It's still Texan. Is this real morgue? Yep.  Oh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley, identify you when you wrap your car around that light pole because you was caring more about that thing than the road. Is she like me? Not anymore. No text messages worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa. Run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots, end up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the Stormwater and Creeks web page. You're still Texan. Izzy, where are we at? Connie Moore. Not on my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. I guess she was paying more attention to that thing than the road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving, a killer combination. In recreation and parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day, because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings, space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day, because we know that for our community, farce made life better. You steal, Texan. I got on a daycare, know that I'm running late. They charge if you're late. I'm not usually one of those people to text and drive. And I was almost done with my text when that car came out of nowhere. You still appeared in all coming traffic. And that text message, it never got through. One text or call could wreck it all. Hey, I'm Texan. Is this a real morgue? Yep.  Oh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley, I identify you when you wrapped your car around that light pole, because you was caring more about that thing than a road. How do you feel like doing that? Not anymore. No text message is worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa, run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots, end up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the Stormwater and Creek's web page. You're still Texan. Izzy, where are we at? Connie Moore. Not in my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. I guess she's paying more attention to that thing than a road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving. A killer combination. In recreation and parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day, because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings, space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe, and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day, because we know that for our community, farce made life better. You steal text. I got on a date here, know that I'm running late. They charge if you're late. And I'm not usually one of those people to text and drive. And I was almost done with my text when that car came out of nowhere. You steal a beard in all coming traffic. And a text message, it never got through. One text or call could wreck it all. Like with real dead people. Ooh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley identified you when you wrapped your car around that light pole, because you was caring more about that thing than a road. I mean, she liked me. Not anymore. No text messages worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa. Run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots, end up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street cutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the stormwater and creeks webpage. You're still texting. Izzy, where are we at? County Moor. Not on my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. Guess she's paying more attention to that thing than a road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving, a killer combination. Recreation in parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings, space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know that for our community, cars make life better. You steal Texan. I had all the day care know that I'm running late. They charge if you're late. And I'm not usually one of those people to text and drive. And I was almost done with my text when that car came out of nowhere. You still appeared in all coming traffic. And that text message, it never got through. One text or call could wreck it all. Steal Texan, is this real more? Yep.  Oh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley, identify you when you wrap your car around that light pole because you was caring more about that thing than the road. How many is she like? Not anymore. No text messages worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa, run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots, end up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the Stormwater and Creeks webpage. You still texting? Izzy, where are we at? Connie Moore? Not in my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. Guess she was paying more attention to that thing than the road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving, a killer combination. In recreation and parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings, space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know that for our community, farce made life better. You steal, Texan. When I had on a daycare know that I'm running late, they charge if you're late, but I'm not usually one of those people to text and drive, and I was almost done with my text when that car came out of nowhere. You still appeared in all coming traffic. When I text message, it never got through. One text or call could wreck it all. Damn Texan. Is this real mort? Yep.  Like with real dead people. Oh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley, I identify you when you wrapped your car around that light pole because you was caring more about that thing than a road. And you should like me. Not anymore. No text messages worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa. Run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots and up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the stormwater and creeks webpage. You're still Texan. Izzy, where are we at? County Moor. Not in my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. Guess she was paying more attention to that thing than a road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving. A killer combination. In recreation and parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. For our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings, space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know that for our community. Parks made life better. You steal text. I had on a daycare know that I'm running late. They charge if you're late. I'm not usually one of those people to text and drive and I was almost done with my text when 10th car came out of nowhere. You still appeared in all coming traffic. And that text message, it never got through. One text or call could wreck it all. Is this real more? Yep.  Like with real dead people. Ooh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley identified you when you wrapped your car around that light pole because you was caring more about that thing than a road. How did she like me? Not anymore. No text message is worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa. Run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots. End up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the Stormwater and Creeks webpage. You're still texting. Izzy, where are we at? Connie Moore. Not in my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. Guess she was paying more attention to that thing than a road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving, a killer combination. Recreation in parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings. We have space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, own passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know that for our community, farce made life better. You steal Texan. I had all the day care know that I'm running late. They charge if you're late. I'm not usually one of those people to text and drive and I was almost done with my text when that car came out of nowhere. You still appeared in all coming traffic. When I text message, it never got through. One text or call could wreck it all. Hey, I'm Texan. Is this real mort? Yep.  Oh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley, I identify you when you wrapped your car around that light pole because you was caring more about that thing than a road. How do you see like me? Not anymore. No text messages worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa, run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots, and up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the Stormwater and Creeks webpage. You're still Texan. Izzy, where are we at? Connie Moore. Not in my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. Guess she was paying more attention to that thing than a road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving. A killer combination. In recreation and parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings. We have space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know that for our community, farce made life better. You steal text. I had all the day care know that I'm running late. They charge if you're late. And I'm not usually one of those people to text and drive. And I was almost done with my text when that car came out of nowhere. You still appeared in all coming traffic. And that text message, it never got through. One text or call could wreck it all. Is this real more? Yep.  Like with real dead people. Oh, I got to text Ashley. Ashley, identify you when you wrapped your car around that light pole because you was caring more about that thing than the road. How many is she like? Not anymore. No text messages worth a life. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa. Run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots and up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the Stormwater and Creeks webpage. You're still texting. Izzy, where are we at? Connie Moore. Not in my schedule. You scheduled it when you tip on that minivan and sent two people to the hospital. Guess she was paying more attention to that thing than the road. Making sure my wife picks up my suit. Sounds like a text message that just couldn't wait. Texting and driving. A killer combination. Recreation and parks. The days begin when the sun rises. We're going to go ahead and get started. Welcome to the city council study session of October 6th, 2015. Madam city attorney, do you want to introduce our first study session item? Thanks. First, if we could ask the city clerk for a roll call. Let the record reflect that all council members are present with the exception of Mayor Sawyer and council member Waisaki. Great. And then our first study session today is a preview of the 2015 water and wastewater cost of service study and rate structure recommendations. Linda Reed, deputy director of water presenting. Thank you. And actually I'll start off. David Guin, director of center rows of water. Wanted to start off by letting the council know that this is a big item we're bringing to you today. And we realize that there's a lot involved in this item. This study session is going to cover a lot of ground. We're accomplishing a lot with this proposed change and we're addressing some legal issues that have come up in the state that we're tackling. We're addressing the drought. We're addressing long-term sustainability for the department. And we're also looking at how to run a system long-term within our means with reducing our costs and identifying other revenue streams to support our ratepayers through this. The other additional piece of this is and something you've heard previously was an additional piece that will support our low income residents. And that's something we're very excited about that we're bringing forward as part of this package. And so a lot is here and we're excited about this. We're actually, we're very proud of what we put together for you and the Board of Public Utilities has brought forward. And I'm going to turn it over to Linda Reed and Bob Reed. So Linda Reed our deputy director of administration in center rows of water. And we also have Bob Reed, the president of the Reed group who is here to present as well. Thank you.  And as you can see, we've been working on this for a long time. We put out an RFP in August of 2014. Bob Reed of the Reed group was a successful consultant. No relation. And then he met with the BPU budget subcommittee four times in some pretty lengthy work sessions and then presented to the full board at the beginning of September with the rate package recommendations. And on September 17th, the Board of Public Utilities unanimously recommended this rate package to be heard by the city council. I wanted to go into a little bit about our current status. Unlike many water agencies, we're not coming to you with a large increase request due to the drought. A number of agencies, East Bay Mud, Santa Clara Valley district, Roseville have been doing 10%, 9%, 20% rate increases because their revenues are down. Our revenues are down. They're down about $4 million from two years ago. And we have been managing that through cautious expenditures and use of our reserves. As you'll recall, right after and during the Great Recession, we cut both our O&M and RCIP budgets. Our employees had frozen wages. They had mandatory time off. They agreed to implement a three tier retirement system and they all agreed to pay extra into their PERS account. So we're really fortunate and very proud to be able to maintain our vital health and safety services during the drought with no need for major rate increases. We went into this rate study looking at what our long-term history would be. The whole idea of this rate study is looking at the future. And we know that we're gonna continue to experience weather events, whether it's going to be wet weather, where we have increased expenses at the treatment plant because of the inflow of water into our system, or we have dry years where we're experiencing less revenue. We fully expect that a lot of behaviors that our customers have adopted due to the drought are gonna be permanent. So we're looking long-term and we're planning for the future. We talked about the weather. We also talk about regulatory environment. Every new permit has new regulations. The regulatory environment does not halt. It continues to ask things of us about the cost of money.  Everything from the cost of copper to the cost of health insurance. Our key is remain resilient. And so I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Reed and then I'll come back with some closing remarks. But really what we're doing is trying to set it up for the future and to be so that we can continue to operate without large increases. Good afternoon Vice Mayor, Torsi, members of the Council.  