oals accomplished to solve our community problems lack of affordable housing has been a problem in Santa Rosa for over 25 years the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group was formed in the late 1990s because the city at that time was not meeting the regional housing needs assessments from the Association of Bay Area Governments the city never has met those goals since new faces and new perspectives are needed to solve the old lingering problems please do not appoint a previous member of this council because this council has not solved our problems please appoint me to these next 11 months of service to our community working together to solve issues in a complimentary and collaborative manner utilizing the recommendations of the city taxpayer funded open government task force we can solve some of our city's problems by focusing like a laser on housing matters and fiscal responsibilities first and foremost we can make a difference on past problems we can be visionary to solving the challenges of 2020 to 2030 first housing second climate adaptation with better urban forestry and urban green with good green infrastructure to diminish greenhouse gases with carbon sequestration more trees please i will fit in wherever needed i will do what's needed by you and i will do it in a collaborative manner in which you will find i am probably one of the better people that you may have worked with through all the issues that you will come up with though you may disagree with me i'm a polite guy thank you so much for your time thank you mr. DeWitt mr. Alvarez you're starting the question thank you thank you that mr. DeWitt and thank you for your continued interest and watchful eye on the work that we do on our services as a regular and close observer of the issues that we've been grappling with over the years you are aware of the great challenges we face related to our homeless issues with the large number of our residents who do not have a home to live in what do you see as critically from these efforts as it relates to our council political will we've talked about it for decades there's been homeless in our city for decades i think you could make some issues be solved by working with the county to get some of these homeless people on government-owned land we could utilize the fairgrounds we could utilize property right next to the Sonoma county administration buildings we could do things but unfortunately what occurs is often that lack of motivation if you will between the bureaucratic agencies that are involved sometimes they don't see it as if it's an emergency even though you've declared an emergency certain i would say vested interests in jurisdictional agencies bureaucratic approaches they're not necessarily interested in solving this problem tonight whereas the homeless person outside he knows it froze last night there was frost on the ground so they want to get it solved so again looking for specific things that you think that were we have not been doing because it sounds like we were talking about it's almost like we're housing people put them someplace how does that end the problem of homelessness because there may be others that will become homeless as well so i'm looking for long-term solutions to our homeless issue not not just based here in Santa Rosa but across the country as well yes thank you sir well first you deal with the root of the problem some people have various societal issues that might have to be dealt with but give them a roof tonight first we could do that by providing perhaps a single wide mobile homes that are used in what are called employment enclaves when a large business starts to build a new refinery or a new manufacturing plant they house their construction crews on site they put them in small single wide mobile buildings that house three people per mobile that has three bedrooms and three bathrooms we could do things if it was a true emergency like after hurricane Katrina and get people into housing once people are in housing those that might have mental or societal issues they could deal with that through a societal safety net those that want to perhaps not be i guess you'd say members of our society they want to be free they want to be outside they could do that somewhere else what we need to have is a bit of structure to it the fairgrounds the stables they could be cleaned out people couldn't be living there right now i really find it difficult because the county has land and they have funds and they want to spend a lot of money but they want to do it in long protracted responses rather than trying to do it like an emergency tonight or like right after the fires you get people into the veterans building i just left there i was there today for vet connect we have people there who help veterans who are homeless we give them goods we help them but they have to have a place to stay why not open up that veterans building and let them sleep in there three hots in a cot that's what people do when they're in the military thank you mr do it thank you sir thank you for your very comprehensive application mr do it and i have no further questions thank you sir thank you for your time and your ongoing interest in our community it's my pleasure miss would you be willing to talk about what you think the greatest personal quality that you would bring to our council what what you would bring based on your character and your disposition would be most necessary for our council the ability to compromise i believe i can collaborate with almost anyone and i've followed orders before from other people when i couldn't do anything different so i know how to play with the team and do things that need to be done for the good of the community it's not about me in any way share perform it's about trying to solve the problems that you as a council have already decided upon you have your priorities right now and for the next 11 months you need somebody to hit the ground running come in and work with you and get these things solved on what you want to have done by december when i'll leave the council thank you thank you for your time miss thanks again for participating in this doing my pleasure you made a comment about when you were working with the county regarding our homeless issue what efforts do you know that we are working how we are working or are not working with the county and what would you if you're one of the seven up here what would you initiate one of the dilemmas right now seems to be that because the county has a responsibility for the joridota trail some people in the city say well it's a county matter and then the people who are out there living right next to the joridota trail are in the santa rosa city limits and they're saying hey i have elected officials and those officials should be helping to solve this problem which is affecting me and my property right here right now there are people who are so i guess you'd say angered by what's occurring they don't see the need for compassion that some of those people are disabled some of those people have wheelchairs and use crutches and they can't get around real easy so what i would like to see happen is that the city and the county through the police departments and the sheriff's department go out there make sure that there's a law enforcement approach done within a humane way also dealing with health safety and welfare those folks that have warrants or have problems they need to be taken care of and perhaps not be sleeping in a tent the health issues such as using propane tanks it's very dangerous one is exploded and it's burnt a person's tent those things shouldn't be going on the idea of putting porta potties out and saying that that's a good response i don't think that's solving the problem of the pollution that's coming from those people who still may be utilizing the outdoors to relieve themselves there's a lot of very serious societal issues that are going on the city and the county could be working together i know you and miss hopkins from the county of the fifth district supervisor you're giving it your best but jurisdictional agencies aren't becoming as collaborative as they need to be to solve this in a timely manner right thank you as you're aware our community has experienced a couple of fires since 2017 the most recently the arcade what's your evaluation of the way the city has responded to that and what suggestions would you have us in preparing for unfortunately the potential next one well i believe there'll be another one we should be preparing by not having housing built in fire prone zones and i believe we should also be working with the people who actually make the decisions on where housing gets built the finance years the insurance companies and we say no there's certain areas that are fire prone and we're not going to submit our community to having to perhaps deal with another emergency secondary to that the city did a very good job in some ways to respond to the fires the last two times we've had them recently but for people who lost housing i heard there was a lot of concerns that they weren't able to be sheltered as quickly or as well as they would have liked to have been there wasn't as good of a warning system people would like a better warning system people who lived in the journeys in mobile home park who were unexpectedly burned out they basically had never gotten that resolved yet that's two full years they're still trying i saw on a future council agenda there'll be a matter to deal with them and try to talk with them and help them in my last three so i just want to confirm what you're saying so i heard you say don't build in fire prone zones do you consider northwest santa rosa fire prone zone some areas specifically up in the found grove area where the hamley fire burned up close to the community hospital so i can't change what's happening but that's a historical fact and you would be an advocate of not allowing building in those areas not new building what's already there is there and we can't take it down thank you hey mr. do it thank you sir i wanted to ask you a little bit about affordable housing you know we've had the opportunity to speak over the years about your ideas for affordable housing you're a member of hag how would you know obviously the biggest issue with affordable housing is finding the money to build it how would you if you're on this council find the money to build it well right now there's a project going forward called lantana it's being built out on the farthest southwestern border of the city not city-centered directly in contradiction of city priorities and yet it's the city housing authority that's been directing millions of dollars to that housing which was originally planned to be apartments multifamily rental and now they've switched it up in the middle of the game almost like a bait and switch after receiving millions of dollars and say it's going to be self-help owner i think one of the problems is is that the council's directives are not being followed by staff or members of boards and commissions they neglect to follow up on what your true priorities are your priorities are as i understand it to have affordable housing city-centered as close to the downtown area as possible what i would see having going on there is to work with the developers who are already doing things like this and make sure that when they say they're going to put housing in they do it such as what happened with the atnt building it was originally slated that yes we'll help you get that building because you're going to put in housing and then they didn't do that now the empire building across the street it's being built to put in housing for tourists a hotel to bring in money for various factions that'll be using it downtown perhaps but that doesn't house santa rosa residents the three tallest buildings in santa rosa are here in the downtown area for senior citizens apartments we could be doing more of that in closer to town and the seniors would like it i know veterans would like it recently i tried to help a veteran with a hudbash voucher get into a room we found him in a boarding house on college street and actually the city stalled him from doing that saying the window was not big enough to be an accident of fire then citing that boarding house and telling them they couldn't rent out any more rooms now so for an emergency please treat it like an emergency let people get housed and do our best to use our housing authority monies to be used in the downtown area where the downtown specific plan is now being thought about roberts avenue right over here less than a quarter well half a mile away as the crow flies that's a perfect site brownfield's money has gone there to help that get redeveloped we could get in there and get housing close to the railroad multi-story multi-family rental housing we got over 400 units of new ownership housing being built out there in the southwest what we really need is the multi-family and multi-story buildings close in to here too i mean we shouldn't look at it like you can't put something somewhere because we've decided that area doesn't want to have it it shouldn't work that way it should be fair across the city that we can put up multi-story buildings in areas where we've already made the plans for that santa rosa avenue is a perfect example mendicino avenue college avenue many of the houses along those roads were turned into businesses putting people out of housing so you folks have the power to solve these problems if we just put the energy forward in the next 10 years i'll give it my all in the next 11 months and do the best i can to help you sir all right thank you mr. duet i appreciate your contributions to our policy process but i have no further questions thank you i appreciate you giving me the time and mr. duet how you doing good thank you sir so you've been a very frequent and active participant in the open government task force it's been a focus of yours and a priority for the city at times what would you like to see most implemented from the original open government task force report as well as having participated in the new iteration working on a sunshine ordinance well i believe we should implement all of the recommendations from it and we should begin starting now i mean that to me is the true sign where do you want to start well i believe the agenda for next tuesday's meeting and all the information packets should have been available yesterday we should be working on looking at what's coming up next those things aren't compiled yet and there's matters on there that are of concern to public members who'd like to have more than just a few days to prepare for that upcoming hearing so the sooner information is made available to the wider community and as much information as possible it helps all of us it's something that's a real positive to make people think that our government is helping them there's a lack of trust out there in government right now we can build trust by being those people who say yes let's share the information let's make it available and let's help you find the information if you're a property owner who has a permit issue or you're a person who has a parking ticket issue the parking district itself is a concern to many people they don't understand it okay recently within the last couple of weeks you wrote a letter to the editor about this appointment yes calling on the council to appoint a new young fresh perspective if you end up getting the appointment from the council what will you do to try to cultivate new young fresh leaders throughout our community i'll be talking to that young man from rosalind that was ahead of me on the agenda i'd never heard of him before i'll go reach it out to him right now as a matter of fact and say let's work together i'm not just a one-trick pony though i'm not just about my