 Good evening, everyone. Thank you for taking time to join us this evening. I'm Adrienne Mertens. I'm the chief communications and intergovernmental relations officer for the city of Santa Rosa. You are on the information and community input meeting for the city of Santa Rosa's PG&E settlement funds. This meeting was specifically set up for our fire survivor community members of the Fountain Grove, Hidden Valley, Montecito, and Oakmont neighborhood areas. I do want to touch on a few housekeeping items for the meeting, and then I will introduce our participating city staff. So as community members join this meeting, you will be participating as an attendee, your microphone, and your camera will be muted and turned off. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. If you are calling in from a telephone for privacy concerns, our host, Trisha, who you cannot see but is on the meeting right now, will be renaming your viewable phone number to citizen and only the last four digits of your phone number will be shown on the screen. So we'll start the meeting with a brief background presentation that will provide more information on the settlement funds. But really this meeting is a time for all of you who have joined us to ask any questions and also to provide your input on how you believe the Santa Rosa City Council should prioritize the settlement funds. So after the presentation concludes, we'll open for questions and community input. At that time, we'll ask that you raise your hand in Zoom using the raise your hand feature. Our Zoom host will move one by one down the list of attendees with their hand raised. And once you've asked your question or shared your input, the Zoom host will lower your hand. And if you're dialing in from a telephone, you'll want to use star nine to raise your hand. And to introduce our city staff participants, we have Alan Alton, our interim chief financial officer from our finance department. We have Dave Guine, our director of housing and community services. We have Jason nut our assistant city manager and director of transportation and public works. And from our fire department, we have chief Tony Gosner. Fire marshal Scott moon and assistant fire marshal Paul Owen fall. And then we also have and who we are very grateful for our two co-host Trisha Mason and Elisa Rawson, who will be helping with the transitions between presentation and community input and questions. They'll also be recording notes from the meeting to ensure that we document all the input received. So in addition to this meeting, the city has held one previous meeting with our coffee park fire survivors. And we do have one more community wide meeting that's planned for tomorrow evening. This meeting as well as that meeting that's tomorrow were rescheduled. They were originally set for late September and had to be rescheduled due to the glass fire. So I want to thank everyone for your flexibility and patients as we got those rescheduled and back on track. Additionally, we have a digital survey that's running to collect public input it's being circulated throughout the whole community we've had a few thousand survey responses so far, we did extend the date of that survey. And it will now in this upcoming Sunday, October 25. And we will provide the URL on how you can take that survey at the end of the meeting. So after all of our input has been collected and we get through those meetings and the survey deadline ends, our staff will be working to compile all of the input that we receive throughout this, we've received throughout this process into a comprehensive report that will be provided to city council and Alan, who will be our presenter will share a little more information on what will happen after that during his presentation. So at this time I would like to turn it over to Alan Alton, our interim chief financial officer, and we'll give Trisha just a second to transition the slides. Thank you, Adrian. Good evening everybody. I hope you all are well. Let's just kick on to the first slide here and we'll run through these kind of quickly here so the city filed a claim with PG&E to recoup from our damages from the 2017 modifier that weren't covered by either federal or state aid or insurance. So from that settlement we received about $95 million and we received that in July of 2020. Next slide please. There are no restrictions on how the funds may be sent and the council made it or spent in the council made it very clear that they wanted to get input from the community to help with the prioritization. So some of this has been discussed during council goal setting or with the long term financial policy and subcommittee, but this is really these meetings and the digital survey are our way of ensuring that we're reaching fire survivors and the affected community to be able to get that direct input and report that back to the council. Next slide please. So we are postfire and there are still things that the city needs to recover and rebuild. I would say that just for a little bit of context going in here the city has worked since the fire with FEMA and Cal OES on a number of disaster recovery projects. All we have 29 projects that were approved by FEMA, and which allowed us to establish a budget and begin work and those projects are in some state of being underway. So all of our projects related to the response of the fire. So the folks fighting the fires and and all of the, the other city response that went to the incident itself, we've received that reimbursement back. So what we are dealing with when we talk about funded projects are obligated projects. Those are the ones that are needed to actually rebuild in the community. Unfortunately, though, some projects have either been denied and and are therefore unfortunately unfunded. So, next slide please. So one of those and probably the