes on and on and on the point is it was enacted in 1872 it's necessary now it's necessary in the future we haven't had a housing crisis like this of these vast natures i told you in butte county they're shipping people out of the county they have no housing we had before the fires 80 percent of people paying more than 50 percent of their income for rent and transportation that's the highest in the entire country it was something like 75 percent or something in new york city and approximately similar in san francisco we're way higher and most of it is a significant portion is transportation um what that said 80 percent that means 20 percent are paying less than 50 only 20 percent and everyone else is paying more it roughly like 25 percent are between 50 and a total roughly 25 exclusively between 50 and 55 20 between 55 and 60 15 between 60 and 65 10 percent of everybody at close to 70 percent and five at 75 percent um normal rentals are based on the comparison of what's at the market if you do not approve this people will put it at an expectation rent a very high rent thank thank you mr ales there are many more things to talk of course there um mr davis followed by i think it was thea hartman who i didn't uh okay mr davis a couple of fallacies have cropped up been uh stated outright and been alluded to tonight one is that the price cap uh and decreases in rent are somehow hurting us and landlords are basing their decisions on that well if your rent was $1,000 on october 9th 2017 then they landlords cannot raise it above 1,100 the only reason they would hold out to rent a vacant property home is if they thought they could hold out for someone that they could then charge 1500 the day the rent cap goes away yes that might not officially be rent price gouging legally when it happens but it is not a reason to not extend the rent cap to enforcement you're you're implying that if you can't find someone to enforce this you shouldn't do it you strongly implied that a couple of you but if they won't enforce it that's on them if you don't even give them something to enforce that's on you and third i know on an earlier item this cropped up and it's been talked about a little bit does this apply to homeless people in general or only to people displaced by the fires well officially it's not even recognize that many many homeless people were affected by the fires were displaced by them you had a whole community at the bottom of fountain grove who had a stable long-standing community and the fires did your job for you the job that you've chosen to do in scattering them to the wind just as heartlessly thank you thea hartman okay speaking of being old and tired a lot of us are and my name is thea hartman and thank you very much mayor corcy and other friends and soon to be friends i i want to speak in favor extending the 10 cap i'm a retired professional i live at vintage park apartments which is a senior apartments as justine had everybody raised their hands you could again these people have come we're all old we've all stayed up late it happened that i had to go to the bathroom i have a walker i had to go down the ramp and then i got there and the and and the ramp bathroom was locked so i just wanted to mention that to you to let you know that we're here against hardship to tell you that this is a minor hardship and what we're facing with rents is a major hardship we live in a place that's it's not hard it's an lie tech and you've probably heard about them and discuss them they're supposed to be affordable they're not a couple of years ago they started raising the rent a lot and with the fire they could have raised it they wanted to raise it more but they couldn't because of the 10 percent but they had been given permission to raise it more so most of us pay more than 50 percent of our income in rent and when your income is only a thousand dollars a month that leaves you with very very little to spend people are now where i live are now going without necessities like heating and medicine we gave up we gave up our you know our little small luxuries long ago and and we were all middle class ones we all came here i mean most of us came from nice houses and we had cars and we had families okay thank you miss hartman thank you and i have stats for you if you want some thank you bring us back to the council are there any questions before we get to comments and motion questions mr schwethelm you want to put something on the table here so i'll make the motion with my comments we won't come back around good okay one i appreciate everyone doing hanging out and sticking around with us and giving us the feedback because although some people we hear many comments say you you're not listening i like i know i can speak from myself from the other six of us up here we here we're not always going to agree but we definitely hear what's been said today and so for me i am going to be um encouraging that the urgency ordinance be continued mainly just from the um my neck of the woods and coffee park area if we were like halfway built i just heard at a coffee astronomy last night i think we have six to one residents have rejoined their home 700 some odd units are under construction that sounds great it's been great progress but we need 1200 right and those people who have been displaced and i think in coffee park 40 of those folks were renters we still are in the crisis and i am in support of tine with the emergency i think our city attorney had mentioned that it's not clearly defined what is an emergency i'm not quite sure i can tell you what it is right now but i know we're still in that process we're not ready we're not really whole yet and another concern i have is many of us know insurance for many folks are going to be running out 18 months post disaster and we're about what 14 months now so my concern is about four months from now where a lot of folks who are using that insurance money to apply for the rent when that goes away where are we going to be so for that reason i'll make the following motion uh i move in order an urgency and interim ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending chapter 10-4 4 of the santa rosa city code to extend the temporary prohibition on rental housing price gouging for the duration of the city's proclamation of a local emergency due to fires second all right uh any comments before we vote mr suyer thank you mirror and i do want to mention you mentioned um madam city attorney that this will be before us on a