All right, why don't we bring this study session to order? This is the 12 o'clock or so study session for the Santa Rosa City Council. And before we start, I would like to introduce the gentleman to my right. His name is Kyle Scott. He is the first, as I mentioned last week at our council meeting, he's doing the first council sit-along to observe how the meeting goes from this side of the desk. Kyle was born and raised in Sonoma County, graduated in May from Holy Names University in Oakland with a major in business management. He's kind of interested in politics and he wants to kind of dip his toes in the water see what it's like. So he and I have been meeting a couple times sharing different perspectives that I get to enjoy on a daily basis. He's doing some research. So this is another evolution to see is this the direction you want to go either in public service from an elected perspective or from a staff perspective. So Kyle will be here. He won't be participating in the meeting. He'll just be observing the meeting. So with that, if we could, Madam City Clerk, could you a roll call? Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember Combs. Thank you. Mr. City Manager, would you like to introduce our study session? Yes. Item 3.1, minimum wage study session, Ryasa De La Rosa economic development manager presenting. And Ryasa, before you start, I do want everyone in the audience to know if you are in need of translation services, we have some headsets up at the very top where Julie waving her hand. Thank you. The nice Vanna wave, I appreciate that. So those are available for both of these next two study sessions. Alrighty, good afternoon, Mayor Schwetholm and members of the council. With me today is Ian Perry, a research and policy associate with UC Berkeley and one of the authors of the estimated impact of minimum wage study that you have in your packet. And also available to help answer questions are Assistant City Manager McBride, Human Resources Director Reeves and Mara Ventura and Marty Bennett from North Bay Jobs with Justice. And if you will, the plan is to go through the packet that you have and then to hand it over to Ian to go into more depth about the study that they participated in and then to open it up for questions. So by way of backgrounds, SB3 was, which was passed in 2016 set in motion the phase in of a minimum wage rates in California with the goal of getting to $15 per hour by 2022 for employers with 26 employees or more, which are considered large employers. And by 2023 for employers with 25 or fewer employees. And then thereafter, the California minimum wage would increase annually based on CPI with a cap of 3.5%. As noted on this slide, the governor does have the authority to pause the schedule increase for one year if certain economic or budget conditions are met. But this budget off ramp as it's called could only be used twice. North Bay Jobs with Justice and the North Bay Labor Council came forward with a proposal to expedite this timeline, the state timeline to get large employers at to $15 per hour by January 1st, 2020 and small employers 25 or less at January 1st, 2021, not October 1st. And the executive summary of the staff report, there was a statement that said that there would be exemptions. They would remove certain employer exemptions allowed by the state, but this is not true according to the current proposal that you have in your staff report. So at this point, it would be simply a question of expediting the timeline. Thereafter, once you reach the $15 per hour, there would be an annual increase according to the CPI with no cap. So that's the only difference to SB3 that they're suggesting in addition to the expedited timeline. Ian will be going into the UC Berkeley Labor Center proposal, so I'm gonna skip this slide and get you to our comparator cities. So in terms of comparator cities, only five of the 12 cities have a minimum wage ordinance that exceeds the current state minimum wage or expedites SB3 timeline. The rest of them that we've identified as comp cities are consistent with the state. In terms of the cities in Sonoma County, Petaluma and Sonoma have now passed local minimum wage ordinances. So Sonoma passed their ordinance that raises the minimum wage to $17 an hour for large employers and $16 an hour for small employers by 2023. And then they've left it open to provide more direction thereafter, starting in 2024. And last night, Petaluma passed their local minimum wage ordinance that allows for, which is for the most part, exactly what you have in your packet. So they passed that on first reading last night. One thing that I found interesting about what Petaluma passed is that while large employers will be at $15 an hour and small employers at $14 an hour by January 1st, 2020, come 2021, both large and small employers will be at $15 an hour, but they will plus CPI. So they're not gonna have a two-tiered rate going forward. They're going to normalize it come 2021. Let's see. In terms of the impact on Santa Rosa and our human resources, while there are no compaction issues, we did spend more time looking at recreation and parks because that department employs seasonal temp workers. So that with enough hours that it equates to about 64 full-time employees and within six seasonal temp job classifications. In preparation for SB3, recreation parts did do an analysis on the budget for these classifications. So we found that expediting the timeline would really have an impact only in fiscal year 2021 and that would be to the tune of about $200,000 if we accelerate the timeline. So after Ian completes their presentation and discussion, these are some of the starting points of our discussion that we would like to have, namely timing, exceptions in special considerations, enforcement, and costs of living adjustments. So this was a very quick summary because I think history tells us that most of the questions you will have will be on some of the studies and the precedents set in Ian is the expert on that. So I'm gonna hand it over to them and pull up there with the patient. There we go. Hi everyone, thanks for having me here. I'm Ian Yves Perry from the UC Berkeley Labor Center where I'm a Research and Policy Associate. So today I'm gonna talk first about the estimated impacts of the $15 by 2020 policy that's in the report that I wrote and came out in October. And then kind of we're gonna zoom out a little bit and take a look at what the academic research says more generally about the impacts of minimum wage increases. So looking first at the policy that we're considering here today, I should know that actually the model I ran on a slightly earlier version of the proposal, the differences should be pretty negligible though. So this analysis is looking at the effect of a $15 minimum wage by 2020 across the North Bay, which you see is Sonoma, Marin, Napa, and Solano counties. Using, to create these estimates, I use the same model that we at the Labor Center and the IRLE, just another research organization at UC Berkeley, have used to conduct analyses for many cities in the state of California, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Oakland. There's been a few by this point. And all of the estimates in my presentation today take kind of the current state policy, which gets to $15 by 2023 as the baseline. So you should be interpreting everything that I'm saying in terms of the effects of this policy as being in addition to what is going to happen over the next few years with the state increase. So looking first at the number of workers receiving raises and kind of what those raises would look like, I estimate that about 36% of the covered workforce in the North Bay would receive a raise and that works out to about 192,000 workers North Baywide. The average raise would be about $1.74 per hour and that works out to about on average, almost $3,000 annually or 16% increase in their take home pay. Overall throughout the North Bay, this would result in an additional $565 million in increased wages paid to low-age workers. A little bit about the kind of the workers who would be receiving wages, wage increases. 94% are age 20 or older, 60% are workers of color. Half the workers receiving raises would have at least some college experience. The typical affected worker in the North Bay is currently earning half of the median individual salary in the North Bay, but that typical affected worker brings home half of their family's income. So this runs contrary to kind of some general perceptions of minimum wage workers as providing just kind of supplemental or extra income to their families. My report finds that actually these affected workers are bringing home half of their family's income. So providing the top three industries for affected workers are gonna be retail, restaurants, and health services. This is kind of the usual pattern that we see in minimum wage increases because these are typically industries that have higher numbers of low-age workers in them. Most of the affected workers are gonna be in private and for-profit firms and public and non-profit workers are less likely to be affected than the average worker. And that's simply because right now they're typically earning higher wages than private sector workers. Looking at the effects on business costs and price, we see in restaurants by the kind of full phase into this policy, cost would increase by about 2.1% and that kind of translates based on the work we've done into about a 1% increase in prices. In the retail industry, which was one of the other most affected industries and then the overall economy, the cost and price increases would be minimal. So looking here at Santa Rosa, I found that Santa Rosa has about 13% of the North Bay workforce. It's not really possible to run this model on Santa Rosa in particular but extrapolating from my results for the North Bay, if about 13% of Petaluma is about 13% or sorry. If Santa Rosa is about 13% of the North Bay workers, we can assume that about 13% of the affected workers would also be in Santa Rosa. And so that comes out to about 25,000 workers in Santa Rosa receiving a raise. Okay, so taking a step back now and looking at kind of what general academic research has to say about minimum wage increases, the kind of main findings from credible research designs and credible research designs shows that effects of minimum wage increases on employment in retail and other low wage industries are very small and often the studies are not able to statistically distinguish any effect from no effect at all. There's some debate that remains about the effect on teen employment. But again, the more credible research designs are finding very small effects. And if you remember from earlier in my presentation, only about 6% of the affected workers from this proposal would be teenagers. Looking at some of the most recent studies that have come out, some of my colleagues at UC Berkeley have studied six of the recent city minimum wage increases. So that's Seattle, San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Chicago and Washington, DC. And they found no evidence of employment losses. The kind of other notable recent study that's come out was produced by researchers at the University of Washington in 2018. This was evaluating Seattle's recent minimum wage increase. They found in their initial version, they found actually some fairly substantial employment effects in the negative direction that were largely out of line with the rest of the research body. Kind of further kind of digging into their methods kind of showed that there were some flaws in their study and some of their subsequent reports that have come out in kind of later versions. The, that finding of negative employment effects has gone away. And so their more recent work shows that Seattle's minimum wage increases did not have any adverse effect on workers total take home pay. So this kind of leads to a question that I frequently get which is why are the effects on employment so small? Many people kind of assume in a standard kind of supply and demand model that if you raise the price of labor or through wages, businesses are gonna provide less jobs. There's a couple effects here that kind of explain that. The first one is on kind of just the side of the workers themselves. So worker productivity has been shown to rise and worker turnovers and shown to decline after minimum wage increases. So this mitigates some of the cost of businesses of the increased wage bill. On the other side, workers themselves have now more income and they're able to spend that income in the local economy and that has positive effects on the local economy which tends to create some employment. And so what we see is basically these two kind of positive effects on employment tend to basically cancel out the negative effect that would be the increase in wages. And so overall, we see that employment is generally not substantially affected. And this is just kind of a mapping out of that process that we've shown before. Beyond the effect on employment, minimum wage increases have a lot of other effects on kind of workers and communities. So they've been associated now with reductions in poverty income inequality and use of public assistance programs. Research has also found that after minimum wage increases, health has improved for workers and their children. And there's also research showing that children of affected workers show better academic performance and then when they reach the job market have better outcomes there too. So kind of wrapping up, the bottom line here is that about one third of the workers in the North Bay would receive about a $3,000 annual increase in pay. We anticipate little effect on employment for these affected workers to primarily to these productivity and consumer demand effects. But in addition to kind of just these two purely kind of economic effects, we also think that there should be decreases in poverty and equality and public assistance use as well as improved health and academic outcomes for the children of affected workers and better health for the workers themselves. So that is the end of my presentation and I'd be happy to take any questions that you have. Thank you for the presentation. Bring back to council any questions. Mr. Reissmaier. Thank you, Ian. Just quick question, I have not seen research in one of the kind of missing components in what I think will be critical to our discussion today also. Have you come across any research that talks about not necessarily the amount of the increase but the speed of the increase? Not necessarily looking at the speed of the increase itself, but I think kind of what you're saying is if you're increasing it kind of quickly that is in effect increasing it more. And what we're seeing, what the research tells us about increases that are comparable to the proposal here is that it kind of falls in that range of increases that in the past have not been shown to have significant negative employment effects. Okay, great, thank you. Ms. Lemming. Thank you, Ian. Thank you, Ms. Delarosa. I'm curious to know if you have seen any challenges in undocumented workers reporting wage violations in other areas that have adopted these types of ordinances? That's not a line of research that I'm kind of aware of in particular about the effect of minimum wage increases on kind of wage theft for undocumented workers. We do know that that is kind of an existing issue. It's not clear if this would make that issue worse or not, but I know that Marty and Mara also have some points to make on the enforcement side so I'll let them kind of handle that. Thank you. My question was driving at have you seen any practices that are especially useful in helping that population make reports? Yeah, that's a question I'd recommend for those two. Okay, point taken, thank you. Any other questions? Sorry. Thank you, Mayor. Are there