off of what Mark was preaching last week. And in two, in light of several circumstances that we've dealt with and you deal with on a regular basis, we wanted to start tonight I did just wanted to begin addressing this issue of bitterness. And we've seen bitterness, full bitter fruit over last year and even before that. And we see its fruits and we see its effects. And so it's something that we need to be aware of. And tonight really I think we'll be maybe a beginning point for spending some time talking about this subject, learning what it looks like and being able to identify it, being able to biblically and lovingly deal with it. It's something that is critical for us to understand. And it's one of those things that sometimes is for whatever reason elusive. I know when Pastor Charlie probably attested this, you know, and Brother Ben, I just see some of the brothers in the room that we've, you know, been through several circumstances and situations with that when you're dealing with someone and you begin to unpack problems that arise, it becomes obvious pretty quickly. It's like, Oh, there's, there's bitterness involved here. And as bitterness is really making it hard to get anywhere to make any progress. And it's really difficult to maintain peace and unity and really difficult to resolve this issue with your brother and get back to that loving, you know, fellowship that you had before the bitterness crept in just so many issues related to that. And at the same time, sometimes really difficult to define it clearly to diagnose it clearly, like, you know, putting your finger on those issues that give rise to bitterness and then knowing how to specifically address that issue to vet it out and to deal with it. And so I'm sure over the next weeks and months, we'll take opportunity opportunities as they arise to address this subject. And what I think I'd like to ask you to do in this process is to become comfortable yourself with what it looks like, why it is so dangerous and deadly, why it's such a wicked, poisonous thing in a church. And then so that you know also, you can start formulating how best to interact with yourself when you have been, I don't know what that feels like, I've never been bitter, but maybe you guys have, no, we've all had bitterness, right? This is something we all deal with at one time or another. We have those, those tendencies in the flesh. And so you want to be able to properly diagnose that and handle yourself when it comes to that, but also so that you can lovingly interact with your brothers and sisters that may be having difficulty with that too. What we've said this before, and it is very true that often bitterness in the person who is bitter is blinding. They just don't see it and they've got to be led to a diagnosis. And I personally want to be more adept at identifying that and diagnosing it and dealing with it. And I certainly want our church to be more adept at identifying it and dealing with it, diagnosing it. So take this time tonight and then I mean we'll spend a little bit of time next Sunday during the Lord's Supper talking about it. And then as time comes up, becomes available in small group, we may spend some time there talking about it. And so if you will as we go through, just take some notes, be thinking through it, and help us as a family learn to deal with this issue. We're part of a church, right, that is weak and passive when it comes to sin. Right, yeah, no, I would expect a more vehement reaction than that, but yeah, no, our church is not weak and passive when it comes to sin.  No, we're a church that takes sin very seriously. You know, in a day and age where most churches and most of what would be considered evangelicalism has no, they want to smooth things over to have a sham piece, which is really no piece at all. It's a fake superficial piece, and it's a superficial piece gained at the expense of dealing seriously with sin. This is not a church that's like that. The brothers here, the sisters here, we are serious about living a holy life. We want to obey the Lord, we want to obey scripture, and so when there's sin, we address it at some point or another. It's going to get addressed. We may miss the boat on occasion, or may take a wrong course of action when it comes to something like that. We are all just men at best, and we have clay feet. However, we don't want to be complacent with sin. We want to deal with it. But when you're dealing with sin in that way, and when you are biblically obeying what the scripture says, when it comes to resolving conflict with your brother, in some cases, because again, we're dealing with the flesh, this issue of bitterness can come up. Someone gets hurt or someone gets offended. It may have nothing to do with resolving a conflict. It may have been something that someone said to you in passing. It might have been something that just crept up in conversation. It might have been something that happened at a fellowship. It might be something that someone's doing that somehow you've taken offense at or feel neglected in or feel hurt by. It could have been a comment that was completely innocent in that person's mind that has really rubbed you the wrong way, and now it's just taking root in your heart and causing problems. It may be, and this is what we've seen frequently, it may be that someone else is hurt. Someone else feels mistreated or treated unfairly or they feel neglected somehow or feel hurt somehow, and so you in mulling over their hurt and their offense and their issue, you yourself become offended and you yourself become embittered over that. There are all kinds of ways for bitterness to come up, and we'll talk about some of those, but we've got to know as a church how to deal with it. And the first place I want to go to start talking about this is in Hebrews chapter 12. In Hebrews chapter 12, we have an exhortation here, command from God with how to begin addressing this and taking care of it in the church. And like we've said many times before, we're a family. The church is the body of Christ, and we're all to work together in preserving our peace. That is not the pastor's job or it's not an elder's or a deacon's job or a leader's job. It's everybody's job. It's certainly our job, but it's your job too. We're all in this together. And so where this comes up, the body has to do what the body is supposed to do. Now I praise God for some of the difficulties that we've been through. I can say that unashamedly because they really have matured our church. I see us growing and growing. We've got a long way to go, but I see real growth. I see real changes taking place, real maturity, setting in. And the longer the time goes and the more these types of circumstances that we face, the more biblically mature our church becomes. There was a point in time when we look around our church and the oldest Christian around here, well, Jack, but I've been a Christian for a long time. But most of the people in our church have been a Christian for seven years, five years, three years. And we are in a sense, as a body, growing up in the faith together. We've got godly older men, godly older ladies in the church, but in a lot of respects, a lot of us are younger in the faith. And so these things must come. These things must arise. And, you know, if you're in a church that takes sin lightly or takes peace superficially or doesn't ever deal with things like this, then where are you ever going to learn these valuable lessons, right? They just, they don't get learned. And these kinds of lessons are the means of our growth and maturity in Christ. They're the means of our sanctification. And so we need to praise God for these situations. I can tell you over the last year, and Pastor Charlie, brother, tell me if you'd attest to this that we've learned a lot about how to deal with bitterness and how to deal with conflict and Matthew 18 situations. It's just the Lord grows you up through trial in dealing with those things. And so let's take heed to this and grow up together in this so that we're all working on this together. And it's just going to take some time to understand it. But let's begin with Hebrews chapter 12. And let's start with, let's start with verse 14. This is Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14. And here the Bible says, pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And then it says, looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by this many become defiled. Lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau who for one morsel of food sold his birthright. For you know that afterward he, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears. And specifically here, we can talk about some of these other verses, but specifically let's look at verse 15 together. Here the verse begins in the New King James with looking carefully. When we were walking through the passage in 1 Timothy 3 with respect to an elder, we looked at that word Episcopos, right? Episcopos. And that word literally means overseer. It's a compound word, one who watches over an overseer. This word looking carefully that begins verse 15 is the word Episcopo. It's the same root word and it, similar to that word Episcopos, it means to watch over, to watch carefully in the same way that the Episcopos in 1 Timothy 3 watches carefully over the congregation and deals with problems and issues that come up. You as a member of the body of Christ here are commanded in verse 15 to watch carefully over Episcopo, watch carefully over your brothers and sisters in the congregation with respect to this issue of bitterness. You know the question comes up, am I my brother's keeper? Well yes you are your brother's keeper. You're to watch over and carefully watch over. We are too in one translation to see to it. You're to see to it. You look for evidence in your brothers and sisters in Christ in the body. You look carefully for evidence of bitterness, evidence of anyone falling short. We are to have oversight of each other in this. Now this word looking carefully here in the Greek is a part of simple, but this is, maybe you guys will know exactly what we're talking about here, a part of simple of attendant circumstance. If you look at verse 14, it says pursue peace with all people. That word pursue there is an imperative. It's a command, right? It's a command. We're commanded to pursue peace. When you get to verse 15, that looking carefully then picks up, it's an attendant circumstance part of simple. It picks up the force of the command in that verb pursue. So it itself becomes a command. When we think about this now, this is to you, this is to me, it's to everybody here. We're commanded. It's a command of God to look carefully. You know, some folks might think for themselves that they refuse to do this kind of thing because they don't want to be a sin sniffer. Or why am I going to go up and bug my brother, bug my sister over some potential sin issue or some something that I see. Here scripture commands it. You're commanded to look carefully, to watch out for, see to it that no one falls short and there's not any root of bitterness. If you look at it rightly, it's helping each other stay safe. Sin here is a serious problem. This falling short of the grace of God is a serious issue. There should be no one that comes through the doors of our church that we'd let stay here over a period of time without having some assurance that they're genuinely converted. I mean, how many of you in your past experience have been to a church where no one shared the gospel with you? They don't care about your soul. So no one should come in the doors of this church without multiple people sharing the gospel with them, without inquiring about where they are in the faith. Not only that, it should be that person here who is potentially deceived. How many of you know that because of the fruit that you see again, you'll know them by their fruit? You have concerns over whether or not they're genuinely converted. It's loving and it's right to approach a brother or sister with that kind of heart if it's