monthly basis to reestablish the emergency but i think it would be valuable to have a regular item on our agenda maybe six months i just leaving it completely open open ended gives me a little concern i know that there there are a lot of words spoken tonight about the villa and the vilification of the landlords and i personally know that not everyone out there um jack their rents up and many of them were actually much lower than you might think and i and i know a number of those and they are concerned many of them are retired um they live on the income of they're not these people don't all have apartment houses some have a home uh the home that they live in and maybe uh something in an apartment behind or maybe another family dwelling a single family dwelling and that is their income and for them to that ten percent that was um that they may have taken advantage of it already because out of out of fear that they they might be under the under the gun uh in in a couple of years and and it is true in two years it will be five percent and if it's on if it goes to three years which a crisis we are in crisis and it could go three years um and then you're at three and a half percent so i think that that there should be a regular review of the amount um to give the council an opportunity if they so choose uh to to allow landlords to increase it by two percent i mean i don't know what the number might be but i think that everyone has a different uh that everyone has a different situation and i think that most of the landlords that i know i don't know any corporate landlords most of the landlords i know are really the they're they try the best they can and i and i know it's not a popular thing to say but they're not all evil i mean it's i i know for a fact uh and i think that they need to be there should be some consideration um to those landlords especially if they have a the repairs that have to be done and i know that there are there's a way you can go to the city and say look i've got to put a new roof on and it's going to cost me fifteen twenty thousand dollars to do it um maybe it's ten thousand i don't know how much it cost to put on a roof these days but they they there should be some consideration given to a to a regular review and even if that regularity is six months just to allow people to have that conversation because bringing it up as a council member is going to be difficult because it's going to look like you're trying to undermine the the intention and i think the intention is good and it we are in crisis it's important that we do this now but i would i would prefer that we have a six-month review of that ordinance and not just have it based on that on the emergency itself but to have a conversation about the status or the status of our of our landlords and the ability for the council to have a conversation about the possibility of allowing for an increase of some of some type so i would be more comfortable if there was a six-month review on our on our agenda something that is set and that we can tackle every six months while we go through this difficult crisis. Any comments? Mr. Tibbetz. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Just following up on what John said um you know it sounds like the whole council kind of feels this way and i certainly have for a while just as it's a responsibility to protect somebody's investment in a community there's an even tenfold greater responsibility to protect the people who are subject to that that investment and i am completely uncertain about what's going to happen in the years following that fire and as tom pointed out rightfully i believe it's when that FEMA money runs out that's going to be i think when we really figure out who is where and what costs are actually what um so this will provide important protection for that moment as it approaches but when if we're going to be going into this space we really really have to have information um i i think just blindly making decisions one way or the other is is not a responsibility or an irresponsible approach and um so i i just wanted to just put some example questions out there that i think would be helpful to discuss at that six month time period if that's what ends up getting adopted but what's the average room cost compared to the previous year and five years ago identify if santa rosa has any increasing or declining number of rentals on the market are we seeing an increasing number of um uh rental properties being put up for sale identify the number of new units built every year and then compare that to the rental costs as well you know we just discussed a 981 housing pipeline i think that's going to have an impact but i'd sure like to be able to do our best to quantify what it is if anything at all so again i just stress that as we we embark down this path that we do have accurate information to guide the decision making process mr rogers thank you mr mayor so i will be supporting this moving forward and i think that that was probably pretty clear from some of my earlier comments i do see uh councilmember soyer's concerns around the having some form of a conversation or some form of a date certain what i would also suggest is if we go that direction though that we give both renters and landlords uh a uh certainty over the course of that six months so in fact rather than tying this ordinance to the emergency declaration we have this as a six month review period we're within that six months uh for both the land the renters who are concerned that the ordinance is going to go away and the rent cap is going to go up or within the landlords who are concerned that this is going to go on in perpetuity that we actually do a middle point where we use the findings of the uh emergency uh for why we are doing this but actually create a six month jump six months and six months uh for a review period for us to have this if that makes sense um i think that that would provide sort of that middle point between certainty for both the landlords and the tenants on when we'll be discussing this and then i do i want to echo sort of the the comments that i made before which is that right now you all did a fantastic job of showing up and there was no opposition strong opposition to passing this resolution to move forward again and at some point that's not going to be the case and we need to have a conversation about what that emergency does look like i do appreciate councilmember tidbits looking for data for how we can have that