In going through this rate study, we really did take a comprehensive look at the water and wastewater utilities. As part of the process, we developed 10-year financial plans. The city had previously used a five-year planning horizon. We've extended this in our modeling out to 10 years. Not that we have a perfect crystal ball of what's going on eight, 10 years out, but by having the opportunity to look at capital program needs, potential debt issuances and other trends over a longer period of time, those longer-term trends can inform near-term decisions. And so it's really a helpful tool, even though the entire plan can be updated every few years, the benefit of that long-term planning horizon is very helpful. So within the financial models, we are looking at operating and maintenance costs, debt service obligations, both existing debt obligations as well as anticipated future debt issuances, as well as capital program costs, the costs of capital projects to rehabilitate the system. We are also looking at reserves and reserve policies. And even within this included some adjustments to reserve policies to help manage the financial risk associated with the utility. Because we have changing demands, because we have changing weather patterns, because we have an economy that has peaks and valleys associated with it, we can use the reserves to help manage any uncertainty that's associated with the operation of utilities. And that's very helpful. And that's part of the reason why we're able to bring pretty nominal rate adjustments within this plan. Also having this model allows us to do some sensitivity analysis. What happens if demand rebounds quickly? What if it doesn't rebound at all? What if this drought deepens? Changing some of the other assumptions. So it's really a helpful tool to do some of that scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis. We use this model also to develop, to identify to quantify the annual rate revenue requirements. So that's the amount of revenue that needs to be generated by each of the utilities to cover the costs with consideration for reserves as well as other revenues in the process as well. In going through this rate study, we're quite pleased to be able to recommend that for the current fiscal year, an increase in the rate revenues is not necessary. The amount of revenue, even with the cutbacks in water use and so on, the amount of revenue is sufficient because of cost reductions and other financial management policies, a rate increase is not required at this point in time. We are recommending some rate structure changes and I'll talk more about those in a moment. Those are to reflect the cost of service and updated cost of service analysis. Beyond the current fiscal year and beyond this initial rate adjustment in January, we are recommending five years of moderate rate adjustments each year at the beginning of each fiscal year. There would not be rate structure changes associated with that. So this table summarizes those rate adjustments. I wanna spend a couple of minutes, there's quite a bit of information on here. For the water utility, for the last several years, I think six or seven years, there's been an automatic adjustment to the water usage rates, the variable component of the water bill. That adjust by an amount that's determined based on the changes to the Sonoma County Water Agency's rate. So when they adopt their new wholesale rate for the fiscal year, that gets put into a calculation formula and it creates an adjustment to the water usage rates for the city's utilities. So we're recommending that we continue with that automatic adjustment mechanism. We're making some slight modifications to that to reflect the rate structure changes, but it basically operates the same way that it has. And just to let you know, if the water agency is anticipating about 5% annual rate increases in their rates each year, that's kind of what they're anticipating. That would result in about a 2.2% increase in the water usage rates for the city. That component is not all of the water usage rate includes other costs besides water usage, besides the water purchase cost, but that 5% increase in the water agency would translate to about 2.2% in your retail water usage rate. On top of that, we're recommending that at the beginning of each fiscal year, there would be a 5% adjustment to the service charge. Service charge makes up less than a quarter of the water bill. So that 5% gets diluted down quite a bit because the other part having to do with water usage. The third column here shows what the overall rate increase would be with assuming a 5% adjustment to the water agency's rates, factoring that into the usage charges, having that 5% in the service charges. So about 2.8% per year is what we're anticipating in terms of the magnitude of the rate increases for the water utility. On the wastewater utility, we're recommending 3% increases for the next three years, the next three fiscal years, and then followed by two years at 2.5%. And I'll talk a little bit more about those in a moment. The last column shows the combined water and wastewater impact for a typical single family customer. And you can see in January that there's gonna be a 1% increase in their bill even though we're not increasing the rates. And that's because anytime you change the rate structure, it shifts around who's paying how much.  In the case of the typical single family customer, they may experience about a 1% increase in their combined water and wastewater bill as a result of rate structure changes. And I'll talk more. Quick question.  Uses about 7,000 gallons per month for water and about 4,000 gallons in the winter time as the basis for their winter water use that goes into their wastewater bill. Thank you. That's typical. And three quarter inch water meter. So I'll talk more about the specific rate structure changes in a moment, but I wanted to... Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanna make sure I understood that number. That's typical for Santa Rosa. Yes, currently. I'm sorry, my family uses under 30 and so I'm a little startled at the, even the 4,000 number seems shockingly high. Thank you. So we are in going through this financial planning process and looking out in the future. One of the significant variables where there's some uncertainty is what's gonna happen with water and wastewater demands. And this graph summarizes what the history has been from 2000 through about 2008. There was some slight variation in the water demand due to weather patterns and other factors coming into play, but in the last five or six years, we've seen dramatic change. Starting in 2009 and then for 2010 and 11, I think probably driven primarily by the economy, cell reduction in demand. And then it rebounded some and then as in 2014 we see a big reduction as we enter into the shortage drought year. And for 2015 is probably similar to 2014, maybe even a little bit less. So the question we have is, well, what happens as we emerge out of this drought, what's gonna happen to demand? Will it rebound? How much will it rebound? How quickly will it rebound other factors? And we did quite a bit of scenario sensitivity analysis around that specific variable. And this table summarizes the water demand sensitivity analysis here for each of the next five fiscal years in the current and then for future fiscal years. The first column of percentages are what's reflected in the report. That assumes that in the current year, demand would be similar to last year. And then we would have about a 5% rebound that is not even close to a complete rebound but a partial rebound and then stabilizing at that level of rebound. The next column is what if we don't have any rebound? What if this is the new normal? We get back to a normal conservation ethic in managing water use year by year. And then what happens if we have more of a rebound and we had two years of a 5% rebound, that's still not back to normal but it is more than what's reflected in the report. And then what happens if we have a deeper shortage? This year, less water use in the current fiscal year relative to last year and then a rebound over a couple of years. And what happens if we have yet another year of shortage conditions and we go even further reductions in water use? So these are all different scenarios that we put into the model and then we looked at, well, what does this mean for the financial plan if we hold the other information constant? And this graph summarizes those different scenarios with the proposed rate plans that are included in the recommendation. Where we have a rebound or a more significant rebound, we maintain the reserve levels and those stay above the minimum. The dash line on this graph is sort of our minimum reserves that we wanna stay above. It's the operating reserve and the catastrophic reserve combined, we'd like to stay above that, not too far above that but we wanna stay above that and think of that dash line as a floor. And then the other scenarios that we looked at where there's either less of a rebound or continuation of a drought or deepening of a drought, those are all of the lines that continue to track south. And you can see in the worst case scenario that we looked at by about fiscal year, 1920, we would dip down into that minimum reserve. Now part of the policy around the catastrophic reserve is that is available during an emergency shortage. That is one of the catastrophic emergencies that's anticipated. But what this is indicating is that with the rate recommendation, potentially in a worst case scenario, these rates may not be enough. On the other hand, if we have a rebound in demand or a strong rebound in demand, we would maintain the reserves and maybe even build up additional reserves. And so with these rate plans that are being proposed, if the rates aren't necessary over this five year period, we can ratchet them down and we'll talk more about that in a moment. But this is, I just wanted to share with you sort of the range of possibilities and looking at the scenarios and how this sort of information informed the decision related to the recommendations that are before you. Similar on the wastewater side, we looked at similar scenarios in terms of the rebound in demand. Water demand affects wastewater revenues as well. And you can see in this graph, there's actually a greater divergence between the different scenarios that we looked at. Particularly if there is a rebound in demand, you could see some pretty significant increases in reserves. Well, that wouldn't actually take place. We wouldn't be implementing the rates that are being recommended at this point if we saw the reserves continuing to climb. But also we see a scenario that in the worst case scenario, we may dip down below that dashed line, below that minimum reserve sooner. And so we see these variables here. Each year in this five year period, once the rates are adopted, there's an opportunity to review the costs, to review the capital expenditure needs, to look at the reserves that are available, to see what's happening with demands and what's anticipated to happen with demands, and then make adjustments. And if the rates that you would be adopting in December are not needed, there's an opportunity to scale them back. And what's being planned is that these recommendations, or this analysis would go through the BPU Budget Subcommittee with the BPU to make recommendations to the city council on whether the previously adopted rates would be necessary or not. So that's sort of the mechanism for on an annual basis to fine-tune, to adjust the course, if you will, as we go through this period. I have a couple of questions on these two charts. I wanna make sure I understand what they're showing us, and I wanna make sure that the public can understand these two. Both of them show that the reserves are significantly higher than the minimum required. Does that mean that it's significantly higher than we need? No, the dash line is a minimum floor. It's an amount that we don't want to go below because we need those reserves for catastrophic emergencies as we've discussed for operating reserve, for working capital needs, cash flow requirements, and those sorts of things that we really don't wanna dip below that. But the amount that's above that dash line is really provides a surplus reserve that helps provide flexibility for the operation and the maintenance of the utility and the operations. It's the way that we manage and mitigate the risk associated with uncertainty. Now, at some point, that gets to be too high, and so we're developing criteria around that that would be as part of the budget review process each year to see, are we building up reserves, like this green line on this graph that continues to go north? Obviously, that's getting to a point where we're building excess reserves, and that's one, it's not allowed. You can't, you know, that's an indicator that we're generating too much revenue from the rates. It's okay to have prudent reserves, it's not okay to have excess reserves, but there's a lot of factors that go into determining when you move from one to the other. How long have we been carrying reserves of this size? There are, have always been reserves in terms of the magnitude of them historically. It varies depending on the need. One of the factors that goes into this is capital program requirements and providing building up funds to pay for capital projects. So I don't know if you wanted to... Yeah, and some of the council may recall that when we were going through the Great Recession, we dipped down to the minimum levels, and on the water side, we were well below our minimum level of reserve. We were almost out of reserves in about 2009. And so that's when we talked about when we cut back our O&M, we cut back our CIP, we eliminated positions, and then we were getting back to a normal reserve level. We saw a couple of years of increased water use, if you'll go back to that slide, where Mr. Aid was showing you the ups and downs of the water use. You can see that we had two years where water use was up, and so that built those reserves, and then we had the woof down of the water use. And so we're using those reserves. And so what that excess reserve allows us to do is make a cushion. So we're not, oh my gosh, we need a 10% rate increase. Oh, we don't need any rate increase. Let's us build in that ability to do a minor adjustments. I'll just bring it back one more slide to... What we're dealing with is this varied