Good afternoon. Welcome to today's City Council meeting. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Schwedhelm. Here. Councilmember Sawyer. Councilmember Rogers. Present. Thank you. Councilmember Fleming. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember Fleming and councilmember Sawyer. Thank you. We'll start our day in closed session with item 2.1. Madam Deputy City Clerk, can you please facilitate public comment on that item? Thank you, we'll do. If you're joining via Zoom and wish to make a public comment, please raise your hand now for item 2, closed session. If you're participating via telephone, please dial star 9. Mayor, I'm seeing no hands raised in Zoom and no one approaching the podium for public comment in person. Great. We'll go ahead and recess into closed session then. Good afternoon, Pablo. Good afternoon, Charles. Thanks for joining us today to provide interpretation services. Charles, if you're all right with it, I'm going to go ahead and move you into the Spanish Channel now. And, Pablo, I'll leave you in to do the normal instructional paragraph at the top of the meeting or right before the meeting. It's called order. Excellent. Thank you both. Charles, can you please do a brief mic check from the Spanish Channel? Charles, can you please confirm that your mic is working? I'm not hearing you through the Spanish Channel. Yes, you're perfect. Thank you very much. I'd like the interpreter currently on the Spanish Channel to commence translation of the meeting in Spanish. For those just joining the meeting live translation in Spanish is available for the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish. To join the Spanish Channel, click on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish Channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Pablo, can you please restate that in Spanish? Let's go ahead and bring us back. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Schwedhelm? Here. Councilmember Sawyer? Here. Councilmember Rogers? Present. Councilmember Fleming? Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez? Present. Mayor Rogers? Here. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present. Right. City Manager Smith, if you could please introduce item three. Good afternoon, Councilmember Rogers and members of council. Item 3.1 is a downtown city asset surplus strategy. It is recommended by the Planning and Economic Development Department, Transportation and Public Works and Real Estate Services, that council hold a study session to receive information, ask questions, discuss, provide feedback, and give direction to staff regarding the downtown city asset surplus strategy. This presentation will be given by Jill Scott, Real Estate Manager. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Councilmembers. I am here today with Reisa De La Rosa of Economic Development and Andrew Triple of the Planning Department to discuss downtown asset surplus strategy. Next slide, please. So creating a downtown asset surplus strategy is something we've been working towards with staff and council for some time now. The city has contemplated many different alternatives to invest and promote an investment in the downtown, as well as options to manage the organization's very significant deferred maintenance of city buildings and of parking structures. So through the housing action plan, the downtown stationary specific plan and infill developer attraction, the city has really prioritized, promoted, and tried to incentivize affordable housing and mixed use projects in the downtown. And although we know these have been really successful, we do know that more housing is needed throughout our city and specifically in the downtown. So tonight staff is just really seeking council's direction and feedback on an asset strategy for the downtown. And this would be putting those city assets to work to create more housing for the community. And just to be really clear, we are looking at parking assets as part of the strategy. Staff is looking at parking assets with replacement of public parking. So we are looking for replacement of public parking on those assets with the addition of housing. And then I'm going to turn the next slide over to Raisa. Okay, so good afternoon, mayor and council members. So to start us off, we thought it would be helpful to walk back a few years to remember why and how we came to emphasize downtown infill housing development. So if you recall, because housing and in particular affordable housing was and, you know, really remains both a local and statewide crisis in 2015, council elevated housing as a tier one goal. And as a result of that, staff began working on the housing action plan, the mission for which was to facilitate the construction of housing for all, specifically meeting the housing needs for this full spectrum of household income groups, including those currently living within the city and those relocating to the city in the future. So that the housing action plan was approved by council in 2016. And it includes the five program areas you see on the slide, which are to increase inclusionary affordable housing, to achieve affordable affordability by design in market rate projects to assemble and offer public land for housing development, improve development readiness, and increase affordable housing investments in partnerships. So of these program areas relevant to today is program three for the assembling and offering a public land for housing development. And specifically under that goal is the tactic of identifying city and other public parcel suitable suitable for housing and to establish a process for development. So while I don't have the most recent data on hand, at the time the report was created nearly 50% of Santa Rosa residents were renters with 9% of families below poverty level. And in addition, in the report, it was recognized that about we had I think at the time about a 1% vacancy rate for residential rental units, you know, in 2016. So obviously we had a severe supply of vacant units. And it was this kind of data that really spur the aggressive and creative responses that make up the housing action plan and that that kept housing as a council priority since 2015. Next slide. So as the plan was approved in 2016, it was known at the time how prescient it would be to laying the groundwork to expedite the rebuild of homes you lost in the 2017 subsfire, but also to ensure we maintain our momentum to pursue housing for all throughout the city with with that extra emphasis of the downtown area. After the fire, we did a lot of interviews with our major employers. And there was an increase and or sort of I don't want to say was increased interest. There was at that time we understood the level of interest our major employers had in seeing additional downtown housing, both market rate and affordable housing, and how important that was to the recruitment of the workforce that they were worried about, especially after the fire losing. So it was, you know, through the process of the rebuild and the that we were able to sort of expedite and make sure that we maintain the efforts to pursue housing throughout the city. But it was in the the as a result of the conversations and specifically to the plan highlight that we gave extra emphasis to the downtown area. And through these efforts, we had really the great fortune to partner with the Council of Infill Builders to host a developer convening in 2018. And the result of that convening was twofold. First, we got the accelerated infill developments in report that you see on the slide here on the left, in which key barriers were identified and solutions recommended to encourage and expedite infill development. But we were also introduced to new developers from outside of the area who brought new ideas and a lot of resources to the table. Also in 2019, we worked with the Barrier Council to host a developer tour of the downtown and Rosalind areas that also spurred additional interest from a number of out of various developers who participated. I think on that tour, we had it was sold out. We had at least 50 developers. And again, they were mostly from the Bay Area. But we also had developers coming from out of state just a few of them from out of state. And basically, this is all to say that despite the pandemic, we still have momentum to our housing plan. We are still starting to, or I should say not so, but we are starting to see the fruits of our labor in the projects that were entitled or are currently under development right now in our downtown. And, you know, even this year, we still have interest in our downtown city-owned parcels. So before I hand it off to Andrew Triple, who's going to talk through the next slides on policy and some of the other elements that in part came out of the Housing Action Plan, I just want to remind you on the whole, as a plug for housing, that housing plays a vital role in creating the kind of balanced community that allows for fiscal, economic, and environmental sustainability over the long term. And our need for housing is multifold, obviously, but it does carry specifically in the downtown. The housing sort of brings along weaker performing uses, which given the tumultuous year we've had is an important element to our economy. So next slide and these will be presented by Andrew Triple. Great. Thank you, Ryse, and good afternoon, mayor and members of the council. To orient ourselves around today's downtown land use and development strategies, it is helpful to review the most recent policy decisions that are shaping downtown. The downtown station area specific plan update was adopted by council in fall 2020. Codification of the plan was accomplished with amendments to the zoning code and design guidelines that were also adopted in fall 2020. The adopted plan reflects six key planning goals. The top three were more residents and jobs near transit, more housing at all levels of affordability, and increased diversity in land uses. Next slide, please. And then the remaining three goals were enhanced historic character, improved connections, and new art and cultural facilities. The key land use policies that have been codified as a result of the downtown plan adoption include establishing new core station maker and neighborhood mixed use general plan land use designations as well as the zoning districts to implement them, regulating height and density through floor to area ratio or FAR, focusing ground floor activation on key streets and pursuing it largely through design approaches, eliminating the minimum parking requirement, and excluding parking from FAR calculations, and then finally using surplus parking supply to incentivize development. Next slide, please. The new downtown plan is most recent in a series of policy initiatives to support housing development. Other initiatives include permit streamlining and reduced discretionary entitlement requirements delivered through the Resilience City Development Measures established in 2018 following the Tobes Fire. The incentives made available through the downtown high density multi-family residential incentive program that was also established in 2018, the federal opportunity zones that were established in 2019, and the Renewal Enterprise District or RED, which is a regional housing action program in which the city is a partner that was established in 2020. We're happy to go into greater detail on any of these policy initiatives, but for the sake of time, let's turn to what we now know about today's housing production in the downtown area. Next slide, please. So the data reflected on this slide show housing development activity from 2016 through 2021. At the end of 2021, 1,371 dwelling units or living spaces because ADUs and junior ADUs are not classified as dwelling units were either constructed under construction or had received planning approvals. The projects reflect a mix of market rate and affordable housing types with 350 units or about 25 percent approved as affordable housing projects. Today's inclusionary housing ordinance, which Ryza referenced in her presentation, requires that the downtown projects either pay a housing impact fee or provide at least 4 percent of 4 rent units for low-income households or 5 percent of 4 sale units for moderate-income households. Next slide, please. For 2023 through 2031, the reason rena housing allocation is not additive. In other words, the city's new rena housing allocation through 2021 is 4,685 units. The housing element update, which is ongoing right now as part of the general plan update, will identify sites citywide that can accommodate the rena requirement for housing development. In the downtown area, it is projected as part of the downtown planning process that 7,000 new housing units could be developed as a result of new policies, primarily the move using FAR implemented through adoption of the downtown plan. As part of the housing element update, we are reviewing the effectiveness of programs identified in the current housing element to determine if they should be carried forward in the update. A focus of that review is housing for special needs groups, including income-restricted households. One program included in the current housing element directs the city to acquire sites for potential affordable housing projects with subsequent disposition to affordable housing providers. Next slide, please. And then I think we're going back to Jill to follow up with the next series of slides. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. So we're talking this afternoon about putting city assets to work for the community, essentially. And we're looking at this through the goal of program three that Reisa spoke to earlier of the housing action plan, and that's to assemble and offer public land for housing development. So the actions under the surplus strategy are directly related to that, and really there would be two goals that are actions we would meet. The first being what we're talking about today is identifying downtown land assets that are really underutilized properties that could be made available for housing or mixed use development projects while still including that public use, such as public parking. And then the second portion of the strategy is to consider the public-private partnership options to address deferred maintenance of property assets. So back in 2019, staff and JLL consulting looked at really studied the downtown area and the options for this and looked at increasing availability of downtown lands for housing by really consolidating government services and making them denser, streamlining the access for the community to services, and while trying to solve that growing deferred maintenance issue, and also a big benefit would be freeing up some buildable land in the downtown area. So although staff has not had a chance yet to bring forward in a study session the public-private partnership, we call it P3 partnership options. We do plan on doing that in the near future, but we are bringing it up today because it does relate to some of the parcels that we'll be talking about in the next slides. So both of these actions that we're talking about, the two actions, looking at underutilized land and the potential for a P3 really alleviate the city of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance concerns associated with City Hall complex, the parking assets, they advance the hat goals for much-needed housing in the community and streamline government services. Next slide please. So some of you may have seen this presentation that we have as part of the downtown stationary specific plan, and this really lays out the downtown and the city-owned lots in some of the state and federal buildings as well. Some of those starred lots are really the catalytic sites that we're looking at for development, and that planning has highlighted in the downtown stationary specific plan. And why we're showing you this today is because we wanted to point out to you in red lots 10 and 11, which we'll be talking about today, as well as garage five, which is in just a little bit below that. Thank you. And then the two sites that have stars on them, and one is in red. So Central Library, the White House site, and the City Hall site. So we won't be discussing today the these three sites, Central Library, White House, or City Hall site, because that is really part of the second part of the strategy, which is strategy, excuse me, which is the potential public private partnership. So today we'll be talking mostly about 11, 10, and garage five. Next slide please. So considerations. We really reviewed the staff that you're looking at here today, along with consultants and other staff really reviewed and considered all the downtown assets for marketability, viability, underutilization, and what would, what is the potential for redevelopment. And so after looking at the P3 strategy, the ones that came to the top of the list at the time were the third street garage, which is located on the corner of third and D, and we call it parking garage five, as well as two surface lots, surface parking lots, which are located on fifth street, and that'd be parking lot 10 and parking lot 11. And then again, we're not talking about the White House site, or the City Hall site at this time, because that is included in the public private partnership strategy, which is the second part of the strategy. And so in looking at these and talking about this internally, due to many things, market conditions, lot size, specific needs of the surrounding area, staff really believes that garage five, which is the third street garage is currently likely the best opportunity to launch a market test for redevelopment of city assets in the downtown area. Next slide please. There's further considerations that we need to bring forward and for Council's consideration today. And that is the parking asset deferred maintenance. So the third street garage has about a little over three million in deferred maintenance and parking lots 10 and 11 about 1.5 million each. We've been deferring this maintenance because we've been going through this plan process and looking at all of the potential for these lots. And so we are awaiting Council's decision tonight on while we are moving forward with the lot maintenance or if we won't. Next slide please. So if Council directed staff this afternoon to move forward with a strategy, we've put together what could be a potential strategy launch timeline. It could look something like this. Garage five on third street would be considered for the first asset to market tests for development. And then we could move forward for consideration in the upcoming years of garage 11 or we could do, excuse me, lot 11 or we could do lot 11 at the same time as garage five. We would recommend that lot 10 be removed from development consideration at this time and that we probably should move forward with the reconstruction projects on that lot. And then at the same time and in the near future, staff would return to Council with a study session on the potential for the public-private partnership options. Next slide please. So in 2019, the State of California updated its surplus lands act and this update really changed things for city governments, cities, counties, and agencies. And it made things a little more difficult, I will say, or challenging for development in downtown areas, especially infill development on government property. And so what the new SLA we call it says is that government owned property must be declared surplus by its governing body prior to disposition or request for or proposal RFPs for development, even with continued use such as public parking. So we looked at this and we said, wow, this doesn't really make sense. Our parking lots are not surplus. We still need parking. We still have a community government use, but we have to declare these surplus. So we worked with HCD, the State Department of Housing and Community Services and their attorneys, and we've been working with them for almost a year now to try and streamline this process and work within the law to make this to make development of housing, which is the goal of the surplus lands act. And our current situation worked together in harmony. Unfortunately, we have not found a way to streamline this process yet. And so we do think that we would have to move forward with bringing these to council to recommend that they be declared surplus. But until the time that we do that up until that time, we will still be working with our outside attorneys to try and find a way to declare these exempt surplus if at all possible. And then the second part of that is we need to then make these available to housing sponsors for affordable housing through a notice of availability to the State Department of Housing and Community Services prior to us putting this out to any private development through an RFP process. So we would take these, put them on the list from affordable housing. We would negotiate with any affordable housing folks, developers, and see if we could come together with replacement parking and the construction of affordable housing on any of these lots that we're discussing. And then see if we can come to a development agreement with them. If we can't, then at that point, we would look to an RFP to outside developers. Now, during this process, doing the notice of availability, that is the time when we would really look to our downtown organizations and community outreach on their input on working with specific developers that we get from the notice of availability. And then also in, if we go forward with an RFP in putting together that RFP and in looking at what we get back from that RFP and responses, we would definitely be working for that downtown input and that business input. Next slide, please. Okay, so we have now the Surplus Lands Act, which is a little more, quite more stringent than it was before, as well as we have a city council surplus policy. Now, in the future, we do plan to come back to council to update our city surplus policy, but for now, we have these two policies that do overlap in a lot of areas, but also have their own sets of requirements. The Surplus Lands Act is more stringent than our surplus policy. And so today, we're looking for a little guidance from council on if we'd like to move forward with our city surplus policy as well as the Surplus Lands Act, or if we'd like to bypass portions of the city surplus policy to streamline and sort of quicken the process. And so a little bit about our city surplus policy, which is outside the Surplus Lands Act, is prior to council review, if we have to declare these parcels or parcel surplus, prior to council doing that, we would need to take them to, again, to the Housing Authority for review, recommendation, and action for recommendation to council. Then we would have to go to Planning Commission to have them review for recommendation and action to council and then proceed to council from there and then through the whole Surplus Lands Act. So today, we'll just be looking for a direction from council on if they would like us to follow that entire process or just the SLA process. Next slide, please. So next steps and all and although these are ordered one through four, likely they're all going to be happening around the same time. So the next step likely is probably number four in which we'll go to close session with council and talk about price in terms for these lots or lot, whichever the council's direction is tonight. If we do follow the city surplus policy as well as the SLA, we'll be looking to go into the Housing Authority for their review next. Then after that, the Planning Commission, then we will bring it back to council for a surplus resolution action. And then in that action for that resolution, what would be included is the reservation of appropriate right away, replacement of all public parking with the addition of housing or potentially mixed use projects. And then, of course, those developments would have to meet all the guidelines in the general plan, the zoning code, the bike and pedestrian master plan and the downtown station area specific plan. Next slide, please. At that point, once it's declared surplus, we would submit a notice of availability to HCD, making the property available to approved affordable housing sponsors. If we had any of those affordable housing sponsors interested in replacement parking and with the addition of affordable housing, we would negotiate with those interested housing sponsors. That's the time where we would look to our downtown associations and our businesses in the downtown for their input on these. And then we would look to a development agreement of some sort with the housing sponsor for development. Now, if we are not successful in negotiations there or we do not have any interest from affordable housing sponsors with the replacement of public parking, then we would move to an RFP process. And in the development of that RFP process, again, is where we were really looking for community input for our downtown organizations and our businesses in the downtown. So that is the end of our presentation. We're definitely available and willing to answer all of council's questions. But before I turn it back over to the mayor, I did want to just put into context the direction that staff is hoping to get from council tonight. And that would be number one, does council want to move forward with a downtown strategy with any of these lots or garages? If council does want to move forward, which lots or garages would we be moving forward with? And then number three, do we want to follow the city surplus plan policy as well as the SLA process, or do we want to streamline with just the SLA process? And that is the rest of my presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Jill and Raisa and Andrew and everybody else who's been working on this one. I think for the purposes of the discussion, it might be helpful if we put back up the map of the different assets that we're talking about that might make it helpful for council members. Let's go ahead and start with questions from council. Council Member Fleming. Thank you so much, Ms. Scott and Ms. Dela Rosa, for your continued, this is not the first time that we've been working on this and I just want to end Mr. Tripple for your continued dedication to our goals and revitalizing downtown as well as getting housing. I do have a couple of questions. One is pretty simple. Can you just reiterate for the council what the city versus the city process versus the surplus SLA and that you did say it, but I just want to make sure we're all super clear on what the differences and what that would mean in terms of timing and staff resources. Sure, I would be happy to. So the city surplus policy would just add a few steps to the beginning of the process. So city staff would be presenting these, would be setting up a meeting and the materials and presenting these to the housing authority for their review and recommendation. That would be about a probably six week process. Once they reviewed and hopefully recommended to council to declare these a surplus, then we would move to another six week process where we would be taking these to the planning commission for their review and their recommendation to council. Then once that is done, then we'd have another six week process where we would bring these to council for consideration. So those are not steps that are essential to the SLA process. The rest of the steps are overlapping with our policy and even more restrictive than our policy. These are steps that the city has had in our surplus policy. So and although they've been very important in the past on many different lots that we're looking at, it may not be with these. And so we're looking for council's direction on if they think that is appropriate or if we should bypass that and go directly to council. And in your opinion, is there any risk of bypassing it? Because what I can see is that it would streamline the process, but I'm trying to figure out what we trade if we do decide to go that way. Is there anything that pops up for you as a concern? I'm not seeing any major concerns right now because we've worked with housing and we've worked with planning on this. Staff has been instrumental in all of this. And so I think planning staff or housing staff would have been able to bring forward any major concerns, but we are bypassing two public meetings. So that may be a concern to council. Okay. Thank you for that information. And then I have a curiosity about slide 14 with the strategy. And I was just wondering if you could add any more information or context to the reason, the recommendation for the strategy of garage, specifically garage 11 and then removing garage or not garage 11, excuse me, lot 11 and for development and then removing lot 10. Lot 11 and lot 10 seem similar to me in both practice and on the map. And try and understand how you came to that decision might give us a little bit more insight in making this decision. I'm sure I'll start on this one. And Risa, please feel free to pop in at any time on this. So with lot 10 and the businesses that are in front of lot 10, the size of lot 10 is very narrow. The businesses are there have specific needs for large size equipment to come in. And so at this point, we looked at it, it's also