conversation we're not at that point now uh not to quote the supreme court we'll know it when we see it that we know that we're still in an emergency we know that we're still in a crisis but when we also talk about housing this was before the fire and it will continue after we've rebuilt this community as well uh so there's a lot of work still to do on that and i think we need to have a conversation uh specifically around uh what our metrics are going to be for this emergency resolution this comes thank you this is very clearly a limited conversation with regard to price gouging and we have many obligations to keep it within those limitations um we have other things on our pending agenda that we may want to discuss and the implementation of some of those things for example the rental inspection program which has been on our pending agenda for some time would give us access to a lot of data because under the program like that we would be able to monitor and track turnover we could consider whether or not we wanted to monitor eviction there are a lot of ways that that program could could benefit the community in terms of giving us the basic data that we are seeking much of which we don't gather right now um it may be it may be available through um there's a gentleman named scott who does a lot of monitoring of apartments and i spoke with him in an earlier round of conversations got a lot of good information from him but it is a industry source a lot of the data that we get is industry sourced um so gathering our own data through having the rental inspection program come forward i would hope we would have that conversation um really excited to hear that we have the support behind um this price gouging ordinance that we have and i want to thank the council for their thoughtful deliberation and to thank the city attorney for bringing it to us north bay jobs with justice the living wage north bay organizing project the living wage vintage vanguard um you know there's a lot of folks who have shown up uh and i really want to thank you all for showing up um i know that some people are concerned about having there be an every six month mark if we leave it the way it is as this is proposed it's every month not every six months so i think a date certain uh is a better tie and i i would support my colleague the vice mayor's comment um if if it is difficult for staff to bring it every six months i would be willing to consider nine months or on the anniversary of the fire or you know other dates that might might be more amenable depending upon staff's workload for bringing it forward but removing it from the monthly uh item that causes a lot of problems with having to have a lot of people turn out every month just to see if something happens so i i do have that concern uh and again want to thank you all um i i think that we had folks from uh the rental industry come forward uh and talk about very reasonably wanting to find common ground and i think we need to take them up on that and i think we need to have those conversations uh i think we need to figure out how we do that uh moving forward uh in the future so thank you um so so i i'm to comment a little bit on timing um i am concerned about a six month mark just on staff capacity to deliver any analysis i mean following up on the questions that were asked especially in light of what was the other issue that was raised is that there's going to be a heavy lift for staff um to build a case uh about um exactly a topic that just came up which is about uh continuation of benefits that's you know we're going to be in a conversation about dr potentially getting more dr funding and also about um this continuation of benefits conversation so uh while i hear there's a conversation about date certain i am concerned about the timing because that's that's almost dead on to an argument about extending benefits and we do know that that's going to be have to be a heavy lift in the first quarter of next year so i would just urge council to take that into consideration um i'm again if we're going to establish a date certain it would be helpful to have a date certain that was maybe a quarter after that april time period so that we could do some of the data analysis and bring you back some information would nine months be a better date that's why i said a quarter a quarter a quarter past the april time period would be helpful and really fast mr city manager is it 18 months or is it two years because i'm it's 18 months okay so the two years what got extended to two years so we're talking about fema benefits expire after 18 months so so it's an april side was two years not it's like it's slightly different but there that's why i'm bringing forward the fema benefit conversation which is a huge issue that we're just starting to gear up to to have a conversation um leading into the january through the first quarter time period if the council will and if mr soyer would uh as the second i'm wondering if i would accept a friendly amendment to the anniversary of the fire um if you would accept the october date that's clear and it gives staff time so that would be an october date well yeah i mean i was kind of open for nine months as a compromise but um i'm just if we wait another year before we have this conversation i think there will be a fair amount of the there may be a flip of who who's in attendance in this in the in the chamber in a year it may be um a larger percentage of of retired landlords that are saying you know we need to get a little bit of an increase here so it could it could come in and it's which is a good thing it's new may change the nature of the conversation and that's really how government works um but i am waiting a full year um well it's 10 months because it's 10 months from today yeah okay it's 10 months you're right um and i'm you know i'm i'm sure i just i just don't want it to be completely open-ended and we do have to review the emergency every month i would we're still stuck with that i mean because we but we don't have to talk about the ordinance every month just the status of the emergency i i would be happy to accept 10 months 10 months from today anniversary of the fire anniversary of the fire as a friendly amendment if the motion maker would do so well just through the mayor are you offering that as a friendly amendment i don't want to put words in your mouth but i didn't hear those words come out of your mouth i offered it you know that's why i'm looking at miss councilmember soyer