done lovingly, that's the key issue, because we want them to be in heaven. Here in the book of Hebrews, the book of Hebrews was written to offset this potential of apostasy, the people falling away, falling away because of difficulty. In verse 15, we're to watch for it, we're to look carefully, we're to see to it, we're to look for evidence, and then we're to address that lest anyone fall short. That may be falling short because they're never converted, falling short because they're walking around here as a false professing Christian, falling short because they've fallen into some sin now all of a sudden and they've gotten themselves in hot water and they're starting to depart from the living God, another passage in Hebrews, right? So we're to help one another in this, we're to dig out bitterness and we're to dig out all the associated problems with that, but we're to help one another grow up into Christ. This word carefully, you've got looking there, that participle, but we're looking carefully, that carefully speaks to vigilance in this. You got to remember, all of this has to be done with, if you will, soft people skills, wrapped in velvet, wrapped in love, you know, cushy, cushy. You go up to somebody, listen, you've shown up late for the second time in a row, I think you're lost. We all see that extreme how ridiculous that would be, right? There is a loving way to approach someone and you're to approach them lovingly. It's in a spirit of gentleness that we're to entreat a brother, we're to be gentle, but it requires vigilance. Maybe you've seen, I know I have, several times where someone will come and the brothers and sisters talk to them and they'll come and they'll talk to them and they'll come and they'll come and they'll come and they just come and they just keep coming. In over a period of weeks or months, sometimes it's not easy to talk to a professing Christian, right? About their soul. Sometimes out of fear of offending them, or because maybe the last conversation that you had got bristly, there's just, at some point, we fall off that responsibility and they come and they sit and we just stop having those conversations and we stop talking to them and they just continue to stay around and it just becomes easy for them to sort of sit in the back and the brothers and sisters come to understand, well, that's just the way they are and we don't talk to them anymore or more about their soul. Here the scripture is saying vigilance. It requires vigilance. We've got to keep having those conversations and keep talking to them. Again, we're dealing with eternity and dealing with the state of their soul. But specifically here, it says, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, then it goes on to say lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble. We're to talk to someone about their soul and we're to vigilantly and carefully look and watch over them with respect to that and then we're to watch over in order to prevent bitterness. Let me make a note of this with respect to this falling short of salvation. You, so that you understand, do not hold the gavel when it comes to someone's salvation. You can look at a false teacher teaching a false gospel and based on the authority of God's word, you can confidently say that person's lost or teaching a false gospel. You can look at someone who says, you know what, I really don't believe in God, but I think I'm a Christian. Well, based on the authority of God's word, you can say, you don't believe in God, you're lost. When it comes to someone who is making a profession of faith and they are wanting to follow the Lord, they're seeking the Lord, again, that, whether that person is genuinely converted or not, rests in the mind of God and you don't hold the gavel when it comes to that. So your conversation, again, in having these conversations like this in being loving and in being compassionate and in using tact and maturity in talking with someone would approach them in a way that they're not offended with you, but they're hearing what you're saying. And so if you walk up to somebody and say, listen, I think you're lost and we need to talk, there is to use wisdom, there is a better way of approaching that. Listen, I need to talk to you. I'm concerned about you. I love you, I care about you, and I just want to talk about how you're doing, see where you're at. I have some concerns that lead me to possibly believe that you may not be genuinely converted. Have you taken a look at yourself lately or where you are with your spiritual life, you're getting to know them, you're diagnosing the process, if you're helping them walk through it. But oftentimes when it comes to some of those conversations, you know, in the past we've seen patterns every now and then of that gavel coming down, and when the gavel comes down, in many cases you lose, we're not in it to win a point or win an argument, you're in it to win someone's soul, you're in it to win a brother, win a sister. And so you just take tact and care and compassion with the way that we have those conversations, and that is very important. You want to be able to have these, the Scripture commands that we do, but you use love and use compassion in the way that you do that. But secondly here, this, looking carefully, is to prevent bitterness. A root of bitterness, when the Scripture here in verse 15 mentions a root of bitterness, it has the sense of a poisonous plant, right? A poisonous plant. It's here a metaphor, this root of bitterness, really a metaphor for that person who is committing that sin in the church. It's a person in this case spreading 11 of bitterness or spreading 11 of poison. This bitterness is said in verse 15, springs up and causes trouble. Then it goes on to say, and by this many become defiled. In this, you have to see, there is a spreading of an infection. Bitterness is a contagion. It's an infection in the body. There's a bad example that's being set here. There's a bad attitude that is cropped up, and this doubt causing, disruption causing, division causing, bad attitude is now causing trouble for someone else, and defiling it says many. It is a contagion. It's an infection in the body. This causing trouble refers to the effects of taking that poison into your body. So we're going to understand bitterness. It's some, in a lot of cases, right? It's really easy to spot. You can have a couple of minute conversation with someone and come away from that conversation thinking, wow man, that person just seems bitter to me. Really sometimes easy to spot, but sometimes difficult to diagnose, difficult to deal with, and sometimes difficult to protect yourself against. It is a contagious infection in the body, and this causing trouble, when it says springing up causing trouble, that's the effects of taking that poison into your body. If you get near someone with the flu and you kiss them, what are the likelihood of you getting the flu? It's pretty likely, right?  I was like, I know I get grossed out too, but yeah, it's listened. That is like bitterness. It's an infection. It's a poison, and you get involved with to any large degree with a bitter person. You got to understand that's contagious. We'll talk about that more as we go through this. You can become bitter and bittered yourself. The effect here, this trouble, is the effect of that poison of bitterness being taken into your body, and there's no one here that's immune, no one. No one here is immune from bitterness. You get around bitterness, maybe we'll talk about it, you get hurt or offended, and you're understanding you've been unfairly treated or neglected, and now it's really simple for you. The strongest among us can fall to bitterness, and you get around that embittered person. Very easy to go along with the bitterness in that person and get taken up by that infection, and it goes into you.  We're to cut that off before that happens. You have to understand that this person by definition, the embittered person, cannot have fellowship or the unity that scripture describes because the bitterness prevents it. Now, that's not by declaration of the church, that's by the reality of their heart. They may, someone may be here, maybe one of you right now struggling with this issue, and you're embittered in your heart over something. By nature of that bitterness in your heart, it impacts your fellowship. It impacts your unity. If you're embittered over a hurt, embittered over a fence, it has already destroyed the fellowship and unity with that person that you're embittered against. With the bitterness, it's impossible to have biblical fellowship, biblical unity. The bitterness has to be dug out. Now, when we start walking through bitterness with someone, there are several things that you can look at to diagnose bitterness, but when we start dealing with someone with bitterness, if they act in accord with their bitterness, rather than in accord with the word of God, then by acting in accord with the bitterness that is in their heart, we begin having to separate our fellowship from them, because that bitterness, being the contagion and the infection, the poison that it is, cannot be allowed to continue to spread, cannot leaven the whole lump, cannot, the poison has to be cut out. The cancer has to be cut out of the body, right? So it may eventually, over a period of time, get to the point where we say, listen, if you're going to be embittered, if we can't resolve this bitterness in your heart, if we can't resolve these problems, then we can have fellowship with you. You're not in unity with us, and that bitterness, and we've seen it, haven't we? Time and time and time and time again, an embittered person talks to another person, and they become embittered, and they're embittered together. They have a little embittered club. It's a little bitter click, you know? And that little bitter click talks to another person, and they join the bitter click, and then they're sending out invitations on Facebook to join their bitter click, and they get other people to join their bitter click. And before you know it, you've got this little bitter click that just, they start falling like dominoes, and one leaves after another, bitter. And then their bitter click doesn't break up. They take their bitter click to other places outside the church, outside the peace and unity and fellowship of God's people, and they pretend to sit in other fellowships without their bitterness, but yet the bitter click then graduates into being divisive against our church. You see how this spreads? It's just a, it is a wicked tool of Satan. So by definition, bitterness impacts or prohibits, destroys the fellowship and unity that we have, the unity that Scripture divides, that describes. There's something in bitterness, the nature of bitterness, that is contrary to that fellowship. It's contrary to that peace. So in order for us to labor, to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace, like Ephesians tells us to do, we have to deal with and dig out the bitterness. It says that, that bitterness, that root of bitterness springs up, causes trouble. And it says, by this many become defiled. This is because again, bitterness is highly contagious. People become infected. Maybe they pick up the offense of some other bitter person.  