Council Member Sawyer, can we do a quick mic check? Sure. How's that? Loud and clear. Thank you. Thank you. Interpreter Charles, can we do a quick mic check? Mic check. Thank you. Loud and clear. Pablo, I'm going to join the Spanish Channel from my phone to confirm I can hear you from the Spanish Channel. One moment please. Thank you, Pablo. I heard you loud and clear. All right. Let's go ahead and start our regular city council meeting for this Tuesday. Madam City Clerk, could you please call the roll? Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Tibbets, Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Council Member Alvarez, Vice Mayor Rogers. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Council Member Tibbets, have you joined us? Council Member Alvarez, have you joined us? Yes, I'm here, Stephanie. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Council Member Tibbets. Great. Thank you so much. We'll be starting with our closed session items. It's 2.1 conference with labor negotiators. Let's see if there's any public comment on that item. Andina, do we have anybody on Zoom looking to do public comment? No, not at this time. Great. Then we'll start with Mr. DeWitt. I wanted to make sure and advocate that the City of Santa Rosa continue to have a hard-headed fiscal oversight approach on its finances. This approach has been so tight-fisted, when an expense such as an extra $300,000 comes up in the budget, the city has cracked down and said, no, we can't do that, such as our public television station, our senior center over in District 1. And I ask you to do the same thing in your negotiations for the wages, especially at the upper level. Currently, we've had a numerous year policy of heavily rewarding the city manager at the top and basically leaving the front line workers at the bottom struggling to get by while our city hasn't had enough services that we need. So I would advocate for you today in these discussions that you make sure and keep a tight rein on your spending for the wages of many of these organizations you're dealing with. Public safety folks, they're well rewarded. The firefighters, the police, they're doing really well. It's our front line workers, the people out there taking care of the city's streets, the city's parks, and the necessities, the amenities that we as the taxpayers expect to have in our society. We're not getting it. It's basically been something that for at least the four years since the fire, the city has been pleading poverty and we're losing. We basically have given our parks over to the homeless community. Anybody can go in and start camping in a park and it's theirs. And we don't have the workers to take care and move them on. So I specifically would ask that you make sure and help the operating engineers, local three, the maintenance and utility system operators, the mechanics, the service employees, the international union local folks, and perhaps give them that raise that they so deserve. But I would ask for a wage freeze on everybody else until we get through this pandemic. We're 15 months into the city essentially having locked us out of city hall, having a lockdown on the public really being involved. I'm standing here in an empty room about 50 feet away from me having to wear a mask. This whole thing is like tight times and the Delta variant is coming up on COVID. Difficult times could lie ahead if we have a resurgence of this problem. So please be tight-fisted in your negotiations with these different agencies. But help our frontline workers, especially the frontline women, who do a lot of the work to help the public here at the city hall. The people that need the help the most. Help them and that helps us. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. DeWitt. We'll go ahead and recess into closed session. For those of you just joining the meeting, I'd like to remind you that we do have Spanish interpretation available. To join the Spanish channel, please click on the icon on your Zoom toolbar. It may look like a globe. We recommend that once you join the Spanish channel, you turn off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish feed. Interpreter Pablo, would you be able to repeat that in Spanish? Of course. Bienvenidos a la reunión. Interpretación en vivo será disponible para esta reunión si desean escuchar en español. Pueden hacer click en el icono de interpretación en la barra de herramientas que ahora aparece un globo terráqueo. Ya que se unan al canal de interpretación, les pedimos que apaguen su audio primario para que solo se escuche la interpretación. Claramente. Gracias. For those council members who are participating by Zoom, could you please activate your camera? We cannot see if you are in the meeting. So by activating your camera, we know that you are in the meeting and we can establish a quorum. Thank you. All right, Madam City Clerk, let's go ahead and resume our meeting. We'll move on to item 3.1, that's our interviews for our housing authority vacancies. Council, we have four vacancies that we'll be filling today, two are for tenant commissioners and two are for at large. We'll be going through all of our interviews, starting here at 1.30 and finishing right around 3.30 and then we'll be making the appointment later in today's council meeting. So we'll go ahead and start with our first applicant who will be joining us via Zoom. Do we have Magdalena on Zoom? Hi, Magdalena, how are you? Go ahead and make sure you unmute so that we can hear from you. Yes, thank you. Excellent. So we do, it is a little bit of a cattle call, each interview is five minutes long, but I'm gonna go ahead and kick it off. Can we hear our translator still? We need to move them to the Spanish channel. Charles is interpreting on the Spanish channel and Pablo, you on your rest period. Perfect, thank you so much. So Magdalena, we will start just by asking you to give an overview of your experience and why you're interested in being appointed to this position and you're going for one of the at-large appointments, correct? Say it again, to which appointment? As an at-large member of the housing authority. That's correct, though honestly, I have missed a job description. I read a lot on the website as much as I could, but didn't really find a job description, but that's okay. Well, go ahead, why don't you go ahead and tell us why you're interested in this position and what your experience is that you think makes you unique or qualified for it? Well, I moved here to Santa Rosa about one and a half years ago. I have lived with my husband and family in the Bay Area for over 30 years. I have never worked in a city position. I ran a business as interior designer and one of my two boys is on the blanking spectrum, on the artisan spectrum. So ever since he was a young child, I have worked with many agencies in this capacity to help him thrive and grow. He's 30 years old now, so I'm still helping him along. But so we moved from the Bay Area to Santa Rosa. I'm, say, my retired sort of, and I wanted to do something for the community. I have seen that homelessness is a big problem in Santa Rosa, and I'm just curious how I can contribute to solving it, helping to solve it if this role has this option. So that's more or less the gist of it. Okay, great. Thank you so much. Council members, who wants to start with questions? Council member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. Well, first, I just want to thank you for your willingness to involve yourself in city governance and I appreciate the thoroughness of your application. So I don't really have any questions. Thank you. You're welcome. Council member Schwedhelm. Thank you, Magdalena. Have you ever attended a housing authority meeting? And if so, what were your thoughts? No, total new to me. Okay, thank you. Any other questions, Council? I'm not seeing any hands pop up. Magdalena, we really appreciate you applying and we all have your application and have read through it. And as I mentioned at the outset, we'll be making our determinations later in tonight's meeting. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us. Bye. I believe our next applicant is coming down. How's it going? I appreciate your mask, although I know that Council member Schwedhelm and Council member Alvarez will not quite so much. Oh, I'm so sorry. Well, welcome, Kevin. We appreciate you not just being here but being interested in the position and it is a quick interview that we're doing. Council members have your application. We've all read through them and then we're just giving you a chance to address the Council and seeing if anybody has any follow-up questions based on your application. And so if it works for you, we're doing about five minutes. And if you wanted to start just giving us a quick overview of who you are, why you're interested and what might make you stand out as an applicant. Okay, my name is Kevin Craker. My wife and I just moved here from Colorado Springs about three or four years ago and she's a doctor here. She just became a neuropsychologist and she had her internship here and we had troubles when we first got here as far as being able to stay and afford the rent out here and the city helped us out. And I've told my wife that the opportunity ever came up, I want to give back to the city as for y'all have helped me out. And now I work at AAA Energy Systems, which is an HVAC company and I love that company more than anything, but also I'm willing to devote my extra time to the city in any manner that I could help out. All right, thank you. Council members, who wants to start with questions? Council members, with him. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Kevin for applying and going through this process. On your application, you talk about homelessness being one of our biggest challenges in the city. How do you see the city addressing homelessness in what role would the housing authority in your opinion play with that? Well, we could maybe organize a little differently as far as the homelessness, more programs for the homelessness to give them the opportunity that some say that they don't get, that they don't have the opportunity to get back to society and get back on track to have an actual life. And I would love to be a part of something like that to help out, you know, to reorganize or to make sure things go efficient. All right, thank you. Other council member questions? Go ahead, John. Thank you, Mayor. I'm curious, you mentioned your ability to communicate with people. What do you believe gave you that skill? My whole life, I've always been social. My wife's an introvert. She doesn't like to socialize very much, but me on the other hand, I like to talk to people. As I'm outgoing, I love to speak to people. And as part of my job as well, when I'm meeting customers, going into their houses and their homes to make them feel comfortable that I'm there to do my job adequately and efficiently. I just, I don't know, I'm a people person. I love to talk to people. Thanks, Kevin. Any other questions, council? Kevin, have you had a chance to watch any of the, or attend any of the housing authority meetings? No, sir. Okay. But you are comfortable with the workload of the board. You wouldn't have any trouble working it in with your schedule. No, sir, we'd have a problem. Great. Thank you so much. Anything else from council? All right, we really appreciate you being here and taking the time. As I said at the outset, we'll be making our determinations later in the council meeting and we'll definitely circle back with you and let you know as well. But just want to be, just express our gratitude for your interest in serving the city. And we look forward to talking with you soon more. Thank you much. You have a great day. You too. All right, council. Next up, we have Wayne Downey. Dr. Downey, how are you? I'm wonderful. Thank you for this opportunity to have a conversation with you all. Absolutely. And thank you so much for being interested in the position. And thank you so much for joining us today on Zoom. As I mentioned at the outside, it is a quick interview. Council members do have your application and we will be asking you specific questions that we had from the application. But first, I want to give you just a chance to introduce yourself and talk a little bit about why you're interested in the position and what skills you think you can bring to help us at the Housing Authority. Thank you again. My name is Dr. Wayne Downey. I possess a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership and Program Management. I also serve as a commissioner for the City of Santa Rosa Housing Authority. This has been a blessed privilege to participate in helping the city address its housing needs. What you're not seeing about me is that I happen to be a person who uses a wheelchair in addition to being a person of color. This experience has afforded me the optics that are not normally viewed when pursuing housing opportunities so I have enjoyed utilizing my own experience trying to obtain housing since graduating from college and really focusing on creating opportunities that are easier and more streamlined for people in similar and dissimilar situations. So this has been a fantastic opportunity not to mention the fact that I roll around the city and it's absolutely thrilling to see structures being built that I know that are going to go up for people who are of modest means, homeless, needing emergency housing and so forth. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Downey. I'll see if there's questions from Councilmembers, Councilmember Schwedhelm. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor, for your continued interest in this. So since you do have some experience on the Housing Authority, can you share with us what the most challenging part of that role is and what is the proudest accomplishment you have during your time on the Housing Authority? I think the most challenging has been trying to keep the NOFAs going out, trying to comply with the Community Development Block Grants and other governing agencies dictated by housing and urban development. I think the most challenging thing in the last three years has been in addition to business as usual pertaining to getting things built. Every year we have had some sort of catastrophe in Sonoma County, albeit fire or pandemic. So this has afforded me the opportunity to have to jump from one parameter to another parameter in addition to interfacing with the San Francisco Office for Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, and other agencies that have provided me information that is more germane to our housing needs in Santa Rosa because not all jurisdictions possess the same housing needs. So I've been able to provide a voice to these governing agencies as the how the best, how best, and Santa Rosa, and that's been extremely exciting to have that opportunity. And then of course the challenges is trying to, I mean, how do you prioritize when everything needs to be full attention number one? So there's been a lot of juggling between keeping things going, a lot of juggling as far as making sure that emergency services are streamlined and a lot of juggling as far as conveying to federal agencies. This is the issues that we're experiencing in Santa Rosa and these are the parameters that we need to have tailored to best serve our most challenged populations. All right. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Downey. We really appreciate your service and your interest in continuing to serve and we'll be making our appointments later at today's meeting. So thank you so much for taking the time to be here to answer some questions for folks. Okay. That's it. Thank you for your time. Next, we'll move on to Thomas LaPena. Hello, Thomas. How are you? Good. How are you? Welcome. Just wanted to say thank you for being interested and for applying for this position. Council members have your application and we just have a couple of questions for you. But wanted to give you a chance to kick it off here, just to talk a little bit about what your experience is and why you're interested in the position. Well, it's the Housing Authority and that hit me first off because I'm a retired building inspector and code enforcement official. I served five years on the board of directors of the State of Georgia Code Enforcement Association and actually what brings that to mind is when you say housing to me, it means quality of life for people. And I had an occasion in my former job, we initiated a apartment inspection program because the county that we lived in didn't do it and the municipality wanted the apartments inspected because they hadn't been inspected since they received their certificates of occupancy. It's almost like what just happened in Florida. The first building of apartments we inspected was like 35 years old and had 308 units and we came away with 1200 violations and we didn't go into the apartments. We just walked the common areas and there was a lot of things going on. So that affects people very, very much and I thought I could bring another perspective to the Housing Authority, something not only people need to live and get off the streets, but they have to live in housing that's quality to maintain a quality of life. All right, thank you so much for your answer. Council members, any questions? Go to John. Well, Thomas, you know, your application speaks for itself and your experience speaks for itself as well. So it's unusual that we have someone from with your background applying. So thank you for your willingness to apply and I think you bring a unique perspective to this body if the decision is to bring you on board. So thank you for your application. I think it's great to have your expertise as a possibility on this board. Thank you. Thank you. Well, one thing that brought that me to applying for this position is I went through the recent CPE Academy right before COVID hit and right after I did the Academy I knew I wanted to join the VIPs to help, to give back. And I rode along with Nick Vercelli before he came a canine officer and what struck me was out of the 10 calls that he had that day, eight of them were homeless related and it just hit me that we've got to do something to get these people off the streets and help people, but then my background from code enforcement comes in and one of the slogans is quality of life for people. And I just thought with my background I'd be a different fit and I sort of think outside the box and I'm an ex-New Yorker so you can't tell me something can't be done. There's always a way to make it work and I worked in community development in this city and we were contracted. I was not an employee of the city but yet they gave me this quote Velvet Glove Award one year because my city manager used to say you get people to do things and you give them a citation and then they say thank you. And I said well I've always been lucky that way. People saw me, maybe it's because I'm so small they don't want to hit me they just want to talk to me. But there's a way of dealing with people and I feel really care about people who don't have a good place to live. Well we certainly appreciate your interest in the position and thank you for being here today to talk with us. As I mentioned we'll be making our appointment later in today's meeting and looking forward to that discussion amongst council members and just really grateful that you'd be interested in helping to serve your city. Well thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks Natalie. We'll go on to Ladonna Moore who is joining us via Zoom. Mayor it does not look like Ms. Moore has joined us via Zoom yet. Okay we'll go ahead and give that a minute and see if Ladonna joins us. There's a Patrick Moore that's on here perhaps that's Ladonna from a shared computer. Hi do you see me now? Yes is that you Ladonna? Yes it's a shared computer thank you. Ladonna let me promote you to panelists so we can have your camera on. One moment please. There we go. Ladonna how are you? You're on mute. So make sure you unmute because we've got a couple of questions for you. So council members have your application. We're very grateful for your interest in serving the city and participating in the housing authority. Before I give them a chance to ask some questions do you want to just give us a quick overview of who you are and why you're interested in the position? Well I would say that I'm really interested now that I've recently retired to take some of my time and energy and help the city. So I've been looking around at where can I fit in. I used to manage a civil engineering company I understand about plans but quite frankly listening to Thomas the gentleman before me he's got the experience I'd vote for him. But yes I definitely have the drive I want to help this city now that I've got the time and I'm just looking for the slot in which I can best help. So housing seems something I at least had a knowledge of and an interest in. So that's why I applied. We certainly we appreciate you applying and we always love when it's congenial between folks who are going for the same position. So let me go ahead and see if the council members have any questions for you. I'll start with John. Thank you Mayor. Thank you for applying for this position and regardless of the prior applicant who had some unique talents to bring to this body can you give us a little insight into what you might bring that it's unique as well? Well I grew up in a my father was a contractor I grew up in that world so I had a husband whose past who was in architecture so housing is something I seem to understand and really enjoy in terms of reading the mission for this council I understand that what the focus is on and I agree that we need to find housing for everyone we've got to find a way to support this. Well I was reading the county's five-year plan and you know a key piece here is housing how do we get affordable housing so that it interlinks with all the other steps the city is trying to make. So I think I was in education for 37 years there's definitely an international baccalaureate coach so I'm an out-of-the-box thinker I can find solutions that sometimes people don't look at and I'm ready to give my time. Thank you very much. Vice Mayor. Hi thank you so much for being here today. So I just wanted to throw out the comment and let you know that I wish you the best of luck with this and also let you know that some of us still have some board positions that we need to get filled so right and I'm one of them so definitely reach out if this doesn't doesn't work out I'm sure we can find a place. The city council and look and see what other openings there are. Yes. I can do that information at srcity.org forward slash boards. Okay I will check that out. All right thank you so much Ladonna we really appreciate you being here and applying. We'll definitely be making our appointments later today and then we'll perhaps a council member or two if you were not selected for this position we'll also be reaching out as well. That'd be great. We'll go on to Phillip Olson. Madam clerk I don't see Phillip on zoom. Mr. Mayor Mr. Olson did notify us that he is traveling and he may have challenges connecting via zoom whether it be with the camera on or via telephone but he was interested in serving his continuing his service on the housing authority. But I do not see his name or hand being raised under his time slot. Okay we'll give it another minute here and just see if he can find a way to pop on. All right I'm not seeing Phillip he must not be able to join us while he's traveling. Do we have Frank here? Not yet all right. Well we're a couple minutes ahead of schedule so we'll go ahead and wait and see if Frank joins us as well. Hi there you Frank. My name is Frank Panza P-A-N-Z-A. Thank you. How are you doing Frank? Excuse me? So we're doing quick interviews here so all of the council members have our applications in front of us that were submitted and so I was just if you have a couple of minutes we are going to ask you a few questions that council members have about your experience and why you want to be on the housing authority. I'm sorry but I'm not understanding a word you're saying. Okay. I have my hearing aids on. I can hear you perfectly but I can't make out the words. All right let's try without a mask. Is that a little easier? That's a lot better thank you. Okay welcome. Council members have a few questions for you about your application. Just if you would start by telling us who you are and why you're interested in the position. Okay. As I said I'm Frank Panza. I'm a retired lawyer. I practiced in a corporate environment for 30 years and in the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department as a trial lawyer for 10 years. I'm here because I owe this community the benefit of what I can provide in looking at complicated issues. I've always been concerned about housing especially for the homeless but since I've retired I really haven't been active other than in speaking out and writing stuff. Writing things like that. But at this point I have a duty. I believe I have a duty to do what I can to make things better for the people in Santa Rosa. I'm not interested in politics. I was involved in politics in my 30s in New Jersey and I wasn't able to get on boards then because the elected officials were in a different party and had been for 30 something years. But I am interested in working on substantive issues. I've been reading about what the housing authority does. I see a lot of it is dealing with governmental issues which I believe I'm fairly competent to do. I mean in looking at the Internal Revenue Code for 40 years I'm used to dealing with completely incomprehensible directions and regulations. So I think I could do that effectively for the housing authority. I think that's really all I have to say. If you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. Absolutely. And we're very grateful that you are interested in participating. Councilmember Sweatham. Thank you Mr. Mayor. Yeah thank you Frank for applying for this position. And I noticed that your answer to the top three issues facing the city very comprehensive, very detailed. How do you see any potential work with the housing authority would be able to address some of the issues that you surfaced? I noticed that there are facilities here that provide money for housing. I think I can work effectively with those other facilities in addition to the Section 8 stuff which is I'm not sure how long the waiting lists are or how many facilities there are in town. I looked at the list of facilities but I don't know how practical it is to get into each of them. I can do that kind of stuff. I can write. I wrote for 40 years. That's what I did as a living. I think I can communicate effectively. And that's how I believe I could help the housing authority. I didn't see a lot about homelessness on the sites, on the site for the housing authority. I saw a lot about rent and subsidization. I would be more interested in working on homelessness issues as well, especially if that's something the authority does. I'm a lawyer. I'm used to dealing with complicated stuff. I'm used to dealing in adversarial situations and recognize that the best thing to do in an adversarial situation is cool things down. And believe it or not, as a trial lawyer for the Internal Revenue Service, I had to cool things down because I had 40 cases on my docket. And I only could try two of them on account. So I had to deal with 38 of them some other way. That's about all I have to say about that. Thank you. All right. Well, thank you so much, Frank. We will be making our appointment later at tonight's council meeting. And we'll circle back with you after that. Just really grateful that you'd be interested in serving your city. And we'll be talking with you soon. Thank you very much. One thing I would mention, I've lived here for almost 40 years, but only three in the city because we lost our house in the county in the 2017 fires. So I haven't been a resident of the city for 90% of the time that I've lived here. Thank you very much. No, thank you. In council, our next person, Cynthia, has canceled and will not be joining us. So we'll take five minutes here and then we'll come back with our following one with Kevin. In the time, we're doing quick five-minute interviews and then council will be making our determinations later at today's meeting. We all have your application. And so we'll be asking you a couple of specific questions about it if you get a chance. But first and foremost, I just want to open it up and have you introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your experience and why you would be a good fit for this position. Thank you very much. Yes, my name is Kevin Diaz-Ramos. I am new to the Santa Rosa area, so I do not consider myself a local quite yet, but I've been living here about two and a half years. And I am currently a master's student at the University of San Francisco. So I would really like to see how the city puts into practice this inclusionary housing policy and how we seek affordable housing to develop. All right, thank you. Council members, questions? Council members, what help? Thank you. Thank you, Kevin, for applying for this. Very impressive list of volunteer, your work that you were doing. Have you ever attended a housing authority meeting and how would that time commitment, if you were selected, fit in with your other going to school and these other volunteer opportunities? Thank you for that question. Yes, I have thought about how that time commitment might fit for me. And it does seem to fit well on Thursdays in the afternoon. I have availability. I have not attended a housing authority meeting specifically in the city of Santa Rosa at all. Or in my hometown of Southern California in downtown city, I have not attended a specific housing authority meeting, but I have made a public public comment once. And so I probably would have to get acquainted with the process of being on the board. But I do have the availability and the time commitment that I'm willing to make. Thank you. The time that you made public comment, what was the issue that you felt so strongly about? Yes, of course, there was a public comment that was proposed for, I believe it was an affordable housing project that was being directed towards veterans. And it was a large development, many units. I wanted to specifically make a comment in approval. Although there were many folks there that wanted to make a comment to deny that. For my specific comment, I wanted to have more availability of mental health resources which I think would be very helpful for the crime rate which I think was very steadily unchanged. Council, other questions? Council Member Sawyer or Alvarez? No, thank you Mayor, the application was very complete and I appreciate it. All right, so we, as I mentioned, we'll be making our decision later today. Just very grateful for your interest in serving the city and we'll be circling back with you after tonight's meeting. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hi there, are you Tara? Hi there. My name is Tara Montoya. I've been a job developer working with Department of Rehabilitation for 16 years. And due to COVID last year, of course that kind of ended everything. Also I'm an academic tutor, computer repair, person so I know how important it is to be able to feel safe in your house and to have a good landlord. And I'm very fortunate I've been living in my place on Sonoma Highway for almost 14 years. And I have a great landlord and it makes all the difference. I really like working with people with disabilities because just getting a job is hard enough but then to have to find an employer that will accommodate them that's another challenge. So it's been an interesting work. I think with my background and my education I think I'd be a great I've done work in the county only through like employment type of services. So but I love Santa Rosa and I've been here about 35 years, grew up in Napa and always seem to come back here. This is where my home is. We're very grateful that you applied. We love seeing folks who are interested in serving their community, particularly people who have experience, good and bad experience that they can bring to the community. Thank you. Council members, do we have any questions? Council member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you very much for applying. I'm curious given your experience as a such an eight voucher recipient and a disabled person and a businesswoman. What would you say was the body in which you saw it? Well, being on the waiting list for six years was extremely difficult and I was working and I was disabled and really shouldn't have been working and so I spent many years just going through kind of a cycle of trying to work and then becoming disabled again and so that process I think needs some changing in some way. I don't know how to do. I know there's a lot of people that are really wanting this and everything but that is a long time to wait honestly. Council member Schwedel. Thank you. Could you just share a little bit of information as to why you're choosing this opportunity now? What has come? You've been a resident for quite a while. I'm just interested in hearing why you're taking advantage of this opportunity now. Section 8 person, Jodi that was the one that recommended to me because of my background and she felt that and I thought, you know, I've I've always wanted to get involved in government. It just I've had a lot of other challenges to deal with in my life and so now I'm at an age and I have the time because I don't really know about my employment or my being a vendor with the state any more given how things are going right now. So I think it would be really interesting to get into the middle of it and see what kind of insights I might bring that might be different and new. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much and the five minutes goes quick. I know we'll be job developers. So five minutes is a great time to have an interview, right? Well we do have the application and appreciate your responses on that as well and as you've heard we'll be making our appointment later tonight so feel free to tune in otherwise we'll circle back with you as well tomorrow or in the next couple of days but thank you so much for your interest and for being here and for bringing your perspective. Thank you. Our next individual is Erlian Roger. Ms. Navarro is not on the Zoom meeting yet but we do have Ms. Rawhouser on the Zoom who is the next candidate. Okay let's go ahead jump we'll jump and then come back if we see Ms. Navarro. Ms. Rawhouser I just promoted you to panelists. When you get to the panelists side please turn on your camera. Okay there we go. Can you hear me now? We can. How are you? Okay I'm doing very well. Well thank you so much for your interest in the position and for taking the time to join us today. It goes really quick as I'm sure you've seen five minutes and council members have your application and have a couple of follow-up questions for you if it works. But first I wanted to turn it over to you give you a chance to introduce yourself and to tell us why you stick out or why you think you'd be good at the position. Okay well I'm a Sonoma County girl I lived in Santa Rosa proper for most of my life I was on the Spring Creek Elementary as a cheerleader at Herbert Slater I graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College and then in 2017 I finally went back to the University and graduated from Sonoma State so that pretty much rounds it. I opened up the Santa Rosa Plaza and managed to reach as hair stylist for five years and then I was working independently as a stylist after that I lived the experience of being homeless as I owned a three bedroom two bath house at the journey's end and as we all know what happened at the journey's end during the Tubbs Fire and I was unfortunately had one of the houses that was left standing so I was caught in the limbo of my insurance company claiming that I did not lose my home due to a wildfire but due to a government action therefore they had no responsibility to reimburse me for the loss of my home and so I'm also disabled I'm a four-time cancer survivor and I'm living with compromised kidney issues and so I had my golden ticket my home was paid for I just graduated from the University with no student debt I had no credit card debt I was ready to start my second chapter in life and the fire just happened and threw me into that huge trauma of what do I do where do I go who's here for me and so working with Kendall Jarvis and Tucci I was able to just rebuild my life again and so without their help I wouldn't be as doing as well as I am today and so with Tucci what I did was I got involved with them and we created a community group for the Journey's End and that was to give them one day a week where we could meet as a community share lunch and we planned different activities I got different guest speakers to come in to talk about issues that were pertinent to the Journey's End residents and we got a grant so we did a couple of parties and a few field trips just to kind of get a sense of community again and unity and I believe that really helped a lot of people and then with legal aid Kendall took, we did a class action suit against foremost which we finally did get restitution for that so I was grateful for that and Kendall's the one who because I had lived at the Journey's End for 30 years I was on rent control so I had my golden ticket my rent was frozen in perpetuity I owned my home I moved forward to live on my disability and I was set and I was feeling I could branch off and do my second chapter in life by using my degree that I just received in sociology and so what I found during my Journey the most traumatic part was I had a house so I wasn't houseless I was homeless I didn't I moved a total of 13 times before I actually was able to find a little bungalow on Sonoma Avenue and so I stayed between friends family and hotels for the first few months after the fire and it was just really traumatic just going through all the listings and seeing basically people's garden sheds for rent for $1200 and so I went from a highly affordable life to an affordable life and what I found that the most traumatic part was the sense of hopelessness and when you lose your hope that's when you begin a downward spiral and you just don't see how anything can be better so I think that finding a way to integrate hope into the existence of homelessness would greatly benefit the people who are dealing with the situation. So sorry that you've gone through that but I appreciate you be willing to your willingness to share your perspective with us and to use it for good within our community. Council members do we have any questions? The five minutes goes quick we really appreciate you being here and we'll be making the selection later in this council meeting tonight. I did have another comment if I may. Absolutely. When I was going around looking for places to live before I got rehoused and I had my section 8 housing voucher I was very upset because I had an excellent credit rating and I would walk into places and the first thing I'd be told is we've met our quota and when I was in business to me a quota was a minimum and a goal was something you strove to achieve and so I feel that there needs to be a better establishment of shutting people down by saying we've met our quota when I don't know if they honestly had met the quota and I think that's an important issue that as we open up with all these new apartments coming in that the quota for the section 8 housing members is more transparent. I appreciate that. Thank you so much for being here today and for lending your experience. We'll be making the appointment and then we'll circle back with you. You very much. All right, thank you. We're going to go back. We're going to see do we have Erlina. I'm not seeing her on zoom. No, it does not look like she has joined us via zoom. Do we already have Shashana here? How about we take a quick break and we'll see if we get applicants and we are a little bit ahead of schedule. Julie, how are we looking up there? Anybody materialize yet? Okay. We'll keep waiting. Mayor, I do see the 250 interview for the at-large tenant commissioner on the line. All right, let's go ahead and promote Constance and see if Constance is able to do a little bit early. Constance, Kenny, that's the 250 interview. Hey, Constance. Let's go ahead and get you to unmute but it's good to be able to see you. Can you hear me? We can hear you now. Oh, perfect. Are you good to do your interview a few minutes early here? Absolutely. Great. Well, thank you so much for taking the time and thank you for your interest in this position. Before I turn it over to other council members, do you want to just give a quick introduction who you are and why you're interested in the position or why you think you'd be good at it? Absolutely. My name is Constance Kenny. I'm 57 mother of three. Coming from a position of being homeless myself back in 2012 due to domestic violence, I was homeless with my son and in 2013 I was blessed to be able to go into Catholic Charities to where I've learned a lot firsthand of the homeless situation and the needs to be met from Catholic Charities. I was blessed also with getting a voucher from the city of Santa Rosa along with Burbank Housing to where that's where we are now. I'm great talking with people and because of my experiences firsthand I think I would be valuable, very valuable to your board. All right, well thank you so much for bringing that perspective and thank you for your application. It's very, very happy to see it. All council members have had a chance to read through it. Let's see if there are any questions about it. Council members, what help? Good afternoon Constance. Thank you again for applying for this position. On your application you talked about improvements on the structure of the wait list as to shorten the time in which applicants have to wait for the wait list. Could you share with us some of your thoughts on how we might achieve that? Thinking that if there could be a possibility of, I don't know if there's just one wait list or different types of wait lists but different types of housing needs that might help. And then possibility of if there was different outlets of steps in which you're going to get your housing help in the interim. I had to work two jobs in order to pay my rent as a single mom and my age it was kind of hard but it's just steps in order to help people on their road to getting help with the wait list. Great, thank you. Other questions from council members? I'll just ask you Constance have you been following the work that the housing authority has been doing and do you feel comfortable being able to plug in and pick up where other commissioners have left off? I have not been following that I do intend to and I do have the time I do have Mondays and Tuesdays off and any evenings so I am going to to study up on it and follow it and I would really love to be on board I think I would be a great help. All right, well thank you so much we are grateful for the application council members will be discussing later in the meeting the appointments I see down you're going for one of the at large tenant commissioner positions so there will be two folks pulled from that bucket and we'll circle back with you shortly thereafter. I appreciate your time. No, thank you so much. You take care and we'll talk to you soon. All right, thank you folks. Are you Lewis? Go ahead, let's use the microphone over here. First and foremost, welcome. Thank you for taking the time to be here today. So Lewis Brown we are doing quick five-minute interviews. All council members have your application in front of them both my two colleagues to my right as well as our colleagues that are participating via Zoom. So if it works for you to start off by introducing yourself talk a little bit about your experience and why you want the position and then we'll go on to some council member comments or questions about your application. All right, we'll do. My name is Lewis Brown and I'm coming at this from a number of different angles. The first angle is the single parent of a disabled child I've had the experience of dealing with section 8 housing in both Sonoma County and Santa Rosa so I understand the issues the angle of a person who's receiving the benefits or the detriments of being on a section 8 voucher. The other angle I'm coming at this from is the angle of an attorney. Despite being on section 8 for so long I was able to get through law school was able just within the last couple of years to pass the bar and one of my major interests is affordable housing and development in communities such as this. So I would like to be able to take both my experience and my education and put that to work to benefit my community. All right, well thank you so much for bringing those perspectives. Council members, who wants to start with questions? Go ahead, Council Member Swinnell. Thank you. Thank you, Lewis for this application. In reading your application your top three issues, you go to some great detail and I'm wondering how you see the intersection of what you put there is the top three issues facing Santa Rosa and your role should you get on to the housing authority? Where would those intersect? Well, if you could refresh my memory. What were the top three issues that I put down? Well, yeah. So you say at this point my information is limited but off the cuff I would say the first is affordability driven by the enormous hurdles to even the most benign development proposals and then you go on from there. Right. Well it is difficult. I mean there's a lot of push we pull you is in terms of coming up solutions for these these significant problems on the one hand you can have a piece of property say for instance that city owned and the city may want to put a development there that would help to alleviate these problems but you're immediately going to get pushback from the community around that development so ways of making this not just appear to be but actually be a win-win for the various stakeholders in the community are essential and that means bringing all sorts of different people to the table all sorts of different perspectives and finding compromise. So just with that on the same point you mentioned specifically NIMBY backlash so how would the housing authority fight some of the NIMBY backlash? Well that's a difficult one isn't it there's really only two ways of going about it that I can think of right now off the cuff number one would be to show that there's some benefit to the people in that community that they're not recognizing if you can sell them on the benefit then you can sell them on the proposal and the other one I don't recall whether it's one of the council members or one of our supervisors simply put out there that you've sometimes got to be willing to stake your own political career on what is right sometimes you have to do the things that are right for your community even if there is a powerful subsection of that community that doesn't like it Thank you My other question for you too was just about your general interest in other boards as well here serving Santa Rosa are there other boards that you've looked at or applied for before that also interest to you I haven't really looked at any others recently so I mean