one of the lots that's in the worst shape, reconstruction wise. And so we really looked at that, looked at the needs of the businesses there and the size of the lot and determined that this may be the one that we push off into the future. And then lot, garage five, I'll go with next, which is on 3rd and D street. Staff really feels that this is a great sort of center location that would be wonderful for replacement of public parking with the addition of housing. It's probably one of our best locations and a garage that is very old and in need of a lot of maintenance and would be primed for redevelopment. Lot 11, those businesses in front of lot 11 don't have the same specific needs as the ones of 10. And we think with replacement parking and housing, it could work there. It's really council's choice if they want to move forward. We do have, we did currently sell lot two, surface lot two, and they will be developing that in the future with the replacement of public parking. How fast or how slow we move forward with the next lots is really council's decision. I just do want to remind council that in within these agreements, we do need public parking and we do need to retain public parking. So within all of these agreements, if the developments don't happen for some reason, or the market changes for the worst, hopefully it'll be better. But if it changes for the worst that the city will buy back these assets as part of the agreement because we cannot you lose parking assets. So I would just caution that we should probably think about that while we're deciding how many lots we move forward with. And if we do something like sell lot 11 for development with the funds that are made from that go into the parking district for our capital improvements? Yes, they will go back to the parking enterprise fund, which is specifically for capital improvements. Excellent. Thank you for answering my questions. If I could just add just one thing, we did do a massing study on lots 10 and 11 and they are feasible. There's in addition to the reasons for lot 10 that Jill said we have less interest even as early as 2019 when we did the developer tours, we had less interest in lot 10. So in combination to the use needs of that lot, that's one thing. And lot 11 is feasible. We did do a massing study and there is interest and it's always been one of the lots that has carried more interest with this position. Okay, that's really helpful to know. Thank you. Thank you, councilmember. If there's any questions to my right. So Jill, just to clarify, so the recommendation from staff in particular to lot 10 is not to move forward with that at this point and actually to invest and repay by assumed since it's a flat lot and since it does need a lot of work, is that correct? That is correct. Okay. For garage 5, what I've heard the most from downtown businesses is a little bit of a called PTSD around the construction of the square and most of the business owners that I've talked to have been fully in favor of the vision of what downtown will be 15, 20 years from now with these sorts of projects moving forward, but really weary of the impact that it's had on their business or that it will have on their business after a pandemic after having been shut down longer for the square. How are we going to incorporate the voices of the downtown business owners to make sure that if this does come to fruition, that it's not just a shared vision of the development itself, but also a mitigation of the impacts while we get that up and built. That's a great question. So if we do go forward with an RFP, we would definitely like to work with the downtown organizations and the businesses to create and craft this RFP for this development so that it's a development that not only works for the city, it works for the community and it works for the developer. I mean, what is the point of doing it if it doesn't work for everyone? Also, looking at the downtown and the PTSD you talked about, which I completely understand, there are growing pains with this and so we realize that parking is one of those and our parking department will make every effort to find different locations for those folks to park, to make parking available for the public and to limit their concerns and really to make those downtown businesses a part of this conversation and figuring out how we make all this work. And then, Mayor, if I may, I would add that one of the fundamental differences in the reunification of Courthouse Square is that it re-bifurcated the North-South you know, corridor and the impacts of learning a new way for our community to move around the downtown, the impacts won't be as great when you're looking at some of these lots and garages. There is an issue with, you know, Third Street is our major east-west corridor through the downtown but it's, I think, slightly less of a lift to reimagine your transit compared to what we did with the square. And then the second thing that I would say is, to Jill's point, the, there are growing pains in our downtown and though we, it was difficult when the square was developed, it did spur in the end when it was completed new economic opportunities. And so we did see some movement and some expressed interest, again, from developers in that when the city put in, invested in the downtown, we did then get the hotel and some new, some new movement in long health parcels that we had not previously expected and a renewed interest in development facing the square. So it is a bit of a seesaw, I guess. No, I appreciate that. So I've heard clearly from staff and I think that don't want to speak for colleagues, they can speak for themselves. I'd be supportive of the DAO and the downtown businesses being a part of that conversation in the crafting of the RFP and then also discussion on the proposals that come back from it. There also is the first part of the surplus lands act where you have affordable housing projects that are being proposed. And I'd like to see as those come in some form of voice for downtown businesses to be at the table there as well, just in the event that we don't even get to the RFP process because a fantastic group of projects come in. Have we been in any discussion or is there a path or an avenue to be in discussion with the county in particular on this asset, given that they are in the process of moving downtown and knocking on some wood here, it will be huge stakeholders in the future of the downtown as well. We've had some preliminary conversations with the county about this, but nothing directly yet. As we're working with them on their parking needs in the downtown, we'll definitely have future discussions. Great. And then my last question is just from a staff capacity perspective. Do we have the capacity from staff to manage two of these potential sites moving forward, garage five and lot, I think it's 11, the one that's the most westward. Do we have the staff capacity to do both at the same time, or would it be better fruits for our labor to focus on one asset such as garage five and let staff really focus their attention on that? From the real estate services perspective, it would be easier for us to focus on garage five first and to move forward with that, but we could bring on consultants if council would prefer to work on both at the same time. Andrew, Raisa? Well, it's a heavy lift, but everything is possible as we've seen repeatedly in the past five years. And I would support Jill in that we can start with garage five and then bring things on following that. I don't know if the city manager had anything that she wanted to add. Council Member, Mayor Rogers, one of the things that I believe we should focus on is just intentional engagement. So I think it would be best if we brought one project at a time and then, you know, thought about the next project. I think it is important the community engagement piece is going to be a heavy lift and considering we're coming out and we want to go into economic recovery, I think we should have an intentional focus on how we stage these projects. So I would prefer that we do one project at a time. Okay. Council Member Sawyer? Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Jill. What I want to hear is a reiteration of the path that does not endanger our ability to maintain the parking. So I know that each time there were several options and the word surplus parking to me is um are two words that I wouldn't necessarily put together at this time. I know in the future we will probably have surplus parking but I don't see that on the I'm truly surplus parking. I don't see that on on the horizon anytime soon. So I think there I think there is a I want to take the path or I want to can you tell me the path that would most endanger or the ability to what path would compromise conceivably our ability to replace the parking that would be disturbed by the project. That's the one I want to avoid. Which one which one is the which one would would be the most what damaging to our parking numbers potentially as far as development? Which location or which process? Which process? That's that's the process that I'm interested in not following. In other words if we were to put it out to declare it surplus garage five for instance and then have a um a developer come in and they were uh able to give us a project that did not include the maintaining our parking is that a possibility if they were able to make that pencil because I can't believe they're given the cost of per space of parking these days. I can't imagine anyone coming in and just putting in an affordable housing project and still be able to replace the parking numbers. There's several parts to that question that I'd like to share with you. First of all I agree with you I think it would be very difficult for a hundred percent affordable developer to be able to replace parking as well but that is how the city would put out the council's direction. That's the staff's intent anyways. That is how we would put it out is that we do require replacement of public parking. There's two different ways to look at when you're talking about surplus and I I'm sure you probably understand this I just want to make sure that everyone listening does. We did do a parking surplus study in 2019 pre-COVID. We do have a little over a thousand spaces of surplus parking in the downtown and that was pre-COVID when it was busier. So even though we do have some surplus in the downtown our intention is not to take away from that surplus with any of these projects. So once we put the project out we declare it surplus and I again completely understand that that does not make sense. It doesn't make sense to most of us but it is part of the process. Once we declare it surplus we put it out to those HCD developers. It will be for replacement parking if they can't do it and then we go to an RFP process. It has to that RFP process has to be the same as the process that we put out through the surplus lands act to the affordable housing developers. So if we wanted to consider if council wanted to consider less than the full amount of replacement parking that would have to be considered in the first part and in the second part. So with the affordable housing developers and in the RFP process. So it is an expensive endeavor especially since we've seen replacement parking numbers as high as 50,000 per space. So really high number right now. It doesn't mean that a market rate development and a affordable development together could not do the majority of the replacement parking but we don't know until we put it out and we see what we get back. We look at the performers and we make sure that there's a there there that there's looking you know working with the downtown working with our city staff working with the council. Is this a project that benefits the city benefits the downtown and the developer. Does this work for the community. That's why we're putting this forward as sort of a strategy for a market test. This process I think I'm answering your question council members where we have no intention of endangering the parking with this process and it it could potentially make make it so that it's not a doable process and a performer for a developer but we just don't know until we put it out and test the market. Thank you and I think what I was concerned with was the the possibility that we could where we would not be able to to request or demand condition the project on replacement parking and I was thinking that if you were if we were to go down the affordable housing we were to surplus it and then put it into the to put it out to affordable housing projects that indeed they could bypass the condition of replacement parking but that is not the case we could we can condition we can condition it at in any of the paths that we take we can condition it to supply us with at least comparable numbers in parking regardless of which path we take that is correct and even in the resolution when we declare the property surplus we will say that it is with some replacement of public parking. So after after we hear from the public public I'm going to be interested in hearing a strong recommendation coming from the economic development and and and you Jill on on the direction to take which gives us the gives us what we what we're looking for at least in the near future and potentially into the far future for our downtown I'm not I'm not looking at this point into reducing or or endangering our parking numbers because they are so right now very vital to the health of our downtown at the same time that the that the new development is also vital to the to the economic health of our downtown and is definitely in our future. Thank you councilmember. Madam city attorney last question I had for you was related to a correspondence that all council members received alleging that this would be inappropriate to move forward with this with the CEQA designation that this action tonight in it of itself doesn't require a CEQA analysis can you address that a little bit for the council? Certainly this is a study session there will be no action no formal action taken yes the council will discuss the different options will give some direction to staff but because there is no formal action taken and this is such a preliminary step there is no no requirement for any CEQA review at this stage certainly as we move into the next stages there will be appropriate CEQA review undertaken at that time but at this at this time this particular study session is exempt from CEQA requirements. Okay councilor there are any other questions before I go to public comment? All right seeing none if you're interested in providing comment on today's study session