neighborhood i'm about everybody in the community from benna valley to rink and valley over to the northwest being able to be a part and parcel of how we make the decision making that's not happening right now the young people they'll feel empowered if we reach out to them and say hey look you know we got this issue coming on we'd like for you to come and give us your point of view not back up our point of view come and tell us what you really think you as a young person who in 2030 will be dealing with these issues as an adult so i'm a real strong believer in youth we used to have a thing called youth build out in rosalind which helped teach young people to build some houses it went away because of federal funding but we could be doing those things especially now so i'm all about helping young people and the 11 months that i'm on here i will be that person that goes to high schools and talks with people and says hey can you come down here and be a part of our teen council can you be involved to learn the issues for what's important to you and your peers not your parents not me but your friends the people that you hang well i won't use that word the people you spend your time with that's what a teenager needs to know i think okay and then obviously you've done a lot of work with our veterans in the community what if you could select one thing for the council to do to try to help veterans what would it be house those homeless veterans first and foremost and then let the veterans work on the projects the veterans have advocated for such as the veterans trail over in rosalind we had come down here and asked you to let us save four houses and let those houses be moved by veterans and rehabilitated by veterans so homeless veterans would have a place unfortunately we weren't able to convince the city's bureaucracy although we might have gotten some council members support we lost those houses i think you just do it we've now come to the part of the program we have one minute for a closing statement well thank you very much for your time today i appreciate that you've been worn out already by probably listening to so many people speak with you about their pet projects this isn't about me and my projects at all it's about me trying to give you 11 months of my unrestricted time to do the best i possibly can to help you on what you chose as the priorities for the city you already have your marching orders if you will if you give me orders and say dwayne we want you to do this and this that's what's going to occur i'm a person that can follow directions get things done and make sure i do it in a pleasant and polite manner with everyone no matter how much they may not personally like me i get along with folks because i understand that in our land we still have the right to disagree and we can agree to disagree politely and do it in a positive manner and make santa rosa the best city and not just the state of california but i'm shooting for the entire night thank you mr do it it's been a pleasure let's relax another time i didn't get to tell you but we're having a a roseland event welcome this week uh as i know you're fully aware but i will remind you the way the process will be working today will give you three minutes for your opening and comment then each council member will have four minutes to ask you any question here she she chooses just as a heads up you maybe stop by a council member if they've heard enough and they want to ask another question and then once we're done with all of us having an opportunity to ask our questions you'll have a one-minute closing statement to make okay so with that please start your three-minute opening statement thank you mayor schwedhelm vice mayor fleming members of the city council i want to thank you for this opportunity to talk with you today about my qualifications to fill the vacant council position i have a unique perspective and a wealth of experience as current vice chair of the planning commission for a member of the major oversight committee and the open government task force as well as 28 and a half years as an employee of santa rosa in two different departments as stated in my application i'm a lifelong resident of sonoma county and have lived in santa rosa since 1978 my involvement with the city began in 1985 and continues to this day my background has a direct relationship to this opportunity in 1985 i was hired as housing program specialist with the city's department of housing and redevelopment my experience in homeless and affordable housing issues and programs will be valuable in the work being undertaken by the council as part of your tier one priorities in 1999 i was promoted to the position of administrative services officer in the police department i was part of the executive team leading that department my experiencing experience includes the preparation and management of a 44 million dollar budget personnel issues including hiring and labor negotiations in 2008 with the economic downturn i was part of the team making the tough decisions including the very difficult elimination of positions and laying off of employees in 2013 i retired from the city and since then i have taken on more and more challenging opportunities continuing to serve my community within one month of retirement i was appointed to the major oversight committee due to my knowledge as a major as the police department's major o contact in 2014 i was selected to fill a vacant position on the mayor's open government task force and in 2017 i was appointed to fill a position on the planning commission of which i'm now vice chair i was successful in both of these roles as i had been following their efforts and became immediately effective and i see this as parallel to this opportunity to become an effective contributing member of council you have a very aggressive work plan with your tier one priorities as well as decisions coming up such as the p3 labor negotiations the general plan update and the downtown station area plan i can be effective in helping getting things and helping to get things done my familiarity with rosenberg's rules city processes and procedures make me an ideal candidate for this position i have the valuable foundation and real life experience for this next step in my community service i ask you for the opportunity to bring my skills and practical experience to your vital role on the development of public policy and your ever important decision making with respect to the questions asked in advance i have no time constraints that would limit my ability to be available for all meetings regardless of the time both council and any great thank you probably a new sound for you uh mr schorger you get to start this round thank you very much for being here this morning this afternoon now um you mentioned in your application in your opening statement that your work in our police department what would you say are the pros and cons of having worked there uh pros and cons of being a city employee in the police department specifically in the police department uh as it relates to this position yes i think definitely a pro is that i prepared and administered the budget uh it was that department's one of the largest general fund uh at least at that time uh it was the largest general fund department budget and so i was intimately familiar with how the budget is developed and um then the administration of that so to me that is a definite pro uh also the fact that i was involved with uh in personnel issues and provided information for labor negotiations gives me benefit that some other candidates probably don't have as for con i can't think of one it was a great place to work just as a city was a great the city in general was a great place to work for those years thank you and what do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess that's probably a two prong answer if i can uh i think the first is to be able to listen you have to listen as a council member from what i've observed over the many years i've been watching council is to be successful you really need to listen to all segments of the population and the community and come to uh issues with an open mind and seek out information i think that that is probably one of the biggest uh biggest things a council member needs to have thank you um there you're this speaks to your experience on the on the planning commission perhaps and there's a uh we are currently involved in a fair amount of discussion around infill housing and sometimes that that infill housing is no proposed in our downtown and we are downtown is surrounded by historic neighborhoods and sensitive areas how do you balance that need for for affordable housing and just housing in general uh when it butts up against some of our historic neighborhoods it's interesting you should ask that since that issue did come up when there was the joint planning commission council meeting uh regarding the downtown station area plan there was some there were questions uh at that time and then we also received some public uh correspondence uh one of the things that we talked about there was to have uh kind of the height for infill development tiered towards or tiered away from the historic site so there would be a buffer that from the historic neighborhood so there would be a buffer between infill development uh in the downtown area uh specifically and uh the historic neighborhood so i think uh issues like that also one of the things i had experience with when i was in housing was the deter commons project next to the deter brown barn and that project became a much better project after we received a lot of input from the neighbors uh and there was those were very tough community meetings that we had back in the 80s or 90s uh but the view that we were going into that neighborhood with was ended up being totally different than what was actually built because of listening to the neighbors thank you not for showing up but for your decades of service to our community um it's really quite notable how much work you've done both as an employee and as a resident for our community i'm curious to know different from your experience on the planning commission and measure oversight you know the council takes on issues where we set policy and are going beyond interpreting policy and you're an excellent team player i've watched a lot of your work and you do a really great job working with your peers in a respectful way to implement policy i'm curious to know and this is a bit of a difficult question not intended as a gotcha but just to get some insight into your thought process about what you think some of the the biggest missed opportunities or mistakes our city has made since you started working here and i know that's a really big question and it's fine to just pick one mistake and it's not intended to be a landmine and it doesn't have to be from this council it could just be something that had you been in control or been the dictator of our fine town what you would have done differently and a dictator with a bigger budget than we have wow um probably you know this goes back a ways but perhaps actually it does go back quite a ways i think courthouse square should have been unified earlier i think that was a missed opportunity it should have happened earlier probably never should have been divided in the first place but and to be honest with you i was not a proponent of the unification of courthouse square i was looking at it you know the dollars and cents and thinking there's different ways to do this but i will say seeing the vitality of different events in courthouse square i think it was a good idea and i am totally supportive of it and i wish that could have happened earlier perhaps you know in the 90s it would have helped create a more vital downtown earlier and going along with this line of questioning what would you do what would you take away or add to our goals as we head into goal setting uh one of the things i would i don't think i would take anything away uh you have accomplished some of the goals already or you're pretty well into a number of them one of the things i would add is uh around employee morale and recruitment and retention uh and i think that that carries over into a number of your goals such as housing and infrastructure uh it's hard to attract employees when they can't afford to live here and and to retain employees when they can find you know a different you know that they can go from say being a renter to a homeowner in a different community uh so that's one thing but that also has such an overlap with all the other goals that you have and has there been a decision that we've made in the last year that you would have done differently the only thing i can think of is in two instances where um there were projects that were appealed to you uh that had come to the planning commission and instead of making a decision right then and there you uh asked people to get together and come up with a solution and i think that in the long run that was a good thing but at the time i was thinking make a decision make a decision but in the long run i think it ended up being better it is hard to make those decisions but i'm sure you know that thank you you're welcome i love i love that i love that twirl sound it's not giving you too much credit quite yet so the um on the same lines of the the council decision you just agreed with because i find it interesting you know on the planning commission and so yeah appeals do come here how do you reconcile that when the council disagrees with the decision that the planning commissioner you personally disagreed with the council decision when the planning commission was going in another direction uh you have a different purview than the planning commission does uh the planning commission's purview and is to follow the city's rules and regulations and codes and the general plan there's not a lot of discretion when it comes to some of the the decisions that we make um and you have a lot more discretion uh to make decisions and you disagree with me you disagree with me that's not i try you know i mean you disagree with me i'm not going to take it personal okay or personally one of the things just not taken personally because i know you watch a lot of council meetings you attend a lot of them and sometimes uh some of the conversations in here can get somewhat emotional and um how would you plan on dealing if you are chosen to deal with that we make a decision but some folks take it personal make it personal against you how would you plan on reconciling that and dealing with that well i have had that this that experience both as a staff member over my tenure working for the city as well as as a planning commissioner and i think i would go to what the city's basic principles are and focus on the issue not the person and people are get emotional emotional when it comes to certain issues and and i would try not to take it personally which is probably easier said than done but i would try and just focus on the issue that's being discussed in your application you talk about uh when you began working with the city there are no programs to assist in creating or funding homeless shelters so we've come a long way since then what do you think we're not doing that we should be doing in the area of homelessness uh putting more pressure on the various communities that aren't having taken in their fair share uh and what i mean by that is i see i i've always seen santa rosa as being the leader in the homeless issue and there are certain communities within this county certain cities and towns that aren't stepping up and i think as much pressure that you can bring to bear on your colleagues on other councils um needs to occur uh i think the coordinated effort that's now being worked on as part of the continuum of care leadership council is a great step in