That bitterness is a contamination. Again, that's why it has to be so carefully dug out and addressed. Lupriolo says this, if you haven't taken the time to read through Lupriolo's little book on bitterness, really, really insightful, really helpful, I want to encourage everyone to get a copy of that. I really want us as a church, us as the body, to become very well versed in this sin. We need to really understand this, really be able to spot it, really to become mature in the way that we deal with it. Okay? I encourage you to get that book. But he says, this bitter person, speaking of the bitter person of the corrupting influence, he stays in or near the fellowship of the church and spreads wickedness, doubt, and general defilement. That's true of bitterness. He stays in or near the fellowship of the church and spreads wickedness, doubt, and general defilement. When a bitterness, when a bitter person or person engaged in that bitterness in their bitter heart, as being overcome by bitterness, they're not content to leave alone. They're not content to harbor that in themselves in, because of pride, because of connected sins, they've got to, in a sense, save face and spread that, build allies to their case. It goes part and parcel with bitterness. This concept of bitter, the word bitter, has to do with something that has an unpleasant taste. It's also in the Greek word that means sharp or pricking, that it has a sense of something, an internal wound, which is exactly what bitterness is. Bitterness is an internal wound. But it also has a description of something that causes grief or is hard to bear. You've heard the words, bitter defeat. Oh, that was a bitter loss, a bitter failure. They fought to the bitter end. It's something that's difficult. It speaks to an adversary. In that sense, speaking of that, a bitter grief, a bitter loss, a bitter fight, a bitter adversary, bitterness causes a reaction. It causes a reaction. And the person who is bitter, and tell me if this isn't true, it causes animosity. It leads to antagonism, pride, arrogance, haughty, headstrong, implacability. In other words, they're fired up and there's nothing you're going to be able to do to calm them down. Just implacable, unintreatable. They just cannot be reasoned with. Unteachable-ness, sometimes it results in self-pity, results in resentfulness, and all of that from a heart that is unforgiving. Bitterness springs out of an unforgiving. This is why this dovetails with what Mark was preaching. Just that necessity of forgiveness. You must, must forgive. Because of these things, because of that antagonism, that unteachable-ness, that pride, sometimes the resentfulness, the unforgiving attitude, results of bitterness are that that person becomes to be anti-social. They start with drawing. They'll withdraw from the person initially that caused the offense or the hurt, but then in pride or in their offense. They'll start withdrawing only to those with whom they can make allies, make partnerships in this bitterness with. In other words, the person that is their ally in their offense against that person, that's their ally. Everyone else then becomes, or begins to become their enemy. In the beginning, it may be that one person that's the enemy, but then it begins to be the people who sound like that person, or the people who act like that person, or the people who are friends with that, the friend of my enemy is my enemy. It's like that kind of ridiculous attitude in the Lord's Church. It becomes, they start with drawing. They become indifferent or adverse to conformity. When someone is embittered, let's say that it's I'll give you some real examples. It's got someone that's embittered over a fine point of the way that our church deals with church discipline. You know, some issue in the process of church discipline that, you know, I think that's just, that's unfair. That's just a mistreatment of people. It's too harsh or it's, you know, whatever that fine point of the process is. Because they are embittered about that thing, that the church does, their bitterness starts to take aim at the church itself. It's no longer that one point. Now it's the church. Now it's those people you start talking to them. It's not our church. And we really, I'm just praying for our church and so thankful to the Lord for our church and just love the brothers and sisters at our church. Now it's your church or that church. You know, their bitterness starts taking aim at a wider scope. The scope of bitterness always grows. It maybe starts with one person, maybe start with one 10 second conversation. But then after that root springs up and begins to grow, it expands and expands and expands. And now all Baptists are wrong. You know, it's like everything's wrong with the world. You know, it's not content to stay within its tiny little context. It's got to spread. And so in that sense, the bitter person begins to become indifferent about the people that they're around, the church that they're in. They become adverse to conformity in their, and what I mean by that is they, they don't want to go with this status quo. They've got to stand apart. The bitterness in their heart causes that division of themselves and they stand apart from their brothers and sisters. They stand apart from the body. Now it's me and them. You know, it's no longer us. You realize that in that same context then, that is divisive. And when they build an ally, that's being divisive. They are divisive. They're sowing discord in the body. It's unsubmissive because they're no longer going along with what we're doing here. They stand apart. It's rebellion. And it's rebellion against authority. That is, it's pride in many cases. It is arrogance. It's haughty. It's head strong. It's unteachable. It's all those things. And it just divides them. Look real quickly at James 3 and just because it's close here, one book to the right. Look at James chapter 3 and look at verse 13. So James chapter 3 verse 13. Who is wise, James says, and understanding among you, let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness, that humility, right, in the meekness of wisdom. Verse 14. But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, and that bitter person that goes right with it, self-seeking in their heart, right, envy, all goes hand in hand with bitterness. If you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom, the wisdom of the bitter person, the wisdom that they think they have, does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy, and good fruits, without partiality, without hypocrisy. The fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Bitterness is said to be self-induced misery. If you're bitter, it's self-induced misery. If you read the article in the bulletin this morning, I hope you guys are reading some of that stuff in there, the bulletin. They do such a good job on the bulletin. Please honor, Nikki, by taking a look at the bulletin when you come to church on Sunday. But the article on bitterness, when you are hurt or you're offended or you feel as though you've gotten the short end of the deal, the short end of the stick, the short straw, when you have felt as though, maybe you feel as though you didn't get what you deserve, you weren't treated the way that you should have been treated, and for whatever reason, you've taken an offense or you've been hurt. You've got to understand, it's not if the seed of bitterness is planted in your heart as a result of that, it has been. The seed of bitterness is there. If someone says something to me that I'm hurt by or offended by, the seed of bitterness is there in the heart. It's already there, but you have now a choice of responses to that. You can bend down immediately, pluck that seed of bitterness out of your heart, and immediately forgive your brother, forgive your sister for your perceived hurt, your perceived mistreatment. You just forgive them, you love them, right? Forgiveness and love, or you can sit back with that seed in your heart and you can mull over the hurt. You can mull over the offense, you can review it in your mind. I can't believe that just what happened, that really happened. Did he just say that to me? Wow, man, the arrogance of that. Why would that brother, that was a complete, unloving act that he just, you know what, I think he did that to me once before we were having this conversation. You know, he's not been treating his brother's hate. You know what I mean? You just start reviewing the hurt over and over in your mind, and then it's like the next day. Boy, the look on his face too, when he said it. And there was that little huff, I could tell it. He was just pride, proud, proud. And you start, you know, and it's not beyond us, right? As you're reviewing over and over in your mind, the history of that one offense, that you begin trumping it up in your mind and adding stuff to it. And what is fiction now starts becoming fact in your mind. You know, when he did it, I thought I saw the devil in his eyes, you know, and you start making stuff up. It's, you know, you just review that hurt, review that neglect, review that mistreatment. You just review it over and over and over again in your mind. And you, that seed of bitterness just grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. And so you know what? You get invited over for fellowship.  And you're like, yeah. So they prompt a little and prompt a little. And so you start talking and you won't talk to Jack in this way because Jack's not going to take it.  You're not going to have an ally in them.  You've been here five minutes. Oh, let's talk. You'll talk to the person who's been here five minutes that doesn't know and you build an ally and the bitterness spreads and it becomes that it's that contagion, right? It produces, bitterness produces chain sinning chains. I think that's a lupriola term too. Chain sinning. You just sin. It causes sin after sin after sin, sin piling up on sin, compiling sin is constant. Look back, go back to Deuteronomy chapter 29. Deuteronomy chapter 29, this issue of root of bitterness in Hebrews chapter 12 is, I think, drawn from this passage in Deuteronomy chapter 29. And look beginning at verse 10. This is Deuteronomy 29 verse 10. Here in Deuteronomy 29, the Lord is going to refer to a person who is superficially identified with God's people. If you're not superficially identified with God's people, if you are genuinely identified with God's people, then this issue of bitterness will not, you're not going to allow that to divide you, right? If you're identified with, if you're a Christian, you're identified with God's people, then that bitterness needs to be rooted out, needs to be rooted out of your heart, there needs to be genuine peace.  So this person who entertains bitterness and allows bitterness to fester and brew and boil is the superficial, he's superficially identified with God's people. Listen to what it says, this is verse 10. All of you stayed today before the Lord, your God, your leaders and your tribes and your elders and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives and also the stranger who is in your camp, from the one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water that you may enter into covenant with the Lord your God and into his oath which the Lord your God makes with you today, that he may establish you today as a people for himself and that he may be God to you just as he has spoken to you and just as he has sworn to your fathers to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I make this covenant and this oath not with you alone but with him who stands here with us today before the Lord our God as well as with him who is not here with us today for you know that we dwelt in the land of Egypt and that we came to the nations which you passed by, you saw their abominations and their idols which were among them wood and stone and silver and gold so that there may not be among you man or woman or family or tribe whose heart turns away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of these nations and that there may not be among you a root bearing bitterness or wormwood and so it may not happen when he hears the words of this curse that he blesses himself in his heart saying I shall have peace even though I follow the dictates of my own heart as though the drunkard could be included with the sober oftentimes in the case of a bitter person they in their bitterness in their pride in their haughty headstrong arrogant ways thinking that they are pursuing right thinking that they're doing the right thing thinking they give God service right they kill you and think they give God service thinking that they're obeying scripture even or that they're doing the right thing they've made the right decision they follow the dictates of their own heart and think that they have peace ultimately