if there's any way that I can serve my community I would love to be able to serve my community so if there's something that intersects with my interests, my education, my knowledge and I can have a positive impact I'd be more than happy to devote my time and energies to that Thank you so much Our five minutes here we really appreciate your application and are grateful of your interest to serve your community in any way that you can we'll be making our appointments later tonight in our open session for our council meeting and then we'll be circling back with you to talk in the next couple of days if that works Wonderful, thank you so much Alright, thank you Next up we have Shashana Shashana, welcome in we really appreciate you being here with us today we're doing quick interviews all the council members have your application in front of them and have had a chance to read through it so if it works, I'm going to ask you to just introduce yourself a little bit, talk a little bit around why you're interested in this position and why you think you'd be good at it and then I'm going to open it up for questions from council members on your application I'm Shoshana Burney and I've been on HUD for quite a long time probably almost 20 years on and off actually this last time was only the last six years and it's helped me out so much I just wanted to be part of helping others that don't like the process was a lot for me at first and not understanding some of the things that like what you needed to do the paperwork to follow through and that the county and the city are two different you know things that entities that kind of got me welcome for years and then opened up right away I'd like to serve my community I don't have as much to say as he did but I don't have much experience on boards like this but I would like to put input if people ask me what I think about certain things absolutely we're really grateful for you to take the time and be interested in so we do want to talk to you a little bit about the process it's going to open up to council members for additional questions and comments council member Sawyer I see you've unmuted yes thanks mayor Shoshani you've mentioned that you have been through the process and I'm curious in your experience if there was one thing you could change in that process that you have been through a number of times what would that be I mean really the waiting period of not knowing no contact with anybody you know it's just you're hanging for a long time and also to let landlords know that like I mean I was thinking during COVID like they're the only ones that were getting paid you know the people that had had I mean it's a guarantee grant but they might want to somehow fish out the bad apples better too because some people give bad names to people like I'm disabled I've been disabled for a long time but you know I'm very respectful where I live so I don't know there's tweeting out people that take the time from us from people that need a home so thank you thank you council member Schwedl no questions just to review the workload that the committee has had before it over the last year you know I asked for anything and I didn't receive anything and I just said bring yourself and don't worry about it I never got emails or anything just told the other day okay but do you feel confident you can just jump in and help out if you know what if that's what is needed then yes I mean like absolutely the place for but like I'm wondering what's going on with community hospital up there on ill and what can be used for that that just drives me kind of crazy thinking why isn't that being used besides the earthquake stuff so I mean that's just some of the stuff I wanted to ask and bring forward the homeless situation too okay well we really appreciate you being here today that that five minutes goes really quick I know but as I said council members also have your application and we'll be making the appointment later tonight and we'll be circling back just really want to thank you again for your time and your interest is there something that I should have been able to read about the workload or something because I wasn't told that because this is a consistent board and commission just curious if you've kept up on what the agenda has been that they've had in their open meetings it's been infrequent because of the pandemic so I was just curious absolutely thank you for coming in I see Greg's here ready go ahead come on up to the microphone there hello how you doing Greg so I know you've been through this before so we're doing quick five minute interviews all of the council members whether up here at the dais or via zoom have your application in front of them and so I'm just going to have you first introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your experience and why you'd like to serve on the position and then I'm going to open it up to council members to ask questions about your application okay my name is Greg Jan I'm a long-term city resident I moved here in 67 I've been chair of the mental health board and I was elected to point her all of it school board I've helped build a school called Jack London I've been on the Democratic club and Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee I helped design the mental health services act I try to be busy I'm an author this September I'm authoring my publishing my fifth book on political commentary and mental health stigma I have a light schedule so I can perform these duties I'm in our own voice presenter at NAMI I also have my own health business license here at Sonoma County Santa Rosa County City my own health trade mark mental health trade mark filed by attorney that keeps protects my property that is unique in mental health services I don't make much money from my own little independent company but I try to do it I have a family of siblings two brothers and three sisters my parents passed away 2011 2016 and my mother was a long term district attorney of Santa Rosa Sonoma County and my father was a national minister who spent time in Santa Rosa First-Best Presbyterian Church I went to schools Sonoma State Santa Rosa Junior College Montgomery all the way from kindergarten and I went to Chico State graduating from everybody so any other questions lots of hats that you bring to the position so we appreciate that I'm going to open it up for councilmembers and see if they have any questions about your application seeing them from the dais councilmember Sawyer thank you mayor and thanks for applying for this position you show a great wealth of volunteerism in your application how do you immediately apply your specific volunteerism with housing I live in housing I live in the Rosenberg I have a real estate license sales license that expired in the 90s I have I have an interest I don't know how chair of the mental health board worked with mentally ill adults I worked at community support network which was providing housing I worked as a union rep working for line staff provided housing section 8 housing certificates my life has been intertwined with mentally ill disabled adults I also housing in the twilight of life I worked in summer field nursing facility not worked but volunteered in the men's club 10 years visiting men coming from housing in that issue of when they lose housing and go to nursing home volunteering is just in my blood and I perform service you know I'm on disability now it's not much likely that I can make money because I lose a lot if I try to make money I was recently accepted into a masters program at Grand Canyon University it was called mental health and wellness with an emphasis in community mental health administration and if I were to pursue a job in that field I'm not sure I would try to get a masters it's just something to consider but I would lose so much in health housing and social security benefits that it might not be worth it to pursue a job but my volunteer spirit is to help and my father was a minister and my mother did good good work as a district attorney secretary so it it's all blending together thank you all right thank you so much Greg we really appreciate you taking the time to come in council members will be making our determinations later at tonight's meeting and we just we're grateful for you for coming in for bringing your experience and being interested in the position but we'll talk with you soon is it televised in Windsor my sister's in town we're staying at a condo watching movies and things like that you can access the link at srcity.org or on YouTube or on Facebook okay thank you very much all right you take care and I will be informed by email or so yes we'll also reach out to you thank you we have Adam here yet I'm looking on zoom Tisha and Scott are not on yet so we'll take a quick break and see if we can get one of our applicants hi there are you Adam excellent step up to the microphone very nice to meet you so we're doing quick five minute interviews council members have your application in front of them and so if it works for you what I'll have you do is first give a quick overview of who you are what skills you bring to the position and why you're interested and then I'm going to open it up for my colleagues to ask you questions about your application okay my name is Adam Larson I let's see not really prepared for this but I served in the National Guard I'm looking forward to maybe re-enlisting soon what else can I say I've been on housing for some time over 15 years I believe and I live in a place called Del Nito apartment so I don't know if you guys have heard of them or not but it's a pretty difficult place to live for somebody that well I've been getting cyber bullied a lot by my neighbor and it's no fun it makes life a lot more difficult to get things accomplished and so I'm going through that and I have troubles right now but I'm kind of a shade tree mechanic so I'm getting through that but I'm persistent I have a good head on my shoulder so I think I do good in this job I believe in God I think that's the most important thing in my life right now it always has been actually and what else can I say just thank you for this opportunity you know thank you for being here we're certainly very grateful that you're interested in serving your community and bringing your perspective to it so I'm going to open it up for council members to see if they have any questions for you we'll start with council members thank you Mr. Mayor thank you Adam for coming here today have a little chat with us I noticed on your application you talked about you know people on housing who are taking advantage of and you also know you selected for this position on housing authority how would you use that information in a role on the housing authority board let's see so I know people that have been taken advantage of on housing reflect on that for a second I wasn't really prepared for that question can you go ahead and read that to me one more time so you just made comment on your application that you know people on housing who are taking advantage of and they also commented that you know how people take advantage of the program and so what I'm interested since you have this information how would you apply what you know if you were selected to be on the housing authority board how would you use that information to change that why even said that fair enough I'd have to reflect on that for a while you know to get that answer I'm sorry all good are there other questions from council members all right well we are very grateful for you to come in thank you so much for being interested we'll be making our selections later tonight in our open meeting yep and so we'll circle back with you but you're also welcome obviously to sit in or to watch that meeting since it's all done out in public all right thank you so much all right council I'm looking it looks like we've got Tisha and I apologize Tisha if I'm mutilating your name go ahead and introduce yourself to us here when you join our zoom hi Tisha please unmute your camera and your mic and we are ready for you oh I got it all right there you are got lost all right very nice to meet you so we're we're doing okay well I thought I would try to help make housing more affordable to people because I'm in lower income housing myself and maybe make the conditions better for people that complain that they're not living in the best of conditions for their in their area or housing and um I've been on section 8 for a long time so I'm familiar with lower income housing and some of the problems that people have with that and that's about it for now forgot what I put in my application well council members we'll have some questions for you about it I'll start off I just wanted to ask some of the things that you that you mentioned where would you start for making quality of life better for folks who are living in the maybe it's more affordable if I could and make the conditions better by making repairs things try to get them to fix things that need to be fixed and make sure that they have a suitable place to live in for those people that don't have a suitable place to live in and pretty much take it from there okay council members council member Sawyer you know I'm curious you've been in the worked with the city and it's housing authority how has your experience been with them and your ability to attain housing pretty good luck but I know people that haven't had a very good experience with housing that's why I try to get involved with that and help out people like that more thank you for that dedication yeah appreciate your willingness to apply thanks council member Alvarez any questions I can't see that if I had a question for you and I do appreciate you applying for this and really want to help the city of Santa Rosa especially with your experiences what advice do you have for us as the council members and how to really assist our section 8 members of the community what can you tell me that I could really help our fellow members any recommendations I would recommend if I could that they pay less than what they're paying some people don't get that much on disability or whatever it is they're getting a month and they really need a break on their rent especially since they can't work so some type of financial assistance or something of that type is what you suggest perfect thank you very much for that sure alright well thank you so much for coming in virtually joining us via zoom as you heard me mention we'll be making our decision later tonight in our council meeting so feel free to drop it on that zoom as well so circling back with folks to let them know who was appointed and then the next steps for those individuals in the next couple of days okay great thanks alright thank you so much council I don't see scott on the zoom but I do see david so let's go ahead and promote david we'll go to that interview next that's our 310 interview I apologize I do see that scott just jumped on so we'll do david back for your interview scott if that works for folks david how are you I'm good this is my service dog chiquita she just wanted to say hi I'm going to let her go adorable thank you well first and foremost thank you for being interested in the position and for joining us here today I know it's not easy in the middle of the day we do have quick 5 minute interviews so council members have your application in front of them we'll start first by asking you to introduce yourself and why you're interested in the position and then I'm going to open it up to my colleagues to see if they have any questions about your application before we deliberate later tonight wonderful um well I am a transsexual black Jew I've lived in sonoma county for almost all of my life I was born in pasadena I am disabled I'm a transsexual black Jew and I'm also on housing and I have a service dog because I'm on housing I've been