that direction i just would like to see some of the smaller communities um be a participant a player just because i'm pretty sure you've already looked at our review or upcoming agendas and one of the items that we'll be discussing is uh going evergreen sandworth going all over and what's your position or what are your thoughts on that not your position what are your thoughts on that well it's a very expensive proposition uh and i know that you have a study session uh coming up on that and i think the end of this month beginning and next month i think that um i would need to see what the cost is and what if the city does go evergreen what else can't be done and i think that's something that you need to look at in any decision that you make is you know the pro the um if you do this what can't you do and do you have any thoughts about what would be on that higher list of the city can stop doing this and redirect resources whether it be to ever pay for evergreen or any other count city priority no i don't my turn this week's like first i just want to tell you uh publicly that when i was reviewing your application i was really in awe of how many years of service you've had in various departments and different initiatives and there's somebody who has not been involved clearly as long i appreciate that on a deep level thank you one thing that struck me was your involvement affordable housing and that was an area of your background and expertise that i wasn't too familiar with and specifically in nonprofit finance of of funding affordable housing construction what do you see as the biggest flaw right now in the construction of affordable housing finance and what would you do assuming you could do it in 11 months to remediate that well it's it's very expensive as you will know to build any housing but an affordable housing in general um i think uh one of the things can be to help leverage funds that could that will be coming down from the state and hopefully at some point the federal government to build affordable housing to pull the money together to make sure you have you can have a project that is feasible also uh to really when projects come before you really look to see their timing i mean you don't want to commit money to a project that is going to be you know five or six years down the road and you don't want to dribble the money out to a lot of projects so that you can't uh really make one a project work uh so i think did that answer your question i think yeah okay that was pretty sufficient um but you know following up we heard from somebody earlier who believed we should target these funds for affordable housing downtown how do you personally feel about downtown being areas of affordable housing development would you do it all entirely and i'm asking especially as in your capacity as the vice chair of the planning commission because when he brought this up i thought to myself maybe that actually would result in something happening downtown but i also thought well what you know are there are there downsides to doing just affordable housing in the downtown should it be mixed etc what would your thoughts be i think that in the downtown area there should be a mix of housing for all income levels and all all types uh i don't think it should any money should be targeted um just to one area in the community i do believe that should be spread out affordable housing and it should be spread out as as much as possible in all areas of the city but i could see perhaps allocating a certain portion of the funds specifically for downtown but i don't think it should there should only be affordable housing downtown okay thank you and my last question is one thing that's become apparent to me is we've had a lot of interest from people in roseland to take this seat and in there throughout the course of the interviews it became apparent to me that some still feel as though we are underserving the community and that to me was a little bit eye-opening um how would you try to whether it's accurate or not how would you try to do better and at the very least uh change perceptions that that we are really in court doing the best we possibly can and really going out of our way to um not only want to say change perceptions but to actually do it i guess because it's been a common narrative i think one way is to uh have neighborhood get-togethers in roseland area uh you know working with the the beat sergeant or the beat lieutenant to have um did different neighborhood events and community events uh reaching out to perhaps reaching out to some of the people who applied for this position to be continued this week so you actually uh out of all of the applicants have a really unique background having both served as staff for the city and then also having served on numerous boards and commissions can you talk to us a little bit about with the second pat on a time where you disagreed with the staff recommendation that came before the body that you were sitting on how did you handle that and how did you end up voting on that uh when i was on the major oversight committee uh i felt that the committee was not getting all the information that we should have had as it relates to the budget uh and i had um an advantage that i knew what was kind of under the hood so to speak of the budget and but the other members didn't and so then i ended up people looked to me to ask those tough questions and there were times uh when especially when uh there was some reallocation of positions in recreation and parks at the time that i disagreed with uh and i felt we weren't being provided all of the information that we should have to be able to make an informed decision uh and i disagree respectfully i am a respectful person i don't personally attack people i just you you ask questions in a respectful manner and you keep asking questions in a respectful manner till you get an answer so in that in that instance did you end up asking staff to go back to get more information or did you end up voting on it uh yeah i think we ended up getting more info going back and getting more information if i remember and this was 2013 or 14 yeah i understood and then i think uh all of us uh up here one of the things that we we all collaborate very well we know the virtues of collaboration but we also also bring our own core values that help guide us in our decision making what do you consider to be your core values that are non-negotiable my ethics i think i'm a very ethical person and to me that's non-negotiable okay is that yeah that's helpful we have uh you've obviously looked at our priority list you know what our top priorities are as it pertains to serving on subcommittees which ones do you want to plug in on and how do you think that that best serves us in getting our tier one priorities addressed uh in knowing what your committees are i think that the two that really would resonate with me it would be the uh long-term financial stability and audit committee and because of my background in city budget i think that i could be very useful there and then also the cannabis subcommittee as being on planning commission every time we have a meeting we see one or two cannabis applications come forward and there are things that i think could be tweaked in the ordinance and i would like to see the cannabis subcommittee look at that ordinance and i have actually spoken to the chair about that to say we've really asked before we're out of time if i could ask you a specific question within that do you think that the city's set back requirements are adequate within our ordinance i think they need to be expanded to include um other educational facilities and what's in the education code so you still do the 600 feet i'd have to to take a look at where um what other communities have done but i still i do think the 600 feet is probably adequate okay thank you so much i thought i knew you kieran i want to focus a little bit on affordable housing uh your your experience goes back to redevelopment for example uh so looking at things today where we're heading and trying to achieve as it relates to affordable housing how do you go about identifying and processing what may be the best uh funding mechanisms for specific needs as we address our affordable housing needs well it it kind of i look at affordable housing kind of like as a patchwork quilt when it comes to all the funding because you need to cobble together funding sources from everywhere to be successful um i think some of the as i said before some of the funds that are coming down from the state uh will be helpful if the red gets off the ground some of that uh funding source um i think uh looking at tax exempt bonds which i know that the city has a long history of using for affordable housing so and and once again looking at what projects can get off the ground quickest we don't want to spend our valuable resources on projects that are you know 10 years down the road five years down the road we want stuff we want stuff on the ground that answer the question it does thank you thank you very much uh then the other topic these are important topics because this coming year we'll be getting into obviously our budget process and labor negotiations as well with the majority of our our units uh share with us some of your experience and things that you bring to the table with both of these processes probably interrelated as well uh but you touched on some of them being involved with the police department's budget but what do you bring to the table as far as the entire overall process and both of these employer relations and the budget what i bring is the fact that i would know what questions to ask um having been in the role of preparing a budget knowing what um the different line items are uh you know i hopefully wouldn't tend to get in the weeds too much uh so that and then also what it's like as with the labor side i was a founding member of the san rosa management association was one of the managers were not did not have an employee association and back in o five for a variety of reasons we banded together and i was one of the founding members so i saw it from that side of the table and then when i was in the police department though i didn't sit at the at the labor negotiation table i was instrumental in providing information knowing what kind of information is needed to provide um so i think i have especially with labor i have experience on both sides of the table and with budget i have experience on how to prepare a budget and how to read a budget and the kinds of questions to ask thank you and you touched on this earlier as it relates to uh our homeless issues big issue growing and growing uh and you talked about the need for other uh communities to be engaged as well what other solutions do you bring the things that we may not be doing now as a council to address this and trying to end homelessness overall i think one of the things that which i i know that you all will be looking at it is um sanctioned encampments and is that is something that the city should be doing um i know you have the um i can't remember the acronym the program where like churches can have people uh at their places and reading the paper today the county is going to go towards that but i think that's one step that needs thank you once again for this opportunity i hope through the process that i've demonstrated that i'm clearly the most qualified person for this position i've had a constant commitment and service to the community for almost 35 years and i hope that you that i will get your support thank you thank you so much okay council we will be breaking out for lunch break please be back ready to do our next interview at 130 130 thank you i'm getting blown up you reconvened this afternoon's meeting um welcome is minor thank you for participating in this application process i know you've read all the documents but i'll just rehash what you'll be experiencing uh we'll give you three minutes to make an opening statement that each council member will have four minutes to ask any questions um they want within reason and any that they say the attorney allows uh just give you the heads up if um council member wants to ask another question they may interrupt you because they we each only got four minutes and we want to get as much information as we could and you'll have an opportunity for a one minute one minute closing comment and then you also that there is a new refined buzzer so please be respectful of the times if you hear that stop and we'll be moving on okay so opening statement thank you city council for giving us an opportunity to present ourselves to the community as a whole and to you as a as well i am available for all the city council meetings and also for the goal setting meetings i was able to participate in that last year and any other additional meetings we may have i'm available for that as well i've rearranged my schedule i'm ready as for today one of the things i want to do is tell small story student one lived in an area that had guns drugs gangs and violence such as being woken up to the neighbor next door and front neighbor being murdered a childhood fear being shot in the head before the age of 18 experiencing the 92 rides and fearing whether or not they would see the next day running from drive-by shootings from walking to the grocery store three home burglaries friends experiencing teen pregnancy and more student too played the violin for many years met many stars such as Muhammad Ali jesse jackson chico de bars cast from cheers and star track next generation participated in school clubs neighborhood watch performer on television taught sunday school participated in academic pentathlon decathlon junior high school valedictorian all these things that these students have in common was that was me so that brings us to today why i do the work that i do in the community it has a lot to do with my upbringing it was difficult but yet i'm still here it i'm telling you the story of this because it shows the perseverance that you have that don't let your circumstance dictate what you do in the future so as of today you can find me on many boards and commissions you can find me in the public working with different people in the community you will find me in rosa and cbi doing work over there some of you i've done work with as well as well as some of the staff of city of santa rosa you'll see me vice chairing measure oh you'll find me also on measure why oversight committee and participating in the public with various meetings meetings and things and activities within the community why choose me i have stakeholders i have relationships with people in the community as well as in the county so as we're moving forward and you're taking the time to digest what you hear today let me be part of the team we all have a common goal and that's make santa rosa great again okay thank you miss one mean you're first all right make santa rosa great again wow so miss minor thank you so much for coming in today and thank you for all of your continued service to our city i'm curious to know you have a very um you know a specific background that you detailed for us um and we share something how many played the violin and we're obsessed with star trek the next generation i'm not afraid to say live long and prosper and i can do it both hands but at any rate i'm curious to know how your experience would inform your views and your goals as we go into goal setting and budgeting this year um like i mentioned before i was able to attend the goal setting last year both days and i got to see the process so i also participated as a community engager and spoke on the behalf of the community so i clearly understand the procedure that is needed in order for us to move forward so when it comes to that information everything that i've experienced whether i'm in rosa and whether