bitterness leads to division and the division is when the bitter person out of their bitterness begins to follow the dictates of their own heart thinking they have peace and they leave and they join themselves to another church which is if it's a true biblical church it's the same church they're just going to another part of the body claiming peace when they're following the dictates of their own heart and God says as though the drunkard would be included with the sober in other words you follow your bitterness far enough you're outside the kingdom you are lost as and you think that you have peace like the drunkard think that he has peace with God the drunkard would be included with the sober you're fooling yourself as this bitterness is a terribly defiling sin that can lead someone to hell and we have these conversations all the time that um you know bitterness is a heart issue you have bitterness in the heart but bitterness manifests itself doesn't it so when that bitterness manifests itself you have to like the scripture says you deal with the conduct you deal with the manifestations of it it's um whenever we see scripture uh that deals with how to where to interact with our brothers and sisters with respect to sin it always deals with conduct my brother did this and so I have to go to him you know it's like uh the brother that says boy I'm really struggling with you know lust in my mind I'm really struggling with pride in my mind well that's something that we need to help a brother with and work on those kinds of things but you don't dis fellowship someone for the problem they're having with sin in their mind it's when that sin manifests itself and causes problems that it incurred and it incurs church discipline that it incurs someone coming to them and so here bitterness manifests itself um you got to be able to diagnose it and let's look at some of these okay um and for lack of time just go through if you want to jot some of these down if you want to add some things to it when you see bitterness what are the outward manifestations of bitterness and what I encourage you to do is if you see someone and granted you know let me say this too this is these are all just delicate things delicate situations they require wisdom and tact often to deal with you show up at church on a sunny morning and you got this loving joyful brother that walks through the door and you know you don't realize it but he just slammed his thumb in the car door and so he comes in with a little bit of a scowl on his on his face and you're like brother I think you're bitter uh use some tact some love some compassion it's when when you deal with sin it's repeated a pad it's a pattern of that that establishes you know it's like man I talked to my brother I encouraged him I loved him you know just had a conversation and he just seemed like someone was bugging him I asked him but he said everything was okay and so didn't press too hard but um I need to follow up with him so you know wheat goes by and you have another conversation and I'm seeing the same the same thing day or two goes by you have a conversation on the phone and I'm hearing the same thing okay brother I need to need to talk to you is that pattern right that tells you what's going on when there is no pattern then love your brother be concerned for your brother but um you don't and I saw you speak an angry word and so this is step two and I've got two brothers with me you know it's um we've got to use wisdom and how we approach these things but um when a person is bitter resolving conflicts with them becomes a monumental and virtually impossible task if you do have a circumstance that comes up and you go to that person to resolve the issue and they become unreasonable with you or they're not forgiving they're not responding to you with love and with patience um there's a possibility that they are bitter resolving conflicts with a bitter person is almost impossible the bitterness has to be dealt with so that the conflict can be resolved um withdrawal when you see some with withdrawal withdrawal is a symptom or a red flag of bitterness um bitterness and this withdrawal causes a breakdown in communication the person just doesn't communicate as well or as often or as loving or as compassionately as they once did there's something going on there and bitterness can cause that a bitter person will keep a record of wrongs a bitter person will take something that in and of itself may be somewhat in the grand scheme of things insignificant but then that seemingly insignificant thing that should be setting on a clean slate and forgiven and written off now becomes a part of a big pile of bitter dung that is lined up with all these other little seemingly insignificant things that um are now not setting on a clean slate they're setting on a whole list of wrongs a whole list of offenses and so they keep a record of wrongs don't remember every one this one time you said this and this other time you said this um you know this other situation when this happened you did this and just a record of wrongs right bitter person a bitter person has a critical heart as a result of that keeping a record of wrongs or or seeing everything is a one list long list of one problem after another they're critical they are easy to they're easy about their criticism they level their criticism all the time in that they're condemning they have a judgmental attitude there is in the in the bitter person a need to react and to spread their bitterness in order to build allies and to save face to protect their ego protect their pride um they just have to do it that's why um you know we don't have time tonight but when you're dealing with sin in the church and you're dealing with divisiveness and bitterness and issues like this and listen it's it's circumstances like the circumstances we've been through over the last year that expose problems like this it exposes it it brings it to the surface and praise the lord we get to deal with it um it brings it up it comes bubbling to the surface when you go through difficulties like this because people get hurt and they wallow in that hurt and that hurt develops into bitterness and then bitterness and all kinds of other sins but um when you get that person that's in that state um everything breaks down with them they become as we've said against the church against being in conformity with their circumstances and so they have to withdraw themselves they begin withdrawing themselves they begin pitting themselves against you or against the church or against the one they're offended at in doing that in pitting themselves against you they have to justify their decision they have to justify their heart justify their actions by now building or getting allies to themselves they can't stop from doing it so bitterness then graduates into division we get accused all the time it's really difficult to leave this church because you can't leave here in sin and it seems like most of the people leaving here are trying to leave in sin but we've been been has brought this up a couple of times we've been bit by this so many times when someone leaves the bitterness doesn't get dealt with so they leave bitter and then they sit outside bitter with their allies casting grenades over the wall um bitterness has to be dealt with otherwise it leads to division leads to more sin and if they're going to a biblical church it's just more sin than the body that's a sin that some other church leadership is going to have to deal with and they don't know and may go hidden for a long period of time may go may never surface again but it doesn't get resolved doesn't get dealt with and it causes division and disruption in our church so it has to be dealt with you can't just leave embittered in that the bitter person has a retaliatory attitude i think one person in particular that is the chief embittered person who was left here in last year under all this difficulty that we went through and man there is that has graduated into complete retaliation vengeance lord says vengeance is mine but they become vengeful they start lashing out trying to destroy you trying to destroy the church that's where bitterness eventually leads to but it's this retaliatory attitude the bitter person will have suspicion and distrust they'll have doubts they'll be suspicious about their brother they'll be suspicious they'll start judging your motives judging the motives of your heart i said this and this is what he meant or they did this and this is how they feel about me right it's a evil suspicion it's a distrust when it used to be that person used to be when that would come up or that thing would be said or that thing would be done that that slip of judgment and you maybe even sin or whatever happens and you would have responded by oh man i love that brother i i've done that very same thing myself right you'd have responded that way um or um i love you brother this is an area that's difficult for me too you know and it just you would have responded that way in love and compassion with your brother knowing that we're all in this together but instead um you might have given them the benefit of the doubt he didn't mean that the way that it came out when i was talking to him i know my brother loves me he didn't mean that the way that that came across i'm just going to forgive that right but you don't you carry that offense carry that hurt the bitter person makes mountains out of molehills makes mountains out of molehills every little issue becomes a flagrant death con for offense um the bitter person um has an intolerance for just about everything it's an intolerance for the way that you look eventually uh the way that you speak um i don't know if you remember we had a small group meeting one night and a couple of the brothers you know we were talking about um uh just and i think if i remember correctly uh pastor charlie was just uh talking about um being faithful to the lord you know faithful and obeying the lord and mentioned the word you know that bad word obedience a couple of times um faithful lord and obedience and obeying the lord's and had a couple of brothers you know say amen and we're talking about resolving conflict we've got to get conflict resolving a couple of brothers amen well i had a conversation after that small group meeting with a brother there's no longer with us because he's been divided from us by his bitterness where you're saying did you hear the way that they were saying amen and you didn't rebuke them for saying it that way that's bitterness that's the effects of bitterness uh you come and bit it in your heart and there's just an intolerance for just about anything you just even the tone of the voice they don't want to hear uh even the sound of your voice just makes me you know cringe that's bitterness it's bitterness um they become they become uh don't like the sound of my voice brother the sound of your voice is music to my ears the bitter person becomes hypersensitive they're hypersensitive um the pinprick becomes a dagger in the heart um that's associated with pride the embittered person is impatient the the bitter person magnifies forgivable offenses and it doesn't forgive they treat those forgivable offenses as unforgivable um you did this in church discipline you know this person was treated this way or said this to and i can't forgive that and this is a wicked church you guys are all disqualified and i'm out of here they treat forgivable things that should be forgivable as unforgivable um and it causes again it causes division the embittered person becomes disrespectful and unsubmissive got someone who is older in the faith and they're irreverent or disrespectful toward that person um someone who comes to entreat them and they're disrespectful or dishonoring irreverent to that person the brother's coming in love in that the embittered person becomes rebellious there's rebellion lupriola in his booklet said this he said rebellion hardly ever happens apart from bitterness so he says that almost all rebellion is a fruit of bitterness um that