housed for the last 5 years of my life before that I was homeless I'll start off and I'll just ask what was the biggest barrier moving from homelessness into housing and how can we make that easier for folks through the housing authority well one of the biggest challenges is um the way that the biggest challenge was finding a place to live first of all not the second go round but the first time it was really difficult and I would also like to say that because I was living on the streets for so long and I wasn't able to get certain things I did have a little list of things if that was okay to go through with y'all some things that might be helpful absolutely that'd be great okay well my first point would be about mental health I myself have severe post-traumatic stress syndrome and I have psychogenic seizures which I'm not convulsive but I have seizure disorder so I have to keep my stress level down but I'm also able to function very well um disabled people as well as disabled vets um need some help with mental health services we need some better help with our facilities that handle mental health issues for people who are on the streets um and a part of that point um is that in my opinion because I haven't necessarily researched this so much but I would consider about 80% of people who are homeless or vets um have major mental health issues it's hard for people to go and live in a place when those issues aren't addressed so my second point would be that after there is um more help for folks like that um you know there could be mental health professionals in their lives that help assist with drug intervention proper medications and mental health issues for people that way that when people are housed who do have certain disabilities it's easier for them to be better standing community members because they'll have a home they'll be mentally stable to be able to live in a place some people have a hard time living in a place so that also makes it so a lot more people living in housing or who would like to do that will also be able to take proper meds and a lot of folks would stop doing drugs and alcohol and live stably I myself live on SSI so I know a lot about that I have 19 years clean and sober from drugs and alcohol and also in conclusion I'd like to talk about the fact that not only um I would love it if y'all did find it in your heart to accept me to be able to help with housing because there's other things I have to offer like early childhood education I am the retired teacher since I'm on SSI and I would love to see a low income stimulus thing um in some form for folks here in our county who have it really difficult and just need that assistance that are very low income targeting one group of people which is the lowest income you know because what y'all have done for me is more than I could give I couldn't give you enough gratitude to thank you for the opportunity here the opportunity to be housed and to have my service dog and for my family to know that I'm housed and that I'm able to be doing well I have a psychiatrist and a psychologist and I am mentally stable and I am housed so I'd like to stop talking because I don't know if I over did it I apologize if I did No, no it's wonderful and we really appreciate talking with applicants who have a perspective that they'd like to bring and who have thought through the issues that they'd like to work on that five minutes does go quick and so we are at the end of the time and I apologize but we do have the rest to make decisions on and I just want to thank you so much for being willing to put yourself out for this position and for being interested in serving your community and we're just grateful for all of the applicants and for you for coming forward and asking to be able to help and to serve so we'll make our appointments later tonight and then we'll circle back Okay and as we say in Hebrew Shalom So shalom Alright take care David and Councilman we'll go on to our next interview with Scott Okay there's no picture There we go Can you hear us? Looks like we lost, we've got video but we don't have audio for you at the moment Okay what about now? There we go Okay like I said my grandson is helping with this I'm not really good with zoom or anything like that What's your grandson's name? Devante How's it going Devante Well thank you so much Scott We really appreciate you taking the time and Devante for helping out as well We're doing five minute interviews Council members have your application in front of them and if it works for you I'm going to have you introduce yourself the perspective and the experience you'd bring to the board and then turn it over to council members for additional questions about your application Okay Briefly my name is Scott McWhorter I am Okay you got to slow down I just got back in the house and I'm rushing So I'm a disabled veteran I've been on disability I got through HUD VASH back in 2010 That's how I got on section 8 I got it through HUD VASH program I was one of the first people that got section 8 through that I'm a graduate of Sonoma State I got a philosophy degree I'm working toward getting a master's degree at Sonoma State I raised my grandkids I've actually got custody of my grandkids I have two grandkids who live with me that's Devante and Maya My perspective of what I think I would bring to the board I'm still taking back with the last applicant I listened to everything she had to say and that kind of struck me here So I'm thinking more about what she said But my perspective is more so Again I'm a disabled veteran and I had the unique opportunity of having one landlord for a teen year period We became friends So I got to see section 8 from not only my perspective but from her perspective as well and how she viewed tenants and how she viewed people It's not like I really search out people that are on section 8 or anything like that But I did have an opportunity to run across people in section 8 and look out to hear what their experiences are And what I believe I bring to the board is two folds One is I have the ability or just let's say I have the opportunity to learn from a landlord's perspective of what they think of section 8 and how they perceive section 8 and then on the other hand I got this side that I'm on a person that's on section 8 and how I view section 8 from somebody else and what their views are That's all I'm going to say I really appreciate the perspective Let's see if council members have any questions about your application Council Member Schwedhelm Thank you Scott for your service and for applying for this position On your application you talked about accountability of landlords which is a unique perspective Can you tell me what you think the role of the housing authority could be Okay with I'm trading lightly here on how I say this I'm preface what I'm saying is not to say that landlords don't do their job or section 8 doesn't do their job But what I witness is that whenever there's an issue and there's an issue between a landlord or a marriage attendant section 8 and their infinite wisdom sometimes 90% of the time they will side with a landlord over what a tenant is saying and I think that creates a one sided kind of relationship where the power dynamic is more that the landlord has more control and more say where a landlord can literally do whatever they want and at section 8 tenant doesn't feel like they have a voice or they have a power or they have any way of opportunity to give these issues address Great thank you Other questions Council Members I'll just follow up on Council Member Schwedhelm's comment a little bit I've been able to track the agenda for the housing authority and have you seen the different workload that they have and would that meet with your schedule and your time that's available You mean as far as the meetings last this is not the first time I was asked to become a part of this but last time that I heard it was on Mondays was one o'clock it was once a month something like that it's been changing since then but I know I was going through school during that period so I didn't really want to take up any more responsibilities other than the ones I have now I'm more open because it's more the master's program is a little bit different than it is just going to like a regular summer state or regular college so I'm more open with my time Okay that's great and I apologize the five minutes goes quick but we appreciate you taking the time to be here as you heard me mention earlier we will be making our decision later tonight in the council meeting there's two tenant positions that we'll be considering and we'll circle back with you after the council deliberates and we'll talk next steps outside of that I just want to express our gratitude for your willingness to serve and looking forward to continuing to talk to you in the future about these issues Okay if I might say just in closing I just appreciate you taking your time talking to me like I said I was rushing to get the grand kiss of me so when I got back here my thoughts I had not a chance to really sit down so it might seem like my thoughts might be a little bit you know more nerve you know I am nervous talking this way I feel I'm more face-to-face type of person than I am a Zoom person I'm totally uncomfortable with Zoom so I apologize if I seem a bit nervous don't apologize Scott you did well many of us are definitely not Zoom people so we completely get it just again thank you for taking the time and thank you to Devonte for helping out as well and we'll talk soon alright thank you alright so council next we have William William please turn your camera on and unmute your microphone I believe I have audio we've got audio so William I appreciate you coming on and taking the time to talk with council members there we go oh hi well good to see you having some kind of technical difficulties but I'm sure that's not a hurricane of a concept for anybody of a certain age but I'm glad to be here and see what's happening I think we're all understanding the struggles of Zoom over the last year and a half so we're glad that you could join us and we appreciate that you're able to turn on the microphone and talk with us for a couple of minutes here so we do have about five minutes if I could get you first we'll start have you tell us a little bit about yourself why you're interested in the position and I'm going to open it up for questions from my colleagues on your application absolutely I'm just having a little problem with the audio volume level for some reason well we can hear you just fine oh that's much better I see okay I'm going through a phone rather than a tablet and that's kind of strange yep it's all good so it's great to be here I have been kind of following along with some of the other with some of the other folks and I think most of the issues at hand are pretty much addressed pretty well basically I think the main thing is holding up the show really me personally from my experience being on section 8 in my experience I waited seven years to you know get in and I've seen people you know many of people don't have that much time on the clock and there's a lot of people that are hurting out there I'd like to see that moved up I realize there's the bureaucracy involved with a certain amount of allocated you know allocations of however many and there is a bit of a stigma with the rental with the with the renting around the around the county there's a sort of stigma attached with accepting section 8 applicants I think there's maybe an unfair assessment that they believe that they're getting kind of a trace of society a lot of these people are marginalized a lot of these people are just picking themselves up by the bootstraps they're just trying to scratch and survive and I think the machinations the way this thing is operating it's not really serving people because you see a lot of people going by the wayside if you're waiting years and years you know something's got to happen I don't know if it has to do with the federal government I don't know if it's at a local level city, county, whatever state I know all the agencies work together but I think you know that's definitely a thing it's a time thing and not only that getting a lot of the rent you know landlords to get on board I don't know what it's going to take I know you can't expect your agency to become some kind of advertising agency or going out soliciting available space for people but I see people who are approved and they're just having a whale of time just trying to find anything where they're just even accepting it they're ending up having to move away from the area to different counties different you know so those are the biggest things other than the waiting part which is well worth it if you're in a social economic strata of a lot of us who are old disabled on a limited fixed income it's a real blessing you know to receive this and it's something you want to hold on to and maintain and preserve and protect but I'd like to see the process of it maybe the available units somehow I don't know how to get the landlords on board with this you know it's it's there's a stigma that somehow I don't know it's following a lot of people and I talk to people all the time you know it's not just typical financial fiduciary issues like oh well you know I've been homeless and I have bad credit or something I'm talking about people with normal credit and you know and yeah and people from all walks of life I live in a senior building here and we have all kinds of people and one thing we do have in common is this is for low income people and we've come from all walks of life and all professions and all levels of education and we've all seen greener pastures and we're all in the same boat we're just we want to survive we want to be good neighbors we want to be helpful with one another and we want to keep positive things coming coming in and we want to perpetuate this for more people going forward mostly because we see a lot of pain out on the street there's a lot of trouble out there and you can't put the onus on the police it's not it's more of a social issue it's something that everybody has to work on at a at the street sidewalk level you know it's not the police you know it's not their issue it's not the fire department it's not all the public safety people it's not the it's not the agencies you know it's certainly not the housing you know they do what they can they're tireless workers and all the ones I've ran across are all dedicated to their job and they do and they are compassionate people and that's what's most important that's how we have to go forward I think was with compassion but we have to find some solutions to get these people in the building somewhere and not in the creek and not on the side of the freeway it's just you know it's a public safety issue there's liability issues with property owners when these people are camping and stuff you know I'm a bike rider I don't like what's happening with Joe Radota or any of the various trails the Prince Greenway I see it every day this is a tragedy there's trash everywhere it's an ecological disaster you know these people and it's subhumanizing it's we've got to get these people you know in a building and I think after that I think they will I think the majority of them will want to elevate themselves further once they can take a shower you know well thank you so much William that five minutes does go pretty quick I just want to express the council's gratitude for your interest in serving in this position we'll be making our determination later tonight and then we'll circle back with you shortly thereafter thank you for your time and keep up the good work absolutely you take care we have one last applicant let's see if we have Michael here Michael if you are on the zoom under a different name please raise your hand via zoom we'll hang