i'm in panoraila vet district or coffee park it all pertains to the city as a whole so it is important that we take those goals and i'm going to stop because i want something really specific and it's good to get this context but what i want to know from you is what you would bring to our goal setting what you would add what you would take away what you keep i would add my personality of course but also the relationships i have within the community i would be able to do the community engagement that is necessary to bring forward policy and changes in policy find out from both parties what that looks like for them and then bring that back to the council and discuss it with you all are there any specific goals that you have that are not on our tier one or tier two priority list no it's pretty much the same um like i said before you'll find me in the community currently working on some of those policies with other agencies and the tier one and tier two i believe in those on those policies and those changes and i look forward to adding to to the to the policy change is there anything that we are doing that you would change or suggest that we approach differently it's a really broad question well because i'm a community engagement i think it's very important that the council as well as the city continue to build those relationships with the community and continue to listen to what the community has to say that's very important when we sit in these meetings and come to city council and we hear things being reported out and that's not what was said at the meeting it's very disappointing so continue to build that community engagement that would definitely help with with the city moving forward are you suggesting that we could use an improved fidelity between the specific feedback from communities and it's um translation to us but there's something that gets lost in the process yes for sure uh i work with rosin cbi that group is predominantly latinx and so it's always important to have that communication and so i'm the lone soldier there but we make it work if we can make it work the city can make it work too but we may not have the time to get into the specifics today but as always when someone comes forward with a very specific and achievable problem i like to ask them for specific and achievable goals to to solve it i know that you're uh have a lot of work in your place but i would look forward to hearing more from you thank you thanks again for participating in this um first one i just want to ask you what would you anticipate being your biggest challenge challenge to being a successful and productive council member if you were to be appointed the biggest challenge um at this particular time i feel i'm ready because of the work i currently do it would just be shifting my priorities which i've already done so it would just be a learning curve of just getting in there and continuing the process that i'm currently doing now okay specifically if you talk about one of our focus areas has been downtown and revitalizing it what thoughts or suggestions or things would you be in favor of continuing to do or do that we're not doing now to revitalize our downtown for the downtown there's some other issues that's going on as far as like safety and moving forward with the building we also have other specific plans here in the city of center rosa so it's not just downtown so even though we're moving forward in regards to the downtown please don't forget the other areas that we have available we have specific plans for those so we need to make sure that as we're moving forward in regards to downtown that we're doing the same for the other areas but as far as downtown some of the movement that's happening right now is good movement okay and when you talk about a lot of needs across the city so this i know you come from the rosin part of town let's talk about infrastructure priorities for you where would you suggest those and what would you be suggesting for the infrastructure it would have to be with collaborations with the city staff along with city council and also with community members also some of the physical infrastructure as far as the streets and the buildings that we have we have some dilapidated buildings that needs there's a dire need of repair so the infrastructure is key not just for the state the city as a whole but for everyone here because if we don't take care of what we have it's going to cost a lot more later well so tell me a little bit more about how you do those priorities so when you talk about infrastructure and capital improvement budgets we do have this building is built in 1969 but we also have a lot of roads out there that community members drive in all the time how would you set some of those priorities for staff what they currently have been doing has been working it would be continue working with those entities and continue to expand on what we can do to improve that and what we can do to improve it in a way where it doesn't cause a lot of money there are some creative ideals out there that could possibly work and also possibly looking into more funding there's other entities out here that we can collaborate with and possibly receive more funding okay and i know you've attended some council meetings and every council meeting we get to make decisions can you tell us about some decisions that this council has made that you would disagree with and what direction do you think we should have went gone in something that i disagree with you may have agreed with everything we've done well there have been times when i have disagreed with something and when i come to the meeting and i hear both sides it changes my opinion so it is important to hear both sides so once you hear both sides then you can make a more valid distinction between okay that's maybe i can see that now so it's it's here in both sides and they're making a decision from that okay and as you you may be aware that the county is proposing a half-sense fire-related sales tax what are your thoughts on that well the public they do have concerns with the increase in taxes but if we continue to collaborate with each other and find other ways to maybe look into providing that fund that would be great thank you wait for me thanks miss minor i want to thank you for being here i remember when i first met you over at the rosin village neighborhood center and getting to know you since i've always just been so impressed and grateful and inspired by your level of engagement in that community and i want want my first question is going to be based on that experience that you have with rosin we've had a number of candidates come through who have made pretty stark points that they despite annexation despite a lot of investment that the city has made into rosin they still feel as though that they're not they're being underserved compared to other parts of town you know somebody who may even have lived experience with that what would you say or do if you're on this council to try to correct course with those constituents well a little bit i do a little bit of that now what i'm in the community doing surveys of wherever it is that i'm doing and i make it a point to express to them the difference of before annexation and after annexation so the narrative has to be clear and when santa rosa took that that area over and then explained to them what happened before versus what's happening now i did hear some of the community members say that there was a difference with the policing and that was something that was complained a lot prior to annexation so it's really making sure that the narrative is clear and making sure that we continue to communicate with the the people of rosin and when if we're having that dialogue and they feel like they're in the loop some of the issues we have now will dissipate so you feel as though it's it's really a communication shortcoming that the city has less so than an actual practical boots on the ground investment kind of it would need to be both need to be definitely have the education and definitely having the open forum for community members to speak on and then also having boots on the ground okay how do you see yourself as that conduit of information between city hall and rosin what would you do to practice what you're preaching oh i'll be out there in the streets talking i'm talking talking and making sure that people understand what the city is about and what we're where we're trying to go as a city and making sure that people understand what our goals are as a city in relation to rosin and what rosin goals are in relation to the city okay um that's all the questions i have you have a minute 44 is there anything that you hope that i had asked that you might want to talk about no i look forward to working with you guys and being up there okay thanks just minor hey miss minor how are you doing i'm good so one of the things that you allude to in your application is the potential to run for city council representing the roslin district in 2020 how would you balance the need to introduce yourself to that district and focus on those issues with the reality that the seat is in at-large position with six other districts that you'd need to introduce yourself to an advocate for well i have a good uh background in collaborating with everybody across the city you can find me in various areas talking and communicating working with different entities within the city uh my son was in the pine island district when we dealt with the fires of coffee parks that had a direct relationship with that being displaced from the school for two months and dealing with being in other areas so i have a clear understanding that yes it's at a large position i have a lot of contacts and people that i speak with across the board in the many works that i do so i get to hear from every district about some of the issues that's going on in their district that's great uh and we first met also similar to jack uh meeting with roslin cbi talking about the rental inspection ordinance that rental inspection ordinance is going to come before the council with a new council member on it being as involved as you have been in that do you feel like it's been crafted uh appropriately or what changes would you advocate for to it as it comes to the council well being i attended some of those meetings uh we had input in the crafting of that so as we're moving for it i feel it's it's a pretty sound policy and i just hope that we're able to execute it as a city as a whole and that it works the way it's supposed to work okay we obviously we've dealt a lot with emergency response over the last couple of years how have you seen the evolution of the city's response what do you think we're doing well and what do you think we need to do better on as far as the emergency response um i'm partial to fire and police and parks and recs because i do sit on the measure o oversight committee and the work i've seen has been great one of the things that i experienced as a community person was being able to participate in a tour of the city and what measure o funds have to do for the city and i appreciate everything that was done in regards to that and learning about the recently purchased long ladder fire truck prior to the fires and that being available for the fire so as we continue to move forward and not only the fires and other issues we have here in the city our team that we have here in the city our chief and our police and fire they're doing a great job expanding on the funds that they have and as we're moving forward i hope they continue to be able to be supported on the behalf of the city and the and the council and with your measure o hat on uh somewhere in the not so distant future will be the reauthorization of that measure o at that time do you feel based on where you sit today that you'll advocate for its continuance or would you want to see some reforms to how that measure was drafted i would advocate for measure o because of the if you take the fire and the police out of it what it does for the city and what it provides for the children of the city that is awesome being able to participate in activities that are free free of charge that is something that helps keep the youth off the streets so i would definitely advocate for the continuance of measure o excellent thank you so much diva can you share with us some ideas that you might have as relates to media some of our affordable housing needs so for the affordable housing um some of the things that could possibly help with that is maybe increasing the fine um that is associated with uh providing affordable homes make the fine a little higher so that people can make sure that it's put into the projects that they're bringing forward and then also continue to work with the community and find out exactly what the needs are because we have a large number of market rate facilities that will be coming into town but we also need to be mindful that the workers here they're not in market rate income brackets so we need to make sure that we're able to have things available for our hard worker families in service or the fields or whatever it is so looking into maybe increasing the fines a little bit and you mentioned uh earnings and wages how do we address that uh to make things more affordable in our community well you took the first step by passing the the 15 an hour rate and as we continue to move forward and look at the cpi and the cost of living and all of those issues we would have to move accordingly to that so as we're moving forward as a city and some people need additional money or help that's something that we need to continue to look at and move forward again thank you for the work that you've done in your neighborhood you continue to do that in your and your engagement with uh city board as well uh what ideas do you have for uh increasing civic engagement by our by our broad community as a part um well part of that i am a community engagement teacher i teach an elective class to seventh and eighth graders so starting young and teaching that to the students in how to engage the community and showing them that they have a voice so i tell my students hey look at me today so hopefully they're watching i don't know but getting into the community and really teaching the concept of community engagement and what that looks like everybody can complain but what are you going to do about it are you going to just complain and do nothing or complain or do something so it's making sure that the community understands how they can get involved we are in need of people to join the commissions and boards and committees and people are not stepping up so we need to engage in that aspect and educate and make sure they understand that this is where changes can happen and then once they understand that are you available to participate maybe even changing the meeting times i don't know that is something that we have to look into as we're moving forward for it as a city thank you even good afternoon miss minor thank you for being here today um what would in the in the spirit or the conversation around affordable housing um what would you uh what are your thoughts about infill development as a strategy and how do you how would you um kind of mitigate the fears or concerns of the neighborhoods especially our historic neighborhoods when it comes to infill development um to mitigate the concerns again it goes back to educating the public um there are times when we see signs that go up and say hey come speak at council come speak at planning commission if they don't understand that concept and understand what that entails it means nothing so and and moving forward and mitigating some of the fears is just really educating and sometimes we might have to pay a little extra to get that information out to the public whether it's in the flyer