seed of a hurt or that root of bitterness matures into stubbornness as it matures into stubbornness it bears the fruit of rebellion if you're embittered you can become depressed you can doubt and doubt your salvation you can lose your assurance um having difficulty over bitterness uh and a bitter person remembers and replays every detail of the offense like we said that can blossom over time um so you know in back to Hebrews 12 in looking carefully let's anyone fall short of the grace of god let's any root of bitterness defile them or defile others do you see withdrawal do you see pride do you see self-will do you see division do you see that critical attitude do you see that critical heart that keeping a record of wrong a record of wrongs do you see suspicion and distrust do you see a spreading of doubt do you see making mountains out of molehills do you see unforgiveness for what should be clearly and obviously forgivable offenses offenses that you wouldn't even go to a brother about it would just be an offense that love would cover there's love covers a multitude of sins um and that would be something i mean we all slip right we've all got clay feet and i've done that myself a hundred times before you know but to the bitter person it becomes a mountain the the and we'll talk about this more in the days to come but there's two antidotes to this and as you're sitting down talking to the embittered person um and i'm listen i i want you and i do this together when i want you to go to work on understanding this sin understanding what it looks like understand what causes it understand how it manifests itself in you when you become bitter and then how to lovingly and compassionately and tactfully and maturely and wisely and lovingly and compassionately talk to your brother or sister about it if you see it this is something that we need to become mature in and that's by the lord's design we've faced a lot of these circumstances where bitterness has has come up and so why why would the lord allow bitterness in his church why is that why would the lord in his body allow a conflict to come up yeah like yeah amen yeah yeah so that those who are tested may be approved and so that we're matured in the faith we grow up and we learn how to deal with these things god in many cases isn't as concerned about the offense as he is about your response to it you learn how to deal it's um i was talking with a precious sister earlier and we were talking about joseph um and his brothers and i just you know thought about that with um joseph uh it says i think it's in genesis 42 where he's wailing and pleading with his brother with with his brothers not to do this he didn't have the sovereignty or the providence of god in mind and he's saying to himself i'm going to let this happen because the lord in his providence is going to um preserve many people alive by my he doesn't have that perspective on things at that important time he's like don't do this i don't want to be sold into slavery you know pleading with his brothers it was genesis 50 when he looks back on the circumstance and he says yeah this was what you intended for evil god meant for good many people might be saved alive he saw god sovereignty in that uh you can look oftentimes at the the end or at the other side of a trial or of a difficulty and you look back at that and say i see what the purpose of that was and it was good the lord meant it for good and i've learned from that and i've grown from that um well the lord has allowed certain of these circumstances to come up in our church because we're to learn from them we've had one huge lesson many lessons wrapped up in that one big huge lesson over last year or so here and this is one of them we just need to become mature in this um but one way that you battle is with forgiveness you just forgive i'll be quick here just forgive we don't have time to go in all this we'll do this at another time um forgiveness so you know comes when there's sin involved many times people are bitter over something that god himself wouldn't be offended with god is offended with sin but when you're embittered over something that isn't sin it's uh maybe it's a liberty issue or maybe it's uh a difference in the way that someone talks or says something or addresses something or handles something and you become embittered over that you need repent of that thinking that if it's not sin and god's not offended with it necessarily then why are you taking such offense at it and forgive your brother just forgive forgive forgive your brother um if you're offended you go according to matthew 18 if you've done the offending you go according to matthew 5 verse 23 and if what has been done is not involving sin then stop taking offense and forgive your brother you may decide in wisdom or in love or whatever to have a conversation with your brother about it because you may think there's a wise or loving or more compassionate way or whatever the case may be to deal with it but don't take offense to the point of dividing yourself from your brother and allowing a root of bitterness in your heart forgive your brother um in light of how much god in crisis forgiven you if you do not forgive those who have offended you it is wickedness and that was mark sermon last week there's wickedness it doesn't matter how much it hurt doesn't matter how much you were offended it doesn't matter how you feel about it the debt that you owe god for your sin is incalculable and unpayable so forgive your brother just to forgive your brother i love the story of kori 10 boom and uh it was interesting in mark's story in the sermon that um that forgiveness also is an act of the will you do it not how you feel about it you do it i'm gonna forgive my brother and when those thoughts of unforgiveness come up or those thoughts thoughts of offense you squelch them right back down i have forgiven my brother um but it's interesting that kori 10 boom we remember when she was forgiving the nazi she resolved herself in her will to reach out her hand to take his hand and forgive him and then the emotions came after um that's the way we're to forgive forgiveness begins with an act of the will if you don't resolve yourself in an act of the will to forgive your brother you never will you're waiting on the feelings to come along um you may never forgive them um and in many cases just made this point in many cases it's not the offense that you are to address but it's your response to it we would take you that attitude here's this offense that rises up okay i'm not gonna be offended at that i'm gonna respond to it biblically um in many cases it's not the offense that is the issue that we're we need to respond to it's our response to it um you deal with sin and we deal with sin according to scripture but how do i respond when an offense rises and oftentimes in your sanctification and your spiritual growth and maturity it's how you respond to a circumstance that the Lord is concerned about for you so make sure that you're responding biblically you're responding appropriately and you're responding in love and forgiveness and the other tool is love and love again is an action you forgive and you love you love is an act of your will choose to love um there's stories after stories after story it deals with that where you know the husband and wife have a bitter fight you know and so in his bitterness and his anger he just decides i'm gonna go to the store and i'm gonna buy her flowers just the act of buying flowers softens his heart by the time he gets home he's just loving his wife again and when he presents her with the flowers she's loving him you know it's like just the act of love you know just love um and then we'll we don't have time we'll we'll finish this up at another time and talk about specifics we can use a lot of examples you know over the last year specific circumstances that we can talk about to help you with this but hope this has been helpful we want to keep spending a little bit of time on this until we feel as though we've reached some level of understanding here and i just want to encourage and exhort you to become proficient in this subject this is one of those practical ministry things that the Lord has commanded us in Hebrews 12 to deal with okay


Tonya, volume testing. Sounds good on here. Perfect. Good afternoon and welcome to our long-term financial policy and audit subcommittee. Today is July 13, 2023, and we will now begin our meeting. Recording secretary, may you please call the roll? Chair Rogers. Present. Member Stapp. Here. Member McDonald. Here. Member Hattie. Thank you and always remember to reflect that all subcommittee members are present. Thank you. For housekeeping, as members of the public join the meeting virtually, you will be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted. If you're calling in from a telephone and choosing a piece during the public comment portion of today's agenda for privacy concerns, the host will rename your viewable phone number to resident. how public comment works at each agenda item the item is presented the chair will ask for subcommittee members comments and then open it up for public comment the host and zoom will be lowering all hands until public comment is open for the agenda item once the chair has called public comment the chair will announce for the public to raise their hand if they wish to speak on the specific agenda item if you're calling in to listen to the meeting audibly you can dial star nine to raise your hand the host will then call on the meeting the host will then call the public who have raised their hands public comment will be limited to three minutes and a timer will appear on the screen for the subcommittee members and public to see once all live public comments have been heard the meeting host will read email submitted if you provide a live public comment on an agenda item but also submitted an email email will not be read during the meeting additionally there is one public comment period on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters which is item two this is the time when any person may address a subcommittee on matters not listed on this agenda thank you very much will now go top item two public comment on non-agenda items we are now taking public comment on item two non agenda matters this is the time when any person may address a subcommittee on matters not listed on this agenda if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand we have no hands raised and receive no emails thank you continuing to item three approval of minutes we have one set of minutes that is for our special meeting April 27th 2023 are there any changes or amendments to the minutes seeing none we will adopt the minutes as presented moving to item four four point one our Rosalind pavement funding follow-up here to present is assistant city manager Jason nut and Veronica Connor budget manager and they will provide us with information on pavement improvements in the Roseland annexation area good afternoon thank you my name is Veronica Connor the budget manager and I'm just going to be introducing this item today before I hand it over to assistant city manager nut but I just wanted to mention that we are bringing this forward today because at a previous meeting we had a member of the public asked some questions about our Rosalind pavement funding and progress and the subcommittee indicated they would like an update and some more information on this subject so we've put together some information for you the assistant city manager nut will get into into the next slides and Tanya I think you can advance the slide please thank you thank you very much for having me chair Rogers members of the subcommittee Jason nut assistant city manager director of transportation so we've been wanting to try to come and provide an update on kind of the the Rosalind improvements that we've been making over the course of time since we actually annexed the final remaining unincorporated area into the city back in 2017 one of the conditions that we arranged is or negotiated