nature of where we live in California. And so what we're trying to manage is this up and down and not have that impact our customers every year. And so by having that buffer to your point, that the amount of that buffer is critical. And that's something we debated the budget subcommittee and the board all the time. How much is too much? How much is enough to allow us not to have to raise rates due to the drought? And I think we were proven successful this year. And what we're trying to do is hold that steady at minor increases to make sure we don't dip below that in the future and have massive cuts and massive rate increases. Okay, thank you. Is there any, yes, Ms. Combs. Thank you. So I'm counting five reserve pools operating catastrophic rate stabilization, geysers and designated. And I'm wondering if there's another pool also. Are these all the wells that we're reserving water in? Rates in? And all of those reserves you just mentioned are in the wastewater utility. I think it's a smaller number in the water utility. It doesn't have the geysers reserve or the rate stabilization. And so it's fewer in the water utility. Those are all the designated reserves that have specific purposes associated with it. The amount that- Is there another, are there any other reserves in the department? There's what we refer to as the surplus reserves, which are the amount that are above and beyond that. And that's the amount that we're using to manage the functioning of the utility. So that's that amount that we're working with. Okay. So my slides aren't numbered. It's my page six. It's the second slide at the bottom. Here in reserves, I think it's wastewater. That's the one that would have this list plus surplus. Yes, so this- And is that what's shown in the dotted line? Is that the total of all of these? The dashed line in these graphs are those designated. So the operating reserve, the catastrophic, the rate stabilization, the geysers, and the designated for wastewater, that makes up the dashed line. And then the solid lines are include that additional surplus. And the model that's reflected with the rate recommendation and the assumptions in terms of future demands is the solid black line. So it's not the highest line. It's the middle path. And I noticed that the dashed line sort of jumps up a little bit. Can you tell me why that jumps up a little bit? Yes, and I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to mention that. It's, we discuss this with the budget subcommittee, that the catastrophic reserve was established in 2007 and it was established at a mount that anticipated damage that might occur as a result of a significant earthquake and the cost of repairing that. And then the catastrophic was reserved on that, you know, was established at that amount on that basis. It has not changed in that period of time. And when we look at the inflation associated with the construction costs, since that time has actually gone up about 30%. And so what we recommended was that we adjust the catastrophic reserve. So it still has the same purchase power, if you will, to undertake those repairs if that catastrophic event were to occur. Okay, I have one more follow-up question on this. I hope. So thinking of this as sort of like insurance. I have in the past purchased an umbrella policy. So I didn't pay a high amount on all my items, but I paid a reduced amount with an overarching coverage that could fill the gap. It seems to me that we have a lot of categories, but that it makes sense to have sort of one pool that can, when there's a problem, meet the need, assuming that you wouldn't have all of these reserves needed at one time. Is that, has that been considered? Is that reflected here? Is that? Yes, each reserve has a specific purpose. Some of them are established because of debt requirements, for example. And so there are things associated with debt that's been issued, the rate stabilization, the geysers is related to the contract, the geysers contract. And so they each have a specific purpose. And then they can be used for those purposes or dipped into consistent with the policy that governs. So there isn't an overarching reservoirs that would catastrophic. Well, I would, I think of the surplus reserve as kind of that umbrella policy, if you will, that provides additional flexibility. And it really, when we went through the- I'm sorry, and that's not in the dotted line. That's in the solid line. That's the amount above the dotted line is that surplus. And that really provides the flexibility. Okay, thank you. And we use the term quite a bit of resilience in these utilities that we're able to respond to changing conditions and uncertainty of what demand is, what the weather is going to be, what the economy is going to be, to respond in a responsible way without having significant rate impacts affecting customers. And this surplus reserve makes that possible. So, okay, I'm gonna move on and talk about the rate structure changes and the issues around that, if that's all right. So back in April of this year, a Pellet Court decision came out in the San Juan Capistrano case, Capistrano Taxpayer Association versus City of San Juan Capistrano, Fourth District Court of Appeal down in Southern California. This decision focused on Prop 218's cost of service requirements and in particular addressed some issues around tiered water pricing. Within the decision, they also talked about balancing the state's conservation mandate, which is embedded in Article 10 of the Constitution and balancing that with the cost of service requirements in Prop 218, which is part of Article 13 in the Constitution. And there was also some issues related to recycled water and how recycled water is just part of the water portfolio, part of general water service and can be viewed as such, which is exactly what is being done here in Santa Rosa. So there were some useful elements of this court decision and there were also some controversial elements of this court decision, particularly around tiered pricing. And I'm sure you've heard or read about that, having to do with trying to encourage water conservation with tiers and yet how are those tier rates defined? So the San Juan Capistrano decision regarding tiered rates, the court said public agencies have the authority to design tiered water rate structures. Now, there are some people that came out after this decision said tiers are unconstitutional. Well, that's not true, but the court did say that individual tiers can be supported by higher costs associated with providing service higher levels of usage. So it was really being a little bit more prescriptive in terms of how the rates could be justified in a tier structure that each individual rate had to have its own cost basis. You couldn't look at the structure as a whole for that. So that had some pretty significant implications statewide for how tiers had been developed. So we took this decision, we looked at the rate structure that we had here in Santa Rosa as we were updating the cost of service analysis and we said, okay, how can we develop rates going forward cognizant of what this new decision means for us? Can I get clarity real quick? We're in the ninth district and there's a fourth district decision. Is it applicable to us? Yeah. Is it more of a suggestion? No, it is the law. And ninth district I think is federal court. This is a state court of appeals in Orange County. It does apply. Now there is a different state appellate court covering this part of the state and a court there. And I'm not an attorney here. So if I'm stepping out of bounds here, I think a court here could look at that decision and they might decide something different, but it is the law right now. Appellate court decision has the way to law. The state attorney general, on behalf of the State Water Resources Control Board asked the California Supreme Court to de-publish this decision because it was so controversial and the California Supreme Court declined to do that. So it is the law at this point in time. That's correct. Unless there was a contrary court of appeal decision that comes out of the first district, which is the state court of appeals that governs this area. Thank you. So as we move into the rate setting part of the study here, we have two primary, two fundamental objectives that we must address. One, we need to meet the legal requirements as defined by Prop 218 and as informed by these court decisions. San Juan Capistrano is just one of the more recent ones. There are a number of other cases that come into play around Prop 218 issues. The other thing is we need to make sure that we're providing sufficient reserves for the utilities, adequate revenue to meet the service and financial obligations of the utility. So those are two primary objectives that we need to meet. There are also some secondary objectives. And once that we've met the two primary objectives, we can try and meet some of these other objectives. And those include encouraging water conservation, maintaining the affordability for basic levels of service, limiting the bill impacts associated with the rate structure changes, simplifying the rates to ease customer understanding as well as administrative processes within the city and to improve revenue stability. And these were all objectives that were discussed with the budget subcommittee as we went through this process. And they were all things that we tried to accommodate once we had met the primary objectives. And I will mention some of these things pull you in different directions. Encouraging water conservation by putting more into the water usage charges is contrary to revenue stability. And so some of these things are at odds with one another in some respects. And so part of the task of the rate design is to strike the right balance between these different factors. And that's what we were working to achieve. So with respect to the proposed water rates, currently we have a four tier water rate structure for single family customers. What we're recommending is a two tier structure. So the first tier would still cover the winter water use, the sewer cap, the basic level of water use for indoor water use. And then the second tier would apply to all water use above that rather than second, third and fourth tier. Also as part of this analysis, we looked at duplex water use characteristics for duplex accounts. And they really have water use characteristics more similar to single family homes. So we suggested that they actually be grouped in with the single family customers rather than multifamily. They don't, the water use characteristics is more similar to single family home than it is to an apartment unit. So we're recommending that change. We also have tiered rates that apply to dedicated irrigation accounts. It's a three tier structure that's tied to the water budget and again, recommending a two tier structure for irrigation accounts. The initial block would be the same, 125% of the water budget that water budget determined based on the specific landscape requirements for each service connection. And then a uniform water rate would continue for other customer classes. Yes, sir. Excuse me, if I may have missed this reading through this report and if you're gonna come to it later on, that's fine. But I'm not sure I saw where you explained, even though we're going to a two tier structure, it's still two tiers. How is that second tier more expensive to deliver than the first tier? That's a great question. And it is in the report. It's a pretty detailed slide. So I didn't put it in the presentation here, but we have our Sonoma County Water Agency water. And that's about 95% of the water use comes from that source. It's also the most expensive water. We have some groundwater and we have a little bit of recycled water, which is part of our overall water portfolio. Each of those have different costs associated with that. We also have water conservation program costs. And so the way that we designed the rates was within the first tier, that quantity of water within that first tier is our lower cost water supplies as well as some Sonoma County Water Agency water, but not conservation costs. And then in that second tier is all water agency costs. So it's none of the cheaper water, but all the more expensive water plus the water conservation costs. So there is a cost analysis that goes into defining the costs associated with each tier. And if you look at the rates for the single family and the duplexes and you compare it to the rates for the dedicated irrigation, both have the two tier structures, but the rates are a little bit different. And that's because the amount of water in the first tier and in the second tier is a little bit different in each of those two classes. And so those rate calculations are a little bit different because of that. That's a complicated explanation to answer your question. There's more detailed explanation in the report that explains that. Okay. So then for our other customer classes maintaining a uniform water rate, we're also recommending adjustments to the fixed service charges. Those are tied to the size of the water meter. And we wanted to reflect the capacity relationship across the meter sizes. Somebody that has a larger meter can place a larger demand on the system.  