any studies that engage cities closer in population to Santa Rosa? I mean, none of these are anywhere close to the population of Santa Rosa. Are there, and I would think that in cities of larger numbers with more businesses, the averages are going to drastically change as far as those that are highly successful that make millions of dollars in whatever industry or whatever business it might be could tend to swing the positive effects and hide the negative. Are there other studies of populations closer to Santa Rosa? There's been studies of the initial minimum wage increases which there was one in like Santa Fe, New Mexico which kind of found similar results to the other studies. I'm not sure how Santa Fe compares to Santa Rosa in size, but I think it's smaller than some of these other California cities. At the same time though, I would expect, especially with the regional effort that's being proposed here, that the kind of economic processes wouldn't be that different than some of these other local minimum wage laws that have gone in, even though the cities are a little bit larger, it's still the kind of same idea where a city that is kind of distinct from a state is increasing its minimum wage and the research that is on, those city increases in particular has shown research effects that are consistent with kind of the rest of the body of literature which is that there is not much of an employment effect. So directly to your question, it's hard to do a study on kind of cities of smaller size here, but in my opinion, we can extrapolate from the research on larger cities. Any other questions? I had one in the report and in the presentation in a couple places that indicates increase, well, the sense in addition to research on the effects of minimum wage increases documents important reductions in family poverty rates, which greatly interests me. Can you, how would we measure that? In other words, if we do this in this moment in time, what would we anticipate seeing further down the road? Yeah, so there's research that basically has looked at this and kind of looked at poverty rates in places before and after kind of minimum wage increases compared to places that did not have minimum wage increases. And it's kind of that research has shown that the increase in minimum wages in those cities has caused kind of reductions in poverty that didn't happen in those cities that didn't do their increases. It's the exact size of that effect kind of depends on the size of the minimum wage increase, but it's something that kind of with what we're seeing here, I would expect in a kind of few percentage point reduction in the poverty rate. Mayor Schwedhelm, the other thing I would just add is that one of the programs that we're working on with the Center as a Metro Chamber is access to quality early childcare, affordable quality early childcare. And that was something that we identified that we wanted to try to track because that's one of the key findings in quality childcare as well, linked with wages and, yeah, economics of family. So we'll try to integrate that into our discussions with the Metro Chamber on that front as well and try to associate it. I mean, because that's what speaks my interest. There are some intersections here where there's many different efforts going on in this community to reduce that poverty rate. So if this is an additional asset to try to drive that number down, and my question is, and it may be impossible to do, what impact did this have on that number when there's so many other efforts going on to reduce that poverty number? So a couple of percentage points, I appreciate that. Any other questions from Council? Go ahead, Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just want to follow up with that question and a question of my own. When we're looking at baseline data, because I think that should the Council move forward with implementing the minimum wage policy, it's going to be so beneficial for us and for other cities looking to follow suit to be able to look at what that measurable data was. So when we look at the baseline, are we using census data predominantly on median income? I mean, what's in the weeds kind of baseline? There's a couple of different sources that are used to do the research here. One of the main ones is called the quarterly census of employment and wages, and that's actually data that comes through the unemployment system. The state, every state runs an unemployment insurance program, and it's part of that they're required to report how many workers they have and some information about how much they're earning. And that's publicly available, and researchers have utilized that to do a lot of these studies, because it's kind of one of the most accurate sources because it's coming directly from reporting from the employers. There are also other studies that do use not directly from the census, but other Census Bureau surveys that chart kind of labor market indicators, and those are some of the other ones that are used as well. Okay, cool, going forward, I'd be particularly interested in how many people that we lift from above the poverty line, as well as how much did the median income of Santa Rosa increase, and also combined with how much job creation occurred. Are we seeing a decreasing amount of jobs? And I know there's obviously a multitude of factors that contribute to that, but what's kind of exciting and intriguing for me about this policy is really being able to track and pinpoint that information and find the sweet spot between job growth and wage growth. Practical, and I think the answer is obvious, but looking at the enforcement side of this, I've gotta believe that most people will be compliant, but there will be some that may not either for a nefarious reason or lack of information. When it comes to the compliance side, will there a traditional, I guess, route to rectify the wrongdoing? Would that be through the State Labor Board? Is that through, does the City of Santa Rosa plan enforcement role? So if we were staying within the, goes to the State, they've got the resources, but if we expedited, then it comes onto the City, which I believe we've seen any incorrect me if I'm wrong, that most then contract out, but the complaints from the research I did were very few and often mitigated just by a call from the City before it goes to a consultant, that's the enforcement consultant. So those consultants would be contracted with us until the State timeline matches up with ours? Well, in theory, if we expedite the timeline unless we choose an option, in term, which is one of the questions in timing, if we choose to hold CPI adjustments until we're even with the State, then that's where it could revert to the State, but otherwise in theory, if we expedite it and then do the annual increases, then we will always be ahead of the State. So I hope I'm not being a stick in the mud by asking, but do we know what the cost of that contracting is and is that taken into account with that $200,000 increases within the organization? No, that $200,000 was specific to recreation and parts in those seasonal part-time workers, yeah. So based on direction today received, we will price out the options and that's what we're looking for input on how enforcement is to be handled, but there will be a cost center. What we're understanding is from other cities' experience that the cost center is not huge, but there will be a cost center on enforcement of the program. Okay, thank you. Ms. Flanagan? Yes, I have another question for you, Ian, around fiscal impacts. It's fairly easy to understand what a fiscal impact for a worker, a lower income worker is when you go from 12 or 13 to 14 or $15. And I'm wondering, you know, it's mentioned that there is lower turnover for employers and that there are better health outcomes for families and children. I'm wondering if that translates into a specific percentage or amount that we could telegraph to our business community around, because it's clear that there's an outlay on payroll, but is there any savings or costs associated with it that is not captured in that data? So beyond, I think the major effect that's beyond just kind of the productivity and turnover effects would be the increased consumer demand that comes from the additional income. We're talking about a large kind of infusion of money in these workers' pockets and low-age workers tend to spend a larger share of their income and spend, well, so that represents basically a lot more money that's coming into businesses in the community and, you know, in our view, kind of creates economic activity that we see kind of the result of that through the lack of effect on employment, but that basically also means that the impact for businesses isn't as kind of drastic as they might first think. So what you're saying is that these families, when they do get this increase, they tend to have more spending money that they put directly back into the economy. Do you know if that increase typically goes to the types that is that spent in the local jurisdiction? What I'm trying to understand is, you know, when I have a small business owner come to me, can I tell her or them, you know, that this may cost you more on this end, but that there is data that I could point them to that suggests where they might recoup some savings? Yeah, I think that that's a fair way to characterize it is that the additional money that they're getting paid is likely to be then spent in the local economy. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Okay, Riza, I know we have some other members of the audience that are subinterexperts here. Were they going to be part of the presentation or just available to answer questions from council? Just available to answer questions as needed. Okay, great. Then we'll take members who filled out, members of the audience who filled out cards. First comment, Peter Rumble, followed by Myles Bergen. Thank you, members of the council. I typically start by thanking staff. I wanted to change things up a little bit and I wanted to thank Mara Ventura from North Bay Jobs for Justice. She and Maddie Hirschfield came in to talk with a few members of our advocacy council. And I can't express how grateful I am to engage with a community partner that is interested in a positive conversation. And I hope that that continues moving forward. On a personal note, one of my historical heroes is Bobby Kennedy and something that I always think back to is his quote, I believe that as long as there's plenty, poverty is evil, government belongs wherever evil needs and adversary and there are people in distress. And I truly believe that both from a kind of a moral individual perspective as well as from a business perspective because we know for a fact that poverty and inequity is not only bad for the individual, but bad for business. It's bad for the economy, it's bad for our community. It's one of the reasons why, as Ms. Dolorosa mentioned, we are so engaged in issues like childcare. We are launching today a housing trust for affordable housing in our community, bringing employers to the table. And I want to make sure that as we continue to address this issue that we work collaboratively and keep open a channel of communication so we can bring back to your council how good, well-meaning social policy is actually implemented on a local level and what it means for businesses who in some cases, the owners are foregoing paying themselves to pay their employees. So I know that there are ways to work through these issues and I sincerely hope that we can do that in a positive collaborative spirit. And I definitely want to again, emphasize my gratitude to Mara Ventura and Maddie Hirschfeld in particular for coming in and having that positive conversation. Thank you, Peter. Miles Bergen followed by Mara Ventura. Thank you, Mayor Schweldhelm and members of the council. I'm Miles Bergen, a board member of Sonoma County Conservation Action. SCCA stands in support of North Bay Jobs and Justice Accelerated Regional Minimum Wage Proposal and we urge the council to bring forth an ordinance as soon as it's practical. The fact is economic issues are environmental issues and environmental issues are economic issues. And with the specter of climate change bearing down on our planet and scientists only giving us 11 years to bend the curb of our carbon emissions, we need to be taking every step possible to ensure that we, our children and our grandchildren have a healthy and livable planet in the future. According to the city's own data, about 60% of Santa Rosa's carbon emissions are created through on-road transportation and the County of Sonoma share of emissions are roughly the same for on-road transportation. And at the same time, since 2016, median rent prices have gone up by 25% while median renter wages have only increased by 9%. And this imbalance causes more and more low wage workers to be displaced to other areas and to commute into our community, pumping dangerous greenhouse gases into our atmosphere in the process. In fact, the County EDB released figures showing that every day more than 138,000 workers either commute into or out of Sonoma County and that this number is 22% higher than it was 15 years ago. Increasing the minimum wage is a step to combating climate change. When low wage workers have more money in their pockets, they're better able to stay in our community. When low wage workers are able to stay in our community, they don't have to commute as far to and from work every day. And when their commutes are shorter, greenhouse gas emissions go down. Mr. Mayor and members of the Council, SCCA is strongly supportive of an accelerated minimum wage increase in hopes that you will do your part to do right by our planet and by our workers at the same time. Thank you. Thank you. Mara Ventura, followed by Marty Bennett. Hi, members of the Council. Mara Ventura, Executive Director, Jobs with Justice. I just wanted to quickly say thank you so much for having this study session. It's just a great opportunity to bring in and present this great data. I want to point to another study that RISA has and I'll send to you. It's called Enforcing City Minimum Wage Laws in California Best Practices and City-State Partnerships. I just bring this up for the question that you had, Council Member Fleming, around protecting undocumented workers. I'm sure other folks will address that and any questions you had around enforcement, which is just to say there's a lot in here, specifically, it's chapters around small cities for how you can build enforcement that provides disincentives for those few bad seed employers that are not paying the minimum wage. And that goes a long way for folks who are undocumented who don't speak English, can't don't have the ability to go through a lawyer or have a long wait line. We have a nine month wait for a wage theft hearing for the Labor Commissioner here in Santa Rosa. I also just want to quickly say, you know Jobs with Justice, so I won't do a long introduction, but we are part of a national organization. We have 40 chapters across 25 states and National Jobs with Justice is also a big leader on the fight for 15 nationally. So that's really exciting that we're able to continue the work here in our own communities and really model for the rest of the country. And our Raise the Wage campaign is, we're partnered with the Labor Council to represent more than 70,000 workers as well. In addition, our Raise the Wage campaign has also become one of the three priority issues chosen by the Alliance for Adjust Recovery. It's a coalition of every major environmental, labor and housing organization in Sonoma County. The purpose of their organization is to address structural inequality in the post fire rebuild and recovery. So we are honored to be chosen as one of their main issues. We also wanted to share that today is the fifth of six study