most the most iconic wine is the fire station five that was on new gate that was destroyed in the fire. We're hoping to rebuild that station in found in a new site within found grove that is more fire hardened, if you will. So far, while we continue to appeal FEMA's decision to deny this project. It's still currently unapproved and therefore unfunded, and is something that would, would fit in for these, these dollars. Next slide please. And to that we have there were roads that were damaged both in the in the areas of the fire burn scar there were as part of the debris removal mission. The large trucks that went through there. It put weight on streets that that deteriorated them greatly. We've, we've estimated the cost of those streets to be repaired at around $24 million. Next slide please. The streets sidewalks were also destroyed or damaged greatly, both during the fire and the debris removal mission and we're looking at about $4.1 million of cost estimate to repair those. Next slide please. So, over the past couple of years, the city's removed hundreds of hazardous street trees and other right of way trees in the burn scar area. There are still hundreds of private property hazardous trees. They've been destroyed in the city's initial assessment that still remain. And so the fire department is focusing on private property dead and drawing trees that present fall hazards, both to immediate structures or or neighboring structures. And we are currently in fringe on the defensible space around a structure, and we are estimating costs there of around $5.1 million. Next slide please. So, what I have here are a number of items that have come up in previous public forums. People included on the digital survey that Adrian mentioned before. These are things that would sit as as items that could be used for the money. We're looking at PG&E settlement money, looking at vegetation management fuel reduction, evacuation route, either construction and improvements in the WUI, home hardening incentives and assistant programs, or readiness. We're even to looking at jumpstarting affordable housing opportunities through incentive funding. So kind of moving outside of fire specific projects but something that noting that the fire is a community wide impact, of course in some areas it was very directed but it affected the community as a whole. So we're looking at ways to kind of rebuild the community as a whole as in also. So we would also look at looking at our resiliency through backup generators or micro grids, things like that, that we can maintain our critical facility functionality through disasters. We're looking at business and workforce recovery, loans and grant programs, community assets that are libraries and community centers, homeless services, repairs that are not necessarily associated with fire recovery, improvements, broadband internet, all of those. So it's a like I said before it is a there are no strings on these funds that could be used for everything. And as you can tell from these that have been brought up in other areas. There's a wide range of possibilities for that. Next slide please. Okay, so we, as I mentioned before we are looking for your help we're looking for input. We'd like to have that as a way to help the council prioritize where this will go as Adrian mentioned before. But after the survey is has completed on Sunday, we will tabulate and analyze that data will take the input from these meetings will take the input that has come in through emails and letters and other public forums, and we will somehow compile a report to the long term financial policy and audit subcommittee. That is the council subcommittee that has been tasked with doing the initial prioritization of these prior before it goes to the full council, the subcommittee meetings. The one that we are targeting to take this information to will be the November 12 meeting. It is a brown act. Publicized meeting. We do use it through zoom so it's much like this. So that will be the first attempt for three council members to go through this and then the following Tuesday on November 17 will be in front of the council during study session to go over this report for the full council. The meeting session means that they won't be making a decision on that there but they will hopefully provide staff with direction on how to move forward and when they would like the next meeting to go or how they would like that to move forward from that spot. My presentation is done and we'd like to hear from you so I'm going to turn it back over to Adrian. Thank you, Alan. So we will now open the meeting for questions in your input. And again I'll just remind you of the process for that if you'd like to make a comment. I'm going to try to input or ask a question via zoom you want to use the raise your hand feature in zoom and if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to indicate that you're raising your hand. So the input that is collected here as Alan said will be part of that report going to council, and I do want to mention that when council gave us direction on putting our input process together. They did emphasize that it was really important to them that they heard directly from our fire impacted neighborhoods and so that's why we have set up these meetings specifically so. You know, this is a time to ask questions of our subject matter experts that are here but certainly also to weigh in on how you think those funds should be prioritized. So, I will turn it over to Trisha now who is going to transition us into question and input. So the first speaker will be resident Lama, please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Hi, can you hear me. Yes, I can hear you. Okay, yeah, my name is a Quindalamba so I'm a fire survivor from Fountain Grove, and so we have you know a group of 40 odd homes which