go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom we also have the podiums open for folks if they'd like to join us to make comment here in the chamber I'll start with Natalie followed by Callum. Can you hear me? Yes we can. Perfect Natalie Natalie Valfour representing our poor business center so I was going to make only one point but listening to the conversation I'm going to throw something else in there so I think it would be good to ask staff I would love staff to explain when they say replace public parking what that means because let's say garage five has a I think it has 194 spaces you tear down the garage you put 194 spaces back in addition to residential above so the increased demand reduces supply and this is the explanation I have continued to been given over many meetings with staff so just wanted if you could clarify staff to clarify about that would be great so regarding surplus and how garage five can be deemed surplus I read the SLA and I'm not sure and maybe you guys have lawyers I know better than me but it doesn't make sense how that parcel in and of itself can be considered underutilized just because the city doesn't have underutilized areas because it's actually 77% utilized in your downtown specific plan under mobility it's it has a table if you guys want to look at it at some point and garage five is 77% which is most and it's actually 11% higher than the second highest so staff also brought up maintenance and I understand that but I don't see how that leads to surplus I get maintenance I get the need for housing I get all of that but this is surplus through the SLA so if that can be explained that would be great as well and so really my request today oh actually sorry one more thing is when there is a discussion about disruption of businesses and property owners there is a short term but there is also a long term and I've never seen a report or a study provided showing yes here is the potential negative impacts to the business community it is always yes here is the positive impacts of housing and here maybe can the businesses deal with it so if we could have some sort of this happen in the specific plan too I went through that entire process and it's never from the eyes of the business owners so whether or not it affects them it affects us our building would die and we'd leave 50 of yes but it affects everyone else not sure but it would be great to be able to have a report that focused on that and as well as the data and evidence staff used to to classify garage five underutilized and thus surplus and able to be looked at in this and this fashion thank you and we don't get into a back and forth during the public comment but I did take down your questions and we'll ask staff to follow up on that after we finish our public comment let's go to Callum followed by other Natalie hello mayor vice mayor council members I'd first like actually to take the opportunity to welcome the city manager to Santa Rosa we're extremely happy to have you on board and very excited to work with you to the matter at hand I would just like to register our support as generation housing and meeting the policy director I would like to register to support for a downtown strategy or market test for garage five while you know the previous speaker she did know you know some concerns that we certainly should have addressed and and I am also very interested in hearing staff's comments the fact of the matter is and I know every single council member every single person in that room on this call understands that affordable housing is of utmost priority at this time and I'm also really excited that we have a variety of projects that are going to be developed over the course of next several years in the railroad square area and so certainly having some sort of availability in terms of parking space is useful but we are always at the mind as you know housing advocacy organization and as someone as a group that promotes walkable communities that less parking to the extent possible is always better so that we can drive people towards more transit oriented options public services etc I do understand that replacing parking could potentially be cost prohibitive which might possibly result in a need for market rate developments with our inclusionary ordinance I'm confident that we can still hopefully get a number of affordable units during the process of negotiating so those are my comments I appreciate your time and I look forward to hearing what you guys have to say about this thank you all right thank you James we'll move on to Natalie Hi thank you this is Natalie Chilurzo from Russian River Brewing Company we're located at 725 4th Street thank you Mayor Rogers and fellow council members for taking public comment during the study session also thank you Jill for your informative presentation and thank you to Rice as well we met a few months ago in regards to some of our concerns with lot 10 in particular I understand that there is no action today and I do appreciate you're taking some input by by the public as well so I would just uh just support what Jill had presented in her presentation to remove lot 10 from consideration so I think many of you are aware of our location in downtown Santa Rosa thankfully we're coming up on our 18-year anniversary this year we're also hopefully fingers crossed in the process of extending our lease for another 10 years I know that my landlord is also on this call because we do have a concern that if we do enter into another 10 years on our lease and the city decides to move forward with with developing lot 10 we would have to shut down not necessarily because of the restaurant operations but because of the beer manufacturing operations Jill had alluded to some of our business operations with the large equipment such as weekly bulk gas deliveries we also do daily transfers from of pallets of beer from our Windsor brewery and need to utilize a forklift to access that parking lot we have spent grains picked up on a weekly basis and we also utilize the forklift and then Vinnie and I need to replace our brew house in the next few years and we would need to access the tanks inside of the brewery using large cranes and that can only be done from the back so anyway I just wanted to throw in my two cents today and I just really appreciate everybody's time and I totally support more housing in downtown Santa Rosa thank you well thank you so much Natalie appreciate the comments we'll go to Madonna hi can you hear me yes we can thank you so much for taking my question and our comment uh Mayor Rogers Vice Mayor Alvarez you guys are doing an amazing job I just want to give you a shout out Jill thank you for your presentation my name is Madonna I'm a project director here at Disability Services and Legal Center at 521 Mendocino Avenue and I'm calling just to be in support of the affordable housing and if the projects in the past I know some city has come to us in regards to the disabled community and what housing needs may look like for someone in a bigger wheelchair or you know different forms of you know what equipment they use so I just want to let you guys know that we are still here and available if you need any guidance as far as you know grab bars or maybe the person is a very overweight and in the wheelchair so they need a bigger door those are things that come up quite often for us here so I just want to say that I am in support of having the affordable housing and we are downtown we do support support the housing projects downtown and again thank you and I yield my time all right thank you so much see if we have any other public comments on this study session Mr. DeWitt I'll come to you at the podium thank you my name is DeWitt I'm from Roseland I'm also a member of the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group started over 25 years ago and one of the main things that group did was look to see if any surplus properties were available from city county state or even federal possibilities to utilize for affordable housing you had to be on a list to get notified by the city of any surplus properties and what the strategy might be for disposing of a surplus property one of the dilemmas that's come over the years is the changing of staff has made it so that those surplus property lists are not readily available and distributed to members of the public or organizations interested in utilizing the efforts of surplus property being used for affordable housing it is now time to make sure that you folks remember the Sonoma County Housing Advocacy Group is still interested in doing anything possible to help with affordable housing to be provided upon any property that the city of Santa Rosa declared surplus one of the real dilemmas during the housing crisis the homeless crisis which you continue to declare is you don't save housing that you own you've actually torn down houses over the years I believe the member on the board now the longest time Mr. Sawyer he was here when 17 housing units were torn down on stony point road to build a road widening project afterwards the properties that were left over have just sat there and that could be surplus property here in downtown Santa Rosa you tore down a house across the street from the police department no big deal to you folks yet you still say there's a housing crisis and there's a homeless crisis so any properties that you own in downtown Santa Rosa especially if any of them had residents in them in the past should be utilized again for residential there's an opportunity for you folks to show that you truly are trying to solve the crisis by doing what was once called infill downtown city-centered growth instead of building on the green fields at the farthest edges of the town which is currently what has been happening for the last 20 years so I just want to reaffirm to you folks there are people in the community that want to make sure that we know about every property that's listed as surplus we'll put that in writing now you've heard it here in person Sonoma county housing advocacy group has existed for 25 years and none of these problems have been solved by you thank you thank you mr. Dewitt I'll go ahead and bring it back from public comment first we'll start with a couple of the questions that I heard and I'll start with with you Jill there was a question about will the rfp or will the requirement be suggested to be 194 public spaces replacement plus then potentially the demand for any residential use it will be a requirement for replacement of the public the public parking spots that are in each location so the full amount of public parking spots in that location I would say that we need to work with the community and with planning a little bit more on if we need to increase that parking or what the requirements would be for development in addition with that parking or maybe Andrew would like to chime in the one thing I would like to add to just for context is there is a group across the city including public works transit planning where we're looking at parking at home and downtown development and parking needs generally to align it better with our services through the transit and transportation department etc so it's we're not looking at parking and isolation and assets and isolation we're looking at at it over the long term for our broader city goals right and thanks Jill I think and rice I think from a planning perspective because the minimum parking requirement is a development standard in the zoning code we would want to do that study and analysis as part of the RFP development process so that we have a clear understanding of what is needed then going into the RFP process and then subsequent development so that a requirement for parking spaces would then be reflected in in a development agreement rather than to become a requirement of a project asset under those planning review okay thank you there was also a question about or a questioning of the city's process in declaring that garage as underutilized given its 77 percent was the number quoted use can you address that a little bit how did we come to determine that that constituted underutilized or what does that mean within the confines of this the surplus lands act and that's a great question as well we don't mean underutilized as the parking is not utilized it is it is utilized and it's a very important parking location we mean that overall the parking the land itself and the airspace is underutilized so we could make more and a denser um and a denser development to get more for the community more for the city's dollar by including housing and parking together in the space so we're not looking to you know get rid of parking we're not looking to demolish what's on there we're looking to augment what's already there okay and then finally there's the question about the impact for the businesses and i think if i'm reading between the lines a little bit uh and i've heard this a little bit from other business owners we oftentimes talk sort of in a global view of what the projects we do in downtown will do for the overall economics of downtown and for the city but not getting into the sort of the micro view of the direct impact to the existing businesses that are there can you maybe it's reisa can you talk a little bit about what type of analyses we do do and can do uh and how we can take in sort of specifics from those businesses about the short-term impacts and the long-term impacts of these projects as we move through the process i know that's a very broad question well sure i mean we've done market studies um you know specific to development but we can add to the studies and we need to update those anyway um the uh something more specific and calling it more specifically um the impact uh both during development as well as post development when we have more uh residential units downtown um what that means to local businesses i mean on the whole um you know we're seeing an increased you know across the nation i mean i think i was in a tiny town in um in kentucking was surprised that they had more downtown housing and it's kind of a rural um area than we did and i was talking to somebody about and it is it just has to do with the long-term support in the end of the small generally uh small businesses that make up the the um make up downtown so you know housing as vitality to downtown um it offers a 24 seven uh kind of presence um it this presence depending on the density you know helps with um other safety issues um it has the potential to help with safety issues etc but really in the end and you know it depends on what businesses you're talking to of course um but um the opportunity for businesses to have more um uh the patrons of their