during the course of that agreement was a transfer of funds from the county to the city in an effort to make improvements within the roadway area and work that resulted in was an agreement that six point six two million dollars would be moved to the city in 10 annual installments of six hundred and sixty two thousand dollars a year for the benefit of pavement improvements now the question being what does that mean where pavement improvements and in that particular area there that could be you know just some resurfacing it could be for reconstruction it could be some type of weather or wearing course what it doesn't mean is it doesn't mean we can't you we can't use the money for things outside of pavement and that was very specified through the course of the negotiations we couldn't use the money to build a concrete sidewalk if there was an asphalt walkway adjacent to work we were doing to restore the pavement that was reasonable and was consistent with the agreement type so as you'll see in the second bullet we could do it for a lot of things but it could only be used for an asphalt product in order to go in and the only alteration to that is where an ADA ramp is required we are allowed to rebuild that with a concrete product but only as required there's no there's no supplemental infill and so that kind of limited what we were able to do over the course of time and we've been working on this quite frankly a little slow but we're gearing up we're moving now as far as implementing those funds and so next slide please so just to give you a viewpoint of what that 10 years looks like and and what our anticipated draw down is like I said we started off slow we got money that first year in 2018 we really didn't spend a lot of money we really didn't do it until 2020 and at that point we had our first conscientious project which was the reconstruction of Rose Avenue and Sunset Avenue and that was very significant rose avenues you may if you haven't been down there is a rural street that is connector from Stony Point Road into the community it's heavily used fronted by properties but has very substantial storm drain ditches on either side of the road and so in this reconstruction we had to do quite a bit of work in order to bring that up to some level of city standard recognizing some of the rural characteristic out there and so that was a great investment I'll tell you having been out there that road was really poor condition one of the worst in the areas and why we focused on it initially as we've gone through and I'm and the next four or five slides will start to show you what we've done we've begun to spend these in a rational and consistent way different surfacing types so council member staff you mentioned well what are the different types I'll touch briefly on it but we tried to lump like tight together so that in this one area we could take best advantage of those with the final product ultimately being a complete resurfacing of number of roads which is as you can see coming in 2025 2025 26 is going to be about a three million dollar project and that will be the capstone of everything that we're working on so next slide so in year one as we mentioned 2019 2020 was our first year we rebuilt rose avenue and sunset that was a full reconstruction next slide the next year we came through with a slurry program slurry is a very light asphaltic product that's intended to help rejuvenate the pavement surface itself but really provide a wearing course so these are typically done on streets that are in relatively good condition the attempt is to keep them in good condition we tend to add anywhere from six to 12 years of life every time we do that slurry product and so the streets that you'll see here were with pavement condition indexes of 60 or greater prior to our treatment and our attempt is to try to keep them in good condition the next slide moving forward and this is the upcoming year we're preparing for this cape seal product which is a twofold product it allows us to not only do a a base type of leveling course but then we do a cap or a slurry over the top of that and it's intended to provide that rejuvenation but it's working on roads that have that 45 to 65 pavement condition index and so you'll see there's there's two areas there's an area here over off a Dunn Avenue and there's an area at the back end of of Herne Avenue that we're going to be doing that the first step which is what's going to occur this summer or this fall is we're going to be doing all of the ramps that level of treatment requires through the ADA that we construct curb ramps where they're not up to current standard so that is the work that's going to happen this year with then the cape seal occurring next summer next slide so then the following year we're going to start to do a reconstruction project which is little less than what we're going to get in the following year and you'll see there's some purple lines that exist in the right off the stony point road and on the other side of sabastopol road these are roads that typically have pavement condition that are in failing condition they're generally between a zero and a 40 and so those are roads where we'll actually take the full pavement surface down we'll rebuild the sub base where we have to and then replace the pavement condition back to new in those areas so we're excited to see that happen that work is the process of being designed this winter so that come 2025 it will be in construction next slide then the issue is the the overlay project this is the this is the back end of that three this is that three million dollars and you'll see there's a number of areas that that's populating some up north of third street that was also in the annexation that's the Pearson area and the west six that was part of the annexation area as well you'll see west turn also gets a full overlay there's some areas off of corby avenue that start to get in there as well as some connector streets like i think it's howard uh that connects burbank and mcmin so there's a number of streets that are going to get that overlay in order to be able to restore now what an overlay is is you're not replacing any of the structural you are adding fresh concrete or a fresh pavement over the top to build on that structural section to give it that additional 20 years worth of life it's a great product but that and the reconstruction combined are very expensive and so that's where that big three million dollar chunk is going to come from all right next slide also within the annexation was a shift of funds relating to the roseland lighting district um street lighting has had a number of different lives at one point in time pg&e owned all of the street lights throughout santa rosa as well in the unincorporated areas when santa rosa well in the mid 90s 90s yeah it was the mid 90s i think santa rosa actually moved forward and purchased the street lights from pg&e there was a large statewide initiative we felt pg&e was gouging us we felt there was a better way and a more cost effective way to manage and and move forward with street lighting maintenance on our own so we purchased the street lights from pg&e there are gaps out there where unincorporated areas over pg&e felt that they that they couldn't give us the street lights that remain in pg&e's hands in this particular area in the south part of highway 12 both in roseland unincorporated roseland incorporated and a portion of south park um the county worked with pg&e to establish a lighting district and that lighting district supports and supplements efforts pg&e does to manage and maintain those street lights with the annexation the county has transferred that lighting district to the city so there is a plot of funds that are there to enhance and improve from a capital perspective lighting in there it does grow but it doesn't grow a whole heck of a lot and so this is we're trying to be very careful and cautious how we do this investment right now there is not a plan moving forward to make this investment we're going to be developing a program here in the very new future to see what do we need to do so we've asked the engineering teams to start thinking about community feedback where they've been told lighting is deficient in certain areas particularly from a bicycle and pedestrian aspect and if we were to put out a capital investment this would be a funding source we might use in order to improve some of those lighting gaps and so that's where this particular comes from it is static we don't have an investment strategy yet but we're in the process of developing and next slide that concludes kind of the update here for the rosin pavement like i said it's a slow start i've had a good conversation with council member alvarez about this but assured him that we do have the strategy moving forward and started to outline some of these plans with him and so that's that is where we're at any questions any questions from me appropriate questions yes we're always appropriate to me informational wise what was the logic for pavement only as opposed to being able to improve sidewalks in um purely financial okay what actually i'm gonna go i'm gonna go one step further it was beyond financial so i can't always spend money so we originally made a proposal from a from a public works perspective of a need of about 18 million dollars to bring the unincorporative areas to the same quality and level of infrastructure that the incorporated areas had on average the county countered and the way they presented this kind of what like this we've neglected this area from a pavement perspective standpoint we totally admit that and we should have been x y and z over the course of time however we the county don't build curb gunner and sidewalk we don't build concrete sidewalks we don't add street lighting we just do pavement maintenance and storm drain so when we said we wanted to bring it and elevate it their counter was we would never have done that under our purview and therefore we're only willing to give you funds to bring it to our standard not your standard why would you hear at that point isn't it it's our it's our problem right um it it is our problem and if the attorney's office were in the in the room there's a there's a whole backstory on this negotiation and i won't take us down the rabbit hole that's interesting and and realistically every year i have to call the public i'm also required to call the county's public works director show them our proposal and get approval to facilitate it that way the good news is johannes and i work very well together so that's it's a fairly simple process but there are conditions in there that seem odd but it got us six point six two million dollars that we wouldn't have had otherwise for a community that's in fairly desperate need and in the end what we anticipate the average pavement condition in roseland will likely far exceed the average pavement condition in the city there will still be bicycle and pedestrian gaps that we can't fill but from a pavement condition perspective we'll be in a much better position in that area of town than we would have otherwise but we needed 18 million dollars and we got six correct wondering who negotiated that well we will not get into that during this meeting that is a whole another meeting does anyone have any additional questions regarding the presentation yes question number two yeah um you mentioned that so the slurry adds 10 to 15 years of life did i get that correctly and is it is it capsule or cape seal so so a slurry is about six to 12 the cape seal the cape seal can get you between 10 to 15 depending upon the wear on that street okay an overlay is usually about 20 the way we do reconstruction under our current program we feel we can get between 25 and 30 years on our reconstruction okay average asphalt for brand new the industry says 20 years of life the our specifications we've been exceeding the average and we're working really hard to hold that standard because it's the best use of our limited funds okay um good that's good to have in the back