Will you please translate this in Spanish? Thank you. Good afternoon, folks. Welcome to tonight's City Council meeting. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Present. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. All right, thank you so much. Welcome, folks. And council, I think we have a couple of local celebrities here in the audience tonight. We're going to start with our first proclamation of the day. And Council Member Fleming, this is your item. Hello, folks. It's so nice to see the chambers filled up, huh? All right. Whereas the Rinkin Valley Little League All-Stars team has had a historic year, and whereas five of the six All-Star teams won their District 35 championships with four of the teams securing a Section 1 title and thus competed in the NorCal State Championship. And whereas the senior team won 35 and went on to clinch Section 1, moving on to the NorCal State Champion. And whereas the junior's team also won District 35 and Section 1, also competing in NorCal State Championship. And whereas the Ten and Under team also won 35 and Section 1, also competing in the NorCal State Championship. And whereas 11 and Under team also played fantastic baseball, winning District 35 Championship, and whereas for the first time in 34 years, the Rinkin Valley Little League 12 and Under All-Stars won District 34, also securing the Section 1 title win and placed the NorCal State Tournament. And whereas the City of Santa Rosa recognizes Rinkin Valley Little League's All-Star teams' talent and accomplishment, along with coaches, managers, parents, and community that supported their valiant efforts. Now, therefore, be it resolved that Chris Rogers, Mayor of the City of Santa Rosa, on behalf of the entire City Council, do hereby acknowledge and congratulate Rinkin Valley Little League All-Stars team accomplishment on clinching the District 35 and Section 1 title championships.  Thank you guys so much for being here with us today. Now, I know we've got a couple of folks who want to say a few words at the podium, so I'll go ahead and let you line up first over here on my left. Right on your right-hand side, there's a little button to raise that up a little bit. Yeah, there you go. I think. OK. Big accomplishment for these boys. We had, like you said, a pretty historic year. Another little fact for our 12-year-old team. This is the first time a Santa Rosa team has won in 21 years. So it's a pretty big deal, even for our city for this. The kids did really well. So yes. Do you guys want to say a few words? Yeah. Go ahead. Say hi in the microphone there. All right. Any other comments, if folks? Yeah, go ahead. Why does the place smell so good? Yeah. Coach Lamir. And just on behalf of Rinking Value Little League, I want to thank Mayor Rogers and the entire city council and the recognition for all the hard work of these boys, their coaches, their parents, and the entire membership of the Rinking Value Little League. So thank you very much. And I will say we were all watching and rooting you all on. It was inspirational, and we were really excited to see, not just folks from Santa Rosa, but passionate players do so well moving forward.  Does that work for you? Well, let's go ahead and bring you on down here. Come down this staff side over here. All right. And as our little leagueers leave the area for a little bit and go back up to the top, we do have a second proclamation today. And that's for Taco Tuesday. So I'm going to throw that over to our vice mayor to read the proclamation. Thank you, Mayor. Proclamation of the city of Santa Rosa, whereas fathers Juan Chavez and Chad Hunt shared a vision for building a weekly bike ride that celebrates the rich culture of stretch bikes and brings people together from all walks of life. And whereas the Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday ride, created by Juan Chavez and Chad Hunt, with the help of their sons, Aime Chavez and Juanes Lios, was founded in April of 2021. And over the past year and a half, this ride has grown into a diverse community of hundreds of riders. Juan, any given Tuesday evening bike throughout the neighborhoods of Santa Rosa and whereas the Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday ride, community of riders and volunteers came together to purchase and build bikes to give to kids in our community for Christmas 2021 and whereas Juan Chavez was awarded bike champion of the year by Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition for its community building efforts in creating this ride and the city benefits from having community bike rides that are open to riders of every age from every neighborhood throughout our city and whereas the ride brings economic vitality to downtown Santa Rosa and Rosalind every Tuesday night as the ride supports eating at local establishments. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the city of Santa Rosa does hereby proclaim their support of Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday ride and encourage all residents of the city of Santa Rosa to participate and celebrate in this community bike ride every Tuesday night. Now, therefore, be it further resolved that our Mayor, Chris Rogers, Mayor of the city of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council to hereby celebrate Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday ride. Thank you. It is Juan here. Is he gonna, there you are Juan. Wanna invite you up to the podium. So on behalf of the Santa Rosa Taco Tuesday ride, I'd like to say thank you, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor Eddie Alvarez and the rest of the East City Council for standing behind us and accepting us in this ride that we do through our city. It's grown, it's grown to what I, more than I ever expected it to. We started off with just us four a year and a half ago and I think our largest ride on Halloween, we had 265 people riding through Santa Rosa. All having a good time listening to some oldies and some nice funk and lighten up our bikes and just enjoying Santa Rosa on a great evening. Chad, you got anything? I just wanna say thank you for recognizing us and let's please do more infrastructure for cycling in Santa Rosa. We needed, our children needed, we needed safe. I ride with children, excuse me, on a regular basis and it makes me nervous on a regular basis and I think as a community we can do a lot more for our future generations and so I appreciate you giving me a moment to express that and I'd love to bring Juana's up here in Aden and give their point of view. My name to Chad pretty much covered everything like how I'm feeling, I'm just saying all. Never thought just a simple bike ride going out. Get right up against the microphone. Okay, there you go. All right, I was just saying from the top. Mostly Juana and Chad pretty much covered most of it but it just leaves me in awe. Never thought just a simple bike ride with us four would lead to a whole community event leading to like an average of 150 riders almost every night just riding around the community and honestly I just really appreciate the recognition and everything. Hope to see you guys biking around with us. Thank you guys. Thank you all so much and I will say talking with Cherie Marie Barnett with the Bicycle Coalition. She's invited all council members to come out next Tuesday when we don't have a council meeting so I'll be out there and I know other council members will as well. We're gonna take a quick recess from the council meeting and go outside to take a photo with the proclamation for anyone who wants to sport their bike as we hand over that proclamation to folks. So we'll be back in about 10 minutes in the chamber and anybody who wants to be a part of the photo we're gonna meet right out here to our left. So. All right folks, thank you so much for indulging us on that. That was a fun bike ride. Madam clerk, if you could please recall the role to re-establish our quorum. Yes, thank you, mayor. Council member Schwedhelm. Here. Council member Sawyer. Here. Council member Rogers. Present. Council member McDonald. Here. Council member Fleming. Here. Vice mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. All right, we have no staff briefings tonight. Let's go to our city manager and city attorney reports. Madam city attorney, do you want to kick it off for us? Yes, thank you, Mr. Mayor and I have nothing to report this afternoon but that was fun to watch the bikes. Perfect. Madam city manager. Yeah, thank you mayor. Good evening. So I have a couple of updates. On the housing front, the Canary at Railroad Square, 129 unit multifamily unit project closed its financing and permits have been issued. So site work is currently underway and the project is expected to be completed fall of 2024. So really excited about that. And tonight in response to the most recent weather reports, the city of Santa Rosa in partnership with Catholic Charities will open a temporary drop-in center. It will be open tonight from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. until Thursday, December the 1st. The warming center will be located the homeless services center of Catholic Charities, the new Caritas Center in downtown Santa Rosa. So if you have any additional questions we will be sure to brief you on how many people have utilized our services. So if there are any questions you can just let me know. Thanks. Thank you so much. And that is for folks watching at home we have developed a policy that's been in place now for almost a year that automatically triggers warming centers to open when we have inclement weather that's forecasted just to make sure that folks have a place to go just like we have a policy that has been in place a lot longer actually on hot days when we open a cooling center. So thank you for that to the city team for standing that up. And I know that the community really appreciates that. I'll go to public comment to see if there are any comments on the city manager or city attorney reports. All right, Mr. DeWitt. My name's Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. I was curious to the city manager mean the project called the Canary at railroad square on West 3rd Street. The former John Stuart project. Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. Do we have any statements of abstention from our council members tonight? Council member Sweatham. Yes, I will be abstaining from item 11.4. I was not at that meeting. Okay. Any others? Council member McDonald. Yes, and I will be abstaining. Sorry about that. I'm looking for the minutes right now. I apologize. 11.2. 11.2. Okay. All right, let's go on to our, we'll check, let's see if there's any public comment on abstentions from council members. I see none in the chambers or on Zoom. Let's go to our mayors and council member reports. Does anybody have anything to report at tonight's meeting? Council member Sweatham. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A couple items on November 18th and a continuation of the meeting on November 28th. The Continuum of Care Strategic Planning Subcommittee met to discuss the Continuum of Care's strategic plan. We shared some of the results at this morning's ad hoc housing and homelessness subcommittee meeting, but the entire Continuum of Care Board tomorrow at one o'clock will be considering that strategic plan for approval. Also wanna highlight, I know our last meeting, the vice mayor closed in honor and recognition of Larry Murray and his 30 years of service with this Santa Rosa Police Department. On the 19th, we have the Memorial Service and I really wanna thank the Santa Rosa Police Department for their professionalism and everything they did assist the family in this challenging time. Specifically, I wanted to do a shout out to Sergeant Chance and I don't wanna butcher his last name, there's only one Sergeant Chance, but he really knows how to manage those types of events. So it was very good as a packed house and the family really appreciated all the efforts. And lastly, I went to the Winter Lights on November 25th. It was wonderful community participation on a not too cold day, so thank you. Thank you so much, Council Member. Did you get out on the ice yet, you and Jackie? For folks who are listening at home, the ice skating rink, the synthetic ice will be in the square up until New Year's. Council Member McDonald. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to report out that I was able to attend the National Cities Conference with our mayor. I'm recently in Kansas City and I'm just really grateful to live in California because it's freezing there.  And I just wanna do a shout out to the mayor for his excellent job representing our community and all the things that we're doing for our climate change goals. And we really are to be commended for the work that we do in this city because we're being recognized across the nation for the work that we're doing. So he did an excellent job, but I'm the one that actually got the tweet on Twitter from them because I wore green in an effort to go green for Santa Rosa. So I just wanna rub his nose in that for a moment. And I was able to attend an infrastructure and law class as well as what Royal City Council has to play in health in our community to make sure that there's an equity approach to that. And really looking at maybe our portrait of Sonoma County so that we can look at that and make better decisions for all of us. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. Any other report outs? Okay. And I will echo those comments. The National League of Cities conference was very interesting and well attended this year. I was excited and proud to represent the city on a panel on sustainable infrastructure and on rebuilding more resilient. I will also say prior to that I had an opportunity to represent the Regional Climate Protection Authority and Sonoma County Transportation Authority, as well as the US Conference of Mayors at COP 27 in Egypt where I was on a couple of panels, specifically around wildfire disasters and resilience, what we were pushing forward in terms of our climate. Vice Mayor, I'll be happy to know we had an opportunity to meet with a number of our federal partners at both of those, including representatives from the CPUC, the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, specifically to talk about HERN and advancing that project, which we'll talk a little bit about today. So a lot to report out on that. And I'm happy to report out more to the Council as we get our bearings a little bit. With that, I will turn to public comment to see if there's any comments on Council Member report outs. Mr. DeWitt. Yes, sir. Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland. I was hoping that you folks would take the time to give us a written report out also so that we could share it in our communities as to what goals the city has for these climate efforts and what is actually being achieved. If we could see it all in writing, then we'd know exactly what's getting done. Thank you for your time. All right, thank you, Mr. DeWitt. We do have four sets of minutes for Council today. We have August 9th, August 23rd, September 13th and September 27th. Council, do we have any amendments to those minutes? Council Member Rogers. 