out for a minute and see if Michael joins us looks like we do have one I'm unmuted now I guess I apologize is this Michael? yes it is the video though let's get you promoted so you can turn on your video Michael I just promoted you to panelists so your video should be able to be enabled now there we go hello a bit dark but we can kind of there we go all right thank you so much Michael for taking the time we're doing quick five minute interviews here every council member has your application in front of us and so if it works I'm going to ask you just introduce yourself talk a little bit about why you think you'd be good at the position and then I'm going to open it up for my colleagues to ask some questions specifically about your application if they have any okay my name is Michael Whitaker I do have a masters degree and I moved here in 2010 with all full of vigor to take on the world and help my daughter who was over here having trouble long story short 2010 happened and thank God for her leader in HUD BASH because within six months I was completely going to be on the streets first time in my life and thank God her leader in them worked with me and got me through HUD BASH and got us going because I had two children and my daughter just graduated from Berkeley with honors and has her own life and her own job now and I let her know that without that help that wouldn't have happened that would have been the end of it for us I was circling the drain and I was doing everything I could every bit of savings everything I could there's nothing working and so this program is huge for everybody out here and I just think there's a lot of things that we can improve upon especially with the new program that's going on and I don't know why we can't have something like that involved with some of the housing that we set up for people but if you have other questions I hope that answered a lot really appreciate it Council members I'm going to open it up see if you've got questions about Michael's application Council Member Sawyer thank you Mayor and thank you Michael your application was very comprehensive and I don't have any questions I really appreciate it like I said I couldn't be here and my daughter wouldn't have graduated Berkley without you guys sounds like a success story to me it really was I still have trouble and so does my daughter believe in that she actually made it you know through all of that we were in a hotel room before I got the place that Herlita helped me get into for two months so it was like I understand what these people are going through well congratulations thank you thank you again really very much and Michael you've touched the housing authority before either in person before the pandemic or via Zoom I have looked in before I've applied before over different years but at certain times I was really busy raising a daughter again by myself but now that she's on her own you know there's so much free time in my life now and things are getting better and better in my life every day even through this pandemic so thank God for like I said if I wouldn't have had this housing I'd be in the same trouble a lot of Californians right now waiting to be evicted and you know I'm just so thankful and I know there's a lot of things we can do you know I've done little things myself I bought some solar things myself off Amazon and I'm off the grid most of the time because I don't want to have to pay the electric bill I don't have the extra money you know so I know there's certain things we can do that can make it cheaper for people and again I heard the gentleman at the end on there but I was trying to make sure I was on and I heard him talking about you know give some dignity you know I see people I live on college out and I see people all day long shuffling down the road but totally lost I don't know what to do you know so I appreciate what you guys are doing I just know there's got to be more solutions we certainly are grateful for your application we're grateful that you're interested in serving on the on the board it's wonderful to hear your perspective and to hear success stories from folks who have received the help that they needed to and are interested in paying it forward 100% 100% thank you guys enough no thank you so much and we'll be make our determinations later tonight we'll circle back with you shortly thereafter alright sounds great you guys have a great day and gals too I apologize everyone thank you very much thank you Mr. Mayor Michael you too alright council members and with that that was our last applicant we'll go ahead and go to public comment on item 3.1 Madam Zoom host I'm not seeing any raised hands for the zoom public comment we'll go to our live in person public comment looks like Mr. DeWitt hello my name is DeWayne DeWitt I'm from Roseland I have a great opportunity especially after hearing the interviewees to make a clean sweep on the housing authority this would be a good time to essentially clean house on the housing authority and I say this because I've been following it for over 25 years and most recently one of the most honest people I have ever met I've served as a community but especially here in Santa Rosa was pushed off of the housing authority after he became chairman and he advocated for the housing authority to follow the rules and to do as it should according to the Brown Act which then hadn't been suspended because of COVID so you've got some incumbents that want to be reappointed I believe you should pick a new people and it should be from these interviewees you've done today decades ago Santa Rosa talked about how it was going to begin a process of having new faces in our boards and commissions and city government and it didn't follow up on it the community action team was formed 25 years ago with that idea it's never really taken any effect yet in the process today you could appoint people of color you could appoint people of different gender approaches you've had interviewees here today who've talked about their diversity you can show the community that you actually are going to talk and walk your talk about true inclusion and helping the disadvantaged at the housing authority it's still essentially run by the guy who was the former director of it while he was a city employee he's the highest paid retiree in the city currently sitting on a board it shouldn't be that way as a matter of fact some people think the problems we have with our housing in this community started because of that same person so that person has been involved in this housing authority activity for close to 40 years and we haven't solved the problems that have been right in front of our face this entire time over 25 years ago the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group was formed to talk about how these issues could be addressed so today you have that opportunity to actually walk your talk and appoint all new people to the housing authority and then have those people interact with you have frequent discussions about how you're going to implement those ideals that you tell the community you believe in because we're not seeing it happen thank you Madam City Clerk did we have any pre-recorded voicemails on this item? we had no pre-recorded voice messages on this item with that we'll end item 3.1 and we will recess until 4 o'clock for the remainder of our meeting once you join the Spanish Channel we recommend you shut off the main audio so you clearly hear the Spanish translation Charles would you be able to repeat that please in Spanish? Thank you Charles Alright Madam City Clerk I recognize a quorum of the council we'll go ahead and resume our meeting would you please call the roll yes thank you Council Member Schwedhelm here Council Member Sawyer here Council Member Fleming Council Member Alvarez present Vice Mayor Rogers present Mayor Rogers here Council Member Fleming have you joined us let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Fleming and council member Tibbetts right so council just a quick reminder on some of our housekeeping today is a hybrid meeting that means that we'll have council members both available at the dais as well as on zoom council members on zoom just remember that if you turn off your camera you disappear from the meeting we need to make sure that we have a quorum so all three of you should determine who is going to stay on at all times if not all of you we also are asking that council members stay on mute unless they are speaking at today's meeting and of course we'll have public comment that's available on every item both in person as well as via zoom Madam City Clerk I heard you make the public comment I'm joining on the Spanish Channel for folks who need translation can you also remind the public how they might participate in today's meeting during public comment moments yes thank you mayor after each agenda item is presented the mayor will ask for council comments and then open it up for public comment the mayor will first take public comment from those participating via zoom then move on to members of the public comment the host and zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item once the mayor has called for public comment he will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on a specific agenda item if you are calling in to listen to the meeting audibly you can dial star 9 to raise your hand if you wish to provide public comment and are attending the meeting in person please sign up to speak on an item with the administrator at the top of the room this process is in lieu of speaker cards in order to reduce touch points due to COVID-19 the administrator will ask your name what item you wish to speak on and for a one sentence summary of your statement for the record the mayor will then call on those in person who have signed up to speak on an item once all live public comments in zoom and in person have been heard the meeting host will play voice mail public comments if you provide a live public comment on an agenda item but also submitted an email e-comment or recorded voice message public comment your e-mail e-comment or voice message public comment will not be duplicated, read or played during the meeting additionally there are two public comment periods on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters at items 13 and 17 this is a time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council throughout today's agenda when the mayor calls for public comment an interpreter will be prepared to assist anyone needing interpretation those using interpreter support will be afforded additional time for your public comment as required by the brown act we ask that those listening on the Spanish channel but wishing to make a public comment to turn off the interpretation channel entirely at the time you hear your name called so you can join the main channel to make your public comment so your public comment is heard and translated into English this icon may now look like a circle with an e-s in the middle of the city so you can join the Spanish channel at the conclusion of your comment to continue listening to the meeting in Spanish thank you thank you madam clerk we'll go on to item number 6 that's our report out from our closed session madam city attorney do you have a report yes I do the council met in special session this morning we have a discussion on closed session items first was a conference with legal council regarding existing litigation concerning public utilities commission of the state of california proceedings related to pacific gas and electric utility council met, discussed and gave direction to legal council 2.2 this is again on the special in the special meeting was also a conference with legal council on the city's paving and grading versus city of san rosa and again the council met, discussed and gave direction to legal council 2.3 was a conference with the real property negotiator concerning renegotiation of leases and license agreements at a number of different properties the council again met, discussed and gave direction to the real property negotiator the council then in the regular meeting began at noon met in closed session with the labor negotiators and again met, discussed and gave direction to the labor negotiators and thank you thank you so much we have no proclamations tonight we'll move on to item number 8 our staff briefings mr. city manager mayor rogers and members of the city council we have no COVID briefing for this evening our staff briefings are going as planned that is good to hear we'll move on then to city manager and city attorney reports so do you want to start sure i just wanted to give a very quick brief update to let you know that the as you may have seen in the paper the governor did sign yesterday signed into law ab 832 passed by the legislature and he signed into law and it extends the state's moratorium on evictions until September 30th 2021 again that's for we'll prohibit evictions for failure to pay rent due to financial hardships caused by COVID-19 the state moratorium does still allow for evictions for other causes for at cause at fault cause or no fault cause but again the state moratorium has extended until September 30th 2021 that also extended the time in which landlord could begin proceedings in small claims that also got extended through the end of September and I'm sorry that one extended it actually through the small claims course can begin actions on November 1st and then equally significant the bill doubled the state's relief rental relief fund and it made that fund available for 100% of a low income tenants past due rent back to April 2020 for so as long as the fund has monies in it so 100% of your past due rent and also 100% of a low income tenants past due utilities also back to April 2020 the bill also includes some landlord assistance and I will note that the governor's office also noted that of the $1.4 billion available only $73 million thus far has been paid out out of $722 million in applications so the governor and the state have made a real commitment to streamline that process and ensure that that money does get out to low income tenants to assist them so good news on that front and I have nothing else to report council do we have any questions for the city attorney on her report Mr. City Manager just briefly Mayor and Council I'd like to share a bit of good news about one of our employees Jennifer Miles one of our senior buyers that are purchasing department was just certified by the NIGP which is a national procurement program as one of the first 551 people in the universe to obtain an NIGP CPP certification congratulations to Jennifer and on continuing our tradition of great procurement and purchasing services in the city well congratulations are echoed by the council for Jennifer really well done and obviously a great addition added to the team as well council are there any questions for the city manager we'll go to public comment on the city manager in city attorney reports not seeing any in the chamber nor am I seeing any hands pop up for live public comment on zoom Madam city clerk do we have any pre-recorded voice mails we did not great we'll go ahead and move on then one second we'll go on to our statements of abstention by council members is there anybody who has to abstain from an item tonight looks like we're good to keep moving on to mayors and council members reports who wants to start looks like we have no reports for tonight's meeting go on to item 11.2 that's our board commission and committee appointment process earlier today the council met and did interviews for applicants for our housing authority we have four openings to our at large positions one is a tenant commissioner position and one is a senior tenant commissioner position that council needs to consider typically we do a process of elimination for applicants but