 on the Spanish channel to commence translation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Pablo, will you please restate this in Spanish? Well, welcome to the meeting. For those of you who are interested in interpretation in Spanish, the interpretation is available. For those who want to listen to the interpretation, you can click on the Zoom toolbar that looks like a globe. Once you join the channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the interpretation in Spanish. Thank you. Pablo, I'm going to wait until the council goes into closed session and I'll leave you on this side in case we have public comment. Good afternoon. Madam City Clerk, I recognize a quorum. Let's go ahead and call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Excuse me. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Council Member Rogers. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Okay, I see the other two council members coming in. So we'll give them a minute so they can go on the record as being present. John's just getting his steps in coming down before we go back up for closed session. Council Member Rogers. Present. And Council Member Sawyer. Here. Okay, let the record show that all council members are present. All right, we started our day in closed session today so let's go ahead and see if we have any public comment for item 2.1. Mayor, there's no voicemail public comment and I see no raised hands. And there's nobody present in the council chamber. Okay, we'll recess into closed session and come back for our study session later. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Pablo, are you able to translate that for me please? Very well. For those just joining the meeting, live interpretation in Spanish is available and members or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the channel. To join, click on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Thank you. I'll have you stay on this side until the council resumes. Thank you. In case we have somebody that wants to speak in Spanish. Good afternoon. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll and we will re-establish our quorum. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Here. Thank you so much. We'll move on to our interviews for our library commissioner seats. Council, we have four applicants today. We'll bring them up to the podium to answer some questions and talk a little bit about themselves. Obviously it's been a great relationship that we've had with the library commission, particularly with our investments in Roseland. We have two seats that are up. First, there will be a seat that is specific for the City of Santa Rosa that we will be selecting. The other is a joint position that is appointed between the Board of Supervisors and the City of Santa Rosa. We'll have our deliberations, and ultimately we'll select who our city representative is, and then I'll also ask Council to give me your top two for the joint position between the city and the county for discussions with the chairman of the Board, Supervisor Gore. So if that works for folks, we'll go ahead and jump in, and it is a little bit like speed dating. You do have the applications in front of you, but we'll be able to ask questions from our candidates. So I'll start with David Cahill. Mayor, I do have a question, sir. Yes. Will we be selecting the Santa Rosa representative first, and then the joint representative second? Yeah, we will do that. Thank you, sir. Okay. Hey, it's on. Mr. Mayor, Council members, my name is Dave Cahill. I'm the incumbent for the Santa Rosa only and I'm the chair of the committee for the first time in my seat. And when I came before some of you should, I've seen four years ago when I was interviewed to join the commission for the first time. And my platform at that time could be summarized in one word, Roseland. I had read the statistical portrait of Sonoma County 2014, and I was appalled that the income in the Roseland area was like that of Mississippi. This in the prosperous county in a prosperous state in the richest country in the world. So I was also asked to apply by a couple of outgoing and current commissioners. So anyway, you appointed me, so what have I done? Well, I don't want to pretend that I'm solely responsible for the new temporary Roseland branch of Roseland Road, but I was the commissioner who attended all the interior library working group meetings on this and made what I think were fairly helpful suggestions. I also was the library liaison to the Roseland Library Coalition which is the citizen group that has come before you repeatedly. And I'm so grateful that you did two things. First, you have subsidized the rented facility the new temporary branch to the tune of roughly $150,000 a year and that you've also set aside $10 million for the new proposed Roseland branch way out on her. So I guess you could say that I've done what I promised to do. I would like to stay on the commission to forward the project down on her. Also, our library director resigned several months ago, retired. She was a great director and the commission is even just essentially as we speak sending out RFPs for executive search firms. And I want to be a part of that process because I don't want our present emphasis on the underserved which is in a variety of planning documents for the library to get lost somehow when they wind up with a director that's not that committed to that kind of purpose. The library's mission, a large part of it is to serve the underserved in this county. We already have one Bibliobus running around. We are trying to get staff more out of the branches and into the communities and now that the pandemic is over we are restarting our programs. So that's what I've done also. For two years I've been a member of the library's finance committee and we have much improved and comprehensible financial statements now and we even managed to come up with a clear division of what kind of expenditures are attributed both to the property tax and what to measure why the sales tax increment. So we can tell what happens if Measure Y is renewed in 2024 we're going to a 24 ballot question or if it fails. One of the things that we're starting this September is Sunday hours in all branches. That of course is completely funded by Measure Y and if things don't go well in 2024 and the measure expires in 2026 that will disappear along with many staff. So anyway I can rattle on at some length but maybe it would be a good idea to find out what you want to know. Well thank you so much I appreciate it. I will look to my colleagues to see if there are any questions for Mr. Cahill. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you Mayor. Thank you for what you've been able to do for Rosalind. It's greatly appreciated. I've seen the work that you and I'm an all. Your understanding sir of how public libraries work in underserved communities what is your understanding? What works best from your experience? What works best is to go to where the citizens are to reach them through schools. We have an active outreach program to the schools we go to parks we make it easier especially with the Sunday hours to access the library when people are allowed can go there easily without having to take off work one of the many drawbacks of the old temporary branch in the front of the furniture store was that it wasn't open except when people were in school and didn't work at all so we want to make sure that it's open to all and we also now pay a premium for bilingual staff so the best we can to serve the people who need service the most the new temporary Rosalind branch especially is focused on children and that's where the need is and we'll go for where the need is. We also reach out to LGBTQ folks and that's a vital part of our community we want to make sure that people don't feel disparaged because of who they are. Thank you sir. Thank you Mr. Cahill. It's a little bit like speed dating we do quick interviews as supplemental to the applications but we want to thank you not just for representing for the last four years but still continuing to have an interest in it. Council will make our selection tonight. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Appreciate it. Thank you. Our next candidate is Venkates Swaminathan who is on Zoom I believe. Yes we're promoting him now. Can you guys hear me? Yes we can. Welcome. Great. Thank you. It's great to be here. First of all thank you for the opportunity. I'm relatively new to Santa Rosa and Sonoma County two years ago during the pandemic and but I have to say one of the reasons I'm interested in the library commission in particular is because libraries have always been a huge part of my life growing up. I grew up in Bombay and Delhi and my dad was always a member of the American Library which is one of those great American institutions and so I grew up reading American literature American books and I've always been involved with and engaged with the libraries wherever I've lived in Oakland and San Francisco so for me this is something I would really enjoy being part of the community and really contribute to the value of the community. I also want to say professionally I work with teenagers to help high school kids with college admissions and so I can see in the work I do every day what it means to students who develop a great habit of reading through public libraries and for a lot of low-income kids we work with a lot of low-income kids professionally I will say helping them develop that habit of reading and helping them build relationships with the library is so important so that's why I want to do this I also want to say that in terms of priorities I would certainly echo some of the things other people have talked about, expanding access in the schools expanding the Big League of Bus I would also like to find a way to expand the tutoring programs the library offers there's a partnership now with tutor.com for example, but I think expanding that so that local students can volunteer much more through the library and teach other local students will be enormously effective and then of course there's a great effort to get the Big League of Bus and other kinds of things engaged in local places I think it's important to expand that especially important to expand that through the high schools where students really tend to lose their habit of reading so that said, I'd love to answer any questions thank you so much, I'm looking to my colleagues to see who has a question to start Mr. Vice Mayor thank you Mayor, the same question I asked the applicant prior, your understanding of how public libraries work and what do you find most effective in underserved communities yeah I think the big challenge with underserved communities of course first I think the previous people also said this about getting to places where students where people are where those communities are so parks, schools, but I think it goes beyond that, I think it promotes it's about libraries promoting the habit of reading, encouraging people to read more because honestly that's one of those difference maker things in terms of people's lives when people build a habit of reading their lives are transformed as a result and I think especially in underserved communities it's important that the library get to where students are emotionally, physically that it gets to them students of different ethnic communities, students of different sexualities, different gender orientations all of those kinds of things so that everyone feels like this is a library for them and it reaches them where they are thank you particularly during the pandemic we saw how important it was to address the digital divide, how would you work as a commissioner to keep technology current at the library so that it's not just about checking out books but it also helps plug in the gaps that we see for critical communities yeah so just so it's clear my background is in technology I have masters in computer in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois I've been in the tech most of my life and so I know technology really well and I know how much of a difference it's made and because of the work I do working with high school kids of all different incomes I can see the difference that makes the students who don't have access to Wi-Fi at home access to broadband access to computers I think libraries have an enormous role to play in that and I think things like the Bibliobus are helpful they're a good first step but I think it's really really important to expand that so that everyone has access to high quality broadband everyone has access to secure computing facilities they can use to access the internet and to access all the resources that are out there for them excellent thank you so much any other questions council well thank you so much for being here as you heard me say we'll be making our deliberations a little bit later tonight we just appreciate your interest in the position thank you so much yeah I appreciate your opportunities alright you take care thanks bye now I think we have Linda coming up to the podium Linda I apologize I'm not going to try to butcher your last name could you introduce yourself for us absolutely first of all can you hear me please make sure the microphone is on the microphone is on she just needs to get a little closer and maybe the podium raised a little higher thank you can you hear me now there we go Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Alvarez and Santa Rosa City Council my name is Linda Shilfkin it's a pleasure to be here with you today this might be one of the most odd interviews that you encounter today because I have a whole lot of respect for temporary and for these commission seats and for the coming term in particular and I see a whole lot of weakness in my application so I'm just going to be straight up with it I am a resident of the city of Petaluma so I am applying today for the joint position appointed by your council and also the Board of Supervisors and the big question is how on earth could a city of Petaluma west city of Petaluma west side serve in this role so the mission of the Sonoma County Library is to provide access and the right to access to information to all of our people in all of our community and have a safe place to exchange ideas regardless of whether they are a member of the BIPOC community regardless of gender identity sexual preference regardless of socioeconomic status regardless of whether they are even housed I have lived 50 years 27 of those years have been as a resident of the city of Santa Rosa or in the outskirts of the city of Santa Rosa and yet regardless of my residents and any of those addresses that I've ever lived it really doesn't matter I have never had a problem accessing information I have never been a fourth grader sitting there in math class telling me to turn the zoom on and turn my video on and I'm not and I won't because I see all of my classmates in the class and I see them having their own rooms and I see them having their own toys and stuffed animals and even their dogs have lots of toys and I share a room with three siblings and I'm holding a baby in my arms and I'm taking care of while I'm trying to study math because my parents are out working this is the reality of people throughout our county the incorporated areas and in the cities and I have not experienced this I have not experienced having to derail my college plans because I have to take care of my younger siblings and my parents I grew up in a time where Prop 13 had not yet gutted our public education system and had not yet gutted the University of California access so I see a whole lot of deficiencies for the importance of this role and I sure hope that you're presented today with somebody who has the ability to have experienced this firsthand and serve this but unfortunately I think I'm speaking to the choir here you understand that these are unpaid positions and who on earth could do this important work without getting paid for it so I have the luxury of having some capacity in my world in my time right now in my life to devote myself to this cause and what do I bring to the table I guess I have a good pair of binoculars because I see the climb ahead the next four years I kind of see it like a half dome climb there is a big question that this commission is going to have to answer and they're going to have to listen you ask what Vice Mayor Alvarez what is the most thing that I could do to help our underserved communities and I can listen because there is a big question looming and that is should we be renewing the sales tax measure a lot of folks in this county may have a hard time being convinced to approve the renewal of a sales tax measure people are struggling in all different pockets of our county and I see an increasing reluctance of folks to be giving up their own livelihoods to help other people if the answer to that question is going to be no there needs to be some pretty tough fiscal reality discussions with each of the JPA members and the members of the public about where there would be restructuring and how that would be taking place I am able to listen I am able to hear and if the answer to that question is yes we should be going to the voters to ask them the sales tax measure it is going to be even more important to listen because you are going to have not only the tapestry of the Sonoma County library that supports all of our people here but that is so expertly woven together because we have listened to the voices in all of the pockets of our county and all of the people and their concerns and we have woven those together to help bring supports as much as we can to chip at the institutional barriers and racism in our county that are built in to hold people back and hold people down and so continuing to listen and continuing to hear the renewed concerns and do our best to address those that is something that I can do I can listen so I appreciate your time I appreciate your service and if there are any other questions that you have I am here to help answer them Thank you so much Linda I am hoping you can expand a little bit on the importance of partnerships in this work partnerships broadband is a perfect example there is no way that anybody in this county is going to single handedly solve the problem it is a multi-million dollar problem to have broadband expand out to all of our rural people to our underserved, to our folks who have slow access to wifi and having partnerships so we don't have our government agencies reinventing the wheel we have the county working with the cities working with the school districts and working with the scenic system with the Sonoma County library so that we can tap into not only the federal grants available and state grants available but we can work together as partners and find out how we can advance these resources to help our people that is just one example of how partnerships listening and being humble understanding how we can work together is going to be really important thank you so much any other questions from council members Mr. Vice Mayor first and foremost thank you for your efforts on both measures whether it be the behavioral tax as well as the Sonoma County library tax so thank you for working on those my question to you have you seen any programs that you would like to implement or even some of your own that you would like to see implemented in our library system um my I have seen firsthand what the library can do my daughters have been the beneficiaries from when I was an exhausted parent and practically passed out on the couch and my toddlers would be able to go into the library and access any documents any books they would want and the library is supporting them fully and now they're feisty teens and they are coming back quoting to me John Lewis quotes and feeling very empowered and strong what I see our librarians doing for our kids and our teens is pretty amazing and educating them about how we are all equal and how we should all have access to information in our community so I would definitely be a supporter of that I do believe that there is a wifi checkout program far beyond just books but it's expanding access to digital technology which is essential and that I believe is quite expensive but is of critical importance so I would like to see that expanding thank you very much thank you so much for being here today we really appreciate you having the conversation we'll be selecting later tonight alright thank you take care next we have Sarah Lagos good afternoon mayor city council members and community members it looks like from the way Mr. Rogers is turning I'll turn my there you go that's perfect thank you so much for allowing me to join you on zoom I'm actually on vacation in Chicago visiting family right now but I want to do a quick introduction my name is Sarah Lagos I am in my day job the director of philanthropy for the Santa Rosa junior college foundation for the past four years I've had the pleasure and privilege of serving as a volunteer on the Santa Rosa library advisory board for the past three years I've been the chair of the Santa Rosa library advisory board I have put in an application for the joint position as a commissioner to represent both the Santa Rosa city as well as the Sonoma County in my role on the library advisory board I've had the pleasure and the privilege of observing some of our commissioners including David Cahill doing some great work as well as others and from that role as the chair of the Santa Rosa library advisory board I have had an opportunity to observe our staff at the library to support them as a volunteer as well as to learn and observe what the role of a commissioner does and I'm really excited to apply for that position today because I really feel that those four years have given me an opportunity to see what the library has been doing as a staff and what they need as well as be an advocate in a variety of different goals and objectives that the library has put forward and so I'm very excited to be here and to put in that application for the role Council members, do we have any questions? Council Member McDonald Thank you so much for your application my question to you is really on how would you do more outreach to our earliest learners in the community specifically targeting families to bring them into the libraries and our underserved communities primarily? Absolutely, so we have a really incredible library staff and I think the work that they're doing right now to reach out to families especially in our underserved communities is tremendous, unfortunately they are understaffed and so I think the biggest priority that I would suggest is fully staffing the library at the levels in which they need in order to do that outreach in listening to library director reports and listening to the branch manager reports on every other month it's clear that the work they're doing is very important, it's just simply that they don't have enough bodies and so my priority as a commissioner would be to ensure that the library budget could handle the additional staff that would be necessary to do that work. I also really believe that the library is not just a resource for younger families or young children if you actually look at the library and who is attending and using a library it's actually people who are in workforce development they're coming into the libraries because they need resources to write a resume to job search, they need support for literacy they need support for fixing things in their home and so what I see is a library that is more than just a resource for young children and young families which of course it will be and as a parent I definitely use it for that but I think our libraries are more than just books now I think our libraries are community hubs and community resources and they serve a much broader group of individuals than they ever used to Any additional questions? Alright well we really appreciate you taking the time especially zooming in from your vacation in Chicago we'll discuss later tonight we'll get back to you Thank you We appreciate your interest Alright Council with that we're going to go ahead and recess we'll come back at 2 o'clock for our study session and then as I mentioned later tonight we'll be selecting our Santa Rosa representative as well as a joint representative between the city and the county Good afternoon let's bring it back Council we'll move on to item number 4 that's 4.1 our project labor agreement policy Madam Clerk could you please call the roll Madam Clerk Council Member Schwedhelm Council Member Sawyer Council Member Rogers Council Member McDonald Council Member Fleming Vice Mayor Alvarez Mayor Rogers Let the record show that all council members are present Great thank you so much Mr. Assistant City Manager go ahead and take it away Madam City Manager Thank you very much Mayor Council Members I'm Jason Nutt I'm the Assistant City Manager and I'm joined by Risa De La Rosa our Deputy Director of Economic Development and we are going to walk you through work that we've done over the course of the last five months evaluating what a project labor agreement policy could look like or the evaluation and background that we've done to determine what other policies may exist that we could incorporate into our existing contract structure so I'm going to turn it over to Risa and she's going to kick us off and get us oriented Great thanks so much Next slide please So as Assistant City Manager Nutt said we're here with a number of our fellow staffers to discuss the tools that might best and most effectively accomplish these objectives that were identified by the Economic Development Subcommittee related to the delivery of some or perhaps all city infrastructure construction projects The objectives which have guided our research to date are to enhance our skilled local workforce and increase access to apprenticeship programs to benefit diversity equity and broader inclusion in the workforce to reduce carbon footprint by keeping our local workforce local and to create positive economic impacts by reinvesting local improvement funds through the local workforce So stepping back for a moment and working on this item and in speaking to so many people in the community both union non-union merits labor workforce etc we became actually most excited by the first objective the opportunity to grow our local workforce as opposed to focusing solely on a PLA or project labor product and that is the process of addressing the issues versus the specific tool has allowed us to be more open to solutions that are posed on this slide so while the study session is labeled and is obviously centered around PLAs we want to recognize that there are people in this community and certainly on this council who feel strongly about the issues from different not opposing perspectives that said absolutely as council members are adamant that a PLA is the best and perhaps only tool to accomplish these goals we can absolutely do that but like I said we were particularly excited about the economic development opportunity around sort of an and tactic so that we can for example capitalize on approaches that might seem more open and equitable to apprenticeship and training programs for example in a way that would grow and retain our local and by local I mean in particular Sonoma County local workforce for a broad spectrum of construction needs going well beyond capital improvement projects so we think with PLAs or CWA's which we'll get into or other tools that we have the opportunity to affect housing development and other community benefitting construction needs if we focus on the issues not the singular tool and that has been our premise of our approach to get us to where we are today we're going to endeavor to be balanced and provide balanced information and move through the points but we're going to get through after a number of slides suggestions and points that we need your feedback on to accomplish these goals so next slide our interest with this slide basically is to point out at a high level that there are public contract code requirements that are often attributed as benefits to PLAs that are also applicable to standard construction contracts too again reiterating that this is not an either or question but really it's a question of creating pathways that are palatable enough for both union and non-union contractors and subcontractors to bid on projects in a way that maintains competition and increases our local labor but really what was important to us was also equitably protecting and benefiting the workers so for example discrimination is of course prohibited including not needing to be a member of the local labor or hiring and dispatching not needing to be a member in a labor organization in hiring or dispatching workers for a project also for both PLAs and standard contracts all qualified contractors and subcontractors are allowed to bid for and work on projects regardless of whether they are parties to collective bargaining or not disputes must be resolved by a neutral arbitrator or mediator both PLAs and standard contracts require the use of apprentices in printable occupations and both contracts guarantee prevailing wages set by the director of industrial relations but what is unique to PLAs by code are the guarantees against work stoppages and disruptions which is a clause that we just don't see in our standard construction contracts next slide so in setting the discussion up we need to go through some definitions and descriptions starting with what do we mean by local labor while we typically think of local labor to be labor whose permanent home addresses within cities boundaries or at least within Sonoma County for capital improvement projects this is not only impractical but it's unrealistic so on the other hand considering the jurisdictional boundaries of some local trade organizations to be the defining factor of what local is or could be or should be would also be impractical and go against our stated goals just because some of the trade organizations have a very wide and far-reaching jurisdiction so we recommended that the economic development subcommittee members consider and then they agreed to would be most realistic in that local labor would be defined as those permanent home addresses within Sonoma, Marin, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties so that is a recommendation and that's what's highlighted on this slide we'll also be speaking today about contractor types so when we talk about the building trades or construction trades we're speaking about trades primarily concerned with construction and finishing of buildings, roads excavation structures in such what unions or subscribers are labor union hiring halls that have the responsibility of providing workers for employers who have a bargaining agreement with the union and non-union or merit companies are any company or organization that does not necessarily employ workers who belong to a union next slide okay the last slide before we move on from this is an area we'll be seeking feedback on at the end of the presentation and that's project types so I just want to pause here and be clear that though housing development projects that receive city funding were discussed in the economic development subcommittee for potential inclusion in the PLA policy it was decided across the board that housing projects should be excluded and that we will focus only on public infrastructure projects and then a side note to that is that just like capital improvement projects government funded housing projects are already required to pay contractors labor at prevailing wage which is something we noted in slide three okay so specific to public infrastructure projects there are six categories of projects roadways, linear projects vertical projects park, landscape and environmental this includes earth movements electrical which is traffic signals, building upgrades retrofits and mechanical which is like HVAC boilers and controls next slide and we worked with the North Bay building trades council to try to get a better understanding of what their membership looks like the council is an affiliation of 18 building trades crafts unions with offices in Sonoma, Alameda Marin, Contra Costa and San Francisco counties as well as if you can see there one affiliated trade union based out of LA we reached some of the unions when we considered how to define local labor in terms of demographics we weren't able to get anything other than the counties were both North Bay building trades council apprentices as well as our CIP contractor employees live based on their permanent home addresses on payrolls and from the information that was provided to us from the trades council it was a specific to union apprenticeship data and from that we know that the total North Bay membership that includes the five counties, Sonoma, Alameda Marin, Medecino and Napa as well as Solano County comprises about well there's but 202,633 apprentices and of those about 44% would be considered local based on our proposed definition so again that's 44% excluding Solano County the remaining 56% of union apprenticeship members reside in Solano County next slide so we also wanted to understand whether individuals living in equity priority areas qualifying census tracks and PDAs were adversely impacted in any way so we got information related to the Santa Rosa Junior College Burbank Auditorium job and though that's a very specific job it should be representative of similar projects and I'm actually going to hand it over to Assistant City Manager Nutt to explain this map and then to take us through the next number of slides thank you right so this particular slide was an effort to try to really look at the depth with which the team was trying to identify how either our existing contractors or project labor agreements relating to union contractors impact the community that we currently serve and as you can see on this map we've identified the median household income we've identified equity priority areas and then we took the demographic data that Raisa just described and we overlaid it in our GIS system to try to figure out how things were matching up and so you'll see this slide as well in two slides this shows an example of a union oriented project labor agreement project which was the Burbank Auditorium for Santa Rosa Junior College the blue highlight in the map itself is the equity priority areas and the blue highlighted numbers on the table relate to zip codes where equity priority areas exist and so we wanted to make sure that there was no equity between either union oriented project labor agreements or our existing contract services so that there was impacts to any one particular demographic or area within our community and so this gave us a snapshot as to what we were looking at so next slide please when we think about our current CIP contractors one of the things that we showed the economic development subcommittee from our early evaluation was based on bitter data and the bitter data is vastly different than our award data so the slide on the left or the image on the left shows home office of awarded contractors between 2012 and 2022 it's important to note that of bidding entities only 25% of the contractors that submit bids to the city are within Sonoma County when you look at who gets awarded the contracts a substantial amount of contractors are awarded that are local to the point of about 55% and if we go beyond that to all contractors that we've defined as local meaning those five area counties we're at nearly 60 just over 60% of the amount of local contractors that are awarded and that's important for us because one of the questions is what constitutes local the other piece is when you think about those Sonoma County contractors we conducted a survey and we received of 65 Sonoma County contractors that we've done business with and 21 contractors responded about 31% for employees that lived with that worked for them it's about 700 and some odd employees and you'll see on the right that indicates that 68% of the employees for those 21 organizations those 21 contractors live within Sonoma County there's a small band within the other four counties adjacent to us and then there's 24% that are other now a number of the companies that responded to the large companies the team Jalati the Argonauts and they actually have employees that live outside of our area that participate in various jobs along the way and therefore they're included in their employees statistics and demographics and so that's where that camp comes from what's also interesting is those large contractors are not only merit shops meaning they provide and bid on programs that are non PLA's but they are also trade houses where they have unionized employees that could then also turn around and bid on project labor agreement projects the other thing I want to point out here is on the left hand image that pie chart the 18.3% for all for the companies that are identified is outside the Bay Area this is what I asked staff to do is to break down the number of contractors that exist within that slice of the pie and what they came back to me with is about 50% of the contractors that submit or were awarded contracts outside of the Bay Area don't have any Bay Area or local competition meaning our slurry seal contractor our sewer lining contractors some of our concrete surface maintenance contractors that do protected sealants they don't have competition locally and therefore those contractors or subcontractors are located out in predominantly the Sacramento area and so even when we're looking at how we might be able to arrange or adjust the way we do contract business there's going to be that component of contractors that just don't have the local resource to be able to provide that local base it is not a significant amount as you can see from the pie chart but there is always going to be a component of our contract services that don't have a local home base or a local product type next slide please and so when I break down the demographic data from our local contractors same thing that we showed you for the Burbank Auditorium project where those respondents of the 21 contractors and the 700 employees reside in our local area and again the blue highlight identifies those areas or equity priority areas in general what we concluded based on this was whether it is a union trade project or a merit trade project we don't see any substantial difference in the employee base that those projects are drawing from that's the good news that means we are not going to disenfranchise any particular portion of our community if we go one way or the other that those employees are already going to be reflected somehow in one of the two options next slide when we think about what the union shops will do as far as identifying and assigning local labor we went and talked with the North Bay trades council we got some more information about how they do those assignments and these are the three priorities with how they assign individual employees or apprentices to a particular job they'll first look through their registry and they'll identify employees that live in the local area and they will ask those employees if they are available for that job and if so they will assign them if they have run out of available local apprentices they will then go to the region outside the region then they'll move statewide and beyond now the good news in talking to the trades is if we identify a project labor agreement policy it's up to us the local jurisdiction and agency to define what local member is what a regional member is and what a statewide member is and we want to make the boxes with which they pull those employees from you can see in the slide I've given some examples of different ways that that could be carved out it could be as simple as defining local as the five counties that we originally defined under the definition that Raissa explained it could be that we want at least in that first pass to be something even more granular with the regional being those five adjacent counties that will be something that will not talk about in depth today if council requests us we'll be talking about the next time we come back when we're actually creating more of a framework for either a PLA policy or an adjustment or amendment to the existing contract language it's interesting that when we spoke with the non-union trades they have a similar process for how they delegate or assign employees I spoke with two different non-union trade organizations and it comes off as they'll likely try to assign someone that's within 80 to 100 miles of the particular project and that's the distance that they identify as local if there aren't enough individual employees there then they move in a radial way out of that in order to get that job need assuming there's a specific local workforce requirement again that we'll get into a little bit later when we talk about community workforce agreements and other things so there are regardless of whether it is a union trade organization or a non-union trade organization when you establish an apprenticeship or a local workforce agreement they're going to utilize a particular methodology to assign local first and then they'll be able to communicate beyond that next slide please so Reissa described that we have met with the North Bay Trades Council and I'll give you another some more detailed description about that here of the next slide in this particular case we did talk with two non-union trade associations one is the associated builders and contractors of Northern California they were great to speak with they gave us lots of great information they offered more than enough time for us to be able to understand exactly how their organization works how it differs from a union trade organization and what things seem to be at the at the center or the heart of the challenges when a project labor agreement is being discussed or talked about and so we were able to have suggestions as we go through this and I think as Reissa explained our focus really was the development of that local skilled workforce labor whether union or non-union that's really what we're trying to put forward as far as the presentation that we have today and it was just like the great communication we had with the North Bay Trades Council we had great communication with both ABC and WECA so they're 18 they're 18 union halls associated with the North Bay Trades Council we also spoke and reached out to a number of other entities whether it was ABC WECA the Hispanic Chamber the Santa Rosa Junior College the Chamber of Commerce Sonoma Water and the list does go on we've actually spent quite a bit of time over the last several months really trying to capture as much information reach out and talk to as many people as we could we did relay some of this information to the Economic Development Subcommittee and you see a couple of the bullet points associated with the two meetings we had there ultimately the the subcommittee provided us with some recommendations which were really focused on the definitions that Reissa outlined at the beginning of the presentation and they are going to create that framework as we build our way to our final recommendation moving forward or what we're asking council to provide us feedback on next slide in addition our engineering teams reached out to a number of colleagues in other cities and the list is somewhat comprehensive and somewhat incomplete we received a lengthy list from Cal Cities which includes just about every PLA agreement that's either been adopted, not adopted or cancelled over the course of the last 20 years and we utilize that in coordination with some of the community conversations we've had or colleague conversations and we did reach out to just over a dozen entities and all for various reasons some of which they've had a PLA in place for a long period of time some of which had a PLA and cancelled the PLA program some use PLAs on a project by project basis some use them just exclusively or just throughout all of their project lists we tried to pick entities that had service areas of similar size so that we could start to gain some better understanding of who's using PLAs how they're using it and why they're using it next slide please a couple of the entities that we focused in on were two that were local and two that were more outside of our area so Santa Rosa Junior College in Sonoma County obviously we know Sonoma County's in the process of reviewing and evaluating their program Santa Rosa Junior College has a policy in place they've been using it for measure H they've had it they've utilized it for two specific projects meaning the Burbank Auditorium which we alluded to earlier the STEM building the Burbank Auditorium is roughly about a $40 million project the STEM building is about a $75 million project both have been successful in the implementation of their PLA with that said the non-PLA projects have also been successful predominantly the same contractors so I did have a great conversation with Serif and Fernandez who was their project manager on that and got to gain quite a bit of information from how their PLA program and non-PLA projects are working along in addition we've had staff working through the documentation for San Jose San Jose spent quite a bit of time really collecting information evaluating different policy options vetting those policy options out of the public looking at kind of the same things that we have they looked at not necessarily just jumping straight to a trade-oriented PLA but looking at how you might be able to make adjustments within your existing contract language to be PLA like without focusing or being exclusive to union labor ultimately they made the decision to go a more traditional PLA route but they did go through that process which we found intriguing because that's kind of the same way we've been feeling as we've been collecting data we also looked at Galita Galita is a city that just recently went through this and adopted a PLA policy just under a year ago we were very impressed with the way they put together their staff report we were very impressed with some of the conversations they have and the way they phrased things and it gave us really good insight as we were starting to develop our own evaluation so these were four entities that we spent quite a bit of time evaluating and reviewing next slide so for those that don't know what a project labor agreement is what you see on the screen really is it in a very tight net shell it is a collective bargaining agreement between the project owner meaning us the city and the trade unions so that we can manage the organization and construction of a particular project in a systematic way they're designed really to create that employee-employer-employee relationship more so than the