So adjustments there. We also modified the mix between the volumetric component of the rates and the fixed charge. We increased the volumetric component slightly. That helps with the conservation incentive. It helps to maintain, address some of the bill impacts for basic water usage. And then also the changes going forward are gonna have a bigger increase to the service charge and a smaller adjustment to the usage rate. And so it kind of will pull back in the other direction. So there's a lot of things going on within that. And this seemed to be the best path to strike the balance between all of those different objectives that we were talking about. And this structure also gives customers, you know, that a little bit of additional control over their costs. And then part of the rate structure recommendations is that automatic pass through for the water agency costs similar to what's already in place. So this shows the proposed rate schedule. And here you can see the slight difference in the water usage rates for single family and duplexes compared to the irrigation accounts. The first tier is quite similar. The second tier is a little bit different. And again, it goes back to the specific rate, cost of service calculation for each rate and the water supply blend that's incorporated. And then we have the range of service charges, monthly service charges by meter size going through the full range of different size meters. For wastewater rates, similar analysis, looking at cost of service requirements. For wastewater, we're not only concerned about the flow or the volume of wastewater that's being discharged from homes and businesses and that needs to be treated and disposed of, but also the loading characteristics of that wastewater. So the biochemical oxygen demand, the solids, the nitrate concentration and so on. So those factors complicate the analysis a little bit, but they're important factors to take into consideration. Right now there are about 15 different customer class, non-residential customer classes in the rate schedule. Some of them for just a few accounts. And as we looked at that and we looked at the loading characteristics, we recommended that we simplify that and go from 15 different categories down to four. And so it's more of a generalized banding around similar use characteristics. And it simplifies the rate structure. I think that having very specific rates tends to suggest a higher level of precision than is actually there. And so this is really a way both to make the rates a little easier to explain and administer, but also in my view, more fair for customers as well. So- Excuse me, we have a question. Yes, comes. Thank you very much. I just wanted to go back one slide and have you repeat what you may have said one more time. Why it is that multifamily, commercial, industrial and institutional don't have two tiers? Yes. Currently they do not have two tiers. Currently they're subject to a uniform rate. And so it's not a change in that regard. The reason they have a uniform rate and not a tier rate as the others do is the tier rate structures work very well as a conservation tool as an incentive when you have what I'll call homogenous water use characteristics. Think of a bell curve that shows the range of typical uses around that profile. For commercial businesses, you don't have that. Even within individual meter sizes and commercial tends to have a bunch of one inch meters and one and a half and two and four inch, it's all of the different meter sizes, but even within an individual meter size, you can have a wide range of use characteristics. When you establish, when a business is constructed, a building is constructed, you may not know who's gonna be in there, how much water they might use. And so the meter might be sized based on potential and that may be different from actual. So you don't have this nice bell curve in which to design the tier structure around. So if you create a tier structure in that situation, it actually can feel punitive to those customers because it doesn't reflect the use characteristics that they may have and it creates other problems as well. With multifamily, you can develop a tier structure if you do it on a per dwelling unit basis, but that's a much more complicated structure to have. And while the city knows the number of dwelling units for many accounts, it's not, they don't have that information for all the accounts. So it's really not practical to develop the tier structure for multifamily. Does that answer your question? Yeah, oh yeah, thank you. The irrigation accounts, we have the dedicated irrigation accounts and that pulls the irrigation out from businesses. So it's separate from, so a business may have a domestic meter and then an irrigation meter. And we can just have that distribution around the specific use characteristics of each irrigation account. We look at the size of the landscape, the plant types to specifically calculate a water budget for those accounts and then design the tier structure around that. Okay, so back to wastewater rates. So we've defined these four standard categories rather than 15. We've adjusted the service charge similar to the water side to reflect the capacity relationship and we're maintaining the revenue mix between the volumetric and the fixed component of the bill. With respect to those strength categories, this is a table which is really a guideline and an indicator to help place each customer into each of these four categories. We have low, standard, medium and high strength categories. About 89% of the businesses will be in the standard strength category, so that's the vast majority. It's about 1% in the low strength, about 2% in the medium strength and about 8% in the high strength. In the high strength are things like restaurants and bakeries and mortuary and things like that that place a higher load on the wastewater system. And at the bottom of this slide, you can see the ranges of the concentrations associated with each of these categories in terms of biochemical oxygen demand, BOD, total suspended solids and the nitrate, TKN is a measure of nitrate level in the waste and shows the general range. Quick question on this. Has outreach been done to the business community and have you received any howling from people about the categories that they've been placed? Now that the range of categories has been narrowed. The effect for most customers is pretty nominal of these changes. They're already, even though we have 15 categories, they're already lumped together pretty closely. So this wasn't a dramatic change in most instances. I don't know about outreach weather. Yeah, once the 218 notice goes, there's 45 days before the hearing. And so during that period will be opportunity for discussion with customers. Okay, any idea? You talked about residential customers, the typical residential customer is gonna see maybe a 1% increase in their bill.  Yes, in fact, there's a slide. I was gonna make reference to it or there's a table in the report. It's exhibit one dash six on page nine of the report. It was too big of a table to put onto a PowerPoint slide. And there's about 15 or 18 different commercial businesses as well as different residential accounts, combined water and wastewater bill and what the total change for most of the accounts that's within plus or minus 3% change in their bill. And there's a couple on there though that are like 15% or 13%. There are a few outliers that are more than that but it's a very small number. And I think that would be where some of the outreach activities would be directed to working with those customers. Okay, thank you. Go ahead, Ms. Combs. So following that chart, a small winery, is that what I'm reading goes down 16%? I'm having a little trouble because the chart is sideways on my screen. When I rotate my screen, the chart goes sideways again. Yes, that's true. The combined water and wastewater bill for a small winery, we actually, in the report, we define what a small winery is. And that they would see about a 16% reduction in their typical monthly bill. And most of that is- And the mortuary above them goes up 13%? And mortuary is a high strength load, yes. Okay. And can you tell me which one is the 15% one? Because I'm having trouble telling. Is carwash. Okay, and that was a low strength. It's a low strength, and there's still a low strength. But they're going up 15%. Yes, and that's because the current rate. And I'm assuming their low rate, their low strength because of recycling the water. Yes, they tend to have to filter the water and reuse it and that sort of thing. So in going through this analysis, we need to, similar to the court decision addressing tiered water rates and how you calculate tiered water rates, the same concepts, the same principles apply to the wastewater rates. We need to meet a cost of service requirement. So we have to factor in the specific loading characteristics associated with different types of businesses, the uses that they have, the size of the meter and those sorts of things. And we do that in an objective way and we try and do that in a way that is going to minimize the impacts. But there are a few instances where some people might have bigger plus or minus changes than just within that 3% band. So I know that we're motivated to ask for large users of water to come in and want to talk to us about ways that they can conserve and that we've done, my understanding is that staff has done an excellent job in outreach to breweries regarding their waste and the difficulty that that unusual waste presents. If we give the wineries this kind of discount, are we de-incentivizing them to come in and work with you? And is it possible? I mean, not that I don't love my local wineries, but. I don't think that it creates a disincentive for them to be efficient in their operations. I think that the rates, both water and wastewater, you know, the small winery, it is a high strength category and there's still plenty of incentive for them to manage their usage. Thank you. And just to follow up on that, we do have a aggressive environmental compliance team that meets with our businesses on a regular basis. And the wastewater side of things is probably most, primarily most of the work. And we work with businesses to identify free treatment devices that would work for them, different ways for them to manage their waste, such as the high strength waste receiving, ways to take out and reduce their BOD or TSS or nitrogen levels. If we can help them reduce that, that would change where they fall within this matrix. So it does give the customers and businesses some flexibility and control over their cost if they install certain devices. And we currently work with them on a regular basis for that. So if a business uses some practice that is recommended for water or wastewater conservation, can they move from category to category or do they remain? For example, I know some coffee shops basically run the water dripping all the time and some coffee shops don't have that policy. So there's a significant difference in the water use of the two entities. Would they both be lumped into the same category or do they move from category to category? In the case of a smaller business, like a coffee shop, let's use that as an example. Yes, the specific practice of one coffee shop versus another may vary some, but those businesses are generally very small quantities of waste. There's no direct way to actually go and measure the waste associated with each one. So it's really not practical to tailor a specific approach for one coffee shop versus another or for many standard types of businesses. But where that differentiation does come into play is with some of the larger users, like large wineries, for example, or some of the food processing things that have both very high volumes as well as varied loading characteristics. And with that, then there are, and there's information and recommendations in the report where specific charges can be developed around the specific use characteristics for those high-loading, high-volume instances. And that's specific for that purpose. And just to add to that, remember that these bills are also based totally on flow. So if a business is using less flow, their bill will be less than a business that is using more, even if they're in the same category for their charge. You know, it'll be based this number times two instead of this number times 20, so. Thank you. Ms. Carlson, did you have a question? Okay. Sorry, I thought I saw your hand up. Okay. One more for me. Did I see breweries on this list? I know it's part of our economic strategy, so those breweries fall into the special high strength category where it's individualized based on the loading characteristics of that. So it falls into a group that has an extraordinary surcharge applied to the rate. Okay. And breweries, just for the background, breweries and food production, a lot of the water goes into the product that they're developing. So there's metering to subtract that water out in terms of impact to the wastewater system. And then a lot of those businesses also have pretreatment devices to try to reuse that water within their process for cleaning and other activities to reduce their water use. But they also reduce their nitrogen and BOD levels to reduce the impact to our system. And so it's a very site-specific effort that we're underway with breweries specifically and food production. Okay, thank you. So this summarizes the proposed wastewater rates schedule. We have a usage component usage rate for residential. It's tied to the winter water use or the sewer cap as you're familiar. That's for single family duplexes and multifamily. And that usage rate is 1308. For the non-residential customers, commercial, industrial, and institutional, we have the four different rates. The lowest rate applies to the low strength and then we have standard, medium and high strength. And you can see the differences between those rates and the amount of the difference in the rate is because of the different loading characteristics within that. And again, about 89% of the businesses fall into that standard strength category, which is the same loading characteristics as residential. And then we have service charges tied to the size of the meter. For single family residential and duplexes, it's the same service charge regardless of meter size because if they do have a larger meter, it tends to be either because of an irrigation demand or a fire blow requirement. And so the base service charge is the same. So this graph summarizes a typical residential, single family residential combined water and wastewater bill, both current bill within Santa Rosa and that's the light shaded bar, the third one from the left. And then just to the right of that one is under the proposed rates. So very small change here. That's the 1% change that was on that initial slide about a little more than a dollar change in the bill amount associated with the proposed rate structure. The other bars on this graph are some of the neighboring communities here in Sonoma County and what their combined water and wastewater bills are. I would add that Healdsburg is in the midst of a rate study. Some of these other communities, Rohnert Park and Windsor, just adopted multi-year rate plans earlier this year would have annual adjustments each year. So different things going on with each of these, but this provides a comparison. And then we already discussed that comparison across different types of customers between the current and the proposed rates and with that table in the report. So I won't refer to that again. So you can see from this that there were a number of issues that all came together through this rate study. It really was a comprehensive undertaking looking not only at the cost of service analysis, meeting the legal requirements, meeting the financial obligations that the utilities have to maintain adequate revenues and manage uncertainty, which is inherent, but also