with I think we had 22 that we had I think instead what we'll do is we'll open it up for nominations and see if we can reach consensus that way so let's go and start with our at large positions is there anybody who'd like to make an initial motion council member and again we're going to do these one at a time we'll do them one at a time and see if we have consensus so I'd make a motion to appoint Wayne Downey as one of the at large commissioners second we have one motion for Dr. Downey made by council member sweat helm and seconded by council member Sawyer is there any discussion on that motion let's go ahead call the roll council member I council member Sawyer I council member Fleming council member Alvarez I vice mayor rogers I mayor rogers I that motion passes with five eyes with council member Fleming absent and council member Tibbets absent okay we'll see if we have a second motion for an at large member council member Mr. Mayor make a motion to appoint Thomas Lapeña to the housing commission as an at large appointee second we have a motion and a second is there any discussion on that motion okay let's go ahead and call the roll council member sweat helm I council member Sawyer I council member Alvarez I vice mayor rogers I mayor rogers I that motion passes with five eyes with council member Fleming absent and council member Tibbets absent great thank you so much so the council has chosen Dr. Downey and Mr. Lapeña as our two new or existing members on the housing authority as at large members and I'll now entertain a motion for the senior representative position. I move Ms. Moore looking council member Donna Moore so did I miss did I get in the wrong category yes so Ms. Moore was an at large applicant so so I would move Yvonne Rawhouser okay there's a motion is there a second for this nomination I'll second mayor okay is there any other discussion we'll go ahead and call the roll council member sweat helm I council member Sawyer I council member Fleming council member Alvarez I vice mayor rogers I mayor rogers no okay that motion passes with four eyes vice mayor rogers voting no and council members Fleming and tippets absent that was myself voting no not the vice mayor I'm sorry mayor rogers voting no so congratulations Yvonne you are our representative for the senior category let's move on now to our at large tenant commissioner appointment that we have one position on this and I'll entertain a motion council member thank you Mr. Mayor I move to nominate Scott McWhorter to be a tenant commissioner on the housing authority there a second motion by council member seconded by council member Sawyer any discussion okay let's call the roll council member I council member Sawyer I council member Fleming council member Alvarez vice mayor rogers I mayor rogers I that motion passes with five eyes with council member Fleming and tippets absent excellent well first and foremost I want to thank all of the applicants for being interested in serving the city we did have a lot of good choices to choose between it does sound like the council was able to coalesce around some of the same individuals so I definitely appreciate that and we're looking forward to the continued service and the new service for our appointees Madam City Attorney and Mr. City Manager we'll reach out to the rest of the applicants in the next couple of days great let's go ahead and we have to take public comment on this item yes because we took public comment after the interviews but yes take public comment again okay we'll open it up for item 11.2 not seeing any movement in the chambers I see no hands that have popped up via zoom let's go ahead and see if we have any voicemail public comments we received no voice message public comments on item 11.2 all right we'll go on to approval of the minutes we have item 12.1 these are the minutes from our May 4th and 5th special meeting were there any amendments or additions to the minutes I'm seeing shaking heads let's go ahead and go to public comment and see if there's any corrections that the public wish to provide and I'm seeing no movement for live public comments either in the chamber or via zoom and did we have any voicemail submitted no we had no voice message public comments on item 12.1 okay without objection we'll show those minutes adopted as presented to our consent calendar Mr. City Manager Mayor Rogers and members of the City Council we have night items on the consent calendar this afternoon beginning with item 13.1 a motion to accept a contingency action for the Pacific Avenue reconstruction Humboldt Street to Montecito Avenue item 13.2 a motion accepting the 2020 general plan annual review report item 13.3 a resolution authorizing submittal of a grant application to the state of California Department of Parks and Recreation office of grants and local services per capita grant program for the revitalization of the playground area at South Davis neighborhood park item 13.4 a resolution for approval of an amendment and change order number 3 to the communication system and services agreement with motor roll of solutions incorporated to increase compensation by $2,755,731 dollars and 11 cents for a total not to exceed 8,104,319 dollars and 80 cents for nine years of maintenance and software system upgrades item 13.5 a resolution for approval of the fifth amendment to the general services agreement number F00 1776 with Patricia Enterprises Inc. DBA advanced security systems item 13.6 a resolution to approve the first amendment to the professional services agreement number F00 2259 with best best and Krieger limited liability partnership for real estate legal services item 13.7 a resolution approving the second amendment to the professional services agreement number F002008 with Gooden McGride squary and day legal liability partnership for legal presentation representation in proceedings before the California public utilities commission item 13.8 a resolution approving the first amendment to the professional services agreement number F002270 with O'Donnell, Gratton and Mitchell PC for legal representation and finally item 13.9 a resolution approving the first amendment to legal services agreement with Myers-Novey for legal representation also do we have any questions for you councilmember Schwedhelm thank you Mr. Mayor I had a question on item 13.1 Mr. Coleman my question is about the cost increase specifically about the pavement section thickness the increase and at this point in the project how that comes up now versus when it first came I just want to understand the process sure Lisa Welch our associate civil engineer who is managing this project to respond to that question thank you Lisa you have been promoted can you please unmute your camera or microphone yes sorry I had some issues can you repeat sure so my question was we're anticipating an increase of $300,000 for the thickness of the roadway for longer life I'm just interested in the process about how at this point in the project this comes to our attention and increase additional funding I appreciate that thank you there was a design oversight late in the game and the design phase it happened around the 90% mark and it resulted in us not knowing that it happened until after the project was out and we had to make sure that it was out so in light of some of our earlier discussions today is this a city staff oversight or was this a contractor oversight it was a change made by city staff that was okay thank you Madam City Attorney just as a point of clarification there's a number of items on here that are helping the city in specific ways correct that is correct and to clarify in particular because I notice it wasn't in the title the agreement with Gary Shea O'Donnell is for a particular litigation that is going on that requires particular expertise and likewise 13.9 the agreement with Myers-Novey also concerns a particular litigation matter that also requires specialized expertise great thank you are there any other questions from council alright let's go ahead and go to public comment on our consent calendar we'll start with Gregory Farron good afternoon my name is Gregory Farron 13.2 it's a great staff report I appreciate it I hope a lot more people get to read it the thing that's really been disappointing for years and this is no surprise to any of you is how poorly we have done in building housing housing in general but especially housing for those in the extremely low and very low income levels you seem to have done pretty well in the moderates you know the marketplace and your housing authority have done a good job of trying to get people who are you know I won't say wealthy but at least you've got some money in their pockets for those on the lower end of the scale we're really bad I mean we have not done very well and I'm trying to inspire all of us to do a better job because that's clearly where we're deficient and so I'm hoping you guys will use every tool at your command and we will certainly from the community but this is no surprise but this report really lays it out clearly about how badly we're doing in building housing in general thank you thank you Gregory I don't see any other hands on Zoom so I'll look to the chamber is there anybody who wants to speak we'll come back for the other items later this is specifically for the consent calendar so we'll go to Mr. DeWitt I'm from Roseland I ask you to pull this matter and actually reconsider it at a different date because streamlining the process has become essentially discriminatory and exclusionary the current process that's ongoing has not done a robust effort or authentic community engagement it's essentially been something that's been utilizing this Zoom format which as you saw in your interviews earlier today is problematic for many people in the community this needs to be a process which has actually opened up more and you should actually have the meeting between the planning commission and the city council here in the chambers where people from the public can come and interact with those bodies and talk about this plan which is so very important for the future the previous speaker referenced the information that's been made available pointing out that plenty of housing gets built for the well to do in this community and that your regional housing needs assessments falls short especially so for the extremely low income and the low income and it's been that way for decades it's not something new it's a policy that's been ingrained in Santa Rosa cities activities for all of these decades the only way you'll be able to change this up is if you have authentic community engagement in the general plan process it's not happening now the consultants that have been hired are just fine with that they get paid whether or not there is good authentic community engagement that's not happening so I ask you to please pull this item reconsider it so that you can have a joint meeting with the planning commission and you the city council with the public there to participate I've also asked to speak on item 13.3 as a separate and distinct item under the brown act and I ask for the full amount of time to speak on that sir that's not traditionally how we do things so I'll look to the city attorney Mr. Mayor it is within your discretion okay I'm going to stick with the norms of the chamber Mr. DeWitt but we can discuss that as a council and see if we want to change what our policies and process is I did see you had 45 seconds that were left on your time if you'd like to take that to talk about 13.3 Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland in 45 seconds I'd like to point out that this park needs this grant and it was the only park in Roseland for over 50 years and the only reason we got that park was because the freeway was built not because the city wanted to give it to us give us more neighborhood parks stop with the big community parks we need small neighborhood parks throughout Roseland and you could be applying for these grants at the state to get them I hope that you'll take that into consideration and do your best especially the new council member for district one to give us neighborhood parks with funding from the state even if the city pleads poverty thank you for your time thank you so much Mr. DeWitt is there anybody else who'd like to speak on the consent calendar Madam City Clerk do we have any voicemails we received no voice messages on item 13 for the consent calendar alright Madam Vice Mayor it's your favorite time of the night I move items 13.1 through 13.9 and wait for the reading of the text motion by the vice mayor seconded by council member Schwedhelm let's go ahead and call the roll council member Schwedhelm council member Sawyer council member Fleming council member Alvarez vice mayor Rogers aye mayor Rogers aye that motion passes with 5 ayes with council member Fleming and council member Tibbetts absent all right that will take us to item 15 the rest of our agenda cannot begin until after 5 o'clock when we resume at 5 o'clock we will be going to our public hearings that's item 16.1 and 16.2 which is in accordance with our sunshine ordinance trying to take public hearings as soon as we can so we'll gavel out for now and we'll be back at 5 o'clock all right and we are back Madam City Clerk can you please call the roll thank you mayor council member Schwedhelm council member Sawyer council member Fleming was that you council member Sawyer it was thank you madam thank you council member Fleming council member Alvarez vice mayor Rogers present mayor Rogers here let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council member Fleming and council member Tibbetts great Mr. City Manager let's go on to item 16.1 our first of two public hearings Mayor and members of the City Council our first public hearing of the evening is item 16.1 a resolution to adopt a proposed water demand fee schedule an ordinance amending chapter 15 of the city code to adopt the proposed wastewater demand fee schedule based on the 2021 water and wastewater demand fee study final report presenting the staff report this evening will be Kimberly Zunino deputy director of water resources and Bob Reed of the reed group mayor I'm just waiting for Ms. Zunino to join the meeting I have Bob Reed on the panel side if you would like I could proceed or wait for a minute your pleasure let's go ahead and wait one quick second Mayor Rogers I'm not sure what's going on with Kimberly if you would like me to go ahead and introduce this I'm happy to do so on her behalf please do director and if she does get a chance to pop on we can hear from her then great good evening Mayor Rogers and members of council I'm Jennifer Burke the director of Santa Rosa water and we're here today and follow up to a study session we had done with the city council to present our recommendations for the water and wastewater 2021 demand fee schedule public hearing with us today should be Kimberly Zunino our deputy director of administration with Santa Rosa water and our consultant Bob Reed with the reed group and it looks like we're going to go ahead and we're going to go ahead and we're going to go ahead and really has been able to successfully join us so I will now turn it over to her to finish the introduction thank you sorry about that I think I have both streaming right now so I'm going to turn off the other one there we go can you hear me now yes we can all right sorry about that I was running you from a different way as you may remember on July 8th we held a study session to provide you with an overview and to receive comments from you on the 2021 water and wastewater demand fee study and the proposed fee schedule today for the public hearing you will be again provided the details on the report and the proposed fee schedule and the request for adopting the report and approval of the proposed fee schedule we'll be presenting