11.3 on page five of 12. My statement, veterans organizations for the Veterans Day event, not veterans statement. Okay, we can get that corrected. Any other amendments? Any public comment on our minutes? All right, without objection, we'll show those adopted with the correction from Council Member Rogers and with Council Member Schwethelm abstaining from item 11.4 and Council Member McDonald abstaining from 11.2. And I see no objection. Madam City Manager, let's move on to our Consent Calendar. Thank you. Item 12.1 is a resolution approving the memorandum of understanding with the County of Sonoma Probation Department for extension of the Santa Rosa Violence Prevention partnerships guiding people successfully program and authorizing the City Manager to approve and execute any amendments there too. Item 12.2, a resolution approving the appropriation of funds from Special Tax District Zone 11 services account. Item 12.3, a resolution making required monthly findings in authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing for public meetings of the City Council and all the City Boards, Commissions, and Committees pursuant to Assembly Bill 361. And item 12.4 is an ordinance adoption. Second reading, ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa amending Title 10 and adding Chapter 10-22 to the Santa Rosa City Code regarding the disposition of unclaimed lost property. Thank you. Councilor, any questions? Council Member Schwedham. Thank you. Not really a question. I just have a comment on item 12.1, the partnership with probation. I just really want to commend former probation chief Dave Cook on his service because when the Violence Prevention Partnership lost some state funding for this probation stepped in because they saw what a valuable partner they were. And then I also want to congratulate Vanessa Fuchs who is sworn in as the new chief probation officer on October 25th, and I'm very confident this partnership will continue to grow and solidify through the years. That's all. Thanks. All right, let's go to public comment on our Consent Calendar. I see Mr. DeWitt moving towards the podium. Yes, sir. Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland. What's now called Dutton Meadow was once South Dutton. There's a project there called Lantana. And I'm curious, is this the same project that's being referred to in the special tax district and the money being shifted from there? If that's the case, you should make it known. That project took 13 years to get going. And I want to make sure that any funding that's moved from there is not lost, if you will. Could you explain this better to us? I'm very glad that you had the former mayor explain how the probation department's been working on 12.1. That's the Sonoma County probation and how they've been quite helpful. Last but not least, as you can see by this full room today, people feel that the COVID problem is over. And I think, because our president has said, it's also behind us, that you could now open up all city meetings. That it doesn't have to be on Zoom for these side meetings that are like example, might be the Waterways Advisory Committee or the Planning Commission, things like that. All meetings should now be open to the public again as they were before COVID. Any citizen should be able to walk in to any of the government meetings and participate without having to be on Zoom. For some reason, we're looking at it like we have to wait till February because the state government has said, well, that'll be the day that they clear it. But you could clear it earlier. As this room full of people shows us, you could do that. And it's a good thing to let people participate in our democracy, in our representative situation. It's not gonna happen unless you clear it and say that those auxiliary agency meetings, the different ones that are going on off to the side and making all the decisions actually, and then they come here for your final stamp. So please do that. Open them up, let us participate and get back to where we were before COVID. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Duit. Let me see if I can get an answer for you. So the funding for the Lantana home division is for storm drainage infrastructure improvements for bio retention sales in the planters, planter strips. Right. The Lantana home subdivision, that is correct. Correct. All right. Mr. Vice Mayor, if you'd like to put a motion on the table. Thank you, Mayor. My move item is 12.1 to 12.4 and waive for the reading of the text. Second. So we've got a motion from the Vice Mayor and a second, it sounds like from Council Member Rogers. Any additional comments from Council? All right, Madam Clerk, please call the vote. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Great, thank you. It's not yet five o'clock, so we don't have public comment for non-agenda items yet. We also can't go into our public hearing until five o'clock. So we'll move on to item 14.1. At five o'clock, we'll do public comment for non-agenda items and then shift gears and go into item 15.1, which is the mobile home rent control ordinance issue, if that works for folks for timing. But Madam City Manager, item 14.1, please. Item 14.1 is a cooperative funding agreement with Sonoma County Transportation Authority and Associated Funding Plan and Project Management for phase three of the Hearn Avenue Improvements Project. Assistant City Manager Nutt will lead the discussion. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Jason Nutt, Assistant City Manager. I'm excited to finally bring this item to you for consideration. This has been a long time coming for us to talk about bringing a major capital infrastructure project to completion. And so this is gonna be an exciting time. I'll do my best to keep my energy and control so that we can get through it. Next slide, please. So the question is, is where did this particular project come from? So there were three phases to this project. The project was originally identified in the Measure M expenditure plan back in 2004 for local streets projects. We broke it into three pieces so that we could try to chew away at the significance that was needed, the significant improvements that were needed for this particular area. And so what you see on this is, phase one was really the improvements that were done on Santa Rosa Avenue. We widened it, we provided additional through lanes, we improved some of the intersections between Yolanda and Colgan. And it made a substantial difference. I mean, we noticed how traffic changed through the course of that improvement and that was very successful and huge. We then went back and we did some improvements along Herne Avenue in phase two. From Colby back to Dutton, we actually widened it, provided additional through lanes. We gave additional capacity. What ultimately resulted, however, was the last phase became the predominant bottleneck.  We've spent the last nearly 20 years developing this particular project. And the intent was to make improvements in such a way that it would enhance traffic circulation, provide better public safety because of how we have our public safety agencies on the various sides of Highway 101. How we can improve multimodal access. We've got communities in the south part of town that want to bike. They want to utilize pedestrian facilities in order to get around. And right now, there's substantial barriers in the way. So the intent of this project was to try to bridge a lot of those gaps. And I didn't mean to be punny, but that came out that way. So next slide. So the next question is, well, what did that process look like? So we went through a long and significant public investment trying to come together and understand how those improvements should look. And this has taken a number of different twists and turns. We've gone everywhere from trying to align Yolanda and Herne to make it one continuous to continuing to keep this offset situation. Many years ago, the traffic engineers came back and said, realistically, under every possible scenario, the existing configuration actually works the best under future demand models. And so it was up to them, the design team, to take that and to really look at how they could make this a better facility with a bridge that functioned with all of the needs that we had along the way. And you can see a long laundry list of things that we incorporated in an effort to make this better. Safety was key. Safety and multimodal improvements. And so we've been focusing on those with an idea that we would reduce the crash impacts that we see currently occurring on Highway 101 as the queue of traffic waiting to make the loop going southbound to eastbound exists. This will reduce that significantly to a point where it no longer is a major issue for us. It's improving bicycle and pedestrian safety crossing the bridge. Right now, there's no sidewalk, there's no bike lanes. There's hardly two vehicle lanes to be able to get really over the bridge. And so the enhancements that we're looking at by making a five lane facility and improved bike lanes, it really does provide us with that future look at how we can improve our multimodal access. So if you go to the next slide, we've rolled that cross section up so that you can actually see what this really means. When we originally started to pitch this project and when we went out with our first series of grants, the project looked slightly different. It incorporated a traditional interchange that had class two bike lanes, it had some wide sidewalks, but it was really focused in on the travel lanes. After we did a community oriented engagement process, what we learned was we needed something that was for more all age consideration with the multimodal aspect. So what you see on the south side of the road or the right side of the image is a shift away from your traditional class two bike lanes and a shift to a wider sidewalk with a class four cycle track. That's barrier separated in an effort to provide that high comfort level for cyclists of all ages and all skill sets, to provide that barrier separated place for pedestrians who are less comfortable in a high traffic environment to be able to walk and cross that highway interchange. So those were changes that were made in the last 18 months. We've had huge response back from our federal agencies and our state agencies on that being a targeted space and a vastly improved design. And that's what we're moving forward with. We've even moved one step further and we're utilizing that and connecting it with a multi-use path on the west side from Corby out to the smart multi-use path so that there's that all age connection between multi-use path facilities. So we're really making this effort to create a facility that should provide a benefit for just about everybody. Next slide. So now that I've built all of you up, I've got you all excited about it. How are we gonna get there? I'm gonna get to construction. Over the course of the last six months, we've been working with the Sonoma County Transportation Authority on the likelihood that they would be willing to take a leadership role on this particular project. What that means is we would enter into a cooperative funding agreement. That cooperative funding agreement has a number of different pieces to it and you see that on the screen and I'll just go through some of the key bullets. On the Sonoma County Transportation Authority side, it makes them the project manager. They are the centralized entity that will handle our construction activities, our administration, and any design considerations along the way. They will be the central prosaatory. What they're gonna do is they're going to then enter into a cooperative agreement with Caltrans who is gonna handle the administration, the advertising, the award, and the actual handling of the construction. So they will be our project manager. Caltrans will actually be the on-site field project manager and construction manager. In doing that, they've agreed that they're gonna put some money towards this or at least they're gonna help us try to accomplish money. One is they've come into a local partnership program funding that is a direct allocation to the SCTA and the amount of $5 million and the SCTA Board of Directors has allocated that specifically to the Herne Avenue project. That does have time constraints and I'll go into that in a little bit more detail. In fact, each of these funding items I'll hit on in more detail so that I can give you more understanding of where it came from and why that particular funding is important. It also looks at going after a local partnership program competitive grant and the amount of $8.6 million. That's the funding gap that we're really looking at and that's the piece that we're trying to accomplish. In talking about this particular project with the changes that we've made, that real focus on safety and multimodal, we think this is an excellent project and has a high potential to receive funds through this program and so we are really excited about this opportunity and I'm happy to say as of today that grant application with SCTA our partner has gone out to the state for review and consideration. SCTA has also agreed to continue to maintain some of their agreements that they've done relating to that Measure M expenditure plan for local streets projects. The construction phase of this or phase three was assigned $3.45 million and that's currently available to us to use and spend. In 2019, we asked council to make a recommendation to the SCTA Board of Directors to shift funds that would have gone to a different Santa Rosa sponsored local streets project and have those funds come to the Herne Avenue improvements project and council did agree to do that and the board of directors at SCTA also agreed that should we get a full funding plan that they would support the increasing of an additional $10 million of Measure M funds toward this project and so that's the fourth bullet you'll see or the fifth bullet, I'm sorry, that says maintain that $13.45 million of Measure M funds. SCTA has also agreed to be the lead at helping adjust where STIP funds are coming into the city and so council member Fleming was gracious enough to help us find with SCTA's help that $3.4 million that was gonna go to the US 101 bicycle pedestrian. Overcrossing because of time frames, we believe that this project could benefit greatly from having those funds brought to it and spend those funds quickly and so SCTA has agreed to take the lead on working with the California Transportation Commission on reassigning those funds to the Herne Avenue improvements project and again, we'll talk more about that. So I said a lot of things that SCTA is gonna do so what's the city's deal in this? Well, what we're agreeing to do and one of the actions that we've got in front of you tonight is we're gonna be asking council to dedicate 8.6 or appropriate $8.6 million of general fund money just in case we are unsuccessful with the local partnership program competitive grant. We wanna make sure this project gets to construction and because of that $5 million that has a timeframe associated with it of middle of next year, that $8 million assures that we retain those funds for this project and we're able to move and get this project out onto the street. The other thing we're doing is we're ensuring that just over or just under $6.2 million of other funds are dedicated specifically to this project and made available for construction activities and project management activities. Those funds come from utility impact fees, they come from our state gas tax through the SB1 program as part of the local streets and roads project and so we've put that nearly $6.2 million in place in the funding strategy and again you'll see more of that to help fill that gap. In addition, we are as I mentioned before looking to have council agree that moving that 3.2 million or 3.4 million dollars of state transportation improvement funds from the bike pad over crossing to the Herne Avenue improvements is an appropriate move and asking SCTA to proceed with that process. Next slide. So the overview of the funding strategy, this is about a $36.6 million project to complete from beginning to end based on our estimates. You can see the various funding sources that the funding is coming from. I mentioned the utility impact fees, the SB1 local streets and roads, those are city monies, things that we're committing to as a part of