are rebuilt now in Fountain Grove. And one of the questions I have for the panelists here is the biggest risk for the city right now, you know as we, you know, 12 through these years to rebuild. And now we are, you know, we found found that Skyhawk was hit this year by another fire. And that's the risk upon getting hit by these fires right and the risk is from the insurance perspective we are very fearful that insurance companies will start denying the insurance to say Fountain Grove and Skyhawk Skyhawk homes. You know that is that has got that could have a rippling effect on the city right if they start denying, and we are not able to get insurance, it reduces the desirability of the city for people to come in, and it will have rippling on the economy and everything helps. So I think as we have these funds. I would like city to consider the maximum funds go towards that we do not have these incidents year over year again and again. Right. And I see some some suggestions about vegetation management and things like that. There wasn't any mention of technologies like drones and, you know, sensors and all that. When Fountain Grove was hit. There was a report which said that Skyhawk Hills and Lincoln Valley Hills are number one risk for the city. And no wonder that's what happened this year and you know Skyhawk was hit and we had many residents who lost home in Skyhawk and Lincoln Valley. So these areas the point is these areas are known and the risk is known. And how can we mitigate that using these funds so that we can prevent it vegetation management is one, you know you're making the fire breaks. Definitely we need to fund the fire fire station. You know when the fire happened in Skyhawk, we know that the fire department was scrambling to get the firefighters because we are running out of firefighters. It was very fortunate we are so thankful for the fire department to not make Skyhawk event or not let Skyhawk event become a Fountain Grove event. But you know I think we need to stop this happening from year over year otherwise the whole city's desirability economy and you know if insurances start stop denying the insurance will be in a much much worse situation. So, so that's my comment and request to the to the people who are making these decisions to to direct these funds. Thank you. There are no hands raised at this time. So if anyone else. Oh, I'm sorry, I spoke too soon. The next speaker will be Jenny. Please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. My name is Jenny. I am a Fountain Grove fire survivor and rebuilding. And I've just briefly reviewed what was brought up on the slide as possible options for using the funds. And I feel that it's a bit disheartening to see many items on there that are not related to the fire. It seems that the number one priority for the funding is to bring back the areas affected by the fire to the level that they were before streets, lights, signs, infrastructure, water, water meters, you know whatever that might mean. But that's the number one priority that the money needs to go to where it's supposed to be directed to which is to those areas directly impacted by the fire. Once that settled and back to par so to speak, then maybe we can all have a conversation about hey okay it costs this much money to bring us back to par. We have this much money left in the settlement. Now what do we want to do with it. Now where do we want to focus our direction and intention, but absolutely the money should go to where it is supposed to go which is to fix what was destroyed and make us all whole again. Thank you. I'm assuming she. Okay. The next speaker will be Ron. Please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Hello, my name is Ron. Do I need to get my last name or does that matter. It's up to you. I'm a fountain Grove resident survivor of the 17 fire. And I wanted to kind of just add on to what Jenny just said I agree 100%. It is kind of upsetting that we have gone three years and very, you know, from the looks of it. We're living here currently seems like that just not a lot of effort is put into rebuilding this area and the fact that they want to put funds into other areas that are not related to the fire also does not go down too well. I mean I feel like first and foremost, you know, more effort and time and money needs to put in the get in our community back. You know, there's a lot of different processes with building and cleaning up the area debris removal is still hasn't happened sidewalks streets. You know there's burn trees still from three years ago that are just in areas everywhere all you have to do is drive around and see them and no effort has been put in. And then assisting the fire department and whatever they need to harden the area, etc. So, that's, you know, my input, and, you know, that's it I guess I just kind of agree with what a lot of people are saying that live here so. Thank you. Thank you. The next speaker will be resident be Mills. And then Jenny, please unmute yourself, unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Yes hi my name is Brian Mills my family and I lost her home in 2017 in the Hidden Valley neighborhood. Not to sound like a broken record but I wholeheartedly agree with the last two individuals, the to hear, and I don't mean it's maliciously but to hear someone saying the opening presentation that this funding is no strings attached funding I think is 100% the wrong mindset to have here. We received that money in a settlement to help make Santa Rosa whole again and to repair the damage done so until every last little thing is addressed and fixed. That money should not be even considered for anything else this discussion should be more realistic in the fact that we received X amount of dollars in the lawsuit. We're faced with more than that in repairs that need to be done so we'd like