yes yes i would accept that we need to move this you know it's it's just uh you know it's it's a it's a tough conversation i have i i'm gonna tell you i have a number of of um landlords who i know one landlord who had a studio apartment 350 bucks a month same lieutenant for 10 years they never raised the rent they did raise the rent by $35 um this year um and still they're now getting 385 so in those i gotta tell you not everyone out there is gouging uh gouging on their tenants um and but i think that i'm looking for compromise i'm moving forward and getting this taken care of and we'll have that we'll have the conversation in october of next year mr oliver's thank you mayor i think that uh given where we are today as a community uh i i didn't expect any opposition to this tonight and i was surprised by the number of people that came and i'm glad that you're here to share your stories uh uh to hear the stories of some of the families that are impacted on an everyday uh circumstance with jobs and sometimes handling multiple jobs and trying to make ends meet so i'm glad that we were able to hear our community and i do agree that we do need to have a check-in period we will be renewing the emergency every year uh but i also don't expect to have a lot of data available at the at the end of that time but i think we can start identifying what kind of data points we can't identify they may inform us we have we've had a homeless emergency for a while and we and we do have data coming in on that right so i think uh with any emergency it's it's going to require some work uh to number one to identify that we still have the emergency but also to identify what kind of information can we gather uh because we all have our personal stories and i know that not everybody is out there price gals you know wanting to uh but again those are personal stories but how do we identify what kinds of data points do we have available to us so we can start measuring something over time i think would be important for us to consider and i don't know what that is but there will be other things that are going to be happening we we heard about the number of units that are coming hopefully are away with the money that's coming in so there's a lot of things that will be happening but again i don't expect we're going to have some really hard numbers for us by october but hopefully we'll have an idea of where we can get information besides the anecdotal information that we get when we have these discussions vice mayor thank you mr man i did just really fast wanted to comment and thank the folks who translated uh during the public comment and thought i would mention that we are actually so i will take that applause as support for uh translation by default which we will be discussing next week at the open government task force so i wanted to make sure i just mentioned that so um i'm going to support this also um and it's not because uh i want to vilify landlords i don't think anybody up here at this day thinks that all landlords are out there are in wait to to gouge their tenants but uh we we don't all want to blow up planes either but we all take off our shoes at the airport because there are some some bad actors out there and unfortunately we need to make laws like this to to um keep them in check um i want to thank the people who showed up tonight uh the organizers of this uh did a great job i would suggest that you um do a similar job and let the district attorney know that these are crimes worth prosecuting we're we're asking we're asking a lot from our staff putting this on the city attorney or the code enforcement department or the police department none of these folks have a lot of extra time we're also now asking for data to be coming back in addition to that so we need some help maybe we can divide the the job between us doing the investigating and the da doing the prosecuting we're something along those lines but it just seems wrong to me for the da to decide that uh is she's not going to prosecute this crime uh with that we have uh motion and and and if i and if i may uh just want to get clarification um um been scribbling to write revised language for the ordinance and uh want to confirm that the ordinance will now be in effect until october 9th 2019 and is it the council's desire that it also continue to be tied to the local emergency or simply the date i'm seeing some first of all i i think i heard that it would be reviewed in october of 2019 but not in effect until then but it'll be reviewed at that time okay small word change there um and the second part of that was so then the second part was whether it still is tied to the existence of the local emergency mr schwet home yes i would you know i'm not in tis well who knows what's going to occur but if the council decides because we don't have a clear definition of you know why are we established a emergency there's a lot of different data points that suggest at least to me we're still in an emergency so for some unforeseen reason something drastically changes prior to the specific review of this item before october of 2019 i think it still does need to be tied into there if if that were the case then it needs to be noticed as a review of this ordinance at the same time as it's noticed as a review of whether or not we have an emergency that's my concern because the reason from my point of view that i was separating it was so that all these people don't have to come here once a month and if we tie it to the emergency declaration they have to keep coming once a month so if we're going to make it a conversation that includes this we have to notice that um and that's so i'm i'm are you okay with you know sometimes the emergency is going to go by and we're going to say oh it's still so obvious um if you're thinking if somebody's scheduling and thinking that it's not going to be a consent item then it needs to be noticed as a possibility that this would change i think that um there's a way to get around that concern and that is to say that this ordinance will be in effect at least until october 9th of 2019 at which time it will be reviewed Mr. Rogers i think i think i can help uh split the baby is that the term so i think what i'm what i'm hearing is from that would satisfy both concerns is that the ordinance is in effect until the anniversary of the fire unless if the emergency ordinance fails to be continued this item would automatically be agendized for discussion that that is clear i i'll have that