this cooperative funding agreement. It also shows the Measure M funds that the SCTA is committing to continue to keep in the mix and when those funds became available to us. And then it talks about the outside funding sources and what it is we're looking for, the 3.4 in state transportation improvement funds, the 5 million in local partnership program formulaic funds and then the grant application that we're looking for the 8.6 million. You will see the asterisk that shows up on this, that asterisk highlights that bullet point that I said earlier that the city is gonna appropriate general fund money in the event that that grant is unsuccessful. Next slide, please. So I'm gonna very quickly go through where these funds come from. We talked about the Traffic Relief Act for Sonoma County, that is the Measure M. It's a quarter cent regional sales tax. It has recently been superseded by Ghost Sonoma, which is the measured, which was measured DD. That goes into place in a couple of years. And so we're very excited to continue that local and regional transportation sales tax that's gonna help us perpetuate some of these improvements into the future. But the slide kind of shows just sort of what some of these programs are all about. It talks a little bit about the local streets program, the three projects that are City of Santa Rosa funded or City of Santa Rosa sponsored, what the stage and phase of those projects are. We were doing very well. Fulton Road is actually under construction. That's the last piece of the phase one. Phase two is the interchange. And that's where we've asked for SCTA to reconsider some of the funding options because of timing and purely because of timing, not because of need or the future investment potential for that site. And then the Farmers Lane Extension, which is designed and ready to go. It just requires additional funding to bring to fruition. And then some of the timeline associated with each of those actions. Next slide. State Transportation Improvement Funds. These were monies that were identified for our portion of Highway 101 at some point in time. They went unallocated as a function of those activities and in working with MTC, as I mentioned, Council Member Fleming was successful in having those assigned to the City of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County, which was outstanding. And it gave us the opportunity at this point to consider shifting that to a project that needs it to get out the door now where we can look at the bike and pet over crossing as a extremely fundable project that's about 18 months away. It gives us time to try to backfill that $3.4 million with other funding sources and other opportunities. And we think there's a very strong opportunity that we're gonna be able to make that happen. You will see in the last series of bullets the timeframe in order to make that happen. It is not necessarily a sure thing, but getting Santa Rosa City Council support for moving that forward would be a huge benefit for SCTA as they go and start to make those requests of the California Transportation Commission. Next slide. The Road Recovery and Accountability Act of 2017, whenever I say SB1 or whenever you hear SB1, when we talk about local streets, this is where that comes from and why we bring that and highlight it. It is a direct allocation to the City based on receipts that come associated with the SB1 program. Right now, the City is seeing about a $3 million a year revenue come from that. And that's what we've been allocating on an annual basis. And if you recall, every year in May, you have an unusual council item that asks you to dedicate a specific project or series of projects that will utilize these SB1 dollars. It's part of the program is that we have council adopt a resolution, we send that off to the CTC and the CTC approves it. So that's what we're intending to use for a portion of the funds needed for Hearn Avenue. There is also a portion that already exists in the bike and pet overcrossing project. We have this current year's allocation of $3.9 million is already assigned in the bike and pet overcrossing and will remain there. What we're gonna be looking for as a part of this action is for council to acknowledge and agree that it's our intent to appropriate the upcoming 2324 funds in the next year's budget. Next slide. And then, so then there's the other piece of SB1 which is the local partnership program. There are two components of local partnership. One is the formulaic. We talked briefly about that because SCTA was successful at having their, having our regional sales, transportation sales tax renewed the state rewarded SCTA with this formulaic component to say thank you for making it happen. Awesome that the city of Santa Rosa became the beneficiary of those $5 million specifically for this project. Now that particular funding source is the one that's creating the timeframe here. It does have a requirement and condition that we need to have that expenditure plan approved and ready to go by June of 23. And so all of the tasks and activities that we're asking council to put into action here are specific for us to retain that $5 million and to get it put onto this particular project. The other piece of the local partnership program is the competitive program. That's where we applied for the grant. It's that that we're hoping to receive the $8.6 million to fill that last funding piece to bring this project to bid. So those are the components that we're looking at. All of these activities will get through their CTC approval in May and June with where hopefully we will be successful not only having the $5 million formally appropriated to the project but also that's the CTC staff will recommend the Hernd Improvement Project and the full board will approve it for us. Next slide. The last piece is the unassigned general fund balance and so this is the backstop. This is the piece that's gonna assure that we can get this thing done. We do have other grants that we are gonna go after. While we believe the local partnership program grant is the highest likelihood it's our best chance and it meets all the timelines that we need to check in order to assure that that $5 million comes to us. We are going to apply for a raise grant which is that federal grant program through the infrastructure and the IJA and jobs act. Thank you, Mayor. And so it's our intent to look at that. We do have other grant applications that are coming forward. Our agreement with the SCTA is gonna look like is gonna look at they're gonna support us and be our partner as long as that grant application doesn't have a negative impact on the $5 million. Very comfortable with that. That's the whole purpose in getting us there anyways. But if we're unsuccessful with those grants we still need to be able to say that that $5 million is gonna come here and that's where having the $8.6 million in general fund appropriated is so vital. It makes sure that we don't lose that funding source and it gives us the level of protection and insurance that this project will find its way to the end. You will see some feedback that talks about how this impacts our general fund reserve. It does put us at the level that we start wanting to think about whether we need more or less. And so it's part of that policy mandated 17%. It gets us right very close to that level. So that's something that is needed for council's consideration. Next slide. So when we wrap all of this up we're asking for council to do four things. We're asking for council to delegate the authority of the city manager to negotiate the final version and execute this cooperative funding agreement with the Sonoma County Transportation Authority. And drafts are well underway. There is a draft attached to the staff report. It is not final. It is still a work in progress and we'll be working between the two agencies to complete that very shortly. We're asking for council to agree that moving the $3.4 million in state transportation improvement funds is in the best interest of the city to get those to the Hearn Avenue improvements project at this point in time. We are asking council to appropriate $8.6 million of unassigned general fund reserves to the Hearn Avenue improvements project as that backstop for this project to make sure that we don't lose the $5 million. And lastly, we're asking council to commit and direct staff to bring forward a budget that includes $3.714 million in next year's SB1 local streets and roads funds as part of the fiscal year 23-24 budget. And with that, I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you so much, Mr. Assistant City Manager. And just to emphasize, because I'm not sure a lot of information and I don't want it lost on council members, part of this is that that $5 million, it's not just if we missed the timeline, does Santa Rosa lose the $5 million? But Sonoma County Transportation Authority loses the $5 million. So that's some of the urgency. I do wanna call out James Cameron with Sonoma County Transportation Authority who's here in the audience. Welcome him as a partner and thank you so much for your work on this. I wasn't sure if there was anything that you wanted to add. It's in a shaking head. Here for questions if there are any questions. I think the most fundamental question, Mr. Assistant City Manager, is if council takes action on this today, does the Hearn Overcrossing get built and what does the new timeline look like? Thankfully, I'm happy to say yes, the Hearn Avenue improvements phase three, the interchange will get built because the plan as council would be approving tonight with the catch that we still have to wait for the CDC to make all of their approvals, even of the $5 million in local partnership program and the SB1 local streets and roads funds that fully funds the project and allows us to get out to bid probably in the early winter in the early winter of 2024, potentially the late fall of 23. It depends on how well the coordination is going with Caltrans. And given that right now we see interest rates as high as they are, anticipating if they come down hopefully, do we think that there's going to be need for additional dollars with that sort of elongated timeline or potentially would we be saving money? So the $36.6 million incorporates a level of inflation for the upcoming year. And so there is a measure of conservative funding within the program. So it's our hope that if inflation doesn't continue to escalate at a rapid rate, that we're well funded for this project. And if we start to see a dive in inflation and we start to see contractors continue to be hungry, that there's the potential that we'll have some additional funds based on this estimate. So for me, we've talked about this obviously quite a bit and for folks in the audience, I'm also the chair for Sonoma County Transportation Authority so I get to kind of see this from both sides. It's really a question of, do we have two mostly funded projects between the one-on-one bike bridge and Herne? Or do we have one fully funded and one underfunded project? And I think you'll hear from at least one of my colleagues looking for a commitment on how we're going to get both ultimately. But in the event that inflation comes down, prices are cheaper and there's additional funds, would the extra dollars slide back into the one-on-one bike bridge to complete that project as well? I would say with the exception of the general fund dollars because I can't make that suggestion at this point in time, but any unspent gas tax or utility impact fee funds would absolutely be, we would be recommending that those be reallocated to the one-on-one bike and pedestrian over-crossing. All right, thank you. And then just as an end cap from my council member report and I've been talking with the vice mayor a lot about this, this is something that we meet with our federal agency partners on all the time. I mentioned a Department of Transportation. We've met with them four different times to talk about grant funding and to push forward these two projects in particular, but other projects across Santa Rosa, but these have been the two primary focuses and so a shout out to our federal lobby team and Scott Alonzo and our team for continuing to drive opportunities for us to find additional funding. That's it for my questions on this one. Thank you, Mr. Assistant City Manager. Thank you, Mayor. Any other questions from council? Council member McDonald. Thank you, Mayor. Just for clarification, the 8.6 million that we'd be taking from the general fund, we would just do that as a backstop so that if we didn't receive grant money, it's there to fully fund the project. But if in fact we do receive that, it goes back into general fund and we could reassign it later, but we could just put it back in that general fund. That's correct. We will hopefully know before the fiscal year 23-24 budget conclusion as to whether or not we're successful and at that time if we see that there's enough grant funding to cover this, we can make an adjustment and move those funds. We can in essence, unappropriate and or move them elsewhere back into the general fund. Great. And just for clarification on, I know that the building costs have gone up a tremendous amount. We've been looking at 20, 25%, but I'm hearing up to 38% increase. Has that been built into this for the price, the cost of inflation on building or what kind of increase did we add just in case to make sure it's funded? So from a generalized inflation, we feel fairly confident based on not only the comparable type of structures that are out there, the type of bids that we've been receiving within Santa Rosa and we incorporated that inflation. There are some aspects that we're not sure how they're gonna fit in. For example, council just approved a project labor agreement. This would fall and would be something that would incorporate that. We don't know if that's gonna have a fiscal impact, but it could and we won't know until the time of bid. We don't know if inflation will continue to rise. We don't know if there's going to be shortages of specific types of material like we saw a couple of years ago where steel was very difficult to come by. So there are some components that are unknowns. That's part of why we build in 10 to 15% contingency within a project so we can have a buffer to accommodate some of these changes that may occur. But I'm gonna remain hopeful and optimistic that the 36.6 million is a very good estimate moving into being able to go to bid this next year. Thank you and hope is not a strategy. So I just wanna make sure that we have a good one in place to make sure that this is fully funded and we can realize the project being done. But thank you. Council member Fleming. Thank you and thank you for your work on this. I certainly see the merit in making sure that we don't lose out on the funding for the region or for our city. And in that spirit, I'm open to considering the transfer of the funds from the STIP program. That said, when I went to MDC, I did tell them that we were gonna build this bike bridge. And so I'm just curious to know if you think that it's feasible that we'll get the grant funding in say 18 months. And if we're not that a commitment from city management to recommend to the council that we backfill that funding, make it happen. So having gone through our kind of the balance sheets for both projects, what we're left with is about a $9 million deficit between the two. And that's actually lower than I had anticipated about three months ago, partly because my team's been expertly moving to a position that we could get at least one of these projects fully funded. And so money has been moved in from gas tax to ensure that we're filling holes in our project budgets. And so the $9 million for me is a very achievable deficit, especially if we have 18 months to work through