an opportunity to look at the reserves. We also looked at other miscellaneous fees and charges and a number of other things that all came together in going through this study. And so we have developed recommendations. We had the strong support from the BPU on the recommendations going forward. And we're really pretty pleased that we're able to offer pretty modest rate increases for the next five-year period here and pretty modest rate structure changes as well. So with that, Linda's got a few more words here. Okay, I just very briefly, because we're gonna be back to you, not November 10th, like it says on this slide, but it has been moved to November 17th, but we'll be to you to talk about the H2O program in detail. But the board reviewed this on October 1st and they made some suggestions on our pilot program. And hopefully this week we're gonna be releasing an RFQ looking for a nonprofit partner or partners. And that'll give us a better idea of what our costs are going to be and how that program is going to flesh out. So we'll be back to you on November 17th to talk a little bit more about that. And then just wanted to reiterate that it's an ongoing evaluation. Bob turns over these financial plans to us and then it becomes a living model. We are updating it constantly with demands, with what the revenues and trends are looking like. And we wanna assure you that we're working very closely with the Board of Public Utilities. They review our revenues, our expenditures and our reserve levels every year at budget time in detail. And so the next steps for us at this point is we will be sending out those Prop 218 notices and doing some outreach. And you have a public hearing scheduled on December 1st. And we're all ready to answer questions, additional questions and take comments. Okay, I have one card on this. Mr. Duit. And appreciate that you folks have had this work done. Appreciate that a lot of study goes into these things. By the same token, I think what's really important is this right here, new normal, no normal, things are gonna be changing if we are better at conservation. I'm hoping we are. I've never looked at any water as if it was waste. I spent a lot of time in the desert when I was younger. And I know that all water has value in one way or another. The dilemma is many people, especially if they live in an apartment where the water is paid or if they work at a business where the business picks up the cost, they don't worry about it. They just go ahead and keep wasting. So I believe in volumetric metering of water for everybody and that especially for businesses, they'd be able to keep track of it and pay a higher cost if need be. Especially at wineries. I've got a friend that is quite concerned because he knows some winery workers and they tell him about hundreds of thousands of gallons of water that basically just get flushed out and it's potable water. It's used to clean in the areas for the barrels and different things like that. And you'd think that we could come up with a system in which we were using recycled water to do those types of things and keeping our potable water for the important stuff. So what I'm hoping is as this goes forward and prepares for the public hearing that they'll look deeper in to how to do an incentive type package. First, by making sure that everyone has volumetric metering no matter what type of a customer they are, everybody gets charged and is seen for how much they use.  I mean, we're four years into this drought and you may believe the rain is coming next week. We've had a taste, everybody's ready, but it might not. And so we need to be prepared and keep looking towards the future in which there may be even worse and longer droughts than this one we've experienced. So having volumetric metering, excuse me, these meetings get to me and I begin to mess up the words. Volumetric metering on all water for all customers and make it in to a nice type package, bring in as much revenue as you can so you can hold down the increases on everyone over the next five years. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Councilor, are there any further questions or comments? Mr. Oliver. Wait, I'm back. I just want to, I want to thank staff for the detailed work that occurred over times. It started back in 2014 with the process, report a lot of good information. The individual looping out was very helpful as well. It helped in this process to get a better grasp and understand it and really look forward to this coming back to us for additional input and final decisions, but as far as a process that you have used so far, I really, really, really like it and I greatly appreciate all the effort, so thank you. Mr. Schwedhelm. Thank you. I just want to echo that also. I always never thought I'd be saying this but I look forward to your reports because it's very thorough and it's clear to me that it's a very well managed operation from start to finish. So I'm impressed also with the detail that you have here and you've anticipated the questions that we may have and you always have answers so I really appreciate it and keep up the good work. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Again, just echo council members that have gone before me to thank staff for the prep work that went into this for giving us all the opportunity to meet with you one-on-one and ask our questions ahead of time. That's extremely helpful and I'm very much looking forward to the implementation of our new program for low-income users. So I'll join the love fist and appreciate the department very much for how professionally it's managed and for all the work that happens all the way up and down the line to keep our citizens safe and healthy. This is like our number one public health contribution is clean water and sanitation. So this is what keeps our citizens safe and I very much appreciate that. I also want to very much appreciate you for the H2O program. I love the cute little title there. Help to others. It's a shame that Prop 218 prevents us from giving direct assistance to seriously low-income water users and you and I both know you've been working hard on this for a number of years and I'm really grateful to see this program come forward and I hope we continue to lobby to get Prop 218 to have the same kind of exception that the electric utility has. I will add that it always concerns me when we're doing rate increases that are not aligned with consumer price index or social security increases because our residents are dealing with those rate changes. So it concerns me to see the increases that are sort of set here for several years that don't have a tie-in to CPI or social security rate increases. So that's a concern of mine. I appreciate that it will come back annually instead of having what looks to the public like two rate increases. The one that the county water agency passes on and then ours but by bringing them together we don't get hit twice with you just raised our rates. Why are you doing it again? So I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness on making it clearer to the public when there's a rate increase and what it is. So thanks very much. I just like to reiterate the appreciation for the H2O program. We kind of went past that quickly but it is appreciated the work that's going into that and it's not a big amount but it's a good step in the right direction. So thanks for doing that. I also wanna thank the Board of Public Utilities for working hard on this. I know that you spend a lot of time on it and it makes it a lot clearer when it gets to us, I believe. This is an incredibly complex issue with all kinds of moving parts and the presentation today and the report really made it clear to me as for somebody who's definitely no expert in this stuff it was clear where we were going. I appreciate how much work goes into dealing with all the sensitivities of not just costs and revenues but being fair to people, keeping increases low and dealing with something like the weather. How much more uncertainty can you get? So thanks and this is coming back November 17th, is that right? The H2O program will be coming back November 17th and the public hearing for the rate increase will be December 1st. December 1st. Thank you very much. We have a second study session, Mr. City Manager. Item 3.2 review of body worn camera policy, Hank Schreeder, Chief of Police presenting. Welcome, Chief. Vice Mayor, Council members, I brought show and tell so you can actually see what we're talking about today. Mayor, Council members, today we're here to talk about the body worn camera policy developed by the Santa Rosa Police Department. The department, ultimately the development of the program is based on the fact that we recognize that the video can add a unbiased kind of view of the incidents between public safety and the community. So we started developing this program as early as 2011. So it's been a long time coming. Department's been developing the body worn camera program for a variety of reasons. And ultimately it's in the best interest of the community and the department. Through, we utilized nationwide best practices, a variety of other policies throughout the state, nation, several conferences, including the National Academy Conference. Recently, the League of California Cities Conference just last week had a few presentations on body worn cameras. The POA was involved in the process of developing the program in the interest of their employees dealing with the issues and are very supportive of the program at this point based on the policy that's presented today. The city attorney's office was involved as well as a community survey that we put out in order to identify concerns that the community has regarding the cameras, as well as areas that we can do further education regarding body worn cameras in the city of Santa Rosa. So on August 18th, you asked for the camera policy to come back to you. Where we are in the process is the policy in draft form. We have the cameras in possession. We have 120 cameras that would go primarily to our field service division, which is our uniform patrol officers, downtown enforcement traffic, and we're ready to start beginning the implementation process of that. We anticipate it's gonna be a phased in process because it's a big program. When I say the body worn camera program, it goes all the way back and many of you were involved in helping develop this program in the beginning when you talk about evidence storage, digital evidence management before you even get to a point where you can have cameras. So it's a whole program. The policy is part of that as well as our training plans that come out of the program. So Captain Craig Schwartz was involved in his managing the current body worn camera program. And I want to allow him to talk about some of the highlights in the policy that maybe you have interest in. Good afternoon. We've been working on this policy for quite a while now. And as the chief said, we've actually been researching and looking to implement this body worn camera program really since about 2012. We first started putting a few body worn cameras out in 2011 during some of the Occupy events. But those cameras were really kind of off the shelf type small devices that we're not ever met for law enforcement or the ways that we would be using them. That was in 2011. So in 2012, we really started looking into what camera systems were available out there. And I will admit going into this that I thought it was going to be a lot simpler than it has turned out to be. It's not the idea of just going out and buying a camera. There are so much more involved as we have learned related to even just the storage of the videos and the evidence and what is to be done with that. And then all the additional policy type questions that come in about, you know, on the slide, you know, when will the cameras be turned on? When is it appropriate for them to be on? When would it be appropriate for maybe the officers to not turn them on? When would the use of the cameras really even be prohibited? How long do we keep the recordings for? Where do we keep the recordings? Do we keep them locally in a server that we have to manage and deal with here at the city or do they go up to the cloud to be stored by another company? And then there are issues with the employees' access to recordings, when does an officer get to view a video recording that they've made and issues with the release of those recordings, trying to balance transparency and privacy issues. So when it comes to just kind of going point by point, one of our main concerns was with the activation of the recorders and when they would be coming on, the officers would be sliding the door down that you see on the camera in front of you. So right now, if that camera had an active battery on it, it would be on. It's a very simple camera to operate.  