sessions that have happened regionally. So Sebastopol, Sonoma, Petaluma, Katadi and the next week, Nevada will have this, they'll all have identical study sessions. It was really important to us and a big lesson learned across the state of California is that this work really needs to be done regionally so cities aren't pitted against each other and we're thinking about timelines and phasins and enforcement that support each other. We understand your job is to consider a wide array of solutions on all the intersectional issues that our communities facing, housing, poverty, racial inequality, homelessness, access to care, mental homework to do. But we think that we need both short-term solutions and long-term solutions. We know it will take years for us to get the labor enforcement that we actually need the governor to allocate funds for in Sonoma County for us to do real enforcement. And we understand that it's gonna be years before we can break ground on affordable housing that you all are working really hard to make sure it's getting built quickly as well as the chamber is doing a lot of really awesome work around workforce housing that we're excited about. So we recognize that, but we wanna make sure that folks in our most vulnerable community actually have a fighting chance to be here when that affordable housing is built. Thank you so much. Thank you. Marty Bennett followed by Manny Hirschfield. Good afternoon to the council. Marty Bennett, North Bay Jobs with Justice. There has been considerable preparation for this campaign in terms of research and coalition building and developing a model ordinance. And I just wanted to survey what we have done to this point. You just heard from Ian Perry from the UC Berkeley Labor Center. And UC Berkeley Labor Center has completed similar studies for every county and region where city-wide minimum wage has been implemented in California, both before and after the implementation of minimum wage loss. Currently, there are 46 cities and counties nationwide that have implemented city or minimum wage loss. 29 of these are in California. Recently, Sonoma passed the 28th. And as city staff mentioned last night, Petaluma passed the 29th. UC Berkeley Labor Center has an inventory of all minimum wage laws nationwide on their website. We believe their methodology, developed by labor center economists and researchers, is now widely recognized in the field of public policy research as the most accurate and reliable. The second thing we've done, which is on our website, is develop this report, The State of Working Sonoma 2018, which is the most comprehensive study to date of inequality, poverty, the working poor, and the impacts of the housing crisis. In addition, we've developed any number of popular education materials, two fact sheets that define the problem and summarize the main reasons why, incrementally, phasing in and raising the minimum wage is one of the most important ways that local government can address the problem of structural inequality. We've also published numerous op-eds in the Press Democrat and other publications in the North Bay, and just go to our website and click on Raise the Wage to see those. Finally, we have developed a model citywide minimum wage law that we have provided the city staff and city council. We have reviewed most of the California minimum wage laws and collaborated with the San Francisco labor firm, labor law firm, McCracken, Stemmerman, and Halsbury to craft an ordinance suitable for all jurisdictions in the county and based upon the best possible language drawn from ordinances implemented in cities such as Sunnyvale, San Mateo, Redwood City, and Emeryville. Our law firm has extensive experience in working with coalitions such as ours to develop citywide minimum wage and living wage laws, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other jurisdictions. We can also provide city staff the contact info for city staff in these cities who have worked on the approval and implementation of citywide minimum wage. Thank you. Thank you, Marty. Maddie Ayersfield followed by Jack Bacorn. Good afternoon, Mayor, City Council members and staff. Thank you for participating in the study session with us. You heard from Ian that about 25,000 workers in Santa Rosa would be affected by this if you accelerate to a $15 minimum wage by 2020. There are a few myths I wanna address. The first is that small businesses do not employ most minimum wage workers. According to the National Employment Law Project, large firms with more than 100 workers actually employ two thirds of minimum wage workers. Second is that minimum wage workers are not mostly teenagers just working to get a little extra spending change. The average minimum wage worker is 33 years old and contributes half of their income to their family income. The third, the rising minimum wage will not cause businesses to leave the city or increase unemployment. It will increase workers $2,900 research documents that low wage workers receiving wage increases, spend that money locally. It's a boost to the local economy and it's kind of a cyclical thing that feeds positively on itself. Also the taxpayer with the minimum wage, the taxpayer is not subsidizing low wage workers as much as they are when workers are still working 40 hours a week and having to avail themselves of social services. So it's really the employer that's getting the so-called hand out there when a 40-hour full-time worker needs social services. 44 cities and counties nationwide have approved the $15 minimum wage and 24 of those are in California. I don't think that includes Petaluma that passed virtually our minimum wage ordinance just before the stroke of midnight last night. That was a huge success and I'm looking forward to Santa Rosa following in those shoes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Manny. Jack Buckhorn followed by Patricia Marino. Yeah, good afternoon, Mayor Swenholm, city council and city staff. My name is Jack Buckhorn. I'm the executive director of the North Bay Labor Council and I don't have any prepared remarks this afternoon but instead I wanna talk about the opportunity that you have to make a difference in the life of the working poor by passing a living wage ordinance similar to what was done in Sonoma and last night in Petaluma. They took fairly a little bit different approach in each area in Sonoma. They back loaded the minimum wage which means that the worker will end up with more money over time but they won't get it as soon. And Petaluma they chose to front loaded and to go to 15 sooner and to put a cola in the Bay Area Cola next year on January 1st of 2021, that is gonna put money in the pockets of the working poor immediately and help solve the poverty problem that we see. Here in Santa Rosa, the wealth of the business here is in excess of $10 billion a year. The money that would be going to these workers pockets is estimated at $75 million a year. Those workers are not putting that in an IRA. They're gonna use that at the end of the month to help pay the rent and hopefully put food on the table. These are critical necessities that workers need to be able to survive in Sonoma County. Coastal communities are passing these living wage ordinances because of the higher cost of living here. And so the approach that we prefer and that we believe are fundamental to advancing a minimum wage are keeping the minimum wage always higher than the state average. The state minimum wage was a compromise between lower cost communities and high cost coastal areas. We know what it costs to live here. And in my opinion, and I hope you will agree, a higher minimum wage is necessary from now into the future, not one that aligns with the state at some point. So I just would urge you to consider that as you move forward in these discussions. And finally, on the poverty front, we all know the portrait of Sonoma County identify the areas of poverty in Sonoma County. We also know that those areas have poor health outcomes. It's very clear that by putting $3,000 in the pockets of working poor, it's going to increase the likelihood of better outcomes for their health, for their children, for their families, for our community. So I plead with you to do this. First of all, I wanna thank you for having this session. You have the opportunity today to change the plight of the working poor by helping them create more wealth, put money in their pocket. And honestly, it's the most efficient, and it's the quickest way to address the affordable housing problem. Thank you so much. Thank you. Patricia Moreno, followed by Laura Tapper. Buenas tardes, lo primero que quiero solicitar es más tiempo porque voy a perder en la traducción. Entonces, tres minutos no va a ser suficiente. Good afternoon. I would like to request more time than three minutes due to the translation we're gonna miss some time. So I will appreciate that, thank you. Please. Bueno, mi nombre es Patricia Moreno y estoy aquí hoy para apoyar los 15 dólares para el 2020. Hello, my name is Patricia Moreno. I'm here to vote in pro for the $15 as a minimum wage for 2020. Here, you were presented with the evidence with the studies by the members. And here I am to talk for the, I wanna be the voice for the working people, the hardworking people in Sonoma County. Bueno, yo trabajo en un restaurante, gano el salario mínimo. Obviamente no tengo beneficios. Mi salario es, como les acabo de decir al mínimo, vivo en casa de mis padres porque no puedo acceder a una renta. Mi esposo tiene dos trabajos. Y creo que soy el ejemplo de miles de trabajadores y de familias de la ciudad, el condado y el país. Myself, I work for a restaurant. I earn the minimum wage. I don't work full-time, I work part-time. We work hard, we don't have any benefits. We don't work overtime. As well, I live with my parents. I don't earn enough to pay rent, so I have to live with my parents. As well, my husband lives there. He carries two jobs. And we have to survive in Sonoma County. There's million of workers in Sonoma County in different cities here in Sonoma County that they do the same. Y algo que me llamó la atención es que yo trabajo en un restaurante y yo sé cómo los restaurantes resuelven el problema cuando quieren obtener ganancias. Es muy fácil lo que ellos hacen. Obvio, reducen beneficios porque antes yo tenía poquitos beneficios, entonces nos quitaron los beneficios, empezaron a reducir las porciones de comida, elevaron el costo de los platillos y bajaron en la calidad de los productos. Y saben qué, abrieron más tiendas, más sucursales. Entonces, si no ganan, porque nos dijeron, no podemos aumentarles porque no estamos ganando. Es curioso, si están abriendo tiendas, como es que pueden, si están abriendo tiendas, como es que nos están ganando. So working at the restaurant, I can see how they earn their income. They can increase their income while the workers, myself, I have witnessed that they increase the prices in the cost of prices, they lower the product and they reduce our benefits. I used to have benefits, I don't have benefits anymore. They lower our times and they open new stores, they open new restaurants. So it's obvious that they can pay or they can increase the salary when they're opening, they're opening new facilities in new restaurants. They're growing and we are not. And well, I also have evidence because my brothers, for example, they work in small companies of the county, of the city. And they are small companies that my dad and my three brothers already earn more than $22 and they have benefits. So how is it possible that the small companies that belong to my brothers and my dad who work for them, they do give them benefits, vacations, insurance, medical, or salary and these big companies, or for which I work, they complain that it will affect them. I have my own evidence with my family, my parent, my father, and my two brothers. They have been working for small companies, no big names for the county. And they, by now, they earn $22 an hour. They have benefits and they have full time. And for these big companies, these big names, these big corporations, the restaurants, for example, for the one that I work for, how is that they cannot afford to pay as well or provide with more hours or provide for more. So these big companies, they keep on growing while these small companies, they provide for their employees and they don't increase our earnings. And another thing, I've realized that our children are already entering labor force and they are facing that they are having miserable salaries and that they need to save for the university, for the school, to help their parents. How are they going to be able to go to the university if they don't have money? So I think that a large number of young people would benefit from the minimum salary increase because they would help their family and they would help themselves. And here we come, our kids, your kids, everybody's kids. They're growing, they're looking for a better life and they wanna work in the labor to be able to continue with their education, to go to college, to be able to pay rent, to be able to help themselves and help their parents. How is that they're gonna be able to do that if they don't increase the salary? They're gonna stay in the low pay, they're not gonna be able to go to college and better themselves. Could you ask her to please wrap up her comments, please?  To conclude, I know that there will be four chairs in the council, in the member of council available for next year. We're gonna pay very, very good attention on who is gonna be standing for our community, who's gonna support us, who is gonna do something so these changes in myself and my community, we make sure that we vote for who really cares. Thank you very much. Thank you. Laura Tapper followed by Chris Thompson. Good afternoon and thank you for taking the time to study this issue, it's very important. My name is Laura Tapper, I'm a resident of Santa Rosa. I'm here representing, as the previous speaker who I do not know, a part of the working part of Santa Rosa that is earning low, low wages. I work for a large international corporation. We have not had a raise in over five years, we're making $12.65 an hour. When the minimum wage for large corporations went up to $12 an hour in January, there was no increase. 