it. One, I'm very hopeful that the local partnership competitive program will be successful for Earn Avenue, which keeps the $8.6 million in the city's general fund, which may become a conversation for the bike and pet overcrossing in 18 months when we look to go through the same program of full funding. We have one grant outstanding right now, which is the Safe Streets for all grant through the federal government. This is an excellent project. It's a very fundable project. And while we haven't heard any feedback at this point in time, we feel fairly strong, strongly that this is a very good candidate. And there will be several other opportunities between now and the 18 months in the future for us to go after similar great grants to look at. So I have a high level of hope. We do have an annual allocation of SB1 Local Streets and Roads. It's about $3.9 million. And if we get to that place close to the end of this project where there needs to be other aspects, we can move that out of some of our other improvement programs. We do have a five-year program for the SB1, which includes some work on some of our major arterials. But we could shift that like we're doing here to bring that major project to fruition. And so those will be the items. If we get into that space, we'll have a conversation with council at the end of next fiscal year. So that's all really great. And I appreciate the need to do this. We have consistently as a county and as a city underfunded this portion of our community. And we're putting in lots of housing in south and southwest Santa Rosa. And we owe it to this part of our community and to our whole city to get this done. That said, what I'm really looking for is a specific commitment from you and the city manager to recommend to the council to have this project fully funded, the bike bridge fully funded. If it's with our general funds or other funding, if it's not grant funded within 18 months, is that a commitment that you feel that you can make today? Thank you for the question councilwoman Fleming. I think we can make a commitment to you that this is a priority project. I think we would have to go back to the drawing board, to the table to see what funding that we do have. But just like we're making the recommendation tonight that we need to backfill this project with $8.6 million because if we keep piecing it together as we've been doing over the last couple of years, it's not gonna get built. And we owe it to the community to get this completed. So you have a commitment for me to make certain that we find funding to get this project done and other projects in the future. Excellent, sounds like we're on the same page. Thank you both so much. Any other questions from council? I do want to acknowledge and thank your team for adding in the class four bike lane. I think this would be a very different conversation if Herne wasn't multimodal and didn't address some of the equity aspects that we've talked a lot about up here from the dais.  Mr. Dewitt. Yes, thank you. Dwayne Dewitt from Roseland. 22 years ago, the Southwest Santa Rosa Redevelopment Project Area Committee recommended that this Herne Avenue project be built. You've said that it may start in 2024. That's a great thing to have it happen within a quarter of a century. So I'm really glad what we're getting there. I want to advocate that this project be built. Thank the city manager. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, for saying that the community needs to have this done. It's really important also that you not look at it as a way to say you can't build the bike bridge because you helped those poor folks over in Roseland. You can get the bike bridge built also by perhaps not making as expensive a project. You may be able to reconfigure that bridge as some bicycle advocates have told me could be done. One of the concerns I have is making sure that it gets done within a short period of time. The Stony Point Road widening project took almost 10 years once it got going and it cost millions of dollars extra. You can often say, well, that's because of unexpected circumstances, inflation, things like that. Today you've said, okay, you're building that idea in to this plan. That's a very good thing. I would say thank you to all of you for supporting this project and letting it go forward and making sure that here in public today, you tell the city manager, this needs to be built within our lifetime. I can give it another 24 years perhaps, but we shouldn't have to wait for it to get done. The bike bridge can wait longer. This Hearn Avenue project, especially keep in mind those. All right, folks, welcome back. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Council Member Rogers. Present. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Council Member Sawyer, have you joined us? Okay, let the record show that all Council Members are present with the exception of Council Member Sawyer. Thank you. And we do see that John is on Zoom, so hopefully he can take his camera off soon and be counted towards quorum. So folks, where we left off was in the middle of public comment for item 14.1. So we will finish that and we'll go to Alexa via Zoom. Okay, Mayor, we do have one other person who wants to make comment in the chamber on this too. Okay, I'll come back to the chamber after. Okay. Hi, can everybody hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. So my name is Alexa Forster and thank you for resuming the meeting and giving us a chance to talk here on Zoom. Really grateful for all the decades of the work that has gone into the Hearn Avenue project and to Assistant Manager Nett for a great presentation. I have two comments and two questions. The first comment, I really wanna applaud Councilwoman Fleming for pursuing assurances that the bike and pedestrian bridge will still get funded, but I must say that in light of the City Manager and Assistant Manager's responses to her question, I remain very uncomfortable about the use of the inset money for this project and I don't believe that the public has been adequately notified that a decision is being made here today that could potentially kill the bicycle and pedestrian bridge. The second comment is that I applaud the addition of protected bike infrastructure on this stretch. I agree with Mayor Rogers that it has made this project much more exciting for our city, but I have concerns about the proposed design, both what happens to cyclists when they get dumped out on the west side of the bridge at a now even busier Santa Rosa Avenue because this widening of this bridge for traffic is going to mean that there's even more traffic lanes turning onto Santa Rosa Avenue from right there. It's gonna be even more hostile environment for cyclists. So just wondering what happens on that side of the bridge, but also I'm wondering if City Council members are aware that the recommended width for a two-way cycle track of this nature, according to NACTO, which is the National Association of City Transportation Officials is 12 feet wide and at least according to the presentation that Assistant Manager gave, this provides only an 8.5 foot wide cycle track, which is near the lowest recommended at even the most constrained points and at the same time, it's providing generously wide traffic lanes. So I'm wondering if there's gonna be an opportunity for additional public input on the final striping for the bridge. I'm also curious if it's true that this project, the Hearn Avenue project was denied funding through OBag because the analysis showed that it was likely to increase vehicle mile travels, vehicle miles traveled. If so, how is a project that is projected to increase vehicle miles traveled compatible with our climate and traffic safety goals? And if not, why was it denied OBag funding? And more generally, what is going to be the impact of the Hearn Avenue Bridge on vehicle miles traveled? Will it increase them or decrease them or remain neutral? And finally, I'm wondering if the public can see the recent balance sheets that Assistant Manager Nut referenced regarding the price of both projects. There have been inconsistencies in what the public has been told about how much these projects will cost. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's the last hand I see on Zoom. Was there another public comment here in the chamber? Okay, do we have any prerecorded voicemails? No, we do not, Mayor. Perfect. Mr. Assistant City Manager, do you want to respond to the public comment? Thank you, Mayor. I'll do my best to work my way through the many questions. The Class 4 bike lane was an adjustment made to an existing bridge design. That design was created several years ago that incorporated Class 2 bike lanes as well as wide shoulders, I'm sorry, wide sidewalks. Without reconstructing and redesigning the entire structural portion of the bridge, we utilized the existing width to reconfigure in a way that we could accommodate not only the Class 2 bike lane on the north side, but also the Class 4 cycle track on the south side. We did Class 2 bike lane on the south side. The lane widths at 11 foot travel lane are required for transit purposes as well as our emergency service providers. Those are standard lane widths that are required for them to traverse. And a little bit wider of a lane on a turn lane as those vehicles, when they begin to swing to make the turn do get wider and therefore these are standard conditions. They are less than Caltrans would typically like. Caltrans standard does have a 12 foot lane width minimum, but for city street purposes, we've asked them to do a design exception in an effort to reduce the lane widths. And it also provides us a four foot shoulder and the two foot curb buffer for the Class 4 cycle track and then as well as the median needed to keep mirrors from bumping into each other as the vehicle's crashing. So from a lane width perspective, the team did everything they possibly could in an effort to meet not only standard design but also conform a more antiquated approach to something more modern and more convenient for all user type of program users. The other question was what are we gonna do at the Santa Rosa Avenue side? The cycle track and sidewalk do terminate at Santa Rosa Avenue. There are Class 2 bike lanes on Santa Rosa Avenue that you can transition to and from not only the cycle track on an appropriate green light if you're traveling north-south on Santa Rosa Avenue, but if you are utilizing the Class 2 bike lane on the north side of the bridge, you can access that going northbound from the left-hand turn lane off Santa Rosa Avenue as well as shifting over and transitioning on the southbound Class 2 lane to the east-west Class 2 lane on the north side of the bridge. We did prepare a slide where we can show the balance sheets for the two projects. City Clerk, if you could help pull that up. Yeah, we'll be bringing that up right now. So this was a working balance sheet that we prepared in an effort to try to better understand the impacts to the two projects that we were working on. You can see there's a number of funding sources that exist that go into both projects, most of which are gas tax, as well as a number of grant opportunities. What it ultimately shows is we have about a $9.4 million deficit between the two projects. By fully funding the Herne interchange or the Herne Avenue improvement projects, that $9.4 million deficit goes toward the bicycle and pedestrian over-crossing. What we're looking at is about a $32 million project for the bike and pet over-crossing. Similar to the Herne Avenue interchange, we incorporated a level of inflation. However, because it's at least two years away from construction, we incorporated three years of inflation, the current year and then the next two fiscal years. That's what has shown as an increase in the overall cost to the bridge. It's a conservative measure on staff's perspective so that we don't find ourselves in a position of underfunding any of these projects. We hope that that is not the way the bids are gonna go, that the economy is gonna shift, that we're gonna start to see lower inflation costs and that the cost of providing these services is not gonna be high moving into these outer years. But from a conservative estimating perspective, that's the approach that we took. Therefore, that's resulting in that $9.4 million deficit. So I believe I answered a majority of the questions that were asked by the caller. I think the additional question was on the OBag dollars. The OBag dollars. So we did make a request for OBag dollars for this. The project was described as a vehicular project less than a multi, more than a multimodal project. Given the fact that we are shifting from two lanes to five lanes, it in and of itself doesn't increase vehicle miles travel, but it does provide for more accessibility across the interchange. If you do the math the way the vehicle miles travel program works, it does indicate that the bridge increases vehicle miles travel. What it also does, however, it substantially increases our multimodal aspects through bicycle and pedestrian convenience, access, it improves our ability to provide mass transit across both directions on the bridge, as well as providing emergency services to both sides of Highway 101 that are currently all restricted given the very narrow aspect of the bridge today. And so unfortunately, given the criteria that we were informed by MTC, the statement and the calculation associated with vehicle miles traveled did rule that particular project out of that grant program. However, the value that it brings to the other components for our community is significant and substantial, which is why we receive a highly recommended rating by the federal government for our federal applications. All right, thank you so much, Mr. Assistant City Manager. Council Member Fleming, if you could put a motion on the table for us. Indeed, I will, thank you, Mayor. I bring a resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa delegating authority to the city manager or designee to negotiate and execute a cooperative funding agreement with Sonoma County Transportation Authority to include funding and project management for phase three of the Hearn Avenue Improvement Project and approving associated funding and waive further reading of the text. Second. So we have a motion from Council Member Fleming and a second from Council Member Rogers. Are there any comments from Council Members? Council Member Rogers. Yes, thank you. One City Manager, I'd love to see your enthusiasm about this project. I also like that the residents' concerns were incorporated with the safety, safety being a top priority. Thank you to staff for all their hard work and to all the other organizations that have come together with us to hopefully make this happen very soon, STCA. And thank you, Councilwoman Fleming, for going after the much needed funding. I'm so ready to break ground and across the finish line. So thank everyone for their hard work. Thank you. Any other Council Members? Council Member Fleming. Yeah, thank you very much to the team and to what, in my mind, what this is, is it is an example of us all working together and rowing in the right direction and putting the broader needs of the city ahead of one particular area or another in a way that I hope that that spirit is something that we continue on for many decades into the future in our city and not become provincial in that way. And so I think that we can be really proud of that tonight. One of the things that's really important to me going forward is that we do continue to consult with our community and make sure that we add priority for bikers and bikes and pedestrians and that we incorporate community input into the striping process and that we follow through with our promises to make all parts of our community equitable geographically but also based on vehicle miles, travel, pollution and in particular that we keep our word about what we say we're gonna do and do what we're gonna say. And so I am going to be supportive of this and proud to be investing in this much needed project this evening. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member McDonald. Yes, thank you. And thank you, Assistant City Manager Knett. This was a great presentation and clearly you know this project deeply and well and including where it's going through to Santa Rosa Avenue and what's available on those roads as well. I also wanna say thanks to SCTA for partnering with us on this. They've been so successful with the work that they've done on Highway 101 and throughout our community. So I'm very happy that we're partnering with them. They have an excellent reputation. I look forward to working with them as well. And even though it's uncomfortable for us to ante up that $8.6 million, I do wanna reassure the Council that it's important that we do that because oftentimes that's how grants are funded or even partially funded because it's a way for everyone to see that we're committed to the project. So I agree with staff recommendations and I'll be supporting the resolution as well. And Mr. Vice Mayor. One of the first conversations that you and I had was that overpass. And to see that moving forward, it gives me to respectful investments in our infrastructure. And I'm very happy to see that moving forward. We speak of the Portrait of Sonoma County. We speak of safe access to schools. We speak of the development boom that we're seeing in Roseland, in Southwest Santa Rosa. And this right here is the one project that I see bringing it all together. Not only for what should have happened in my biased opinion a long time ago, but what should be happening for the future residents of Santa Rosa. And I would like to mention a place called Moorland. And what that area means to their Portrait of Sonoma County and their quality of life. So on behalf of a kid who's ridden their bicycle plenty of times over that overpass and very nervous each time, I thank not only yourself, but the staff of the city of Santa Rosa and really hearing the needs of the community and assuring that we are looking to improve the quality of life of each and every resident of Santa Rosa. Thank you, sir. And I want to thank you for your work on it as well. And thank SCTA for stepping in as a good partner to try to help us with this project. For me, this isn't a choice between the Herna Overcrossing or the 101 Bike Bridge. This is a decision that we are going to get a project as opposed to getting zero projects. Right now with inflation and with the increased costs, we can't afford to do either of them if we try to pursue both of them. So I think prioritizing a project that increases multimodal access and I probably feel differently if Herna didn't have the bike track and the pedestrian access on it, but doing something that increases safety increases the ability for our community, particularly in one of our equity quartiles to get folks across the freeway safely and in a responsible way makes a lot of sense to me. With that said, you also still have my commitment as I know we do from city management to get the dollars done to be able to build the bike bridge and make sure that we're able to deliver that project as well. And so I appreciate the support from our colleagues to be able to do that as well. With that, Madam City Clerk, if you could please call the vote. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Great, thank you so much. We'll do our first public comment for non-agenda items, period, if somebody has a comment that is within the jurisdiction of the Santa Rosa City Council, but is not on tonight's agenda, go ahead and approach the podium. Go ahead, Mr. DeWitt. Is the overhead on? Let's get that fired up for you. It is on already. Might be zooming a little too close there. Go ahead and try to back out a little bit. Let's see if it focuses. There you go. Hello, my name is DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. This document here is from the City of Santa Rosa regarding South Davis Park. For over 50 years, the only public park in all of Roseland was South Davis Park, made when Highway 101 was unwisely built through the middle of Santa Rosa. It is located across the street from the home of George Mayby, who was a sailor killed at Pearl Harbor on the USS Arizona on December 7th, 1941. Some of the residents near there now would like to name the park in honor of the man who gave his life and service to our country. One of the dilemmas right now is as the park is being reconfigured by city staff, they have an approach that is not necessarily as welcoming and accommodating to the neighbors who live there. This survey that's up here right now has a very interesting finding, which I will show you right now. It's open to anyone in Santa Rosa. Only 28% of the respondents to this survey are from the Southwest and even less are from Roseland. So what's happened is this neighborhood park is being decided by people who don't live in the neighborhood. Now that's not a policy that Santa Rosa used to follow. In the general plan, a neighborhood park was set up for the people who lived in that area and they were the ones that had the voice, the ones who lived within walking distance of the park. This actually still held true for the people over in the Southeast who worked on the Southeast Greenway recently. Those people were told because they lived nearby that 42 acres along that old Highway 12 right away that it would be done with their guidance and they would be the ones who led the way. Unfortunately, that's not been happening over in Roseland. What's happening is people from throughout the community get to make their voice heard and the people in Roseland are taking a back seat. Now it might seem odd to you that we would want to honor a veteran from World War II who died at Pearl Harbor but we think it's actually something really good. It keeps that history of that community alive which that freeway fractured and in a sense made it one side of town and the other. Montgomery, that's named after a man who also was on the U.S. as Arizona, Billy Montgomery. And the eastern side of town was honored but not the western side. So keep it in mind as people go forward and say they'd like to have this happen, especially if staff says, oh, well, that's not what the community wants. They don't carry the community in their pocket. They live there by South Davis. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Mr. DeWitt. Are there any other public comments? Okay. Madam City Manager, let's go to item 15.1, please. Item 15.1, a public hearing. Amendment to Chapter 6-66 of the Santa Rosa Code. Introducing a mobile home rent control ordinance. Director Bassenger will lead the discussion. Thank you. We'll just wait for the presentation to be pulled up, please. All right. Good evening, Mayor Rogers and members of council. I'm Megan Bassenger, Director of Housing and Community Services. And joining me remotely is Jeff Burke, Chief Assistant City Attorney. Tonight we'll be providing an overview of the city's mobile home rent control ordinance and a recommended update. Next slide, please. So this first slide is an overview of the mobile home park locations throughout the city of Santa Rosa. There are 19 parks shown on this map. 16 of them are subject to rent control. The three that are not are owned or occupied. Those 16 parks report to the city on an annual basis, the spaces that they have, subject to the rent control ordinance, and we'll get further into that in this presentation. Next slide, please. This is an overview of those 16 parks. As you can see, it's a total of 2,155 spaces, the majority of which are subject to rent control. There are a variety of circumstances that could exempt a space from rent control. That could be they're occupied by RVs or trailers. There are spaces that are owned by the park with a mobile home that is also park owned, or they could be vacant. And that information is updated annually to the Department of Housing and Community Services. So these numbers do change on an annual basis. Next slide, please. Mobile home parks are a very unique situation, which is why statewide there is separate legislation that often governs mobile home parks and differentiates them from standard rent control that is over multifamily and single family units. Mobile homes are often owned by the residents, and they are located on space that is owned by another entity. This makes it difficult for a mobile home owner to relocate the unit that they own and occupy. There's also low space turnover, and frequently we see that the mobile homes are occupied by senior citizens in our community. Next slide, please. So to provide the council with some overview of the ordinance history, Santa Rosa first adopted the mobile home rent control ordinance in 1993. And this is chapters six dash 66 of the city code. The purpose was to provide a reasonable annual rent increase that will protect the residents and also provide the mobile home park owners with a fair rate of return on their parks. This is a legal test that is tested throughout the country. Owners are entitled to a fair rate of return, but cities and counties in which these parks are located and have ordinances have discretion over what they can require. Next slide, please. Some of the changes that have occurred to the ordinance over time would be there was initially a mobile home park policy board. This operated between 1993 and 2001. There were five members that were appointed by council and two non-voting advisors. The board reviewed a variety of topics, often the ordinance amendments that took place over time. And as reflected in the staff report, and you'll see on the next slide, there were many adjustments between 1993 and the early 2000s. Next slide, please. So there were 13 amendments to the ordinance, including the elimination of the mobile home park policy board. The hearings that were required for fair rate of return and arbitration were one of the things that the policy park board created and was put in place by the final revision to the ordinance. And this helped establish a funding mechanism for the administration of the ordinance and the staff that supports this. Next slide, please. So some of the changes that the ordinance has gone through, initially when it was adopted, the allowed annual rent increases were 100% of CPI. In 1993, this was adjusted to have a maximum of 8% increase with a minimum of 4%. So on an annual basis, an owner could adjust the rent, but they were guaranteed at least 4%. And then the residents at the park had the knowledge that it would not exceed 8% of CPI. In 95, this was adjusted again to reduce the maximum to 7% and lower the minimum to 3%. And finally, in 2004, which is where the ordinance currently stands, the maximum was set at 6% and there was no minimum. Next slide, please. So there are mobile home rent control ordinances in the majority of jurisdictions in Sonoma County. Santa Rosa's is 100% of CPI with a cap of 6%. This is also the same as the county of Sonoma, the cities of Katadi, Petaluma, Sebastopol and Windsor. The jurisdictions within the county that have differences to their ordinance are the city of Rohnert Park. And their formula is a little more complicated than what we see in the majority of jurisdictions. It's one half of 1% less than CPI with a 4% cap. So for example, the current CPI is 5.7%. So one half of 1% less would be 0.5% or 5.2%. So the cap was invoked in this recent year. And then the city of Sonoma is 80% of CPI with a 5% cap. Next slide, please. Thank you. So the reason we're here tonight is that the residents presented a request to amend the ordinance from 100% of CPI with a 6% cap to 50% of CPI with a 3% cap. Following that request, staff convened two meetings, one of the owners groups, so mobile home park owners met with staff to discuss the proposal and also to obtain their input. And there was also a meeting held on August 25th with residents of the park, where they also expressed their input on the proposal. What we heard at both meetings was a concern about the most vulnerable residents and how they would be able to pay their space rent on an ongoing basis. So both parties were able to express that they are keenly aware of the economic impacts on vulnerable residents and want to make sure that those individuals are assisted. Next slide, please. Following the two larger meetings and ad hoc with three representatives of park owners and three representatives of park residents was convened. That group met three times with a goal of reaching consensus on a potential amendment to the ordinance. Staff feels that we made progress in reaching a middle ground, although both sides were not in agreement with the recommendation that was presented tonight, but we did make progress and move both sides off of their initial initial proposals. The key elements that emerged through that series of meetings was the percentage of CPI, an annual limit on the increases, which is the 6% cap we currently have versus the residents 3% request and in place transfers. And on the next slide, I'll get into what in place transfers are. So an in place transfer occurs when a resident sells their unit to another person and that unit remains on site and is occupied by the new owner. The ordinance currently has a provision that allows eight parks to adjust the rent twice during the life of the ordinance for those units. So the majority of parks that have a limit on in place transfers have exhausted those because they could do it twice between 1993 and current day. Through research on the state of California, we determined that parks that have 100% CPI increases or lower often have a provision that allows for in place transfer, which means that when the unit remains on site and is sold to a new owner, the park owner can adjust the rent, which allows them to recoup some of the rent from a lower CPI. Next slide, please. So this slide is a summary of the proposals. You can see on the column on the left, the current ordinance, which is 100% of CPI and a 6% cap. And as I just explained, there's a minimal amount of in place transfer that is allowed. Following our three ad hoc meetings, the residents agreed to 65% of CPI with a cap of 3.5% and a 3.5% increase in place transfer. The owners presented a proposal of 75% of CPI with a 6% cap, 15% on in place transfers. And then the owners also volunteered through their proposal to provide $100,000 a year as a rent subsidy, which would be funding that would not have to be repaid by park residents. If this was to proceed, staff will need additional time to work through program details. After reviewing the proposals from both sides at the ad hoc, staff made a recommendation to adjust the ordinance to 75% of CPI with a 5% cap and 10% for in place transfers. Next slide, please. So to touch on the rent subsidy rent deferral issue, again, this was a concern that was expressed by both residents and owners through the course of the meetings. We also discussed the administrative fee balance. So as I mentioned in the earlier slides, one of the amendments that was made to the ordinance was the collection of a per space fee that is used for ordinance administration. We currently have a balance of approximately $800,000 and this is due to the limited number of issues that have arisen with the ordinance over the course of the past few years and also staff limitations. So we have not had staff to pay with the administrative fee due to staffing vacancies. The owners and this funding could be discussed at a further point in time. The owner's offer is a subsidy. It's not alone. So it would be given directly to income eligible residents that need assistance paying their