written all right are we ready to vote that passes unanimously thank you very much thank you folks we've still got several things to do on our agenda tonight and i'd like to get right to them so thank you very much for being here mr mcglenn we're going to go back to 14.4 item 14.4 report parking garage 9 2017 repair project steve ditmer and kim nidow presenting folks please please take your conversations outside we're going to continue with our meeting right now thank you very much of course the members of council this item for repairs to garage 9 originally went before council on september 4th hang on just a minute steve ladies and gentlemen please if you're going to have conversations take them outside we have business to conduct we'd like to get out of here tonight too thank you very much mr ditmer thank you the repairs recommended by walker restoration included replacement of the wear slab on the top level of the garage as well as crack ceiling and waterproofing the council considered a ward of a 2.18 million dollar construction contract for the repairs to ashron construction that ultimately resulted in a tie vote a subsequent vote provided direction to staff to bring back a smaller scale repair project and to wait a year to bring back a project for full repairs the council did not act to reject all bids for this project a rejection of all bids is necessary where the construction contract is not awarded if awarded additional funds are required to complete the project due to increased construction costs if the council rejects all bids for the project staff will follow the council's direction on september 4th to reduce the size of the project and wait a year for a contract for the full repairs on the garage it is recommended by the transportation and public works department and finance department that the council either by motion reject all bids for the city of san aroza parking garage 2017 repairs project and reaffirm council's direction on september 4th 2018 to bring back a smaller scale project for a contract award and wait a year to bring back a project for full repairs or by motion award contract number c0 1823 city of san aroza parking garage 2017 repairs in the amount of $2,180,095 to the lowest responsible bidder ashrin construction and restoration of santa clara california approve a 10 contingency and authorize a total contract amount of $2,398,104.50 and by resolution approve a fiscal year 2018-19 budget allocation of $706,569 for the project this concludes staff's presentation and we would be happy to answer any questions. Mr. Dittmer, is there any any risk of structural damage or or or or such by waiting a year on this project? So we had a question along these lines last time there's not a risk of you know catastrophic collapse or anything like that it's similar to pavements the the pavement deteriorates over time so the sooner you repair it the the longer it lasts and and the less it costs but it's it could be deferred thank you any other questions council I'm sorry my recollection from last time was as comes would you lift up your microphone please when I first started on council they told us to keep them pointed down and not up and so I have old bad habit the my recollection is that there was a possibility of something else happening with this garage and I'm just trying to remember it from a previous conversation was there a possibility of something else happening with this garage in the next five years you're you're referring to a development project yes ma'am there there is nothing on the books that I'm aware of but we're that this garage was not one that was slated for a high opportunity project there but we have other possibility uses for two million dollars right now just a little bit of background on your question there isn't anything on the books that I know of either but I do know of interest in this property and others it's speculative and early I don't think that we can count on that but there but there is some interest there thank you other questions mr. Sawyer thank you ma'am I'm curious as to the effect that we get attachment three was included in our packet the letter from the contractor that had placed the bid that ultimately did not go forward at our last meeting what is the can you quantify the effect on the integrity of our process given the action that happened at our last meeting and if we were to not follow our own processes in in in a request for for proposals what does this do to our reputation in the in the opinion of the four of you because I'm concerned about it I mean what and then and the gentleman and he's what what I see in attachment three is some expectation expectation of perhaps litigation so I'm just kind of curious what's what is uh is there a reason beyond the repairs to move forward with the process that we have that we have that we have you know that we have in place well from the legal perspective as a matter of law the council does retain full disc discretion to either accept a bid or reject all bids and it's a matter of reputation the council has the has the same authorities I would not there are plenty of times where we bring things forward and council makes a different decision and we move on from there okay so the original reason to to reject all bids or that to use the monies in another way for the future could someone refresh my memories to what what that what that suggestion was and explain to me why we were not going forward with the street I think I think the concern was that there may be opportunities at these locations part of the reason we're back here is that we need to actually have you if you're not going to move forward with the project to reject all bids okay part of our process go ahead and make make any other questions I have a so I have a number of possibilities here actually mr. soy as the item he's going to put a motion on the table um and then then we'll have comments okay um so I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna take I have one of two possibilities here and I'm going to take take one and just see where it goes um and a motion to award contract number c 01823 city center was a parking garage number nine 2017 repairs in the amount of two million 180 thousand ninety five dollars to the lowest responsible bidder ashron construction and restoration incorporated the senate senator claire california approving a 10 percent contract contingency and authorize a total contract amount of two million three hundred ninety eight