50 of our workers got together and we requested a raise citing the fact of the cost of living in Sonoma County, the impact that the fires have had on the cost of living and we were flatly declined. This company makes its money. It is a company that I will put in the category of corporate greed and the only reason I continue working for them is because I'm dedicated to the other workers that I work with in trying to raise everyone at the bottom level where I am. We are the boots on the ground, we're making the money for this corporation. The workers that they employ cannot work full-time, which keeps them part-time workers, no benefits, no health insurance. We are a group of older citizens as myself, a retired person who works part-time to supplement social security. I know there's many in the community like that. There are dreamers that work at my company. They have many dedicated workers that have worked for this company for over 17 years and they're still making $1,265 an hour. There are people that are limited in their ability to work due to disabilities or health issues. There are people that are less able to work because of lack of education, but they're very capable workers and they do a fine job at the job that we are given, but they also, some of them are living in their cars, some of them are, as the woman before me, two in three families living together in small apartments, trying to help and support each other and lift them up. This is corporate greed. You hold it in your hands to help lift up a large portion of this community and this is just a small portion. I'm just one of these people. I will tell you if the wage goes up to $15 an hour at my job, I will cut back my hours. That will, and I know that other retired people there will too because we're constantly balancing, not making more money than we can so that we don't pay taxes on social security. That will open up jobs for other people. Thank you very much. Thank you. Chris Thompson followed by Christy Lubin. Hello, my name is Chris Thompson and I'm the vice chair of the Oakmont Democratic Club and a member of North Bay Organizing Project. I support the North Bay Jobs for Justice $15 an hour proposal. This proposal would give those people who work in Santa Rosa more income sooner. By 2020, low income workers here would make $15 per hour. The North Bay Jobs for Justices proposal would help to address many problems of our community. Problems such as rent increases for the bottom 20%, post-fire inequality, failing wages, wages that are not keeping up with the cost of living and the housing crisis, both pre and post 2017 fires. Our low income brothers and sisters are suffering greatly and the North Bay Jobs for Justice has a proposal that can help. Additionally, this proposal will help the environment by taking cars off the road as workers will be able to both live and work in the same community. Please pass this just and forward thinking ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Christy Lubin followed by Anna Salgado. Hi, my name's Christy Lubin and I'm the executive director of the Great and Day Labor Center and we are members of North Bay Jobs for Justice and the North Bay Labor Council. I'm here to speak in support of a $15 minimum wage in the city of Santa Rosa by 2020. I wanna thank you all for taking this under consideration and I also wanna thank you for asking some really good questions here today because they're really important questions and I wanna, from the perspective of the people that I work with, I wanna shed a little light on what some low wage workers are experiencing in Sonoma County. So we organize with day laborers and domestic workers, specifically folks who work in landscaping, construction, provide basic labor and who are house cleaners, caregivers and nannies. These folks are predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrants and domestic workers are predominantly women. If you look at the study that Marty Bennett mentioned, the state of working in Sonoma, the population that will benefit the most from a minimum wage increase are people in the average age of 33 years old but if you read a little deeper, they are women and they are immigrants. Many of these folks that I work with are working two or three jobs and working seven days a week. So if you wanna look at health impacts and basically stabilizing families which is part of the upstream investment portfolio, look at this as an investment, maybe we're not investing in youth and young children but we're helping stabilize families and perhaps they will be able to cut back like the speaker before me and not work two or three jobs, maybe work two jobs because nobody can live on $15 an hour. Since our president was elected in 2017 statewide and throughout the country, we've seen a surge in wage theft and mostly in wage violations which means over time and minimum wage violations. Myself and the leaders of my organization, we are on the ground, we are out on street corners throughout the county doing wage enforcement, wage education with the laborers and domestic workers, restaurant workers, motel workers, we are in parks, we go to the food bank lines and we do this three or four times a week. Just in the past week we helped recover $3,000 in stolen wages, half of which were minimum wage violations. Workers who were paid less than minimum wage, they didn't even get the $11 an hour. So raising the minimum wage is gonna really shed a focus on wage enforcement in this county. So it will have many ripple effects, it will improve health outcomes but it will also help us uncover other labor exploitation that is happening in our low wage worker population in Sonoma County. So I'm out of time, I got a lot more to say but we'll say it another time, thank you. And please, let's follow Sonoma and Petaluma and most of the Bay Area and let's raise the minimum wage. Thank you. Ana Salgado followed by Bonnie Petty. Buenas tardes a todos y gracias por el espacio. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for the space. Empezaré por decirles que vengo a pedirles que atiendan el llamado de nuestra comunidad en aumentar el sueldo mínimo a 15 dólares por hora tan pronto sea posible. I will start by telling you that I'm coming here to ask you to please hit the call of our community to raise the salary to $15 an hour as soon as possible. Los más afectados son nuestros hijos y nuestros jóvenes. Estos jóvenes de la clase trabajadora, que con tanto aumento en tantas cosas como en la vivienda, es una gran hazaña el seguir viviendo en este condado y la ciudad. The most affected are our children and our youth of the working class with the raise on the cost of living. It is a great deed to continue living in this county and city. Vamos a ser un lugar acogedor para nuestras familias que ya están pensando en moverse fuera de esta ciudad y del condado, por lo cual muchas escuelas, guarderías y empleos estarán teniendo poca tendencia. We're gonna let's make a appealing place of this city because all these families that are moving out already and our schools and our child care centers will be losing attendance. Tan solo los gastos básicos son una verdadera pesadilla para una familia de tres niños. Just the basic, the cost of the basics, it is a nightmare for a family of three. Yo he sobrevivido trabajando, haciendo múltiples trabajos a través de los años. Pero hoy me preocupa la situación para muchos ancianos, padres jóvenes y madres solteras trabajando horas extras. I have survived with doing several jobs at the same time, but what worries me is the situation that many all elderly people and parents and youth and mothers, single mothers working extra hours. That's why I support the $15 an hour race and I invite cordially to all of you to unite in the effort to make this effective and pass it. Let's support each other. We know that this is a long journey and we need to support each other. Thank you. Thank you. Bonnie Petty followed by Tom Zells. Good afternoon, thank you council members, mayor and council members for doing this study session. We have been anxious for this to happen for a while and we're really excited to be here. I work with North Bay Jobs with Justice and last night we were excited when Petaluma decided to go ahead and adopt the minimum wage for Petaluma. I think we would have been a little more excited had it not been midnight, but it was midnight. So, but we were excited for that as well as when Sonoma passed theirs. However, I am a resident of the city of Santa Rosa and I have been working on minimum wage work for years and it's been great watching the movement across the country as more and more cities and jurisdictions have been passing $15 minimum wages for people across this country. But I want to see it happen here in Santa Rosa. You are my leadership here. I look to you to help make this and keep this the city that I have grown to love. I've been here 35 years and I love this city and I am appreciative of the things that you do that help take care of the people of this city and this is one of the things that you can do. I'm not gonna go into all the details. You've heard details from all kinds of people here about all the reasons why this is the right thing to do. Environmental reasons, housing issues, just in general taking care of the people here. But I just look to you to please make me proud and make me proud to continue to be a member of this community and do the right thing and take care of the people of this community. Raise up those who are struggling and have been struggling for a long time and all of it exacerbated by the fires and as Christy talked about, we've had an ongoing long range problem of wage theft in this community and this is just one more tool that we can use to make sure that the people in this community can continue to live here and make this the vibrant community that I've come to love. Thank you. Thank you. Thomas Ellis, followed by June Brashears. Good afternoon and thank you for addressing this issue, bringing it before the council. This is really important. I just want to talk about the economics itself, give you a little justification for what I hope you're gonna do in support of this $15 an hour. Economics is really misunderstood at every level. It was Greenspan who went before Congress and said, I really didn't know that the market could get at this wrong when after the collapse. Here's the chairman of the Federal Reserve and he said, I really didn't know the market could get at this wrong. Well, the market's wrong right now and markets are meant to benefit the actual economics and develop the economics. So it's completely misunderstood at every level, all the way up and down. Pricing power is an example of monopolist's power, okay, and the monopolistic competition that they portend. Usually this is measured in the form of higher prices but the monopolistic, the monopolist's power is not limited to high prices when there's a structural restriction on jobs and labor. And so I'll remind you that earlier this year, and thank you, that you changed from banks of Wells Fargo and then JP Morgan Chase to US Bank. So thank you. And I wanna point out that this measure of this item 3.1 is very well linked to the previous special session, study session of 3.1 and get more housing because that's part of the pricing and the power problem. And I wanna point out that JP Morgan Chase owns 50% of Lee and Feng and Lee and Feng controls 20 million Chinese, the labor of 20 million Chinese people. This is pricing power. What they do is import, cheap stuff and ruin our jobs. This is what holds down labor prices. Affordability, it causes unaffordability. So please pass this measure, incorporate this, you'll expand the economy. That's what economics is supposed to be the study of right now. It's really just about, it's lauding themselves with immense amounts of money bags and gold and everything. Look at all these things that are happening. So I just point that out. And thank you again for switching the banks. Thank you. June for shares followed by Debbie McKay. Hi, I'm June for shares. I'm on the County Council of the Green Party of Sonoma County and currently in Sonoma, I mean, in Santa Rosa we have many hundreds of registered Green Party voters. And I'm here today first off to thank you very much for holding the study session. Really much appreciate it. And I'm also here to speak in strong support for moving forward on the minimum wage ordinance to get us to $15 by 2020 as proposed in the model advocated for by Jobs with Justice. And out of respect for everybody's time here, I'm not gonna repeat all the excellent points that we've heard from so many speakers such as the speakers from Jobs with Justice, Sonoma County Conservation Action, the Labor Council Alliance for Just Recovery, North Bay Organizing Project, Great and Day Labor Center, many community members that have all spoke in support of raising the minimum wage. So just suffice it to say I'm strong affirmation of their comments and the Jobs with Justice proposal and on Santa Rosa making progress on the minimum wage ordinance. Thank you. Thank you. Debbie McKay. Hi, Debbie McKay and I'm here on behalf of the League of Women Voters. Then the League of Women Voters has a position supporting the living wage. So we're very encouraged by what we see taking place today. It's a well thought out proposal and it's supported by research. And I think it will help the city meet some of your important goals, one of which is recovering the local economy because as you've heard, the lowest paid workers tend to spend the money they earn and put it back in the local economy. I think it will also help you prevent more homelessness because the recent homeless count indicated that you've got a roughly 20,000 people living in precarious housing situations. And the report also said the biggest barrier for people getting out of homelessness is that 68% of them can't afford rent. So I think this can help you prevent homelessness and I think it can also help you open the door to more housing if there are better paying jobs. And overall it will reduce poverty in Sonoma County. So I'm very pleased that you're taking this very seriously and looking into it very thoroughly and we encourage you to support a $15 an hour minimum wage by 2020. Thank you. Those are all the cards we have on this item. I have one question. Rice, I heard yesterday on the radio from Congressman Thompson that the federal, the feds may be introducing legislation to increase the federal minimum wage. Are you aware of that or do you have an update on the status of that? I don't have an update on that. Okay, any other, Mr. Vice Mayor? My understanding is that it has been introduced and I believe it raises it up to $12. I'm looking at, I'm looking at Mara for. You got a golden ticket, Marty, you can come down. The Raise the Wage Act has been introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders to Congress and it would provide for raising the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 an hour has not been raised in nine years. It would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2024. I think I just want to be explicit in terms of politics. It is certainly not going anywhere given the staunch Republican opposition in the Senate and the White House to raising the federal minimum wage, okay? That said, there is tremendous momentum across the country to raise local and statewide minimum wage. We now have seven states that have passed 15 minimum wage by 2024 or 2025. Maryland was the most recent. It was passed by the legislature. It was vetoed by the governor and the legislature in 24 hours overrode the veto of the governor. So I think we can say that this local issue of citywide minimum wage has national repercussions. And the more in which particularly in coastal California we are raising the wage floor through local minimum wage ordinances, that is going to impact the state and the federal levels. Thank you, Marty. Council, any additional questions for staff? So, Ryazzi, you want this slide up here, you want feedback from council on those four items? Yes, at the very least, please. At the very least, right. Mr. Tibbetts, why don't we start at this end? Okay. Well, I think first and foremost I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Marty Bennett for all his work on this as well as everybody else's and congratulate him on a recent retirement. Although I'm sure this will not be the last we'll see of you. I also want to just say that I'm very supportive of moving something forward in the city. In my day-to-day life, I work with people who are living in poverty and the nonprofit I work for, we don't have any kind of rental assistance programs yet I get about a phone call per week of people just proactively reaching out asking for help because they came up short. And on the flip side of that, we've also had a lot of experience running thrift store businesses and over the last few years, we've raised our wages pretty substantially and we've been able to counteract that with a simple price increase in our goods. It was certainly true, it was not nearly equal to what the wage increases were. And so through that lived experience, I've just kind of really become a fan of increasing the minimum wage. What I think we have here today is the opportunity in going forward is to really look at these 25,000 people living within the city of Santa Rosa, living in pretty extreme poverty when you look at where all the other disposable