form newspaper radio facebook uh the flea market whatever that looks like that's what we need to do do you support the philosophy of infill development yes to some degree well they just recently had a fire and on jenice and one of the concerns was the density so to have it it would be great but then there's other fears that come along with that what do you think is the most important ability a city council member should have well is that again what's the most important ability you think a city council member should possess being personable being able to be accessible to the public and just being someone that's listening to the public and then finding a solution that might work for that citizen or that group thank you and what does governance mean to you governance means a body of rules and regulations to help everybody move forward so something that works today may not work tomorrow so you would have to change it so as we're governing whether it's the city or or a committee you have to make changes so as we're moving forward and things change you have to change your governance thank you all right those are all the questions from council you now have a minute for a closing statement thank you once again for giving us an opportunity as you can see we have a lot of people that apply today i hope that you take everything that i stand in consideration that this is an opportunity for you to make a big statement as we're moving forward and pick someone that really understands both sides as a as a community engager as a city council person as a mom as a business owner i understand all those avenues thank you thank you welcome david thank you for participating in this process so just give a quick overview of the material you've already read but we'll provide you a three-minute opportunity for an opening comment then well each council person will have four minutes to ask you any questions he or she would like you may be interrupted because again it's we're very time sensitive here so if they got enough information they want a little bit more than me interrupting the middle of that okay then you'll have the final word you get a minute for a closing statement so all right please three minutes for your opening statement all right thank you very much nice to see all of you um uh ma'am at home vice-mayor Fleming and council members thank you for allowing me a few minutes of your time this afternoon i must say i am heartened that there are 19 candidates for this job i'm sure that you're probably heartened that with me you were just over halfway there so we'll continue on from there but it is heartening to me that so many people want to step forward and help the city of santa rosa and contribute to the city of santa rosa and fill this vacancy left by miss combs so that i think is only a good thing and it's nice to know that there are so many people who want to make santa rosa a better place to live work play raise the family and just generally enjoy life it's important to me to be here today because public service is a core value of mine my father was a council member to small town bellingham washington and i have served on a number of commissions uh santa rosa library commission and it's a core value of mine it's important to me to be here and it's important to me to serve and contribute to where i work i am prepared to regularly attend scheduled council meetings i have the council's goal setting session in march on my calendar already should i be selected to fill this role and i'm taking an extended leave from my employer in may prior to my official retirement date in july so i do have time available to devote to the council meetings to subcommittee meetings and to being an advocate and an ambassador for the city of santa rosa so let me take a couple of minutes and tell you why i am your ideal candidate to fill this position i'm results oriented i believe in a quick fix when it's available maybe some market umbrellas down on that square until those trees come in you know i'm also gonna i'm someone who looks at long term sustainability i'm going to tell you a quick story about that i met a young woman from a local health care organization the other day and she introduced herself to me and said that she had met me before i didn't remember her but we had met nearly 20 years ago and she was one of the first graduates of the health care workforce development program which is now part of the junior college health occupations program and nearly 20 years ago i was on the original steering committee for the group that developed the program and we founded a home at the junior college and it's been producing health care workers and leaders in our community ever since then so i share this as an example of vision of implementation and of sustainability to improve our community some things just take a long time and there are things that i'm doing today that i may never live to see the results of but that's just okay with me that's fine you know i'm good at playing that's that buzzer that ends the opening comments okay thank you council comments and i get to start um so dave can you share with us what you believe is the most important thing the single most important thing about you that will convince us you're the right person to fill this vacancy yes um i am a quick study i have been in government work before with the Santa Rosa library commission i understand budgeting and the main thing that i think sets me apart is my collaborative informative and communicative style and i'm a fun guy to work with i take things seriously uh because they are serious um but there is room for um having a good time while we do it okay and with your experience in the library system what suggestions or uh offerings would you make for the city of santa rosa in ways to enhance what we currently offer the community and way of library services well definitely rosalind let's make it a real part of the library system not just a temporary part as it is now and like most things like the city it needs and continues to need ambassadors and spokespeople i would encourage all of our council members to be ambassadors for our library system it's a valuable asset in our community so one of the things because we have had this discussion and this council has set aside some funding for it but not a hundred percent of funding so where do we come up with the funding or what will we stop funding so that we could fund the rosalind library you know i think uh within an organization like a library um there is a library foundation um it is not but there is no reason why it should not be a multimillion dollar foundation uh so a public private venture to help ensure a new library and rosalind to make sure that our current libraries are functioning and are in good spaces and are meeting the technological needs of our community so i would say a public private venture uh is really a great way to go forward with that and there's already those building blocks in place and so with your employment in the healthcare field it offers you i think a unique experience with those experiencing homelessness so that's one of our council of tier one priorities here what thoughts or direction would you give the city as to ways to help and homelessness in our community you know homelessness uh i don't need to tell you it was a complex issue and in the hospital setting i can tell you that a lot of the people we see have mental health problems right a lot of them are there on 51 50 holds and how do we treat those people well first of all we need to treat them all with dignity whether they have mental health problems financial problems or whatever the issue might be why they're homeless so how do we make sure that we have a dignified system for treating them meeting with them hearing them and also how do we include them as our neighbors they're not foreigners they're not aliens there are community members so outreach from individuals from organizations like the ones that are currently doing some network catholic charities for example and i think we have opportunities to use existing facilities to house people some people say they might not be dignified enough the fairgrounds for example but i think we need to look at all opportunities and see where can we house people especially during inclement weather and i'm a big believer in a housing first solution to solving a lot of homelessness issues great i know your application you mentioned you've been a resident 30 years here correct so you obviously experienced the october 17 fires can you give us a letter grade for our efforts towards recovery from the tubs fire uh yeah i'd give everybody an a you know and i'd give that an a for effort it's an important issue and i think we all pulled together we were all there we were all helping each other thank you mr ebright i want to thank you for for being here and thank you for all the work that you've done as a library commissioner towards advancing the interests of a rosalind library in rosalind just for the sake of the public i remember working with you and you were really instrumental in making that become a reality and i'm with you and that i hope it can move forward in the future uh one question that i want to ask and it's not meant to be subversive or create a land mine for you but what have you read in the paper in the last few years or you know of course of 10 years that were decisions that this council has made actually i want to refocus that to this council because this is the council you'd be joining what decisions have we made that you felt were bad decisions or incomplete or missed opportunities to do something better you know i'm not going to lay it at the feet of the council i understand the city government is a large organization but you know i'd be really happy to move into a downtown condo and people keep threatening to build them and by golly i'd love to see him be built so how do we expedite that process so i can move downtown and live in a nice place we're working on that but do you have any ideas potentially concrete policy solutions that could help advance that goal well i don't know what barriers stand in the way of developers um and are there ways that we can provide um not just financial incentives but other incentives so that people will want to move downtown i have friends who say i don't like going downtown i don't know why they say that i love our downtown i love our square uh so again i'd say part of that is ambassadorship advocacy and it's the role of all of you and i think other people in our community to do that and put those benefits forward so that people know what they are so if obviously homelessness is becoming as you put it in correctly a very complex uh and dynamic and sometimes fluid issue but um if you had ten million dollars how would you invest it in solutions and in what solutions would you invest first of all given homelessness i would say that ten million dollars isn't a lot of money great answer okay um just to put things in scale um but um you know part of it there's suffering out there first thing i would do no harm i would believe as much suffering as possible as quickly as possible and if that's moving people into temporary housing let's do that identifying those people who need mental health and other health care services let's get that for them let's make those people part of our society again so they do not feel ostracized so you have just over a minute left and those were my core questions i wanted to ask you but is there anything that you wish i had asked you that you want to take this minute to share yeah i'd like to know or let me tell you the answer to the question why is this important to me and why am i even here i love the city of santa rosa this is my home i've been here for 30 years my wife and i live here my daughter lives here my granddaughter lives here i expect to live here until i die i'm not going to retire someplace else i'm going to retire here and very soon actually um so that's why this is important to me and that i think is one of the things that it may not set me apart but it certainly gives me the heart to do the work of a city council member thanks for that addition i have no further questions thank you mr e right how are you doing good thank you so one of the things that you obviously have had to deal with grapple with and adapt to is the public safety power shutoffs from your role in the health care industry can you talk a little bit about what evolution uh you have made or or the organization has made that you could bring to this city as suggestions for ways we can do it better or things that we should consider as we go through the the public safety power shutoffs yeah i mean i think we need to identify who's vulnerable for starters i mean they are blanket power shutoffs uh but they do affect people differently so how do i identify the needs of people when the power is off am i on some sort of medical device for example that's what's familiar to me um and do i know who those people are and i do know and do we know how to help them and get them a battery backup whatever it might be um so identifying the needs of people during a power shutoff and i will say i was heartened by um how everyone pulled together i was fortunate i lived in an area uh without power and without i mean with power and without uh i was not in an evacuation zone i wouldn't exactly say it was a party at our house but there's sure a lot of people there i think one of the interesting things about sitting in this seat is you both advocate for city response to address the impact but also have a role to play telling santa rosa's story more broad in the state and in the federal if you were in this seat uh not just advocating for changes to address the public safety power shutoff but would you be advocating to the state for pg need to be able to shut off the power or do you think that that process needs to change you know i will admit there's some of that that i don't know the technical details of so public safety i guess would be my first priority um and is a power shutoff the best way to achieve that i'm not sure it is it certainly creates a lot of habit for people i know that um and what are the reasons for a power shutoff do people understand that i'm not sure they do uh we know that we think or we've heard that some of our fires have been started by equipment out in the outlying areas um but what does that have to do with us here in santa rosa so making people understand the connections between what's out there and their lives here and how it's affected is very important okay we talked a little bit you gave a letter grade on how the city has done on recovery we're going into year three are there any blind spots that you think that we have that we should focus on in the third year um or are there any policy changes that you think we should consider well again it is the city council you do make policy and set direction for our city but how do we get more people involved in the recovery again i think uh in our permitting process has improved i think there's room for continued improvement there um why aren't we building more homes why aren't we building more multi-unit homes what sort of financing can the city help support in any number of ways maybe not in a dollar amount but how do we help builders build and we also want to make sure that we are keeping our valued citizens here in the city of santa rosa so that they do not leave we talk about um the fires i think we talk a lot about homeowners there are a lot of people who didn't own own homes who were very much impacted by those fires and i think we need to keep all of those people in mind great thank you thank you for your service and congrats on your retirement thank you david talk more about the housing needs we had some shortages before the fires so this really set us back so what ideas do you have