current city and state contract code requirements but union labor does provide some specificity within the project labor agreement language and you can see some of the bullet points here that sort of outline where the value and benefits may be now going to the next slide this is really going into a little bit more depth what are potential advantages and what are potential disadvantages and and if you go online there's reams of information on both sides of this and so weeding through that to try to create more of a bullet-listed executive summary actually was very difficult so I just want to say it's actually very evenly split so if we happen to deviate and be more descriptive one way or the other it's not intentional it's just the way our conversation worked out so as you can see on the potential advantages it really is looking at how you can develop and implement a higher wage labor pool that has a full benefits that's backed by the union itself and it creates a defined work program for each of the individual employees whether apprentice journeyman pre-apprentice or other it establishes a mechanism where you can you can provide more certainty on budget on time and the labor itself in addition to having a systematic approach to dealing with any labor issues that may arise the intent is through their training programs with each of the union halls you have what looks like and what appears to be a very diverse sustainable local workforce and a growth mechanism to create more growth in the future and then the claim is that because of all of those things that are put in place you have a higher worker safety for those employees on the potential disadvantage side you have when you think about apprenticeships the claim and the evaluation and the study shows that they provide the same level of skills to the membership to the apprentices and the journeyman you do have skills that are developed not necessarily through union hall through a consolidated training center and in the conversation with ABC in week I was able to confirm that they do have training centers that are state regulated and are certified similar to the union trade houses and so they are also guaranteed to be paid prevailing wage and benefits benefits may differ depending upon the specificity of the contractor that's been employed under the contract itself but all benefits do exist for those employees under the project delivery and quality assurance side the concern is that PLAs tend to increase project costs that they don't necessarily result in a more on time delivery than others and I will say in the history at Santa Rosa as far as we've been able to tell we haven't had any labor disagreements with any of our contractors so we're not sure if there's necessarily a challenge that the PLA will solve there the other when we look at the workforce focus you know that there's a statement that a PLA and union labor is a superior workforce to others again we haven't been able to identify any validation in the community generally states that it's not valid that you have quality workforce on either side whether merit shop or union shop and the concern about bringing your contract to a specific employee type may constitute some discrimination on the non-union shops that could warrant or result in economic challenges not necessarily economic growth and then on the other front it's if you are a non-union employee under a contractor that has been awarded a PLA contract you're required to join the appropriate union hall for the duration of that at the cost of the membership and you have to conform with those rules again there's information on both sides I don't necessarily nor does any of the staff particularly have a pro or a con on our own but we wanted to make sure that that's out there is stated and I'm sure when you get to public comment you'll hear some additional on both sides of the coin but this is where PLA discussions always land this is the piece right here it's the pro and con and who's right and who's not right or who's you know and that's where we're trying to work beyond that I think Rice's initial statement that we decided it was more important to look at the value of the program and that's what staff is going to be presenting to you we did want to point out with this slide that we did receive a couple of feedback from agencies that have had PLAs there was one and so again while the centers of junior college PLA program when they looked at both of their two projects both projects are working within budget both projects are on time and at this point in time they've identified payroll a 78% local workforce it looks great and it fits perfectly within their PLA program we have received feedback from a couple of other jurisdictions where they have seen cost increases the Vista unified school district identified a 30% cost increase over a couple of month period that they're relating to the PLA contract implementation for that particular project and East Bay mud at one point did a survey back in 2017 that more or less stated I'm going to executive summary here more or less stated that contractors prefer a non PLA approach whether they are union or not because they believe it's the positive nature of open competition is actually a benefit to a local agency so those were the three primary pieces that we learned I remember I showed you that lengthy list of agencies that we contacted these were the three most poignant that provided us with actual level of detail Jason if I can interject as well we did receive some feedback from merit contractors and some of the things that came up for them were I just want to hit on this was the local workforce piece of it that PLA might require non union companies to obtain their workers from union hiring halls and so this might cause a conflict with smaller local non union contractors in terms of retaining their workers and we believe we have identified some work rounds on that for language potential language for PLA another thing that came up was companies having to pay benefits twice and then if their non union workforce who join the union for the duration of a project leaves they don't get that benefit again we think we have work rounds for that and then there was a question of whether PLA is required non union companies to obtain apprentices exclusively from union apprentice shops and I think Jason touched on that and we have some potential answers to that as well thank you Rice great great additions next slide please so one of the points and potential options that Rice had just alluded to is the establishment of a community workforce agreement whether PLA or non-PLA it seems this is an option that we have in an effort to really focus in on the concept of generating and growing a local strong workforce and what a community workforce agreement is the establishment within your contractual document that you're incorporating in with any particular contractor or in your RFB is a requirement that a certain percentage of the workforce coming in and providing service through that contract be local and local is defined by the local agency so as I mentioned with the server bank auditorium project they utilized a contract manager who worked through the certified payroll from each of the contractors and subcontractors to determine where the home address or home zip code is of each of the employees which helped them validate that they met their minimum threshold for the project labor agreement they also determined that in their non-PLA programs they ended up utilizing the same service to concur and confirm that in fact even on the non-PLA projects they were still getting a high level of local labor predominantly the same companies were providing services but as we're looking this is something that we could either incorporate into policy policy that we would want to establish associated with PLAs or we could create a policy relating to our existing contract services to require a certain percentage of each of the workforce or the workforce through each of the contractors to be considered local based on the definition that was outlined at the beginning and there are a couple of examples here of agencies who have gone forward and done that and found success in the way that they've implemented it next slide please so then the question came well if we're going to really look at potential project labor agreements how would we apply it as I said the Santa Rosa Junior College uses a project by project basis they pick large projects and assign PLAs to individual individual projects there are other agencies such as Santa Jose that has more of a uniform approach to the way that they implement their PLAs and they've identified a particular threshold threshold meaning a dollar amount that projects above that dollar amount would be subject to policy projects below that amount would not they would be considered your standard contract arrangement for any contractor to be able to bid on staff went through the process of looking at this in a number of different ways because it was really important again engineer involved and we have lots of engineers involved so we're very linear thinkers wanting to try to come up with a rational way of assigning what a threshold could be for an agency like Santa Rosa and so I'm going to talk about three specific methods that we used the first was to identify whether or not saying if we had 90% of our projects were left as open bid and 10% was assigned to project labor agreements what would that look like what's the 80th and 90th percentile of our projects and so it ended up resulting is a range between about two and three million dollars ended up being that 90th percentile based on projects that were delivered between 2012 and 2022 and it's important for me to say that and you'll see why when I get into a couple of slides why defining prior projects versus what's coming is a big deal and may have relevance in further deliberation on the next slide on this slide we're going to show you the other two methods one is to evaluate based on project count the number of projects in a particular category that's the pie chart on the left the pie chart on the right is looking at that in a different way and it's based on project value not necessarily the numbers of projects but how much money is being invested by percentage to the rest of the program so between 2015 and 2020 you'll see that that 69% or I'm sorry that only 4% of the projects were above 5 million dollars and you'll hear me use 5 million dollars at least through this discussion so that I'm being consistent in the way I'm presenting it and so only 4% of the projects between 2015 and 2020 had a cost of above 5 million dollars and those accounted for 24% of the total projects if you flip that and you look at the value side of it 69% of the projects had a cost of 1 million dollars or less but only accounted for 24% of the capital investment so number doesn't necessarily reference the actual investment being done in the community and that's you know as we go to the next slide and I start talking to you about what's being programmed moving forward you're going to see a substantial change in what's coming so go to the next slide so when we project the difference between 2023 and 2026 looking at the projects that are incorporated there all 88 projects what you end up with is you've got projects greater than 5 million dollar account for 72% of the total invested value which is in contrast to projects less than 1 million even though that 62% of the number of projects it's only 9% of the invested value and when we spoke with the North Bay trades council it wasn't the number of projects that was the key it was the invested value that was the key it's the total amount of money going into the system that they're most interested in now they may have comment about that as they get the opportunity to but that seemed to be the key piece as they asked as we worked through this with them as we talked with the subcommittee as we talked to staff when we look at where do we establish a threshold it's not the number of projects it's the value of those projects and so as you're looking here the key step really is the amount of projects even at that 5 million dollar and above $60 million invested capital going into those 12 projects over the next 3 years and that's not a small amount now of course there are some assumptions and I just want to be clear that there are assumptions as to what you're seeing on the screen this is projected this is we're not guaranteeing that there will be all $160 million going out we are hoping based on our current schedules but we believe that this is achievable and attainable and actually holds really well for us to evaluate if council decides to move toward a PLA policy what the value of it is how it benefited the community and gives us a chance to then come back in 3 years to determine whether or not there are any adjustments when we get to the end of the presentation you'll hear us talk about timeline on a particular policy should council want to go there next slide please so just want to give you a quick snapshot of a few of the projects that we're talking about in that above $5 million range that are going to be coming you'll recognize a couple of really big ones the bike and pedover crossing the community center the hern avenue interchange we've got a lot of sewer lining and sewer replacement projects that are coming forward there is some big big projects moving their way into our system and heading out to bid in the next few years and we think that that should we be asked to move toward a PLA policy it's this list of projects that we should be focusing in on and we wanted to give you some indication as to what that might look like now I'm going to turn it over to Lisa and she's going to take you through she's going to kind of wrap things up in a nice bow and take you through the questions that we have for you. Lisa. All righty next slide please okay so we have talked at you for 22 slides and we are now at the point where we're laying out the feedback we're looking for from you so this is just a graphic to lead us into the next slides basically do you want to move forward with the development of a PLA and or a community workforce agreement only or do you want to combine a PLA with other policy approaches and what might those be for example do you want to explore more options for enhancing our existing contract vehicle and we sort of laid those out for you it could be as simple as a yes in our answer for you but again we're trying to go back to a is this a yes but or a yes and solution that you can direct staff to work on next slide right specifically if the direction is to proceed with the development of a project labor agreement and or a community workforce policy the questions for council are mostly around scope and criteria starting with whether to apply PLAs to projects on a project by project basis or as a blanket policy project by project application is that follows the model of what the Santa Rosa Junior College has in place it basically allows council to focus the policy on what you want while also providing a greater level of flexibility to the project delivery teams whereas you know as it's probably obvious a blanket application would mean that the policy would be used for all projects that conform to whatever criteria is developed from there to help guide the feedback this slide lays out a number of the areas again that we need direction on with the matter of local labor definitions you know first and foremost are you okay with the definition we recommended or that the economic development subcommittee recommends and are you okay with us moving forward with local craft trade workers only and excluding professional consultants and other administrative staff so we didn't really get too much into this but for example the city hires management consultants frequently including inspectors and testers who provide oversight services should these services be excluded from a PLA regarding community workforce agreements our recommendation is to move forward with a test of a 30% local workforce requirement as well as considering a percentage requirement for pre-apprentices but we don't have a recommendation around sanction or merit labor so again we'd love your feedback on that and in terms of project criteria council can include or exempt certain types or categories of work from PLA requirements so going back to the six categories of project types roadways, linear, vertical park landscape, environmental electrical and mechanical are there project types that make more or less sense for inclusion in a PLA and what about exempting projects with specialized funding sources so those are questions that we need to have answered for a project value threshold as you probably would guess by now we're recommending a threshold of $5 million and above and to have that threshold be indexed to the Bay Area CPI or the CPI of your choice would this be acceptable to you and if not what is the threshold you'd rather see and then the last point on this is would you accept a proposed three-year term and revisit date for PLA policy we looked at a project labor agreement matrix that the the associated general contractors of California put together and in that we noted that there were 65 PLAs in effect in that document 59 of which have a set term or expire the completion of the project and because the use and application of PLAs is truly an unknown for the city having a term would give us the opportunity to review and assess the policy and adjust it accordingly moving forward. Next slide. On the other hand if council is more interested in amending the city's existing construction contract requirements to achieve the stated goals or if you want to amend the contract to address projects that would be exempt potentially from a PLA policy we'd still need similar direction so we've laid out our recommendations which pretty much mirror the previous slide except for project criteria the project criteria line since that would apply only to public infrastructure projects or at least those that wouldn't be included in the PLA and therefore there would not be a project value threshold that would apply to this. Next slide. And we're at the end so we can move on to questions and comments we wanted to again end on what we're trying to achieve and just to remind you that we have our whole team who worked on this available for questions and we're done. All right, thank you so much Raisa and Jason. So we'll do questions from council members first then I'll have Raisa sort of reiterate what type of feedback would be helpful from public comment as well as from council members and I would encourage council members as you were asking questions of staff if there is something that you need more information about or think that somebody providing comment could give some clarity to I'd throw that out there so that folks can actually engage with us in this discussion then we'll bring it back and we'll get final comments from council lay out a potential timeline for the completion of this work and then we'll move on to the next item so with that I'll see which council members want to start who has questions to begin council member Schwedem Thank you, Mr. Mayor first of all Jason, Raisa and all of staff thank you for this comprehensive report we've been talking about this since I've been on council for probably the whole time but I really appreciate this information so we can make some decisions and like you said the community has a variety of different opinions about this and for a little bit more clarification I really appreciate the information about home office versus where they're located I think you used home office I know at our last council meeting we had a discussion about a contract where they were incorporated in another state but their home office is in Berkeley can you talk a little bit more about how you determine that and because it also goes for the workforce who actually investigates that you know and I saw the city where they're going for 30% but only 19 are local in terms that that's actually their resident locations so I'll start and Raisa chime in as we go along so when it comes to home office obviously when we've reached out to contractors we're asking specifically where they're based out of not necessarily where their their business their business tax may be assigned and so in almost every case we heard that was a Sonoma County or a California based contractor that was providing services to us so that's what we would be doing is where specifically are the trucks rolling from the next is looking at where are the employees based and we do have the ability without asking personal information other than zip code of home residents we can confirm where that employee whether they meet a local requirement or not and then your question is who does all that at this point we would prefer to hire a third party management agent to do that we typically hire a construction management firm to come and provide additional resources to our staff during the construction process and Raisa mentioned our recommendation is to not include that under the PLA requirements typically it's our experience that professional services are able to meet the requirements that we need to meet that agreement type from those and so we would utilize them as an independent evaluator that would review the certified payroll to determine if the contractor has met their local requirement under a community workforce agreement. Raisa anything else? Yeah I think that hits everything but I just want to bring to you know the number of projects versus the value of the projects and speaks to why we landed on a five million dollar special recommendation given the cost of administering a PLA for the very reasons you bring up. Okay thank you and then about the numbers like the Burbank Auditorium PLA example how many employees are we talking here that would help provide a little bit about these percentages? If I remember right they have 70 employees, 70 and you know it's possible that North Bay Trades Council could confirm or deny that once they get up there but if I remember right looking at their list that they forwarded me if I remember it was 70 employees. Just a ballpark number because obviously the smaller the number the bigger percentage with one or two people so and then the last question for right now I have my own con statements one of the cons was non-union labor required to join a applicable union during the project duration and this might be a question for city attorney are unions so the nexus I'm going for so if the city goes in that direction these are some taxpayer dollars going there would the unions be subject to PRAs to see how those dollars are being spent? I don't believe that the unions themselves would be subject to PRAs their private entities right even though so again if we're going in this direction with the PLA it's city dollars so the only PRA available information would be the city of Santa Rosa has chosen going this direction with this union but then it stops there how they the union uses those dollars the fees or whatever that is not subject to a PRAs what I'm hearing you say. Right it would not be subject to PRAs all of the data that we receive would be subject to the PRAs so we would be presumably getting all of that data not in terms of where the dues are spent but in terms of who's being employed the value their wages all of that information presumably we're going to have that that would be the avenue for people to get that information but the union itself would not be and then I would also assume each union gets to establish their own fees the city does not have a voice in that. In terms of union dues. Correct. Correct. Alright thank you. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you Mayor I have a fairly easy question I think and this is for clarification is it my understanding that a union shop can with or without a PLA bid on a city project? Yes. So they have the freedom to do that. That's correct. Well if city were to embrace a PLA program or requirement and it was over five million dollars the merit contractor would not be able to do that without being a participant in the PLA. So the only way a merit contractor would be able to bid on that is if their employees were to join a union hall during the course of the project. During the course of the contract. And those workers would not have the advantage of it's a question. Do those workers after they joined for that period of time have any benefit any kind of long lasting benefit whether it be insurance medical benefits any kind of benefits that those that are union workers all the time would be able to be would be able to participate in. In other words are they paying for something they're not going to get? So councilmember I'm going to provide an answer and then I'm going to ask your indulgence for us to come back to it in the later date. It's my understanding that they had received benefit during the course of their membership with that particular union but I don't believe it extends beyond that period of time with that said I would like to come back and return with a more detailed answer it's possible you may hear it from member of the public as they're speaking as well. I appreciate that I'm certainly you know willing to wait that's why we're here. I can add to that that we have seen some examples and again we have to go back and research this further but we have seen some examples where they have some jurisdictions have added language to address that and that's a concern. It comes in two fold one is does the if the employer or the contractor already provides benefits and that are equivalent to union then they double pay for the union can that be addressed and we've seen some examples of that and we can bring those back for you and then as well as we've seen some language that offers an opt out if there are existing equivalent benefits for the employee to not do the do's so I believe both in California outside of California there are examples of language to that effect so there are workarounds that would remove that as a concern if we were to move in the direction of PLAs and at least that element. Right we would have to do further research on those specific examples but we've seen small examples of language that could potentially be a workaround. Council member if I could just clarify the questions so that we can return with the correct answer your question was should a member from a merit shop be required to join a union during the course of a project when do they receive benefit during the course of their membership but really the question was at what point does the benefit stop for that particular employee that may temporarily join the union is that the nature of your question? Yes because as you know some of these projects can be rather long lasting let's say a year or two to complete a project and they're paying their dues that's kind of the bottom line on it. If I can piggyback on that as well because that was one of my questions was one of the negatives or drawbacks that was mentioned was the paying benefits twice and I think if I'm connecting the dots correctly and if I'm not let me know that that bullet point is essentially that somebody is paying into their benefits with the company and then if they join the shop for a project would then also be paying into the union benefits that they may or may not have long term am I understanding that correctly Raisa? Right and so some of the again like everything there's pros and cons but some of the research on that point has equated it to something akin to wage theft I think is how it was referred to so it reduces if you are not going to join the union long term it reduces your wage on that project both based on the double application of that cost basically. Okay thank you Council Member Fleming. Thank you this is a tremendous body of work thank you Assistant City Manager and Director Dela Rosa for your excellent work on this. My first question does go back to the benefits and it is not just the staff that it's an invitation to community members to speak to how benefits are applied both during the project and afterward and how an employee is able to leverage their dollars to make it work for them in the long run I think that there's certainly a lot of technicalities and questions that we might have that you have the day to day experience to help us understand exactly how that works and how we can assuage some of our concerns on that one. I do have a question for staff and all my questions are actually for the community as well I'd be very interested to hear what folks have to say which is the first one is do we have any sense of why the county chose to only go with vertical projects rather than other types of projects? If any of our other team members want to chime in generally speaking the trades are really focused on vertical type of projects whether it's mechanical, building construction steel workers, sheet metal workers a lot of the trades are really focused on something other than asphalt or underground pipeline work or park construction and so the predominant value of public infrastructure really is in that vertical and that's where the junior college is having substantial success because all of their work is vertical in nature and heavily employees a majority of the trades that are involved and so the type of work that we're suggesting since we don't do a lot of vertical work may limit some of the interest in some of some of the union trade companies now as I mentioned companies that we use on a daily basis whether it's team Jalati, Argonaut they're all union houses already they are the ones doing our paving and underground work so they're definitely going to be participating but my understanding is the best value for the trade houses and their focus is on vertical construction Risa, any additional nothing additional no thank you so much my second question which is mostly been addressed by our staff would be open to the public which I'd like to hear both pros and cons of professional services being included or excluded and what your views on that are thank you all for your education on this topic thank you council member Donald thank you mayor so I have a couple different questions you stated in the presentation that 18% of the local contractors are from out of the area is that because there's no one actually in business in those areas and how would you get that information to give us that percentage so that was definitely one of the areas I asked staff to dive into because I figured that was going to be one of the questions is why so much investment from out of the into out of the area and it really does boil down to we don't have comparable contractors in our area and the larger region just seems to build and generate some of those contract types that are willing to drive out our way to provide service and so as I mentioned it's like our slurry seal contractors the ones that are doing the protective coding on our streets that are in good condition and we discussed that a few months ago I've spoken with our local contract base here and the acquisition of the equipment is just too expensive for them and there's not enough work locally to be able to make that an effective business model for them to have at this point I would love it if they would contradict me it because I'd love to see them come more local but that's an example of a contract type where that 18% from predominantly the Sacramento area will likely continue to be based out of that that central valley just because that's where they're building their their predominant work type those aren't necessarily non union shops those potentially could be union shops just maybe not here locally that's correct and then if they were to identify under a project labor agreement we would have to work with that particular shop on if we established a community workforce agreement that had a local labor percentage that would be one of those potential exemptions that we might want to discuss to be able to accommodate those types of contractors thank you and then you stated also that only 25% of the businesses that were local were applying for our jobs around 25% so my question is is that because is there a problem on our end of why contractors aren't bidding on our jobs I guess is my question is are there additional contractors that we're just not appealing to through our process and so are there more than them but only 25% of them are actually applying for them so if you're looking at developers if we're only having two developers come to the city that want to work with us is it a city issue or is it an actual contractor issue so that would be interesting for me to find out if we actually have a lack of contractors or a lack of contractors willing to work with us is something I would want to know and then on page 16 I guess my questions are on the potential I understand the advantages part but under the potential disadvantage you have two bullets and I just want to understand how you came to this on the increase of total project costs how did you come to find out that they actually that there is an increase of costs because of a project labor agreement specifically if the materials are the same no matter if you're a project labor agreement or not could you tell me how they come to that actual mathematical equation to equal out a higher amount okay there were a number of questions in there I'm going to try to work my way through them so the first relates to the local nature the nature of our local contractors who's bidding and who's not yes I talked about if you look at our bidding pool those that record under planet bids which is our standardized electronic sub platform 75% of the bidders are from outside of Sonoma County does that mean that there's that we're disenfranchising any local contractors no it just means there's that many more contractors in the broader portion of northern California that may be interested in our projects so it's not that there is a lack of per se depending upon project type it's more there's just a lot more of them elsewhere generally speaking and I say generally the cost of mobilization will force those bids to come in higher than the local contractor and that's what you see then in the next pie chart that showed about 65% of the contracts awarded were with our local contractors and that's the difference between who's bidding and who's being awarded that means our local contractors one they're here they're interested they're hungry and they're getting awarded the contracts because of the lower cost of mobilization and workforce now as I said there are some contract types that just either don't exist here don't exist in high volume or numbers and therefore it can be more expensive for a local contractor to produce the work than someone from the outside simply because they don't have enough volume to make them competitive and so it is an open market and companies that do high volumes of a type of work can sometimes even if they're coming from out of the area under bid a local contractor that does much less volume so that's you know it's a very complicated discussion about bidding process but I think the key is to note that even though only 25% of our bidders are local 65% of the contracts awarded are to those 25% and that's the important thing with that the second question with the last question that you asked I have another one after that mostly it's around projects labor agreements you have in here that there's an increase of total project costs so my question to you is how do we know mathematically that there's an increase to cost and what drives that so the bullet points that you see on there I'm just going to tell you we're cut and pasted from the internet right because we didn't want to impose any city bias with the exception of the one statement that we put in there that stated that it's to our knowledge there's not been a labor dispute on any of our projects all of those are generalized statements coming from the World Wide Web so I don't want to take any ownership of the statements that are being made there nor whether they are immediately or directly related to a specific project that we're talking about now the feedback that we receive from some other agencies that have identified contract differences we've been told that in some cases they're duplicative bids some with PLA conditions some without being told that the contractor provided some information to the local agency that identified this gave us the opportunity to increase and inflate the cost this way because of the PLA but again I'm only relating the one case that we heard from the Vista Unified School District that's the one piece that we related we did not get substantial feedback from any other agency that is general intuitive meaning people without having empirical data without having something in writing to us we've heard anywhere from 11 to 30% increase in total cost I don't have any data other than the one point from the Vista Unified School District that gave me any written indication of increased in cost so that's yes on that too I think there was one study that showed there is potentially cost increase due to uncertainty and additional administration so that was something that came up in one of the studies and then where there is a new variable perhaps some workforce there could be the potential that contractors then come in higher just to be safe there is not empirical data on any of these things but these are just some of the things that have been stated and the Santa Rosa junior college projects that I expressed they haven't identified any directly related cost increases associated with the project labor agreement project so like I said the examples that we have that Raisa explained as well we've got just snapshots and I would like to say we can place it too in our market it's very difficult when we don't have something like this and we don't have local examples it's very difficult enough local examples that is also a difficult question to answer in that way as well based on our local market okay thank you that's what I wanted to get at and then the last question I have is around access of the trades you have under here that it may be negative for small and minority owned businesses can you tell me where you came up with that specific bullet and if you have any data that actually shows that it impacted small businesses to preclude them from working on public workshops or is it they just don't have enough workforce for the large projects and then same with minority owned businesses how did you get that data and so as I said that this is data that comes back over and over and over again when you look for the advantages and disadvantages we've asked around we can't identify empirical data that says that is or isn't the case all we hear is that this is a potential possibility and that's why we identify those as potential we did get some feedback from a local Santa Rosa business that is a smaller contractor that indicated that this could be a substantial impact to them the project labor agreements since they are a merit shop if project labor agreements were installed but again it's that's a related experience from that one particular contractor not having had PLAs in our organization it's their anticipated response and I think part of that is what we're looking to do is ensure that small merit-based shops are still eligible to it's a viable pathway for them to also participate they can come in as contractors or subcontractors and again if we have some language that based on the information that we've read addresses some of the concerns on costs to small very small businesses we think we can do that through some of the benefit statements or language so again if this is a direction you're looking at going into we keep those small local businesses on top of our mind and we think we have a pathway if needed to address to address those concerns it's mostly cost to the business itself but project labor agreements don't preclude small businesses or minority owned businesses from actually participating there's no state law in the state code whether you have a PLA or just a standard construction contract it is discrimination is prohibited on multiple fronts including that thank you so much and thank you for the presentation I really appreciate the information thanks any other questions from council members so one of the things that drives me nuts Jason is and it's not specific to one company it's not specific to union non-union but when someone wins a bid on a low bid and then we have excessive change over change orders as we go through the process and it drives up the cost and ends up being around the cost that the other bids that came in were around do we have any type of data on if these types of policies help with that issue so change orders are going to happen right that's a normal course of conducting business and doing construction regardless of whether it's a union contractor or not we've recorded and calculated we're about 8% on average through the course of our construction seasons some obviously are higher some are lower but 8% construction contingency is our average for projects over the last decade which seems very reasonable to me and other practitioners in the industry I wouldn't expect that project labor agreements would change any of that we can condition a union contractor any differently than we can a merit contractor relating to the capping of the cost to provide a specific product if there are conditions that are different that warrant the change we're going to end up compensating for that more than likely and I say this without having specific data because we just don't expect that the next bidder would have run into those same challenges during the course of construction and their cost through the contingency program would have increased as well so I know this is an area of frustration because visibly it looks like that contractor underbid for a specific reason with the benefit of increasing their increasing their their payout but typically that's not the case typically it's very specific to the conditions of the project the specifics of your question I don't have any data that relates that it is any different under a project labor agreement than not that's really helpful thank you jason on side 21 you had the list of projects that were anticipated for 2023 I already know that some of those numbers are outdated some of those projects I know are coming in likely going to be more expensive can we if we move down this path update all of those numbers with the best available information because what I would hate to have happen is for other cities who are looking at this to look at it and say this was the major change when really we already know that some of those numbers are going to be soft at this point absolutely and I can tell you they've changed since we put them on this page and by the time if we move toward any type of policy adoption they will have changed again so that's the one thing I can guarantee is that they will change but yes we can provide the most accurate and up to date information at the time we bring this back at council's request perfect and one of the things that I'm interested in is if we do go this direction and if we do do it as a short-term pilot one and this is the question is three years long enough for us to be able to extrapolate data to see what the actual impact is on our community and especially we have a number of projects that are legacy projects that are coming to fruition right at that time is it going to mess with that threshold in question once you're out of year one essentially but two I'd like to help us to cut through some of the lack of data that we're putting together a comparison if we go this route so that other jurisdictions can look at real data because you're right there's if you look at it online you've got data on both sides that have increased costs saves time, saves costs there's competing data that's out there and I'd like us to actually see what works for Santa Rosa you mentioned one of the pieces of feedback is whether to exempt specialized funding projects can you explain that a little bit further yeah actually I think Jason helped me out on that one because I believe that one was related to well some of our CIP projects but certainly also the question of FEMA dollars and other things came up and I think water so Jason do you have more information on that one? yeah you know as we've been doing our research there will be some funding types that are far more challenging for example one of the challenges the county had is the federal aviation administration said regardless of what the Obama administration put on writing they didn't change their specific legislation and therefore they were not going to allow PLAs to occur we've heard the same thing from the federal transit administration obviously we don't have an airport in our jurisdiction we don't do a lot of capital investment on the administration side however there are some other grant opportunities that may come forward that have similar types of restrictions and we want to be cognizant of or we want to incorporate some level of exclusion that allows us to accept those funds without getting bogged down in a lot of legal discussions about whether our project labor agreement is an applicable reimbursable type or an applicable project mechanism for delivery and so that's why we feel it's important to include some of those exclusions should we go this route because there's always going to be something that's going to come up that we need to be able to address and FTA is probably the one that I'm most aware of right now that they've been very clear project labor agreements are not a delivery type they're willing to accept at the moment even though the Biden administration has explained that they are an acceptable form of delivery through the infrastructure bill and just to add to that if I recall correctly we asked Havity this question and they did point out to what Jason was just saying that it somewhat depends on who's at the White House so again it's just looking for language that allows the flexibility if the federal rules change great and the last question Jason what if there's not an ability to provide the workforce what have other jurisdictions built into their PLAs in that kind of an instance so this is where they've authorized exclusions right so there's a list of exclusions that might be incorporated into the policy document that gives the director of the department the opportunity to state this particular project it's just not going to work for the following reasons and it lays out a series of bullet points that they would be able to make the determination that this may or may not function there may be whether it's grants maybe timelines maybe lack of contractor maybe