funds that they have go towards and rising costs everywhere else in our day-to-day life. And I just think that we ought to be really pursuing getting those 25,000 people a raise. When we're in government, it's rare that we get a policy like this where we get to effectuate so much immediate change for such a large group of people. And I think that's important and it's certainly not lost on me. You know, from just kind of what am I thinking? What am I looking at for staff? I like the 2020, $15 at 2020. And I also do like looking at going up to $16 in 2023. And here's my logic. You know, when you look at California average rents, it's 1,516. So maybe the statewide minimum wage makes sense for that average rent throughout the state and some of the more cost-effective areas. But when you look at the average rent of 1,900 in the city of Santa Rosa, we still have some catch-up to be playing. As far as the COLA versus CPI, I think as this process evolves, we need to be listening to the community on is COLA or CPI what is preferred, what is better? We need to specifically listen to our businesses in this regard. Also, one of the questions I had is it better to just revisit the issue in 2023 when we've gone up to $16 an hour? So I'll be listening to all of the community groups involved in this process as far as those issues are concerned. I think listening to very small businesses also needs to happen. One thing that I don't wanna have happen is be here making a decision on this a month or two from now or whenever the mayor and council may choose to bring it back and then all of a sudden we have a lot of small businesses here laying out concerns that we didn't hear in the information gathering process. When we define small businesses though, I'm gonna be thinking about is 25 employees really truly a small business? I know that's the federal designation or is 10 employees a small businesses or 15? And again, I think that can only be gathered through local information gathering. But the other thing is measuring. I think that's very important. The mayor brought it up, know our baseline today and be able to do a year over year kind of impact running up to 2023 and making sure that the council is in touch with this because I think it is something if you're a business owner where it's probably pretty worrisome to be watching seven people tell you when and how to give raises. But I think as Peter brought up quoting Bobby Kennedy, this is a county of plenty in many regards but yet there's a lot of people here living with next to nothing and on the margins of poverty and homelessness. And to me that's something that the council really can't turn our backs on. So again, all in all, I wanna thank staff for bringing this forward, especially in a short amount of time. And I'll be looking forward to hearing from the community and my colleagues. Thank you. Ms. Lemming. Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor. First of all, again, thank you so much to staff, to Ian, to North Bay Jobs of Justice and to all of our commenters who are here in the middle of a work day. And I can't tell you how much this means to me because not only does it show how quickly staff can respond to a council goal, but that our council has chosen to move toward a study session and hopefully with some direction on an initiative that hits home for so many working families and that if we do decide to go this way, that this will mean food on the table for many children. But, and that the adverse childhood experience index for so many of our Santa Rosa families will lower. I know that we struggle with homelessness and I've never met a person who's homeless who didn't have adverse childhood experiences tied to economic insecurity during their formative years. And I think this is one of the most proactive steps we can take to reducing future homelessness, mental health problems, and increasing the wellbeing of our families across the region. I'm heartened that the initiative has been taken to a wide range of municipalities so that we don't have competition between our municipalities and that we can encourage workers to live where they work and hopefully the workers who work in Santa Rosa will be able to afford to live here. And that leads me to my next point, which is that this does a lot for our environmental justice initiatives that if we can have people who can work in Santa Rosa, live in Santa Rosa, that's fewer vehicle miles driven, more time that parents can spend with their children, and less emissions. I'll try to give you feedback on each of these four points. It needs to be expeditious. It needs to be predictable and communicated in such a way that's predictable to our business community, as well as our workers. I don't think that that's something that's gonna take too long. It would be good for anybody. I think we need to be very... I'd like to clarify the timing situation. The timing is, I believe how do you want this to roll out over a period of time? Obviously we will try to bring it back expeditiously as possible, but we really wanna know how quickly, what the mechanism, time of delivery of the certain raises, just for clarity purposes on that. Thank you. So in terms of the timing of the rollout of the increases, I am a supporter of the rollout per the recommendations of North Bay Jobs of Justice, and I'm in support of going to $16. And I believe that if we do get a good benchmark and we have feedback that is positive, we can potentially be more aggressive, and if we have feedback that is negative, we can adjust the course. But I in no way would wanna hold back on the implementation of the wage schedule increase, but I wanna be very clear that I want this to come back to Council as soon as it's reasonable and possible, and that we don't hold it up for any reason beyond staff resources. Exceptions and special considerations. I'm with Council Member Tibbets. I'm not sure that 25 people is a small business. I am very sensitive to the needs of small businesses, having been a small business owner, but I also want to make sure that we don't create exceptions that create more poverty. As a taxpayer, I don't enjoy paying for subsidies for working folks. I think that I should pay for products and that businesses should pay their employees a living wage and that the honor of work should be appreciated and that nobody should have to, who's a full-time working person, should have to rely on government services. I mentioned before my concern around enforcement. I want to make sure that it's clear to people that not only can they report wage theft, but that we don't report, that they are safe in reporting wage theft. Both safe from their employers and safe from outside Santa Rosa forces that might seek to punish them for coming forward. And I support a cost of living adjustment with a note that I want to hear about more about the difference between CPI and cost of living as it affects our workers and making sure that over time, our workers don't experience a real dollar decrease in their wages as a result of not having CPI or COLA that's effective in keeping up with the cost of living. So just for a point of clarification on that, and I might have Mara talk to this. I mean, COLA is like the national CPI, we're talking there, the proposal is that it is based off of the Bay Area. CPI, do you want to speak a little bit more on that or is that just it? The nine county metro area, which is different and actually higher than the national average, the CPI. So in that, my concern is that the real wages of our workers are not negatively impacted by choosing the wrong index. Sounds like that this has been well thought through. Those are my comments. Thank you. Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. Well, it would be difficult for me to adjust to respond to these four issues without having more information on the other side of the equation. I know what this kind of minimum wage change would have done to my business and perhaps because everything that came through my front door or what was delivered for sale in my business was pre-priced. One was working on a 20% gross profit margin. My employees all had full medical benefits and never were paid less, never were always paid more than the minimum wage. But I know what this would have done to my business, I would have been adversely affected in a fairly substantial way. So until I hear from the business community as far as some of the, not their conclusions, but the negative effects that we have not heard of this afternoon, I would be, it would be difficult for me to respond to these other four items. So I'm waiting to hear the other side of the conversation. Mr. Alvarez. Thank you, Mayor. First I want to begin by thanking Patricia and Ana for sharing their experiences with us this afternoon. I want to start by saying thank you to Patricia and Ana for coming to share your experiences with us. Thank you very much. I can personally can really relate to the need for something like this, having grown up in poverty as a farm worker as a child with my entire family. I can see where this would have been a great benefit to us at the time. But I think that whatever we do, well, first thing to say to this, I think with Santa Rosa being a regional center, the regional center that we are, we probably should be a little bit more in the forefront and moving this forward throughout the region. So my hope is that as this progresses with other cities in the county that we come to some point where they're pretty consistent. I know we're starting off from different places now. And if we're going to try to meet 2020, we need to move on this, I think, a little bit quicker than normal. But I think something like this has a potential for, I think it was mentioned before, keeping workers here, drawing workers here, and also building workers here as our youth get into the job market as well. The issue related to small businesses, I'd like to see more research on what that means for Santa Rosa, what is a small business, and how we would phase them into the process so that eventually it's all the same. And the same with the Kola Bay Area, et cetera. What is the best formula that we could use for our community and the region? And again, I think the goal would be to hopefully have us be consistent county-wide. I'd be interested to see if the county's even looking at this yet or not as far as what they're planning to do county with the unincorporated areas. At this point in this proposal, the county is exempted from reviewing, would be exempted, their employees would be exempted in Santa Rosa from this. Thank you, and I'm referring to it in corporate areas of the city, but we'll see what comes with that. But I think this is, I think, conducive with helping to boost our local economy, and that does not just mean business, but also the workers are here. So I think, so again, I mentioned the timing, the expectations, I'm sorry, the exceptions, the enforcement, again, looking to see what other cities that have moved into this area, what are they doing in the area of enforcement, and how do we build some of these penalties, if you will, into an ordinance. And I mentioned my, I already said my comments related to cost of living adjustments. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think oftentimes when we're sitting up here at the dais, we're talking about poverty and economic inequality without actually mentioning poverty and economic inequality. And sometimes it's much more apparent than others when we're talking about housing and homelessness and access to healthcare. But when we talk about student test scores, we're actually talking about poverty and economic inequality. And when we're talking about environmental policy, we're actually talking about economics and inequality, because if parents can't put food on the table for their kids, they're not gonna be putting their resources into solar panels or into energy retrofits to their home. And so I think that for us, it's great that we're having this conversation because it's an opportunity for us to address every single major issue that we have as a priority for this city and to move it forward. And especially right now when the economy is booming and yet we still see that wages are flat and we still see poverty and economic inequality increasing, it's hard not to look at it and say, if not now, when. So I am interested in us bringing this back. I don't have many particulars within the four categories. I will say, I agree with Council Member Oliveris that it would be nice if there was some consistency across jurisdictions in Sonoma County to make it a little bit easier on the enforcement side and on businesses to understand the rules that they're playing under. I will mention though under the special considerations, I know that there is always a conversation about whether or not tips are included. And I will just tell you right now, my own personal perspective, my own, if I had my druthers, I think that tips should be eliminated entirely, that there is a historic racial aspect to tipping that I don't know that the general public is always aware of where tipping really became prevalent in the south after the first minimum wage laws were passed because that allowed folks to pay people of color a different wage ultimately for the services that were provided. And while that's not the intent in today's world and how we see it intended in restaurants in particular, every study across the board shows that there still is racial inequality in terms of how tips come in. So I'm particularly interested in how we have that conversation because I do think that it dovetails with another number of issues that we are currently seeing in our community and it is something that I will be very sensitive to as we move forward. The current proposal does not include tips in that, so. Okay, thank you for that. I just wanted to, first of all, just thank everyone for this conversation. Knowing that we have this state session coming up, I'll try to do a little research how other cities handled it. In my understanding, you know, here's some of the horror stories where it's pointing fingers and arguing, like, you're this if you do this, you're this if you do that. And really, I'd like for folks to look at Santa Rosa and actually model the ways we're doing this. We're intelligent human beings, we may disagree on some things, but the process that brought us here in a very civilized manner, I'm very appreciative. And Ian, I'm very appreciative of this report because it gives data and facts and you had mentioned it a couple of times when you reported about the assumptions some people may make. And then this research is excellent to help me kind of guide the direction that I think we should be going. So in regards to this, I am in favor of $15 by 2020. And as some of my other colleagues have said, I'd like more information about, do you go cost to live in or CPI? And that consistency is a big thing, you know, with SB3, what's the metrics for there? And then even here locally. So I know we have a manufacturer at home park rent control and those increases are based on, again, COLA or CPI and then also SSI increases. Are those based on COLA or CPI? Because it would be wonderful for it to be consistent because as some people are dependent upon SSI increases for other increases, but it's based on one measurement versus the other, it'd be wonderful if it was all consistent. The exceptions that we talked about in here, wherever we can be consistent with SB3, we should be. The enforcement, I don't know enough about in favor of a carrot versus stick approach, whatever we can do to encourage voluntary compliance. Last thing I wanna do is create a whole new bureaucracy to enforce this type of ordinance. So I'd like to see what have some other community experience that have effectively gotten to that voluntary compliance level. And then I had mentioned the cost of living versus CPI just more information. So if it does, and when it does come back to the council, let's see the pros and cons of going in this direction or that direction. I'll go back to you, Ryze. Do you have enough information from the study session? Yes, this is perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you for everyone who's participating in that. And we will now end this study session. And I see we have our fire department coil spring is ready to move to item 3.2. Item 3.2, review of proposed building and fire code adoption and community wildfire protection plan. Ian Hardage, assistant fire marshal. Jesse Oswald, chief building official. And Paul Lowenthal, just for fun. Good evening, Mayor and council members.  