to help prioritizing what we consider to be the most important repairs to make, but to even consider that we would use this money for something other than making the city whole again I think is is deplorable I'll be honest, I don't know how else to describe it to even think that that's a discussion that needs to be had to me is very disheartening. I would definitely say I to when I drive around Santa Rosa, especially three years later in the areas that were affected. They don't look even nearly close to being back to where they were before I understand that it takes longer than that but the fact that every single tree and all the medians has disappeared. Even with the new houses it, it doesn't feel like Santa Rosa in those areas yet and that means to be our goal in my mind those areas need to be restored back to as close to we can feeling like the lush green Santa Rosa neighborhoods that they were before. I just, I can't as a victim and a resident. At the same time I can't condone the idea of using that money for anything different than than rehabilitating the city back to its previous state as best as possible. Thank you. The next speaker will be Jenny. Please unmute your microphone and identify yourself again for public record. Thank you. Thank you. This is Jenny again a found growth rebuilding and fire survivor. I just wanted to tag on to this conversation just knowing a little bit about city politics and bureaucracy and the fact that we have the city has this money and it is there to be used. I also feel very strong about the fact that action should be taken sooner than later this isn't about a one year plan a two year plan a three year plan a five year plan. We've already been waiting three years and just this in the last few months, the first phase of some tree removal removal started. And to everybody's point it would be nice. Now that the money's here to see action taken more immediately. And not as a long term or multi year process. Thank you. Duncan had their hand raised. I'm not sure if you would like to speak or ask a question. At this time there's no hands raised. Okay. Duncan will be the next speaker, please. I'm going to turn the microphone and identify yourself for public record. I'm not sure if there's technical difficulties. Can you hear me. We're getting a lot of feedback when you talk. Sorry about that. I'm not sure. I'll have to send my email. Your question or comments. And if you'd like to, if you have a question that you want to send in for one of our panelists to answer, you can go ahead and try to email me right now at, it's my first initial a and my last name so a mertens at srcity.org. Or you can send me your public input in that way too. Thank you. At this time, there are no other hands raised. I don't know if we want to wait for his comment. Sure, we'll give them a minute. I actually wanted to take a moment to open it for our panelists and appreciate all the feedback so far in your comments and I think there were a few things in there that maybe your panelists want to address or there were a few things that came up that I think they might want to provide comment on. So how about I start with Paul, or should we start with Alan you want to. Okay, so. So clearly I was not artful in my, my use of words, when I said no strings attached I didn't mean to put any type of string attached to the work in the fire area insignificant. No strings attached on a fund on money coming in was merely meant that, that that it literally could be used for every anything. So the council decided to use all of that in the fire areas. That's absolutely what they, what they can do. Sometimes we receive settlements and they can only be used for certain things so that's all I meant it was not at all to slight your area or the, or, or the work that needs to be done there. And, you know your comments have been received and they're, they're, you know, very pointed as, and I can absolutely empathize with why they are and that will be brought back to the council so I just wanted to make that clear I didn't mean any offense that they came across that way was just an in our full turn of phrase and I apologize. And then fire department anyone want to address anything. Thank you. I wanted to follow back up on a couple of the comments, specifically on trees and vegetation management so we do recognize that there are significant number of dead and deteriorating trees. It's kind of quickly shifted from dead and dying and more of that dead and deteriorating status. We have a couple ways that we're have been actively addressing it. Right now, we have been holding up and or holding people responsible for moving some of the more hazardous trees that are presenting that fall hazard to the right away potentially, and or the structure itself or neighboring structure when rebuilding is taking place on a case by case basis so we have been able to use that. We're also actively looking at the potential of creating an addition to an existing ordinance right now. A lot of you and found over familiar with our weed abatement ordinance. What we're actively exploring is adding the trees to the existing weed abatement ordinance that will give us the ability to address trees, like Mr Alton had described that do present that fall hazard to the right away to a neighboring property and or are within areas that would be directly impacted or close proximity to rebuild. One thing we do want to make clear that we've been trying to be very clear about it up front is there was a lot of out a lot of comments early on in the recovery process from residents that were adamant about all of the dead trees being removed from the burn scar. There is not a plan to do that at this point. A lot of the trees, primarily in the open spaces or areas where they do not present a threat to falling on a neighbor's property onto a structure