of my mind um third third and final question um and i i'm assuming the council member alvarez has already been in your year about this one um the sabastopol liar sabastopol street lighting um i'm surprised that the number of times that's been mentioned to me um i'm assuming that's part of our thinking so sabastopol road was already a city street it was it wasn't part of the annexation area uh at this time so funds that were brought in here okay couldn't have been used on sabastopol road now what i need to go back and look at is whether the roseland lighting district includes areas of sabastopol road and it might okay it might not include the whole stretch again we did think i mean everything's kind of quilt wise in it when it came to these areas in southwest with the county there's pockets uh all over that that are slightly different than other neighborhoods so i'd have to double check but that would be an area for example if we wanted to invest that half a million dollars we could we may be able to use it on sabastopol road if that's within the district um that's interesting to know i just wanted to flag that sabastopol road hadn't brought up to me i'm assuming you were aware of the the issue that even though there's existing lighting there um it's not satisfactory according to some of these owners yeah we that that particular project there's there's a whole lot of investment evaluation that was done in the way back machine 20 years ago when they did the corridor plan and so the lighting that you see out there was implemented as a function on that uh whether or not it's consistent was whether or not the city and county line existed in a certain spot that's really interesting okay that's it that's it for me thank you thanks for the input though on the on the lighting complaints i'm good all right uh we will now go into public comment for item 4.1 the roseland pavement funding follow-up if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand zoom host are there any is there anyone wishing to make a comment i don't see any hands raised and we've received um yeah there's no one on the no one calling in so thank you um so that will conclude 4.1 we will now go to 4.2 our long-range financial forecast update in general fund revenue overview chief financial officer alan alton will provide an update on the long-range financial forecast an overview of the general fund revenue thank you chair rogers and member of the committee um so we wanted to uh i this was going to be a pretty light agenda today to make it worth your wealth come in thought i would throw some uh fund numbers at you and uh go from here as we round out the the afternoon uh next slide please so um with the adoption of the budget uh we've we've updated our long-range financial forecast so what you have here is the update of that and it includes the actions that were taken at the budget adoption which added about eight hundred thousand dollars to um uh to our deficit uh ongoing um uh the the forecast has the same assumptions as before so what you're seeing are are all of our most likely revenue um estimates and uh known costs that we have going through so it doesn't include labor contracts and uh those things that are unknown um um we did use our fiscal stability reserves uh in order to uh address the the deficit that brought those reserves down to about 24 million dollars um um you know just for reference on that uh if we did nothing and just let this forecast play out the way it is uh we would exhaust those reserves by the end of the forecast so it does eat that up and again that's not addressing labor concerns or uh or labor contracts uh which we will be going into negotiations on that um soon as they expire at the end of this fiscal year and as uh you know what you'll hear from from me and the city manager going forward on this is is that we're this obviously isn't sustainable from a it's just not sustainable um from any standpoint um so uh additional um budget increases going forward uh are going to need to have either a corresponding reduction or an addition in revenue that's the only way that we're going to bring ourselves back and going into the next budget um you know obviously we're going to need to start addressing that now so it's just part of the reality there but that does uh segue into a discussion on revenues so the next slide please so these are our tax-based revenues and if we are going to um these are the the revenues that we actually have the most control over making changes although we do have control over making changes to fees and other charges too but I'll focus mainly on taxes as these are our major sources of revenue um I do not include property tax on that because we we do not make changes to those we can't unless we're going to go out for a general obligation bond but uh uh our major tax sources are there these just show the five years average uh we segregate out the sales tax from our one percent Bradley Burns tax that comes in and then in addition to that we have our general fund add-on taxes so we have um back in 1718 we had one quarter cent uh add-on tax that was general um beginning in I believe it was 1819 uh and in full effect in 1920 we added a second one that was for fire recovery I believe and um and then in 2020 right I think we combined both of them to be measure Q which is just a half cent general tax so we have our Bradley Burns and we have two add-ons one is the public safety one and then one is a half cent general tax as you can see roughly uh a quarter cent uh sales tax runs about 10 to 11 million dollars uh that we get in half cent we're at 23 million our transient occupancy tax well actually we can go on to the next slide I go into more detail there um so this is uh this is kind of what I was heading on before is that in the general fund um you know we have taxes for revenues we have taxes we have fees and other charges for service our fees uh may not exceed the reasonable cost of providing those services so that's why we will do nexus studies we will do other types of fees studies uh to ensure that we're meeting the reasonable cost for performing those services and having our fees um um uh address that uh council can change those uh at the dais uh there are two exceptions uh two taxes that uh um uh that may only let me say that again taxes are increased by the voters uh there are two exceptions to that um you cannot increase property taxes as I mentioned before unless we're doing a general obligation bond and then you have that uh cannabis industry tax that we actually wrote into the ordinance where that may be uh increased by council next slide please so that brings us to our tax uh revenue overview so um our sales taxes as I mentioned before we had the bradley burns one percent sales tax that's basically a point of sales sales tax that comes in our additional amounts uh which were agreed to by voters um and I gave you the mentions there those are actually transaction transaction and use taxes um and those are simple majority for general tax measures our transient occupancy tax right now is nine percent we have two uh um assessments for tourism that are on top of that so we have a three percent bia for san rosa tourism and then we have a two percent for sonoma county tourism so when you when you combine them all together we have a uh 14 percent rate that goes uh uh that um people renting lodging pay however only that nine percent goes into the general fund the nine percent is the lowest in sonoma county I believe um uh we have not raised that in a while um I would I would estimate that if we uh it would be about five hundred thousand dollars a percent I think it comes out to the last time we did an analysis of it um utility users tax so we have a five percent tax it's on telephone electricity gas and in our ordinances video but it's really cable um those uh that tax is capped at a thousand dollars uh um I would pardon by the state no by a spy ordinance um and it's at at that cap our residential customers especially for PG&E never hit the cap uh it's uh we we do have businesses that will actually exceed it um uh they there is a mechanism in place if they realize that they've exceeded the cap they can request a refund and we refund those back um they can also prepay and uh and then that stops the the collection by PG&E uh we did go out and I believe it was 2014 to uh um to address our telephone utility users tax it essentially only taxes landlines it does not attacks uh or tax cell phones or other mobile devices um so we were one of the few cities that's that has a UUT that uh is not modernized um anyway we we tried to modernize back in 2014 um uh there was a pretty uh uh vigorous uh opposition campaign to it and we we lost um to be fair we didn't really put much of a campaign out ourselves uh obviously if we ever went out again we would we would have more of an education effort on that um in my view it's uh it seems like it could be a bit regressive uh if you think of who has landlines and who typically who may not um I mean personally I only have a cell phone I don't have a landline it's not fair that I don't pay into that tax but right now I don't um we have business tax business tax is a tax based on gross receipts for business activity within Santa Rosa um this is capped at 3000 uh what that means is that if you are a very large business or a very small business you're paying the it right up to the same cap so that's that is something that um we have looked at in the past but we have not gone out and tried any type of of um changes to that ordinance with the uh with the voters I I don't think since I've been here we've we've tried that um it gets complicated to try to explain what we're doing and how we would do it I have some ideas on what we could do but um those are still just kind of on a on a whiteboard so um and with that those are those are that's just a really quick broad overview but I think it's important to start bringing up what we what we have uh in front of us to be able to address the deficits that we're going to see and that we'll see for uh the foreseeable future but we need to start getting that plan together to bring things more in line thank you for that presentation do we have any questions yes council member patina already all right um maybe did you mention it but with the changes in the um the long-term deficits is that primarily or that the changes that we're seeing now is compared to the last time that we met or the already council is that probably primarily due to the four positions we had to police department yeah so everything else stayed the same okay uh we changed the first year and then everything else went out from there but yeah it's it's the addition of those positions I just wanted to confirm um and then with the with the detailed revenue chart that was that was interesting the first time I've seen a multi-year projection like this I just want to make sure that I was I was reading it correctly um with this with this sales tax number and granted it's strange five years because you have the fires and you have the pandemic and so it's not a typical um but from a I mean from a when accounting for inflation it looked like our sales tax revenues has been roughly you know flat over the last five years that an accurate way to look at that data yeah well well it's also worth noting that our the Bradley burns is one line item but that sales tax add-on we did have an increase of half of or a quarter percent there between between 1819 20 so that was a big incremental change that's true I was just looking at that while I was just thinking about the Bradley burns I was thinking about the Bradley burns from the end of business tax because the business tax is just for inflation well frankly it's kind of gone down inflation it just adjusted over the past five years yeah then you mentioned the cap three thousand our cap which is helpful so when I look at that business tax does that does that actually reflect a true flat not flat lining of business activity or because it's capped at three thousand do we have enough