You slide the door up and it stops. And rather than going through all of the different scenarios because there are so many when we would expect the officers to turn on the camera, the easiest kind of way to put it is that when an officer is engaged in an enforcement-type contact or an investigative contact that could include a traffic stop, a bicycle stop, pedestrian contact, and a criminal investigation where they would be interviewing a witness or a victim or a suspect, we expect the camera to be on. We do provide some discretion to the officers because there are legitimate privacy concerns in many of the calls that we go to. And in the survey that we did, the public recognized a number of those concerns. So we do leave them some leeway to turn the camera off if, say, they're talking to an informant or if somebody requests it to go off. Excuse me, Captain. Ms. Kosher. Thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor, just a quick question with respect to that. I imagine domestic violence calls fall into that or anything involving minors. That was right. One of the areas that would sort of classify as a sensitive-type call, and it could be dealing with domestic violence, it could be dealing with minors, it could be a sexual assault, it could be when you're in a medical facility and there is the potential that there's HIPAA-type private medical information being discussed. Is there any way to capture the video data and sort of sequester it in a way that would comply? So that doesn't necessarily mean that that instance may not be recorded, but it certainly has an impact on whether it would be produced if there was a request for production of that. There are a number of laws, well, for an institution code that prohibits us from releasing information about minors, there's domestic violence laws, any HIPAA mentioned. And so all of those would factor into, as said, the police officers have some discretion if they're talking to an informant. Obviously it's not likely that they may get the information they need if that's being recorded. So they have some element of judgment. Okay, thank you. And then when we talk about, when the recorder should go off, in most cases, we expect the recorder to remain on for the duration of that contact. Now once again, we do provide some discretion there, so if there's a large area of sort of lag time where the officer is back at the car writing reports or doing something or is not directly involved in the contact, then we will allow the officer to turn the camera off and then turn it back on once they get back into the actual contact with the victim, witness or suspect. And retention of recordings, we consulted with our technical services division manager, other policies, other cities across the country and our city attorney's office to talk about that. And really when it comes to both retention and release of the recordings, we have existing policies and existing laws that we follow with that. So for example, in most scenarios, we would keep these video recordings for at least one year in one day. If the recording is more sensitive because there's a use of force or it could be subject to civil litigation, we would look at keeping that for up to 27 months. And then if it's evidence in a criminal proceeding, we would maintain it as long as that evidence is required by the courts. And when it comes to finally the release of the recordings, that was an interesting area and one that I was really kind of curious with the survey results for because of the issues trying to balance transparency and privacy for the people who are on the recording. And we have an existing policy dealing with media relations and records release, evidence release that we would follow with the videos because really the videos are just another form of evidence or data that are already captured in that policy. And that policy allows ultimately the chief to have the final discretion about what gets released. But as always, we would expect that that would occur in consultation with the city attorney's office and in some instances the city manager's office. I have a question on that. Would a video recording, as far as a request for the release of a video recording, it would be treated the same way as say a request for a copy of a report or a copy of a booking photo? Yes, we would follow all the same policies that we utilize for evidence reports, criminal reports, things like that. It is a balancing act when you talk about release and when to release and protecting the community safety aspect of it, you may have somebody that's in a video that's wanted that wouldn't necessarily be released, but we have to get it out to the public. So there is some public safety aspects to it, but it's balanced against the protection of the witnesses and victims and evidence for prosecution in cases with the video itself. So we're always, in almost all of those cases, we're in consultation with city attorney's office. I know that unfortunately in our digital world, there's a lot of demand for content and police videos seem to be good content in a lot of cases. So how do you decide, I'm not even sure how to ask the question, that when are you making a decision based on transparency of public records or what the end use is gonna be? It depends. So in some cases, for example, if it's evidence for a crime, it'd be ultimately the prosecution and then what laws govern the release of that information. I think what we're seeing nationally is a lot of police videos that are released in states that allow some of that to happen. For example, Washington and Texas and some of these states that have these processes. In California, it's a little different. We do follow many of the Public Record Act laws and things like that associated with it. I think from the conference last week, it's exactly what you mentioned. There is this kind of, we're not sure yet until we get to an incident. For example, we get requests for criminal reports that are still being prosecuted and we don't release them because it's in the best interest of the prosecution for the DA's office. So there are these incidents. So it does, on a case by case basis, does play out. Sometimes the transparency may be and you're seeing agencies get involved in these where the police wouldn't be the only ones with cameras on a particular incident. So they're showing only a piece of it whereas law enforcement may have a whole nother side. So those are some of the discussions that we'd have to get when it comes down to releasing and whether or not to release and what's the best interest in the incident itself. So the chief said it's very fact specific and there could be any number of other laws that's not gonna be governed solely by the Public Records Act. That's one of the main issues that we would be looking at. But as I mentioned, there are a number of other laws that prevent disclosure of certain information. There's concerns about privacy rights, medical information. Right now there's a case that's pending before the California Supreme Court on the Public Records Act that really deals with digital media which is, you know, technology evolves. I think that becomes a more challenging question. And it was a case where the ACLU requested data from automatic license readers and they made a request and the police did not turn that over because they said that was part of a law enforcement investigation. And so the Supreme Court has asked to look at that issue about how far does an investigation go? Do you still retain the records or do they still remain confidential once the investigation's concluded? So I think we are gonna be getting much more guidance in the near future on those issues. It may be that we can, to protect people's privacy rights, blur faces if there's a need to release information. It may be that there's a compelling safety need that overrides that, such as if there's somebody suspect that's on the loose that the police need assistance in helping and that person was captured in a video, those circumstances could override the concerns for privacy and other laws like that. So it really is gonna be on a case-by-case basis. Okay, have we had any requests for video that's been produced during the pilot program that has been going on for a while now? I'm not aware of any. No, I'm not aware of any either. I could check with our technical services division manager and get more information for you if there have been though. I would imagine it probably would have come to one of your attention. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the council at this point? Are you done? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Then there are questions. Mr. Swadham. Thank you. Where do we land with the storage solution? Is it cloud-based storage solution? So one of the reasons that we selected the camera that's up in front of you now is because this particular camera interfaces well with our existing newly purchased digital evidence management system and it is a locally-based storage solution. So it will not be loaded up into the cloud. We have a server at the police department where all of the videos will be kept. And have you anticipated the life expectancy of that server? We have. Yes. Why don't you be able to share that life expectancy with us? Well, we have, I believe, 72 terabytes of space now that we have basically planned for in budgeting to be able to either add to or replace as the needs arise. So it should be within our budget to accomplish that. Within the year and a day, because I would imagine as we go, we'll be. Multi-year lifespan on the storage devices, so. Okay, great. And then, similar to Chief Schroeder, I heard a presentation in the cities about Cal Chiefs has got a model policy and then also Lexapol has a model policy. Can you share with us, is our policy going to be consistent with that? And I'm not sure if other council members understand what Lexapol is, but you might want to take an opportunity to explain that a little bit. Sure. Yeah, go ahead. Lexapol is basically provides model policies throughout the state. Many of the agencies adopt the policies, either whole or parts of the policies that come out. They keep them up to date with case law and relevant things that are impacting law enforcement. We're a Lexapol subscriber. Our policies are based in Lexapol, so we did use Lexapol's policy and Cal Chiefs. Our policy is consistent with Cal Chiefs recommendations that were presented just last week. Ms. Combs. Thank you for bringing this forward to us. I appreciate the transparency in this department and the attempts to find the balance between the needs for privacy and the needs for transparency within a government agency. This is a really tricky one. I wonder if you'll be patient with me and go through a couple of items. I'm looking at the recommendations of our local task force that was with regard to county issues, but they have a section on body worn cameras. So I'm just looking at that recommendation and wondering if you went through that recommendation and looked at where there were similarities or differences. We've reviewed all the community and local law enforcement task force recommendations and we did it from a process of what are we doing currently? What is it we can do with limited resources or no resources, but we can put in place that makes sense. And then ones that we'd need additional resources. In some, I've been in discussions with the city manager on and the body worn camera one was one specifics that the community and local law enforcement recommended. I don't know that I can answer that right now without them in front of me. But we did actually, they recommended obviously a body worn camera program. I think I'd like to know, I'd like to have you tell us if this comes back to us where the differences are between our local recommendations rather than make us go through them because I do have it in front of me. And I think I'd rather not go through it one at a time with you today. They have a number of retention specific items. They have a couple of items regarding activation. I think they're similar, but you would maybe be better able to tell me where the differences are. I would really like that. One of the aspects that I am interested in involves whether any subject of the recording has access to it, can make copies of it, can flag the recording, whether or not they're filing a complaint or opening an investigation. So can you clarify just that section of the policy for me? Are you talking about the subject? Any subject of a recording? I'm trying to sort out if they have access to it, can they make a copy? Can they flag a recording in some way? People within the community would fall under the same rules and laws that we talked about originally in the presentation. So they could make a request and then we'd have to look at it case by case basis. So it isn't automatic that a person who is the subject of recording has access to it? No, it's not. And it may be that there's another process and certainly in the criminal setting that they can subpoena those records if they were in aid of a criminal defense matter. Or in a civil case, they could certainly request them as part of the discovery process. I have also a concern about 450.7 and I just want to understand the authorization to delete. It appears to me 450.7a1 allows, I'm not exactly sure of the structure in the department. You know, this isn't my most expert area. So if you can let me know, it seems to me that if you're deleting something there should be two people who know it's being deleted. It concerns me to have one person who is a close relationship with the officer delete material. And I understand you need to delete things like the officer forgets to turn it off when he goes in the bathroom. I mean, I understand that stuff. I'm just trying to figure out how we differentiate between the goof delete and the, I'm gonna help you, you know, delete. So in the current policy draft, the requirement would be that a lieutenant or a captain who is somebody that would be at least two levels in the command structure above the officer, provide the authorization to delete it after they review the video to ensure that there is no evidentiary or administrative value to it and that it is an accidental recording. And then that would go to a system administrator for the actual deletion of the video. Do we have any kind of internal auditing process, internal affairs kind of position? Yeah, our property evidence is audited on a regular basis just for this concern that you have. So it's an external audit. It would be hard to audit it if it's not there. So it would be hard for that auditor to see whether why that was deleted or not. And one benefit to the digital evidence management software that we use is that every access to the items in there is audited and tracked. So there is a log entry. Every time somebody looks at the video, anytime they do anything to... So there's a record that it happened. Correct. Assuming that the system fully is fully transparent that way, but there's not a record to what was deleted except for someone's statement that I just deleted this 15 seconds, right? Okay. Correct. So that's a concern of mine. I just, I'm throwing it out there that it's a concern I don't have the solution. When we're dealing with money, we have two people make decisions about counting money in front of someone else or having a backup or a check. So it concerns me that there's not a two-person system for this. And my other concern is a sentence that says the chief of police shall have final approval which is 450.9 for whether something is released. So if the press, for example, were to make a request for information for a copy of the video, my understanding is that you said the chief of police has final authority. And I'm trying to understand exactly legally what that means. Does that mean that the majority of the council can't ask for it to be released? Yes. So the majority of the council could not ask for it to be released? That's correct. So it has their criminal, the police chief is the one who has the most information about pending investigations and whether a release of certain information would jeopardize the investigation that's going on. The police chief would also be consulting with our office because obviously if we're required by law to release something, police chief would not be not authorizing it to be released. And I believe would also be checking in with the city manager, but we can certainly make that more expedited. It just is interesting to me that it's not the city manager who has the final authority, but that it's the police chief. That's kind of interesting to me. Yeah, and that's because the police chief is the one who knows what the investigation is and what the impact of release of certain information could have. And it's also familiar with all the various penal code sections and other sections that limit disclosure of information. And you wouldn't feel comfortable informing the city manager and forming the council that we would understand those things. I just said that we'd be happy to clarify in the policy that police chief would consult with the city attorney and the city manager on those decisions. And if the courts wanted to say, you shall release that, if there was a court decision, does that have authority over the statement in here that the police chief has final authority? Yes, because the policy says that we'll comply with state and federal law. So if, for example, the case that I just mentioned where the California Supreme Court is gonna weigh in on what the scope of the exemption to the Public Records Act is on law enforcement investigations, if they define that more narrowly than it's currently understood to be, then certainly we would be guided by what the case law says. And if there's any new legislation that comes out regarding those things. What would be the process, so the process of appeal of a decision about the release of the information would be through the court system? Yes. Thank you. Further questions? Mr. Mayor? Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. Just a couple of, I guess comments, not necessarily questions. I'm not one to meddle in your, a lot went into this and I appreciate that. There's a lot of national models out there, a lot of legal restrictions that you have to follow and I greatly appreciate that. But you did speak to some sensitive type cases where there may be some options, if you will. And I do encourage you to continue to explore those. I think we know from the past as we enter something new, we do accept policy, but we know that's not the final policy because changes happen, there's challenges through the courts and we have to adapt to that. And I know this will continue to evolve because this is new territory for us. But one area of concern that I would have that I want you to continue to monitor is that issue related to the initial contact interaction with domestic violence victims, sexual assault victims, because we know how difficult it is for people to report. And it is a very traumatic time for them. So I just encourage you to continue to monitor that, to ensure that we're not making it so that people are not reporting to us. So we've gone through a long, long, long process over many, many years to develop that trust and make it easier for victims to report. So I just really encourage you to be sensitive to that and see what changes need to make over time to make sure that we do not impact that in any negative way. Anyone else? Ms. Costa. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. And thank you, Chief, for bringing this forward. I only had one point of curiosity, maybe a suggestion even at the deployment of a new technology in the field, obviously will not be without glitches along the way. Will there be an opportunity, say at six months or a year, in panel groups, see how it's gone, how are the officers feeling, how's the public feeling about it, just to make sure that things are going as intended? Well, I think with any program like this, there has to be a valuation milestones along the way. I think some of the things they point to a lot of times with camera programs, at least in the research, is use of force complaints and these kinds of things. So those are some of the things that we'll be looking at down the road. In many ways, it's not just the officers we're talking about, people behave differently when they're recorded, and that's the community also. So it's an opportunity for us to kind of, when you lead in some of these technologies and you lead in some of these programs, there's things that we're gonna have to make changes to along the way. Thank you, and I appreciate that, and I wanted to thank you as well. One of your answers earlier to a question was, we took a look at the county report, for example, and compared it to, what are we doing? What can't we do, and what will we do? And I think that that's very appropriate for this community, and I appreciate you taking that report seriously, just as we've talked about with the previous Civil Rights Commission report. So the more that, I think I said this to you before, the more that we can get out into the public what it is that we are already doing, I think that's gonna improve the conversation. And so I would just encourage you, whenever we have a conversation like this, please let us know, maybe there are ancillary areas that we've already begun implementing. I think it's, like I said, it's an opportunity to enrich the conversation. So thank you very much. There's a lot of technical information about this and a lot of legal information. One of the kind of the general public chatter issues that's come up during this is whether officers are able to refer to videos when they're writing their reports. Tell us what the policy says about that. The officers will be able to refer to their report. I think, like we've said during the presentation, it's evidence. What I'm looking for them to do is write the most accurate report they possibly can and reviewing the video is part of that process. All right, thank you. And I just wanna say, I'm happy that this program is being rolled out. I'm proud to be part of a city organization that's doing this. I would like to hear more and how it's going as we move forward. But thanks for getting it started and I look forward to hearing more about it. Thank you for your time. I do have a couple of cards on this. Thank you, Ms. Gomes. Dwayne DeWitt. Thank you and I thank the department, the police department for undertaking this effort. I think it's a very good initiative. It's something that could be very helpful to a lot of the misunderstandings in the community. One of the things I'd like to ask is if they could try to get what's called a fail safe backup system for their storage. In the past, there had been an incident at city at the police department on Sonoma Avenue. Young man lost his life and the cameras didn't function that day and no footage was available. And that caused some people to question the credibility of the police. Not myself. I just looked at it like, okay, we have to have better technology, see where that goes in the future. I believe we're there now. So try your best for a good fail safe backup system. And then there's talk in some places about what are called automatic on switches so that whenever the officer grabs a portion of his weaponry, be it his pistol, his baton or his mace, in this case I should say tear gas perhaps, that that would automatically turn on the camera also. And that way the officer wouldn't have to reach for a camera while he was doing other things that could be very important for him to save his life in a dangerous situation. So I'm very glad that you're doing this. Same time, I wanna make sure we have the ultimate safety for the officers and then the ultimate backup for credibility of the officers to show what actually occurred. There's people that try to manipulate video also as you've seen down in Rohnert Park and in some cases that end up on the web where people have tried to doctor video footage and make it look like it was something different than it was. So thank you once again for this effort, for transparency, good luck on it and everyone stay safe out there. Thank you so much. Thank you, Xavier Nazario. I just wanted to make a quick comment about the body-worn cameras. I wanted to thank the police department for being proactive on this initiative. I think it's important as a Santa Rosa citizen that we're taking a step in the right direction and that there's transparency involved in it. The two questions that I had and one more thing before that, I think the survey I received it a couple months ago, I thought it was very well-structured, it was very thought-provoking, so great job on that as well. It really helped put it into perspective on all of the legal and personal and private issues that a police officer has to deal with on a day-to-day basis when turning on a recording. The areas that I didn't have clarity on and I was hoping that I'd get some clarity on this were, one, if there is a nighttime recording, what is the quality of that compared to a daytime recording? Two, how are the trainings influenced by content that's on the video, future trainings? And then lastly and most importantly, is there a policy for behavior violations of police officers who are not using, they're using their discretion, but they're airing on the side of being conservative with using the recording. What type of policy is in place for behavior issues in that way? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nazario. Do you want to address any of this? So night vision comes up a lot and what it is is it's an enhancement to what the actual officer sees at the time of the incident. So most of the cameras do not rely on any kind of night vision technology for police? You have something? Yeah, I would say when it comes to the quality of the video during a low light situation or at night, it is degraded. You're not going to get as high quality a recording as you would during the daytime, but it is a low light camera so it is designed to function in a darker environment, just not quite as well as it would during the daytime. As far as future training, we pretty much review everything we do in the police department to develop future training for officers. As a matter of fact, our policy calls that out that we have the ability to review video from calls for service and things like that in order to develop training for future. And then behavior issues are well handled throughout the policies in the organization, POBR and things like that. Those are also addressed in other policies within the police department. And specifically I believe with the question about behavior with potentially officers say who are not turning the cameras on when we expect them to. And that was a conscious decision in writing this policy and in consultation with our police officers association on how we worded that. So that we are creating a performance expectation that the officers do that. So it might not be a policy violation the first time an officer forgets to turn the camera on as they get out of the car. But if that does occur repeatedly, the officers not meeting the expectation and that gives us something that we can deal with to try and encourage that behavior. One of the things we mentioned about it being a program, part of that program is developing other training like our defensive tactics and firearms training and driving training around the camera system itself. So getting officers used to using the cameras during those kinds of, those are all being built into place so that it becomes almost second nature like putting on your seat belt. Great. Thank you. That concludes our study sessions. I want to welcome all the people who've come in in the last few minutes. The council has been sitting here for a couple of hours already. We're going to take a 10 minute break. I don't know something that's already in our pocket. Welcome everyone. Welcome to the October 6th, 2015 meeting of the Santa Rosa City Council. Mr. City Manager, could you report on our closed sessions please? We had two study sessions. One on the 2015 water and wastewater costs and one on the review of body worn camera policy. Thank you. We have a couple proclamations today. The first one is for Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And I believe Ms. Combs has this. Thank you, Mayor. And the recipients are Madeline Keegan O'Connell and who is the CEO of the YWC of Sonoma County. And you can bring people down with you if you want. Come on down. I brought just a few friends of mine here today. I'm so glad you did. So let me read your proclamation that you can say a few words. Thank you so much. Whereas Santa Rosa recognizes that the crime of domestic violence violates an individual's privacy, dignity and security due to the systematic use of emotional, physical, sexual, psychological and economic control. And whereas the YWCA Sonoma County is a community based organization and is affiliated with the YWCA USA, 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of YWCA Sonoma County and we honor their mission to empower, educate and support domestic violence survivors and the children. Whereas the YWCA Sonoma County operates our communities only. Confidential safe house shelter, the only 24 seven domestic violence crisis hotline and the only therapeutic preschool serving one of our most vulnerable populations, children age three to five years old. And whereas domestic violence is a serious crime that affects people of all races, sexes, ages, sexual orientation and income levels. Stopping the cycle of vicious assaults in homes requires a coordinated effort between the criminal justice system, the agencies that provide services to victims and the resolve and courage of the survivors. And whereas only a collaborative community effort will put an end to the cycle of domestic violence. Members of our community are encouraged to participate in the YWCA scheduled events and programs that support their mission to eliminate domestic violence in Sonoma County through awareness, education and empowerment. Now therefore be it resolved that John Sawyer, mayor of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire council does hereby proclaim October 2015 as domestic violence awareness month. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you so much. Julie invited me to say a few words and I'm so grateful to be here. I am Madeline Keegan O'Connell this very inspired and proud to be the CEO of your YWCA Sonoma County. And tonight I'm joined by members of our team who provide the advocacy to the clients. Julie you're very kind to let everybody know that we do run the county's only shelter for domestic violence victims and we've been around 40 years. I know you think we don't look a day over 39, we're trying. This is our 40th anniversary. And today we're so proud to be here with the Santa Rosa Police Department with capable leadership of Hank Schreeder and our detectives who work in domestic violence with us. How about we give them a round of applause for our partnership. It is very startling to realize that one in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. The CDC reports that 4.7 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year. We know that women 18 to 24 are most at risk. And we know that only 55% of victims will report to police. You do not have to be personally affected by domestic violence to understand that it is a public crisis. Now you've heard a little bit about what we're doing about it through our therapeutic preschool, the only one in the county through our 24 seven crisis hotline. I love to read that number because I know that you'll commit it to memory. It's five, four, six, one, two, three, four. And one of these lovely generous people behind me will undoubtedly answer the phone and provide not only victim assistance but assistance to families as well. Neighbors, friends who are troubled by activities that they believe are going on and we're here to help. We launched the, I don't know, Tom, is it the first ever domestic violence response team for Santa Rosa? Just this past spring and we've got a lovely, we've had just incredible results. Let me just tell you a quick story about a client of ours named Brenda. Brenda was at a block party on a Saturday night. It was about nine o'clock when the Santa Rosa PD reached out to our advocate who was on call at that hour in that day of the week to come out and meet with the officer at a hospital where Brenda had injuries. And she counseled with Brenda. She counseled with members of Brenda's family. Brenda was interested in helping her abuser be bailed out of jail at that moment. She was in significant crisis. Remember that domestic violence is one of the most complicated crimes because you're being victimized by somebody that you're also involved with your children and your family together and you love that person in a lot of ways. Through the advocacy of the YWCA and the immediate response of the Santa Rosa PD, our advocate was able to counsel with Brenda. That was Saturday night. Well, we're very proud to tell you that by Tuesday morning, she checked into our safe house shelter with her children and she is safe today. We are working with her to find housing and appropriate custody arrangements with her family breaking that victimization and that violent power and control model was very difficult for her to do. We applaud her and we're here today for Domestic Violence Awareness Month to remind you that we are part of the survivor cycle and we are part of making a healthier Santa Rosa for all of us. If you permit me, I have a calendar I've shared very liberally with all of the green shirt people here today. Note to self, we'll have purple shirts next year. Okay, just so you know. And they've been so kind, your audience is so courteous to take our wristbands and I've given each of you a promotion for Allstate Foundation's Purple Purse and there's a way for you to log on and help support our mission. We're gonna be at Montgomery Village this Saturday with a little band you might have heard of called Pride and Joy and we're gonna be celebrating the success of 40 years of the YWCA, keeping families safe in Sonoma County. Please join us from noon to three. Chris, that's in your neighborhood, right? You can just write on over there. And then next Tuesday, enjoy some coffee with Dutch brothers there on Mendocino and they're gonna do a drink, more coffee and donate event for us. And we've got signs up all over the county, we're on buses and we are easily found on Facebook and online and it is our honor to be honored by you. Thank you very, very sincerely. Thank you all very much for coming today. Our second proclamation today is for Fire Prevention Week and Councilman Oliveris has this one. Thank you Vice Mayor and I believe Paul Lowenthal, our Assistant Fire Marshal will be accepting this and probably some of the other fire staff as well. Whereas Santa Rosa's first responders are dedicated to reducing the occurrence of home fires and home fire injuries through prevention and protection education and whereas Santa Rosa's residents are responsive to public education measures and are able to take personal steps to increase their safety from fire, especially in their homes and whereas Santa Rosa's residents who have planned and practiced a home fire escape plan are more prepared and will therefore be more likely to survive a fire and whereas the 2015 Fire Prevention Week theme, here the beep where you sleep, every bedroom needs a working smoke alarm. Effectively reminds residents that they should install appropriate smoke alarm devices in every sleeping room outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home to ensure the alarms are heard by all and whereas the City of Santa Rosa urges its residents to support the many public safety activities and efforts of the Santa Rosa Fire Department. Now therefore be resolved that John Sawyer, Mayor of the City of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire City Council does hereby proclaim October 4th through the 10th, 2015 as Fire Prevention Week. Thank you very much. This has been an exciting week for us. Our crews and fire prevention staff have been busy going around all the schools throughout Santa Rosa, visiting everywhere from TKK through 4th grade throughout most of the schools, doing presentations, teaching about 9-1-1, stop, drop, and roll and obviously most importantly the smoke detectors this year. Getting them to go home and present an actual homework assignment back to their parents which they all seem to really like.  And we have two open houses this weekend, Station 6 in Lincoln Valley and Cal State Road and Station 8 in Roseland. That'll both be open from 10 to noon and we encourage all the residents to come visit them. Thank you. Paul, are the open houses both Saturday and Sunday? Just Saturday. Just Saturday. 10 to noon. 10 to noon, Station 6, Station 8. Great. Thank you all very much. Thank you. We have a series of staff briefings today starting with... Item 6.1, quarterly capital improvement program projects, Andy Allen, supervising engineer presenting. Vice Mayor Corsi, council members. I'm a supervising engineer for team two which was one of two capital projects engineering teams dedicated to Santa Rosa water projects. Today I'll be giving you our quarterly status update which is expenditures for April, May and June. I will also provide major project updates, let you know about some coming attractions and remind you about our CIP information on the city's website. Here's your pie chart with expenditures from April one through June 30. Want to note an error under the bike and pedestrian. It's noted as 0.05 million. It was actually 0.5 million, which is a much bigger number. The total is correct, $16.3 million we spent on capital projects during that three month period. As you can also see that local sewer and water takes on a big portion of that along with Laguna treatment plant and the others. Our team completed two major projects this spring, early summer. Montgomery Drive, second pier street sewer and water improvements. The other project was Brigham Avenue, Gordon Lane, sewer and water improvements. Both those projects began in the winter and were completed in early summer and both were relatively close to the fairground so we're happy to report those were completed before the fair began. We had a major project start. This was from team two, excuse me, team one and it was Stony Point Widening Project. Started August 24th, the reconstruction phase two. It includes water, sewer and storm drain along with of course additional lanes of travel, turn lanes, sidewalks and bicycle lanes. Now for some projects that will begin later this month, the connect four private water systems to city water. This project will connect three mobile home parks and one multi-unit apartment complex to city water eliminating four private water systems that have high levels of arsenic. This is an entirely prop 84 funded project so we're about ready to begin. Can you name the locations that are being served now? I think there's some additional ones that we'll be coming in later. Correct, there is a private street for the apartment complex on Moreland Avenue. We have Sequoia Gardens, which is out on Fulton and we have two projects on Southerns Santa Rosa Avenue. Another project that will begin in the next few days is Illinois Avenue, Suture Lane, sewer and water replacements. It's another facet of the JC neighborhood that we are getting close to completing, removing those old VCP water mains. I see me VCP sewer mains. We have a, this next project is White Oak Drive Water Improvements. It's out in the high fire severity zone. There was a six inch water main that was deemed that needed to be upgrade to get fire flow to and up through that private driveway. So we replaced six inch water main with an eight inch water main up that private driveway. It's certainly topical given the fires we've had lately and that is a dry area. Another project beginning is Jennings Avenue Sewer and Water Improvements. This is a stretch from Herbert to Cleveland. Again, we'll begin in the next couple of weeks replacing deteriorated water mains. We also have a sister project being monitored by team four. This is Cleveland Avenue Water and Sewer Main Improvements. They actually ultimately touch together and connect and we'll begin shortly. Last project I'm gonna speak to today is the Oakmont Drive Water Replacement Project. There was a stretch of 12 inch water main that asset management determined it was time to replace. We've had a number of breaks and leaks and as you can see by the picture there are some patches in the streets where our maintenance crews had to do that. At the point where maintenance became too big of an issue it's time to replace that main and that's what we're doing out there on the east end of Oakmont. Certainly remind you that we have a website dedicated to our construction projects. They're updated regularly. You can look at it either via a map or a list of projects and filter to the type of projects you're looking for. So see we're spread out pretty much over the entire city and those updates are actually pretty crucial to our neighborhoods. When something changes dramatically even day to day we can modify those very easily with our program so we can update it daily especially if we're having some type of issue like traffic signal problems or gas main leaks and those were updated as the day progressed. So I'm here to answer any other questions you have and as always we're looking for input regarding any changes you'd like to have in this update. Thank you. Are there questions? Ms. Costa? Just a quick one with respect to the widening on Sebastopol Road. When do you expect that phase or that section to be completed? That's a darn good question. Why thank you. I don't have the answer to that question but I can certainly get that back to you. It's a project that's not on my team. Maybe an answer coming your way. There we go. That's what I appreciate. And I obviously meant Stony Point Road not the Sebastopol Road, sorry. That changes everything so. So it's not a good question. It's not a good question. So we're just getting started with construction on Stony Point Road and our project manager is actually here today because he has an item on our consent calendar so he will correct me if this isn't the right answer. My understanding is the construction is expected to go two years and wrap up before winter of 2016-17. Is construction being limited to off peak hours? I just, I'm over there fairly regularly and it's bad, traffic's really backed up. I recommend finding alternate routes for everyone. So no. Okay. The, that reach of Stony Point Road has residences right along both sides so doing all night work out there would be disrupting people's lives for years. So we have some night work I think in the major intersections but otherwise primarily daytime work. Okay. Thank you. Ms. Combs. Thank you. My ever-present comment asking that you work on capital improvement projects with our community advisory board and I'm looking forward to hearing how they're having input. Great, thank you. Mr. Allen forgive me if I missed this but can you describe for us, for me what the purview, what the responsibilities of team two include? You're all over the city, it's not geographical it seems. As I indicated there are, well I didn't indicate this, there are four CIP teams two of which are completely dedicated to Santa Rosa water projects. The other two teams also do transportation projects, building projects. We all do, all four teams do Santa Rosa water projects just to let you know that. The, our projects are put together by the asset management group and they decide which projects need to come forward for construction and that's based on the need of the project. As those projects come in we pick them up. The team that is capable of adding more projects to their plate picks up the projects and starts to move them through the process. There's no geographical designation to where our teams do work so you'll see us next to each other. You'll see us across town and that's how that's decided is based on workload our capabilities of moving the project out to construction. Great, thank you. I don't have any cards on this. Thank you very much. Mr. McLeod. Item 6.2, city hall demonstration garden project update. Heavenmore supervising engineer, stormwater and creeks presenting. Good afternoon, council. Thank you so much for having me. We're happy to come today and present you with an update on the city hall demonstration garden retrofit. As you may remember, we received a grant from the state water board for just over $800,000 and the project on this campus will include creating a low water use demonstration garden doing low impact development, stormwater quality features in the main parking lot. Excuse me, Ms. Moore, would you pull that microphone down a little closer to you? Sure, is that better? Yes, it is. Thank you. Sorry about that. And as well as educational and outreach materials about this demonstration garden. So since we have come to talk to you before, we have completed a public comment period. This was made available on the project website. We received a total of 23 comments and these fell into about four different categories. Planting and irrigation was one kind of group of comments that we received, hardscape and kind of elements of the garden, including the rainwater harvesting system, pathway layout, that sort of layout feature and the