lack of local workforce there may be specific reasons why that project just doesn't fit nicely under a PLA policy and therefore we would want to create some exclusions that direct the staff on how they would go through that to justify an exclusion I appreciate that so that's an exclusion and I'm sure that there's many other specific ins and outs that each of these policies are going to be a little bit different talk to us about if you have the thumbs up from council to move forward from today what would the next steps be and what would the timeline be for exploring some of those minute details before the full policy came back to council so I'm going to I'll start and Ryza can chime in on this we would be if council gave us direction and provided us some of the feedback based on that one slide that Ryza walked you through that said we need these six following kind of pieces to begin to create a framework for either a PLA policy or a policy that adds to our existing contract language our intent would be to try to compile that and come back in September just from the standpoint of getting back on the council agenda working through creating the document vetting the document internally vetting it through the attorney's office vetting it through our capital improvement program and the team there we would want to have a little bit of time to create framework and a draft policy for council to give us further direction on and then we would look to policy adoption in October okay Ryza before I go to public comment can you put back up your slide on what type of feedback would be helpful yeah it's by 24 alright I'll have you go back over it in just one second for folks who are in the chamber I'm going to start with public comment on Zoom you all have comfy seats to sit in and it's nice that we have a public here to actually see the meeting but if you have not put in a card to speak yet go up and see Julie Guzzi up at the top for folks who are going to be speaking from Zoom if you have not yet hit your raise hand feature so we can get some form of a look at how many folks want to provide comment now Ryza if you can go back over the slide really fast and the proceeding the next one after that sure it's pretty so that's my history we just want to confirm whether the local labor definitionist Noma Marin Napa Medicine in Lake County is acceptable and whether or not it's okay to have it applied to local craft trade workers only and exclude professional consultants and other administrative staff the second thing is on a community workforce agreement whether to test a 30% local workforce requirement we didn't have a recommendation on sanction of merit labor so we'd love any feedback on that and then as well as a percentage that you might like to consider regarding pre-apprentices and apprenticeship requirements also project criteria we're looking at or need to know what kind of project types you would like to include and whether that should be applied across the board or project by project any exemptions to project types we need to know as well as what is a project value threshold that would be acceptable to you and then what would be your term any term or what term would be acceptable to you in that regard and then on slide 24 that's slide 24 is really specific on the policy for a PLA slide 25 is sort of the and or and so you know if there's a strong preference to not do a PLA but actually do language overlays onto our existing construction contracts we can do that similar kind of language overlay and or we can do apply some of these things to the existing construction contracts for those projects that would not be included in a PLA if that makes sense and so the questions on this slide are very similar to those in a PLA but would not have a project value threshold applied to it great thank you so much Raisa let's go to public comment then as I mentioned we'll start on zoom and we'll start with Joe followed by Eric did we lose Joe I'm sorry I don't see Joe's hand raised okay we'll go to Eric followed by Richard hello can you hear me yes we can thank you for the coalition for fair employment and construction we are a statewide organization formed 23 years ago by union and non-union construction firm solely to oppose project labor agreements and the discrimination of ways that they represent one reason I think that you find so few entities in California just as an example there are 1100 educational entities in California 67 entities have placed a PLA in effect over the course of the 23 years I think the question you have to ask yourself when you're looking to radically transform the way you do businesses, why are so few entities across the state engaging in project labor agreements? And your staff did a pretty good job of highlighting exactly what that is, but I wanted to focus in on a few of them. And if this is something you really want to move forward with, there are ways and there are PLAs that have been created that actually allow for non-discrimination to occur. But the people that are proposing this, be clear, this is a private, big labor special interest group that wants to gain a monopoly on work. They're not doing this for the betterment of the working man. They're not doing this to help local hire. The vast majority of the local hire in the state of California, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, wakes up on a daily basis and works in a union free environment in the construction industry. It's 86% in California. It's over 80% in the North Bay. That's the reality. This is the most dynamic, profitable time to be a worker in this business because of your skill set, and you choose to work where you choose to work because your skills are so needed and most choose to work in a union free environment. But to the point about why PLAs are so discriminatory and unwanted is, it's very simple. There's four provisions within a PLA that if you did not include them in yours, should you go forward? Which question would be, why are you looking to fix something that isn't broken? That question has not been answered. There's four things you can do to make the PLA fair for everybody. And you would not lose all the bidders. You will lose if you place a typical PLA negotiated by the same unions who want to monopoly that have brought this idea to you in the first place. And the four provisions are this. This is all of PLAs about all the other rhetoric aside. A non-union worker should not be forced to join a private entity as a condition of employment at the union. Why would you do that? Should they join the Catholic Church? Should they have to become Republican party members? Nobody would ever do this. You shouldn't force a worker to join a private entity. That's about $1,000 out of its first paycheck, by the way. Number two, non-union employees have to pay a union health welfare and pension plans. They'll never invest in it. These are five to 10 year requirements. You need to be talking about that as a group of elected officials. And so does your staff. That is the main reason you do not have non-union contractors bidding these projects. They would never have their workers have wage theft occur. That $20 per hour or so that goes to benefit package is lost to the non-union worker. They simply do not receive it because they'll never invest in the union. If you do not have that requirement in a PLA, you simply will have more bidders. And finally, all state approved union apprentices should be allowed to work. Have that. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric. I did see that Joe's hand popped back up. So let's go to Joe and then we'll come back for Richard. Hello. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. All right. My name is Joe Lubis. I am a policy analyst with associated builders and contractors Northern California chapter that's ABC NorCal for short. And I just send here to speak in opposition to project labor agreements. They prove to be costly and discriminatory. I would like to point out to the latter, you know, trait by looking at the Santa Rosa Junior College's project stabilization agreement. You know, section 13.3 has core has core workforce require mentors require arbitrary quotas that force contractors to not use their own workers. Section 15 refers to a joint apprenticeship that's that excludes marriage shop apprentices like ABC NorCal's, you know, both joint and unilateral should be allowed to take part. Furthermore, there's on 16.3 of the Santa Rosa Junior College PSA. It mentions the fringe benefits, you know, go into union trust fund. If you're working, if you're not a union shop, you don't get those. The workers don't get those benefits. You know, in speaking of Santa Rosa Junior College, they had their Burbank Auditorium that was estimated at 23 million. It's now it was awarded for $28 million, $5 million over the estimate. They could have gotten better value. You know, the College of Marin, even their new Miwok Center, the Indian Valley campus, it was originally $23 million. There, you know, during the course of this, there were costs that made it $36.2 million, $13.2 million over the original contract. And there's a four month extension of the completion date. Also, at, you know, sit across the bay in San Francisco, the APG and any middle school modernization project, it was estimated $16.9 million. It was awarded for $27.2 million. That was a 10.3 million, 61% over the estimate. Also, in the South Bay, there was the College Ridge Project Phase II project. It was budgeted at $14 million and received two bids of $19.3 million and $22.3 million that were rejected. In short, project labor agreements throughout the Bay Area have a horrid track record. Let's avoid it. There's no need. Project, you know, no project labor doesn't mean nobody's unionized. Just means everybody can take part. And let's keep it that way. All right. Thank you, Joe. We'll go to Richard, followed by Rob. Good afternoon, council members. Richard Markson for the Western Electrical Contractors Association. First, I want to compliment Jason and Reza. I think they did a great job of illustrating both the pros and cons of project labor agreements. But from Wicca's perspective, PLAs are designed to reduce competition. The unions hate the fact that ABC and Wicca and the other non-union contractors are successful. And so, PLAs have been designed to eliminate that. And actually, the PLA enacts a no-bid contract to provide labor for city projects. The only source of labor on any of your construction projects will be from the construction unions, which seems to kind of fly in the face of what fair and open competition seems to be. PLAs erect barriers to local workers and contractors to work on city projects. And a couple of caveats that I would encourage the city to incorporate in the event that you direct staff to negotiate a project labor agreement for city projects. And the first is that would provide the city the authority to reject bids and to exit the PLA if it's not satisfying your goals. So for instance, if you've only received a couple of bid proposals under the PLA, and you don't, particularly if they run under the engineer's estimate, that you would be authorized to reject those and to redid the project without a PLA. And one of the things that I recall that the mayor asking about is transparency, and I would caution the city that many of the statutes that the legislature has passed recently on alternative delivery mechanisms like design build, specifically exempt PLA projects and the contractors from keeping and submitting certified payroll records, which is the administrative record that the city would use to verify compliance with the payment of prevailing wages and the provision of benefits, and the location of where the workers are actually residing. So we would certainly encourage the city to incorporate a provision, notwithstanding any other provisions of law, certified payroll records would be required for any city projects. And the other thing is at the outset, you've talked about apprenticeship participation. The typical PLA in Sonoma County excludes non-union apprentices. Thank you. Thank you so much, Richard. Let's go to Rob followed by Peter. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Oh, wonderful. Good afternoon. My name is Rob Barsi, and I am the training director and administrator of the local 551 Electrical Union Apprenticeship Program, which is located right here in Santa Rosa. I'm also a graduate of said program. Our program has been instructing and graduating electrical apprentices for over 70 years. And I'm here today to speak in favor of the PLA. A couple of things I'd like to mention, our program currently has a diverse and inclusive population of about 107 students. We're proud to be able to say that our student population is about 50% minority and 50% non-minority. I'd also like to point out that a good number of our students have graduated from the Santa Rosa School District. Additionally, all of our apprentices are registered SRJC students and earn college credits towards a college degree. 107 local apprentices translates to 107 local families. We would like to be able to offer apprenticeship opportunities twice that number of local residents and their families. And project labor agreements can help us to move towards that goal. Apprentices and graduates of our program earn a living wage and are able to live in the area, purchase homes here, start families here, and send their kids to schools here. The more local projects covered under a project labor agreement with local hire and local apprenticeship language, increase the job opportunities, and in turn, increase the number of local apprenticeship opportunities we may be able to offer to apprenticeship applicants in our community. We'll continually strive to be able to offer the most apprenticeship opportunities to our local residents as possible. Local PLAs ensure a level playing field for all contractors in the bidding process, ensure that all of those working on the project's earn a living wage and benefits, and help to provide work for local residents. If any of you have any additional questions, I would be glad to answer them for you either here today or at a later date. And contrary to what Mr. Christensen said, we do care about the workers. We do care about the workers' families and just not all about money. It's about providing opportunities for human beings. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. We'll go to Peter followed by Jolene. Good afternoon, Peter Rumble from the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber of Commerce. First, I wanted to say thank you to the staff. That was one of the strongest clear-eyed presentations on this topic that I've seen and just a really tremendous job. So thank you to staff for that. The framing of this, of what your council wants to accomplish is so important. The framing that Risa put forward at the onset of the presentation, what are we trying to do? And I wholeheartedly agree that we want to find every opportunity to create pathways for people to increase their wages, provide a better standard of living for their families, to be able to put it on a stage, work in and be able to go home safe and sound. And I think it's clear from staff's presentation that there are ways to do that for everyone without the potential drawbacks of limiting city investment in one group or another, focusing on investment in our workforce, rather than falling back into sort of an ideological debate without a ton of data behind it. The set of benefits listed under PLA option can be achieved in large measure by other policies and adjustments to the city's current practices, training, safety wages, worksite harmony, all of that. And in doing so, all of the potential disadvantages like increased costs, limited competition, limited training options can be minimized or eliminated altogether. We have some wonderful people who work in this community, many of who are your existing contractors and they would or may vary will be cut out under a PLA policy with a low dollar threshold and indeed, most of the local labor force here in Sonoma in the North Bay would be similarly cut out. Are we really saying that their labor isn't valued? Shouldn't we care about and invest in and help raise up all of our local labor? I mean, truly. Similarly, we have amazing organizations investing in and providing training and apprenticeship opportunities for next generation of skilled labor. Are we really saying that those programs aren't worthy of city investment, of public investment? And I also think of someone starting their own construction business who would practically, albeit perhaps not legally be shut out of government contracts when we know access to those government contracts is one of the best ways to grow a fledgling company. So please understand that we believe that union labor and apprenticeship programs truly are wonderful. Unions can provide a tremendous opportunity for people to improve their alliance. We are simply stating that the pathway is not exclusive to unions and we encourage your council when using the local community's money to make investments in and prioritize the entire local workforce. And you can do that while still holding all contractors accountable for caring for their employees and delivering these public projects successfully. So thank you. Thank you so much, Peter. We'll go to Jolene followed by Jared. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers and members of the city council. Can you all hear me okay? Yes, we can. Okay, wonderful. My name is Jolene Kramer. I'm the attorney for the North Bay Building Trades Council. And we appreciated very much our meetings with the assistant city manager and the deputy director of economic development about the benefits of a PLA and the process of negotiation. I do wanna mention that most of the folks that you've heard from thus far represent the business community. And I know that you will be hearing from folks from our local union affiliates who actually represent working people in your area. So I look forward to that. As you've heard, a PLA is an agreement between a project owner and a local building trades council that is an efficiency tool to deliver projects on time and on budget. Most public works PLAs are programmatic in the sense that they apply to a number of projects that are being undertaken by a city, county or school just sometimes there's a dollar threshold. Sometimes there's a percentage but very rarely are they actually applied to single projects. That's only done really on a very, very large scale project. And the reason for that is because these kinds of programmatic PLAs build capacity to bring in more local residents into apprenticeship training. They truly build a pipeline between your residents and the very high quality union apprenticeship training that is available in your area. As we negotiate an agreement, we can all target those local folks for those who live perhaps in the more underrepresented areas. And this is done through the union hiring hall procedure and it's tracked by a certified payroll which will be required on this project. I'm not sure if there was some confusion about that but it certainly would be required on projects covered under the PLA. Without a PLA, a local hiring goal or policy is simply not as effective because there's no local halls to draw from. That's how the policy gets implemented. I also wanna make sure it's clear that any contractor can work under a PLA and it's actually helpful to non-union contractors because they can pull their labor from the hall. Respectfully, the staff report does a legend number of negative consequences of PLAs without any evidence and also assumes added time and expense without any evidence. And I would encourage you to consider the many, many successful agreements that we have in Northern California in determining whether to proceed. I also wanna mention that the anti-PLA policies that were passed in other localities have been invalidated by state law with the exception of charter cities and those have rescinded their policies because they become ineligible for state funding. Those are no longer policies that exist in California. Finally, it is premature to discuss specific terms for the agreement without any negotiation or discussion with the counterparty. So I look forward to sitting down with you all, talking through all of these issues so that you can understand where we're coming from as the signatory to this agreement along with the city. I look forward to having those discussions and I appreciate your consideration of a project-related agreement. Thank you, Jolene. Let's go to Jared, followed by Mike. Hey there, quick Mike check. Can you hear me all right? Yes, we can. Thank you. Hello, my name is Jared Mumm. I am a journeyman electrician and a member of IBW Local 551 and I am speaking in favor of this PLA. I'd also like to point out that I live, pay taxes and vote right here in Santa Rosa, which so far seems to put me in a minority in this room. I'm in favor of this PLA because I believe that local hire is important and I believe that apprenticeship utilization is important. I owe everything I have to the training and education that I received from your local electrician's apprenticeship program. I was a 19-year-old kid and I was getting pretty sick of asking, may I take your plate, ma'am? Getting sick of busing tables when I found this apprenticeship. Across five years, I worked my butt off and I went to school at the same time and for my blood, sweat and tears, I earned a fair wage. I was the only person in my friend group that had my own healthcare. I graduated with more in my pension at 25 years old than many 40 and 50-year-old Americans have saved for retirement today. Because of your local electrician's apprenticeship, I'm able to provide for myself, my wife and my daughter. We own a home here in Sonoma County when so many of the friends that we graduated high school with had to leave the county or the state just to cut it. And one last thing. I've only heard it a few times so far, but I do think that the word discrimination gets tossed around far too casually whenever we have this conversation over and over again. As a straight white male born and raised in America, I have never once in my life faced the discrimination that some of my family, my friends, my coworkers or any of the women in my life have faced. The closest I have ever come, the worst taste I ever had of it was when I was speaking with a potential employer and I mentioned that I was a union member. That there was about the fastest I've ever been shown the door. I think it is disingenuous at best to attempt to co-op that language for the purpose of trying to squash a contract. Again, my name is Jared Mum. I'm in favor of this PLA. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you so much, Jared. We'll go to Mike followed by John. Hi, my name is Mike Cook. I'm not a contractor, so I don't have a foot in this discussion as far as whether it will affect me or not, but I am a resident and taxpayer in Santa Rosa. I really don't understand why we are talking about PLAs for city projects. I just think about all the extra time and effort that the city staff has already put into this discussion when it was admitted that most of the information has been just cut and pasted from the internet. And I just see how much more time and effort city staff is going to have to put into PLAs should they be adopted on projects that are subject to the PLA. That's why I believe that the costs are increased over non-PLA projects is actually the paperwork. This whole discussion as was presented by staff is centered around three goals. The first one being highly skilled local work force increasing access to apprenticeships. The second is reducing the carbon footprint and the third is positive economic impact. Well, the first way I think you can do, you get accomplished goal number one is actually hiring local firms and using increasing access to apprenticeships by using the existing programs that are here in our community already, even using the union apprenticeship programs by providing money to them to support our community members. The second, hire local firms that hire local employees. Third, hire local firms. And I've been part of some preliminary discussions and I've mentioned this before as well. I think the city needs a local preference ordinance, not a PLA. I've heard that the non-PLA and the PLA agreements and the firms that get these agreements have a similar workforce as far as where they live and whether they live in the area or not. So who's this really helping? To me, this is helping the unions. It's not helping our local workforce. The costs that are additional in PLAs are for administration purposes and not to increase economic impact. I saw the slide that said, the difference between PLA and non-PLA and I'm running out of time. So I'm just gonna say this, with PLAs, union firms get the work and there's no work stoppages non-PLA. Any firm can go and I don't believe I've heard there's any labor issues. Thank you so much, Mike. We'll go to John. There we go. I wanna do a mic check. This is Sergio Cortez with ABC NorCal. Can you all hear me? Yep, looks like you're up Sergio. We'll go to John next. Gotcha. So I am Sergio Cortez with ABC NorCal. I'm the workforce development manager and I wanted to first thank the staff for a really great presentation in depth on the pros and cons. Really did, seeing they did really great research and I know we had a really great conversation with them as well. So thank you for ensuring that we get, everyone gets the fair shake of what's happening with what can happen with the PLA. Now, I just wanted to mention these great programs that we have and that we're hoping to have next year in your area, as far as the pre-apprenticeship courses that we do. We conduct pre-apprenticeship courses for the second chance workers for those that have come out of prison, the parolees, your welfare to work programs, the homeless to work programs and those pre-apprenticeship programs are really great conduits for people to be able to, and most of the people that need it most, to be able to have a career in construction and our pre-apprenticeship programs are great conduit to apprenticeship but also just for careers in general construction. So we really want to make sure that those opportunities aren't limited because if we do have all these people graduating from our programs and they have nowhere to work as an apprentice in your area due to a PLA, it really makes that word discriminatory, make it correct on how you're using a PLA. When they discriminate against those that are non-union, it really is tough to be able to find work for our apprentices and be able to give them the high wage and these great benefit jobs that they deserve. So I wanna just thank you all for, definitely putting it out there of what the pros and cons are but as a non-union contractor as well, it does limit my ability to be able to, bid on these jobs where one, I had to hire from the union hall or to have my workers have to join the union temporarily and not get their benefits because typically it takes five years for them to have the buy-in for them to actually receive the benefits. So thank you again and definitely I wanna make sure that this is a no on the PLA. Thank you. Thank you, Sergio. We'll go to John, followed by the other John and I know you're both sweating to see who gets called on first. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Alvarez and council members. My name is John McIntyre. I'm looking out to represent the many women and men of IBW Local 551. That would be the local electrical union right here in Santa Rosa. I wanna talk to you about PLAs and specifically healthcare and pensions associated with some unions. Some of the arguments you will hear or heard earlier in staff report are that the benefits that are paid into the healthcare and pension trust funds will never be utilized by non-union workers because they're not part of the union. It was brought up earlier by council member Sawyer. He had a couple of questions on that. I wanna just hit on those points. In IBW Local 551, we've worked with several contractors who are not signatories for our collective bargaining unions. Meaning they were not union contractors but were successful on being awarded electrical bids on PLA projects. That means that they have workers who qualified for and were able to enjoy our healthcare plan long after the PLA project has ended. They were allowed to bank any worked hours over the required hourly amount you need to have healthcare and utilize those banked hours until their healthcare account is completed. We had one such issue recently. The project finished earlier last year but the worker was able to continue to enjoy full healthcare for him and his whole family long after the project was completed. That continued for him until his bank hours were all used up. The only complaint usually here is that they wish they had this healthcare everywhere they go because it is so much more superior to what they have become accustomed to. So you see the double paying healthcare benefits is not the full story. The Merit Shop contractor does not pay for the company benefits once the employee is covered by the benefits in the union. There is no real double payment of healthcare for the Merit Shop contractors as they do not pay any healthcare benefits for their employees after the project while the bank hours are spent down by their employees. That means they don't pay any healthcare for their employees at all. Long after the project has been completed while they're on the union healthcare plan. Pensions are another issue usually thrown out there. We just heard it. In our pension funds, we have a provision. If you make under a certain amount you can request all of your pension to be paid back to you. There is no vesting period. When you work you earn the pension that pension is yours from day one. You're either gonna get it after the project is complete or you're gonna get it once you reach retirement age and for us that is 55. I hope this addresses some of those issues for you guys and thanks for your time today. Thank you so much, John. We'll go to the other John and then Rick. Oh, good. I'm the other John. All right. This is John Medina, a sprinkler fitter local 43 business agent and also president of the building construction trades council of the North Bay. First of all, good afternoon council, mayor and staff. I want to thank Raiisa and Jason also. It was a pleasure working with you guys and trying to get all the information to you guys that you needed. And it was a really well done staff project here that you guys rear report. I've been through many of these processes and so have our attorneys and Eric Christian and all the ABC people that you're gonna hear from today as well. But I'm one of those that are actually representing the workers in the community and to answer Eric Christian's question, our economy and our equity is broken, Mr. Christian. That's why every city on every public entity in the California and in the country is either entering or considering a project labor agreements for the workers. It's for the community, it's for the protections. It's the only way that the cities or these jurisdictions, the local firms and the workers can be utilized is through these labor agreements. The SRJC, I love that you guys keep bringing that up in the staff report, as it was mentioned by Sarah Fernandez, the project cost appears to be mirroring the estimates of the PLA and does not have to appear as resulted increased costs. That is from your own local Santa Rosa Junior College and that's from the senior director of capital projects is approved. There is no cost effectiveness. There's no cost difference. Our economy, I really just wanna urge support for the PLA, obviously, but I also wanna urge the support of the council, the council members to move forward, to develop and negotiate with us, the building trades and with our attorneys and your attorneys to the actual terms as they see fit, as you guys see fit and no offense to the staff, but obviously they've been clouded by many different things that they picked up off the internet and not just from the actual ABC or the building trades. So I think the community would benefit from the council looking into this a little further and having its own negotiations for the benefit of this community and for the equity of the Santa Rosa and the region. So again, thank you for your time and consider this project. Thank you so much, John. We'll go to Rick, followed by Maddie. Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, we can. All right, thanks. I'm Rick Cross. I'm with the VSS International. We're a payment maintenance contractor. As many of you know, VSS is an open shop contractor where obviously our employees are not required to join or financially support a union as a condition of their employment or hiring, therefore becoming a union contractor for a project for the sole source of performing project in the city of Santa Rosa would cause a lot of problems for us and our employees. To answer the earlier question about just that, there was a question that one of the city council members asked about increased costs. What does that come from? It really boils down to, I mean, there's some minor costs that'll hit the project for sure with paperwork and some admin costs and that sort of thing. But the meat of it is really the PLAs reduce competition by sole sourcing union contractors through agreements like PLAs. This practice results in the costs that are inflated due to the elimination of competition. If there's less competitors out there, the price goes up. We see it all the time. If I get wind that there's only a couple of us bitten on a project, our price goes up. It just, it's the elimination of competition is why costs rise. And as agencies are faced with cuts and with this inflation thing we're seeing and the cost of fuel and the cost of asphalt on a lot of your, maybe not your vertical projects, but your horizontal projects where there's asphalt involved, I don't know why you would limit your competition. It'll affect your road budgets drastically. There should be an increased discussions on ways agencies like the city of Santa Rosa can cut costs, not raise costs. Quick, quickly, a city of Sacramento and Stockton have both gone away with PLAs. They voted unanimously to put them in place. And then once they saw the results on bid day, both city of Sacramento and Stockton, some of the big leaders behind PLAs gone away with them here recently on all their resurfacing projects. Anything that had the asphalt on those horizontal projects, they wouldn't waive from it. They used to receive on an average of five bids for 20 plus year, you can go back and I took a snapshot of the last seven and they were receiving five bids all within budget every year. In 2019, when they went with that project labor agreement, they had one bidder, it was 41.5% over the engineers estimate. They didn't award it, they went out with the same exact project, use the one bidder's price the following year, increased it by 41% by engineers estimate. And again, they got the same bidder at 17% higher than the inflated engineers estimate. It's just, it's crazy. So I just implore you guys to look at your last resurfacing projects. We did three of them last year. I think we got, we bid on three of them. We got two of them. You guys out on an average of five bidders on one, four bidders on another, they were all within budget. If you go with a PLA like this, we won't be bidding your work regretfully. We won't be bidding your work and you guys will be receiving a one man like cities, you know, and stop. Thank you. Thank you, Rick. We'll go to Maddie. Hi, I had trouble getting my mute off. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Alvarez and council members. Thank you for allowing me to speak today. Something that we haven't heard much about today is who gets prioritized to do this work on PLAs with project labor agreements, performance statistics under PLA show a net increase across the board in proportional representation of women and minorities engaged in apprenticeship programs. PLAs actively increase the number of those individuals recruited into and retained by those programs. Now I'm going to go to the Portrait of Sonoma County, the recent update. It stresses the importance of concrete policy action by local government to address racial and economic disparities in wages, education, housing, health care, and on the job health and safety. On page seven, the report states, and this is a quote from the report, the inequities we see in Sonoma County are the result of decisions and policies, people in power, most of them white men put into action, different decisions can create better, more equitable outcomes. I want to stress I'm quoting here, this is not me. And it goes on to say the inequities, the inequalities that exist today are not natural or viable, nor are they a product of chance. They are the result of policy decisions made by people in power. Different decisions made through different, more inclusive decision-making process can lead to better, fairer outcomes. Now I'm off the report, 68% of the overall membership in the building trades affiliated locals are minorities. In Sonoma County, that number is closer to 70%. Our North Bay TIP program, the Trades Introduction Program, has placed a heavy focus on recruiting women and minorities, specifically minority females, in the apprenticeship program and prioritizing grant funding assistance for the support services that they may need, such as childcare and so on. So I'm just gonna go back for a second to that last statement from the portrait of Sonoma County, different decisions made through different, more inclusive decision-making processes can lead to better, fairer outcomes. So like I say, this hasn't been addressed today. The people in these programs, PLAs are apprenticeship programs target minority groups and women, women of color, and underserved populations. So please keep that in mind while you're making this decision. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Maddie. We'll do last call for hands-on Zoom. If you're interested in providing public comment on Zoom, hit the raise hand feature. Okay, I'm gonna bring it back to the chamber. We'll start with Michael, followed by Frank C. Thank you. Is the mic working? Yes, we can hear you. Okay. Make sure to eat the microphone, get nice and close. Okay, I see, they have a mask on it. Okay, so basically what I'm getting out of this discussion is that this isn't about monopoly, this is about basically providing a level playing field and people choosing to participate in these projects or choosing not to and then to alleged discrimination seems to be not a really fair characterization what's going on. I should have introduced myself, council members. Excuse me, Michael Allen. I have appeared before you many times and appreciate your public service, all of you and appreciate the work of the staff. I believe that, I've worked on a lot of public policy issues in my life and I believe that working together we can increase outreach to all the disadvantaged communities in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County and the adjacent counties will be part of the local labor policy. What we're talking about is providing good public policy as a almost a leg up to the ladder that the ladder that will take people up into the middle class. And I can't emphasize that more. We're talking about creating opportunity for those who've been dispossessed, disadvantaged and increasing that possibility of being able to raise up themselves and their families. To me, when we talk about the threshold issue whether it be $500,000, a million, five million or these figures tossed around, what you really need to understand from our standpoint, from the trades which represents about 20,000 members of the four counties and 20,000 union households is that we see that the more work we can work cooperatively with you through negotiation where basically it's something that's good public policy that basically makes sense for the taxpayers because we're all taxpayers and we all want the money to be spelt wisely but it increases our capacity to train more and more people locally and raise them up. And I don't think we can stress that too much. We're talking about raising up people. We're not talking about trying to push people down or exclude them. We're trying to be inclusive. And to me, I think if you get nothing else from the discussion, we do want to sit down with you, take the information from the staff report, take the information that we have, maximize the advantages as discussed in the report. And for those disadvantages at side, are they folktales or are they real? And if there's some reality to them, then work through those disadvantages so that we would end up with a product that the staff would be proud of, the public, the taxpayers would be proud of, and this council would feel they had achieved something moving towards the true equity and advancement of our disadvantaged communities. So thank you so much for listening to me. And I guess I finished with five minutes to spare. Thank you so much. Thank you, Michael. We'll go to Frank C, followed by Frank R. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Thank you so much. And thank you for all the work you do, and particularly on this project. My name is Frank Cuneo, I'm the director of the North Bay Trades Introduction Program that we call North Bay TIP. You have heard a few references to. Before I became that director, I grew up in Sonoma County on a vegetable farm and had lots of siblings, so I figured out I had to fend for myself. It took me 10 years after high school to learn about apprenticeship, and eventually I did apply for it. During my apprenticeship as a sheet metal worker, I wanna point out that I worked on both small projects, residential homes, and also larger projects like the jail here in Sonoma, I mean, in Santa Rosa and the hospital, et cetera. Both of those were good learning experiences, I believe in well-rounded training, and when you're talking about different types of jobs to include in the PLA, you might consider that. The North Bay TIP program works under the approval of the North Bay Building Trades Council, and it was developed with the concept of connecting construction apprenticeships with local communities. We seek out disadvantaged people, and I wanna also note that some of those have been non-union workers to help them lift themselves up through apprenticeship and a great career. We refer to joint apprenticeship programs, but not those exclusively. I really believe in joint apprenticeships. I served in my career as an apprentice training coordinator for 20 years. Sat through many meetings on a joint panel that was equally staffed by employer representatives and worker representatives, and I cannot tell you how many discussions or if you wanna call them arguments happened, but eventually they all pretty much long-term resulted in a balanced program, and I really appreciated the quality of that. At the same time, every person on those committees were very invested in the apprenticeship, and they typically did not hesitate to fund it, to take actions to develop the quality of the program, and those are some of the reasons that a joint apprenticeship has proven so many times to be higher quality. I should also mention, before I retired, I was the President of the California Apprenticeship Coordinators Association indirectly representing about 50,000 apprentices. Like apprenticeships, we have capacity, sorry, I'd be happy to talk with you more. Thank you so much, Frank. We'll go to Frank R, followed by Sam. Good afternoon, City Council members. Thank you for your service. My name is Frank Reardon, Business Agent for the Plumbers Union, Local 38. I am the full-time elected officer representing the North Bay for the Plumbers. I have spent 25 years in the field in the last 17 years as a representative for the Plumbers. Of the 25 years in the field, 24 were spent on the road for four hours a day, and the work done was mostly in San Francisco. The idea of going to work, the idea of ongoing work being done here in town by my contractors is something we in the building trades have been working on and hoping for for a long time. I wanna thank you for us all making it to this point today. We, the Plumbers, have a state of the art training center right here in Santa Rosa. We train to the highest level possible, all things plumbing, pipe fitting, welding, and HVAC. We train people to thrive in a career, not just perform on a job and then be forced to go and look for another one when that one is done. Our members look and hope for a sustainable flow of work to support them here locally within the community where they live, and their children go to school. They wanna be a part of Santa Rosa and not just exist in it as if it were a bedroom community. By having a PLA in place, the City Council will be going a very long way in strengthening the fabric of our city, making a really tangible improvement in the lives of your constituents, allowing them to work locally and get home to their families early enough to be with them as a dad or mom, not just walk in the house after spending two hours on the road with only enough time to say good night if they're lucky. Any and all public money projects or maintenance must be done at prevailing wage rates. Prevailing wage is literally the wage we negotiate. It is our wage that is set. One of the benefits of a PLA is that there will be more oversight on contractors to ensure that there is no wage theft. The wage theft is very common on most public works jobs due to a lack of oversight. This agreement would close that loophole at no cost to the city. It is performed as part of the function of what I and our other affiliate PLA will also ensure that Santa Rosa will once again have highly skilled apprentices and journey persons working on these projects. The residents of Santa Rosa, of which I am one, expect all tradespeople doing work on the public dime to be skilled, highly competent, and professional. Nothing else should be acceptable. By having trained tradespeople doing city work, the public can and should expect the highest quality of work at no additional cost to them. In closing, the staff report you have received is a long way from allowing these things to happen. I would urge you to please not adopt the staff recommendations as written and to sit down with the building trades representative to negotiate the agreement policy that will achieve the goals the labor community is looking for. Thank you for this chance to speak to you. Thank you, Frank. We'll go to Sam, followed by Jack. Hi, there, is this working? Yep. Hi, my name is Sam Crump. I've lived in Santa Rosa for the last 10 years in Sonoma County for over 20 years. I completed the apprenticeship program in Local 38 this past December. Along with the best signatory contractors, Local 38 trains and teaches the most qualified plumbers and pipe fitters in the industry. I did not just join the union for a job but to master a trade. But with that, I've received more possibilities than I ever thought possible, such as a skill set that I'll forever have, financial security that has allowed me to settle down and start a family of my own here in Sonoma County. I'm a first generation Local 38 plumber. I hope to pass down not only the skills I've learned to my children, but to also instill in them the love and respect for union labor that I've come to recognize as a major importance in our community. Santa Rosa has a unique opportunity with Local 38 calling it home to its union hall. It is providing vocational training that is unmatched for future generations of Santa Rosa. There is a strong sense of pride that I have when working in Sonoma County. When I work on a school, I think my kids might go to class here. When I work on a hospital, I think my grandmother might be staying here and that's no small matter. The pride in the craftsmanship is visible in the quality of work. I thank you for the PLA discussion, but I ask you not to adapt the staff recommendation as written, but to sit down with labor and produce a final draft that will support local skilled labor and apprenticeships. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. We'll go to Jack, followed by Nicole. Oh, he's pretty tall. Well, good afternoon, honorable Mayor Rogers, council members and staff. My name is Jack Buckhorn, executive director of the North Bay Labor Council and resident Santa Rosa. I'm here to ask for your support in advancing a project labor agreement policy that will leverage Santa Rosa's capital improvement dollars to help meet the city's goals of enhancing our highly skilled workforce by increasing access to successful union apprenticeship programs that benefit diversity, equity and broader inclusion in the workforce. Supporting a PLA policy is a proven strategy to achieve these goals and I would argue a necessary investment in our community. Just this month, California's labor and workforce development agency published a report called Advancing Apprenticeship in California, a five point action plan. This action plan seeks to grow and expand access to traditional construction apprenticeships for women and disadvantaged communities. One of the action steps is to quote, leverage and educate stakeholders on project labor agreements, a mechanism that supports workforce diversity in publicly funded projects, emphasis added. Here are just a few of the many reasons California's labor and workforce development agency recommended using PLAs to increase equality and reach disadvantaged communities. According to statistics provided by the California Division of Apprenticeship Standards for 2021, union joint labor management apprenticeship programs provide the vast majority of state approved apprenticeship training. 94% of all construction apprentices are enrolled in union apprenticeship programs. That's 48,614 out of 51,698. 93% of all apprenticeship graduates are produced by union programs. 11,045 out of 11,929 in 2021. 68% of participant in union programs are people of color. That's 33,532 out of 49,443. 96% of all women in state approved apprenticeship programs are in union programs. That's 1,225 out of 1,275. In Sonoma County today, union apprenticeship programs are training over 678 apprentices and all 15 of the building trades while the non-union programs have 117 registered apprentices and five construction trades. Over half of the non-union apprentices are registered with one program, the Independent Roofing Contractors of California. Unfortunately, only 25% of the apprentices in this program have graduated over the last five years. Regionally, union apprenticeship programs have consistently trained over 92% of all the registered apprentices in Marin Lake, Minnesino, Napa, Solano, and Sonoma counties, 2,437 out of 2,633 and have an outstanding graduation rate. In conclusion, I ask for your vote and support of project labor agreements to move our society forward with equality of opportunity and taxpayer accountability. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jack. We'll go to Nicole. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the City Council. Nicole Gehring with Associated Builders and Contractors Northern California Chapter. I've been advocating for our journey workers and apprentices for over 15 years for their ability to be able to work on public works projects. Our graduate, we have been actually graduating apprentices for over two decades, producing some of the most skilled and qualified journey workers in the state who because of a project labor agreement would be limited because of the quotas and restrictions on the PLA language, they would not be allowed to work on the projects in the city of a PLA where to be put into place, including our apprentices. Our apprentices are unilateral and because of the joint language we see in most of the PLAs, these people are of all walks of life, minorities, veterans, women, second chance people, people who are homeless living in their car that have completed our pre-apprenticeship programs, they would not be able to work on PLA projects because of the language that we see in the PLA projects. That's why we decided to meet with the city to see if we could maybe work on a workforce development program that we could include everybody in this process and try to get more people into the trades. As we know, we desperately need people right now into the trades. We have a major workforce shortage. Many of the construction workers are aging out. Many of the apprentices aren't coming to us as you heard before until 10 years outside of high school. I mean, we need to do something and we need to include everybody in these pipelines. That's why I support the goals that the city staff has put forth. I wholeheartedly support those. And I would also ask you to go out to the, I know that you went out to the companies that are in the area, but the questions weren't asked to them if they supported a PLA or if PLAs would increase costs or if they were a disincentive to bid. The North Coast Builders Exchange did the survey a few years back and they should redo it again because they did say that 74% of the respondents of the survey did say PLAs increased costs. 68% said they were a disincentive to bid and 75% said they reduced bidders. And the union firms in that survey also said that 50% increased, 50% of them said that PLAs increased costs. Only 10% said that they wouldn't bid that they were not a disincentive to bid and 45% said that they would reduce bidders. So I mean, I know that you don't have any mathematical evidence, but you do have bid results. You have examples of bids being rejected because of prices coming in over the engineer's estimates, projects being pulled and going back to bid. Watsonville just had a project. So I would encourage you to just look for a workforce development policy and work with your North Coast Builders Exchange. They have a core program. We have pre-apprenticeship programs. The unions have pre-apprenticeship. We all work together. We can bring more people into the industry and into the trade. So I thank you very much for your time and for holding this session today. Thank you. Thank you so much, Nicole. Last call for public comment. Okay, I'm gonna bring it back to council. First of all, I wanna thank everybody for being here today and for providing comment. I'm gonna go ahead and start with Raisa, reminding us again, what type of feedback you would like from council members. Okay, so again, if you'd like to see it, it's on slide 24. And what we are looking for is local labor definition. Again, we recommended Sonoma Marin, NACA, Mendocino, and Lake counties. And whether or not you want to consider local craft trade workers only and whether or not professional consultants and other administrative staff should be excluded. The second thing is on community workforce agreements. The key point here is whether a test of 30% local workforce requirement would be acceptable. The other thing is if you have any thoughts on sanction or merit labor, and lastly on local labor in regard to pre-apprentice and apprenticeship requirements, if there is a percentage that you would like to require of pre-apprentices. The other thing is on project criteria, we need to know if you want to consider all public infrastructure project types or if there are some that you don't want to include and also whether or not you want it to be project by project or to be applied unilaterally. And then lastly, on that point, if there are exemptions for project types, specifically with special funding requirements, or if there's language around that, that would be acceptable for you. And then on project criteria, the recommendation of $5 million and above index to CPI, is that acceptable? If not, what is the threshold that you would like to see? And may we have an index to the CPI? And then lastly on the policy term, is it acceptable to you to put a term of three years so that we can assess it in that time or figure out how to get the most relevant data that would be helpful for you and the return to counsel with any recommendations on changes that might be needed at the end of three years. And if not three years, what term, if any, would be acceptable to you? Oh, and I should say the other part of that is on slide 25, I keep forgetting, and slide 25 is do you want to, if especially a PLA is not going to be applied across the board and there are some exceptions or there is a threshold, are there any changes, language changes, and amendments that you want to make to existing contract requirements, again, to give language overlay similar to PLA or at the far end of the spectrum, do you want to not do a PLA and consider simply doing amendments to the existing construction contract? Great, thank you so much, Raisa. And I do want to start off just by thanking staff on this. I know as we entered into the discussion more and more data requests came back and I've got to say I think that staff really did a good job of trying to hone in on the complexities of this issue and why it's been difficult to have the conversation. I also want to thank Council Member Sawyer and Council Member Fleming for being willing to have the conversation. We, John and I were joking pretty early on this is a conversation that's more than a decade in the making and nobody seemed to really want to have it but everybody wanted to fight about it. And so I want to thank the Economic Development Subcommittee for unanimously saying it's time for us to have this conversation one way or another. Let's throw everything on the table. Let's have an honest conversation about it and let's see if this is for better or worse something that we want to do here in our community. With that, I'm going to kick it over to Council Member Sawyer to start us off with direction to staff. Thank you Mayor and I also want to thank Council Member Fleming for the, we actually had fun. I mean we don't probably agree on many of the points of the presentation today and some things don't really need to be agreed on at all. We have some philosophical differences but it was a great conversation not only between the two of us but with staff and this report that you are seeing this evening is an example of staff working very, very hard with the subcommittee trying to identify those sticky parts that need to be dealt with. No, it has, in my many years on the Council this topic has been avoided and we decided that it was time to have the conversation and we did. So and I want to mention that I really think that any way that we can improve our process for contracts, I'm in favor of and I know that that's really not necessarily a question here but I think there are, I think there are alternatives available to us where we can improve the workforce and a program like that I would be very supportive of. I think Peter Rumble actually took many words out of my mouth and he more than I could write down and he really identified some really key points one of which is this is not about those that are in favor of PLAs being evil and those that are not in favor of them being evil these are people that have responsibilities and the non-union, those that are the non-union and are looking for us to move away from PLAs have a job to do and that job is to convince us why we don't need PLAs and the union reps are here to convince us that PLAs are beneficial to the community and all of the great results of what a city can derive from having a PLA. I think that PLAs are a solution looking for a problem. I think that Santa Rosa, especially when you think about vertical versus horizontal, I looked at the projects that were sitting there, I would ask that at the same time that we get the numbers we find that we also identify those projects which are vertical and which are horizontal so that we can understand which ones would be most affected by Santa Rosa or by a PLA. I think that along with those individuals having a job to do, I also have a job to do and my role is to provide an even playing field for all individuals and companies looking to do business with the city of Santa Rosa. I think the PLAs, by definition, do not provide a level playing field. That's my opinion and I know that this is a war of statistics and facts. Maybe that's why so many councils decided not to move in this direction by having the conversation at all but I do have a concern about the fairness of a PLA program that requires a worker to join a group to do business depending on the threshold with Santa Rosa. I think by its nature it's unfair and I think it's my role to make sure that that playing field is level. Now, as far as getting to race and I think I can go piece by piece if that would be helpful to you on the various feedback questions that you have. Some of these would suggest that we're already talking about a PLA agreement so I'll just say, just that it doesn't apply to me because I am not in favor of moving forward with a PLA. Although I am interested in having more conversation about a community workforce agreement, I'm not sure that I'm clear exactly what that, the ins and outs and all the details involved in that which would look like a compromise. I'm okay with actually with the local labor definition. I think that's fine. I have no problem with that. The community workforce agreement, I spoke to that. Sanction or merit labor, I think I wanna open it up to everyone. I think everyone should have a crack at city contracts as long as the PLA is not involved. So I'll just reiterate that and I may see it another couple of times if necessary. The apprenticeship requirements, I am not familiar enough with what would be required and I'm gonna leave that to staff to fair it out exactly what kind of requirements as far as apprenticeship programs or should be required. Project criteria, all public infrastructure projects should be open to everyone. So another way of saying what I said before. Project value threshold none because I'm not interested in a threshold. Other key considerations, policy term. Choosing three years sounds interesting but since I'm not in favor of this particular program, I might wanna apply it to the community workforce agreement if I knew more about that but I think that probably wraps it up and I'll just stop. And again, I appreciate everyone in this room for being here today, offering their personal and professional perspectives on a very controversial at times, controversial discussion. So I thank you. If I may, even if you, I guess the first question should have been yes or no on a PLA but even if you are not in favor of it as it sounds like you are not council member Sawyer, the answers to those questions are still helpful specific to any community workforce agreement or any contract overlays that we might consider. So even answering the questions are still helpful. So was there something that I, did I leave out something? No, you did not. Council member, I think Raisa was asking if you're in favor against the PLA. I think I heard that you are against it and what I'm saying is that even though you are not in favor of PLA, the answers to all those questions are relevant to an existing, amending an existing contract, construction contract, or could be applied to a community workforce agreement that would be that overlay, if that makes sense. It does. And since I didn't, assuming that I didn't leave anything out and I find you very astute in your assumption about, not an assumption, your reality of my feelings for PLAs. But if I left something out that you need direction on, I'm more than happy to provide it. Council members, by the way. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Once again, staff, I really appreciate all this information. What's been interesting since I first learned about this when I first got on council in 2014, it's been the same conversation. You'll get people who are staunchly in favor and staunchly against it. So it's just what more information can you have? And for me, what has struck me is, I totally get the union perspective because they're tasked with what's in the best interest of their membership, right? Or our role, or at least the role that I see, is I'm looking at what's in the best interest of the city of San Rosa, eliminating the competition. I just don't, I disagree with that. And again, I appreciate the passion, I appreciate the perspectives. We all want to do what's best for this community, what's best for the employees. So I totally get it. There's just different ways of achieving that. So for me, right, I'm just gonna jump to slide 25, the next one. Basically, I'm in favor of amending the existing contract requirements and all the staff recommendations I'm supportive of. The two areas of questions slash concern I would be, one about the community workforce agreement. The recommendation is test the 30% local workforce. The accountability in consequences of not achieving that, if it does come back to this body, I'd be interested in hearing how do you manage that? Looking at the example of the city of Hayward where they're shooting for 30%, they only achieve 19%. So what happens? What's the accountability? Do funds come back? I would like to explore that a little bit more. And then the same thing that I think the mayor first brought it up is three years enough to actually get enough data to make for the future councils to make that informed decision about what's in the best interest of the city of San Rosa. Thanks. Thank you council member, council member Fleming. Thank you. And I think that everybody here has done a great job and council member Schwedhelm said, we're tasked with figuring out what is in the best interest of the community. And I think on that, we all agree. We are here to figure out what's in the best interest of the community. And the pieces of this that really struck me that have me leaning towards going with a project labor agreement has to do with the amount of the apprentices that are produced by our labor unions and the types of people who get into middle class jobs as a result of that. And I don't know that there's any definitive data if you were to get everybody in a room. It seems like if you're in favor of project labor agreements you can find data that supports that. And if you're opposed to them you can find data that supports that. And so I think what we have to say is it potentially might cost more to go with a project labor agreement. The question for me is, is that cost worth the benefit to our community? And if the fact of the matter is that we're developing more apprentices here as a result of investing in organized labor in the trades then the answer is obviously for me, yes. So with that I will go forward and answer the questions. But before I do that there's one thing that I wanna say which is there was a point brought up about bids on contracts. And I think we need to build in a piece here where if we don't get enough organized bids or we don't get any organized bids for that matter that we do have some way to develop those folks, those businesses and or go out to bid beyond our region or figure out a way to get bidders. But I think that first we should see if it happens and I agree that five years rather than three years is probably the time to come back and see if it didn't work. So, Marisa please help me keep track here. So I'm in favor of including crafts in this primarily. I think that in the future we may wanna include other types of projects besides vertical but for now it's fine to start with vertical projects. I think the 30% is fine. I support going with signatories rather than merit and project threshold of 5% to me seems good. Did I leave anything out, Marisa? No, that was it. But when you said project threshold of 5% do you mean five million and above? I did. I think I was getting 30% in five years and five million dollars all conflated there. Yes, I think five million dollars is the right amount to start on this. Did I miss any of the other pieces? No, I think that's it, that's great. Thank you. Okay, the last thing that I wanna add is that equity, we often talk about equity but I think what equity is in this situation is opportunity and I think we all agree that equity and or opportunity is really important and the challenge is is that when it costs money and here's a situation where it might cost money and we have to put our money where our values are and for me the value is in creating a broader workforce that is more representative of our local community. Thank you to everybody. Thank you, Council Member. Let's go to Council Member Rogers. Thank you, Mayor. I just would like to thank the staff for taking the time to listen and incorporate all the feedback that you were given into this presentation. So for PLA in general, yes, I would like to see what it looks like for the threshold and then also local labor definition. I would like to see percentages really, really high but then if we can't meet that, I know that that may be an obstacle. So maybe starting off lower with longer projects, maybe getting to a higher percentage, which I think is very obtainable because I've seen some of the apprenticeship programs that we have locally and I know that we can do that. So it's not something that I don't think that we can do. So in addition to that, so yes, hiring locally is a priority for me. And the reason why I wanna go with the threshold is because I do want projects, I do want people or companies to be able to have the option to bid on projects locally, smaller companies and companies that can stay competitive and that are not necessarily a part of a union, but that they're really small and maybe wouldn't benefit them to be in a union or they don't have enough people or I just know that there's different reasons why companies are not in a union that are really small. And so I wanna give them the opportunity to continue to bid on city projects. The five million is okay, the three-year term is okay and I love the apprenticeship requirement and the pre-apprenticeship requirement and I think that if we provide more projects, like if we build it, then they will come. I think if we provide the projects, then it will definitely give us the opportunity to see our local workforce only increase and that it will allow our local middle class to only flourish and get bigger, but we have the expertise right here. We just have to have the projects and hire locally in order for us to utilize it. And then lastly, I wanna say, I hear the word community being thrown out and this is a time where I feel like I'm not sure when people say that word what community they're talking about because there are people that are from lower socioeconomic parts of our city that would love to be a part of our apprenticeship programs and just be able to provide for their family and this would be awesome for them or to get jobs where they would have good benefits and so and be safe and all the things that a PLA would provide and the things that were named that a PLA brings, I think are so important and that is why I want and I believe it's important for us to explore a PLA and to really sit down with labor and see how we can make it work for us, right? And so how it's not limiting for the city but how we can build and make something so prosperous for us and for our community because there are so many people that can benefit from a PLA in our community. And so with that, I do wanna encourage the PLA to go forward and I do wanna encourage people that work with the apprenticeship programs to get out there and get people that are of lower socioeconomic people that are at disadvantaged backgrounds and maybe that can be of our criteria to have them involved and see how we can build them up because to me that's building our community up. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Council Member. Excuse me, Mayor, Council Member Raj because I just asked one question in relation to the applicability of a PLA, one of the questions that Rice and I are interested in is, is all projects that she labeled that are in the capital program? With exclusions? With the exclusions, so, okay, thank you. Council Member McDonald. Thank you, Mayor. So I am in favor of moving forward with the PLA. I think that they're the best way for us to go on coordinating projects and so I can just go through some of this but some of it I'd like to just direct staff to go back and meet with the building trades as well as their lawyers to vet out some of these nuances so that when it does finally come back to council, some of that's already done for us because we can say and try to define local labor but in fact, they may say, well, we have some of these skilled labor force in Solano County or a neighboring county that isn't too much further so I don't want to subject ourselves to just saying only in these areas so I'd like to hear more from building trades council to be able to tell us where the labor and workforce is so I'm definitely in favor of local workforce and so I don't mind the 30% at all but I do want to also get some of that data back from building trades and letting us know where their labor and workforce is which I think one of your slides actually indicated to us the percentages of where they actually are located so I think we're fine on that 30% what I would want to do is if we couldn't get that I don't want anyone in any business that we're contracted with to be penalized in any way for not being able to do that if they had to bring people in from out of the area it would be up to the businesses in fact to either put them up locally or to be able to pay them to come in or provide them with vehicles to get here. Let's see, as far as the apprentice programs I totally agree with that's where you have skilled labor and workforce because they're in constant training so I'm in favor of all of that to ensure that we have a properly skilled workforce doing our projects. Let's see, as far as the threshold I am not certain five million is the right threshold I'd like to go back again to the trades to see what their thought processes on percentages of jobs versus the actual amount while some of our jobs in the next three years seem to meet that threshold to be able to do the vast majority of our work I think around 74% of it or so was around that five million dollar threshold I would be interested in seeing if we should maybe in fact lower it to maybe three million dollars because coordinating work in project labor agreements is what I'm actually interested in so those efficiencies and cutting red tape because the work's done ahead of time so that's the kind of thing that I would wanna have a look at and really again going back to have a little bit more data on those projects and how many were actually done. Agree with council member Fleming on the three years probably not being enough that maybe we should come back at five years with proper data on some of these because we can see even with our current projects that a lot of times we plan for them to be done within this fiscal year but often times they're delayed and we can see with a shortage of actual construction equipment coming in and procurement of equipment we could see a delay so I'm not sure that three years is a proper amount of time for us to have the good data on that. Let's see, the other thing I would like to look at is you mentioned a couple of grants and I would wanna make sure that we weren't excluding ourselves from any grants because there could be potential language that would not want that type of agreement ahead of time so I would wanna make sure that the city would be protected in that and I think that working with the trade industry we could come to agreements I'd still be interested in having a workforce agreement under grants so that we are still protected in using high quality workers within the city budget and then also in emergency services I would be interested in seeing if we need to act swiftly and under fire and we've seen a lot of times where we have to move dirt and things like that and that there wouldn't be any language that would preclude us from actually needing to move swiftly on projects when we've had emergencies but other than that I just wanna thank staff for this great presentation I appreciate that council's brought it forward I certainly have done some exploration on project labor agreements both sides of it and spoken to people so I appreciate it coming forward today and again my direction is to go with project labor agreements, thank you. Thank you council member, let's go to the vice mayor. Thank you mayor. Being one of the most recent appointees or elected to the council and seeing that this project has been going on for such a long time I must ask during that time period how much involvement have we had from both union and non-union labor groups in the discussion and the presentation? Vice mayor, so up to this year we haven't spent a lot of time as a staff really working on project labor agreements as the mayor alluded to there have been a lot of starts and stops over the last decade or more however since staff was put into this project of bringing this forward we've spent quite a bit of time we've had two or three meetings with North Bay Trades Council and the TIP program we've had two or three meetings with the associated building contractors as well as Wicca so we've done our best to work through the trades programs as well as talking with some of our local contractors and business groups so we've made a concerted effort since given the nods to move forward however prior to this it was more of a start and stop type of motion and that's why I think this hasn't moved forward with prior councils. Thank you and as you and I well known when we've involved the community it seems to go a little bit smoother such as our experience with the Bennett Valley Golf Course where we definitely saw the pros of involving the community in the discussion so I hope that moving forward we will continue to do the same as I'm sure we will. And also to that importance it's too many times that we hear the word equity being floated around and it's almost as many times as one party ultimately disagrees with the original agreement that was entered by both and to minimize that is why a PLA is important. It puts both sides with the clear understanding of what the original intent is and the goal is as well. I believe that the PLA increases that opportunity as mentioned by one of my colleagues prior. Apprenticeships also does the same. So it's clear. It's clear for me the importance of a PLA in our system and with the thresholds I believe that the questions that were asked of us earlier were the threshold of the five million the 30% the three years. I believe some of the other questions that were asked of us were the counties as being considered local labor areas and it's funny how it's also our tribes that come from those counties as well that are recognized locally. So you find the correlation between one another. So it goes to show that some things do not change. Therefore we need to work where we live and live where we work. And if we were to ask ourselves what dignity and employment means it's definitely unionized labor that makes that dignity happen. So it's why I find the PLA to be so important. But again, I must stress we must involve those that our policy involves to be have a seat at the table. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Vice Mayor. So staff that have worked with me for the last six years I think know that I have two main focuses when it comes to policy development. One is using the purchasing power of the city to better our residents. And we certainly saw that when we switched to 100% renewable energy. It was more expensive but it was the right thing to do. I look at this through that same lens. We sit up here and we spend millions every year on homelessness. We spend millions every year on affordable housing. And this is a policy that we can enact that allows us to invest in our community and in our workers to make sure that we're not exacerbating those inequalities that then in our budget times we're trying to figure out how to fund programs to make up for. I'm gonna be a big supporter of this as we move forward. The other thing that staff knows is that I view policy development as an iterative process. We rarely get it right the first time even when we have great data and we're always gonna have to come back and retool and rework and really do things to sander those away as we see how it impacts us in our local community. The great news about this policy is that there is no good data one way or the other. The only way that we're gonna get it is if we create it. And so I am very supportive of us doing this as a five year pilot program where we track the data and see did it cost the city more money? Did that actually matter to us? What was the impact that it had on the workers? Did we see lower bids, a number of bids as well as the price? Is it something that our community and the future is going to have the data that they need to say, yes, this is how we're going to invest in our community and it made sense for us? And can we turn around to them, provide that information to other cities who are struggling with that same question and who do when they do a Google search, see doom and gloom and see sunshine and roses depending on which link they click on? I don't know the ins and outs of most of the laws that'll pertain to this. I do wanna give my direction to staff to go back and work with the attorneys to negotiate something that meets the values of the city and what's being expressed by the council while in still compliance with law. For example, I heard in public comment that perhaps design build projects are not eligible if you have a PLA policy that's in place. That'd be an exemption that I'd be looking for when this policy comes back after it's been negotiated. I like the definition of local labor, but perhaps in discussions with folks who do this, we'll find that there's a better answer for what will work for Santa Rosa. Let's try it and if it doesn't work, we'll change it, we'll try something else. The threshold question to me seems a little bit like a trap and the reason being 2023 is the year where we have substantial projects that we normally wouldn't have coming forward and coming to fruition finally. We finally found the funding for them. So using 2023 as a threshold guide tells me nothing about what's gonna happen in 2024. It tells me nothing about what's gonna happen in 2025. I'd rather use historical averages for the city. That way we're not basing our threshold and then paging it to CPI based on an outlier. The goal that I'm looking for and I expressed this at the Economic Development Committee is not a specific dollar threshold, but you tell me what percentage of work we're shooting for. If we're looking at it and we're saying based on the criteria that we've come up with, we want 75% of projects to qualify. That can be a moving target to me year to year as we adopt our CIP budget. But I wanna know what the policy is going to be to make sure that there's a certainty of work where if a worker comes through an apprentice program and we say if you invest in yourself, we'll invest in you. And we'll make sure that we use the purchasing power of the city to make sure that you and your family can afford to live here. And that's what I'm looking for. Raisa, Jason, do you guys have clear enough direction from council? I believe we do. Yes, I agree. Perfect. We'll come back in September. Again, I wanna thank everybody for being here, everybody on Zoom. This has been over a three hour study session. So I know we've got other things to get to. I hope you'll indulge us. We're gonna take a quick five minute bathroom break and then we'll come back and we'll start our regular council meeting. Thank you, everybody. Welcome back, Madam City Clerk. Can you please call the roll? Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Present. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. Great. So council, I'm gonna jump around our agenda just a little bit. We are going to start with our proclamations today before we get too far into it. Then we'll jump to our public hearings, which we are required to start before a certain time. We probably will take a dinner break after the public hearings and then we'll come back for our report items, our staff updates, our council member comments, all of those sorts of things. Really fast, let's get a report out from our closed session from the city attorney since she just took a bite. Excellent timing, Mr. Mayor. Thank you very much. Council met in closed session on purchase on the price and terms for purchase of property on Bellevue Avenue and gave direction to staff. No final action was taken. Thank you. Perfect. Then we'll go to our proclamations. The first one is item 7.1. It's a proclamation for zero waste week. So I'm gonna have council member McDonald read the proclamation. And then I know we have Joey Hednewitz that's able to provide a little bit of comments before we present it to the recipient. Thank you, Mayor. Whereas each year, zero waste Sonoma and community partners host a one day zero waste symposium as a local opportunity for industry and the public to gain insight on zero waste topics and trends, share ideas and network. And whereas this year zero waste Sonoma has collaborated with North Bay groups and volunteers to expand the community event for an entire week in late July aimed at educating and empowering various sectors of the public to act towards zero waste. And whereas the city of Santa Rosa along with other sponsors will be holding zero waste events throughout the week of July 24th through 30th. Now therefore be it resolved that Chris Rogers, Mayor of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council do hereby proclaim July 24th through July 30th as zero waste week. Thank you, Council Member. I'm gonna jump over to Joey, our zero waste coordinator. Thank you, Mayor and city council members. Yes, as Mr. Rogers, the mayor said I'm Joey Hednewitz, zero waste coordinator for the city of Santa Rosa. And just wanted to talk a little bit about zero waste week. So this is the first annual North Bay zero waste week held here in Sonoma County. It is gonna be a couple of weeks from now July 24th through the 30th. Throughout the week, North Bay communities, Santa Rosa include will offer zero waste activities and events to raise public awareness for environmental impacts of waste in ways you can live a more zero waste lifestyle by committing to reducing, reusing, recycling, repurposing and composting waste. Anyone can be part of the solution. And so we do look forward to the community members joining us during zero waste week. We do have some specific events here being held in Santa Rosa. And then also some larger events happening in the county which I will have my associates alone with all speak to after that. But as far as the events in Santa Rosa are concerned, we do have a street cleanup day on Sebastopol Road on July 27th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Our project area of focus is gonna be between Dutton Avenue and Stony Point Road. So we need to be doing like a community beautification, asking community members to come participate and help us clean up. We will be starting at 665 Sebastopol Road. That is the new location of the Motote Food Truck Park. If you haven't been out there, I was out there last week for a site visit and it's an excellent community space with some food and some nice culture going on out there. So I definitely ask folks to check out if you haven't been out there if you're not gonna join us during zero waste week. One for the community to know that food and light snacks or light snacks and refreshments will be provided during that timeframe. That is being sponsored by Recology, Zero Waste Santa Rosa, Saluna Outreach Solutions and Motote Food Truck Park. Once again, that's gonna be on July 27th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. out on Sebastopol Road. Additionally, we are gonna be having a zero waste webinar where you can learn to detect and fix leaks in your home irrigation system. So it doesn't also just include waste, so we also wanna make sure that we bring some attention to the water situation and the water drop that we're currently in. We will be hosting a zero waste compost webinar where you can learn how to compost at your home using your kitchen and garden scraps by participating in an online compost event, which that information will be shared with the public very shortly on our social media channels and srcity.org. And finally, you can stop by our zero waste table on Sunday during the Live at Juliard Park concert series to receive information on zero waste practices and pick up a water-saving toolkit. And now I would like to elevate Sloan Pagol, zero waste program manager for Zero Waste Sonoma to speak a little bit more about the greater zero waste week. Good afternoon, Council Mayor and staff. I wanna thank the City of Santa Rosa on behalf of Zero Waste Sonoma for recognizing this inaugural week of zero waste activities. Zero Waste Sonoma, Recology, Saluna Outreach Solutions, Sonoma Water, the UCCE Master Food Preservers and Master Composters, Sonoma Clean Power, Sonoma County Libraries, and many other community partners have been working together to offer this full week of events throughout the county, as Joey mentioned. I'd like to invite all attendees of today's meeting to visit www.zerowastenorthbay.org to see the full schedule and get details for those individual events. Just wanna highlight another event that's happening in Santa Rosa, which is our second Fixit Clinic and Reuse Fair on July 24th. That's at 3251 Santa Rosa Avenue from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. It's a free community event with a chance for folks to get help fixing bicycles, textiles, wheeled transportation, lamps, small appliances, and a knife sharpening as well. And we'll have the Children's Museum on the GO bus as well as the library's Bibliobus there and a clothing swap. So if you want more information, I just suggest you go to the website. And once again, thank you for this acknowledgement of this week of Zero Waste Action, and we hope to see you out there at some of these events. All right, thank you so much, Joey and Sloan. Really appreciate it. And Joey, we'll make sure that you get this proclamation to hang up as well. Let's move on to item 7.2. Council Member Sweathelm, this is your item. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And this is all about Bob. Why don't you step up to the podium there just so we know who, as we're describing you, this is who we're talking about. Thanks, Bob. So it's my pleasure to read this proclamation. Whereas 48 years ago, when he was a Viking, a student at Montgomery High School, Bob Borowitz began his career in the golf industry in the maintenance department at the Bennett Valley Golf Course. And whereas after graduating from Sacramento State University in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science degree in administration, he returned to maintenance of the course while building his professional golf career. And whereas in 1982, Bob began working with former Bennett Valley Golf Course Operator, John Flakman, in the pro shop. And whereas Bob learned the operations and business of golf from John while continuing to grow his professional golf career. And whereas he played in many professional golf tournaments, including the Professional Golf Association Qualifiers with the goal of becoming a professional golfer. And whereas in 1986, after completing the PGA Apprentice Program, Bob became a certified class APGA professional and served as a Bennett Valley Golf Course Golf Pro while continuing to learn the golf industry trade and operations. And whereas he was a two-time Collegiate All-American for Division II Golf Championships and represented the United States in PGA Cup matches in 1992. And whereas in 2001, Bob and John became partners in operating the Bennett Valley Golf Course, which included the food and beverage operations until 2004, when John retired and Bob became the sole operator of the golf course and restaurant. Whereas Bob returned exclusively to golf operations and instruction in 2007, after the city retained an outside operator for the hospitality business. And whereas Bob's golf game is described as having the perfect swing with impeccable timing, which he has taught to the community through his work at Bennett Valley Golf Course. And whereas he has devoted his career to golf operations and instruction, specifically to Bennett Valley Golf Course, now therefore be it resolved that Chris Rogers, the mayor of the city of Santa Rosa, on behalf of the entire city council, do hereby acknowledge Bob Borowitz for his 48 years of service to the golf community and Bennett Valley Golf Course and do hereby wish a happy and fulfilling retirement to Bob Borowitz. Thank you. And if I could just comment on this proclamation, Bob, you know, it talks a lot about your accomplishments, but one of the things I've always enjoyed in everyone without exception when I say out of Bennett Valley Golf Course is the family atmosphere that you have helped create. And it's not just you and I know when I spoke with you on your last day out of the course, it's not just you, but the culture that you have established out of the course is unparalleled. It's a lovely place to go. And we talked about our recent discussions with Bennett Valley Golf Course, what a gem for the community is. A lot of it is due to you and your staff and the attitude that you bring to it. So thank you, thank you, thank you. All the job brought back some great memories. I wrote up something, I just want to be real quick with it, but there are few people I need to acknowledge along the way in 48 years out there. I've been very, very fortunate to have first of all foremost my wife Andrea up on the top row. If you don't know which one, she's the one on the left-hand side if you're looking up there. Thank her. It's quite an honor and very humbling when Jen mentioned that I was to receive this honor and acknowledgement. I don't feel deserving. I mean, I was just, basically I was getting paid to do a job and I was fortunate enough to have a great crew, specifically two of my main principal, Jim Canago and Don Ballard have been with me for over 40 years out there. And the big is the reason why the Golf Course is what it is. And as Tom, you mentioned, it's become more of a family operation which with past, I would say directors not in a bad way but they sort of insinuated there's too much of a family operation and need to be more business-like run which I'd always thought we could do both. But anyway, I'm glad you appreciate that, Tom and I think most of the golfers do out there. Don Ballard was our and currently is a superintendent. He's gonna stick around. He took care of all the maintenance aspect of the Golf Course. And Jim Canago, probably my best friend has run the golf shop operations for me. I never referred to these two guys as employees, more as partners. Every employer should be so lucky to have a couple guys or gals to look after their business as way they did for me. And it'd be really hard for anything to screw things up with the staff I inherited from, you mentioned John Flackman. He's the most instrumental person in my business life. He was the first and foremost a friend, a mentor and a partner. It was a privilege to have the opportunity to continue his legacy and try to uphold the standards he set. Pretty much all that I have accomplished at Bennett Valley is due to John's mentorship and his trust he had in handing over the reins to me in 2001 when he asked me to become his partner. In closing, I'd like to thank the city of Santa Rosa for placing their trust in me to oversee Bennett Valley golf course and for giving me the chance to be able to spend my entire career in golf, which doesn't happen very often. And it's been such an unbelievable run, a great facility and thank everybody. I didn't get a chance to meet all the council members. I've known John and Tom and Chris for some time now. But I've always found that you folks have been very easy to work with. Sometimes things take a little longer than we'd like, as you're well aware of, but in general, I appreciate all the support that you've given us at the golf course. Thank you. Thank you so much, Bob. And one of the things that I'll point out as we've gone through this process of finding a new operator was just hearing from the community about how much they've loved you and the family atmosphere, as Tom said, but really you, your personality and how welcoming you made them feel at the course and wanting to make sure that we didn't lose that aspect as we moved forward. We're gonna bring you down. We're gonna bring your family down. We'll take a brief moment and take some pictures. But first I wanna open it up for public comment for folks who might wanna add their well wishes here before we take the photos as well. Thank you. Well, if I could just add a few words to Tom's words, I think somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 rounds a year, every year consistently, the highest utilization of any golf course in the United States, as I understand, that led to, I think, the goodwill and feeling, as the mayor mentions, that so many people in this community have for that facility in Newen and led to, I think, the need that people have, the resonance that they have with that facility was because of the way it was run, the way it was maintained. And again, with 100,000 to 200,000 rounds a year on the golf course, that's a lot of where it's two and three times the number that is normally played on a course that gets made. And that's a public course. And on a private course, they would have maybe 18,000, maybe 50,000 rounds, it'd be an enormous number on a private course. Santa Rosa Country Club, maybe 20,000 rounds. So they had 10 times as many rounds, but they had to maintain and make the course playable for everybody. And that's a feat, that's a thing that everyone remembers. And that's kind of the difference between the two places. Thank you, Thomas. Let's go back to Zoom and Gregory. Yeah, I have the distinct pleasure of representing the Benavali Golf Club as a member of the board. Our board wants to say the same joy of working with Bob. We're a little older actually, we've been around a few years longer than even Bob and we, for the last 40 years in particular, as he's been in charge of the pro shop, 40 years of partnership, putting on tournaments. We've gotten to know him pretty well and a whole lot of our members are standing to salute him. And we wish him well. Thank you, Gregory. We'll look and see if there's any other comment. Okay, we'll go ahead and bring it back. We'll take a quick break while we take some photos and then we'll be back for the rest of our council meeting. Excuse me, Mayor, can I just? Oh yeah, sorry, go ahead, John. Not a problem. Bob, excuse me. You know, these warehouses are packed with a great deal of information that I had no idea about. When we were sitting around asking in the Mayor's conference room at times and elsewhere when it wasn't available because of the talking about the golf course and the golf committee. And quite frankly, I mean, you're very modest but I honestly had no idea of the qualifications and the history of the man I was sitting across the table with or from. So it's really impressive. Thank you for your many years of service. You are loved by your team and the participants at the golf course and you will be dearly missed. Almost as much as I miss my dark hair, which we both had at the time we started seeing each other. But it happens, but congratulations. Anyone else, Council? Great. Go ahead, come on down. I wanna welcome everybody down. Madam City Attorney. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to correct my report out on the real property negotiation closed session. Although I was close, it is adjacent to Bellevue Avenue. The address of the property that was discussed in closed session is 3012 Dutton Meadow. Just wanna make that correction for the record and thank you. Perfect, we appreciate it. So as I mentioned, we're gonna jump around a little bit. We're gonna jump to our first public hearing of the night that's item 16.1. Madam City Manager, go ahead and take it away. Good afternoon, item 16.1 is a public hearing, a resolution of necessity for the acquisition by imminent domain of easement interest in portions of real property, commonly known as 4912 and 4914 Highway 12, APNS 031-240-006 and 031-240-067 for the Los Alamos trunk sewer replacement project. I'd like to introduce Stephanie Valkovic, our associate real property agent. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council members. I'm joined here tonight by Jill Scott, the city's real estate manager as well as Mark Easter, the city's outside council from Best Increase Krieger. And I'm actually gonna turn it over to Mr. Easter to provide some background on the hearing. Sure, good evening. This is a hearing for the city to consider adopting resolution necessity for the acquisition by imminent domain of permanent and temporary easement interest for the Los Alamos trunk sewer replacement project To adopt the resolution, the city council must by two-thirds vote of all the voting members make the following findings. Number one, that the public interest and necessity required this project, that the project's been planned in a manner that's most beneficial to the public with the least private injury, that these property interests are needed for the project and that the offer of just compensation has been made to the owner. Staff will make a presentation on these findings. Any interested property owners who are here will have an opportunity to speak and then members of the public will have an opportunity also to speak on these issues. Just a couple of other things. The issues to be discussed tonight at the hearing are, and actually once the public speaks then the hearing is closed and the council can have discussion and vote. The issue of value is not the subject of discussion tonight other than confirming that the required offer has been made. The issues to be discussed are the findings that I just recited. The property owner will certainly have an opportunity to seek greater compensation if there's eminent domain proceedings and adopting this resolution necessity if the council chooses to do so does not terminate negotiations with the property. Thank you and just one matter of housekeeping if we could have the clerk note for the record the proof of mailing of the notice of hearing to the property owner. Yes, I did receive the proof of mailing of the notice of hearing to the affected property owner. The notice of the hearing invited the owner to appear and be heard on the matter described and the hearing notice was provided to the property owner by first class mail 15 calendar days before the hearing in accordance with the statute. The property owner will be speaking at the meeting. Thank you. So as you just heard, we're here to discuss easements needed in connection with the Los Alamos trunk sewer replacement project specifically easements over a portion of the property is located at 4912 and 4914 Sonoma Highway which properties are owned by Samantha Zappelli. Next slide please. Staff first came to council on May 24th to present this item on that day, the motion to adopt the resolution of necessity did not secure the five votes necessary to pass but a motion was made to reconsider the item and at the June 7th council meeting council voted in the affirmative on the motion for reconsideration allowing this item to be re heard today. Next slide please. The 2014 sanitary sewer system master plan update identified roughly three miles of the Los Alamos trunk sewer for replacement. The current trunk was constructed in the 1950s and is nearly 70 years old and in deteriorated condition. This project is the number one high priority project for maintaining desired service levels within the city's sewage collection system. And it is designed to provide increased trunk capacity and reliability while reducing maintenance requirements. Failure to complete the project could result in sewer overflow, environmental impacts, permit violations and fines. Next slide please. Segment one of the project begins at Streamside Drive and runs easterly to Elaine Drive. This alignment was selected in an effort to collect flows from the existing trunk while working to minimize the amount of bypass pumping operations needed during construction to minimize impacts on future development by private property owners as well as to minimize the impact of the project on heritage trees. Next slide please. The subject property is located toward the eastern most end of segment one, a few properties west of Elaine Drive and south of highway 12. The existing trunk sewer currently crosses a portion of the western parcel of the property and this is shown in red and the proposed easements for realignment are shown in teal in this picture. Next slide please. Over the past year and a half, the city and its right away consultant have actively tried to reach an agreement with the property owner with dozens of phone calls, site visits and staking of the easements, 80 or more emails back and forth between the parties and most recently through a meeting with the project team, the property owner and her attorney. Next slide please. The city first extended a formal offer to the property owner in January, 2021 in the amount of the appraised value for the easements. The property owner then hired an independent appraiser at city expense to value the easements. Next slide please. The independent appraisal was significantly higher than the original appraisal. However, in an effort to reach an agreement with the property owner, the city made a revised offer in September, 2021 in the amount of that appraisal. And then in November, 2021, the city made a final and revised offer providing additional compensation above that already being provided for the replacement of fruit trees being impacted by the project. In spite of these good faith efforts, the parties have been unable to reach an agreement on price and terms. Since 2019, 28 other necessary easements have been acquired for the project for more than a dozen property owners. So these outstanding easements that we're here to discuss tonight are the last and final easements needed for the city to move forward with construction of segment one of the project. Which leads us to staff's recommendation to council. Next slide please. It is recommended by the water and transportation and public works departments and real estate services that the city council conduct a public hearing and adopt a resolution of necessity by a two thirds vote declaring the necessity of acquisition by imminent domain of two permanent easement interests and two temporary construction easement interests in portions of certain real property more particularly described as Sonoma County assessor parcel numbers 031-240-006 and 031-240-067 for the Los Alamos trunk sewer replacement project. And this concludes this portion of the presentation. Myself, Jill, Mr. Easter and representatives from the water department and project team are available to answer any questions. Great, thank you so much. I'll look to my colleagues to see if anybody has any questions on this item. Okay, we'll go ahead and open the public hearing. I'm gonna go ahead and start with the property owner for comment. I just wanted to state on our meeting that we had last week and I hired an attorney. Hold on one second. Let's make sure the microphones turned on. The microphones turned on. You just need to talk a little closer to the mic so we can hear you better. Is that better? A little bit closer. Okay, is that better? Yeah, that's better. Thank you. Okay, so I just wanted to state that I'm definitely in knowing that this is a necessary project. It's just that our business lies within, there's four parcels. So it goes in the middle of the parcels and it has been a business. It's been in business since 1958. So there's like water lines, power lines that coincide with my home and business. So it's not just the sewer project. And when we had our meeting last week, you know, we brought up those things. Sorry, brought up those things and asked to maybe be added to the insurance policy of the construction company because also our building is very old. So it's just gonna disturb more than just the sewer project. It's my family's livelihood and also employees' livelihoods that are in between. And I'm just trying to get those things sorted out of what are we gonna do if this happens or what are we gonna do with the abandoned sewer project? And just things of that nature on top of getting a third appraisal to maybe coincide with the two that we've gotten. But it's just a little bit more details than, you know, yes, the project needs to go through but we just need to figure out the logistics of everything. So that's all I have to say. Great, thank you. Is there any other public comment in the chamber on this item? Let me go ahead and look towards Zoom as well. If you have comment, hit the raise hand feature on Zoom. I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item. Thomas, are you looking to speak? Okay, we'll go ahead and close the public hearing then. And I will bring it back to see if there are any additional questions, any comments? Mr. Vice Mayor? Thank you, Mayor. In regards to the comments that we just heard in regards to added liability, what issues are being foreseen from the city center to make sure that the livelihood of both residents and employees are being looked after? Thank you for your question, Vice Mayor. At the meeting, the project management team spoke about the insurance coverage for the project. However, in terms of the matter, hand to night, the project necessity, the minimization of impacts on private for the greater public good, we believe we've addressed all of these concerns. I've spoken to our appraisers, I'm a Radaway consultant and the information provided did not lead us to believe that there would be any change in the conclusions or recommendations to counsel tonight and that we could, this kind of evidence could be provided to the court if there was anything concrete in nature, I guess. And I guess if I don't know if Jill might have anything to add on that matter. How do you mean counsel? And normally in a project, there's insurance that's provided and liability insurance with the contractors that is provided to her and would be provided to anyone. She had additional concerns. Her, my understanding is that her attorney was looking into it and was gonna get back to us. We provided all of the information and all of the documents to her attorney. If there's anything else that we need to be concerned with with that, we will definitely address it and move forward with the situation as we go through this. As I think Stephanie had talked about, we will continue to negotiate with this and the negotiations will continue this being part of it as we go on tonight. We're just here to prove the project necessity. Does that answer your question? It doesn't. I think it's clear to all parties involved that there is a clear necessity to move forward. I just hope that we are looking after the best interests of every resident and resident, including the one that we have before us tonight. Thank you. And counsel member, I can assure you that we are and we are addressing every piece of this. It is greatly appreciated, Jill. Thank you. Council member Rogers, do you wanna put a motion on the table for consideration? I move that adoption of the resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa adopting a resolution of necessity for the acquisition by eminent domain of easement interests in proportions of certain real property commonly known as 4912 and 4914 highway 12 and more particularly described as assessor parcel numbers 031-240-006 and 031-240-067 for the Los Alamos trunk sewer replacement project and way for the reading of the text. Second. Motion from council member Rogers and a second I believe from council member Sawyer. I think that's what he was going for. I was going for. Any additional comments from council? Okay, Madam City Clerk, please call the roll. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. There were seven eyes. This resolution required five affirmative votes to pass and that passed with seven eyes. Great, thank you so much. Item 16.2 is an urgency ordinance amending city code chapter 18-52 flood damage protection amendments to comply with minimum requirements of the National Flood Disaster Protection Act and the National Flood Insurance Program, NFIP, and setting a public hearing for adoption. I would like to introduce Chief Building Official Jesse Oswald. Thank you, Madam City Manager, for giving the presentation up. Perfect, thank you so much. Well, good evening, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Alvarez and council members. We're here tonight to actually hear this for a second time coming forward as an urgency ordinance for the chapter 18-52 flood damage protection urgency ordinance. Next slide, please. So the center of the city code 18-52 flood damage protection is a local operational and physical element of the National Flood Insurance Program known as the NFIP under FEMA. The ordinance sets forth requirements for construction and development within designated flood prone areas. Next slide, please. Government code section 36937B allows an ordinance to take effect immediately if it is an ordinance for the immediate preservation of public peace, health or safety, and it contains a declaration of the facts constituting the urgency. Section eight of the Center of the City Charter authorizes the city council to adopt an urgency ordinance, an urgency measure to take effect immediately upon its adoption if necessary to preserve the public peace, health or safety if such ordinance contains the reasons for its urgency. It does require a 5-7 council vote for adoption. Next slide, please. So FEMA has recently completed a flood insurance study known as an FIS and a flood insurance rate map known as a FIRM for areas within Sonoma County and primarily outside the city of Santa Rosa limits. The study was focused on Todd Creek and its tributary areas. In a letter from Rachel Sears, high-level manager with FEMA, she indicated that no significant changes have been made to the flood hazard data on the FIRM. Next slide, please. The FIS and FIRM will become effective July 19th, 2022, necessitating the adoption of changes to our local ordinance to maintain participation in the national flood insurance program to ensure continued uninterrupted enrollment in the program. The effective data, the ordinance must be prior to July 19th. And some of the effects, not on the slides, but in the staff report of not having the ordinance in effect prior to July 19th were provided. And I can go over those if needed. Next slide, please. So a majority of the changes were really to provide clarifying terms definitions and procedural requirements. A few of the highlighted changes were the addition of a definition of recreational vehicle that didn't exist in the ordinance before, addition of standards for locating recreational vehicles within flood prone areas, procedural clarifications for applying the requirements to develop within the flood prone areas, addition of one technical requirement to require establishment of floor elevations in flood prone areas to be one foot above base flood elevation. Next slide, please. So this picture depicts essentially the blue area being the water. The old requirement would have been that the lowest floor level be at or above that level of the potential flood waters. Next slide, please. So the new requirement is that any lowest floor or new development or some actions considered triggering the requirement that that lowest floor be now one foot above those projected flood waters. Next slide, please. But it is recommended by the Planning and Economic Development Department that the council adopt an urgency ordinance amending city code chapter 18-52, flood damage protection to comply with regulatory requirements that our ordinance coincide with 44 code of federal regulation 60.3. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Right, thank you so much, Jesse. Appreciate it. Council, do we have any questions? Let's go to public comment, see if there's any comments in the chamber. Seeing none, let's see if there's any hands. We'll start with Gregory. Yeah, thank you, Jesse. I was just curious as to whether or not we have any estimate as to the number of recreational vehicles in flood prone areas which will now be out of compliance. That's my question. Hopefully I'll get an answer either from Jesse or later on. But I'm curious because as you know, we're using recreational vehicles we're trying to provide temporary housing and I don't wanna be out of compliance. Great, thank you so much, Gregory. I don't see any other hands. So let me throw that question over to Jesse. See if he has an answer. Thank you, Mayor. So fortunately, this flood study that created the new maps touched a very, very small portion of the city limits of Santa Rosa. So there are no known structures even in any areas within the city of Santa Rosa that this flood study would affect. Great, thank you so much. And if there's follow-up questions, Gregory, feel free to email over. I know Jesse's very responsive on these issues. I'll bring it back to council then. Council Member Swedum, do you wanna put a motion on the table? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Yes, I will. I move an urgency ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa adopting amendments to city code chapter 18-52, flood damage protection to comply with regulatory requirements that the city of Santa Rosa's city code coincide with a 44 code of federal regulations, 60.3 and wait for the reading in the text. Second. We have a motion from Council Member Swedum and a second from Council Member Sawyer. Any additional discussion? Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Jesse, you said it only touches a part of the city of Santa Rosa. What part would that be? It is in the southwest area, parts of the tributaries of the Todd Creek, which as we know that is mostly isolated in any areas that could have overflow very far southwest. Very well. I've heard the saying, creating a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Would that qualify? And I asked it very rhetorically. But nonetheless though, it seems like, actually here's a question. Would this increase anyone's insurance that we know of? Would this increase other than the new structures? So for, if, so I'll speak specifically to anything in the city of Santa Rosa. Yes, sir. The limits. Right now there are no known structures that this would affect and that would, if there were, the flood insurance rates could increase for a property that had a structure that was previously not designated in any flood prone area or flood zone. So yes, this type of action could increase flood rates, flood insurance rates. And that possibility is, if I heard you correctly, is for a home being built outside of, let's say five miles away from Todd Road? The area specific, if it's been identified in the map that has been identified in the map. So. For all in that area. Yeah, correct. So this, that what we're discussing is just that area, not, not anything else on our, on our, on our masks. Thank you for taking the time to educate me on that. Thank you, Judge. Any other questions or comments? Okay, let's call the vote. Thank you. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. But the recommendation passes with seven ayes. Great. All right, council. We're going to take a quick dinner break. We'll come back at 635. All right, Madam City Clerk, let's reestablish our quorum. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Here. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. All right, we're going to jump back in our agenda. We're going to go to public comment for non-agenda items. If you are interested in providing comment for non-agenda items, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. And Sandy, I'm going to ask you to facilitate if you would. Thank you. Mayor, I see no raised hands. There is nobody present in the chamber. And there's no voicemail public comment on this item. Great. Let's go on, then, to item 15.1. Item 15.1 is a report, renewing sales tax measure, funding for public safety and violence prevention, Scott Alonso, Intergovernmental Relations and Legislative Officer will present the report. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Alvarez, members of the council, and city manager, Smith. Tonight, we are hearing an agenda item about renewing a sales tax measure, funding for public safety and violence prevention for this November's general election. And next slide, please. And tonight, we're joined by various members of city department leadership, as well as one of our consultants, Brian Godby, from Godby Research. So tonight, I will be presenting the staff presentation, and then we'll be turning it over to Brian for his presentation, and then we'll turn it back over to the chamber for questions in the rest of the meeting for this item. So just as brief introduction, we are talking about the current sales tax measure, O, which expires on March 31st, 2025. It was passed in November 2004 as a 20-year dedicated quarter-send sales tax to fund public safety and violence prevention programs. And in 2004, in November, it received 70% in the affirmative. So it needed a 2-thirds vote to pass, which it did. And the recommendation from staff tonight is to place a renewal measure on this November's ballot that would extend the quarter-send sales tax for an additional 20 years. This renewal measure would continue funding the allocation percentages as currently outlined in the measure O ordinance, whereas 40% goes to the police department, 40% goes to the fire department, and 20% goes to violence prevention programs. And just as brief background for measure O, it provides dedicated funding for those departments and approximately $10 million a year for those programs. That varies for year to year. As you heard a couple weeks ago for your fiscal year budget, measure O received $20 million for this coming fiscal year. But that is approximately about $10 million when you look at the averages. And there is a specific expenditure plan that the council approved and then updated in 2016 that currently measure O must follow. And so just as background for what positions are funded by measure O, we have 16 employees in the police department. Some of those employees, nine of them are officers, one sergeant, one lieutenant, two field and evidence technicians, one community service officer, one communication supervisor, and one police technician. The fire department uses a portion of their measure O funding to support 10 positions. And the violence prevention program have nine positions tied to measure O funding. And that's five positions when the office of community engagement and four positions within the recreation division for neighborhood services. And then next slide, please. Oh, no, should, all right. And measure O funds have allowed SRPD to provide increased patrol services, respond to local emergencies, conduct enhanced traffic enforcement and have an increased presence in the downtown area with the substation of the transit wall. And that's our downtown enforcement team, which is specifically called out in the measure O ordinance. The fire department has used measure O funds to construct and relocate fire stations and purchase specialized equipment, such as new engines and radios. And this work includes replacing outdated fire stations five, 10 and 11. Measure O currently also provides funding for the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention Partnership, innovative youth development programming that serves at risk, low income and homeless youth and families and to the choice grant program, which provides an average of 650,000 to 840,000 to local organizations supporting youth and families. Next slide, please. So the analysis, what we're discussing here tonight is the renewal measure since measure O is set to expire in 2025. So what we just looked at through many months of public outreach and engagement, we also conducted two surveys for the city Santa Rosa that Brian Godby will discuss. And so really we wanted to present the council with options tonight with our recommendation and certainly hear from you all in the community about what they'd like to see for a future sales tax measure. So the proposed measure tonight retains the current allocation of tax revenues to each department as currently allocated. And we're concerned that a loss of dedicated funding could lead to staff or program reductions when measure O expires on March, after March 31st, 2025. So Godby research will have a separate PowerPoint presentation tonight but this is a top level review. The average, after the two surveys that Godby research did, the latest survey we did back in June was a tracking survey that found a residence of Santa Rosa paper renewal measure at 73% approval and a total of 668 residents participated in that tracking survey from June 9th to June 14th, 2022. And then just as brief background as mentioned in the staff report, we conducted various community meetings with stakeholders and groups. We had 13 community meetings. We had seven town halls with council members in person and remote. And we also sent out three male pieces in literature. And we also had an online survey in English and Spanish on Let's Connect Santa Rosa known as Let's Connect SR. So we've received about 200 responses to that survey. That number has increased since the staff report was published as the latest mail piece encouraged residents to return the actual piece of the mail are back to city hall. And we've received some responses already from that from over the weekend. So we're updating that literally as we speak that's about 200 responses there. Next slide please. So as I mentioned the town hall meetings, we had, I guess, sorry, six council meetings. Some of those town hall meetings with council members were in person and remote. And we also had Spanish translation available for all of those meetings that the city was hosting. And some of the common things we wanted to call out that's mentioned in the staff report but also for the public. Some of the common areas that we heard about we heard overall support for current programs and funding within the measure of framework. We heard support for mental health response being a component of future public safety funding including in response, which is mentioned in the updated ordinance before you tonight for mental health response teams and resources. We also heard to call out Roseland as a specific neighborhood regarding police services as there are certain areas in the city and the current expenditure plan that call out where police services would be deployed. And we also heard support for homeless services and prevention as allowable uses for future funding. Next slide please. So additional feedback. We did hear from individuals supporting the current funding allocation but we also heard a fair amount of folks from the community asking for the council to increase the amount for violence prevention. The downtown businesses also supported the work of the downtown enforcement team. So that's some of their specific feedback we heard. Some common questions that we also heard during these meetings since April were how are measure funds used? Who are the nonprofit partners provided within the violence prevention partnership and including the choice grant program and just who is part of VPP? What type of programs for each are funded by measure O? How are the impacts of measure O being measured? Could in response be added to the future funding tax measure? And then what is the current sales tax rate in Santa Rosa? And can we afford another tax increase? So those are some of the common questions we heard throughout our various community meetings and presentations, so. Next slide please. So due to the fiscal impacts of current measure O funding and a potential expiration of those funds staff strongly recommends the placement of ballot measure for this upcoming general election. Staff also recommended maintaining strict fiscal accountability measures in the renewal measure including a citizens oversight committee tasked with ensuring that tax revenues are spent in accordance with the voter approved measure. And a renewal measure would give the community the opportunity to ensure that critical funding remains in place to prevent wildfires, prevent the closure of fire stations, provide crucial staffing in place for public safety and violence prevention programs. And lastly provide resources for adverse youth and their families. Next slide please. So lastly it's recommended by the city manager's office, finance department and communications and intergovernmental relations office that the city council one introduce an ordinance to amend chapter 3.26 of the Santa Rosa city code to extend a quarter cent transaction and use tax to fund public safety and violence prevention programs and to update permissible uses of the tax revenues and to approve a resolution ordering the submission of a ballot measure to seek voter approval of the ordinance at the November 8th, 2022 general municipal election and directing related actions. So with that the staff presentation is concluded and we'll bring it back to Mr. Brian Godby with Godby research for his PowerPoint. Thank you Scott, happy to be here this evening to present the results of the survey we conducted. I assume that somebody is putting that up for us. Yes, it just takes a minute for us to take the old one down and bring that up. Thank you. No worries, thank you. All right, next slide please. We'll dive right in. As Scott alluded to, but as you also may know, there were a variety of different objectives in the survey. First, we looked at the satisfaction with city services and management of taxpayer funds. We looked at the direction of the economy since that obviously has become certainly an important factor. As we had in the previous survey, we looked at the city's performance handling, the COVID crisis. We looked at potential support for a sales tax extension. Then we also looked at the kinds of things people would like to see the money spent on as well as looking at informational statements for both pro and con. And then we also looked at a duration issue to see how long the measure should be in place. And there's a wealth of demographic and behavioral characteristics that we use to validate the sample is representative of the likely voter universe that we're interested in, but also is available for segmentation and further analysis. Next slide, please. This is a brief overview of the methodology. We completed 668 interviews among our likely target audience here of November 2022 voters. There was actually a little bit larger sample wrap around. We also looked at November of 2024 as well as just residents. So there's additional information as noted in the footnotes there for the city analysis as well, but we wanted to focus on obviously the most imminent election. The sample was made up of landline sale and then text invitations and email invitations. So we did have an online component as well as the phone component, but it's important to note that the online component is of likely voters that we are inviting to the survey and we know they're likely voters. It is not of people that we're just posting a link on social media and anybody in the world could respond. We were in the field from June 9th through the 14th. The average phone survey was 24 minutes long and all of that gives us an error rate of plus or minus 3.77%, 4% in round numbers. Next slide, please. And next one after that. So diving into the first section, which is really that background information, including city services and the economy, those sorts of things. The first one was satisfaction with city services and here you see in the June survey we're at 55% satisfied. That's down a little bit from the October survey. We've seen that pattern across the board in the last six months and it's been a result most obviously of the economy and inflation increases in gas increases in groceries, et cetera. And people have just sort of been casting about looking for somebody to take their ire out on. And so that's been most of our city clients have seen this same sort of drop. I don't think it means that city services have declined because they're still being performed obviously at the same level, but you know, people are grouchy is what it really comes down to. Next slide, please. Next slide was the satisfaction with management of public funds. Similar idea here if you had the variance somewhat together you see we're at 41% in the June survey that was 46% in the October survey. Again, same thing going on. October was before the inflation started becoming an issue. So next slide, please. And this really highlights exactly what I'm talking about. It's a question we started asking in December for all of our clients. And as we started seeing prices of gas go up and people discussing inflation. So it's pretty straightforward question. What do you think the direction of the economy is gonna be in the next six months? 