We're bringing forth to you today. Excuse me, folks. We have a council meeting going. If you could carry the conversation on outside would be wonderful. Thank you very much. Bringing to you today an update on progress report almost on the code adoption process for the upcoming code changes that will take effect January 1, 2020. We come to you every three years with the code adoption process. This is the first time where we get to do a study session. Obviously, we've had some significant events in the last three years that we have a lot to discuss and talk about. As usual, beginning of the year the fire code officials get together county-wide and start to discuss consistent code proposals, amendments, updates so that the fire protection and the adjacent agencies are all consistent as much as possible. And working towards a united front with our fire protection problems or solutions. We were able to incorporate bringing the, bringing the building officials into the fold this year and had a meeting on June 26th with the county building officials and the county fire officials. And we discussed many things that we were unfortunately not able to get into your packets today because that meeting was on June 26th and this was uploaded on the 25th. So we'll be able to answer questions later after the presentation. So moving in, obviously home hardening, vegetation management, building standards, fire protection systems have all been looked at and evaluated as to the multi-layers of application and how they can be utilized to provide the level of fire protection that our community wants and needs. So some of those, some of the discussion items that we brought to the table to discuss were number of access points. Currently we require two points of access at 50 dwelling units. We were evaluating, is that number still the right number? I think countywide we're looking at lowering that to 30 dwelling units requiring two points of access. That those are the discussions we're having now. Limitations on the different spelling area there, planting materials in the wooey areas. This is gonna be subject to our CWPP process and the vegetation management program that comes out of that, which Paul will talk about in a little bit. Prohibited specific ground covered materials, same thing. Vegetation restrictions within three to five feet from the structures. The range there is to allow for variants for buildings that are protected with fire sprinklers and buildings that are not. And that will also be incorporated into or part of the vegetation management program. Chapter seven A is out of the building code and the fire code officials provided some suggestions to the building officials for consideration into their adoption. Some of those were noncombustible gates and attachments to structures for the extension of fire from nonhabitable structures into habitable structures. Various clean up association, the fire protection systems. There's been lots of updates and changes in the last three years in fire protection systems based on various different processes that have been incorporated into the code such as the cannabis or plant extraction processes. So we've gone through and made most, if not all of those updates today and those should be showing up in the draft that was in the packet. Clean up language for life safety measures and hazardous processing, same kind of thing. At this point, I'll go ahead and turn it over to your building official. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council members, Jesse Oswald, Chief Building Official. So there are a couple of primary changes that are fairly significant to the codes that we're gonna be looking to adopt. The first one that we're gonna discuss are the temporary emergency housing requirements that HCD proposed and made available to all jurisdictions back in 2017. Back then they were an optional potential for any jurisdiction to use here locally with the event that we were experiencing. We had a comfort level that we could use those as a tool and didn't have to adopt them with my jurisdiction and the Fire Marshal's jurisdiction, we were able to implement any or all of the measures at that time. Moving forward in 2018, HCD now has these measures proposed to be included and incorporated into the residential code and the building code. They are appendices, which we do have to adopt locally and we're gonna recommend that we adopt the entire appendices. So they're there for us to use to provide these minimum standards that it's really a good guidebook for us to more easily and readily say the code, the state law says this is good or this is not. So it's gonna really be a helpful measure for us to use moving forward. Then the more significant aspect of the codes we, with our study session from the Climate Action Subcommittee and numerous discussions throughout the last year or so. The base energy codes are changing significantly again and that's fairly common over the last five or so code cycles. So that's every three years. This year again, this code cycle again, the codes are going to change. The base model codes are going to increase significantly. And with this direction for the all electric reach code, the proposal is to go even more stringent on energy conservation measures for all new construction for what is called low rise residential. And what that means is single family dwellings and that whole group of dwellings up to four stories in the lower residential applications. Partnerships with the regional climate protection agencies and old clean power, Bayron and others continue to work through this process. We have continual contact with the California Energy Commission and PG&E through our partners with this, directly specifically with the California Energy Commission which requires a cost effectiveness study to be enacted and accepted prior to us being able to adopt what's called a reach code. That cost effectiveness study is nearly complete. Our partners again have been working with the CEC and there's just some cleanup language to where they are, the feedback is that they're going to be accepting that cost effectiveness study. And what that means is it opens the door for us to do, move forward with a reach code and it also opens the door to a long past in this jurisdiction ability to adopt another measure in the Cal Green code which is actually the energy efficiency measures in the Cal Green code, which it also required this cost effectiveness study. So our proposal and our belief is the California Energy Commission is going to tell us, yes, this is going to be acceptable for both of those and allow us to move forward with the adoption of these codes. So we continue as Ian said, working with the regional code professionals, fire marshals with the Redwood Empire Association. In meetings, we've had several meetings and we have more coming up to also ensure and try to bring this as a regional approach. As we know, the fire protection aspect is literally a regional approach. And then the codes overall make it easier for development to move forward. Regionally, when we don't have the disparaging information going from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, as you know, many developers work in numerous jurisdictions. So that's our intent. So with that, we're going to turn it over to Paul. Good afternoon, Mayor, members of the council. Paul, the one thought system fire marshal. Using this as an opportunity to also update you on where we are at with the community wildfire protection plan. As you know, in December, 2017, we wrote the grant to develop a CWPP, which would serve as an annex to our local hazard mitigation plant. That was awarded in June of 18 through FEMA. And after approval through council was ultimately awarded a contract to geo elements in April of 2019. The CWPP, as you know, is primarily focused on our wildland urban interface areas that we've become very familiar with following our events here. However, as we've seen the wildfires affect the community as a whole. And with that, this really is a community-based approach. And there's a lot of outreach that has been done and will continue to be done to involve our entire community in that process. We established a steering committee. That steering committee is made up of city, county, state representatives, as well as residents from both the city and the county. Obviously, one of the things that we see time and time again is concerns from the city about what's happened in the county and concerns from the county from what happens in the city because fire doesn't know boundaries. And so with that, we have a pretty comprehensive steering committee. They're really helping keep some of the items on track. Ultimately, geo elements is doing a lot of work with our department helping support them. And ultimately, we will be working with the community on the steering committee to evaluate our values, assets, risks and priorities as we move through this process. We currently have three community meetings that have been scheduled and we'll continue to do outreach on them. We put them at the family center, the vet center and Lincoln Valley library on those respective dates because there's residents that have been impacted by the fire that are displaced throughout our city and the county. And we're trying to make it as accessible to everybody as possible and allow everybody the opportunity to be involved. We, like I was talking about, we have really again, with it being a community wildfire protection plan and the focus on the community, we're going to be releasing a survey. That survey will go out in all of our various platforms whether it's social media, whether it's our electronic newsletter to really truly see what the community identifies, what the feedback is so that we're not just putting together a plan that, like I said, time and time again, that we truly are getting a sense of what the community wants to see and we use that as we continue to drive this plan forward. Hopefully the plan is with everything on track to bring this forward to council by June of 2020 and looking forward to the first round of community meetings. With that, open to any questions regarding the study session. Thank you for that presentation. I just have a quick question for you, Paul, with the community wildfire protection plan because I know I've heard Chief Gosner say it, that it's, you know, I'm very appreciative you're collaborating with other agencies locally, including the county. What about the neighboring counties? How's the coordination and collaboration going with them? So right now we have our particular steering committee, we have a Cal Fire Chief Ben Nichols who represents the LNU, so SNOMA, like NAPPA unit. So there is the ability to have that connection. We also have members of the FireSafe Sonoma, which I'm a board member on also that are part of that steering committee and we at FireSafe Sonoma level also communicate with our neighboring counties. So there is the ability through resources and through this process to continue to see what our surrounding counties can do. But me and the position of running this particular project can take that and also make sure that that is followed up on and that is actually happening. And so ultimately is the desired outcome that all of our neighboring counties we're on the same plan doing the same measures to mitigate? Not necessarily because with it being a community plan and we have to identify what our specific risks and values are here locally, it may not be the same for neighboring counties. But we can still see what they're doing. There's other CWPPs that are being put together here locally, the county's moving forward with one. We've seen them around our region. So we follow that helps us put together a good solid document for us to move forward with. And that document really ultimately will help us with funding sources for grants. And that's really the key is that it's a plan that's developed for us that will help us with future funding. Great, thanks. Council, questions? Mr. Tibbetts. Thank you, Mayor. Paul is reading in the ordinance on page 13, the membrane structure tent umbrella structure and I was confused by that, the cross-outs. Could you explain that a little bit? So in the cross-outs, chapter 31, we made amendments last code cycle to bring in language that didn't exist in the national code yet. And that was umbrella structures was the primary reasoning for adding that language into our amendments. It's all being struck out now because it's all in the national state version of the code. So we no longer have to have local language that's different. So most, if not all the strikeouts you see in that draft document, because I sit on the national committees at ICC, I know through almost three years ahead, what's coming in the national codes and those things that are important. I'm giving into our codes a cycle early. So most of those have caught up to us now and no longer needed in our local ordinance. Okay, so just wanted to be clear. This is- It's not going away. That's for being able to do those sorts of things. No, those things are still there, but they're just now at the state code, not just Santa Rosa's code. All right, thank you very much. That's all my questions. Other questions? Ms. Lane? Yes, thank you. I'm wondering what we can do since this is a regional problem and we have before us a local solution. And I do believe we should do everything we can within our local jurisdiction. But one of the questions I get asked frequently is, well, why do you pick on fire instead of earthquake or so forth? And it's because it's a contagious phenomenon. And so what I'm curious about is what kind of leverage we have or don't have in working with the vectors as in jurisdictions and fuel loads that are east of us. Is there anything that we can do that is part of this or associated with this to help our easterly counties and municipalities protect us against wildfire through fuel reduction? So part of the benefit of being on the fire safe snowboard is we have conversations about what we can do regionally to move projects forward. I work very closely with Chief James Williams from the county who's kind of a counterpart from that level. They just rolled out the county's vegetation management program. So that's something we're following very closely because ultimately we want to see that any type of a program that gets rolled out, that there's consistency across our county. The county, I believe there was about 12 agencies that are moving forward with this, essentially almost like a pilot program that are following and utilizing the county code to conduct vegetation management inspections. Sonoma County Fire District, formerly Rink and Valley Fire, which is primarily to our east and that Reeblee, Mark West Valley on the backside of Fountain Grove is one of those agencies that is conducting those inspections. The downside to it right now is that they're not doing a full comprehensive inspection program of their entire jurisdiction. They're kind of picking several hundred properties within their jurisdiction to roll out the program. For us right now, like I