business more readily available to them matters um and then um some subset to this is you know in our recruitment that economic development is done you know specifically to bring some of the amenities that we know that we need um for example um a grocery store or drug store when we're talking to some of the big providers um you know their answer to us is we're not interested because you do not have the density um so once you you don't have enough of people living in um you know per square mile right um specific to the downtown and so it's a little bit of a chicken egg in terms of what what kind of businesses or additional businesses and amenities we do recruit um we do have a um have been directed particularly by national chains that provide some of the larger um amenities the directive to to add residential housing in the downtown so um hopefully that answers that um we can do additional studies and we need to and um in the meantime we have um models um and input from other areas right so now before I bring it back to council members for comments Jill can you go through the three things that you're asking for direction from council on uh one more time yes so I'd be happy to so um number one does council want to move forward with the downtown asset strategy on one or more of the parcels that we've discussed and number two um which specific parcels um and in what order would council like a staff to um to consider and um the third one would be do we want to follow the city surplus um guidelines as well as the SLA or do we want to go directly to council and then follow the more stringent SLA process okay I heard council member Sawyer with some pretty strong opinions on this one so I'm going to start at his end of the dais thank you mayor um well I am interested in in moving forward with our downtown strategy um the garage the was recommended in garage 10 or a lot 10 in leaving that um for another time another discussion and um and then put starting with garage five and then if there was a um uh an opportunity to do some um work if necessary on 11 um it is an old surface lot all of our surface lots are old actually and garage five is our oldest garage and probably is definitely in need of major work if we weren't going forward with with a project um so I am looking to um if we have to I mean I don't like calling it surplus because it doesn't feel like surplus parking to me or but it is an old building I'd like to go through a process that that um does uh you put it out with an RFP and I believe that that is if I'm not mistaken that would be the city's surplus process am I am I mistaken in that Jill so it's all one process um which gives which gives us the most protection sorry about that I was having trouble with my meeting um the it's all one process really um when it comes to the RFP so we would go um to we would declare it surplus then we would go through the surplus landsac process of putting it out to um low income developers affordable housing developers if that did not work then we would go with an RFP the process for the surplus policy is does does council want uh staff to go to through our policy first which would add the layer of going to the housing authority and to the planning commission prior to coming to council to declare it surplus or does council want us to go just bypass those steps go directly to council and then proceed with hcd list and then an RFP as as the subject matter expert which one which of those options would you would you be um uh recommending to the council um you know we would like to expedite this as and streamline it as much as possible and the SLA process is already quite um long and more stringent than our policy so we would prefer to come directly to council and then well I should only speak for myself but um real estate services would prefer to come directly to council and then move through the whole SLA process well being able to expedite the process is part of the part of for me part of the equation that I would like to um uh support so I would support that the going directly to council then using the using the city's process um of surplus etc and and taking your recommendation that's where I would go council member sped up thank you mr. mayor and thank you for all the presentations on this very vital issue to the health of the city of Santa Rosa and I really did appreciate the explanation of surplus because I was struggling with that reading this whole process but your explanations were very helpful and you know I appreciated it either you talked about the chicken and egg situation where and I think the way you started this jail with work and harmony because I think we all recognize we need parking and housing but what comes first and what's the best way to do that so you know for me um I do want us to move on this process prioritize garage five I'm also supportive of removing lot 10 from this process and I am also in support of stream aligning the process and any lessons learned with this first um experience with garage five we apply that learnings to any future processes moving into the future thank you council member rogers okay uh so I would like to um move forward with um garage five um in favor of definitely uh what involves public engagement because I believe that that is important for us to have public engagement um and I do support the rp process because I also believe that that is very important for us to have uh that process um I don't even know if these go together um because the more you explain it the more I get confused but um in favor of it being expedited um and uh to remove lot 11 the math isn't up 10 remove 10 sorry yeah lot 10 there we go so those are all my in supports thank you council member Fleming thank you mr mayor I concur with my colleagues and what I like about this process is that staff is doing an excellent job of balancing the the fact of the matter which we know that bringing housing affordable and marker eight housing downtown will bolster our business community but that in that process you know the the truth on the ground is that it is difficult and what I really like about miss chelorzo's comments in particular is that she went walk through the steps of how her business would specifically be impacted and it's really helpful to understand how the space and the space around a business is vital to a business and our business community is is an important and essential stakeholder to downtown as is providing them and us with the benefits of having the housing so I like the 30 000 foot view that we hold as a council and mediating that with your excellent outreach and input and so I am in favor of the expedited process of the surplus lands act I'm in favor of starting with garage five I think that it's um going to be a challenging project to start with garage five but it also presents us with the greatest benefit for our inputs and then like council member Sawyer said we can take that as a test study and and use the lessons learned to apply it to to other projects in the city and then I am fully in support of removing garage or excuse lot 10 from the equation at this time all right mr vice mayor thank you mayor I do have a couple questions uh in regards to the statement of the buyback program uh would the buyback price be the market rate or the original price which we sold the the property at it depends on what we negotiate but we always try to negotiate the original price that we sold the property for thank you in regards to the SLA in comparison to the city uh policy from my understanding it'd be saving us at least three to four months uh in the process but I also heard that when it came to neighborhood meetings or concerned citizens two meetings would not be had did I understand that correctly if we went through the expedited process well we wouldn't have you having a housing authority meeting and a planning commission meeting on it but we would still definitely be having many meetings with the downtown organizations and the businesses for community engagement during this rfp or during the first projects first process with the affordable housing members so I don't think that those processes would um expediting this process would take away from any community engagement I'm very happy to hear that and with that being said I I am definitely in support of moving forward uh with garage five uh and leaving uh lot 10 out of the equation for now and uh I do prefer the SLA uh method and and I do love that we're we're seeing an incorporation of mixed use with the residential as well as the the parking and I guess my last question would be is there a model and I have not seen it where we have commercial on ground the first ground and we have parking above it and then residential above that is that something that I don't think it's ever happened in in San Rosa but I'm also looking at the Bethlehem Towers and seeing how the sky might just be the limit I can't think of a model like that in Santa Rosa I actually can't think of a model like that that I've seen in other cities right so maybe you have yeah normally we see some sort of parking on the ground floor maybe with a mix of of um mixed use or commercial yeah I've seen a variety of different um ways in which parking um is situated in other cities generally in bigger cities so I've seen um things in San Francisco and LA for example right I think the specifics of it sorry Andrew oh no no that's fine and I think to add to that you know it oftentimes to be able to do what they call those minor buildings on the ground floor that that has the mixed use component to it then to have several um uh layers of parking and then to follow up with the residential component above that oftentimes depends upon the lot size you have to be able to have that space to construct you know the liner buildings and and um and then the parking access as part of that ground floor um program so there there it could be the reality that this this particular site would not be conducive to that approach but you know certainly a development team I'm sure would examine that as uh as part of their um design process and as a quick example of that um on the liner thing um so I think garage seven if I recall correct not cross seven the seventh street garage um if I recall correctly had some space in front of it so that it could have it could accommodate some small retail and then the parking behind that never came to fruition but I think um it was Santa Rosa's attempt at one point um to at least have uh active ground floor in front of the garage that exists behind it so it may not be on the second floor but um we've seen models in that way well thank you all regardless for for elaborating on on this crazy idea or see that we've seen in in definitely larger metropolitan cities and I thank you for that thank you council members so it sounds like you have pretty unanimous support from the council on moving forward on garage five I want to heed the city manager's warning of or I I guess uh vision of being intentional and how we do things and focusing uh to make sure that we are able to deliver quickly and efficiently on things so I'm fine with starting with just garage five I think that that process also allows us to repave uh lot 10 ahead of time and make sure that we have that asset available as well because there will be a disruption to parking as we move forward on this and making sure that we don't over leverage ourselves by having one in construction for a project another underway for a second project and a third that needs to be repaved all at the same time I think will be a nice delicate dance that will benefit the downtown uh ultimately I also want to reiterate what I heard from staff and what I've heard from the community and that's a desire for downtown businesses to be at the table in discussions about what projects come forward in the sla process and then if we go to an rfp ultimately how that rfp is both crafted and who's selected uh just make sure that those voices are heard uh as we move forward I also heard a desire and I think it's a good one for us to consider as we continue to move forward on how we include the the voices of the individual business needs and I know that staff has worked really closely to do so and and that's part of the lot 10 conversation and just making sure that we're again being intentional and how we do that outreach to folks who will be impacted here as we move through the process will be will be uh important for us thank you to Andrew and to Raisa and to Jill uh for all of your work on this uh I'm going to follow your your recommendation on question number three about doing more expedited uh for the sla process and I look forward to us having this back in front of us soon so that we can move this project forward and ultimately help build that vibrancy downtown uh item city manager do you have any comments to add here at the end or do we have sufficient direction from council we have direction we know um which way have we've instructed staff to go and I just want to thank staff um this is a heavy lift and they've been working on this for quite some time so I just want to thank staff and the city attorney's office for bringing this forward today thank you all right thank you everybody we will take a break we don't start our regular council meeting until four o'clock so we'll be back at that time for our regular council meeting and we're back madam city clerk can you please call the roll thank you council member schwedhelm here council member soyer here council member rogers president council member fleming here vice mayor alvarez president mayor rogers here let the record show that all council members are present all right welcome everybody madam city attorney can you please do a report out for our our closed session that we had earlier certainly thank you mr mayor um the council met in closed session on item 2.1 which is a conference with the labor negotiators um the council gave direction to the negotiation team and no final action was taken thank you all right we have no proclamations tonight no presentations let's move on to our staff briefings good evening so the omicron variant continues to aggressively spread throughout the county over the course of the past two weeks sonoma county's case rate has increased to more than 206 cases per 100 thousand per day in the past week over 6000 new cases were reported to county health officials bringing the total number of active cases to 24 000 large gatherings continue to be restricted to the sonoma county's health officers health order excuse me which will remain in effect until february the 11th now for those who are interested in being boosted or vaccinated beginning this saturday the county of