thousand one hundred and four dollars and fifty cents second have a motion in a second um take your comments at this point mr. schwaedon thank you mr. mayor the reason I would be supporting this because I recall um assistant city manager uh guin talked about this piece of property was not included the request for information about uh developers who are looking for opportunity sites in the downtown because of the age of it it's going to be a parking garage there's a need for this function in this location and so um that I didn't actually hear in the presentation but I distinctly remember him saying they made a conscious decision that this parking garage was not going to be included in any other offers for developers to try to develop you know whether it be housing or any other function within the downtown footprint so I supported it the first time I'll be supporting your motion this time other comments I think I think it's very difficult for us to spend two million dollars on this project at this time there are um I will not be supporting this project I would support rejection of bids it's come in over we can do a smaller scale repair and I think we need for our city to not have some of the financial issues that our city has looking forward in the next year that it makes sense to be physically conservative on projects of this type I cannot um be in the situation right now of um of awarding uh two million dollars that is a substantial overbid um for this project thank you Mr. Tibbets thank you mayor yeah I'm gonna I just want to offer my comments I understand the council's desire to move forward with a mortal of this contract it's you know on its face it seems like a judicious use of the money it has been budgeted for and it's probably going to avoid some costs down the road but the only reason why I'm going to withhold and opt for the first option of rejecting the bids is for two reasons one being that the cost is pretty high and and I'm optimistic that in a couple of years it might not be as high although that optimism might be ill-fated but um I uh also I am also aware of the developer interest in that that particular property and I think this is you know if there's the opportunity to save 2.18 million dollars in the parking district that's a lot of resources available uh to go elsewhere in the district if that materializes if it doesn't I'll be with you all in a year to uh hopefully approve a bid to keep the maintenance going. Vice mayor so I've talked to this developer it's completely speculative um there's no uh there's no skin in the game he would need to replace the parking if if he uses that garage site either there or somewhere else um but uh if there's no harm in waiting a year I don't see why we wouldn't wouldn't do that at this point so um I won't be supporting your motion either and it sounds like that's likely to fail. Um well yeah but right now it's 3-3 so oh I'm sorry Mr. Vice Mayor so I apologize my thinking hasn't changed it's exactly the same as the mayor's which is if we can see a year from now without doing a detriment to the parking garage whether or not something does materialize I'm interested in not losing a potential site for high density housing development that we've talked about if there is an opportunity to move forward there so I would not be supporting either. So if you do vote if you don't you can either do one of two things you can either withdraw the motion then vote on the reject bids or do this vote and then you're going to need to re-vote on the reject bids just so you know we need to close the list. Is it called a substitute motion? Does this substitute? You'll have to help me with it. There's a motion and a second on the table do you want to? I'll withdraw the motion and then cast the item to another council member. Thank you. I move to reject all bids for the City of Santa Rosa parking garage number 9 2017 repair project and reaffirm council's direction on September 4th 2018 to bring back a smaller scale repair project for contract award and wait a year to bring back a project for full repairs and wait for the reading of the text. Second. Your votes. Thank you that passes four to three. Moving on 14.5. Item 14.5 report wastewater revenue refunding bonds series 2018a and a water revenue refunding bond series 2018. Kimberly Zino giving the presentation. Good afternoon Mayor Corsi and members of the council. I am actually just going to be introducing our financial advisors. They're going to be giving the presentation for you. Several months ago we started working on bond refunding so that we could save water and wastewater money in both of the enterprise funds and so I'm going to hand it over to Sarah who will introduce herself. Pardon me. Good evening and we will try to keep this brief given the hour and the long evening you all have had. I'm Sarah Holland Beck, a managing director with PFM financial advisors and it's a pleasure to be before you again this evening. We have worked with the city since 2006 and have been before you with refunding transactions previously and happy to be back with another opportunity to save money for the ratepayers of the city. As Ms. Zino mentioned the market is favorable for a refinancing of the 2008 water revenue bonds and 2007 a wastewater revenue bonds. The well interest rates have risen and in particular on the shorter end of the yield curve with some of the recent Fed actions. Long-term interest rates in the municipal market do continue to be favorable and as the graphic shows excuse me the 30-year rate stays continues to reside below the 3.5 percent mark for a AAA rated that's the AAA rated municipal index and from about year 10 through 30 of the yield curve rates have not been lower than today but for 20 to 30 percent of the time since 1993. So it's a favorable market. So what we're proposing is to refund about $11 million of outstanding water revenue bond series 2008. The sole purpose of the refunding is to achieve savings. We're expecting the transaction will generate approximately 1.2 million of net present value savings which does take into account all the transaction costs associated with affecting the transaction and the cash flow savings is about 2.78 million dollars. So the benchmark in the municipal market for refunding transactions is typically considered to be a 3 percent NPV savings level is a transaction that should be pursued and this one generates about 11 percent savings. So it's a great opportunity. The wastewater transaction we