13% said better, 26% said about the same. Now that's where we are today. That's not necessarily that they think it's great and it's gonna stay great. But then most notably you see the worst 54% and that's not good. But it's not the worst worst that I've seen. We have done a variety of surveys and I've seen this as high as 62%. So this is comparatively speaking, okay. Although it certainly shows that there is a lot of pain out there and angst about the economy. Next question. Next question is the ranking on how the city is doing handling the COVID crisis. And as you can see here again, adding the variance somewhat together where it's 76% versus 20%. It's almost a four to one positive to negative ratio. This is actually a pretty good indication. I've seen this as low as 35% since we started asking this question in 2020. And I've seen it just a little higher at about 82, 83%. So you're at that very high end of the spectrum. So that's good news. Next question, please. So at this point in the survey, we switch gears from this background question and get into the heart of the matter. And you see the actual question that we asked on the right-hand side of the slide. It meets all of the statewide requirements. It doesn't exceed 75 words. It includes a tax rate. In this case is a quarter cent. It shows how much that raises annually, which is required by state law. And then it has a term, which is until ended by voters. The rest of it, because this is a sales tax weekend and special sales tax, we can specify exactly what we would use the money on and you can see the bullets reflect that. The way we analyze the data is we had the definitely and probably asked together to determine feasibility over the course of the survey, but we are starting at 70%. And obviously this is a measure that requires two thirds. So that's a pretty good place to start. Particularly when we compare it with the October data, which is in the lower left-hand corner, where we were asking a half cent sales tax. So that was a quarter cent renewal plus a half cent increase. We were only at 60%. So renewing the tax at the rate that it's been at, obviously is supported at a greater level. Next slide, please. This was a follow-up question, which really was designed to reinforce what might happen in the real world should the council decide to put this measure on a ballot. And that would be to say, this is just an extension, essentially. And you see when people hear that, all of a sudden they jump from 70% up to almost 75. And essentially they're hearing that this isn't the tax increase. And so that's an important piece of information. Next slide, please. The next set of questions that we asked was a very long list. It was offered in a random order, but these are all things that we might spend the money on if the council so decides. And we asked, would you be much more likely, somewhat more likely, or somewhat less likely to support the measure, knowing it would go to that particular item. When we're done with the surveying, we go back and assign numeric values to the response categories. And you see the numbers across the bottom of the slide. And we create this intensity scale, 1.31, 1.3, et cetera. And it's just a really hyper-accurate way to rank these items. It's also pretty obscure. So we also add the much more likely and the somewhat more likely together. And that's what you see reflected by the blue percentages with the arrow in between showing the range. And that puts it in context of the two-thirds majority necessary for this kind of measure to be successful. So at the top of this list, we have reducing the risk of wildfires and people are 81% more likely to support the measure knowing that the money would go for that purpose. Next is improving wildfire prevention preparedness and rapid 9-1-1 response and early alert systems to control fires. Obviously a similar issue is number one, just different wording. The same thing is true with the third item, improving wildfire prevention preparedness, including early fire alert and rapid response. Then preventing future fires, maintaining 9-1-1 emergency response. Obviously all of these are variations on the theme. Then we get to preventing closure of fire stations, rebuilding firefighting infrastructure, maintaining emergency disaster preparedness, including public health crisis, preventing advanced life support, or preventing cuts to advanced life support teams, and then providing mental health counseling and wraparound services and programs to help out rescues and their families. All of those are in our top tier, which means that they are statistically tied. I remember there was about a 4% margin of error, plus or minus, and you see that we range from 81% on the high end to 76% or the low end, but 76% is really pretty good considering we only need 66.7 to be successful. So all of these things are very important to people and score very well. Again, they're all within the margin of error. This is probably the best ranking for them that we find, but it is important to note that they're very close. Next slide, please. Then this is the remainder of the items that we asked, as I said, it was a long list, asked in a random order. You see some sample A, some sample Bs. That's where we were just saving time and doing a split sample, which we could do because we had a healthy sample size. And you see a variety of other things preventing significant reductions in the number of firefighters, paramedics, and law enforcement officers on down the list. I won't read them all in difference to the council's time, but the good news here is even in our second tier, not as important as the first tier, but still at the little bit above the two thirds threshold, even at the bottom of this list. So all of these things are important at the two thirds level or above. Next slide, please. So this is the set of informational items. These are essentially positive arguments and designed again to see what is important to voters that they know about this particular measure. The methodology is largely the same, although the scale is just truncated, there's no negative side of this equation because it's positive arguments in essence. So it's just much more likely, somewhat more likely in no effect. Everything else works the same way as it did on the previous slides. You just can't compare a 1.45 with the numbers on the previous rankings, but you can compare the percentages. And again, you notice just looking at the range here where as high as 82%, at least somewhat more likely for with fire seasons getting hotter, drier and more destructive, it's critical that we fund wildfire prevention. At the top of the list, at the bottom of the list, but very close at 79% in round numbers, the measure will remain and maintain fire protection throughout Santa Rosa and better protect lives and property. So both of those are important and everything in between. And the in between is things like, none of the money can be used for city administrator salaries, a popular accountability measure for this kind of proposal. The measure will help keep the city's fire stations open and staffed up with on-duty firefighters and paramedics. Essential purchases like groceries, medicines are exempt from the sales tax, which is obviously true. Another accountability component that is very popular. The measure will give Santa Rosa local control over local funds and cannot be taken by the state. Another accountability provision that's critical. Measure will require independent citizens oversight, yet again, another accountability measure, which are always important for these kinds of propositions. This funding will help upgrade aging emergency communication systems is important. The measure is critical for helping Santa Rosa prepare for hotter fire seasons. Another variation on an earlier argument. So all pretty strong arguments in favor of the measure. Next slide please. And again, we asked a longer list and this is the remainder of the items. The first few are in our top tier, but and are still good as well, just a little bit lower than what we saw on the first slide for the informational statements. The good news is we've got a lot of information that people wanna hear and need to hear. And then as we go into tier two, we do drop down into the sixties, but we're still above the two thirds threshold. So that's again, a really positive sign for this measure in this upcoming election. Next slide please. So at this point in the survey, we've talked about the measure, we've talked about what we might spend the money on. We've talked about some of the reasons to support it and some of the accountability provisions. And we come back to the exact same wording a second time. And you see we go from 70.2 to 76.4. So a 6.2% increase. That's certainly a very good sign and does suggest that this measure could be viable. However, there's more. Next slide please. The next set of questions is much the same methodology as the informational items, but in this particular case, these are the negative statements. So this is somebody who might be opposed to the measure, might say these kinds of things and we don't put a minus sign in front of them, make them seem bad. The higher the numbers are, the worse they are for the measure. So at the top of the negative list is the city government needs to cut waste and do a better job with taxpayer money than they currently do. Pretty standard anti-tax argument that we see almost always when we've had these kinds of measures go on the ballot. The measure locks 20 year old funding priorities in place and should be updated first at virtually the same level. Public employee salaries, benefits, and pensions are out of control. We need to contain these costs before asking for a tax increase. Again, a standard anti-tax argument. With increasing inflation, grocery and gas prices and the ongoing COVID crisis now is the wrong time to ask for a tax increase at a similar level in our top tier. The measure provides too much money for police when we should be shifting resources and programs to other social services. And then we just voted two years ago to extend our sales tax for the city for 10 years. Now they want to increase it again. Obviously a pretty standard anti-tax argument. The bad news about all of these is they are above the 33.4% threshold necessary to defeat a special sales tax measure like this. So we need to be aware of that and we need to be prepared for that. And what that probably means is that obviously the city can't spend city resources on it, but there probably needs to be an independent organization that comes together to support this should the council place it on the ballot. The second tier there are again, pretty standard anti-tax arguments for the most part, but they're not as influential as those in the top tier. So next slide please. So again, now we come back to our ballot question again, same wording as the first two versions, but it's been just right after the negatives. So we've kind of beat up the measure pretty good and we expected it to go up after the positive side and we expect it to go down again after the negative side and you see that's what exactly what happens. We had started at 70%, we went up to 76, we're now back down to 71 in around numbers, but more importantly, the world doesn't work quite in the structure of the survey and we know that. So it's important to average the second and third test because that's what happens in the real world is some people hear the positives first and then the negatives, other people hear the negatives first and then the positives and there's just no way to control that. So if we average the two of them, we're at 73.6% and that's where we think that we would likely be if both sides engage in this debate during the fall if the council puts the measure on the ballot. And we didn't know where we were gonna wind up on this. This is a pretty good place and does suggest that this measure is feasible and the council could consider putting it on the ballot but we had a fallback because we didn't know if the term until ended by voters would be too long or not. So next slide please. This was an alternative which is essentially instead of until ended by voters what if it was 20 years and that actually doesn't help us in the real world it probably doesn't hurt us either but in comparison to until ended by voters it doesn't work as well. And we see that almost always because until ended by voters empowers them to terminate at any time they want while they could certainly terminate a 20 year measure there's a process to either. It seems like this is set in stone and that they're just less likely to like that. But we still again didn't know where we're gonna wind up. So next slide please. Here is essentially the same methodology but we're just saying instead of 20 years what if it was nine years and you see here we get a bump and now we're back to 69% and it's going up. Again this just shows you the sensitivity of the different durations being at a single digit is probably better than a double digit but they're not really killers in either sense of the word. So there's some flexibility associated with that. And we still think that once you choose a duration that this measure would be feasible and you should consider moving it forward. So that's my presentation and I can turn it back to Scott or answer questions as your preference. Thanks Brian, I appreciate that detail tonight. And so yes, just wanted to before we turn it over to questions, Mayor, I just wanna just highlight a few individuals for this effort. I know a lot of people made this possible tonight to help us get to this. So I just wanted to give a couple quick shout out to the city manager's office, city attorney's office, the finance department or communications and intergovernmental relations office, office community engagement, the recreation division, the fire department, police department, the council ad hoc committee, Brian Godby, Godby research and then Charles Heath who was unable to be here tonight but he was our other consultant who helped out a lot with TPWBH. So just a huge team effort here this evening to bring you this information and recommendation. I just wanted to highlight that specifically. It really was a team effort with all these community presentations and producing the collateral materials and speaking with the community. So with that, we're happy to answer questions. We have representatives from departments here along with Brian and myself. Great, thank you so much, Scott. Thank you, Brian. I do have a question for you, Brian and it's specifically on the term of the measure. And I've said this to you before and I tend to say this a lot when we talk about these until ended by voters is a very nice phrase to have that assumes that you don't have an opponent calling it a forever tax. Have you done any polling in other jurisdictions to see how being labeled as a forever tax impacts a measure? Yeah, we have and it certainly does have an impact. There's no question about that. And I think actually, let me just verify this, the full wording of one of these measures or one of the negatives did include the forever tax idea. So it is faked into that second test because we did mention it, but we didn't spend a lot of time on it. But yeah, it certainly does. It is the number one argument that anti-tax people are likely to use for or against the until ended by voters. Having said that, we've done dozens of measures that were until ended by voters and they've been successful. So it also, I think the data says that the council has flexibility here to decide what they're comfortable with, whether that is in perpetuity or 20 years or something else. I think the measure can withstand any of those options, even including people labeling it a forever tax. Great, thank you. Any questions from council members? Okay, let's go to public comment on this item. If you're interested in providing comment on measure O sales tax renewal, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom and I'll start with Mr. Weeks. Good evening, Mayor Rogers, council. My name is Kellan Weeks and I am a resident of Beaver Street. I just wanna take a moment today to offer my full throw to support for measure O. It's an invaluable resource that we cannot afford to lose and I would encourage every single citizen and member of the community that is currently listening to spread the word and encourage their neighbors to support it as well. Namely, the main reason I wanted to chime in is, A, I recognize the invaluable resources that is in terms of supporting our fire stations and obviously fires and ever present danger. And so I think it's really in our best interest that we continue to fund this to the fullest extent possible to ensure the safety and ongoing operation of our community. And then more importantly, I think everyone would agree that's listening in at least for those who know, in response is probably one of the best things this community has brought forward in years and I for one am very appreciative and very pleased to see how successful it has been. And I would again, actually offer my full throw of support for allocating funding and I encourage the city council to do so tonight and ensure that it is funded in future tax distributions as well. So with that, thank you very much for your time and I appreciate everyone being here. All right, all right. Thank you, James. We'll go on to Gregory. Yes, I'm Gregory Farron. I want to join Callum in supporting the measure but I want to do exactly what he did, which suggests that I'm a little disappointed that it's being designed to simply continue the past. There are things we've learned that seem to be making Santa Rosa safer. He mentions in response, I'd like to see a whole lot more prevention, a whole lot more neighborhood building, a whole lot more efforts to, as we've brought speakers in, build the resiliency of the city either before, during or after any disasters. I think there are a lot of things that we've learned and a lot of things to be learned that a fixed in stone measure and we've seen that in the last period of time for measure O, we've all been a little disappointed that it can't really be changed very much. This is just continuing the same thing and that doesn't make me feel very good about going to the voters and asking for however you put it, here's a way to prevent you from being harmed. This is a way, I would rather see it designed in a way that says this is how you strengthen the city. This is how you build the city's capability in the neighborhoods to be able to understand what to do to help each other. That's missing in all of this. That's not being suggested at all. What's being suggested is, oh my God, things are gonna go to hell if we don't pass this. And that's not good enough. That's disappointing to all of us who have been working hard to try to build this kind of city that works with each other. So I'll join Calum in saying, God, we better do something to strengthen the city, but I'm not sure this is it. All right, thank you, Gregory. I see no other hands. Did we have any voicemails? We have no voicemail public comment on this item. Yep, I'll go ahead and bring it back and see if there's any additional questions from council members. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Are there any figures that demonstrate violence in when Mezra was passed compared to 2021 or 2020 as a comparison? Anything that shows that we've seen the effectiveness of Mezra with the percentages as they were voted? Thank you, Vice Mayor. I will see if it looks like Deputy Director Teyes is here. And also we have Captain Corcoran also from Santa Rosa Police Department on behalf of Chief Cree tonight. So I will ask them if they would like to chime in on your question. Thank you, Scott. And good evening, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Elvade, some members of council, my other days here. And thank you for that question. We actually do track, we do use a results-based accountability for the violence prevention aspect of the work that we do collectively with our nonprofits. So we do have it online. We have a 2020 update report which will show you that in coalition and collaboration with our nonprofits, we've been able to turn the curve in a lot of areas as it pertains to youth and violence. And I can give you one example. One example is our Boys and Girls Club Reach Program on our website, we find that we had 150 youth that participated in that program and 99% of the youth that participated in that Mezra grant funded program were able to avoid becoming re-incarcerated or re-enrolling into the system. So the work that we are doing is highlighted and outlined on a year-to-year basis. And we strive to continue to bring that outreach to the community to know what we're working on and whether it's being effective or not. So... And is there a figure that you could give me in what year that curve commenced and if it's still holding up to this day or to the most recent? Sure, thank you. And those results are from our Choice Cycle 10 which we just closed out. And that was from 2020. So given everything that took place in 2020, a lot of our nonprofits that we work with at that point in time were funding 10 different nonprofit programs. Another one of those was LifeWorks of Sonoma County which is a mental health service provider that provides bilingual and bicultural services and actually goes to where the community is to provide those services. And they also found a 93% reduction in risk-taking behavior like gang involvement, violence and substance abuse. So we have the 2020 out now. We're working on wrapping up this 2021. We just launched our Choice Cycle 11 grant cycle. So we have eight new agencies that, I'm sorry, eight new programs that were funding summer returners. And then, but one item that we really looked at that I want to include is that we made sure to bring in, to really listen to the community. We did a 2021 community needs assessment. And one of the prominent themes that came out was the need for community who wanted culturally relevant programming and more pro-social activities for youth, especially our 13 to 15 year olds, our middle school youth who we have seen time and time again, have been incredibly impacted by the pandemic. The youth truth survey that came out gave us some of this information. But as we're navigating through this, we have had almost most of the middle schools reach out to our department because the youth needs social emotional assistance. And I was going in that direction in 2020 was the last time that we were actually able to get these figures, taking into account the pandemic and the fires that we've experienced here in Santa Rosa. Do you think the funding that we currently have or have had is sufficient to address the issues that we foresee? That's a great question. And to be completely honest, we need to expand our capacity when it comes to specifically middle school youth and the research does back up that when youth are in middle school, cognitively they're developing and that's really the age where the prevention can take place and happen. We are working with the Santa Rosa City Schools and Rosalind University. Rosalind, Rosalind, you're, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm blank, the school district. I'll say happy birthday in the meantime. Believe me with that. Thank you. So the Rosalind Unified School District. See, it worked my godly, it worked. It worked. Yeah, thank you. The Rosalind Unified School District, the superintendent, we are trying to really collaborate and create a coalition around services and connecting youth to services, but young people are just having a very difficult time navigating. And in this time, we are seeing the most gang involvement and gang interest that we've seen in a very long time. So that's sort of newer, that's sort of a new thing that we're coming out of from the pandemic. Thank you. And thank you for being here as well, officer. In regards to, and actually this is more of a general question, not just to you directly, sir. Homelessness, mental health issues, where would that funding come from to address that would that be out of our police budget? Or would that be out of the community bonds prevention? If something like that were to be funded? So currently our homeless funding is coming out of the ARPA funding. So what we did this past year was take the one time funding and use it for homeless services. In the past, it has come out of our real estate transfer tax. But I do want to answer the question. We can get you the numbers of crime that we can report probably for the last five or six years. I think that there's very many tentacles to your question, right? Yes. Every year we have to look at augmenting services and actually finding a new way of doing business, right? So now we're talking about ghost guns and we're talking about side shows. So we have to commend our new police chief on the tactics and approaches that he's taking. So as these new, as side shows, as gun and gang violence goes up, we have to find a new way to tackle these issues. So you may see crime go down in one area where it goes up in another area. But as we report that information to you, then we can show where there's a decrease or there's an increase and what we're using, what we're uplifting in order to reduce those. To our city attorney, how close are we to solidifying the percentages that will be presented to the voter? We do have that in the draft ordinance and I wanted to clarify. So it still is 40% to, it's now entitled Law Enforcement, Police and Public Safety, 40% to firefighting paramedics, wildfire risk reduction and public safety and 20% to violence prevention, mental health counseling and programs for at risk youth and families. So several of the permissible uses under the original measure O have now been expanded. And with respect to your question, in terms of in response. Yes. In response at any similar mental health response teams, services or resources, now could be taken out of either the police, the law enforcement police and public safety or out of fire, out of firefighting paramedics, wildfire risk reduction and public safety. In fact, the staffing on the units that are out on the street do significantly come from fire, the paramedics that are on there. So we've set it up to give flexibility to be able to come from either source. It would not be drawn from, would not be drawn from the 20% for violence prevention and youth programs. And that's a great point to make, especially when we're looking at 20 years as we were proposing to the voter, that we now have a little bit of flexibility in the way that we fund certain issues or community issues. Yes, a little more flexibly. And I'll also note that under violence prevention, we have expanded those permissible uses to include providing mental health counseling, wraparound services and programs for at risk youth, sorry, and their families. So that gives some additional flexibility as well. Thank you. And finally, Mr. Alonso, during the meetings that were held throughout the city of Santa Rosa, did you hear a lot of conversation about the percentages? And if so, were there any that really stuck out or were repeated throughout the community? Or were people content with the way that they stand now? Thank you, Vice Mayor Alvarez. We did hear a mix from various groups. It really sort of depended on the audience and where we were speaking within the city. So I would say in some of the council town halls in Southwest Santa Rosa, we certainly heard some conversation around changing the allocation or increasing funding for violence prevention programs. When we spoke in Oakmont, they certainly were in favor of the current allocations. And so there really wasn't a consistency. We heard really both across the board. So I think that the good news was folks were supportive overall of what measure O currently was doing, but we're open to trying to see if the council would be open to changing the permissible uses as the city attorney just mentioned and or what the allocations looked like. But I do want to just turn it over briefly to Captain Corcoran if he has anything to add as well in regard to the crime data or trends that SRPD is seeing. Sure, thank you for having me. I think I could just give some high level of data that I have. I think the most important violent crime statistics would be our homicide rate. Right now in 2022, we have seven homicides. And for frame of reference, our highest every year was 11 homicides and that was in the 1980s. And so we're definitely having violent crime impact our community currently. When it comes to ghost guns, we're on track to seize more illegal firearms this year than we ever have in the past. And so there's definitely in 2022, violent crime has increased. I'll leave it at that high level data for now. Ghost guns has definitely increased the violence in our community is definitely obvious. I do want to thank you all for what you do. And I also want to thank you for capturing the voice of the community and being able to really translate that into a random form where we could all see where our community's thinking and wanting as well. Thank you all. Thank you, Vice Mayor for those questions and comments. I do also want to give a big shout out to the Measure Oversight Committee. All the members were very engaged through this process. We heard from I think almost all of them individually. We also, they were our first community presentation back in April. And so they were very engaged and Chair Bailey, who I believe is in attendance tonight, has been a great resource for us and just knowledge based given her experience within the city of Santa Rosa. So just want to give another shout out to all the community input and engagement we had from a lot of stakeholders and leaders as well. So thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member Sawyer, I'm going to have you put a motion on the table for discussion. Mary, would you prefer, I have an ordinance and I also have the resolution, but I think the ordinance will suffice for conversation. Let's ask the city attorney and just verify. You'll end up wanting to name both, but you could start with just the ordinance to allow for the discussion and then we can address the resolution. As long as I have the microphone, I will also mention when we get to the resolution, I will have an additional question for you, which is if the council decides to place the renewal measure onto the ballot, one thing that we did not address in the resolution in the draft resolution, state law allows for submission of arguments foreign against, we don't need to address that specifically in the resolution unless the council wants to authorize either the mayor or council members to be an author of presumably the argument in favor of measure O. If you want to do that, when you get to the resolution, I would ask you to weigh in on that. We can add that if that's something that the council's interested in. That makes sense. The resolution does have some language that is not included in the ordinance, but let's go ahead and start with the ordinance and see where we go. So I'll introduce an ordinance of the city of Santa Rosa amending chapter 3.26 of the Santa Rosa city code to extend existing quarter since sales tax adopted by city voters as measure O at the November 2004 election for an additional 20 years and expanding allowable uses of funding and way further reading. Second. We have a motion from council member Sawyer and a second from council member Rogers. Do we have any additional discussion? Yes. Go ahead council member. So I wanted to discuss the possibility of changing the allocations. So they are not as they were previously, which was, which were 40, 40, 20. In addition, I would also like to see or put up for discussion how the council would feel about the committee that is a pointed, I guess, by council with a two thirds boat to make changes along the way. If we have a very long, if the sales tax measures to be for an extended period of time. And I think we should focus more on prevention because I think that that is very important. I won't say focus more on prevention. I will say I think prevention should be also a very high priority, not focus more on. Thank you. Do you have a specific proposal that you'd like council to consider? Sure, 34, 34, 32. Okay. Let's go ahead and see if there's any additional discussion on the original motion and also on the suggestion from council member Rogers. Council member McDonald. Yes, thank you. I just would like to say that I'm in favor with the measure O, the way that it reads now. I think that us putting it on the ballot now makes perfect sense to make sure that it has the opportunity to go through. I'm not interested in cutting $10 million out of our budget and primarily for public safety, but I'm fine with the percentages as they are. So I would not be interested in changing it due to the amount of staff that is provided for public safety. Okay. Any additional input? Council member Svettel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also, I'm a believer of the 40, 40, 20. I think the voters got it right in 2004 and I think they'll get it right again in 2022. And one of the things here, I really appreciate the vice mayor's questions about the data, because I've asked that question over the years since it's an inception. And one of the big challenges, especially from the intervention aspect of it, how do you measure someone? And I'll just use a gang related incident where you have a gang related shooting. They end up in the ER room and we have intervention workers paid for by measure O. Go to the ER, talk to the family members. Retaliation, there's better ways of doing it. You know, I've personally talked to intervention workers that how do you measure that? And how many times, because we don't keep track of the family members who would call up our intervention workers saying, you know, I know who did it. Can you handle him or her being arrested versus just coldly getting them? And it's very difficult to, how do you quantify that? And I really think they are the subject matter experts, our police, our fire, our violence prevention, they will be able to use their best judgment to most actively and appropriately use these dollars. Additionally, with the violence prevention, there's only five, there is five employees. Can we use more? Absolutely. But if you look at the skill set in the cost of our public safety officials, it's more expensive. There's more employees there. And so that's where I think that 40, 40, 20 is the appropriate breakdown. And every year that we've done the choice awards, there's always more requests for the funding that's available. If we can make it, you know, let's do a penny, yes, a penny cent versus a quarter cent, that would be great. But it's like we have to make these difficult decisions. And so for me, it's just keep it at 40, 40 and 20. We've expanded what the implementation plan can be. And that's the way that I think the most voters in Santa Rosa would continue to be able to support this measure. Mr. Vice Mayor, and then I'll come back to Council Member Rogers. Definitely, I'll have you know, I'll have you know, Council Member, I was definitely using the word metric because of what I've learned on this Council. And that's why I kept getting at, you know, our other figures that we can compare. But the reality is, how do you compare? You're absolutely right. How do you compare the person who was just shot with 10 family members at the house trying to get retaliation revenge for that individual? Is it one out of 10? Because there's still 10 family members, right? And in regards to the percentages, I mean, I would love to be a salesperson right now to tell you that if you dropped 5% from the 40 on each one, it will leave you 10%. If you give 10% to the 20, you just increase that by 50%. But the metrics, you know, we could sell. I think there's a term that says layers of failure, failures of life. And I'm trying to figure out how to sell an increase in violence prevention. And the reason that I would actually attempt to do such a thing, I would ask my galley. The programs that no longer exist in Apple Valley, the programs that no longer exist in South Park, when do those stop? And did we see an increase or a drop in violence with when those programs cease to exist? Because there has to be a metrics. I just don't know what it is. I just wish that there was a rule such as you show up at eight o'clock to work and you know you showed up at eight o'clock to work. But I know that's not possible in this regards. So the question is, when did the programs stop in Napa Valley? When did they stop in South Park? And was there an increase that we know of when that happened? Thank you for that question. And I'm actually going to ask Deputy Director Jeff Tibbets who I believe has more information on those, may have more information on those specific programs. Yeah, thank you. So yes, we are still running programs out at Apple Valley. We do run, we have the Apple Valley trailer that's still out there. We run after school programs and serve youth there Monday through Thursday during the school year. And then certainly still promote a number of our programs there and pull from families and youth for the different programs that we offer basketball programs, soccer programs, summer camps, all those things. So, and I'm sorry, what was the second? South Park, the building right there at the basketball court, I believe it's now operated by CAP, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, so that one has received funding through Measure O but yeah, internally, recreation has not run the program out there but I know that we've had some different collaborations over the years. So I'm not sure the history, the exact history, I don't know if you have any of the information of the different funding that we provided through Measure O but being organized from another agency, I don't have all the specific data that's level of service that has shifted out there. And the reason I bring up the South Park site is because I do get the emails from constituents that say that the children from the neighborhood can't play on these basketball courts because they are being rented out to other sports organizations that are using the courts for their purposes. So I'm seeing the lack of services provided to the residents of those amenities. Yeah, so to that point, that was a COVID related thing that we were dealing with, with trying to use our park permits to give agencies that usually ran things in gyms or karate studios or those types of things that couldn't take place admittedly and we heard from the community as well and I think we did our best to fix it. Admittedly, it wasn't something that we were prepared for and we did make some mistakes of overbooking, for example, MLK Park out there overbooking that with a long permit. So as we got into COVID, we started shifting how some of those permits worked so that we weren't consistently impacting the same basketball court in the same neighborhood and trying to disperse that around. We still have some tournaments and stuff that take place but I don't believe we're issuing any more for every day as most of those programs have moved back but if they are, again, we kind of have a process of how long we'll issue the permit and moving that around from Finley Park to MLK Park to the different Southwest Park or the different parks that have basketball hoops that were not over impacting one neighborhood over the rest of the city. I do appreciate that and going back to the percentages, the reality is I don't know what would work. I just know that we've seen our ups and downs in our communities when it comes to violence and sometimes being blamed for violence that comes from outside of the area. So again, going back to the word metric, it's a hard one, I do recognize that. Thank you. So, Council Member Alvarez, let me. Yes, ma'am. Let me see if I can answer that question for you. So when you talk about metrics and we talk about interrupting violence, I think Council Member Schwethelm said it perfectly, we have to learn where the retaliation is gonna come in. Yes. So when we show up to the hospitals, one of the things that we're looking for are people who are in that retaliatory mode. You can either find that from your family, from their family members, the actual victim, or you kinda case the hospitals to see who has showed up. Because honestly, a lot of times people show up to see the status of the victim. At that point, then you target that particular individual and then you try to bring them on to what we call a caseload, right? And it's something that we're trying to look at expanding here. So, and that comes with a partnership from probation, from parole, from our local DA office and the U.S. Attorney's office, right? And what we let them know is that you are on our radar and the violence that you're committing in this city, we're not gonna tolerate. So you can take one or two things, the carrot or the stick, right? So either you help us resolve or you help us solve the crime. But even before we get to that, we have what's called a safety plan. So a safety plan in essence lets us know whether the individual or they're in danger. Do they have a job? Do they have a history, a generation of crime in their family? So you have to assess all of those areas, right? And then you want those people to come in and try to help you solve crime throughout the city. Because let's be honest, I can't do it, you can't do it. Assistant city manager can't do it because they say we don't have what's called street cred. But we have to let the individuals know that you're not gonna continue to wreak havoc in this city. So that's kind of how you start to have metrics. And as you start to accumulate that data, you know if you have the right people on your caseload because you will start to see those numbers go down from that particular group, if that answers your question. It does and I would even add to it. With the pandemic going on, we definitely saw the lack of ability from our violence prevention folks to get out to those crime scenes and offer the services. I just hope that they do have enough resources to be able to do what I know they're good at. Thank you. Could I just, sorry, answer your question a little bit more and add more information in terms of metrics. I can't tell you that we performed over collectively over 400,000 hours to youth and families that have needed services that have needed to get connected to services. We've also supplied, you know, Uber cards or lift cards to committee members that have been impacted by violence and need to get to a therapist or counselor. So I just wanted to give a little bit more in terms of I'm happy to provide more metrics but I just wanted to make sure you understood that we do have a lot of information in terms of being place-based and being out in the spaces where community members are and also as city manager Smith mentioned, we do have to committee outreach specialists who have a lot of, you know, community buy-in and have access to communities in ways that other folks at the city may not have. So I just wanted to add that. Thank you. I appreciate that, Magali. I think what I'll say too, when we talk about metrics there's a really important one that we talk about frequently and that's our response times. That's a metric that is very real for us that we can track and I won't be supportive of changing the allocation in large part because we do see our response times ticking up to an unacceptable level. And that means that the amount of calls that we have for service aren't matching the staffing ratios that we have. We do have community programs that do play an important role particularly long-term in reducing the amount of calls. That's oftentimes eligible for grant funding from DOJ and other sources but staffing is really hard to find dollars for. And so that's part of why I'll be doing that. Council Member Rogers. So in addition to, I hear that that is not a favorite but I wanted to add, in addition to, I think that changing the allocation also changes a mindset. There are people that are currently our staff that are currently employed in response that don't have to necessarily be under the umbrella as far as budget is concerned under the fire department and they can still be paid under the category of the violence prevention. So it would just create more flexibility in how the monies are spent in less limitation to me or if you're looking at mental health. I think that it would create more flexibility especially if you're looking at a long term. Who knows in five years if the ghost gun is gonna be an issue for us we might move to something else. So I'm just looking at having more flexibility. People are looking at different ways to have maybe not SROs but maybe some sort of a figure or a mentor figure somehow some sort of support in the schools are going back to that. Well, how do you do that? So just thinking out of the box and ways in which we can be proactive within our community. And if we only have the funds allocated under fire and police I just feel like it is gonna go strictly to that fire and police the allocation of those salaries and we're not gonna be able to move that because that's what we're gonna get stuck in and historically I feel like that's what we have gotten stuck in is those salaries. So just wanting to have the flexibility being able to use the funds for different things and not having to be under the umbrella of just fire and police. Thank you. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. And I understand the spirit of the council member regarding flexibility but part of the success I think of measure O has been an ability of the community to trust that the money was going to be spent the way the measure stated that it would be and that it had an oversight committee that was making sure that it was spent in the way that it was sold to the voters and it's really what we're doing. We're selling it to the voters and they are supportive of it. If we create too much flexibility I think we start to lose the trust that the money's will be spent the way they that this is what they expected when they voted for it. If we make it too loose I think that they will, they could take us to task over that and we might not be as successful. I think they do get creative though and I think the police department and the fire department both have become fairly creative without breaking the spirit of the measure. So I think, I would keep the 40, 40, 20 as well and but it doesn't mean that the two departments can't look at where they can be more creative and still stay within the letter of the measure. I think and I think we do encourage that. I know, oh my God, I think pushes for exactly that and is always willing and open to looking at new ways to be effective and I think the police department and the fire department do the same thing. This would not, especially with fire the way it is these days and with our response times going up I think this would be an unfortunate time to make too many changes to the measure and I think that's why it's staying at 40, 40, 20 because of the success rate. Council Member Fleming. Thank you and Council Member Rogers I do appreciate where you're coming from. What I think we ought to do and I think where this council has been moving for quite a while is towards looking at our economic development, especially around our downtown development as making the pot bigger so that as a council we can pass balanced budgets like we just did a few weeks ago and budgets that have more money for things that we can say, don't just come from additional sales taxes but come from revenues that are structurally built in to go to programs like child care programs and programming in parks and recreation. And so the thing that I would say to the, while I won't be able to support your recommendation today I do understand and I align with the spirit of it but I think that we ought to really do is be very focused in other discussions around making sure that it is easy and predictable to develop housing in our community and it is easy and predictable to figure out how people are gonna get around and that we attract the high quality jobs and effectively retain families in our areas. And I have a number of ideas and this is not the time or the place for them because it's not agendized but I really do believe that economic development will lead us to the stability in order to fund where our hearts and our values are and that today is not the day to mess with this formula given our fire risk and the increase in violence in our communities. But I'd be interested in working with you to develop structures that allow us to do so going forward. Go forward. Sorry, one more thing. So I'm not sure city attorney if it is appropriate or not but I did want to mention and it is something that is very important to me that we look at possibly having a line or something within measure O that addresses the mental health of our public safety officers in hoping that because we know that sometimes we don't have the funds and with fire season coming up and things that have occurred in our community just being able to address or having people come out and address the needs, their needs, I think it's just very important that we have something to address that. To me, it's just as important as doing weed abatement as it is to address their mental health needs so that they can physically go and mentally go fight a fire as it is to have them physically go fight a fire. So this is the time that if you or any council member wants to propose changes to the language of the expenditure plan which is set forth in the proposed ordinance now is the time to consider those changes. Is that already captured in the language as opposed to my question? I was just reviewing it as council member Rogers was speaking. I'm not seeing it specifically in here. I considered whether under police or as police support services but that really specifies in facilities and equipment and financing for facilities and equipment. So I'm not seeing it encompassed within the language and I might ask Scott or Magali if they see the language differently that if you see anywhere in this language that would encompass mental health services for public safety officers. While they take a look, I'll come over here to my left to council member Sawyer. Thank you, mayor. Doesn't, aren't there programs currently in place that help with that very issue of mental health and support for our public safety officials? Isn't there a program already in place? Yes, both departments have specific services for mental health. Well, I'll tell you, is it enough? No, is measure O gonna be enough to solve it? No, do we need to put a laser focus on it? Yes, eventually. Thank you. Council member McDonald? So my understanding is that there's probably not explicit language in the initiative and perhaps by adding where we have equipment, the option for mental health services but what I'm concerned about is adding a prescriptive amount or something that in ballot language, that is where you actually have problems with oversight in my opinion. So because we have other problems or other programs, pardon me, not problems, but other programs that actually address this issue, I would feel more comfortable leaving the language as it is potentially, you know, you could add something but in my opinion, I think just leaving the language as clean as it is for voters is probably the safest way to go. We do have other programs. When you have money that comes in from this, we could potentially look at another funding stream to focus on those things that our city manager mentioned but I would not be interested in adding more and more language, although sometimes in an initiative, you've seen where they add several different options that you can use the funding for if that's what our public safety desired. So I'm not sure where it would be appropriate to insert that language within the ballot measure because I wasn't looking at it through that lens but because of where we're at on the timeframe, I would feel more comfortable just letting it be the way that it is right now and looking at another funding stream to address the concerns that were brought up by council member Rogers, very real concerns that we know staff are dealing with. I don't have a problem with including language because to me, the mental health aspect of this is part of the staffing aspect of this. It's just the same thing as having these positions that measure O funds take care of somebody's physical health as well. I agree we won't have to prescribe a specific percentage but if it was made clear that when we talk about employees we're also talking about their mental and physical well-being that as an eligible expense, I think that that is what council member Rogers is going for. Yes, mayor, I'm not asking for a specific percentage at all. I just want it to be able to like funds could be spent on that. Yeah, and I think that's why I was asking the city attorney if it's already an eligible expense because I do see that as part of having an employee is the mental and physical well-being of that employee as well. Madam city manager. From the red line version that I have that language is not specified in the current document. And I do understand, Mr. Mayor, that there is a provision under the fire section of hiring additional firefighters and paramedics to staff fire stations. That would include their salaries, their benefits and the benefits that we do include of the mental health services. But in terms of specifically calling out health, either physical or mental health of the public safety officers, this ballot measure or this ordinance is really more looking towards the services for the community. And again, under police I'm not seeing where it would fit in and arguably when you authorize hiring additional firefighters and paramedics, again, that's going to include all the services that are provided to them. But again, the thrust of the measure is looking towards community services, not internal services. That doesn't mean it can't be, it could certainly be added if that's a council's desire. Council Member Fleming. Yeah, I definitely struggle with this because I think that one of the most expensive things that we deal with is untreated mental health and frankly physical health problems for our employees. And at the same time, I hear what you're saying, City Attorney, that the thrust of this measure is really towards providing services. And I think that because we're asking people to pay for services to return to them, that this does muddy the water. I'd be interested to hear going forward from the city manager. First of all, if it's the majority of the will of this council to change the language to maybe use that the discretion of the chief to improve the health of their employees, physical or mental health, I would be supportive of it. However, I think that going forward, what I'd like to hear from you is your ideas about how to put that spotlight on this so that we can have an effective and healthy workforce across all of our departments. So I think in this particular measure, we're only specifying police and fire. So if we're gonna talk about the well-being, then we need to talk about it for the entire city, right? So I think we need to bring something back to the council to talk about how do we address the well-being of the entire city. I don't want to specifically call out public safety because it's not only public safety that has to respond during emergencies. It's not only public safety that's tasked with dealing with emergencies. If we're gonna make it a focus, we need to make it a focus for all 1,200 employees. Let me offer a suggestion and see if this works for council member Rogers and everyone else as well. What if we brought back a study session to specifically hear about what the city is doing to support the mental health of our employees across the board? And if at that point there's need for supplement, we can give direction to staff to start to prepare that. It'd be outside of the measure, but it would give us a chance to talk about this and provide some certainty. Even better. Sounds great. Okay. So I'll work with the city manager on scheduling that. Council member Swiddle. It sounds like we've resolved it, but for me, measure originally was and even in 22, it's an enhancement of public safety services. So my concern would be if we started adding these additional things, it's kind of supplanting, because quite frankly in the city manager at the nail head, I have an expectation we take care of our employees. That's not what the use of measure O is. That's general fund dollars for all 1,200 of the employees. So if we wanna further talk about the mental health and the wellness of our entire workforce, that'd be great, but I wouldn't wanna cloud it up into what's with measure O. Thank you. And then Madam city attorney, I'll ask the council, not sure if it's in the resolution ultimately or in the ordinance, but you did ask the question about authorizing the mayor to sign in support. I would ask the council to grant me the ability to. I don't know that I'll be the best person to sign it. I think that in a measure like this, typically you'll want firefighters and police officers and nurses and the folks who do the work, probably to be the signatories, but just in case I would ask the council to authorize, to authorize that. Yeah. Just, is that like a friendly amendment? Cause I would be. I'll offer that as a friendly amendment. So yes, I'm very supportive of that. Okay. Any other discussion? Any other amendments? Okay. Madam city clerk, can you please call the vote? And it is my understanding. And I would ask if Mr. Alonzo can confirm, it's my understanding that this evening, what the council is doing is introducing the ordinance and that we are coming back on the, on the, I don't remember the date, the 28th or 29th, for final adoption of the ordinance. Is that correct? No. Oh, I'm sorry. The 26th, it's further on the 26th, but it's my, go ahead Scott. Well, my understanding is this, this would be the first reading and the second reading would occur on July 26th on consent calendar for formal adoption. Okay. So given that, given that we won't have the final adoption until our next meeting, I would suggest that we also bring back the resolution at that time because until the resolution is authorizing the ordinance as it's attached to the resolution, if there are any changes to the resolution at your next meeting, we need that to be, we need to be, we need to have the final version of the ordinance be the version that's attached to the resolution. So I would suggest you go ahead and take the vote on the introduction of the ordinance and then we'll come back with the final reading of the ordinance and also the resolution on the 26th. And resolution would not be read tonight. Correct. Well, and remind me, Sue, when is the final date for us to send measures to the registrar or voters? It is in August and I'll turn to the city clerk for the August 12th. August 12th? Yes. Okay. So we do have time. Yes. If we don't have the resolution tonight and just do the ordinance, we do have time to still meet the requirements. We still have, we still have time. Yes, exactly. Okay. All right, let's call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Great. Madam city manager, do you want to do the consent calendar so we can release staff? Great. Let me start with item 13.1 is a resolution. It's the third amendment to professional services agreement F002029 with Jessica Rasmussen of Santa Rosa, California. Item 13.3 is a resolution. It's the first amendment to professional services agreement number F001345 with Perfect Mine, Inc. Item 13.3 is a resolution 2022 short range transit plan public involvement plan. Item 13.4 is a resolution. Fourth amendment to agreement number F000424 for the campaign and lobbyist disclosure system agreement with Netfowl, Inc. formerly known as West Coast Online Information Systems, Inc. DBA, Netfowl. 