monthly space rent. And as I mentioned, staff will need additional time if this is to proceed to evaluate a program and come up with some requirements. Next slide, please. So staff's recommendation meets the needs of both sides. There have been no fair rate of return hearings over the past 30 plus years, which is part of the reason why we've had such a robust fund balance. We have not had to pay for the variety of consultants that would help us navigate through that process. The last 10 years through our evaluation, CPI has outpaced COLA increases, which has led to some of the discrepancy between the ability for residents to pay for the space rent increase and what is able to be charged. The owners have provided an amendment that helps us meet this recommendation and staff feels that by adjusting the cap lower than the owner's recommendation, we're also able to meet the needs of the residents and then through the in place transfer allow them to adjust the space rents upon sale. Next slide, please. To give you an idea of the impact to the rents, this is an average of space rents throughout Santa Rosa. So it's not one particular park. It's not one particular individual. Currently, the average rent is $721 a month for space. If there were no changes to the ordinance, this would increase to $762 a month. If we were to adjust the ordinance to 75% of CPI, which would be 4.2%. So it's not hitting the cap. It would be $752 a month. And then with the residents proposal of 65% of CPI, the increase would be $748 a month. Next slide, please. So with that overview of staff is recommending that the council adopt an amendment to Chapter 6-66 of the Santa Rosa City Code, which does three things. One, reduce the allowable annual rate increases from 100% of CPI with a 6% cap to 75% with a 5% cap. Allow for a 10% increase in space rent following in place transfers and make other minor amendments to the ordinance to conform with changes in state law. That concludes the presentation and I'd be happy to answer any questions. All right, thank you so much, Director. Council, I'm gonna look for questions. Looking on Zoom. Any questions, council members? So I see Jeff Burke is on our Zoom. I know Jeff was intimately involved in the negotiations. Jeff, I'm wondering if you can walk us through the fair rate of return hearings, sort of the parameters around that, how that would play out if we were to end up in a situation where we're having those. Sure. So yes, Jeff Burke, city attorney's office. Good afternoon, good evening, mayor and council members. So as Megan presented, there hasn't been a fair return hearing since 1999 and you can look at it in different ways. One, the owners are satisfied with the return they're getting and there's harmony. The residents may claim that they're doing so well, that an adjustment is appropriate. The ordinance provides a very complex system for when owners want to request a fair return hearing. It does start out with the parties having to go through a meet and confer process to see if there's an opportunity just like in court to see if the matter can be settled short of having to go to arbitration. But if it does, both sides present their case to a neutral arbitrator and they show financial data, the formula that's used in the ordinance has been approved by the courts. It's called the maintenance of net operating income approach and what it does is this ordinance was enacted in 1993. So the idea behind it financially is that you go back and look at what their rate of return was in 1992 and extrapolate moving forward, looking at various financial data and it requires a significant financial analysis to determine whether that should, whether they're entitled to a fair return increase. And the courts looked at this back in the 90s and in the early 2000s and concluded that these mobile home rent control ordinances are legally valid. And they gave significant discretion to elected bodies like yourselves to decide what that amount should be. And of course the lower you go in terms of cutting down the revenue, the more likely it is that you'll have fair return hearings. And that does create a divisive atmosphere of course in the parks between the residents and the owner. So it has been a positive thing that there hasn't been those hearings because they can be quite contentious and costly and time-consuming. I hope that answered the question. It did, thank you so much. Council Member Fleming. Thank you. I had a question about the COLA versus CPI. And in particular, are we alone in being using the San Francisco Oakland Hayward CPI as our index here in Sonoma County? The majority. So I'm happy to answer that. No, we're definitely not alone. In fact, the vast majority of jurisdictions both within the county and statewide use it. It's used by the city of Santa Rosa in a variety of other capacities as well. And I think to change that at this point could make these fair return hearings or other kinds of hearings more complicated because you're starting to compare apples and oranges. So I don't think staff would recommend changing at this point. And why? I mean, our economy is quite different. Why did, was this settled on originally instead of attaching it to the cost of living? I can't answer that question. Okay, that's fair. I mean, that's a long time before and either of us were here at the city, but I thought it was worth asking. All right, thank you. And then Jeff, my question, and if you don't have an answer, hopefully when folks give public comment, they can answer this as well. For me, there's a trade-off here, and I'll just be candid. I care more about protecting the people who are currently in the parks than keeping that lower than on the in-transfer if I had to choose between the two. Was there a discussion about increasing the in-transfer in exchange for coming down on the percentage of CPI? Was that discussed amongst the owners and the residents to see if they could agree a little bit on that? I think that's a really good question. And you can hear from the residents and the owners themselves, but I'm happy to give you my take on it, having self through several meetings. And I do think you're hitting on a very significant issue. And I think that the owners' willingness to contribute voluntarily, $100,000 a year is quite significant. It really could make a difference for those most economically vulnerable who live in the parks. And so it was kind of a difficult dance, frankly, for staff to make a recommendation. Sympathetic certainly to the residents, concerns about a decrease, but not wanting to veer too far from where the owner's comfort level is with providing this $100,000 a year. And so the in-place transfer increase really was kind of that buffer to be able to go less on the CPI percentage, which is fairly standard around the state. I think you'll see that if the CPI percentage is decreased to 75 or 80, typically you see a fair return, I'm sorry, the in-place transfer percentage somewhere in the neighborhood of five to 15%. So we landed on 10. We think we're pretty close with what the owners wanted and we're hopeful that if council today approved staff recommendation that they'll still contribute to this fund. And I do want to address that it is voluntary and you may ask the question, well, what if they're just doing this now and then they pull the plug on that somewhere down the road and they can because there's nothing that the council can do to compel it, but the hammer that the council has is you can always bring the ordinance back and cut down the CPI percentage or cut back the cap or cut back the in-place transfer percentage. So there is a little bit of a check on the system, if you will. Council Member Fleming? Yes. So about the $100,000 fund and is that per owner or per park or is that spread across all 16 parks making for just a few thousand dollars per park? It is spread across all the parks, it's my understanding. And there's 16 parks? There are 16 parks that are subject to rank control. Okay, so 16 parks. So about maybe $5,000 per park and each park has how many units on average? I mean, a hundred or so. So. It's 60 to 50. Okay, so not really a very significant amount of money for a resident. I mean, we're talking about very, very small numbers here. Was there any negotiation about that $100,000 number? I mean, it sounds big, but in perspective, it's pretty small. Well, you may wanna go back to that slide on the amount of the increase for the average rent. And I don't have the numbers in front of me, but if you divide that $100,000 by a hundred residents, I think it would make a pretty significant difference in their monthly payment. So I don't disagree council member with your comment about perhaps per park, but if you look at it for the residents who may benefit from it, it could be significant to them. Okay. Slide 14, please. And council member Fleming, if I can interject, again, as noted, if the $100,000 contribution is still on the table following an amendment to the ordinance, what we would wanna do is develop a program that targets the most vulnerable residents or those with the lowest income throughout the city so that we can provide them with meaningful financial assistance. So it would not be spread equitably for every park resident, but would assist those that income qualify and need the assistance on a monthly basis. Well, to that point, do we have the staff infrastructure to manage that kind of outreach? We would be able to develop the outreach and also a program that would meet those requirements. It just was difficult to do. This offer was presented at the beginning of November. And so in order to do the outreach and develop a program, we didn't have time. Okay, I just wonder with such a small loan amount, the time to do the outreach and administer the fund might be really significant. When I was out there a couple of months ago, I mean, I met people who are dealing with severe food insecurity and so forth and they hadn't heard from us in quite a while. So I just think that we're really, due to our budgetary constraints, really stretched then on our outreach. But I'm glad to hear that you have confidence that we would be able to do this. Thank you. Council Member Rogers. Hi, can you remind me what San Francisco's policy is as far as, I know they use CPI, what percentage and do they have a cap? So San Francisco itself, the city and county of San Francisco does not have mobile home parks. So references to San Francisco that have been made through other hearings are for general rent control. And I believe their rent control is 60% of CPI and that would apply to residential units. So multifamily and single family units that qualify under their ordinance. But again, it's not specific to mobile home parks. Thank you. Council Member McDonald. I have a question about our $800,000 that's appropriated basically for hearings, correct? Is there any way we can reappropriate that money to actually support those that might be in need of assistance and do our own, basically what I'm seeing this $100,000 grant and potentially if we could appropriate some money to really support our most vulnerable members of our community, is there a way for us to add to that and do it sort of like a section eight is what I'm understanding this to be or something that you would be able to develop sort of a quasi section eight based upon language like that of someone who may have the need for it and then the ability to apply through us. So that has been one of the topics that we have discussed is how to use this fund balance. We do wanna retain some in the event we have fair rate return hearings or we have other issues that arise with any amendment to the ordinance. So we need to be mindful of making sure there's enough available so that it's not an impact on the general fund. And then we also have staffing requirements. Annually we bring in enough through the fee to cover our staff but based on any action at this meeting or subsequent meeting on the ordinance we could certainly look at how to deploy a portion of those funds and use it to assist residents in exactly that fashion. Incomeligible individuals where we would make a payment on their behalf to the park to cover a portion of their space rent. Thank you. If I may just add to that please. So two points to make one. Of course that would be one time money, right? The second piece is that that $800,000 was earmarked or administrative costs for hearings. And so now we would be using it instead to help those most economically vulnerable. And so we'd have to approach the owners and the residents because they've each paid in 50% of that. So I think that's part of the reason that we would wanna come back to you next year with kind of a plan and see how that could be worked on. But yeah, that's certainly more than would be needed. Although you can anticipate that probably the numbers of hearings will start going up as you cut back on the revenue. But we're hopeful that with the in place transfer that it kind of evens out. So for clarification on that on the $800,000 just so you said it was a one time appropriation but do we collect money on that every single month from owners so that it does actually can be a continuous funding? Yeah, thank you for that question. So the $800,000 is accumulated over about 20 years. So I, Megan perhaps might know the annual amount, but I think it got to be so large because there hasn't been a hearing in so long. And as Megan mentioned, you had the staff vacancies. Sure, I understand. So on an annual basis, we collect approximately $95,000 and that is what has been contributing to the fund balance. We would need to look at the number of potentially income eligible households and determine how long we could support rental assistance for them. We don't wanna develop a program where we can only provide one year and we put them in a compromised position. But we have roughly about $95,000 that we get here. On an annual basis. On an annual basis. So if I'm looking at the $100,000 that the owners are potentially anteing up and we could maybe double that. So if we're looking at how much could be used, it would be potentially $200,000 for residents. We would need to determine that as we go forward and evaluate how many households we're serving and also the level that we're assisting them at because all those will play into how long we could sustain a program and how many people we can support. Thank you. And then on the hundred that are on the cap on the transfer fee, what I noticed from the park owners was that they offered it with a 15% transfer fee. And then staff recommendation is lowering the transfer fee to 10%. And I didn't notice that the $100,000 was still available to us. Has there any been any conversation around what the transfer fee may need to be for us to be able to retain that money? That is a discussion that we can have this evening. The owner's offer at our final ad hoc meeting was what was presented with the 15% transfer and $100,000 annual assistance. But they can certainly speak to what the lowest level they would be willing to contribute at is. Thank you so much. Council Member McDonough, excuse me, Council Member Rogers. So I heard the annual amount but monthly per mobile home owner, how much are they charged? The fee is set at $4.78 per space per month. And it's of the spaces that are subject to rent control. So this fluctuates on an annual basis and it's collected quarterly. So I cannot give you a monthly amount but it's approximately 95,000 a year. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. Question for you, Mr. Burke. You identified some reasons why the hearings have been quite infrequent in quite a number of years. I'm curious if you have a sense of how long that $100,000 would last if indeed, if the council started to move into negotiations with both the park owners and the residents, which can be, I have learned troublesome at times when we move into negotiations on the fly. If we were to, if the owners decided that they were going to withdraw that $100,000 annual commitment as it stands potentially, how long would the $800,000 last if we went into hearings? Do you have any sense of how expensive these hearings can be? So I just got my calculator out and I think an arbitrator would charge about $300 an hour. And my guess is it would take three to four days for a hearing because there's a lot of financial data and testimony, I would imagine it would be about $7,500 a hearing, maybe 10,000. And I didn't want to mention that the 95,000 that is taken in is a gross figure and that doesn't include staff time. So I just wanted to mention that. Okay, thank you. Any additional questions from council? Okay, we're gonna go to public hearing then and I'll open that for folks. Anybody who'd like to speak, go ahead and start to approach the podium. I do have some names that I'll call here first. I've got Diane Monroe, followed by Roger McConnell. Hello. Okay, this is on, right? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, so my name's Diane Monroe. I live in Sequoia Gardens Mobile Home Park. And I'd like to really thank everyone who's worked on this so hard. I did not realize this was so complicated. That said, I'm here to implore you, the city council and anyone with decision-making powers to limit our space rent increases as much as possible. I liked the 3% with the, what was it, 50% on CPI. I hear you have a 5%. I may not have gotten all those numbers down, but as much as possible. And also, if possible, to prevent the 5.7% increase that we all just got notices about happening for 2023, to fold it into whatever decision you make. The reason I say this is that many of us simply cannot afford this. The consistent higher rent increases and especially the one this year of 5.7. Some of my neighbors are already walking a tightrope between paying rent and buying food and necessary medicine with little or no space before falling into homelessness. Personally, I'm not yet at that homeless abyss, but my calculator says that I will be there if rent increases keep on going with the trajectory they've been going. We senior citizen mobile home residents are people who have worked all our lives, many of us in service industries, teachers, nurses, social workers, counselors, people working in state and local government. We pay taxes and have been good citizens. Some of us even now volunteer with local nonprofits or find other ways to give back to the community. We do not deserve to fear hunger and homelessness in our latter years. Sadly, we're not alone. A 2020 CalMatters article says that people over 50 now account for half the unhoused adults, a fourfold increase since 1990. And that older adults are the fastest growing segment of California's homeless. So expanding programs to help them must be a key part of the state's homelessness strategy. I see that I'm almost out of time. So I just want to say that you're in a position to help keep senior citizens in their homes and prevent further homelessness. And I implore you to do so through regulating space increases, space rent increases. Thank you. Thank you, Diane. We'll go to Roger McConnell, followed by Ken. Roger McConnell, I live at the country out on Fulton Road. I've been involved with mobile home issues here for, oh Lord, 17, 18 years. I didn't think this night would ever come. There's been one group or the other through Santa Rosa Manufactured Homeowners Association that's been trying to get your attention and get on as an agenda item for years. I don't know, nine or 10 years ago, we were another group trying this. I did set through the ad hoc committee meetings. Disappointed, of course. We kept talking apples and they kept talking oranges. We asked for three things. Reduce the interest rate from this Bay Area CPI from 100 down. We asked for a lower cap and we asked to stop collecting for the 800. They talked about in-place transfers. They talked about minimums. I was disappointed. When you do an in-place transfer, anything more than eight parks here are allowed $50 from a lawsuit settled way back in 2004. Anything more than that can kill a sale at a heartbeat. I inherited a little house up in Humboldt County in 2015. No ordinance in the city. And the rent on that space was going up $80 to the next buyer. I went through four different buyers before one little lady said, that sounds reasonable to me and she bought the house. So it can be a real sale killer for your house. You may be sitting on it for months. It's part of what we have to do. I know and understand here. I didn't like the staff's recommendations when they came out of here. I think we went from 50 to 65% of the Bay Area CPI and 3.5% for a cap. Those are reasonable numbers. I mean, these are huge cash cows these parts. This is why corporate buys them. There are a lot of money to be made in these parks. My owner has owned it since gosh, the late 70s. And his profit margin is way up there, way up. So this is what we're asking for for our seniors who live in our communities that we need some lower on the cap. We need lower on the interest rate of percentage of the Bay Area CPI and the 800, stick 100,000 off over there and let's have a great big party with the rest of it. Thank you. Thank you, Roger. We'll go to Ken followed by Steve. Ken Cravenus. I'd also like to use the projector, please. Go ahead and raise up the projector with the button on the right hand side there for you. I think it's all right side of the podium. Yeah, there you go. Thank you very much. And with the projector, you're going to want to zoom back out as well. There we go. Thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Ken Craven and I represent the Orchard, a 233 site mobile home community located on Pioneer Road. Over the last few months, there's been a lot of conversation about affordability in mobile home parks. Last night, I submitted a memo to the council with facts and data to justify the park owners proposal and how that would increase affordability. As staff noted, our proposal is a package and it includes amending the ordinance by limiting rent increases to 75% of CPI with the 6% cap and allowing for a 15% increase on in place transfers. It also includes a request to direct the city staff to work with park owners to document the terms of the $100,000 park owner funded rental assistance fund to be used at the city's discretion to protect the most economically at risk at residents. The terms of our proposal are based on the need to protect residents and ensure owners can continue to maintain our communities. The park owners proposal makes the most sense for all parties involved because it's consistent with the original intent of the ordinance. It provides greater benefit to the most economically challenged residents. It ensures park owners can continue to reinvest in a critical source of unself-setized affordable housing and it potentially avoids costly and time-consuming fair return hearings. Under our proposal, the average annual rent increase from 2001 to 2022 would have been just over $12 a month, which would have been a 2.1% annual average increase. Over the same time period, the Social Security COLA was 2.5%. Additionally, according to Zillow, apartments and single family home rents in Santa Rosa have increased by $175 per month over the last year and are currently averaged around $3,000 a month. These data points show the reasonableness of the park owner's proposal. Park owners do truly care about the residents. In 2017, one-third of the homes in the orchard were destroyed by the Tubbs Fire. Thankfully, there was no loss of life. Our team worked around the clock to restore that community and we were ready to restart building homes within 60 days. We offered every resident the opportunity to rebuild their home at cost without any profit markup for us. 48 of the 67 residents took us up on our offer and in total, we incurred over $4 million of costs and lost income due to the Tubbs Fire, none of which resulted in additional costs to our residents or to the city. So in closing, our proposal benefits all residents. It adds a light through the 75% of CPI increase. It adds an additional layer of protection to those most vulnerable through our $100,000 rental assistance fund. And it allows us to continue to operate our communities in a responsible way. Thank you very much for your time to speak. Thank you, Ken. We'll go to Steve Hathaway, followed by Mark Winters. Hi, my name is Steve Hathaway and I represent Roseland Mobile Home Park. And we believe the owner's proposal provides greater benefit to the most economically disadvantaged residents. And these are residents who are often that have lived the longest within the community. Mobile Home Parks are a crucial source of unsubsidized affordable housing. And it's important to note that Mobile Home Parks are not low income housing. Our residents are diverse group and represent many different social and economic backgrounds, including retired business professionals, union workers, service professionals. Our residents are attracted to our communities because they provide attractive, affordable path to home ownership in an extremely high cost housing market. Residents purchasing homes within our communities are doing so with the full knowledge that the existing rent structure, of the existing rent structure are in our pain and average over 190,000 per used home. Many homes are purchased without loans also. And looking at the data over the last two years, those homes have appreciated 100% compared to their original sales price. And this is data all pulled from housing and community development. We hear and appreciate the concerns that the residents who are financially insecure, we want to help these residents and believe the best way to do this is to provide a greater benefit directly to those residents that are most disadvantaged. The park owner's proposal includes the offer to fund $100,000 a year to be managed by the city and fund the people that actually need it. The park owner's proposal produces a greater benefit to those truly that need the assistance. And that's why I'm asking you to accept our proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. We have Mark Winters followed by Greg O'Hagan. Hi, my name's Mark Winters. I represent Rancho Cabeza, a local home park ownership. Our park's been in around since 19. Our park's been around since 1960s. I say our park's been around since 1960s, Rancho Cabeza, Mo Lawn Park. It's the same ownership, different generations. It was started by a group of businessmen back in the 60s. And our ownership's always been fair and good to the people that we have in our parks. When I address the cost and reinvestment of a mobile home park, we're more or less like a little town's mobile home community. And it's a responsibility of the owner for the repairs and the maintenance of the roads and many other structures and things, common area amenities. And those professional costs, use professional onsite staff utilities insurance, which has increased a great deal because of the fires as of late. And the routine maintenance is expensive, along with that coupled with the minimum wage raised by the city of Santa Rosa, which is deservingly so. In 2023, it goes up 7.6% with 100% CPI each year after that. Given those costs, it's getting more and more costly to run a park and maintain it and do any kind of infrastructure improvements along the way. We've offered to give the subsidy to those in need so we can keep the maintenance and those types of things intact from here into the future. So I highly would appreciate it if the council looks closely at our proposal. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. We'll go to Greg O'Hagan, followed by Bart Thompson. Hello, honorable mayor and council members and city staff. Thank you for your time. My name is Greg O'Hagan and I manage Rancho San Miguel Mobile Home Park. It's a 141 space community and a senior community. I also manage in 12 other jurisdictions that's under rent control. And one of the important factors of rent control is to have balance. And what the residents are proposing is creating a major imbalance. You can't take CPI and lower it this much and not have any other balance on the other side. What will result in that, and I wanna clear some things up, is owners having to be forced to go to these fair rate of return hearings if this imbalance is created. I've been a part of many fair rate of return hearings. And this isn't anything city that you would want, residents that you would want, and to be frank, owners don't wanna go through. It had been mentioned that an arbitrator can rule over this in five to seven days. More research needs to be done. Usually this averages more like six months. It's extremely costly. The process to analyze the analysis of an MNOI takes accountants, it takes legal, and it takes an arbitrator. This is cost to residents, this is cost to owners, and time and resource for the city. Usually these hearings are more than the lines of $100,000 when it's all put together. So I think more research needs to be done there. And the most detrimental thing that comes out of a hearing, fair rate of return hearing is residents and owners are pitted against each other for months and months. And it takes away harmony from the communities. Again, I've been through this, it's not a pretty sight.  It creates residents, upset at owners. It creates owners having to apply for rent increases that can be in the hundreds of dollars if it's allowed through the hearing. I urge you to accept our proposal. Our proposal creates this balance and we've put a lot of thought into this. Also this $100,000, this is gonna help those who really need it. And this is what it's about. I sat in the ad hoc meetings and this is what I heard. Residents who need help. We're here to help those residents and our proposal backs that up. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Greg. We'll go to Bart followed by Tom LaPenna. Mayor, council members, thank you for your time. My name is Bart Thompson. I'm representing Woodcrest and Wayside Gardens. As you may know, we weren't unable to come to agreement via our ad hoc meetings. But the meetings, a lot of great things came out of that. And I'm excited about the proposal and where this appears to be going. I'm really excited for the residents. I think firstly with our proposal, reducing our increases to 75% of CPI, every resident in Santa Rosa is gonna get excellent long-term relief. It's gonna ensure that rents remain reasonable indefinitely. This year is a big year under our proposal. Rents would go up 4.275%. The cool offset is the COLA increase this year is 8.7%. So I know it's not always that way, but this year is a great offset for COLA. And I'm excited about that. I'm very excited to see if we can do this $100,000 annual subsidy because I really think it'll be truly life-changing for a lot of residents in Santa Rosa. Maybe some of them are in this room. And most importantly, the owner's proposal is sustainable. It's just enough so we can continue to reinvest in our parks for the long term. The resident's proposal might sound good for a year or two, but it just goes too far and it's just not simply sustainable. So with a lot of hard work by many, you have a proposal from the owner that I really think is great for the residents, is good for the city, and it's sustainable for the long term. Thank you. Thank you. We'll go to Tom, followed by Dwayne. If Dwayne's still here. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, city manager Smith, thank you for listening. Thank you for reading our emails. Thank you for coming to meet with us, to speak with us, to hear us. There's not much that I have to say, although the gentleman that spoke before me did want us to have a negotiation and want the city not involved. We, the residents in these parks, trust our mayor and council. We trust our city manager. We know you've heard us, we know you understand what we need and what we are humbly asking for.  My residents, please stand up, who live in the parks. Hold up your signs. Show them. We trust our mayor and council. We believe, as I said in a newspaper article, five, you can sit down now, it's okay. Five weeks ago, there was a front page article in the press democrat and one of the things that I said in that article is we believe that our mayor and council will do the right thing. I still believe that. The one group that I wanna reach out to on the council for a second is the ladies of the council. You three ladies have asked the correct questions tonight concerning the $100,000 means testing that would start. Those of us who were on that fixed income of social security cannot afford these increases to keep up with that. Please, I ask you also to listen to a speaker who will be coming before you later from the Sonoma County Legal Aid Society. She gets it, she understands it. I know she's emailed you. I sent you an email a few days ago. Please reread those again. Please do the right thing. I trust you will. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Dwayne looks like Dwayne left. We'll go to Sharon Lieberman followed by Don McLeod. Thank you for the work that you've done, the committee. Okay. People that came before me did say a lot of what I wanted to say. I agree with a lot of things. One of the owners had said that there's this conflict between residents and owners or managers. You know, there's a reason for that because there are, there's a reason for that because it doesn't always seem most of the time that it's equitable. $100,000 goes nowhere. I mean, it's laughable. It's not sufficient. And $762 at 75% is not enough of the CPI sounds really good. But in the mobile home park that I'm in, that's about $600 short of what a lot of people in the park are paying. We're in the most expensive park in Lincoln Valley out of the three, out of the four parks. And it's tough. Everybody is on a, or most people are on a fixed income. And Social Security has not been helpful in raising prices. The stock markets are not helping. The pandemic didn't help. And all of these things have gone, have caused conflict with everybody's budget. And we have people in the park, as some of the other people said, who are going without heat or going without food because they don't have enough money to stretch. And the owners don't seem to think about those kind of things. And communication in these parks is not always the best either. So communication works both ways. I hear the residents being blamed for having a problem with the owners. But you know what? It's a two-way street. I think that owners need to be responsive to their residents. And residents will be responsive to them. And so I think it's really, really important that I think 65, it seems likes, thank you. Thank you so much, Sharon. We'll go to Don, followed by Macy McFarland. Good evening. My name's Don McLeod. I've been a resident of the Rancho San Miguel Senior Park here in Santa Rosa for over 20 years. I was the past president of the Rancho San Miguel HOA for about 14 years. I was the past vice president of the Santa Rosa Manufacturer Association. I'm still on the board of both those associations. I'm involved in the Sonoma County and the California State Association as well. I've seen a lot of trials and tribulations over all these years. There's some things I'd like to point out. I don't know if you appreciate that seniors, 50, 65 years and older are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. Again, we seniors are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population. In San Francisco alone, the estimate at least 30% of the homeless people are older than 50. Nationally across the US, the latest statistics show that at least 50% of the homeless people are over 50 years of age. Compared to, it was only 11% back in 1990. Now it's 50%. Now there are reasons why we're the fastest growing segment. According to the analysts, the main reasons are poverty and lack of affordable housing. It's a national crisis as well as a crisis here in the Bay Area, as you all know. The reason we are here today is to keep manufactured home parks affordable. They must be kept affordable. They are a key source of affordable housing for the city of Santa Rosa. We need your help. We need your strength assistance by voting to decrease the percentage of CPI that park owners are presently allowed to have. A very good reason that there hasn't been any, since 1999 there hasn't been any fair rate of return hearings. Park owners do not want to open their books to outsiders. They would find out how much money they're making. And the testimonial to this is that more and more corporations are buying the parks from family held owners because they're so profitable. Otherwise why would they be buying the parks? So thank you again for your time and your support. Have a good evening. Thank you so much, Dawn. We'll go to Macy McFarland, followed by Margaret De Matteo. Hi, I'm Macy McFarland, and I don't have a lot of facts and I don't have a lot of figures, but I wanted you to look at what a 77-year-old woman who has saved all her life to have security when she retired in a place to live, now looks at when I moved in there, my rent, I moved to Sequoia Gardens, my rent was $650 a month. My rent now is $800 a month. Add to the doubling of the insurance, I mean the utilities, my rent used to be maybe $8 a max. I just got a bill yesterday for over $1,100 that I need to pay. I wasn't equipped for that when I retired and decided to buy a mobile home where I was led to believe Santa Rosa really wanted to take care of their old people, their retiring people, and the mobile homes were the way you were gonna do it. Now I'm wondering, did I make a big mistake? Thank you. Thank you, Macy. We'll go to Margaret, followed by Debbie Stack. Good evening.  Thank you. Good evening, everyone. City Council and Mayor and city staff. My name's Margaret DiMadio. I'm the Housing Policy Attorney with Legal Aid of Sonoma County. I've been a housing attorney my entire career. And I just wanna take a moment to express my support and acknowledgement for the many mobile home residents who came here tonight with so much at stake.  I was sitting next to them. They didn't return. And I hope that I can do justice in speaking on their behalf. I submitted a written comment yesterday. I urge you, if you haven't read it, to take a look at it. But Legal Aid is supporting the mobile home residents and asking for a 3% cap. We've also introduced the idea of tying the percentage of increase to the Social Security Cola. It's not a novel idea. It is being done elsewhere. More jurisdictions are looking at that because of who lives in this housing, it's senior housing. It would make sense to tie it to their income. Nonetheless, it doesn't really matter what you tie it to if the cap is too high. If the cap is 3% and it's tied to the CPI of San Francisco or Social Security Cola, as long as the cap is at a low enough level that people will not be displaced, that is the best action that you can take here tonight for these residents. I've heard frequently people mentioning our most vulnerable residents, funds to help our most vulnerable residents. And I wanna push back on that because we represent mobile home residents. These are all vulnerable residents. They are all predominantly senior on fixed income. A rent increase of 5.7% could cause almost any of them to have to make difficult decisions about medication and groceries. And furthermore, they're here because they don't have equal bargaining power. This is not a contract that we're renegotiating. These tenants do not have equal bargaining power. The land under their home is at risk. Their ability to avoid homelessness is at risk. It's not an exchange for an increase in a profit for a landlord or a park owner with the 10% transfer increase. We would ask you to reject that. I also wanna point out the point in time count for Sonoma County of 2022 showed a 43% increase in people homeless for a year or more. Who are those people? Because the respondents who responded to the survey, 51 to 60 year olds jumped from 19% in 2020 to 28% in 2022. People over 61 had the highest rate ever of 15%. So if you can't make a decision tonight, I would urge a moratorium on the rent increase so that you can make the right decision and take your time with it. Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll go to Debbie Stack followed by Randy Roode. I'm Debbie Stack and I'm from Rancho Cabesa. I make $1,300 a month. I make, that's net. My net income is $15,600. I live off of the food bank. I can't afford anything else. I recycle everything and my neighbors give me their recyclables because they know I'm trying to keep the best I can. I have now been there 10 years and six months. Eight years, nine months, I did not have one single message, notice, negativity, nothing. I was loved in my community.  There is no domestic tranquility at Rancho Cabesa. They come on to your lot any time they want.  Now in 2017, the portable fire pits were banned. I got written up that my barbecue and this fire pit that's for my flowers are to be kept in a shed. Do you wanna know if the fire department said to that? And stopped where my manager is in the bushes. I have written HCA 60 individual emails and that's not counting the responses. I have been harassed horribly where I don't leave my home and my rent is $800.  Please, please don't raise us. Thank you Debbie. Let's go to Randy. Is Randy still here? And I'm sure I'll get an eviction notice because I was here. I don't play well with others. Is Randy here? All right, let's go to our public comment on Zoom. Actually, let me check really fast. Is there anybody else in the chambers who would like to provide comments? Go for it. Thank you for hearing us today. I'm a housing navigator with the Sonoma County and today I housed a 79 year old woman who's been living in her car for over a year. So when we talk about the homeless population, they are elderly. And I think it's really kind of a hostage mentality for the owners to hold these expensive hearings at us in exchange for a decent rate of pay. They bought those parks when they were cheap. It's public record. You can look up how much taxes they pay. And like that woman just said, most of these parks are managed by very uneducated, uncommunicative, rude people and the owners support them. We had to at Sequoia Gardens ask the HCD State Agency to come do an inspection and we still have deferred maintenance. We have a maintenance man who uses obscenities and screams at people and uses benevolent discrimination to give preference to people who are nice to him. So I'm very disappointed in the staff recommendation. I've worked in affordable housing for over 30 years. I've managed parks, I've served on park boards and I find the owner's status pretty unbelievable. I'm excited about the COLA. Well, let's wake up. The economy is disintegrating. If you read the New York Times, the reason for homelessness is economic disparity. It's not gonna change just because the COLA went up this year because of politics, that's not gonna happen. And of Fleming, Victoria Fleming, to answer your question, the mobile home residency laws establish the CPI as the rent increase number to use the percentage many, many years ago. When your COLA and your CPI were kind of friends, right? That is no longer the case. And I also don't agree with the Santa Rosa City Housing Authority's belief that we just discount San Francisco Berkeley and Oakland's rent control percentages, which by the way are all under 3% this year just because they don't have mobile homes. I've managed property in San Francisco. There are plenty, plenty, plenty of vulnerable senior citizens living in rent control departments just like they live in mobile home parks here. So I'm pretty disappointed with some of the staff recommendation. I think a transfer fee could work because people buying in are gonna have a little more money. That makes sense, but 75% is too high for this city and for this county. Unless you wanna see more of us on the street and I'll be housing them, I guess, then you can go with that 75%. Thank you. Is there anybody else in the chambers who'd like to provide comment? Go ahead. Go ahead and make your way towards the podium. Hi, I'm Gary Brady with Sequoia Gardens. I lived there for seven years and I don't think any of the lawyers for the other side mentioned that everybody paid cash or they bought their own place and they have to maintain it in a certain according to the rules and that the money that is collected from rent where I live, a minimum is spent on maintaining the infrastructure of the park, which I really like, which really had nothing to do with the guy who owns it. And it's got trees, it's beautiful and it's getting old and it needs work.  It's our responsibility, the people that live in the park to have our own board to go after the owners and that's a job. And given the 75%, it just sounds like too much certainly for the services that we're receiving, thanks. And thank you so much for listening to all this. Now, thank you. Who's next? My name is Maggie Bradley. I live in the Sequoia Garden Mobile Home Park for seniors. I just wanna start by saying the developer that mentioned how excited he was for these changes, I can guarantee you nobody from that mobile home park who's a resident is excited for these changes. The city council recommendation or the staff recommendation does not go far enough. It's common negotiating tactic to start at 100% and then chisel down from there, which is exactly what they did. They don't wanna give anything. 75% of the CPI is simply too high in Sonoma County. So this $100,000, whatever it is, I'm so grateful to council members who are thinking about that and how that's gonna break down because with that donation, you are guaranteeing that the senior homeless population will increase. That's just a joke. $100,000 is nothing. And whoever stood before this body said, you can bet these guys are making profit. You can bet they're making bank where the seniors in the park are stuck with their social security payments. That's all we get. That's all we get. My rent has increased. I've been there for four and a half years. My rent increase has been $80. If you factor that out, that's a huge chunk, a percentage. And for what we get, anyway, I don't wanna get into that. The owner of this park is not even here tonight. He's very unresponsive to the people who live in the park. So it's not surprising that he's not here.  It's not enough and they're not guaranteed to contribute every year. So I'm not thrilled with the proposal from the developers. I'm not thrilled at all. And I encourage the city council and the staff to take a look at these numbers again. 75% of CPI is too high. Thank you. Thank you. Hi there, my name is Deb Wright and thank you for letting me speak tonight. I live in Rinken Valley, Mobile Estates over in of all places, Rinken Valley. And I've lived there for 17 years. I love my park, I love my home. I feel so blessed that I was able to afford to buy a home for myself in my middle fifties. And I do have social security. And on the side, my side hustle is that I play the ukulele and I sing in nursing homes and boarding care and assisted living facilities. And I'm getting closer and closer to the age of the people that I'm playing for. So anyway, I just wanted to thank everybody for the time that they've given tonight. And I do live in a really, really nice park. And I also feel that we're not asking too much. So thank you