refunded the other portion of the 2007 a wastewater revenue bonds previously there was about there's about remaining about 17.7 million that at that time were unable to be refunded pursuant to federal tax law restrictions. So this transaction well not as large in terms of the savings it generates and not quite as robust and NPV savings since we were going through the process and had the team together it does generate a million dollars of cash flow savings and about just under 5 percent NPV. So again we thought it worthy of bringing forward for your consideration and we have been working to resolve some issues with respect to a surety policy that's in place to satisfy the reserve requirement with with regard to these bonds and that process is moving forward. Bond counsel is also present this evening if you had questions on any of the legal documents or other matters. The schedule we went had presentations with standard and poors to rate the bonds. We expect to receive ratings from them in the next day or two and look to price the bonds next week and close the transaction in the first week of January. So I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have or would turn it over to staff to discuss the actions requested. Please proceed. So the item was recommended both items most both resolutions have been recommended by both staff and the board of public utilities who saw this item a couple weeks ago. Thank you. Any any questions council? I don't have any cards on this. Who's got this item? Mr. Chivitz. I move a resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa authorizing the issuance and sale of city of Santa Rosa wastewater revenue refunding bonds series 2018a approving and authorizing and directing execution of a supplemental indenture of trust, a bond purchase contract, an escrow deposit and trust agreement, and other related documents approving an official statement and authorizing official action and waive further reading of the text. Second. Council here votes. It passes with six ayes. Councilwoman Combs having left the chamber. Thank you very much. There's actually two of them. One for wastewater and one for water. I move resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa authorizing the issuance and sale of city of Santa Rosa refunding water revenue bonds series 2018 approving and authorizing and directing execution of an indenture of trust, a bond purchase contract, an escrow deposit and trust agreement, and other related documents approving an official statement and authorizing official action and waive further reading of the text. Second. Your votes. That also passes with six ayes. Thank you. Thank you very much. Item 14.6 report amendment to the city classification and salary plan to modify salary and job titles of multiple water department classifications. Ben Horenstein and Jeremiah Mills present. Mayor Corsi council members. This has been a effort that's been going on for some time since around 2012-2013. Internal review in, okay, I made a mistake. There it is. In 2015, I'm going to go through this quickly. The city contracted with a compensation consultant coffin associates to take a look at some of the issues that have been identified. We did another round in 2018 and had the final package that we're bringing forward tonight in April of this year. It's gone through the bargaining units and we're bringing the joint from water and the HR department. The key proposals are first was the USO series, utility system operator series that was found to be below 5% market. This is a number of classifications in a promotional series that do a lot of the key operational maintenance work for the water and wastewater system. 50-some staff members. The number is important because this has been validated. Just this year we've lost eight staff to agencies, other agencies, which is a staggering number and to a large extent I believe validating the need to take a look at what we did here and ideally move this forward. We have PG&E and sanitary districts looking at this classification. It's a great training program but hard to keep losing good folks. So we recommend a 5% to their salary structure along with the lab supervisor that was found to be 10% below market. And then lastly we have in our maintenance section we have a span of control of the superintendent of 24 direct staff along with a very staggering, a very big workload but a staggering direct report. So this proposal is to add supervisory duties to the three senior workers that he has and they would be working seniors. So a fairly low cost way to have a better organizational design and take that kind of administrative load off a superintendent that needs to also focus on other important activities, safety and procurement and those and the like. So the recommendation from Water and Human Resources by Resolution is to create the classifications which are needed. So basically it's modifying the current classifications to supervising instrument tech, supervising electrical tech, supervising mechanical technologists and reclassify the current three classifications to those three newly created classifications that have the 5% increase, roughly 5% in the salary from the previous one. I hope you're following me. And then modifying as I noted the utility system operator series at 5% for the various classifications in the series along with the lab supervisor increasing that by 10%. So the USO series the three maintenance supervisors in the lab supervisor. So with that I would take any questions you may have. Thank you. Questions? I did want to I guess I shouldn't do that but I did want to briefly note this is all funded by the enterprise funds not the general fund and as noted in the staff report we will be deleting three positions this coming year to offset the $340,000 increase from this word to move forward. That was my question this was anticipated in the in the budget. No it was anticipated in the budget but going forward what we do have in the current budget it was not budgeted we do have salary savings to pay for through this budget year the upcoming budget it would be funded through specifically deletion of three positions. I see. Any questions Mr. Schwedhelm? Thank you. I guess my first question was I was a little surprised that it started in September of 2015 and we're just getting the data now and not necessarily from a council perspective because did this was that contract with K&A did that come to council or was that an internal contract? I