in continuing to meet our needs as it relates to just overall housing but more specifically with affordable housing well there are government definitions of what affordable housing is um and obviously as a government entity you need to pay attention to those um but also what is affordable to a family of four people who might be at a hundred and forty hundred and sixty hundred and eighty percent of the poverty level how do we keep those people here how do we keep our firefighters our police officers other public servants in our community and how do we keep our schools functioning so i wish i had the answer for you to say this is how we're going to solve our housing crisis and it is a crisis um i hesitate to use the image of a house on fire but i'm afraid there has been and it's very important and i think that should be at the top of everyone's mind in almost every discussion that the city council has is what are we doing for recovery what are we doing to keep our people safe and what are we doing to increase housing stock and i'm also a big believer in not having all the rich folks live in one part of town and all the poor folk live in the other part of town i'd like to see everybody live and work together another crisis that we are facing that continue to face is our homeless issues and not just Santa Rosa but around the region and i think you bring a unique perspective from the health care profession is kind of almost using that lens is there anything that we're missing in our approaches to deal with this issue um again i don't need to tell you that that it's a a complex issue um but at its root it's a human issue um it's an issue of compassion um and how do we translate that compassion uh into action so that we can get more people into homes and into homes where they are comfortable um it's not a confinement program that's not what we want what we're looking for is someplace that people can call home and how do we provide that for them or how do we help them provide it for themselves so a large part of this is also employment wages um how do our people make a living here in the city of Santa Rosa and how do they make a living that they can afford to live either by renting with subsidies or with a down payment on a home and making a monthly mortgage payment so how do we supply them with that type of information and the encouragement to do so do you see any immediate or long-term solutions that we're missing not thinking about now you keep asking me for answers and it's like i wish i had them um yeah i think it's one of those things that um as much as people feel on on a certain level i think you could put it more in people's faces every day every single day uh as an advocate i view you all as advocates and ambassadors for our city um it needs to be in people's faces uh it can be very uncomfortable uh we can do it politely but we need to talk about it all the time thank you david good afternoon david and thanks for being here you bet appreciate it oftentimes well luckily not as often as it could be our personal philosophies um but up against important decisions that come before the council and our ability to move forward despite our personal philosophies what do you believe is the role of our own well-developed philosophies personal the evil all of them may be shared by others what do you believe the role is of your personal philosophies when making decisions with the council it's a very interesting question i'm going to go back to saying a couple of things that i've already said before at the risk of repeating myself um i think compassion is very important this is a community that's raw uh we've been hurt we've been damaged we need to be nice to each other so uh that's one way i would go about decision making is make sure that we communicate effectively honestly and compassionately with each other so that's one of the main things i think is how do we talk to each other how do we talk about heart issues i think that's important in addition to um compassion what do you believe is the most or what be the most important abilities for a council person to possess um a couple of them i think you need to have a strong belief in the goodness and value of the city of santa rosa you also need to have a strong belief and value in government that you are here that our government is here to do the work of the people um that it's not too big that it's not too expensive that it doesn't get in the way of things it's there to serve a purpose so how do we make sure that people understand what that purpose is and i think that the council has a large role in promoting the work of government not just in making decisions but in talking about how those decisions are made and who you're talking to um talking to business owners is important talking to school teachers is important talking to students is important talking to young parents is important who's in our community um and how do we talk to them in that vein what does governance mean to you i'd say that governance to me is deliberation right thinking and quick action thank you hello thank you for your time and your interest today and all of your service my question is i've heard nearly everything that i would ask asked and so um i want to give you an opportunity for a fun question which is if you were a dictator for a month so you can do policy you can implement it but you've got to do it quickly and the staff and your disposal what would the first thing or the first two things that you would do if you had that power for a limited time be i find a way to get our homeless people housed notes how would you do it because you're the oh how would i would do it so you can do whatever any way i want to any way you want um i would open up all of our shelters i'd find vacant spaces i would find contractors and people and volunteers to go in and make those places view beautiful and inviting so that we welcome our homeless people into homes so they're no longer homeless as a dictator i would go out and rob the coffers of other large government entities that aren't related to the city of santa rosa so that we had plenty of funding for going forward i feel like the supreme court would definitely hear a case so thank you for thank you thank you now you have one minute for a closing statement thank you um as i mentioned before um crisis is no stranger to me i've evacuated a hospital uh twice uh and stood those hospitals back up again um and i think we are in a crisis in santa rosa right now uh with homelessness with housing with ongoing fire recovery um and i think we need to make sure that we face that crisis head on with heart uh together uh and bringing more people along with us and advocating for what we have here which is a very beautiful city thank you okay thank you so much sure thank you it's been so long i haven't gotten a good afternoon and thank you so much for participating in this process so although i know you already know this i just want to reaffirm the process will be going through you know three minutes for an opening statement then each council member will have four minutes to ask you any questions here she wants i just give you the heads up you may be interrupted because again that we're very time specific so if they've got enough information from me ready move on you may get that and then you'll have the final word for a one minute closing statement so with that please start your three-minute opening statement okay i'm very glad to thanks as always for your service to our community and for the opportunity that you're granting the public to participate in this process um i am aware of our limited time so i'll get right to the business at hand uh with respect to the three questions you've asked all the council candidate applicants uh to answer yes i will be able to attend council meetings uh yes i am familiar with your budget and goal setting uh dates in march and uh no i don't anticipate any problems with your budget or excuse me your uh boards and subcommittees um quite able to fulfill all of those requirements it has been a privilege to serve our community previously both in your boards and subcommittees on the planning commission and on the city council following my retirement as our community struggled through the 2017 wildfires i have looked for an opportunity to once again serve our community and to give back so i'm delighted to once again be here with this application for to fill the vacancy and the opportunity to serve in brief um my sense of my application is that i present to you a unique set of qualifications given my work in the community on the planning commission as a former city council member and vice mayor and now in my private practice assisting with thoughtful sustainable development and the creation of a new job space here in santa rosa so i'm delighted to once again have the chance to serve with you and i look forward to your questions great thank you uh mr dibbons you're uh thank you miss carlstrom i appreciate you being here one of the things that you mentioned is the new job space and i'm really curious to know as somebody who's been really involved in both the creation of the cannabis ordinance here at the city of santa rosa and a practitioner what actions would you take to help make that ordinance better because my understanding is right now it has some shortcomings it's a really great question and i appreciate the opportunity um in my experience uh within the industry on the ground um there's an incredible amount of volatility um and that's not ever going to be completely dealt with by the council's ordinance or any ordinance um the council has done a remarkable job creating a predictable entitlement process and i think if you speak to any industry that's what they're looking for your staff have gone above and beyond facilitating the introduction of this industry of course there are always going to be shortages within the staff itself and you know of course you're always faced with the opportunity to continue reducing staff burden in order to deal with some budget shortfalls but um really what we're seeing is that uh with the introduction of the ordinance back in 2016 and its development over time um there's been a lot of quite frankly chaos um early adopters to the industry incurred incredibly inflated real estate prices um they had they had to withstand uh grueling entitlement processes in in summonses particularly with respect to the retail ordinance and the retail applicants many of whom took two two and a half three years to wind their way through the city process and that's incredibly expensive um so those businesses a lot of them are now at a point where quite frankly they've run out of money and so they are looking you know they're out there they're trying to shop their projects which of course was was something that um the ordinance had hoped to avoid right um part of the the um competitive process was designed to flush out applicants who were really committed to our community and I think that you did a really good job with that um but unfortunately sometimes those people run out of money and uh they have to look for outside investment so to the extent that um the subcommittee and the council have readdressed that um and particularly with respect to your retail applicants um it's my suggestion that you revert to a standard entitlement process it's fine if you want to continue reviewing these projects through a full conditional use permit um I think that we learned the competitive process doesn't necessarily leave you with the best project although of course I jokingly refer but I think that you did a bang-up job in all of those competitive processes um but that would be one area in particular that I would like for the council to consider taking a look at just revert to a normal entitlement process I think with respect to the other elements on the delivery and supply chain the the review processes are doing a fine job um again they're predictable the staff are much more comfortable with these projects now so they're better able to understand what if any impacts they're going to pose to the city and that's going to help those businesses get operational faster and the faster they're operational the faster they can hire people and the faster that my clients and others in the industry can start creating these really well paying jobs that are heavily regulated and highly trained okay thank you that was a great answer um I wanted to also ask you along those same lines and building off of your works and planning commissioner and somebody who stayed involved here for the last few years housing what maybe I don't know three things or a couple of key points that you think the city has not done or should do more of to help affordable housing and make it more accessible in this community sure um you know the councilor are already tackling a number of these issues I'm thinking specifically of the commercial jobs linkage um encouraging uh the actual development of on-site affordable units as opposed to paying in lieu fees um which I think the department has me disagree with typically units that we're looking for is that my time or his time there we go but I'll give you a few seconds to finish your answer if you'd like thank you I appreciate that um and and quite frankly the the housing department has done an admirable job also of streamlining the entitlement and review process for housing um the density bonuses and the reduction in permitting fees I think are generating a lot of interest in the private development side um and I'm certainly experiencing that in my private practice so I think one of the historic tensions that Santa Rosa has had and you certainly had to navigate it as a council member is between the need to develop housing and protecting our open spaces and for this council where that's really come to a head is the discussion around uh and Fountain Grove's obviously poster child for that discussion we've been dealing with it from the fire front uh with a history and a path of fire that goes right through that area would you as a council member be supportive of rebuilding homes in Fountain Grove and adding additional new development to the area that was not there prior to to any fires assuming the council and the city are able to adequately incorporate the rural urban interface development guidelines and building codes I I believe that I would support people being having the opportunity to rebuild their homes I would not likely support an expansion of development in Fountain Grove even once those rural urban interface ordinances were put into place it's a very hard nut to crack to tell someone that they can't rebuild their home um the 2017 the 2018 the 2019 fires were an incredible trauma to our community and so as a council you do have an opportunity to help people work their way through that and and trying to say to somebody that they can rebuild their home I think um does the community a disservice but you do also have an obligation to acknowledge that building codes building standards development standards and that rural urban interface have not been adequately addressed you have that opportunity to do that now and that is the the approach that I would take great and then obviously we continue to have a re-trauma each year as we go through these public safety power shutoffs do you think PG&E should have the ability to shut off the power and if not who should be able to make that determination and what do you think the city needs to do better to prepare for those instances I think that the PSPS is our one tool that has been haltingly implemented it was terrifying the first time I will tell you and and especially for someone with young children at home having schools without power without power the interruption to their schedule only magnifies the trauma and the impact of these situations but yes in short they should have