the majority of the information for you today at the end I will give you a little bit of an update on the outreach that has happened and then the request for the recommendation so I'm going to turn it over to Bob now great thank you for that good evening Mayor Rogers Vice Mayor members of the council it's a pleasure to present this information to you this evening if we could have the next slide please I'm going to summarize the demand fee study that we've completed for Santa Rosa water talk about the demand fee framework and methodology look at the use factors for both water and wastewater as well as how we calculated the proposed demand fees and then show what the combined water and wastewater demand fees mean for different types of customers and then talk about next steps and I'll turn things back to Deputy Director Mike please so demand fees are sometimes called capacity charges but they're generally the one-time fees charged in new development for capacity in the water or wastewater systems occasionally they're paid by existing customers that may change their use for example a retail store has converted into a restaurant or something they might pay an incremental demand fee for that change of use but generally it's for new development the fees were last updated in 2014 with a comprehensive study however the city does have a practice of adjusting the fee amounts for inflation each year so that they keep pace with inflation but it is a good idea to update the analysis every once in a while and that's what we've been doing for the city the legal standard for demand fees is in the government code and basically it says demand fees are capacity charges shall not exceed the estimated reasonable cost of providing service which is charges are imposed that's a pretty broad standard that applies it's really a reasonableness test that applies go to the next slide please so there are a number of different methodologies that could be used for calculating demand fees what we have used with the city existing fees are based on what's known as the system buy-in methodology and this is an approach that's really looking at the investment that's already been made in the utility infrastructure we take the present value of the existing facilities so we look at historical costs we escalate that up to current dollar value using construction cost index as a inflationary index and then also reflect appreciation of those assets and then we divide that total value by the existing units of development or the demand that is placed on the system the current level of demand and that comes up with the unit cost that's then used to charge new development for connecting to the system this is a pretty common methodology it's best applied in areas that are largely built out with infrastructure largely in place or capacity is available to meet the needs of new development it's a very common and well accepted methodology the development community is familiar with this approach it does incorporate the cost of existing facilities so we're looking at historical financial information fixed asset records in the accounting system for the cost of facilities rather than relying on plans and estimates of what the future might be and what future facilities might be that are required and so because of that we're not relying on a capacity analysis of the engineering study to assess what future needs may be and so it's a simpler calculation approach using this methodology and then also the buy and fee because we are looking at the existing investment in the system paying that fee really represents a reimbursement to the utility for the investments that's already been made in providing system capacity and then that money can be used for any capital improvement projects rather than having to be earmarked for a specific expansion related facility that's part of a capital improvement plan so it's a little more flexible in the way that the money can be spent next slide please so this slide summarizes a lot of the financial information that went into the fee calculation the water is highlighted in the blue section of the wastewater system in green as you're aware of the wastewater system is comprised both of the local collection system within the city of Santa Rosa as well as the regional reuse system the treatment plant and the reuse facilities that benefit not only the city but some of the neighborhood communities as well so we look at both of those separately and combine those together but at the top of this table we summarize the fixed asset information coming out of the fixed asset records of the utility what we do is we take that historical cost information and then as I mentioned before we escalate up to current dollar values and then also reflect appreciation another way of saying that same thing is we look at the book value which already reflects the appreciation of the assets and then escalate that book value up to current dollar amount either path gets into the same place and you can see this is a summary of the different major categories of assets in the fixed asset records I think there is a couple thousand individual assets in these utilities so we look at each individual system component and going through this calculation we then make some adjustments to that we add in the cost the present value of past interest and debt issuance costs when we debt finance some of the infrastructure we pay interest costs and debt issuance costs those are added in that's part of the cost of acquiring the assets we subtract out outstanding principle is representing the part of the assets that have not yet been paid for and then to the extent that money has been set aside into capital reserves for capital improvements we add that money into the system and then we add that asset value that dollar in the bank is going to be pipe in the ground next year in the near term and so we include that as part of the value of the system is those monies that are dedicated in earmarked for capital projects so you can see the water system on looking at all these system assets and adjustments it's almost 300 million waste water system the collection system is also close to 300 million and the regional reuse system is close to 400 million dollars we then take those values we divide by the current system demands a million gallons per day and we come up with a base demand fee and that's expressed first in thousand gallons per day and then a thousand gallons per month and then the bottom numbers in the box there the proposed demand fees expressed in dollars per thousand gallons per month and you can see here in the wastewater we've added the local collection system and the reuse system together both of these fees are increasing from those unit fee amounts from the current fee schedule but as you'll see coming up we're also updated the usage factors and those are declining and those two things work in opposite directions and so for the most part fees are generally going down and we're all for the for the utilities if we go to the next slide describe that process first for the water utility here in doing this update we looked at water use records for the last four calendar years that we had so 2016, 17, 18 and 19 we looked at water use during the peak demand month of the water system generally in July or August for different types of residential customers single family by lot size and then duplexes, triplexes, condominiums apartments and so on we did do some refinement to these categories we've got better information now than we did before and also recognize some of the development trends within the city so working with staff we adjusted some of these categories from the current fee schedule so that we could be more accurate for each of the different categories here this shows in both in gallon per day terms for dwelling unit as well as 1,000 gallons per month units in this table the last line here for commercial industrial irrigation customers it's just expressed at 1,000 gallons per month and so when there is new development non-residential development there is a specific water use calculation made for each project and then the fee on a 1,000 gallon per month base is calculated based on estimated water use for those accounts go to the next slide please this summarizes both the current and proposed water demand fees for the different types of residential property and then that base fee amount for the non-residential at the bottom you can see some of these fees are going up slightly some of them are going down again the unit fee amount is going up but the water usage we are seeing because of drought because of increased water use efficiency because of the efforts made within the community to reduce water use those usage factors have come down and those two things offset each other so some of these fees are going up slightly others are coming down and you can see that as you compare go to the next slide please looking at wastewater now same schedule we looked at the winter water use for wastewater demand fees we look at winter water use this is the time when customers generally are not irrigating so water going into the home ends up going into the wastewater system different types of residential development again here looking at data from 2016 through 2019 and again usage factors all declining across the board across the range of different residential types of development here and the next slide will show the current and proposed wastewater demand fees and you can see here across the board because of the lower demand by each different type of development the fee is declining across the board for all types of residential development you can see that commercial and industrial fee amount is increasing because that unit fee is increasing however staff is also updating the usage factors that apply to different types of non-residential development and that may also result in fees generally going down for non-residential development as well the next slide will show the combined water and wastewater demand fees in most instances new connections are obtaining both water and wastewater services and so this shows the combined water and wastewater demand fees both under the current fee structure the proposed fee structure and then you can see both the dollar change and the percentage change and you can see for all residential types the combined fee is going down by varying degrees in all cases and again for that non-residential it would depend on the specific usage characteristics of each individual development project so that would be determined on a case by case basis if we go to the next slide we wanted to look at how these proposed demand fees stack up with some of the neighboring communities and that's depicted in this graph here the current combined water and wastewater demand fees are in about the middle of the pack but with the reductions that are being proposed you'll be at the low end of the range here and so you can see the blue represents the water demand fee and the green is the wastewater and you can see how they stack up with some of the neighboring communities conspicuously absent is runner part but they've got a very complex fee structure and it wasn't practical to try and include that in this graphic because of the complexity of the structure that they have but this is for typical single family homes in Santa Rosa compared with the neighboring communities and the next slide I believe I'll turn it back to Deputy Director Zanino and I'll be available for questions thank you so we also wanted to update you we talked about this previously as well on the outreach that we've done with the development community in the current environment we've had some challenges but we've done everything we can to make sure that we're reaching out to the developers and contractors to let them know that this change was coming we created some FAQs or frequently asked questions so that that information was available to the public as well as our internal groups so that if any of the groups that work with those developers and contractors are having conversations they could also make them aware of the changes coming we also sent a letter to all of the contractors and developers that we deal with currently and even any that were left on the list that might have been more historical we sent them to everybody so we sent a letter letting them know what we were doing what the process would be and then also attaching those FAQs in addition we also emailed local associations for engineers, contractors and developers to let them know that we would be available to attend to their membership meetings if they would like us to in order to give them an update on the process and answer any questions that they may have next slide please this slide is just giving you a timeline and the work that's been done to lead up to the consideration today the budget subcommittee and the budget or the Board of Public Utilities met many times as you can see here in order to review these documents to provide comments to us to make sure that they were comfortable with bringing a unanimous recommendation to you so once again we'd like to thank them for all their work we do tax them quite a bit looking at all of the different items that we bring for them and then on June 8th we had the study session with you and today we are here for the public hearing and the consideration of the adoption of the new proposed fee schedule I do want to mention that in December of 2020 was the first time that we brought the proposed fees to the Board of Public Utilities and it was at a subcommittee meeting that was a public meeting and in the documents that you have and are approving we are going to go back to that date and go through the process of requesting an adjustment to that demand fee that they were charged and we will work with them to make sure that they have paid those demand fees at the lower rate. Next slide, please. So it is recommended by the Board of Public Utilities and Santa Rosa Water that the council by resolution approve the amended water demand fee schedule and introduce an ordinance amending Chapter 15 and 16 of the Santa Rosa City Code to incorporate the approved sewer demand fee schedule, re-adopting the annual adjustments and making related changes. With that I will hand it back to the Mayor. Thank you so much, Ms. Nino and Mr. Reed. Really appreciate the information. Councilor, are there any questions? Looking to zoom. We will go ahead and open the public hearing then. This is an opportunity for anybody to comment on item 16.1. Not seeing hands via zoom. So we will go to in chambers. Mr. DeWitt. Thank you. My name is Duane DeWitt. I am from Roseland. I appreciate the fact that these deliberations to lower the costs have been put in place working with contractors and developers. I am supportive of lower costs but at the same time as I look at a sign saying drought is here, save water I must ask that you folks once you pass this put it on hold and have a moratorium on new hookups until we get through the drought and we know just how much water we will need to actually declare the drought over. Along that same line decades ago the city of Santa Rosa was discussing how to move water to the geysers. It was considered to be tertiary treated wastewater and at the time in those hearings myself and former council member Noreen Evans spoke about how no water is waste and all water is a commodity. And we should be trying to find a way to get money back from the water that we send north to the geysers. That's a private organization that's profiting from what is essentially a publicly owned asset. That water could be helpful to us. So as you get ready to tell everybody in the community we have to save water and we have to really hunker down and work together on this perhaps you can lead the way by saying first and foremost we're going to limit de