sonoma will open a large-scale vaccination clinic at the sonoma county fairgrounds for the next four weeks from 9 a.m to 4 p.m each day these are appointments are not needed but you can make a guaranteed appointment and guarantee your spot on myterm.ca.gov in addition the federal government has launched a website for the public to request for free at home COVID-19 tests per household they can be ordered at covidtest.gov and orders are generally shipped between 7 to 12 days more information about COVID-19 response is available online at socoemergency.org thank you also do we have any questions on item 7.1 all right let's go to 7.2. Good afternoon mayor rogers vice mayor avarez and members of the council magali day is here director of community engagement with a report on the community empowerment plan update so with the mary lou lowrider patrol car project we're excited to announce that the artwork has been completed and the final protective clear coat will be finalized tomorrow january 6th thank you to mani aguilada and his team for all of their work and contributions to making that happen next the car will go to the jihito's car club to have a stereo system installed in addition the interior of the car is currently being upholstered and will be ready in a few weeks after the previously mentioned work next we'll be installing the rims tires and placing the srpd logos on the doors of the car multicultural roots project the project staff have been busy interviewing community members and researching historical stories we'd like to thank the following community members whose stories will be featuring in the upcoming weeks for their time and for sharing their stories and community contributions we'd like to thank dr frank chong chantel riz lores bailey bernice espinoza they're younger lori fong and many others which will be interviewing and featuring soon additionally we have six interviews in the process of being scheduled with members of our black indigenous people of color community and i'd like to take second to recognize and thank our vistas and our vistas are recent sonoma state graduates mattie cox and haley cats who are working day to day on this project and doing an excellent job we're very fortunate to be also working with an amazing intern rocio arjon from the university of san francisco was working on her masters in public health on evaluating the first year of the project of the multicultural roots project and have an evaluation report to share by march the preliminary feedback we've heard thus far has been that one this is our readership's favorite part of the city connections newsletter two community is excited to see black indigenous people of color being highlighted and uplifted three that the public loves learning about santa rosa and sonoma county's history that they've stories that they've never heard before so our team is also working on other ways to expand this program by including video interviews radio interviews and possibly in person displays when it is safe to do so and i just want to thank all of our community organizations who have helped us with with our reach and i've been sharing the multicultural roots project on our social media pages the community advisory board meets tomorrow january 26 at 6 p.m this meeting is open to the public and is comprised of community representatives from each district the cab will be making funding decisions for their fourth quarter community improvement grant cycle the cab grant program offers many grants up to $2,500 for neighborhood and community groups to implement a community project such as creating a mural conducting a neighborhood cleanup day planting a community garden and more so the cab will also hear a presentation on the city's capital improvement program and provide inputs to staff on the cip budget priorities so the meeting is over zoom and the link can be found on srcity.org's website lastly very important operation for our team and our local nonprofits the choice cycle 11 requests for qualifications on january 10th the san rosa violence prevention partnership released the cycle 11 community helping our indispensable children excel grant program requests for qualifications there's currently $750,000 in funds allocated to this grant cycle we are seeking applicants who will provide programming and services that aligned with our most recent community needs assessment and four focus areas from the community safety scorecard those being school readiness school engagement and truancy prevention street outreach and mediation and workforce development so examples of some of these include mental health services pro social activities and prevention and intervention services this critical grant program is funded by measure o and provides many needed services for youth and families which the community requested during the 2020 community empowerment plan listening sessions and through our input and data opportunities so that is the end of my report also my apologies to the translator for being so enthusiastic and saying all this so quickly thank you thank you for your enthusiasm deputy director i'll look to the council to see if there are any questions on your staff briefing tonight seeing none i'd just say keep up the good work on it we'll go to public comment hold on mr. DeWitt we'll go to public comment for our staff briefings like we always do i'll start with folks on zoom if you have any comments go ahead hit the raise hand feature seeing none we'll come back here to the chambers go ahead mr. DeWitt hello sir my name is dwayne deWitt i'm from rosalind i was glad to hear that presentation it's the first time i've seen that director of that little department since july of last year when she spoke outside with mr. Schwedhelm and other staff members and the local chapter of the NAACP it's a good thing that we're having more people from black indigenous and uh cultural groups involved in the things that are occurring but in that one project she was talking about at the first i think it's really important that you not forget the older folks the folks that are in the neighborhoods that might not be on your internet and you're zooming and your approaches you take now there are a number of world war two veterans still around and their spouses who i think would be really good people to talk with and having this historical approach for a multicultural presentation did you know that we had a hero from the united states army's 442nd combat regimental team of the nissai the japanese americans who went and fought for the united states against the nazis in italy in world war two atman's family was over in roseland his wife is still there these are the kind of folks that a lot of people would learn good things from if they were able to participate in this situation but they don't really know about it as a matter of fact i've never seen anybody from this community engagement department unless you come down to their spot and then participate in the way they want you to do it and then it's all carefully structured what used to be considered the community action team that started over 25 years ago morphed into this thing called the community advisory board and it's essentially just become almost like a slush fund for local folks you don't get any money from measure o unless you're in the know that's what i was told by somebody and it's the kind of thing where they're helping those folks that already know it shouldn't be that way it should be something that people in the community can come to someone in the community and they'll work with them the guy that was chosen to work over in roseland nobody really knew he was there and now he's been hired by the city it's quite interesting when you talk about that stuff one of the things i think is really important right now especially in this discussion is tomorrow they're going to talk about giving some money to a large well-funded organization to do a bit of politics now i'm a housing advocate and i'm always there for housers but i don't think generation housing should be coming down here and asking for some of the money for them to do their political approach they've got dough they were founded by st joseph's of uh sisters of st joseph's of orange memorial hospital now providence they got the dough to go thank you thank you seeing no others move towards the podium i'll bring it back any other comments to staff on item number seven thank you so much thank you deputy director we'll move on to our city manager and city attorney reports we'll start with city manager smith tonight good evening mayor rogers and members of council so i am pleased to announce last week the city's north trunk sewer replacement project achieved a major civil engineering milestone completing the successful installation of approximately a thousand linear feet of 18 inches of sewer pipeline at depths up to 35 feet below the surface using trenchless technologies so i would like to thank everyone who contributed to the completion of the significantly critical improvement to our city's infrastructure and hopefully we see more to come thank you all right any questions from council and i apologize city manager where was that pipe put it is the north trunk sewer replacement project i don't have the exact address in front of me but i can get that for you great thank you we'll go on to our city attorney report thank you mr mayor i have two items to report on tonight we'll start with the charter review committee update the charter review committee held its first meeting in mid no mid november as you know there are 21 members on the committee and it's really been a very strong and collaborative group so i've been very appreciative of all of their work the committee is walking through systematically reviewing and discussing the issues that were recommended by council and patty sisco who is chair of the committee is here today by zoom we're looking for her um and she's going to provide the update once she is into the system chair sisco if you are on the zoom can you please raise your hand by dialing star nine or using the raise hand feature in zoom and perhaps while we wait to locate her if we could go on to your update on the third district's seat and then we'll come back uh yes thank you so the second item i'm going to report on is the uh an update on where we are in in the council vacancy um as you'll recall last december um councilmember tibbetz announced his resignation his resignation left the district three seat vacant um with three years remaining in the term so the council met in a special meeting on december 21st and made the decision to go ahead and temporarily fill the position by appointment uh once appointed the the appointee will take the seat immediately thereafter and will serve for about nine or ten months uh filling in temporarily until the next until the november election uh permanent replacement will then be selected by the voters of district three in that uh that november election so in terms of the appointment process um council agreed to a two-week application period uh that began on wednesday january fifth and closed on wednesday january 19th we received six applications those applications are now public um and they are available for public review on the city's website um what i found in looking for them the easiest path was simply to search for city of san arosa um council vacancy um i can give the the full uh uh site name but it's a little bit more awkward and i did find it quite readily um by simply doing that search um the six applicants will be reviewed by the council will be interviewed i'm sorry by the council in a public session on february eighth we haven't yet set the start time but we will we'll talk into the applicants and and we'll set that schedule and that session will be broadcast also want to note that the public was invited to submit interview questions it was that same two-week period of january fifth through january 19th we received no proposed interview questions so the next step is the february eighth meeting uh the interviews the six applicants will be interviewed and the council will is anticipated to make the appointment uh at the end of those interviews so that's where we are on that and let me see if if chair sisco is yet uh on on our zoom chair sisco if you are dialing in by a telephone number with the last four digits of one nine eight four please lower your hand and raise your hand to indicate that is you she's get she's getting on now i just contacted her apologize for that confusion and mayor rogers while we're waiting on that information the location was off chanty road near franklin and humboldt street and i just want to remind you that the reason why the trench trench list technology was so important was because it's a high traffic area you know going up a hill so i just wanted to note that and while we wait for the chairs this uh tramp is this technology transferable to other projects i am certain that it is and we can provide you with some additional information perfect and i understand that chair sisco is now online and available and has she been promoted yes she is on the zoom and can enable her camera to provide her update great thank you very much and welcome chair sisco and thank you great good good to see you i always have trouble with this part so appreciate your patience waiting for me to get in okay um penny sisco uh chair of the charter review committee here tonight to give you just an update of our uh process and progress um on the charter review committee uh our first meeting was held uh november 17th uh it took a little bit of time from the time that you made your appointments to get all the committee members uh set up with uh city email and ipad so that that we could do our work that first meeting uh introduced us to the charter our roles and responsibilities in reviewing potential amendments to the charter and typical orientation matters regarding the brown act in conflict of interest loss the committee uh indicated the desire to look at all of our future agenda items through an equity lens and set about developing a set of principles to guide our work several committee members uh sat on the recent county redistricting committee and brought forward as a template the principles utilized by that committee with the guidance of sakura shields uh our diversity equity inclusion officer uh we shaped our equity principles to fit our charge the committee has agreed to keep the equity principles as a standing agenda item to evolve as the committee sees fit uh the committee understands that there are deadlines to meet in order to get our recommendations finalized and the council we understand that the council will be holding two public