the opportunity they should have the power if you will to shut off the power when the need it presents itself assuming collaboration has been had between Santa Rosa's public safety departments in the overall county public safety framework great and one of the hallmarks of your council career was working on the open government task force obviously not all of it has been implemented yet if you could pick one or two things to really put your shoulder behind its shove as a council member which would they be the less flashy one would be the reinstatement of the community engagement director I do understand that the role of that has been allocated under assistant city manager David guin's leadership and I appreciate that that commitment to our community remains in place one of the other areas that did not get as much press or discussion amongst the council would be to actually pay the council the council and the city have finally are now finally experiencing the benefit of district elections paying the council is the next step in ensuring that the council reflects the makeup of the community excellent and in your last couple of seconds here I know you've been an advocate particularly for working family members have done more friendly things around the city is there anything on that front that you'd like to tackle early on as well well I think really tackling the housing issue is a is a family friendly issue I'm speaking in the in the green room today as a tenant in this community great thank you so much Erin you're you work downtown and you frequent downtown and what I wanted from you is to give us a little bit of your perspective on downtown there's been the reunification of the square a lot of activity going on a lot of future planning what's your current assessment of our downtown I think downtown is fantastic of course it's experiencing some reverberations from reunification a long history frankly of mistrust of downtown you know I I come from southern California I went to school in large cities I hear from downtown business owners that you know the homeless problem is really a deterrent and I can understand that that is Santa Rosa's perspective but we are a big city and there are always going to be people coming to our community for a variety of reasons being able to watch the activities that take place in courthouse square is so it's such an honor to have been able to work on that project I saw a boot camp out there one morning you know right there on the grass and and all of the community events that we've been able to host from Iron Man to weddings on the square that's a true testament to Santa Rosa's willingness to re-envision itself about downtown business owners of course they are struggling retail itself is struggling making downtown more attractive to our residents to our visitors to our families that remains a challenge that the council is facing you know going back and forth on whether and how much to charge for parking that's going to be an ongoing issue and we're going to disagree on that on occasion but you know my my business partners at least one of them are in the audience they keep trying to move our business out of downtown and I'm adamant no we are staying downtown I love working downtown because this is where the heart of the city is to me this is where the action is and I'm I'm delighted with the work that we've been able to do what kinds of things can we do to make downtown more attractive to families as far as the place besides just the shopping well one of the things that we've been tackling for a number of years this is going back to my time on the planning commission and in service with all of you on the commission or excuse me on the council is to introduce housing to downtown if you'll recall the AT&T project was originally slated to incorporate two stories of housing the developer felt that he couldn't make that pencil out and we as a council really hadn't been handed the tools yet to say no that's not acceptable come back to us with better numbers there's a lot of interest in there is a lot of interest in residents to live downtown there's a lot of interest on the development side to develop the downtown quite frankly unfortunately there are a lot of large albatross buildings downtown that you know there's only so much the city can do to incentivize their development but filling those vacant commercial areas bringing housing to downtown that'll change the tenor of what happens on a daily basis in our downtown core in your opinion what are the three most important qualities that council members should possess an understanding of the job itself a willingness to be exposed to the public and to be truly in service this is not a this is not a part-time job you are always immediately accountable and you should be always available to the members of the public when that when their concerns are facing you and then an ability to collaborate within and amongst the council itself and that's one of the areas that I think I bring some of my some of my strongest suits to you is my training both as an attorney and and and I'll turn to the speed resolution but also my relationships with many of you having served with you previously or worked with you on other avenues thank you good afternoon Aaron thanks for being here in the same continuing the conversation of housing in the downtown we have on several sides of the of the downtown and very close to our core historic neighborhoods and given the reality of in-built development how do you feel you could balance the needs of the neighborhoods the historic neighborhoods that are very concerned about the changes that could be happening right across the street from them and the need for housing and and in-built development well just because you make it more attractive to develop in the downtown doesn't mean you're inviting terrible development and I think that's really the tools that the council have been handed in the last number of years is this understanding that there's a limited amount of this resource which is our land right and we can demand the best type of projects to come forward you know speaking specifically from within experiences on my client side there is a lot of interest in in bringing a mixed use model to Santa Rosa and of course that's going to bring with it some concern because that's a bigger city model that Santa Rosa has had only limited experience with but just like we're seeing as the cannabis industry grows quite frankly in in our community what we were afraid of has not come to pass and these are exceptional projects and an exceptional experience for Santa Rosa so too I believe housing development in downtown would would mirror that experience we've seen that on 7th street we've seen it in railroad square and I think that over time the community's fears will will not come to pass with respect to that but yeah there are going to be more people there are going to be more cars and that is part of what drives a vibrant economy and a vibrant community thank you as a forward council member it's just a few years ago how do you think the local political climate has changed since you were a council member if at all well your workroom is a lot nicer than it was when I was on the council I'll tell you that I think that I was very privileged to take some of the positions that I did on the council and and that was not always without its detriment and I think Santa Rosa is much more comfortable now with the idea that you can be both quote unquote pro development on the development on the quote business side but also maintaining the integrity of our community and in fact that's what really attracted me to Santa Rosa when I moved here more than a decade ago I come from a community that used to grow oranges and was very attached to that as its economic and job space and its leaders unfortunately made really terrible decisions with respect to development in its borders and they ripped out all the orange groves and they built houses and strip malls and warehouses and the entire character of the community changed Santa Rosa and Sonoma County has done a remarkable job of not doing that we do have our growth boundaries we have our community separators and that is a wonderful legacy that leaders before us have given to us so that's really what drives my approach to politics in Sonoma County and and I think that unfortunately following the fires and and the collective trauma that we all experienced there has been this really wonderful consolidation and a really well surprising opportunity to create community and to sort of hold one another close and and to protect what it is that we have here that is so remarkable and I think that that is reflected in our politics and and indeed the public's expectations for how the council will comport itself and the issues that you're tackling and I think that that's a testament to you all and the votes that you've been able to take. Thanks Erin. Hi Erin good to see you and when I first came here there was no mirror in that California and I was like how are you supposed to put your lipstick on before a meeting so you know anyway uh Julie and Liz got to work fast on that and now it's real cute in there I'm sure everybody enjoys the mirror much as I do so at any rate um you know you uh you mentioned something that I think is really important and in a way you said you placed a trail for those of us who would come after you by uh taking the bold step of showing that business is not fundamentally at odds with environment and so I'm just wondering um since I think that you were a little bit ahead of your time in that what you would see philosophically and vision-wise for us as a council going forward in the next year if you were to be seated with us. I appreciate that that's very kind of you to say um that wasn't the intent at the time um it was really just a reflection of my values um and and those values remain the same today um I'm six years older uh and and with a little bit thicker skin and you know maybe a thicker waist um but I think that that would absolutely continue to be my approach um I do work in private practice I do work on the business and development side um that will not cease because I have a child to feed in a roof to maintain over his head um but approaching the very valuable resource of this community which is our limited land space um that will continue to inform my decision-making on the council um you you may have seen it those of you who served with me any of you who watched the votes that I took on the planning commission I do demand better from applicants that come to our to our chambers asking for entitlements asking for tax benefits um asking for staff time and asking for the public's trust and you have the opportunity and you have done that um and and that would absolutely be uh how I would continue to approach serving with all of you I'm very cognizant that uh this is a little bit like being a pinch-hitter um you you need one more row or one more ore in your boat and you guys have done an admirable job there is herculean efforts underway to help the city recover from the fires to continue moving forward to rebuild your your budget surpluses and savings and and my approach would be to continue supporting you in that you know I I am a person in the community I do have a track record um and and my job is to continue uh serving the community in the way that I know will make my son proud um in the future because I had one more question regarding that which is um as the parent of young child and in the center of the city schools how does that inform your approach to because that is you know your child is in school now so how would that change your perspective or augment it going forward obviously it immediately informed my service the first time around um not having an opportunity or a location to to safely breastfeed him um was I think one of the first issues that I brought to the to the council and and to city staff because that had never happened before no one had ever needed to deal with that um but you know my son is is in kindergarten he's at Cesar Chavez language academy which is on the cook middle school campus sabasa pole and stony point road um that's the intersection that a lot of you have heard about where there's all kinds of pedestrians getting killed um because the pedestrian access out there is is lacking um so knowing that I have connections here within the city the parents group have asked me to get involved to talk about what are our pedestrian access opportunities because I do you know hold my tiny little six-year-old's hand as I walk down sabasa pole road taking him to his kindergarten class and that's just one kid and there are thousands of them out there um you know we have limited opportunities as a council to really address those educational issues but there are opportunities for overlap both with our our bike and pen uh advisory board as well as our city schools um and and those are opportunities that I will continue to look for thank you okay thank you for participating in this process so since you have the benefit of having actually been up here for a term um can you share upon reflection about how you're four years on council where are there any things that you would like to handle differently and what were they and how would you handle them differently after experience the council I would say that my very first term my very first year I served on something like 11 subcommittees and um that was an incredible workload and and I was gratified that the mayor at the time had that much faith and trust in me um but I I think that that was too much there was little opportunity to really delve in to um some of those subcommittees issues um you know we had a very contentious council quite frankly um despite the fact that a large majority of us did agree um you know in my in my first term this is 13 and 14 um the majority of us did agree on on many policies there the tone was quite different um you you know you can't serve on a board and not take responsibility for that um had I been in a different place in my life I would have done more work um to to directly address that um I also think the city had a number of opportunities to show leadership where we we failed to do so um I was reminded of that this morning um actually just speaking about um the shooting of Andy Lopez uh that was not within our jurisdiction that was not one of our officers but the city had an opportunity to embrace a community that was hurting and was scared and and I think that we did not address that as well as we could as well as this council may have been able to do um so those are two things that kind of come immediately to mind um you know when you're in your first couple of years on council as all of you know um quite frankly you spend some time just learning where the bathrooms are um let alone how does the city government actually run how does the interaction with city attorney and city manager actually function and how does that impact the policy of the city um and I think that uh spending a little bit more time on those those seemingly minute details may have served me better so with that with the second example you gave the tragic candy Lopez shooting what would you have suggested the city do differently at the time I don't recall that the city ever had any formal response um I we had difficulty even getting a press release out um and that was part of why we formed the open government task force because it became clear that you know you and your role as mayor have uh you are the voice of the council are you the voice of the city is the city manager the voice of the city where is that coming from where does the city look to the the public right they look to the council members who look to the mayor um so it became clear that we needed to develop more strongly the policies and