13.5 resolution, appropriation of funds for Roseland Library Project. 13.6 resolution extension of proclamation of existence of local emergency relating to the threat of community health posed by COVID-19. Item 13.7 resolution extension of proclamation of local homeless emergency. And item 13.8 resolution making required monthly findings and authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing for public meetings of the city council and all the city boards, commissions and committees pursuant to assembly bill 361. Thank you, Madam City Manager. Do we have any questions on the consent calendar? Let's go to public comment. We'll see if folks have a comment on any of the items. We'll start with Erica. Hello, thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councilmembers, City Manager Smith and staff. I would like to introduce myself. My name is Erica Taboe and I'm the new Interim Library Director for the Sonoma County Library. I've been with the library for a little over a year. I moved into this role recently after Director Anne Hammond's retirement. It is my second day as Interim Director, but I'm happy to be here to offer my gratitude and congratulations for the step you're taking today to complete a $10 million allocation for a permanent regional library and the Roseland area of the city. Your vision and commitment to equity, parity and inclusion will make a positive difference to the future of an underserved neighborhood that's among the fastest growing in the county. I know from speaking with library staff that working with the council and city staff for the past two years on this project has been a wonderful example of how public agencies can work together to serve the community. We're excited that the community needs assessment for the Hearn campus this beginning and we'll do everything we can to support an inclusive community-led process. Your investment in this project is a demonstration of timely and effective leadership and it's already attracting more funds and support. In addition to support from the state, our Sonoma County Public Library Foundation is about to launch a campaign to raise private sector funds for our part of the project. We look forward to working together to create a 21st century community hub with the best library in Northern California. Thank you again and I'm always available to answer questions or talk about the project. Thank you so much, Erica and congratulations stepping into that role. Day two, hopefully everything's going well. So far so good, thanks. And we, of course, also want to express our appreciation for Anne Hammond and wish her a great retirement. She's been a great partner for the city. I'll bring that back. Mr. Vice Mayor, would you like to put a motion on the table? I would, Mayor, thank you. I move items 12.1 through 12.8 and we further reading of the text. Second. Second from Council Member Schwedhelm. Let's go ahead and call the vote. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Just to point a clarification on the consent items, I believe the numbers are 13.1. You beat me to it, yes, correct. I stated 12, and if I could repeat that. Yes, go ahead and we'll start the vote over. It is a little bit confusing when we're used to the 12. 12, yes, yes. A little bit of detail. You must have seen it on my face. It was a test. And I failed. I move items 13.1 through 13.8 and we further reading of the text. Thank you. I'll still second it. All right, and let's call the vote. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. That motion passes with seven ayes. All right, thank you, Council. Let's jump to item 15.2. Item 15.2 is proposed City Charter Amendments for 2022. A city attorney, Sue Gallagher, will be presenting the report. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Turning now to our next set of potential ballot measures that are Charter Amendments. And as you all well know, we've had several council meetings in which we've discussed a range of possible Charter Amendments. And at your last meeting, you did focus in on the three ballot measures that were recommended by the Charter Review Committee for this coming election in November 2022. So for purposes of this evening, we're gonna keep that focus on those three specific measures. And of course, we'll keep in mind that there may be future amendments at a later time. But for this evening, we'll focus on those three. So next slide. And those three ballot measures, as you know, are first, a ballot measure to increase council compensation, tying the mayor and council member compensation to a percentage of area median income. Second, a ballot measure to align the Charter with the city's district-based election of council members. And third, a ballot measure to update and modernize the city Charter, including provisions to remove ambiguities, to provide additional flexibility in city operations, and to ensure gender and citizenship neutrality. Next slide. And then you can jump to the next slide. We start with council compensation. And the council, of course, you're all very familiar with this. Council members currently receive $800 a month salary. The mayor, $1,200 per month salary. That was initially set in 2005 and has not been changed since. There have been no increases. But the current Charter provision would allow the council to increase salaries in accordance with state law, with a provision of state law. The increase would be done by ordinance. And because of the length of time since the last increase, you could increase by ordinance salary to move it up to $17,760 per year. That's $1,480 a month for council members and up to $26,640 a year for the mayor. That's $2,220 a month. And then under the current Charter provisions, there could be additional 5% annual increase thereafter. Some little quirks about when those annual increases would go into effect, but basically 5% per year. Next slide. The Charter Review Committee considered that, looked at that. They also then heard of the substantial workload of the mayor and the council members. They recognized the difficulties of balancing the private employment, childcare, family, and all of the responsibilities that you each have as a member of council. So the committee really found that the current salaries are an impediment for those without financial means, an impediment to running or serving on running for council membership or service on the council. Those without substantial resources really can't afford to do that. The committee also recognized that the current Charter provision that would allow those 5% increases really are insufficient to address the committee's concerns. Next slide. So in particular, the committee highlighted three key benefits of increasing council compensation. First, would enable a greater diversity of council membership, particularly allowing those with young families, though with those in lower paying occupations, those without other sources of financial support to join in, run for the council, serve on the council. Second, that it would help to ensure continued strong commitment in professionalism was not a suggestion that there's not that commitment in professionalism now, but that it would help to make that stronger. And that's really in large part because the committee recognized that over the last couple of years, even in just Norman County alone, we've had a number of resignations or retirements from council, again, particularly among those with young families that folks found that it just didn't work to try to balance all of that for a very low, very minimal pay. And then finally, and equally important, was just to reflect the fairness and respect for the extensive important work that's performed by the council, by each of one of you. Next slide. So now we get to the committee's recommendation, and I know we've talked before about some of the discussion and some of the options that the committee looked at. They looked at quite a range of options, but at the end of the day recommended that the mayor's salary be set at Sonoma County area median income for a three-person household. That amount is currently 101,500 per year. Second, set the council member's salary at two thirds of area median income for a three-person household. That amount is currently 66,990. That proportion is equal to the difference between mayor and council members now. Currently, the mayor gets 150%, in other words, another half again. So same percentage, same percentage difference, but just different numbers. Third, the committee recommended permanently tying the mayor and council member's salaries to area median income for a three-person household. Under that each year, the salaries would both be adjusted, however the area median income was adjusted. So that could be up or it could be down. And then the committee encouraged the council to consider establishing a penalty or reduction in salary for unexcused absences or to parallel city-wide salary reduction or for any other reason that the council deemed appropriate. Next slide. So at the last council meeting, we did walk through this whole series of different options, but at the end of the day, the council really focused in on two alternatives. One was to adopt the committee's recommendation as it was recommended. The second proposal was to provide for a single salary for both mayor and the council members with that salary being set at 100% of AMI for a three-person household. That way everyone on council, mayor and council members would be receiving the currently, what the current salary would be 101,500. That was the focus of the discussion at your last meeting. Of course, any other alternatives also still remain available for you to consider tonight. There were a couple of elements that the council discussed and found important. One is the effective date. When do the salary increases apply? And that's gonna affect both fairness among the council members and also public perception of what you're about and why you're doing this. Under the current charter provisions, which again reference state law, the changes in compensation apply to all the council members upon election or reelection of any one council member. So for example, this year if you were increasing, if you voted to increase under current provisions, as of once the election was certified, those new salaries would go into effect for everyone because we'll have at least, we'll have two new council members and we'll have other council members that are reelected. So that's the current provision. Your options under case law and the constitution language, you have power as the council for a charter and voter approval is required, but as a charter city, you can set whatever effective date you would like. So you could have the new salaries effective upon certification of the vote in November, while the certification usually happens in December of this year. You could have, and I think you talked about this last time, have the new salaries apply only upon your own election or reelection. So those of you that are midterm, you would not receive an increase in salary. Those of you that are up for election, for reelection, you would be eligible for the new salaries. The third option that you discussed was to set a date certain sometime in the future, at which point it would apply to all council members. That could be January one, it could be in 2024, that would be up to you. Next slide. Questions were raised also by members of the public about benefits. I think also there were some council members that also asked about that. Of course, you do receive city benefits and those benefits, I wanna emphasize for members of the public, those benefits were outlined in the last staff report and in this staff report, they've not in any way been hidden. Benefits include health, dental and vision, life insurance, long-term disability, and you see the list there. The benefits are calculated separately for each individual based partly on your salaries, the difference between council member and the mayor, but also depending on what health plan you choose, depending on how many dependents you are covering, if any, and the value of the benefit ranges from about 19,400 to 33,700. That, those numbers are from about a year and a half ago, but they're pretty comparable. Next slide. At the last council meeting, there were also questions raised by council members about potential budgetary impacts. There may have also been questions raised by the public. So focusing on the two proposals that you focused on, again, the charter review committee's proposal and the proposal to have everyone paid the same. Finance did prepare a chart of potential impacts on the city's five-year forecast, just a summary, summary, and that chart is, we'll get to on the next slide. But before we look at that chart, I do wanna point out that with looking at what percentage is council salary of the entire general fund budget. Under the charter review committee recommendation, the council compensation would constitute about one quarter of 1% of the general fund budget. The proposal for 100% of AMI for all members, that would be about a third of 1% of the budget. So very, very small percentage would be going to council salaries. So next slide. This may be hard to read. This had the top chart is the long range financial forecast currently. So currently we have in 2022, 23 balanced budget. We do show a deficit in 23, 24, no deficit in 24, 25, and then deficits in the two following years. If we moved to the committee recommendation, the mayor salary at 100,000, council member salary at about 67,000. It does create, it does add to a deficit. This is if you kept all the other budget items the same, you may know adjustments in the budget and all you did was add the additional council compensation. It would increase the deficit in the next five years and then you see the same if you move to a council member salary of 100,000 each. Again, the budget changes obviously every year, you have different programs, you have different number of employees, you have so many different factors that go into the budget. But this is just again, keeping everything else the same, what difference would it make. Next slide. So then we just talk about the next steps and that really is to finalize a proposed budget language. I had tried just leaving blanks so that you could fill in the blank and it really made it pretty useless. So what I gave here is just a sample, this'll give you a sense of what the ballot language would likely read if you adopted the charter review committee's proposal. If you go with the same salary for everyone, this just gets reworded to reflect that. If you decide to go with some other option, obviously it'll be different. And that's it on the council compensation. So next slide, and I think we can go through these next slides, I'll try to go through them pretty quickly. District based elections, we've talked before about the Voting Rights Act, we've talked about the racially polarized voting that we did find that in 2018 when we studied, we were under the threat of litigation. And at that time, the council did just determined to move forward with a transition to district based elections. Next slide, the transition began that November with a district based election of council members in two, four and six. And then that was completed in 2020 with the election of council members in districts one, three, five and seven. We've now fully transitioned to district based elections, but section four of the city's charter still contains a reference to at large election of council members. And we are asking both from the city attorney's perspective and also the charter review committee's perspective that we look at placing a ballot measure, a measure on the ballot to address that discrepancy. So next slide. So we are recommending that section four of the city charter be amended and it'll actually be a deletion from section four in addition of a new section four A, that it would confirm the district based election of council members, confirm that district boundaries will be established and updated by council ordinance in accordance with state and federal law. And then finally, that it also confirms the requirement that a candidate live and be registered to vote in the district to be eligible for office both at the time of nomination papers, the time of election and throughout their term. Next slide. So we have some proposed ballot language here and the full language of the amendment was attached to the staff report. I would make it, I think I'd suggest making a change that we just simplify this to a measure to amend the Santa Rosa City Charter to reflect the city's recent transition rather than referencing the particular section. So next slide and we're now going on to the charter update and modernization. And again, and next slide, we've gone over this before. So three purposes, remove ambiguities, provide greater flexibility in city operations and modernize the language, including ensuring gender and citizenship neutrality. Next slide, charter review. This is to make it express that you can make, you can have additional charter amendments in between the 10 year full review of the charter. I had considered earlier some revisions to the existing wording and I think it's easier just to keep that wording as it is that the charter shall be reviewed in the year 2002 and not less than every 10 years thereafter and simply add the additional provision that additional amendments, nothing precludes additional amendments by voter initiative or by council ordinance whenever deemed necessary or appropriate, I think in the ballot language, I changed it to appropriate. Next slide, responsibility for emergency management. Again, we talked about this. This would revise section 15 regarding the mayor, 18 regarding the city manager, 21, the police chief and 22, the fire chief. This is all to confirm that it is the city manager and public safety that will provide leadership during times of an emergency. Next slide, we've then moved to giving us some flexibility. The board of public utilities clarify that can also include stormwater and dry utilities, budget clarifying that the city manager may propose either a single year or a multi-year budget, keeping all other procedures and all other provisions the same. Next slide, clarification of ambiguities. These are just simple things, clarifying that the three years of California practice that's required to be city attorney does not need to be immediately preceding appointment for council member recalls in the event of a council member recall that the vacancy would be filled like any other vacancy in accordance with section 31, which allows either a special election or appointment. Section 31, deputy officials, this would just confirm that city manager and city attorney can appoint their own deputies without need for confirmation of those deputies by the council. Next slide, gender and citizenship neutrality. This is to revise the charter throughout to ensure gender neutral language. And then also to revise the charter to substitute resident for citizen throughout the charter. But I do wanna clarify that the only places where the word citizen appears is in talking about boards and commissions. So it just clarifies that you need to be a resident, but you need not be a citizen to be on a board or commission for the city. Next slide. This just is the proposed ballot language really tracks kind of those three general categories that we're looking to address in the update and modernization. I realized that in the language, somehow neutrality got changed to equality. If we could ensure gender and citizenship equality by an amendment to the charter, I'd do it in an instant, but we can ensure that it's neutral as to that. Next slide. And these are just some of the key next steps are a number of next steps that we'll be taking, but we would be submitting the approved ballot measures to the Sonoma County Register of Voters. It'll be referred to our office for impartial development of the impartial analysis. And here's the same issue that I raised with respect to measure O. State law authorizes the submission of arguments for and against. We don't need to take any action on that, but if the council would like to authorize either the mayor or council members to be an author on those arguments, that should be incorporated into the resolution. The proposed resolution I'll just note does authorize rebuttal arguments. I know when you read through it and it doesn't talk about the arguments, but it talks about the rebuttal, that's just the way the state election code's written, is that if you want to allow rebuttal, you have to specifically call that out. If you prefer not to allow rebuttal arguments, you, we can delete that provision, but I would generally recommend that you allow for rebuttal arguments because you're likely to want to provide your own rebuttal argument in favor. And then I just noted on here, and I will once we kind of move to that next step, send around to council and to all of our employees, once we've sent this over to the registrar of voters, that kicks in all the restrictions on no public resources for advocacy. And we have to be very careful. We can still give information. We can still make sure that all of our constituents and all of the voters know the facts, but we can no longer use any city resources at all for advocacy. And next slide, which is the end of the presentation. So happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much, Sue. I'm gonna see if there are any questions from council members, council member McDonald. I would just like to see if we're able to go through one item at a time as opposed to engrossed tonight. Yeah, let's do questions across the board, but when we do discussion, we'll take them one at a time. Okay, thank you. Council member, let's go Sawyer first. Thanks, mayor. I think it was just answered. I was hoping that we could separate the three items. Thank you. Council member Sweatham. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And Madam City Attorney, just to confirm, I think it's my understanding regarding the council compensation. The last bullet point on slide four was consider establishing a penalty reduction in salary for an excused absences. That's all that the Charter Review Committee said. In other words, they didn't start defining what an excused absences or what that should be. And I know the wording just says we could establish an ordinance if the council should choose to go in that direction if it passes. Correct, they gave no further details as to what would be included in that ordinance. Great, thank you. And council member Fleming. Yep, okay. We'll go to public comment and then we'll bring it back for discussion. And yes, we'll take them separately. If you're interested in providing public comment on tonight's agenda, hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. Seeing none, I'll bring it back. Let's start as we did last time and go from what I consider to be the easiest to the more difficult discussions. Let's start first with the Charter clarifications. And council member Fleming, this is your item. Drew this short straw. Would you like me to put a motion on the table for the sake of conversation or would you like to do that after we go through each one of these with the surgical precision, I'm sure. Let's put a motion on the table for each of these as we go and open up for discussion. So this would be the exhibit C ballot measure number three. Exhibit C. You'll have to bear with me while my granicus is down so I'm gonna have to pull them up each one at a time. So you want three motions or one motion? I'm sorry, I was lost in the text here. We have three separate ballot measures that are proposed. We'll take them one at a time. So we'll do a motion on number three, then we'll do a motion on number two and then a motion on number one. But we'll dispense with each of them as we go. So motion, discussion, vote, move on to the next one. Would you be so kind or some of us to take a look at this and tell me which, cause I pulled up the resolution but not. Yeah, exhibit C there. Exhibit C, thank you. Apologies for the fact that it's gonna take a few minutes. And do I need to read the whole thing? Madam City Attorney, you were chiming in? Yeah, I actually have a question in terms of, as you see, I've set up the resolution to address all three. We can keep it as one resolution, listing all three or we couldn't divide it into three separate resolutions. Basically, I would put that together and probably bring back the final versions at your next meeting on consent. So either option works for me, but do you have a preference? Let's try to make this as easy as possible. So I'll have the council member make a motion, a proposal for each of the sections that we can discuss and get a vote from council on a straw vote on if council is in agreement. That should shape the final resolution, which then we can offer as one resolution. Does that work for the council? Perfect. So for example, you have exhibit C. C, so you can read just the title, which would be city Santa Rosa measure number three, city of Santa Rosa, city charter update and modernization and wave further reading. So I'll start with exhibit C, city of Santa Rosa, charter update and modernization and wave further reading for the text. Second. Okay, council member McDonald. Thank you, mayor. So I'm absolutely fine with two and three, but when it comes back to council as final, you suggested that perhaps we just have one resolution with all three items. I'd still prefer them to be three resolutions at that time so that we can take it as one at a time per council that would make me more comfortable because if there was a vote in favor of something or not in favor of something, I'd like to do them separate still if that's okay. Yeah, I understand what you're saying now. Is that acceptable, madam city attorney? Yes, it is. Okay. Thank you. It does mean that what I'll do is I'll prepare those for consent for next time, but we'll, I would ask that you take a straw vote. If that's an okay way to do it. Yes, that is a fine way to do it and we'll have the three separate resolutions. So just for clarification on that, do we need to have a motion to actually have you bring it back as three different resolutions or just direction that that's the way a council would like it? Yes, you can just provide me direction. That's fine. So as far as number three, I think it makes sense to provide for update and modernization of our language within the charter. I don't have any problems with any of the, what's being suggested. And I know one of the things that we talked about was around citizenship and we wanted to bring more information about that later. But as far as making sure that there's language that's neutral with throughout the document, I think is critical and important. And so I'm, I'm in favor of this one. Okay. Any other discussion on it? Madam city clerk, can you call a straw vote on this one for us? Sure. Hold on. Okay. Council member Schwedhelm. I guess it's just an I. I'm supportive of what's in exhibit C. That would be an I. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That has a unanimous I votes. All right. Exhibit the city of Santa Rosa city charter amendment district based elections of council members and waive for the reading of the text. Second. I have to put a seconder in there so I could just get the vote screen up. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That also received a seven I votes. All right council member council member now put a motion on the table for the first one and then we'll open it up for discussion based on the motion. So I'll move them. The city of Santa Rosa city charter amendment increasing council compensation. The way that it's listed is exhibit A. I am misunderstood. So what is my recommendation that we accept the recommendation of the charter committee as is with one amendment which is that it is for future council members meaning that after each election council members shall get the recommended amount upon swearing in. So the date of that the new council is seated would be the effective date for the first set of council members and the even members would be this year and probably in December when the new council is seated and then for future councils in 2024 when the odd number councils are elected and seated. Okay. That's the motion. Is there a second? Second. Council member Schwedhelm. I was just listening to the words given on slide nine about when it becomes effective. Did you describe option number two? I did. I just did it with a little bit more detail as to clarify the exact date upon which they would be implemented. Okay. Thanks. So in layman's terms if I understand you correctly existing council members do not receive the increased pay unless they are reelected. Correct. So the idea is that we or future council when people take on this position you take it on with a certain understanding of what you're getting into and that this would be going forward so that there was a sense with the public that we are not increasing our own compensation but rather solving a problem for future councils rather than addressing our own personal needs at this point in time. Madam city attorney. Yes. So one question is the option two that's listed on slide nine is that they apply upon the individual's own election or reelection and I understand what you're saying is it would be effective when the council when the new council is seated. This year we do have one council seat that is out of order because of the resignation. You talked about it being tied to the district number you know the district. Is that your intent or would it be that it's really upon your own election or reelection? That's a good question. I hadn't considered that piece. I think that what the intention here is and I'd be interested to hear from fellow council members I can't imagine that I won't hear from you guys really is that the public has to make the decision and so to clarify then it wouldn't be tied to the council members. It would be upon election or reelection then the compensation would be instituted. And can I ask for a point of clarification? Election reelection or appointment? So if heaven forbid one of us has a reason to leave the council and a new person is appointed would that person receive the new compensation? If that seat and I'm just thinking of this on the fly so if that seat had gone through the process of being of the voters agreeing to one the compensation then the reelection. So for example let's say you mayor were to quit halfway through next year Europe the person who was appointed or a place you would not then be compensated until their reelection. Okay. However if let's say we have somebody new who comes on next year and they leave and the voters have decided to compensate the council members their replacement would then be compensated. To be clear none of you are going anywhere other than the two that have already said that they're leaving us. Council member Swett, did you have a comment question? Council member Swett, go ahead. And again thinking about just what you said so when we have a vacancy now the way I look at it let's just take district three. The person who ran for that realized he was going to be making 800 bucks a month. He left and I'm sure the person we selected understood that and this and again I was looking at that language so this is just to continue that term and that's at 800 bucks a month so it wouldn't be for that specific district until district three would be in 2024 when they would start receiving that new compensation should this pass. That's the way I would interpret that. Yeah, that was my understanding. Council member Rogers and then I'll come to McDonald after. So based on what council member Fleming said or what I think I heard is that if I step down the person who takes over for me would not be compensated? Right, what I'm trying to get to here is that one, the public has to agree to this and then two, that the seat has to be elected go through an election. That's the clearest way to get through to explain what I'm trying to say. So I love the thought but I just wanna say whether we're appointed or elected, I don't expect anything less from council member McDonald and I don't think the public should expect anything less from her than they expect from me. Although the way she came up here is different. I think that what we bring to the community are hours, the number of events we go to, the number of meetings we show up to and our dedication to our city and our drive and our passion for serving our community should be the same. And I think it should be compensated the same to me. It seems like saying, oh, Natalie, you get health benefits but Diana, cause you came in the middle, you don't get no health benefits because you weren't elected. To me, it's kind of the same. It's the same thing. It's still a benefit of being on council. You're compensated for being on council. This is me looking like 20 years. I think if I may, through the mayor, I'm not suggesting that appointed members wouldn't be compensated the same as elected members. That's what I thought you were saying. That's what I was trying to clarify. And to be really clear, there's three people sitting at the dance that are going to be impacted by this. That's myself, council member Rogers and the vice mayor. And that just happens to be the, that just happens to be what happens for us to be able to do what's in the best interest of the city. I think what council member Fleming is going for is making sure that the voters are casting a ballot with a complete understanding of what's being offered to somebody who steps up to run. And the mayor said it a lot more articulately than myself. He proposed that I do this today. And now we have a beef because this was a little bit more complicated as it turns out. Mr. Vice Mayor, where are you going to weigh in? I was just going to ask for clarification. So if we're appointed, is it the same as being elected by the people? Is appointed by six the same as being elected by your district? And I'm sorry I was confused on the different levels of conversation. I would argue no because in fact, not a single person who had put somebody in that seat represented or was specific from that district by definition. So to be clear, us electing one of our colleagues does not deserve the same compensation as one of us being elected by our constituents. I'd be careful not to say deserving because I think that was the comment that council member Rogers was making is that council member McDonald's contributions are just as deserving of compensation, but her voters, her residents had not had a chance to weigh in on that. Correct. So that is what's on the table now. Perfect, thank you, sir. Council member McDonald. Okay, so a couple of points of clarification and this is because I can say this because it impacts me, right? So I actually was appointed to only serve until the next election. My community actually has to elect me in the next election, but it's only to finish the two-year term, but I'm still elected by my community members. And I think this is important because if it happens again to another person, we're one of us leave and we appoint them. It's only an appointment for that short amount of time, whether it's nine months or eight months or whatever it happened to be. And for me, it ended up being about eight months. So technically, I would be then elected at the next election, even though it's a shorter term. So I understand it as saying if myself or anyone in that role, at the next election, if they were elected by their folks, they'd be compensated. What I am uncomfortable with goes back to what council member Rogers said, which is all of us being on separate timeframes. And I think it goes to exactly this point of who gets what when. And I think part of it is if the community as a whole votes on compensation, which is what they do, it's not just the districts that those of us who are being elected. It's the entire community that says, yes, we want council to have compensation. In my opinion, council should then get the same compensation when the election is certified. Because that is what community members have then said to us they are comfortable with. For me, when we go to the actual issue, it's the amount of compensation. But as far as who gets what when, in my opinion, to say those three or four of us or whomever is up for election in this next election to be on a separate pay as the mayor and vice mayor and council member Rogers, I just think causes issues amongst council. And so I am not in favor of that because of that reason, because I think your community members has then stated we are comfortable with this. They are telling you that. So what I am still really stuck on is going from the $800 a month compensation, which is what we get now plus benefits to such a large amount. And I think. Let's come back to that issue. So what I'll do if this works for folks is let's take the issue of when first. Okay. Let's do a straw poll around that. That might make more sense because I think the amount is going to be a separate conversation. So I thank you. I appreciate that. In the interest of moving the conversation forward. Probably a good idea. Those seem to be the two linchpins. Agreed. Council members have. So let's take those first. I will say I appreciate the amendment being offered by council member Fleming. This one is important to me. And I think you all heard it at the last meeting. It's not because I'm a glutton for punishment, but it is at a time where we know that our community is having to tighten their belt as inflation eats into their paycheck. I think it comes across exceptionally self-serving. And that's not what any of us are trying to do. And so I think by adding this amendment, I think it puts us in the best position to actually get paid council members long term, which I think is going to have good benefits for our community in the coming years, not just what we're dealing with today. So I do want to thank you for that compromise. Any additional, go ahead, Mr. Vice Mayor. City Attorney, does the Charter Review Committee make a recommendation of when? They did not. We did not discuss that issue specifically. It was my impression, impression only, that they were assuming that it would go into effect upon certification of the vote and would be generally applicable. But again, that was just my impression. Thank you. We did not reach, we did not discuss that particular aspect. I appreciate that. Council Member Spudel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just on this, so what are your thoughts? Because I know the amendment that we already, the amendment that we already agreed to about two, four and six starting in 2018 and the other four, rather than saying individual here on this option, is there a way that we could use actually the district, finish out the term of that district, whether take the person out of it, because eventually we're gonna get on that cycle. If someone's going, well, let me start in 2020, these districts, it's gonna be every four years, and take the individual out because they're completing the term for that district. I think, I think we were just, I think that's what you were just discussing in terms of Council Member McDonald, who was appointed, again, to fill in until this November and then run for election for the second two years. So your suggestion, and I think there was another suggestion at some point, that because she's in a district, you would be setting it by district. So districts one, three, five and seven would all be under the existing pay and two, four and six would receive the new hire pay and there would be that difference between the two groups for two years. I think we're backsliding a little bit. I think for simplicity's sake, what I heard from Council Member Fleming that it seemed like folks were in agreement on was leave the district number out of it. The new council compensation does not start until a district elects a representative. So that takes care of, you've got two, four and six, as well as three up, if you try to delineate between evens and odds, you leave out district three, which is electing a council member. And may I speak to that point? Well, actually that clarified it and I'm good with that. Is everybody clear, Council Member Rogers? I think it's a cost savings. What? No, no, I'm waiting for you to go on. If we do evens and odds, if we do the way that the districts are really set up the elections, I think it's a cost savings, as far as implementation. It's a way to ease it. I mean, maybe that would help Councilwoman MacDonald. Okay. So my recommendation stands and there's a logic to it and we feel free. I think that maybe when we talk about how much that's a different conversation. But again, we don't have to accept this recommendation, but the logic is that there are two things happen, one's necessary and one's sufficient. Is necessary that you get elected to serve on the council, right? And then the, well frankly, they're both necessary. And then it's necessary that you're not currently sitting. So the people have to decide and then you have to get reelected. Both things have to be true. And so it doesn't really matter which council number you sit in. If you've satisfied both of those requirements, then you would get compensated. Council Member Sawyer. What I heard a voice at the last meeting that I did not attend, I omitted two other options and we can talk about that in a minute. But I understand, Mayor, your concern about the council appearing to be feathering their nests. I don't think you can get away from that conversation no matter how you address that kind of increase. So if you want to, and I think that, frankly, I think it should start on the moment that the election is certified. I would think that for equity and understanding of the public and for a number of reasons that everyone immediately gets the increase, whatever you decide, whatever is decided by the council as the increase. Any other choice I think is gonna complicate and perhaps even confuse the public? I'll hold my comments about the amount until later, but I think simplicity is really important. And I think that just on certification, you got the money. And sure, there will be, and I don't, I understand your concern about that appearance, but my guess is, depending on how much is decided on tonight, they're gonna see that anyway. So I don't think you can get around that concern about the council feathering its nest. Yeah, certainly not for everybody. I mean, we know that, right? Even we're gonna hear things that are incorrect, but I think it's important. So the proposal that's on the table is get the new pay. Let's take a straw vote and see if there are four votes to move forward in that direction. Otherwise, we can come back for a different motion. Adam City Clerk. Okay, thank you. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. No. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. No. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. You have five eyes and two nose. Okay. Now let's move on to the question of compensation, compensation amount. I'm gonna start over here with Council Member Sawyer since he was not at the last meeting and just go ahead and throw out your thoughts, John. Okay, I did watch the meeting so I pretty much know how people feel about this. I actually agree with the dissenting opinion that came with the two people that voted or that did not, they were concerned about the level of compensation and that there would be the potential, if not almost at least some guaranteed pushback from the community. So I was kind of hoping that there would be an option either to take the state's recommendation which seemed a little bit low. I actually was hoping that there would be conversation around comparable cities because I think that there will be pushback. And so I would not, I really respect all the work of the committee. They worked for six months to come up with recommendations for this council and I am in agreement with every one of them except this one and I'm not in disagreement about the council being compensated. That's not the issue. I think they should be compensated and they think that they should be well compensated but moving this, there's been a lot of conversation about the percentage of the general fund and how much this represents of the percentage of the general fund. That's kind of an almost an intellectual conversation because what the people are going to hear is a half a million dollars plus benefits. That's what I think they're gonna hear. And so it concerns me that in our desire to fairly compensate the council whatever fairly means that they will end up with nothing that they'll stay right where it is. So I was hoping for a bit of a compromise inside where comparable cities might be used. It's not 100,000 or 1200 for that matter. That doesn't appear to be the direction of the council. I can tell by the last meeting and I can tell by tonight. So I will not be supporting this part of the recommendation of the committee and I do support the letter of the dissenting opinion of two members of the committee. What I do want to suggest is that the council consider a retroactive decision on the salary to be put in place to kind of cover the council. It would be the state law ability to move that amount that it was added to and added to and added to and I can't even think of the amount that it goes to. But if the community rejects the amount of the renumeration then the council has nothing unless they have something to fall back on. Now you could always do that. You could buy, after the vote you say, people said yes or no. If they said no, you could always go do the ordinance and increase doubling the amount. I think it about doubles it, something like that. So that's my hope is that the council does not end up with no increase. That is a concern of mine because clearly, especially the mayor and I think I am actually in favor of the mayor making more than other council members because I know the kind of time it takes and I'm not alone behind this dais. So I won't be supporting the amount. I honor the work of the committee and I'll leave it at that. Two questions council member. The first, how much do you think the public thinks we make? I think they think we make quite a bit. I mean, I don't think there's one person who's ever asked me how much I make that wasn't shocked by the small amount. If I walked up to that same person tomorrow and said that the council is considering $100,000, I think they would be equally shocked and that's what I'm concerned about, a shock factor. My second question then is, do you have a proposal? Well, my original proposal was... What do you think would be fair compensation that people would understand? Well, I'm not sure if we have those numbers. Do we have the comparable city numbers? Yes, that was part of the presentation from the June 21st, so I do have that with me. The average of the comparable cities is approximately 31,000 for the mayor and 20,000 for council members, 20,150 for council members. And I could even pop that by 10,000 at both levels, but I think the going over 50,000 would be, I think I could easily justify an amount at half of what's being considered, plus benefits. So that plus benefits is a major conversation for me. It's more important than the money. And I think for many of us in the past and in the future, but the benefits are very generous, I think, and very important, especially to families. So I can see myself cutting in half, going to the comparable cities and then bumping it up some. It's also a, it's an arguable point. You can say, well, this is what everyone else, all of our comparable cities have looked at this and this is what they feel is fair and this is the average of the comparable cities. It's something that actually can be defended. I don't know how one can really defend $100,000. I mean, I know how much time it takes to be a council member, especially with your mayor, but I'm, the formula for the, that's being used is, I just think it, I understand the spirit, but I think the end result could be disappointing. Council Member Rogers. I just wanted to say, I think that people tend to want what is important for them. And I say that because I don't need benefits because I have employment. I'm not retired. I'm not, I don't need benefits. So for me, that's not important, right? So in lieu of benefits, cash is better. I have children. Cash is better, but someone will argue for benefits if they wait to guess what? Money, it all equates to money. So I say that to say that you can't say, well, benefits on this hand, because some of us don't take benefits. So some of us don't take benefits because we don't need benefits. So that would be selfish just to sign up for benefits to cost the city additional monies for no purpose whatsoever if we don't need them just for the sake of taking them and just take the compensation that is offered. So I'm back to the reason why I feel like compensation is important. I think that it allows for the council to be diverse. I think that it allows for different people from different walks of life, whether you need benefits or you need the actual cash or whatever you need to serve your city and to not be penalized in different areas of your own life for doing it and to not have to sacrifice in different areas of your own life or not being able to serve your community because you don't have the money to do it. I don't think that's fair or because you just need the benefits. I don't think that's fair or I don't think that it's fair that you have to use all your vacation time in order to serve on council or to do certain things. I don't think that that's fair. So yes, I know from firsthand experience, but is it about me? No, it's about the future generations. It's about maintaining the diversity that we see up here. We have equal. To me, that is so important. It's about keeping that. It's about historically we didn't have that and I wanna maintain that and I wanna find an avenue to keep that. So to me, compensation means that maybe we can open the door for other people to come up here and do that. So Sue, obviously we're having the same kind of debate that the charter committee had. It might be helpful if you could remind the council what proposals the committee did evaluate or what sorts of ideas were on the table. I think the two that I remember off the top of my head, one was the area meeting income, some percentage of it. I think I also remember charter discussing hanging it to the supervisor salary, 50% of the supervisor salary, for example. Can you walk us through some of those? I'm gonna try to, actually I can pull out. I was gonna do, I'll try to do it from memory, but I'll also pull the report because that did go through everything. But they did, actually let me just work from here for right now. They did look at tying it to supervisors. Supervisors currently get paid about 161,000 a year. They are all considered full-time employees. It was, most of the discussion was to, the discussion began with tying it exactly to supervisors salary, then there was some discussion of maybe some portion of supervisors salary. Tied to the average salary of a city employee, and that was about 95,000. This is kind of an order of magnitude. There was a proposal for 104 that put the mayor at 140% of AMI for a three-person household and council members at 100% of AMI. Then the proposal for the proposal that ended up being approved was the 100% of AMI for the mayor and the two-thirds for council members. They also looked at the average of the comparable cities, and that was again about 31,000 for the mayor and 20,000 for council members. They looked at the existing authority. That's what we've talked about where the mayor, it would bring the mayor up to about 26,640 and council members to 17,760. The other proposal was to tie it to the lowest salary wage, which is $15.85 an hour. And I don't know how you then calculate that, do you calculate that as the mayor is considered at 40 hours or 50 hours, whatever, and that council members are considered at whatever other number, or do you actually have to keep time records, which would be difficult. The other thing that occurs to me, council member Sawyer, as you were discussing, kind of talking about specific numbers, in almost, in all of these instances, the committee talked about formulas. It was only after they talked about formulas that we then looked and compared at what the actual numbers were. They ended up at median income for a three-person household. A median income chart has a lot of different boxes so that you could, there are some options embedded in there. So it could be median income for a one-person household or it could be, this is also divided into categories of, from extremely low up to moderate, you could put it somewhere else on that chart. I understand that Berkeley, which settled on the three-person household from Alameda County, that at one point they were talking about setting it at low income. So there are some different options there as well. Those other options within the area, median income were not discussed at the committee, other than maybe something higher than the 100% of median income. I don't know if that's helpful. That's a lot of numbers being thrown at you and not a chart that you can look at. So I do have, we can pull up these two slides if you want, if that's helpful, but up to you. So based on the discussion, I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and throw something out and see how council responds to it. And I'm gonna start with council member Sawyer because I think I know where most folks are at. But what have the council considered the mayor at 50% of what a supervisor makes and council members at two thirds of that number? I believe that puts the mayor somewhere in the 80 range and council members somewhere between 50 and 60,000. Too rich for my blood. Any other ideas from folks? Council member McDonald. Just for clarification, does that include your benefit package or would that be separate from the benefit package? I'm just talking pay. Our benefit package is the same as it is for employees. So for me, when we talk about compensation, I'm talking about the salary. And I agree with council member Rogers, your perspective is dependent on where you are in your life. I'm your proverbial younger person who never goes to the doctor and never needs anything. So I don't use my benefits the same. I'd be in the same boat as council member Rogers where I would pick salary over healthcare. As a point of clarification on that, is there a way that you could do an in lieu so that folks that didn't choose to have the health benefits could actually take the cash benefit amount as council members? I might look to the city manager to weigh in as well, but from my perspective, that becomes a very difficult for the payroll section to have to be calculating what the value would be if you took benefits depending on which benefits you took, which health plan you chose, how many dependents you wanted to cover, that number's gonna vary, and then you'd be translating that into salary. And we don't do that with any other employees currently that counsel salaries, as I understand it, generally track the formulas that are applied to city employees, you know, absent specific contract provisions. The reason I mentioned this specifically is because I was actually on a board where there was a percentage or an amount that you were given a stipend every month, or you could have that stipend amount put towards benefits. So even actual full healthcare benefits were not part of the package of being on that school board. You only had a certain amount that was applied towards it. You could participate in it, but you weren't given the full amount of the health benefits. In fact, either like a full-time employee. So that's why I mentioned that, yes, that is a question. I am familiar that some jurisdictions do it that way, but City of St. Rose, my knowledge, does not do that to any employees. Going back to your proposal, Mayor, on the 80,000 for the Mayor, and then 52,800 roughly is what counsel would pay. I was going back to the last presentation that we had where there was a slide that actually talked about the very low and low AMI. So it would be 50% of AMI and 30% of AMI. And the very low AMI was 53,500, and for two-thirds of that would be 35,310 if I calculated correctly. So that would be about 50% of what we would be going for. And I think if you're looking at jumping from $800 a month to something that's maybe a bit more palatable even for community members to say, this is what we get, this is about how many hours we have to spend doing this particular job, plus we get benefits. To me, that makes more sense, or even looking at the low range, which is 32,100. The 31,700 came from looking at that 1585 times in that 40 hours, and then I just times about 50 hours in a year as opposed to 52, because everybody usually gets two weeks vacation. I don't get paid vacation and the line of work that my husband does, we never have. But looking at that, that is actually equal to what our lowest employees are paid. What I don't know and what's not clear on that slide is do our lowest employees still get to participate in health benefits? And if that was the case, I would even be more comfortable with that because we are asking our other full-time employees to live in Sonoma County on that wage. And we do have that chart available that we could put up if that would be helpful, if you would like that. I am seeing nods, so. So if you look at the two amounts that I was referring to would be extremely low or very low on this particular chart, but then going back to the 1585, that was something completely separate and it was even lower than the extremely low. So I'm not sure if that's a percentage of an AMI or if that's something that just is what we currently pay. And then there was another question that I had around the tying our area median income to whatever it is in that year, that there would be charter language offered for that. But I was wondering, do we actually offer our employees raises based on AMI and what's happening or how that works? Do we have anything that bumps them up into that range? No, no employees salaries are tied to AMI. The, each of the bargaining units negotiates for separately and that's how the forward. I feel like I knew that, but I wasn't sure if we ever use the AMI for that composition as well. Yeah, all right. Thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I think the work when it comes to the pay has already been done for us. And this is charter review recommendation. Honestly speaking, when I ran for office, I didn't even think we had received health benefits and I didn't even know what the pay was. My job was to serve, that's why I'm here. So me personally, whether it's 101 or 30,000, if the person doesn't want city council to receive any increase at all, you could put a million dollars on there or $10 is still gonna receive a no vote on the ballot. So for me, charter review has spoken. I suggest we listen to charter review and move forward and see if it's passed by the voter. We could be counting our chickens before they hatch. Council members, what up? I was just gonna bring up the same point because I'm not sure if we've actually checked to see, can we count to four with the committee's recommendation? Cause it's almost like deja vu all over again. We had a similar conversation last time we did this. We all had different perspectives, but we eventually ended up where we are here today. And even, you know, council members, sorry, made the point about the two, the dissenting opinion, which I'm supportive of, which we could still do after this, but even those two individuals unanimously recommended, even though the vote initially was not unanimous, the unanimously recommended this go to council. And so I'm supportive of the committee's recommendation for those reasons. All right, let's take a straw poll on the charter committee's recommendation, which is the area median income for a family of three at 100% for mayor and at two thirds of that for council members. Okay, council member Schwedhelm? Aye. Council member Sawyer? No. Council member Rogers? Aye. Council member McDonald? No. Council member Fleming? Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez? Aye. Mayor Rogers? No. Okay, well you do have four votes, four aye votes on that. Okay, we'll move forward with that. And then I believe there was a third item that folks wanted to discuss, third amendment? No, okay. Let's go ahead and see if we can get four votes then off of the new motion crafted through this process, which is the charter committee's recommendation with one change, and that was the clarification that you have to get reelected to be eligible. Do you mean reelected or elected? Elected or reelected. Thank you. Yeah. This is another straw vote. Yep. Can you clarify the motion, mayor? The motion is for council compensation, the charter committee's recommendation with one amendment, and that's the clarification that you have to get elected or reelected before you are eligible for the new pay. So there would be a difference of something. One hit the people, voted yes. A council member, one council member would be getting, what's the amount for the, mayors getting 100,000, what's the amount for the council member? 66 or so. 66,000 and the person next to them could be making 800. Yes, correct. I just wanted to clarify that that's what it was. May I also ask one question? If the mayor is selected from the group that is still getting the 800, I presume the mayor then would receive the 1200. Correct. Correct, okay. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. No. Council member Rodgers. No. Council member McDonald. No. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. No. Mayor Rodgers. Aye. Okay, you did not get four votes to move that forward. Okay. Mr. Vice Mayor. Yes, can I make a friendly amendment to the straw vote where if one of us is elected to mayor, he or she should receive the updated compensation and reason being is the mayor cannot get away from the duties at hand, such as one of us as council members could. Council member McDonald. I'd like to amend the amendment that all council members at certification of the vote receive the compensation that the voters approve this November at the same time and not to stagger it. We've already dealt with that with the straw vote with see if we can move forward and see if the council member, the vice mayor's motion carries. Otherwise, we can come back and revisit that question. The vice mayor, please state. We don't have a second on vice mayors. Let's see. Is there a second for the vice mayor's proposal? Okay, looks like no. Actually, I think, could you restate it? I move that any council member appointed to mayor receives the updated compensation. It would be if the voters go with committee's recommendation. Well, that would be without the voters. It would be as we would select our mayor, regardless if it's even or odd on the district or newly or whatever, but whether they're appointed or elected, if we elect that person as mayor, they should be compensated with the new figure of the recommendation by the charter review. Let's do a straw vote. I don't think it's been seconded. I don't think it's been seconded. Okay, council, we're a bit out of an impasse. So if you want to revisit the question of whether or not you have to get reelected or elected, we can go ahead and recall, see if there's any interest in asking that question again. You're making the motion. So I'm looking for a second. I'm going to make the motion again to, for council to consider that if the voters approve an increase to compensation in November at the certification of that election that every council member receive pay at the same time so that it's, and I can give my rationale, make sure it's second first. Second. And my rationale is, as it goes before voters, they are the ones approving if they want to increase council pay or not. And to not confuse the timeframe of when it would start or when the mayor would receive it or what district the mayor's from or any of the issues that were brought us up amongst council. To me, it is a cleaner, clearer process to voters. So it tells them, this is what we believe we should be paid. And you're going to say yes or no to it. And everyone again is back on the even playing field. I think it goes back to what council member Sawyer said around, does it look like we're feathering our nests and it won't matter how it looks. The voters will either approve it or not. And they're not saying we would also like to make this amendment that you only get it if you're in this jurisdiction or however you want it. The votes clear, yes or no. And that to me makes it very clear for council, yes or no, you get it. And this is when it council member Rogers, go ahead. I'd also like to point out, since it's up for discussion that depending on the district that you live in, some people might have the perspective that if their district representative is getting paid less that less will be expected of their district representative because they are getting paid less. And that is not the case, but that may be their perception if we're not all paid the same. Mr. Vice Mayor. I would like to make a friendly amendment and I'm sure this would probably not pass, but nonetheless, my amendment is that no council member receives the new compensation until 2024 when we're all elected again. Is there a second to that? Second. All right, let's go ahead and do a straw vote on that one. If that one fails, we'll do a straw vote on council member McDonald's. If that fails, we're gonna take a five minute recess, take a bathroom break, let people think about this, cool their jets a little bit and then come back to the dais and see where we're at. Okay, council member Schwedhelm. I just wanted to add comment. I still had a comment I wanted to make. The one piece of information that's missing from our earlier discussion about measure O is polling data. And so we're all kind of guessing what's the interpretation because I share your feelings, Mr. Mayor, about if voters learn or people who endorse or don't endorse certain measures, I think it's gonna make it that much more challenging to pass, but I'd be willing to support what the straw poll was, but I think it's gonna make it that much more difficult to pass because we're lacking that polling data to find out how does our community feel about that or our voters feel about that. So that was an eye. That was an eye to deferring council compensation to 2024, putting on the ballot that it wouldn't start until 2024. That's the motion. The motion is to all council members get to pay at the same time, but it's not until 2024. So I'm getting confused. So I heard a motion, then I heard the vice mayor offer a friendly amendment. Was the original motion by council member McDonald accepted? So what I heard from the vice mayor was a substitute motion, which did get a substitute motion. Yes, completely different. So in Robert's rules, you take the substitute motion first and then. I just assumed it was a friendly amendment. I'm glad Susan amused by this. Follow the bouncing ball. So the motion that we are considering with a straw poll right now is everybody gets paid or assuming approval from the public. Every district representative gets paid at the same time, but not until 2024. Gotcha. I'll be an eye. Thank you. Council member Sawyer. Interesting suggestion. Trying to think of why it's a bad idea. At the same time, everybody at the same time. Does it put anyone at a disadvantage? Would there be any differential? I'm trying to think of how that would work. If I'm clear on the motion and going back to everybody has to be elected, it would still do a differentiation unless that's the time certain that everyone would get it. That's the motion, that's the time certain is 2024. The discrepancy is you have council members who are two years into their term, new term versus not. Would it be helpful to take a five minute break and then come back so that council members can formulate their thoughts around this? I'm seeing mostly yeses. I'll come to council member Rogers and then I'll take a five minute break. Can I just say why this could be a good idea? One, it goes before the voters and by the time we find out the results and everything, ideally we're already pretty much in 2023 as it is already. And then it's giving the city manager time in order to implement it to see how we're going to implement it and what we're going to do. So it's just giving us time and then it rolls out and then we, so I think that it's just giving us time to implement it and it has an implementation date. It's like nothing else that you vote for that has a firm start implementation date. I mean, things have implementation dates. So I will admit that my thinking on this was probably different than other council members in that probably the friendly amendment will be January 1st, 2025. That is correct. Okay. I think it's 24. So all right, so then this goes back to our original which means we still have three council members who had not served for election who would then be getting paid. Correct and to clarify my position of that whether really it's to motivate us to move forward but the spirit behind it was some are asking for us to receive compensation immediately and some of us are saying not into our election. So this is the meeting ground in the middle to give time for the constituents to know what is coming with ample time and for us to meet somewhere in the middle as I'm seeing we're not able to go one way or another. So this is a compromise that I'm offering. All right, council. We're going to take a five minute bathroom break, collect our thoughts and we'll come back. All right, let's bring us back. Adam City Clerk, can you call the roll? Yes, thank you, mayor. Council member Schwedhelm. Hi. Council member Sawyer. Here. Council member Rogers. Present. Council member McDonald. Here. Council member Fleming. Here. Vice mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. All right, council. So where we left it before our break was a straw poll on deferring compensation to 2024, but all council members getting it at the same time. So my suggestion, my amendment that I'm going to offer to the vice mayor's suggestion is that the pay starts January 1st, 2025 so that that way all council members will have to have gone through an election or a reelection before they get the approved compensation, but it does not create a disparity amongst council members in who's making what at what point. I think then that's also defensible to go out to the public to say, we're not looking to feather our own cap as council member Sawyer said, but rather we can talk about what's in the best interest long-term for the city of attracting more diverse candidates into these positions. So I'm going to offer that as a suggestion. Looking for a second. Mayor, I think that it addresses the issues that we foresee in the election and I will accept your friendly amendment. And the second was council member Rogers. And I still second. Okay. Any additional discussion? Great. Madam city clerk. Can you take a straw poll on that aspect? January 1st, 2025 start for council compensation. Council member Schwaitham. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion or that vote has seven eyes. So now we come back to the full resolution, which is the recommendation from the charter committee, which includes the compensation at three person area median income for the mayor and two thirds of that for council members. So that, but deferred start until January 1st, 2025. Let's take a straw vote on that and see if we have four votes. Council member Schwaitham. Aye. Council member Sawyer. I respectful no. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. No. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That received five eyes. Okay. So Madam City Attorney, you'll capture all of that and bring three separate resolutions for our next council meeting. I will. Perfect. Any additional or last minute comments from council members? Council member Sawyer. I was going to mention that depending on what the voters do, there'll probably be a lot more people running for second terms. Or third. I was going to say, council member, are you making an announcement now or? No, five is not in the, is not in the, in the, in the odds. You, you missed when they shot down term limits at the last meeting. So council member Fleming. Yes. Do the mayor, do I still need to do the, the actual resolution brought forward? No, because I'll be bringing back three separate resolutions at your next meeting. Okay. I look forward to not carrying them next time. So mercifully we'll move on now. We've already done our proclamations for the day. Let's go into our staff briefings. Madam city manager. COVID-19 response update. So the rapidly spreading Omicron sub variant PA five has become dominant among new coronavirus cases. As of last week, PA five made up at, at the, at approximately 54% of new cases in the United States according to the centers for disease control and prevention. In addition to being highly contagions, contagious, this variant can evade antibodies. And those people who are vaccinated or who were recently infected by COVID including other sub variants of Omicron. Public health officials continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, mask when possible, monitor their health for signs of COVID infection and continue to be vigilant in the fight to spread, to prevent the spread of the, excuse me, the disease. For more information about the status of COVID in our community, testing locations and obtaining at home tests and vaccination information, vaccination information for all ages, please go to socoemergency.org. Thank you. There we go. My apologies. I was not sure if, if you were going to segue into me. Hi, good to meet again. I'm not gonna say is here the office of community engagement. I do have a quick update on the community empowerment plan. So with community outreach and engagement between March and June of 2022, we engaged with 3,403 members of the community. Specifically in June, our team participated in the field day at Cesar Chavez Language Academy, specifically working with our middle school youth there, the Pride Parade, Peggy Sue Karshow and Cruz, Juneteenth Community Festival, as well as many other events where we had the opportunity to interact in person with community and speak to community about our programs and services. The Multicultural Roots Project, our team was invited by the Arts in Public Places program to display a Multicultural Roots Project exhibit at the Finley Community Center during the month of August. The exhibit is set to start on August 2nd with a reception scheduled for August 11 from five to 7 p.m. We're working with community partners to collect items to display in the exhibit, which are relevant to the Multicultural Roots Project. We will be assisting a separate topic. We're gonna be assisting with reaching out to the community regarding the upcoming Police Oversight Community Meeting Series where the community can share comments and feedbacks about policing in Santa Rosa with the Independent Police Auditor OIR Group. We invite you to join us on the following dates and times, August 4th from 6 to 7, 30 p.m. at Shepherd Elementary School, August 5th from 8 to 10 a.m. There will be a series of drop-in hours and they will be available at the Tia Maria Van Alleria and August 6th from 10 to 12 at Finley Person Senior Wing. Lastly, the Hearn Community Hub, thank you Council for approving Ross Drouless-Cousenberry's contract to assist us with the community needs assessment for the Hearn Community Hub. We held our first meeting today with the firm to provide them with additional information about the contract and timeline and next we'll be reaching out to our community members regarding our first large community input event where we'll learn from the community what the programmatic needs are. And if you've not had a chance, I would encourage you to visit Let'sConnectSR.com slash Hearn Hub Project where you can begin to ask questions and provide input. Thank you and that is the end of my presentation. Thank you, Deputy Director. Let's see if there's any questions from Council members. Okay, let's see if there's any public comment on our staff briefings for tonight. Items 8.1 and 8.2. May I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment. Okay, let's move on to city manager and city attorney reports. Madam city attorney, do you want to start? Sure, and I'll try to make this very quick given the late hour. We have our monthly report on settlements and active litigation. We had no settlements over $50,000. That's our reporting threshold in the last month. We have had some smaller settlements. We had a recent settlement for about 5,000 in a personal injury case. We have 30 cases still pending, including five receiverships. I won't give the numbers. I'll just list the categories. Receiverships, general litigation, personal injury. We have just four police actions, three rits of mandate. We are close to resolving several more of the cases. So we are very pleased about that. We have eight trials set coming in the fall and early winter. And then we have, just to let you know, in the Venuci case, which is our case concerning homeless encampments, that trial is set for fall of 2023. Discovery's gonna be starting in that action. That's gonna be a lot of work. And I will also mention that we, this week our new litigator started and we are very pleased. He is going to be a great addition to our team. And so we welcome him. His name is Nathan Putney. Goes by Nate and very friendly. And I think you'll enjoy working with him and meeting him. Thanks very much. Thank you, Madam City Attorney. And a warm welcome to Nate. And thanks for joining the team. Let's go on to our city manager report. I have no updates. Thank you. Okay. Let's see if there's public comment on item number nine, our city manager and city attorney reports. Mayor, I see no hands raised and we have no voicemail public comment. Okay. We had no abstentions from council members tonight. So let's check in on mayor's and council member reports. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. On July 14th, between four and six, I welcome our community to Amitote Food Park for the grand opening. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. No other reports. Council member McDonald. Yeah, I have a few different things. I wanna say thank you to council member Schwedhelm and Sawyer for doing the measure O presentation with me. And I believe you can find that presentation online on our website that was informational for the public. And climate action meets tomorrow. I also met with Jen Santos about Fremont Park and the plans potentially for Fremont Park in the downtown area. And I attended a fundraiser for, it was called Bachi for Books for the Sonoma Alliance to raise money for books for children in our community. I briefly attended the Opioid Summit at Findlay Center, which was extremely informative. And our chief was there to welcome attendees and we had attendees from actually all over the state for that summit. So I just wanna do a shout out to the department that actually put that all together because it was extremely helpful for all who went. And I met with the water department, had an opportunity to go through the entire water department. And then in the afternoon went to the treatment facility to get a tour of that area as well. And so they gave me a huge presentation that I have here and I just want the water department to know that I took it home and studied it. So I know what all the caps and colors of the water treatment underground mean now, but don't test me. We also had the water expo in downtown on the Wednesday night market and it was packed. They had like an Eagles cover band that was down there, but you could hardly walk through the water expo was so well done by the city. The entire department really needs to be thanked for how well it done. There was people lined up to get the free, the freebies that were there. They may were making buttons for kids. It was just really incredible. And then finally I went and participated in the park a month at Galvin Park. And I would like to say that I had the best job there because I was able to make snow cones and not pick weeds. So I'm claiming that as my council job, so shout out to the parks department for their great job. But all in all, I just want to thank our incredible staff. Every time I go out and do another tour or work with any department, I am always just so impressed with their commitment to our city and to our community. And so thank you to all of them. Thank you council member. I'm going to just give one quick item update that I think the council would be interested in. And that's just a huge thank you to our team who put together incredible applications for California State Transportation Funds. Sonoma County was awarded $29 million. And that's three specific projects through Sonoma County Transportation Authority. One project was the much awaited new smart station down in Petaluma. So that was good to get that off their books. But for Santa Rosa, what's most important and most exciting to me was the funding for 30 new electric buses between Santa Rosa City Bus, Sonoma County Transportation and Petaluma Transit. It's not just the buses, it's also the charging infrastructure. So with that in place, Rachel is going to kill me if this turns out to not be the case. But we now have the funding to switch over 50% of our transportation fleet to completely electric infrastructure, which is a significant savings for our climate goals. So great work, Assistant City Manager, Rachel, Nancy, Bjorn, the entire transportation team. Thank you to SCTA for their partnership. Thank you to council member Fleming for helping to shepherd this through MTC as well. And we really value those partnerships and we're looking forward to seeing those roll out. Later this year. Let's do public, now we have item 11.2. Council, we have nine hours ago, we did interviews for the library commission. We have two appointments to make. One is a specific Santa Rosa representative. It's a four year term. We also have a joint City of Santa Rosa, Sonoma County representative. What I'm going to ask folks to do is first, we'll take public comment on item 11, make sure folks have a chance to weigh in. Then I'm going to do these in opposite order. I'll start with our Santa Rosa specific representative to see if there's consensus. And then I'm going to ask council to then come up with their next two for the joint City County. They're top choice for that and their second choice for that. So then I can go into conversations with the chairman of the board of supervisors and determine who we're going to end up appointing. Let's open it up for public comment. Mayor, I see no hands raised for item 11.2, library commission appointments and there's no voicemail public comment. Okay. I'm just going to start by seeing if there's a nomination for our Santa Rosa specific representative. I'll come to council members quite at home first and then I'll see if it aligns with you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I would nominate our incumbent David Cahill for the Santa Rosa specific representative. Second. Second. And Mr. Vice Mayor, did you have a separate nomination? No, sir. Okay. Are there any other nominations for the Santa Rosa specific seat? All right, Madam Clerk, can you please call the vote? Can I clarify who seconded? That would be the vice mayor. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay. Now I'll entertain a motion for the joint seat. Council member Rogers. Sarah. Second. Okay. Were there any other nominations for our first priority for the joint seat? Seeing none, let's call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay, and I will seek a nomination for our second choice. Council member Fleming. Swami Venkates. Okay. Second. Motion and a second. Do we have any other nominations? Let's call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Thank you, Council. Move on to item 12. That's the approval of the minutes. We have April 26th, 2022 minutes. Were there any amendments from council members? Let's check public comment to see if anybody has any amendments. Mayor, I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item. All right, we'll show those as adopted without objections. We did our consent calendar. We've done our report items. We did our public hearings. Council, I did wanna flag our written communications here at the end. As a reminder, we have our team analyze state legislation all the time and I regularly send support and opposition letters based on the council's direction for our legislative priorities or in congruence with our decisions that we make from the dais. One that I wanted to flag for folks because I received a couple of phone calls about it was AB 2011. Happy to discuss that with council members. We have previously from the dais when we discussed our housing element instructed staff to not put new development in high fire areas in the wooey. AB 2011 would allow by right development in many areas. There's a lot of good that's in the bill, but it would allow by right housing in the wooey. So we've sent an opposition letter and we have indicated that if that was removed and if other amendments were taken that we would be willing to remove our opposition to the bill, but I did wanna explain that one since I did receive questions from the public on that one. Council Member Fleming. So I recall, I don't have it in front of me, but I recall seeing an opposition not a support if amended. I mean, I just heard you suggest that you'd support if amended. Would you be willing to change that? No. So the way that the legislature does support in opposition letters now is they've removed the ability to do support if amended or support if opposed, opposed if amended. Really your only leverage is to oppose outright. We have had conversations with legislators in Sacramento and expressed that concern with them. And so we're waiting to see sort of what comes out of the committee approach around the bill, but there is no ability for the city to do oppose unless amended or support if amended at this time for legislation in Sacramento. Thank you for applying it in a clear explanation. I'll go to public comment on our written communications and see if the public would like to weigh in. Mayor, I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item. Okay, let's move on then to public comment for non-agenda items. If you're interested in providing comment, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. Mayor, I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item. Disappointed that Chief Westrope didn't take that as his opportunity. I see you on the Zoom. We have no other items tonight. Council, we are adjourned.