believe the original contract came to council it was part of my time so I'm not exactly sure but I believe the size of it it likely did. I think part of the reworking had to do with the original size and scope of the recommendations and we've worked with management and staff to some degree to winnow down the scope of what we're bringing forward you tonight probably by about two-thirds something like that. So the concern I have so let's say it came to council or even if it didn't but if it was done in September of 15 I'm guessing the employees were aware that this was being done right and we don't have a product for three years is that what I'm hearing? Yes and I these are complicated issues but I appreciate the comment in that you need to do this in a way that doesn't disrupt cross department cross city issues and it needs to be done in a way that you know it's reasonable and affordable and you have organizational alignment so it has taken a while but it's a fair perspective. I guess where I'm having read some of these contracts did the contracts did not establish a due date there will be a product from this examination of what we're paying our employees by this date? Based on my understanding of some of the history I think probably the delay came more from internal in the city in reviewing drafts and iterations and then from the consultant themselves and it arose from just complex issues and interactions that would arise as you look into okay you make this change that's going to impact these other departments in trying to get this right. It was originally a much bigger effort than what we're bringing to you tonight and had reorganization elements that were rethought a number of times within the city within the water department so it has created during this time concerns certainly of staff waiting and waiting on this knowing it's occurring or is there going to be a reorg or not I would just and I can get into more details it was a very big maybe too big of an effort to try and do out of the gate but where we ended up I think is a fairly thoughtful very thoughtful place but yeah the road to get here was rough and bumpy for sure and I guess you know I'm not even sure this would not be the venue I would have chosen to have this type of conversation but but here we are because the other conversation I heard you say the number of staff that I've left and the way I heard you frame it I interpret that as saying because of the salary but I would also just with what you just said there staff believes for many other reasons typically when you look at employee satisfaction salaries not the number one item it's around five you know top ten reasons why people enjoy to work here salaries kind of towards the bottom there so I guess I have a concern that are there other contracts floating out there and then maybe there's a question for the city manager that we don't know about because it's very difficult if we approve this in September 15 where's that tracking tracking mechanism well I will I will do a deeper dive on where exactly they are originating contract came from and I will make sure that's reported out to council but I will say one of this things has has been alignment alignment with all entities working through the human resources department towards a common goal and as council knows we had to make dramatic changes in how we even engaged in negotiation processes and and change some of those issues and I believe that this particular item actually came up in closed session as part of our ongoing negotiations so I want to make it clear that there was challenges we did notify of council of those challenges and in in closed session and it was intimately tied to the contract negotiations that went on last last time we did review that is as part of those contract negotiations but I will I will consult with the city attorney and and make sure we get a clear picture but this is one of those cases where I have to say director Hornstein uh had a moment where he took over a project and he was just trying to get his hands around the operations of this particular unit and the implications of this classification study since that time we've changed how we do classification studies all classification studies start in the human resources department they do not start within a department so I too have had conversations with the city attorney and whether this is a closed session because again it's very uncomfortable with the operations of the organization but I just believe council has a responsibility about the health and welfare of our employees and again those indicators if eight of left okay at what point does council get brought in and I get we're going through changes with both water HR and some other departments but I would just appreciate more information so that we're aware of this so I'll send something doesn't show up three years after we did the contract well I respectfully it did not show up three years after getting contract I think in the presentation today it is coming off of that but we did when we had negotiations last spring um two years ago actually bring this particular item up and say it was going to be a difficult process to get to resolution so while I think that there was some in the 2015 period how this got initiated um it sparked changes within the organization and now human resources is the keeper of these classification studies holistically around the organization exactly to your point council member it can we cannot have um classification studies spring up in departments they need to be working through the human resources department and I appreciate that and that's exactly what spurred some of those changes absolutely so now we just go back to whether or not I would warn another closed session just with the step because there's a lot of different positions we're looking to reorganization you know I'm coming in January um and just sometimes having the public conversation with personnel movements um more information at least from a council perspective in closed session I think would be helpful absolutely the station absolutely thanks other questions mr. Sawyer thank you mayor I'll introduce a resolution of the council of the city san aroza amending the city's classification and salary plan to modify salary and job titles of multiple water department classifications and wait for the reading your votes passes with six I'm sorry passes with six have no cards for final public comment we are adjourned almost made it before 10