procedures that would guide the council's response and situations like that um we have had unfortunate opportunities in the years past to implement that and I think the city has done an admirable job of responding to the public in the Tubbs fire in the Kincaid fire and following the 2018 fires response and its impacts to our community okay great um we have some items coming up regarding our climate action committee subcommittee specifically the ever during policy what are your thoughts on that and which uh what would be your recommendation I think the city has uh an incredible opportunity to take to continue its leadership um on climate change and and our response as a city um I look at these opportunities just like I look at our housing policy you've got a number of arrows in your quiver and you need to try all of them um so you know to the extent that the city can take that leadership role for its own infrastructure its own buildings absolutely um and in fact uh to council member Tibbetts question um I think that there are opportunities there for implementing and uh influencing the the cannabis ordinance in the same way that the county did um requiring applicants to participate in Sonoma Clean Power's Evergreen program is just one element that I think you could address um but I'm I'm absolutely in support of those okay I was going to ask you how we're going to pay for that but the so instead I will give you one minute for your closing statement uh just once again thank you very much I really appreciate the conversation I know how much of a workload this process presents having lived throughout myself so I commend you for your your patience and your dedication to our community and it would be truly an honor to have the opportunity to start with you all once again thank you very much welcome mr is it petker it is mr petker thank you um I know you've received some documents about the way this uh interview process will go but I'll just reiterate it so we're crystal clear on it we'll provide you an opportunity for a three-minute opening statement and then we'll rotate through the council members and each council member will have four minutes to ask you uh questions uh just give your heads up you may be interrupted because again the time is limited if they want more information they may stop you where you're at and then you'll have the final word for one minute closing statement so with that give you your opportunity for a three-minute opening statement great mayor vice mayor council members thank you for this opportunity to be here to try to get this council position a little bit about me I have been in Sonoma County since I was eight years old and then I've been a resident of the city of Santa Rosa for six years of that we lived just outside of the city limits so I always felt like I was from Santa Rosa but I was just outside of it so and then I went to Sonoma State I studied economics and city and regional planning which is under the environmental studies umbrella and then I also studied public administration while I was there and I actually had a few classes with the council member Rogers and that's about it for my opening statement thank you Mr. Rogers you start the question yeah I get to start us off with the questioning and and actually yeah I one of the things that we talked a lot about in the NPA program was budgeting obviously the city has gone through natural disasters we've gone through public safety power shutoffs can you talk a little bit about how your NPA experience and your economics experience would really be best utilized as a council member to help us with some of those issues yeah I believe I have a lot of experience learning about different types of budgeting and being able to figure out the priorities that the city would like to look into and what they would like to solve with their budgeting issues and I would I use that experience to help work on the budget yeah from a from an academic perspective and from a council member perspective do you have a philosophy around how you would try to craft the budget or try to as we're always trying to do squeeze in more priorities in with city city staff time and with with the dollars that are available yeah I think you would start with the current like past five years of budgeting and see what those trends are and then figure out what the hot topics are that you'd be going forward with and then look at staffing and then work on either moving the budget either more or less in different areas depending on what's needed more so we've spent a lot of time working on recovery for the last couple of years we're going into year three of full recovery uh how do you think the city's done so far are there things that you would do differently in what perspective would you bring to the council I think the city's done a great job of bringing in outside help for people that are rebuilding their houses I know that's been important for people to be able to get permits quickly and to get the rebuilding process going and I believe that the city has done a great job of getting resources working on the fire department figuring out where the new firehouses need to be and different opportunities like that so I think the city's headed in the right direction and we're always a balancing competing interest for priorities particularly our tier one if you have five things that you could put for your tier one priorities what would you put housing is a big issue right now economic viability for businesses especially in the downtown they've had a lot of changes in the downtown recently homelessness so it just kind of goes hand in hand with housing but housing for all as well as homelessness and then budget for the city to be economically viable to help work fix on the structural deficit that the city's facing and then the last one would look at the infrastructure that the city has that has deferred maintenance so work on that with your planning background have you had a chance to look at the downtown specific plan and if so what are your thoughts on it I have started look at the downtown specific plan I think it's definitely a good idea to work on getting the grocery store work on more housing downtown I think that's going to be a great way to do economic viability downtown for the restaurants and the different businesses that are associated right and we'll be launching and working on the general plan update as well is there anything specifically that you'd like to see addressed in the general plan that maybe hasn't been addressed previously I think community engagement and different community activities and local parks getting people more community oriented excellent and that's about my times thank you so much thank you I want to go back to the topic of homelessness and thank you for your past work with the redwood gospel mission what is your assessment of our efforts to deal with this issue of homelessness and what do you see as missing in her efforts I think the city is doing a pretty good job with it I think it's a tough issue for just the city to deal with because it's a it's a big topic in the state with the loss of mental health services and so there's the mental health services there's the addiction help that people need to be able to get into recovery programs and then there's also the people that are either unwilling or they prefer the lifestyle to live out on the street so there's there's different areas that we need to figure out how to get services to those people and I think more outreach is needed that for people that want to help the homeless that we need to educate them to direct the homeless people where to go and not just provide them food right at that minute but provide them information of where the homeless can go so they can get connected different services and there seems to be a lot of frustration right now from the public as far as what they see may perhaps a lack of response what do you see as some immediate solutions for some of the things that are going on out there right now or this relationship in campus that we have I yeah I think more shelters which I'm not sure where we would house the people but having shelters that we can have people and direct people to that we can have like different business cards that somebody can hand to a homeless person like this is a map to where you can go to get either shelter or food or different services I think that would be a very helpful opportunity thank you good afternoon Mr. Petker thank you for being here this afternoon appreciate it in the realm of housing and downtown and the city in general infill development has been seen as a threat to some of our neighborhoods regardless of the what some consider a necessity to for us to be able to reach our housing needs what is your attitude toward infill development and how do you think that it affects our historic neighborhoods I actually have an infill development it's a five-story building in the cherry historic district and I believe that we do need infill development especially downtown I've seen several different proposals of them building on mendicino and fifth street building about a seven-story building there and then building where the theater is on third street I think that's a big opportunity to be able to build downtown and we do need to have the historic district remain in place but I also think there's opportunities that we can build infill like at pettersons where the furniture store is a different store now thank you what do you believe is the three most important abilities a council member should should have to be able to serve well I believe meeting with the public because that's who they're representing having a calm demeanor that they can get along fairly well with others and being able to represent the city well and then the third would be to be task oriented so they can make sure that they get the business of the city done in a reasonable manner thank you and what role do you believe personal philosophy should play in your decision making I believe it should play some decision because then people are nowhere going to stand but I also believe that you represent the people of the of the residents of the city so you also need to listen to their what they want for the council to be able to go and do so it's a mix thank you what does governance mean to you governance means that you're elected to make the decisions for the people that you're governing thank you hi there thank you so much for your time this afternoon I'm curious to know you live in district four and in the northeast quadrant we have quite a bit of representation your seat would be at large and I'm curious to know do you have existing networks across the city or how would you approach being somebody who typically comes from an area that's well represented and tries to represent areas that have never been represented yes I do have a network of friends and people that live in all over Santa Rosa and the 20 signatures I submitted I had I believe I covered every area code in the city of Santa Rosa and I would reach out to them to help get their neighborhoods to figure out what their interests are that's interesting in your approach I'll follow that up with a how would you take that approach of the you brought to getting your ballot designation signatures to filling your boards and commissions I believe I would look throughout the city and hopefully get recommendations from people that would like to represent their area and different committees what kinds of qualifications would you be looking for as you went about that I'd be looking for people that are subject matter experts people that are really interested in filling that position and being able to learn about what their what kind of information they need to be able to learn to fill in that position are any personal or demographic would you take any of those characteristics into play not necessarily I think anybody has the ability to fit whatever position they want to learn to be able to fill thank you thank you again for participating in this process what's the most important thing for us to consider when considering you for this position that I would really like to be on the council and I have a lot of education and experience working with the town council and Windsor I wasn't on the council but I got to meet with a lot of the people and have that experience of working with the elected officials as well as department heads with the town of Windsor so further if you were to be appointed on this position what do you think would be your biggest challenge your greatest learning curve area of learning curve it would probably be with the community engagement because I don't have I have a little bit of experience dealing with the residents and the town of Windsor when I work there but having different meetings with people the different interest groups that would probably approach me okay so sometimes in either public meetings or on social media in the newspaper people point fingers specifically at the city or the city council for things that may or may not be within their control what would you think would be one of those areas that the city of Santa Rosa the council fingers have been pointed at them that is unjust that's unjust for the council members or it's an unfair criticism they point the finger you guys are gals the council's not doing a b or c when that may or may not be a responsibility yeah probably for the business community and how long it takes for them to get permits and to get businesses open okay and then you spoke about the downtown and some of the interesting dynamics of developing and energizing our downtown is to get housing there and I've heard a lot of people say well I don't want to move downtown because it's not a grocery store I've talked to a grocery store owners and say well I'm not going to build a grocery store until there's housing how do you deal with that conundrum I live downtown and I go to four street deli and get some of the small groceries there and then there's other places that are close by that are within 15 minute walking distance and I would just tell people that people live in suburbs now drive to grocery stores so so the said the though do you have any suggested solutions for actually concrete plans for actually getting either that housing downtown or the grocery store downtown I'm here and driving out of downtown is an option my question is more of how do you get in the downtown area I think trying to work with different grocery stores and doing a small market because I think a full-blown grocery store would be a ways out but getting a market that's has more day-to-day groceries and stuff so working with the business community getting some interest for a smaller market convenience store okay those are all questions I have uh Mr. Petkirk I have just one question for you and then I'll surrender my time to you to say anything extra that you may have not already been asked but you would like to talk about and my question is is have you observed this council in some capacity over the last couple of years where there was a decision that you felt that we decided wrong or we could have done a better job in creating a better policy outcome and if so what was it and how would you have done it differently yeah recently the council had a decision to make for a marijuana dispensary and I thought some of the subject was brought up like the front-facing door the door facing the street was kind of obscured by the bike shop and I thought either more discussion on that to either say what the actual policy is and but I think you guys made a relatively decent decision on that okay thank you and you still have three minutes of the time I get to ask you questions is there anything you wish I had asked you that you'd like to share now I think we pretty much covered it okay all right well I want to thank