businesses that have been that are larger that we still have a little bit of an upward trend for business activity so that's part of the analysis that we're we're doing so I've reached out to our consultant to start looking at that but yeah if you figure you know if you've got a cap in there the businesses could be doing great and and what we did see during during COVID we actually saw increases in sales there was one quarter where we did it that was where everything was shut down at the the March or April through June of 2020 where just everything was shut down and and it was the shelter in place orders we saw a decrease in sales tax then however we also saw increases in other areas right there's difference in the Bradley burns is one type but our transaction and use actually comes in a little bit hotter at times and so it's that's why we just kind of take it as a whole and and go from there but in general speaking aside from that one quarter we did far better from a sales tax standpoint than we thought we would or that a lot of the the sales tax experts in the state thought that sales tax in general would do I would say just locally for Santa Rosa alone we did we did quite well get a lot of wine yes that was a big and that was a big boom during that time I remember like the sales tax was huge increase during just well there's a product right and if you think of it this way you have you had that you had online sales went crazy you have stimulus money that went into the economy so people a lot of folks took that and spent it then or they banked it and then spent it later when the inflationary times started going up when inflation skyrocketed that boosted our sales tax numbers right because things are a higher cost therefore a higher sales tax so we were able to we saw a lot of that as now inflation starts to taper off and stabilize and the the stimulus money is no longer out there for the most part we're seeing that's why we're predicting and showing our sales tax from a forecasting standpoint to not go down but to level and the effect of it leveling seems like it's going down right so that's what we're that's what we're dealing with what I would say is that from an overall economic standpoint from from a sales tax perspective Santa Rosa is still a very strong economy from that from there so anyway but but that's the I thought it would be good to show you the past trends we do have some dips that are in there so you kind of have to take that in unfortunately a good straight line doesn't really work too well because you got to factor those other things in but it gives you a sense of of where we're going and you know our our our tourism our our t o t is uh is being boosted because coming out of the pandemic tourism went up and to be quite honest it's still still 1718 that never really caught me off guard about 10 percent yeah non-inflation adjustments in 1718 yeah 1718 also was through the fires we had a lot of people displaced and hotels that were artificially high all the fire departments too that came in to help fight it it's true that's help that's a really good really good information in an anomaly almost every year it seems so that so that wasn't this wasn't part of this isn't part of a long-term decline if you if if we could go out and and and we can do this you can go out and go even further years past and pull a trend line that kind of takes out all of all of those dips and anomalies you're going to see that that we're we're going the way that we should go okay that's reassuring and there should be a bullet point on the slide well and yeah and that's that's a good point I mean we when we go through this we see those things and and the red flags pop up and then you realize as Veronica says we we go look at the dating that's why we had this happen and and that there always seems to be something short-term rentals also came in we're we're I think I mentioned at council that that probably a a million dollars or so is coming in just short-term rentals at all so it's boosting that which is good it it's part of our tourism industry so that's part of of for me from a pure revenue standpoint policy aside that and say all right but yeah and that was me the end of my questions but then just to add a note of encouragement to your to your tax additional tax annuling especially with respect to the the business tax cap um that would yeah I think I speaking for myself I'd certainly be interested in here in in here hearing some spitballing at some point in the future so there there and we will in the future in future meetings uh have those discussions in here as we kind of bring those strategies a little bit more into focus um I have uh brought in uh somebody that we've worked with in the past to try to look at how we could how that would look like and how it would look like uh from an opinion survey standpoint as well so these are all things that are just at the very beginning but we we knew coming out of budget that that we have to now start going full pace into this we're into July right now so we're we've got the people in line that we need to be working with to try to figure out what our next steps are from that standpoint from a budget team standpoint we'll be going to our departments and putting out guidelines that are for flat budgets uh I think we mentioned that before but that's what we're what our next years will be we need to keep our expenditures as flat as we possibly can we need to look as departments um and I think as the council as well when we have problems that are in the community I think our first question needs to be how can we solve this with our existing resources and should we not be able to do that then how do we pivot to adding additional resources knowing that if we don't have the revenue to back it up we're going to have to lose something else so we're into those parts of of that as I received thank you thank you vice mayor yeah it was really around the taxes I think what's helpful to know are the several different taxes that we have how long it spends since the ordinance has been reviewed by council and if there's any caps that are in place and then what ones that we can do by ordinance and what ones have to go out to voters and I think there's so many different ones as you look at the biggest ones I'd be also interested to know on the tot what our surrounding areas are charging if we're at nine percent is hilsburg at 12 or 14 I mean go to anaheim they're like very very high so I think that as we look at other industries as far as tourism goes I would want to know some of those things because nine percent even though you're adding on the other things if you look at the other jurisdictions or even like down in those busy areas we don't have Disneyland but we certainly have the wine industry which is adult attraction so I'm just I'd be curious to know if you're talking one percent can bring in a half a million dollars to our budget that's significant in revenue to me so as you start to do those conversations those would be things I'd be interested in yeah what we will bring back as we start looking at this and and I apologize I do have a chart that shows where we were we've we've done all this in the in the past and so it's just kind of refreshing it I want to say hilsburg is 16 but I'm not a hundred percent sure there um there's city taxes including the other bumps I don't think they have a bia well I know they don't have the Santa Rosa one and they I don't believe they are part of the Sonoma County tourism bia what we will do is is part of that analysis comes into where we where we are in the county overall where and what the what the increase could do and and how that all plays out some of those are are difficult to to gauge I mean if you're in and you want to take into consideration um you know fairness issues right I mean probably where I would come from if we were looking at a business tax or something like that is if we're raising a cap I I would want to you know my initial reaction would be to uh um raise the cap on those businesses that could afford that we don't want to harm our small businesses we we need that as a part of our economy and so there's a lot of thought and analysis that would have to go in then we would come to this body and and go through all of that with you and it would be a recommendation from this group before I would take anything to the council so your questions would be vetted and answered and to your satisfaction before we would ever go to the county or to the council with uh with and it would be your recommendation to move forward with that thank you thanks for the presentation and for yours too Jason any additional questions no uh seeing none um we'll now take public comment for 4.2 which is our long range financial forecast update in general fund revenue overview and there are no hands raised and there's no one calling in thank you um we will now uh discuss any possible uh the items for the next I mean well we came up with a few orders sitting here like you but are there any additional there's no time frame on that but I think as we look at the deficit those are things that I would be interested in in knowing you know you could cut these things or we're going to have to come in with more revenue right that's the decision the council I think needs to be shown yeah absolutely and I think that as so just I do have an item for for august our next meeting is august 10th that's the next regular meeting I do have an item for that to put on the agenda um beyond that we will uh um uh when we are closer with our analysis and we're ready to prepare or present that's when we'll we'll get those on the agenda going out um in october uh the end of october is when you'll have uh the uh update of uh this past fiscal year in that just ended so we'll have our year end um update for you uh we'll have by then we'll our books will have been closed into the auditors and that's our first opportunity to have uh an unaudited but good sense of where we ended the the last fiscal year um but for august uh we will put on the agenda um a discussion on a home loan program uh we should be prepared to talk about that then thank you working on anything anything actually home loan would that would that is it possible to expand that to a more gentle housing assistance small scale uh yes I mean that's that's the general idea uh it's talking about folks who are you know 500 short of their rent oh that's uh okay that what we have um that's a down payment it's more than is it ever done I mean it's mostly it's run through other kinds of federal federal assistance programs yeah most we have items coming to council obviously with the mobile home ordinance right we're talking about small amounts of money we're trying to figure out how to finagle that for you know home loan assistance is it possible to talk about other kinds of smaller so the home so let me be clear the home loan assistance is is more of a uh employee city employee loan assistance that's interesting too yeah so and yeah yeah so that's why I'm sorry I don't mean to be kg about that but I we don't have somebody from the attorney's office here and I'm not sure just how how broad I can be I would just say it's referring to yeah also there are all kinds of housings yeah we we do have through our housing uh housing community services we do have uh housing assistance and we do have a down payment program that that we were doing with PG&E money to fund that so yes oh yes that too through our I was aware there were some programs but yeah um anyway the question answered yeah um my only other suggestion would be that I I miss our macroeconomic speculation we didn't talk about interest rates movements sure how in the union markets yep um that's a joke of course that was my that was my non-serious question for this yeah you're allowed your love one if you can grow more of those in the future I always I enjoyed those no problem well seeing no additional suggestions for agenda items and seeing no additional ends on this agenda we will now adjourn the meeting thank you thank you