said, we're continuing to monitor it and watch how it's working or in some cases not working like we've seen in some of the media recently regarding some of the Board of Supervisors feelings about how the reaction is and what the level of compliance is. We're doing on the flip side, we feel like we're actually doing a lot better here locally. If you look at the work that's being done within not only Fountain Grove, but our entire city to reduce fuels, our staff conducted over 12,000 inspections for weed abatement purposes. And if you look at the amount of work done the significant amount of work that's been done here locally and how we haven't actually had a fire here within our city, I think that speaks volumes to what our community is doing and how seriously they're taking it and heating to the warnings and doing a lot of the vegetation management work proactively and weed abatement work. Regardless, we are still aware of those concerns out there and that's primarily why we have the county as part of our community wildfire protection plan and we actually have residents from the county because their areas do directly threaten our city. So we're also working on the state level to get the state to provide better definition to regionalism. That actually is one of the chief complicating conversation is what is a region. The state is starting to open that conversation very, very seriously so that we can get some definition. So we're trying to do work first, understanding that we need to build this definition. And it is unsurprising how difficult it is to start to define a region but that's exactly where the state's recognizing it needs to do more work. And we're beginning to participate in conversations and seeing that proactive work because it's not just fire, it's also environmental issues coming together to sort of encapsulate what a region means so that we can actually do that work proactively. And regardless of whether or not work takes place at the pace we want it to take place on that side of our city, we're still dedicated doing everything we can to continue to solicit grants, to look at funding options, to support Fountain Grove, those areas. Myself and one of the Cal Fire Battalion Chiefs spent about four hours last week with the OSMA Board walking around their open space, giving them feedback, giving them comments that they can continue to look for grants to improve their ability to withstand any sort of a fire that potentially comes out of that area again. So we're putting a lot of different directions and a lot of work to try and help. Thank you. And just continuing on with that line, it's clear when you're in, even within the city of Santa Rosa, when you hit a pocket that might not be under our jurisdiction. And so I'm glad that we're working with our county partners, but there are also parcels that I look up that belong to Caltrans that it's very clear. And going on with the public health model about this, it's unlike immunizations, we can't just immunize ourselves and hope for the best. And so I'm wondering if you can, I know that city manager McGlynn spoke to the regional approach, but how do we deal with our state partners who have parcels within the city limits? Well, and that's exactly the conversation we're unfolding is that, frankly, what we've encountered is a very fragmented system that really wasn't taking care of itself. And those conversations have been enjoying just last week, the governor had a meeting which I was able to participate, the governor's office, to address these concerns. So we're actively pursuing how we get better response to local issues from statewide property owners or statewide programs. So we're addressing those. I will tell you, we, yes, we do have properties within our city that are owned by the state, that are owned by Open Space County. A majority of the properties, we have a good working relationship with Caltrans. There's areas throughout the city that we historically have issues with and they tackle those first. And it does take time to get through the whole entire city. I noticed that one of the spots that they opened, that they actually own, which is at the base of Fountain Grove right next to the Hilton Hotel, which I assume was the one you're talking about. That was, I did notice that has not been done yet and our staff regularly work with them and forget where they're at and I will find out where the update is and when that will be done. Those weeds are as taller than I am. Yeah. So thank you both for that work. I have a couple more questions if you're done responding to that one. This one is about the public meetings and I'm curious about the nature of the public outreach that you'll be doing. I'm glad to hear that you'll be having three, July 22nd, July 25th and August 14th. Can you speak to the nature of those meetings? Yes, so the meetings will be an opportunity to, like I said, engage with the community, help us determine some of the values, the assets, how they want us to prioritize different levels of work, what they want the focus to be. The, ultimately, the firm that we have is gonna help guide it a little bit. The survey that's gonna come out will help the community kind of better understand what some of the topics are gonna be, but it'll primarily focus on what they wanna see, what they wanna prioritize, what levels of work they wanna see, whether they wanna see things that are more restrictive in the code, whether they wanna see more restrictive wildland urban interface type requirements. Outside of the wooey, it's really, like I said, it's really an opportunity for them to see what the process is all about, but then help us truly prioritize the plan and what we wanna prioritize first from. And last question here. What opportunities for our building community do we have for input? I'm glad that we're reaching out to the community. I wanna make sure that our building community, I'm sure a number of them would like to exceed expectations and do as much as they can even before the codes get adopted. So what kinds of outreach are we going to have in that regard? Well, uniquely through the rebuild process, we have a monthly meeting with the developers that are doing 90% of the rebuilds out there, and that's at North Coast Builders Exchange. We work closely with the exchange. We have noticed them of this study session and the dates of the proposed public hearings for code adoption. I have open door policy with their group. We have members of the FPO, our prevention officers group, and the RICO building group that are members of the exchange. So that's really our best outreach other than public notices to get the contractors out there. But we have a fair interest from the contractor world. I'm sure you do. Thank you so much. Any other questions? Just a suggestion I have with the community welfare protection plan. If we're doing the three community meetings, you also are sure stuck around for a downtown stationery specific plan. They're doing pop-up events. There might be some other opportunities rather than just have these scheduled meetings Wednesday night market using other opportunities that you might enlighten or find some other input from rather than just these three that you guys schedule into your normal outreach. But leveraging those other community opportunities, I think would be wonderful for this type of plan.  I know I wish I had a question for you, Jesse, but do we have any cards on this item? Is there your opportunity, Scott? Apparently you're gonna pass on that. Did you need any additional information from any of us? No, we were just looking for any questions or input that you may have. If there's none, then I think we've done our job. I'm really appreciative of both of you and Paul and I'm sure Jesse's too. You guys put yourself in positions. That's what I'm saying outside of that Seahawk thing. I'm getting over that. But you put yourself in positions to hear what the national trends are. And again, a lot of folks don't realize what goes on behind the scenes where you guys build those relationships so you understand what's going on in the state and the nation and then how does it apply to Santa Rosa? So I really appreciate the three of your efforts in doing that. So with that, we will recess our meeting until four o'clock. Thank you. Okay, we'll open this session of the Santa Rosa City Council meeting. Before we do a roll call vote, I just wanted to remind some folks that may not have been here during the stay session. The gentleman to my right is Kyle Scott. He is doing what we're calling a city council sit-along. Participating as an observer only to see what it's like to go through a city council meeting from this side of the dais. So with that, Madam City Clerk, could you call the roll? Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Council Member Combs. Thank you. We had, well, Mr. McGlynn, would you like to report on the study sessions? Nothing to report. Alrighty, we have no proclamations. Is there a fire recovery and rebuild update staff report? Not this evening. Alrighty, Mr. City Manager, do you have a report you'd like to share? Not this evening. And we're rolling. No pressure, Madam City Attorney, if you have a report you'd like to. I'll keep with the trend. I have nothing to report this afternoon either. Thank you. Statements of abstention by council members. Mr. Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I will be abstaining from the minutes of June 25th, which is 11.1, because I was not here for that meeting. And I will also be recusing myself from our public hearing this evening as I serve on the Board of Directors of the non-profit affected by tonight's decision. So that's 11.1 to 15.1, correct? Yes, and I'll be leaving the Chamber and not returning at that point. Okay, any other council members needing to abstain? Seeing none. Council and Mayor's members' reports, anyone have anything they would like to share? Mr. Alvarez. Thank you, Mayor. We did have a meeting of a downtown subcommittee on the 10th. We had an hour meeting with the normal business, but we did have discussions related to the public restroom. So that item will be coming back to the subcommittee so that staff can walk us through a little bit more of the process that they went through to share that with the downtown group and also to see what are the research the committee needs to do before we're able to come back with a recommendation to the full council. Great. Mr. Weiss, Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just wanted to say thank you to the Sonoma County Youth Ecology Corps. I had a chance last week to go out and see them clear brush along Steel Creek, by the Jennings Crossing. For those of you who don't know, it's a program that takes at-risk youth and teaches them skills and the trade within our Park and Rec Department. It's a great collaboration with the County of Sonoma and other organizations. So it was great to get out there, as I've done most years in the past. Also had a chance to have a booth at the West End Barbecue and Neighbor Fest this last Saturday. Part of continuing on with our neighbor organization around community resiliency, really well attended, great music, and only got a little bit sunburn on my feet. And you weren't cooking, I hope. No, okay. Mr. Tivis. Thank you, Mayor. Sean, this is just a point of clarification. We had a conversation earlier about PACE, and I noticed that Keith kindly sent an email to the council updating us. Sounds like that we do need to make some additions for home hardening and seismic upgrades. Any idea of when that may be coming to the council? We will follow up with that information, but right now we went through the county and the county needs to take action first. So we're looking at the timetable around that and we'll inform the council what that trajectory looks like. Okay, thank you, Sean. Anything to report, Ms. Sliming? Just a note on fire recovery. That the fire recovery subcommittee or the recovery and rebuild subcommittee will be having a special meeting tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. as much as I love those meetings. They planned one especially for me, but at any rate, we're going to be discussing important things like evacuation and we'll have a report out at our next council meeting. Thank you, Mr. Schwerer. And just for point of clarification, that is not a Brown-acted meeting, so there's no public at the meeting just for a point of clarification. This communication is so that the residents in the affected areas know that we are addressing these issues. Absolutely. Mr. Schwerer. Thank you, Mayor. I neglected to mention that item in our consent items 12.3 and 12.4 have to do with the greenway. If there is no conversation that ensues on those two items, I can stay in the chamber and abstain. If any conversation ensues, I will leave the chamber. Just so you know why I'm getting up and leaving it, that happens. Thank you. I do have one thing I just want to share with the council. I met with Director Gwine last week along with Steve Burke, the Chair of the Housing Authority. And we've discussed a pilot program with the Housing Authority to review the request for qualification and proposals for the Bennett Valley Senior Center. So the Housing Authority Chair will identify three members of the Housing Authority and I will point two members from the council for this ad hoc committee. Myself and John Soil will be representing the council. This could be used as a model for future discussions specifically around the CDBGDR funds. And additionally, I've been playing phone tag with Chair Rabbit if there are additional discussions regarding strategic planning of the fairgrounds, it would be my intent to have this ad hoc also participate in those. All right, Approval of Minutes. Anyone have any updates or corrections for the June 25th minutes? And Mr. Sawyer was gonna be abstaining from this. Seeing none, we'll accept those. Mr. McGlynn, Consent Calendar. Mr. Knight, Consent Calendar. Good afternoon. Item 12.1, Resolution Approval of the Third Amendment to Professional Services Agreement, number F001625 with Ernst and Young. Item 12.2, Motion, Cooper Drive Slope Stabilization and Drainage Improvements Contingency Action. Item 12.3, Ordnance Adoption, Second Reading. Ordnance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, adding zoning districts to the area within the Southeast Greenway Boundaries. A 1.9 linear mile area between Farmers Lane and Highway 12 and Spring Lake Regional Park in Southeast Santa Rosa, file number ST14-003, GPAM19-002 and REZ19-007. Item 12.4, Ordnance Adoption, Second Reading. Ordnance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, approving a zoning code text amendment related to the Southeast Greenway General Plan Amendment and Resoning Project, file numbers ST14-003, GPAM19-002 and REZ19-007. Council, any questions on any of those items? Mr. Vice Mayor. I have a question on item 12.3. I'm just kidding. I just wanted to see if John would get up. John, you're good. He takes it back. Great. He pulls a hamstring because you're playing with him. Are there any questions on the consent calendar? Seeing none, Mr. Vice Mayor, I believe this is your item. I will move items 12.1 through 12.4 and waive further reading of the text. Excuse me, Mr. Vice Mayor, you will need to. That's 12.1 through 12.2 and waive further reading of the text. Second. So, Deena, can we either update those? So let's start that one again. All right, motion is items 12.1 and 12.2. I'm waiving further reading of the text. We have a motion and a second. And your votes, please. And that passes unanimously. And I will now move items 12.3 and 12.4 and waive further reading. Excuse me, I would note that what's appearing on the screen is not correct. It is showing it as item 12.4 with the unanimous vote. I would suggest that we redo the vote and do the 12.1 and 12.2. For those of you in