meetings prior to finalizing what will go to the ballot our plan is to complete our work by the end of april so that council can meet the august deadline of preparing measures for the ballot hold their two public meetings that they they will need to hold we also understand that council may choose to do some polling on potential recommendations so we understand we have a timeline we received the 12 topics submitted to us by council and separated out the three items that could only be amended by charter as opposed to those that could either be by charter amendment or council ordinance and we prioritize those for consideration first by the committee those three items are council compensation directly elected mayor and rake choice voting the committee prioritized council compensation uh as first to consider and began to review compensation of council to comparable cities the ballot measure uh that uh failed uh on compensation 20 years ago provisions that exist in the charter currently for increasing compensation that have not been utilized and reviewed a copy of a ballot measure that was successful in berkeley in increasing compensation and um i'm summarizing tonight our process but if you have specific questions as to the specifics of our discussion i'm happy to answer those the the general leading of the committee in dealing with increased compensation was to increase compensation the issue being the method of calculating a reasonable number and again the general leading towards some percentage of the adjusted median income as a particular method however committee members uh indicated their decision on this would be tied to our decision uh regarding a directly elected mayor those are linked so it was put on hold until we could have that discussion uh and more fully uh considered the issue of increased compensation um okay so uh our last meeting we took up the uh directly elected mayor uh we received education about a strong mayor versus a council city manager type of process uh we had received one letter from the public in favor of a strong mayor uh excuse me following the uh the staff presentation we agreed to begin the discussion allowing that this would not have to be the final answer from any of the committee members because of the expectation of guest speakers and further information from staffs answering questions that the committee members had made we kind of wanted to get the discussion started and take the temperature of the committee members at that time uh the general direction of the majority of the committee was not in favor of a directly elected mayor however in agreement to fully examine the issue with information and speakers from the next couple of meetings we will continue that discussion uh once that recommendation is finalized we plan to return to council compensation and to uh on to rank choice voting our process uh has been uh to get education provided by staff on the agenda items questions for staff to research and return to the committee and then onto discussion hoping to arrive at a recommendation sue gallagher and rob jackson have been amazing in providing all these answers which i'm sure you understand can be quite uh legalese and thick to the committee and uh locating items of research for consideration committee members have also been bringing in materials for review on a particular agenda item we are meeting every other wednesday from five to seven uh and all of the meetings have been well attended so that's a general summary and again if there if you have any specific questions as to our discussions to this point um we don't have anything finalized yet but we're deep in the in the thick of it right now and um you know getting all kinds of information and education to inform our opinions and thank you very much patty and i'll also mention that we will be putting on to the um uh the city's website a calendar that will outline kind of where we've been and where we're going um you know the uh the later as we get to april there'll be some to be determined uh agendas but at least we'll lay out kind of the path that we're seeing at this point happy to answer your questions and i know patty uh chair cisco is as well all right thank you madam city attorney and thank you to our chair council members do you have questions for the group i'll start at the end with council member rogers no okay council member fleming yes thank you chair cisco for all of your work and the work of the committee could you walk us through the logic of how you the majority of you arrived against uh appointing uh the notion of appointing or having an directly elected mayor um well we we we're not finalized on that decision yet um discussion points uh that were uh kind of not from committee members that were uh not in favor of a directly elected mayor it kind of was it began with what problem are we trying to solve by having a directly elected mayor as opposed to um you know the mayor chosen among the the seven uh of you part of the part of what was brought up was that it could be um seen as detrimental to the demographics that it would be financially straining and kind of the wrong direction for equity and um i take that to mean that um in getting a directly elected mayor uh part of what we did with district elections uh accomplished um a less expensive way for candidates to campaign and it was uh i believe a concern that having a directly elected mayor might be an expensive campaign uh a campaign that only somebody um with more wealth than kind of average uh person might be able to do and that we might be tipping the scale backwards from equity uh to to to somebody that's uh just has more more wealth uh to do the the campaign for an at-large mayor um there were several uh you know former council members that did say the campaigning is expensive and uh again i think the move to district elections was to reduce the cost of that and and this might not be in keeping with that uh there were other issues about particular concerns about legal conflicts with dilution of districts the part of what we would be looking at is um if we had uh a directly elected mayor we would have we have seven districts now that we would be uh moving to six districts with the directly elected mayor and that would be um a dilution of the districts and kind of kind of taking away some things uh from uh you know the public at large um there was concerns that the our method of district elections and the district league district's council but hasn't had a chance to really prove themselves and to see again if if a mayor that oversees the entire city is is really uh an important thing there was concerns that um that uh your method now allowing the rotation among members uh to become mayor allows for growth and team building uh the strong mayor definitely uh there was some some definitely negative opinions about that they were really concerned about how the city would be completely reorganized uh that it might make it difficult to recruit good city managers um so the temperature was not uh it was pretty cold but again we're not done yet we uh we did not have uh the benefit yet of uh mayors themselves that are directly elected that might be able to point to sort of point out a more favorable uh point of view than some of these concerns um also in the meantime uh Sue and Rob are going to be looking into some of the questions and concerns that uh that the committee raised to this point uh there definitely were members that um thought that their arguments good and bad on both sides um so it's but again it's just we don't have all of the uh information at this point to have made a full recommendation but the temperature at this point is cold i hope that answers your question yes it does it's very informative thank you okay council member rogers so um thank you very much for coming to give us an update um and thank you stew and rob for your participation um and thank you all your members i'm just very grateful that you guys are taking the time to to do this i know it was very difficult for myself to choose um who i wanted to be on on the committee but i am um very grateful that you are providing your time and each of you have a level of expertise that you are bringing um to the table in a in a different way of of looking at the items that we have asked you or that we have brought forth um and so i i probably will continue to do this because this is just what i do but thank you thank you thank you um for volunteering your time um because we do not do this very often um as you guys know and this is um very impactful for our city and how we run our city so thank you for your time and please pass that along to everyone thank you it definitely will thank you for your appreciation it's it's a really involved group and um and again with multiple perspectives you all chose very well and they're engaged and involved and i'm sure they'll appreciate you appreciating them council uh vice mayor thank you mayor well i too want to thank the entire uh charter review committee as as they're definitely dedicating their time and energy to making centers a better city uh for myself i was hoping that the rank choice voting could be elaborating and explained for those that might not understand what it means for our voting system yeah that we are we have not taken that up yet uh that's um it's one of it's one of the priorities we really wanted to get through council compensation and the directly elected mayor because those were linked but i believe it's our next meeting we will be having a speaker come and explain that and and then that the committee will be able to take that up but at this point we haven't gotten any information on that thank you i personally will definitely be awaiting to learn more about it as well as i know some of my community has been have been asking the question um my second question is regards to brownock violations i was hoping that you can elaborate what we as council members can do and can do in relationship to interaction with both our appointees and the charter review committee as a whole through the mayor um yes the uh you are welcome to speak to your uh appointees or to speak to other members of the committee um i also want to reiterate i mean it's really been i've been very impressed um with this uh group of uh group group of residents very collaborative very thoughtful very engaged um very sophisticated in their in their discussion and their analysis so really very much appreciated and um you and i would encourage you you're certainly welcome to speak with your appointees or with others um but also you've appointed this committee to do this work so um i i i really encourage you to you know give them the freedom to do that so um i also am happy to to respond to a couple of other things quickly if if you'd like in terms of the ongoing discussion on at-large mayor uh next week the count the committee will be meeting again on wednesday five to seven and we will be hearing from the directly elected mayor from petaluma and also the directly elected mayor from uh san rafael so that i think will be helpful for the committee and then rob and i will also be bringing back responses to a whole series of questions that the committee had so um that should be an interesting meeting on rank choice voting uh yes the committee has not yet gotten there and we will be having diva provo from the registrar of voters will be coming and giving that presentation in a nutshell um i'll i'll just mention each voter ranks their choices so if you had three candidates each voter would rank their first choice their second choice their third choice if a one of the candidates receives a majority of the vote that candidate wins uh if no one receives a majority of those votes then the lowest uh the the the candidate that received the lowest votes their votes would then go to the second choice and so forth until one candidate has received a majority of the votes again it's a little bit complicated but um uh we'll have uh the full presentation a full explanation of the system um not this next meeting but the following meeting so okay i just want to say thank you to the chair uh miss cisco for your efforts on this i have to corral six people you have to corral 21 so by my non-mathematician uh outcome your job is three times harder so thank you so much for uh for for those efforts uh council are there any other questions on this update otherwise we'll go to public comment i just want to say i appreciate and uh the the honor of serving as chair and i'm loving every minute of it so thank you all certainly uh be careful what you wish for uh type scenario but we're happy to have you leading the helm thank you we'll go to mr duit for comment hello duane duit from roseland i'm very interested in this topic because 26 years ago a petition was put together for a ballot initiative to have district elections and a popularly elected mayor this was just after the city had gone to seven uh council members thinking that that would help with more representation actually what's occurred over all these years is there was no more extra representation of the disadvantaged it was pretty much more strength for the business community and more business as usual the petition that was put together in the past was done with an attorney by the name of uh dick day a good man who believed in democracy there are still copies of it available and we'll make it available to this charter review committee because essentially right now the process is still the same with the chamber of commerce and the sonoma county alliance have far more power and deciding who becomes the mayor of our city than the residents if we have a popularly elected mayor there's an opportunity that we can get a grassroots representation to help us lead our own way rather than us constantly following almost a slavish devotion to what the business community wants with six districts we can also hopefully keep the more representation we've gotten for disadvantaged communities right now with this new redistricting that you're about to undertake we may end up having mr alvarez and miss rogers run against each other when they just got on here this is the kind of thing that we need to avoid we need to get the disadvantaged communities of santa rosa better represented in the decision making process planning is politics and the charter review is essentially a planning process which is politics you've got a lot of folks that are collaborative because they're already thinking alike this is an exclusive group it basically wasn't really well advertised to the community people that i know they were like i never saw anything in the paper about it as a matter of fact why don't you put things in the santa