and or encroach on what will ultimately be working on is defensible space around homes. A lot of those trees will be up to the resident as to whether or not they want to remove them. A lot of the work that we did was specifically to those trees that present the hazard or one in fringe on the areas that we've been working to bring into our recommendations for defensible space and vegetation management around structures. Regarding vegetation management. We have in a couple of the speakers did comment on the threats to Lincoln Valley, specifically the areas above Skyhawk. That was confirmed the fire department wrapped up our community wildfire protection plan that was approved by council in September last month. The plan did identify a number of threats to the community. The number one threat was that unburned area between the nuns fire and the Tubbs fire, which a good portion of it did burn during this particular event. However, there are still a number of threats to our community that have been documented very well. We include found road found road is an area that we are been actively working to secure grant funding at both the state and federal level since 2017. Unfortunately, we have been unsuccessful in securing any grants that we have applied for with the exception of the grant that helped actually develop the community wildfire protection plan. We have seen the volume of regrowth and found growth, the change of the ecology and found growth with the lack of a canopy has really changed the brush and a lot of the growth that's taking place. And with that, we have already turned in for additional notice of interests, even as these community meetings are taking place for several million dollars worth of grants that we're hoping that we'll be able to help with improving the vegetation management around our evacuation routes and vegetation management within our wildland urban interfaces which includes found road. The areas that are included in this community meeting. So, we're hopeful that the plan will help with that, but ultimately, as we've unfortunately seen the past it's they're not a guarantee. But we are continuing to actively try and address the concerns that have been raised by us as well as the community. And then one last piece, there was the comments regarding the landscape or mediums that is actually an active project that's taking place in fact a couple of us that are involved in this meeting chief moon and I are meeting with several representatives on the found road landscape project that's currently in progress and design right now. Thank you, Paul. And I know assistant city manager and I wanted to make a couple comments as well. Thank you Adrian. So the comments about the length of time it's taken for us to deliver projects moving forward. We've spent, we spent the first two years really coordinating and working with Cal OES and FEMA and an effort to ensure that the project that we identified as being a recovery effort was consistent with federal and state guidelines. In most cases we were successful and we've been in the last year completing the design associated with a number of those projects. And other projects that we were either unsuccessful and as Alan mentioned, we've gone into an appeals process with them, or it has taken just a significant additional effort to get FEMA to understand the nature of the damage and why it's important for us to move forward with these. In most cases we've been successful, and we are actively moving forward with the delivery of a majority of the projects to recover our community back into a fully operational area. We've got a number of fountain grove we've got a number of lift stations sewer lift stations and water pump stations that are in the process of being built this winter and into next summer should be completed by next fall. We're excited to see those projects come to fruition. As Paul mentioned, we are also looking at doing a vegetation program along the medians and the landscaped areas along the roads in it, as well as improving and improving the park areas that were damaged. There are six park areas that are currently being redesigned from a landscape perspective and in one case at for Ridge will be looking at replacing the play structure. Those that program is currently about 75% designed and we're hoping to begin construction at various parts later this winter. There are a few programs projects that we've been very unsuccessful, unfortunately with FEMA Alan mentioned we have a number of items that FEMA has denied. Those were the projects that Alan specifically related during the course of the presentation today and that's why we've included them as we feel that these are important components to help our communities recover from this devastation. And we believe that they're a legitimate project we're continuing to push on FEMA to try to get them to assist us with financing, but in the event that we're unsuccessful. We believe that this is a potential funding source to try to make those projects complete. And Adrian that's all all that I wanted to provide updates on. Thank you. I will just give one more opportunity for any additional questions or follow up from our meeting participants. And so Trisha, if you want to allow for that. Yes. So Lamba has their hand raised so please unmute your microphone and identify yourself for public record. Okay, thank you again. This is Lamba again for found a grow fire survivor. So, follow on questions for thanks again for the fire. There are two items which I wanted to ask questions about. One is, you know, if the event like Fountain Grove and Skyhawk happen again, I know there is, there was a talk about creating fire breaks so that the fire doesn't move as fast to our communities. And I wanted to get some comments or some thinking around that. And the second is use of