the audience, this is a new voting methodology. We started last council meeting. So there are a little bit of a learning curve. We're still seeing 12.4. Is that the one we're dealing with? Yeah, it's still showing. Do either do a voice vote or I don't know if the other voting system is still in place. I think they do. Yeah, there. So this is one and two? Yeah, 12.1 and 12.2. And who was the second for that one? Mr. Sawyer, your votes, please. Okay. And that passes unanimously with Ms. Combs absent. All right, now items 12.3 and 12.4. We have a motion and a second. Your votes, please. And that passes with five ayes and one abstentia. Council Member Sawyer abstaining. Not quite yet being five o'clock we'll move to report items. Are we gonna wait for the City Manager or because I think you're probably talking on this one, Mr. Now I get to call down Grant Bailey and Eric Rauber. They'll be presenting on item 14.1 which is a project approval of building demolition. And for council on this item, in the report 14.1 there are 13 different pieces of property with 31 different structures. What I would like to do and to help them with the presentation, if you're anticipating pulling one of those items for individual discussion, if you could let us know now so they know how to make the presentation and they'll handle the bulk of them as a whole and any items we want to individually discuss we'll be able to do that. So is there anyone on council who would like to pull any of the 13 addresses for individual discussion? And Mr. Vice Mayor. Yeah, I'll pull the Howard Park Caretakers Cottage for discussion. Okay, that's item 12 on this item. Any other items that council would like to individually discuss besides 12? Okay, Mr. Knight, if you wanna introduce the item. 14.1 report project approval building demolition project, Grant Bailey and Eric Rauber reporting. Good afternoon, mayor and council members. I'm Grant Bailey, an associate civil engineer for transportation and public works and the project manager for the demolition project. Today we're seeking approval to demolish 31 city-owned structures. To give you some background, in 2017-2018 the city conducted a facilities assessment and a number of the facilities were recommended for either sale or demolition. In 2018, council authorized the directors of transportation and public works, water and recreation and parks to demolish 29 city-owned structures. Two of the structures that we're seeking approval for today have not previously been asked for approval. Once we were granted approval for the 29 structures staff performed a sequel evaluation and that evaluation led us to find that each project site was categorically exempt from Seco guidelines. And so today we're here to get final approval to demolish all 31 structures. As I mentioned, councils previously approved 29 of those structures. Two of the structures that haven't received previous approval are both storage sheds. One is located at 4099 Walker Road and the other in Doyle Park. And just to speak to our Sequa analysis a little bit further, we identified each project site or each site as its own project which allowed us to take advantage of the Sequa categorical exemption. As a cost savings measure, we then took all of those individual projects and bundled them into one construction contract which will be awarded in the, well, which we're seeking award in the following item. The nice thing about this is council may choose to proceed with all or eliminate one or any number of these structures from the contract without any consequence to the contract. And I also like to add council staff is recommending demolition rather than repurposing because there's a number of reasons. There are hazardous materials present in all of the structures with the exception of the property or the structures located at Lakeville Highway. There's also code efficiencies in a number of these structures, ADA upgrade requirements are needed to be met if council would like to repurposing these buildings for public purposes. And then also standard maintenance hasn't been performed in a number of years which is shown by the facilities assessment report. It's recommended by the Transportation and Public Works Department that city council by resolution prove the demolition of 31 structures located at 2810 4th Street, 952 Sonoma Avenue, 7630 Lakeville Highway, 7650 Lakeville Highway, 1595 Meadow Lane, 4090 Walker Avenue, 4099 Walker Avenue, 1027 McMinn Avenue, 1370 Burbank Avenue, 1400 Burbank Avenue, Doyle Park, Howard Park, and Juilliard Park. I've also included detailed location maps in the following slides if anyone is interested in that. And I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Great, so let's bring it back to council for questions and let's keep out Howard Park caretakers home for right now, are there any questions on any item outside of that number 12? The one question I have, so if we do demolish these properties, what's the next step for the actual property that where these buildings have been removed? As far as I understand, there's a number of uses that are on the table for all of these properties, the parks properties that we've recommended for demolition, those should be expanded use sports areas or just recreation areas in general. At 2810 4th Street, the former liquor store, there's an expansion of Farmers Lane Highway 12 planned in that location. I know that the public safety building is interested in expanding their parking at 952 Snowm Avenue. So there's pretty broad spectrum of- So where appropriate, some of those projects may come before the council again or if we're expanding recreation facilities, probably not, is that the gist? So I'll jump in here. A number of these properties out in the McMinn Avenue and the Burbank Avenue properties are associated with the Rosland Creek Community Park Project. That master plan will be coming back to council for discussion in hopefully October. The properties associated with Santa Rosa water are either associated with creating that buffer zone in and around the treatment plant or it's the Lakeville Highway properties where they're actually producing or they're actually distributing biosolids for their production. A number of these other properties are going to be either reutilized for different purposes, for city purposes, or in the case of the 952 Sonoma Avenue, maybe what will be included as part of the public-private partnership offering an evaluation that we're doing as well as any of the other properties in the downtown. So we will be developing a staff report for the study session coming on August the sixth to talk about the disposition of any residual properties that may occur and how we might be able to utilize those moving forward. So there will be a couple of follow-up discussions here this fall. Great, thank you. All right, Ms. Gomes, welcome. Thank you, sorry for being late. Did you have any questions on any of the items of 14.1 except for the caretakers' home house at Harris Park? That was the one I had a question about, thank you. Okay, so no more questions on any of those. And Mr. Rogers, do you wanna start the conversation about the caretakers' house item 12? Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty simple question. First of all, I wanna thank staff for taking the time to shepherd me around yesterday to be able to see lots of these sites. Oftentimes it was just walking into a building and going, yes, the roof is falling down. I can see why we need to divest from it or why it's got such a huge price tag associated with it. The one that I've heard the most about is the caretakers' home. Obviously that one has received the most attention from the public as well. The report that we received recommends divestiture, which is not necessarily equate to demolishing. Have we considered going out with an RFP so that community groups that are interested can take over the liability and take over that property so that we don't necessarily have to demolish it, but then it also is not still on the books for the city. So at the study session that we provided to council back in May of 2018, we did identify that some of those properties for divestment or the demolition, we had the opportunity to not only either demolish the property or to remove the building from the property. At that point in time, council didn't provide any direction other than to move forward with demolition where they had identified demolition was appropriate. And so we do have a plan. If council chooses to go that route, that would allow us to evaluate what a sale or RFP on that site would be. It's something the city has never done before and Ms. Scott is here as our right of real estate agent to be able to describe what that process may or may not look like if you choose, if you need more details. It's something we believe we have the ability to do. We just haven't gone through it. So it will take some, it will take probably quite a bit of time to develop an appropriate process that protects the city in this case if the intent is to sell the building for it to be relocated elsewhere. Could I hear what that process might look like? And have we, director, have we had any community groups who have reached out and actually offer that they'd be interested? There have been a number of individuals and groups combined that have expressed interest in the caretakers house with a variety of different items. And actually most of those requests have gone to Ms. Scott anywhere from wanting to purchase the building and relocate it to wanting to repurpose the building and renovate it in its current spot and enter into some type of lease with the city. We've not expressed a lot of interest in leasing the properties based on conversations we've had with the council being a landlord is something that we've heard your nervous, not nervous, you'd like to stay away from where we can. And so in this particular instance, we know that there are potential offers out there and we've just made the choice at this point to follow the direction that we've heard from council which was demolished. But I'll let Ms. Scott talk about what the potential sale or RFP on this property could look like. So regarding the caretakers home specifically, I haven't heard from any community groups but we've heard from a lot of individuals that were interested in purchasing the home separately from the land and moving it to a new location. When we provided them with some information on the property itself and some estimates that we had on moving costs that kind of changed their minds on what are most of them. What I got from our appraiser was a 500 square foot building moved one mile at $200,000. So it's pretty steep, pretty steep estimates. So I did share those estimates with everyone. We didn't have any council action to go ahead and put this out for bid. So what we did was work with the city attorney's office and come up with a plan if you did wanna do that. And what the plan would look like is something like coming up with a policy and procedure for being able to sell a facility off of separate from a piece of land and then coming up with some sort of agreement to be able to do that, putting a bid procedure into place, bringing that back to council for approval and then going forward with that process. It is a bit of staff time because we haven't done it in the past. It's something new, but other cities have. Alameda's done it, San Francisco's done it. So we do have some examples to go by. No, I appreciate that. And I think that that's the direction that I'll suggest the council go, but I'll wait until after public comment. Again, I'm really interested in this distinction between divesting but not necessarily having to demolish. Great, Ms. Gomes, you have some comments? Okay, go ahead. Thank you. When you say a bit of staff time, can you give any more clarification than a bit? It would be have to be prioritized for the real estate office staff as well as the city attorney staff. We would be coming up with a new policy and a procedure, a pretty lengthy agreement and demnifying the city for taking residents off of its foundation. Lots of things could happen in that move, obviously. And then just bringing that back to council so another staff item and bringing it back, it would need to be prioritized for us and the city attorney's office. I appreciate that. Those sound like a lot of elements, and I'm gonna press you to give me a ballpark on 10 hours of staff time, 100 hours, and if Mr. McGlynn needs to step in here and tell me, but I need to know whether or not, what kind of return we're gonna get on an investment here. So we could come back and provide that in more detail, but again, I think the question is, there wasn't at that point, although we'd had some interest, we hadn't had direction from council, if council wants to proceed on that front, I think we can evaluate it, come back with a brief staff report and say this is what it would take to do this effort and at that point be able to, you could make the call at that point. Right, I'm just not in a position of being able to make a decision on that without a rough ballpark. So if the council, again, if that's the council's direction to come back with a firmer plan that would also give us a moment to evaluate some of the other proposals out there, and we could come back and say this is the RFP, this is the amount of time, this is the timetable associated, we could do that report in the next 30 days or so and get council's direction on that particular property. What I'm trying to understand here is about staff resources. Yeah, and if I may, what's before you tonight is simply whether to approve or disapprove the resolution to demolish that structure and if you'd like to direct staff, the council would like to direct staff to explore other options and come back and what city manager's suggesting is I think exactly appropriate is that we can come back with a firmer estimate of the time that it would take to go through perhaps a sale of the structure separately or if the council wants to direct us to explore a lease in place, any of those options, but that would be for another night. So tonight it's simply the decision whether to demolish or not. Okay, so to that end, City Attorney Geller, can you tell me is asking for the staff time to get to that next step, not the RFP step, something that's within the scope of what I can ask? Yes, you may ask us to come back and return with alternative paths forward. Okay, thank you. Mr. Tibbets. Thank you, Mayor. So one question that I have is definitely for you, Assistant City Manager Nutt. With some of these structures that were demolishing, particularly the housing, I think that's kind of where my concern comes in is I'm okay with demolishing it if for some reason that allows us to sell the lot, divest from that asset, take the proceeds and put it into other city priorities. But what I'm struggling with on the housing front is here we are with the housing crisis in this community. There are a lot of, I believe, nonprofits out there that would eagerly bid on a lease for one of these properties, make investments into it to provide low income housing. Or if there are not, I think it might merit a request for information to that effect. Can you tell me why we're choosing to demolish these assets versus use them for a community priority? So a majority of these assets are smaller outbuildings or barns, they're not livable, habitable structures. So a majority of these are really not housing units. Those properties or those buildings that are housing units are either associated with another project that the council is working on or it supports a program that the council has approved. For example, the units adjacent to the treatment plant, we've been given direction to try to create a buffer area relating to noise and odor complaints that we get routinely. On the Rosen Creek Community Par