technology, right? So we have, we are at the hub of, you know, greatest technological place on earth. We have drones. We have sensors which thermal sensors, which can detect fire very quickly. You know, major problems in Fountain Grove and Skyhawk had been that the fire grew so fast and so, so wide that it became uncontrolled. If you are able to act quickly and attack the source of the fire, these technological, you know, things could, could help. And I'm wondering if the city is considering using, using the technology to help us be secure next time. So I'll jump in first on the fire break comment. Yes, the community wildfire protection plan. Addresses nine different subjects and within the subjects, there's 46 actionable items. One of the actionable items is very specific to work for into his compartments for the consultants that we use for the development of the plan, identify compartments throughout the community, the wildfire interface, which includes Fountain Grove and what kind of fuel reductions should be, should continue in some cases and other cases where it needs to be improved and then maintained as time goes on essentially. So there's already work that's gone into starting to develop some of the GIS data that is one of the recommendations that the consultant also put forth to us that will kind of help start to coordinate where the fuel reductions taking place either by homeowners associations by the city and or additional vegetation management and compartments that need to be addressed moving forward. So plan does very well break it out and lay out a successful path for us. The funding source is where we're at right now. So as these community meetings are taking place to determine funds being utilized through the settlement. That's why I mentioned earlier that at the same time, we are submitting notice of interests for fuel management projects that would start to tackle those compartments. I'll hit on the technology and I'll see if Chief Gosner has anything to say. The Santa Rosa Fire Department did attend a technology summit in Sacramento. Myself and our emergency manager, Neil Bregman did attend that. Those are ongoing communications between the private sector and the fire service that will hopefully continue to help lay out the framework for how technology can continue to improve our responses to fires. Technology did play a significant role in how the fire was essentially attacked this time versus 2017. In 17, we did not have the technology that we have today. A lot of the decisions that were made were made based on what was happening and what was happening on the ground and what was happening on the ground and what was happening on the ground and what was happening and reacting to it just as our residents were reacting to it as well. Santa Rosa worked hard with not only the county, but the state and the federal level and has continued to work to make improvements to ensure what happened in 17 doesn't repeat again. That technology in one form came from the use of fire services. We have been working with our entire county now and those cameras were what was used to actually start laying out the framework that led to the early notification as well as movement of resources into the communities that were affected by the glass fire. Myself, chief Gosner, chief moon, Adrian, a lot of us were actually on the phone with each other. The first initial response was at scene of the glass fire. We use the technology, those cameras as well as our new, the improvements that we've made to how we alert and control emergency alerting at a local level. To initiate a significant response from the fire service into rink and valley. Following a very successful evacuation of that area, we've been working with our county to make sure that we have the resources and resources that we need to make sure that we have the resources and resources to exit that side of Santa Rosa. It's extremely unfortunate what happened in 17. Clearly there was a lot of lessons that were learned from that event. Technology has definitely changed and it's improved how we're functioning today and moving forward. That technology also is what helped put together our community in the development and understanding of our fuels. Climate, a lot of data and a lot of technology was used to develop the threat assessments for our community that was what we'll use over the next five years, which is the life of the plan to start working on those actionable items. Thanks. I'll take on to that and just say for those that may not be aware that a network of cameras that Paul said is actually publicly available. If you go to alert wildfire.org, anyone from the public can see those camera views. All right. Trisha, do we have any other questions? Your hands raised. There are no hands raised at this time. Okay. Then I think that will conclude our meeting for this evening. I want to thank all of you for taking time to participate. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And you can still do that by taking the online survey. And Trisha, do we have that slide available that has the survey URL that we couldn't put it? Thank you. So that's srcity.org forward slash 2017 fire settlement. And that survey will be open and available for residents to take through Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Sunday. And then you will be able to do the online survey until Wednesday. And on that website, you'll also see the meeting dates that Alan mentioned earlier for when Council will be considering all of this public input that we'll be providing to them. And we'll be posting updates about the settlement process on that site as well. We'll also have a recording of this meeting available it tonight and so feel free to pass that message along to others as well and so with that that concludes the evening and again thank you for your time