rosa press democrat now for those folks that aren't connected into the internet like you folks are they're still voters they're still taxpayers and they need to have their voice heard too it's kind of funny to them that the first thing that's coming up is increase the compensation for the council members rather than the idea of the popular elected mayor the rank choice voting and finding out what the community wanted to be in the charter review this was basically what the politicians wanted to be reviewed so please try to make it more inclusive we'll get that copy of the 1996 petition into you so that you'll be able to see that this was already discussed it was already looked at six districts popular elected mayor well i'll be better off for it thank you thank you mr do it any other comments go ahead yes 8.2 regarding the third district appointment i would like to see anybody who melts money from the government excluded from consideration because the government should not be a user of playground to make money and i'll give you an example to clearly illustrate what i'm talking about before uh domino capoli resigned it was disclosed that he uh had bought a ownership interest in a security guard company and the reason he did that is he wanted to provide security guards for the homeless hotels and what have you so he figured out that you know he could use that as a way to channel our tax dollars into his pocket that that should be really offensive to taxpayers and voters in this county that somebody in elected office is looking to profit from our tax dollars so that should be looked at seriously and critically during this appointment process all right thank you i see no hands on zoom so i'll go ahead and bring it back we'll move on to item number nine that is our statements of abstention do we have any abstentions from council members tonight mr vice mayor thank you mayor i will be abstaining from item 12.3 uh involves the cannabis agency and i am involved in the cannabis industry i'll go on to council member soyer thank you mayor i just need to abstain from the minutes of november 30 at 11.3 due to my absence from the council on that evening great if it works for council members i'm going to move us through the agenda a little bit faster we do have our federal dc team on the line for item 14.1 so i'll skip item 10 and i'll come back uh later in the meeting mr vice mayor yes i'm sorry i omitted that i i'm sorry i take it back out for the minute so i'm sorry mayor okay so we do have uh we'll come back to item 10 after we do our public hearings actually let me rephrase we'll come back to item 10 as our last item for the night we'll do our public hearings and our report items and then come back for council member reports we'll go to approval of minutes we have three sets here we have november 16th november 30th uh our special meeting and november 30th our regular meeting uh we already heard from council member soyer that he will be abstaining from uh 11.3 are there any changes or amendments from council members on the three sets of minutes mr vice mayor sorry again mayor i actually do need to abstain from from uh it would be the november 30th uh 11.2 special meeting as i was not in attendance okay seeing none i'll go to the public and see if there are any changes to those sets of minutes seeing that in the chamber i see none on zoom we will show the amendments or excuse me show the minutes adopted as presented with council member alvarez abstaining from 11.2 and council member soyer from 11.3 without objection from the council move on to item 12 our consent calendar mayor rogers and members of council we have four items on the consent calendar tonight item 12.1 is a resolution additional funding for the purchase of computer and server equipment from dale marketing item 12.2 is a resolution san aroza tourism business improvement area advisory board appointments item 12.3 is a resolution it's an amendment to the city classification and salary plan to add two fte limited term senior planners and one fte limited term senior planner positions in the planning and economic development department to reallocate leap grant funds accept and appropriate state department of cannabis control local jurisdiction assistance grant program funds and appropriate pg and e settlement funds item 12.4 is a resolution approval of grant of temporary construction easement to specific excuse me to pacific gas and electric company on a portion of city-owned property located at 55 stony point road apn 010-320-019 and 2100 west college avenue apn 010-320-303 for the development of battery electric bus charging infrastructure okay do we have any questions from council members on those items council member schwedl um madam city manager could you just confirm the apn on that second one if we had the right one i'm not sure if that was what i have on my paperwork i thought i heard 303 versus 030 that last apn 2100 west college apn 010-320 dash 030 thank you all right happy to have the clarification i see no questions from council members let's see if there's any public comment on these items see none in the chamber and i see no hands on zoom so i'll bring it back for the vice mayor to make a motion thank you mayor i move items 12.1 through 12.4 with the exception of 12.3 as requested by myself vice mayor alvarez second we have a motion from the vice mayor second from council member soyer let's call the vote council member schwedhelm hi council member soyer hi council member rogers hi council member fleming yes vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with six eyes and then i will entertain a motion on 12.3 so moved i've got a motion from council member fleming and a second from council member soyer let's call the vote thank you council member schwedhelm hi council member soyer hi council member rogers hi council member fleming hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with five eyes with vice mayor alvarez abstaining all right it is not yet five o'clock we'll bypass item 13 for the moment we'll go on to item 14.1 that's our federal legislative platform update the city manager item 14.1 is a report for the 2022 federal legislative platform the report will be given by staff member scott alonso our intergovernmental relations and legislative affairs officer good evening mayor rogers and members of the council and city manager smith i'm scott alonso the city's intergovernmental relations and legislative affairs officer and we have curiakis pagonas and john o'Donnell with us tonight to present you the federal legislative platform and they're joining us virtually from washington dc in 2018 the city of santa rosa hired mmo partners as our federal lobbying team last year the council adopted a federal legislative platform for the first time mmo partners has greatly assisted the city's efforts with wildfire recovery and resiliency and securing federal dollars in support for our residents mmo partners has worked with city staff to conduct an analysis of our legislative priorities federal funding goals and helped prepare today's platform for your consideration the adoption of this year's platform will continue to aid our lobbying teams efforts to better respond in a more efficient manner on behalf of the city and council i do want to acknowledge and thank all those staff members involved in this process we met with various departments and programs in late 2021 to help prepare tonight's updated federal platform the platform tonight is largely based from last year but you'll notice some key differences in some areas that john and curiakis will go over from COVID-19 to public safety to surface transportation and the like and especially regarding the infrastructure bill and build back better finally i'm pleased to turn over the presentation over to john and curiakis which will give you some more background on their work and walk us through the city's proposed federal legislative platform for 2022 and city clerk you may advance to the next slide please uh scott thank you for that introduction mayor rogers and council members and city manager smith thanks for the opportunity to make this presentation to you tonight report on santa rosa's 2021 federal legislative platform and review the city's uh 2022 proposed federal priorities um i just say a word about our firm mmo that scott mentioned we have been representing local governments and special districts in washington for four decades and are proud of the fact that we continue to rep represent our first four city clients which are albuquerque uh oklahoma city oxnard california and phoenix arizona the purpose of your federal platform your federal program that's the next slide is really to communicate the city's federal policy and project priorities to the public to the california congressional delegation congress and federal agencies and also provide guidance and direction to the city staff and federal representatives regarding the city's funding priorities um and as was mentioned before the prior platform was adopted uh last year uh in february 2021 um before we get into the details uh scott mentioned that there was a a short update on what are the big priorities going on here in washington dc which do have an effect on the city of santa rosa and those things are i'd throw i'd put them in three categories one that has happened one that will happen and one that is expected to happen but we're not sure in what form the one that happened is the infrastructure investment in jobs act which provides significant competitive and formula funding for state and local governments we've shared much of that information with uh scott and and city staff and uh we know that the the city's previous success at seeking competitive funding we expect to see that continue in 2022 the uh program that will pass or the legislation that will pass is the f y 22 appropriations bill which as we've said to scott earlier today uh and to city manager smith last week this is a legislation that will get done and one of the reasons we think that is because there's a whole lot less publicity about it at this point in the in the calendar and last week things died down and that's a good indication that things are working behind the scenes the important thing about the f y 22 appropriations bill passing um and not having a continuing resolution for the rest of this calendar year or up until the end of september is that any earmarks that were provided to the city in uh the appropriations bill this year if we don't have a final appropriations bill enacted those earmarks disappear because no new federal spending can be accommodated in a continuing resolution and finally i just say that on the build back better the reconciliation package there's quite a bit of discussion going on now about how to move portions of that package uh forward and the white house and the uh leader of the house nancy polosi and the leader of the senate chuck schumer are continuing to work on different approaches to trying to get uh portions of that if not the entire package passed one of the things they're discussing right now is whether they break it into smaller pieces in order to pass it in congress and that's that concludes the report on what's happening here i just want to say before passing this report over to karyakas is how much mmo partners appreciates the opportunity to work with uh santa rosa uh the the elected officials and the city staff and and since we've been hired we know the pressure that the uh city the mayor and city council and and city staff have had in recovering from uh the fires that that greatly damaged the city and so i want to just recognize the excellent support we get from city staff in doing your work in washington dc karyakas thanks john next slide please so mayor rogers uh vice mayor alrez members of the council before we go into the 2022 uh proposed priorities uh for the city we thought it'd be a good opportunity take a few minutes to go over uh what happened as a result of your adopted federal platform in 2021 as john mentioned uh past last february and uh in no way is this meant to be a highlight real or infomercial for mmo you know the successes and outcomes represent uh first and foremost the mayor and council's direction to us and laying out the direction for us to go in as john mentioned you know your city uh staff management uh certainly uh put in a lot of work over the past year uh to recognize some of these successes and certainly um your congressional delegation you know deserves all the credit for number one voting and getting funding passed in the law to address uh covid and then you know as as john mentioned certainly now on the infrastructure side but uh you know this is certainly a team approach that we um that we take and really appreciate the opportunity to be on the team so with that said i just to go over uh your platform for 2021 the first area was was to address covid recovery and economic resiliency uh the 1.9 trillion dollar arpa law was signed by the president uh back in march 11th 2021 uh the city council uh made it a priority for direct funding uh to address uh the covid impacts both uh the health impacts uh certainly the the revenue impacts the impacts the families and to small businesses as a result uh with with that work and certainly the work of many other cities pressing for this uh congress provided 130 billion in covid uh local fiscal recovery funds uh the city share is about 35 million which i know you all are working uh to uh allocate uh you your first tranche came out last year the second tranche funding about half of 35 will come out in a few months uh treasury department also recently released final guidance that provides uh significant flexibilities uh for uh the use of that funding and i know uh your team is looking at at that um the bill also so provided and is not a entire list of the things that are provided in the bill but certainly the ones that i think align with uh the the priorities that the council laid forward last year um so provided 1.1 billion for a low income home water assistance program that program uh provided the state of california with 116 million uh that program is set to open uh sometime in may of this year it's geared towards you know helping uh low income households uh pay for their their water and wastewater uh services as as a result of of covid uh 50 billion was included in the bill for fema to provide uh reimbursements to local governments for eligible covid related expenses we'll go into a little bit of that later but um that is something that you know we have certainly talked to the city about and the city has taken an active uh very active and proactive approach uh to getting reimbursed for eligible expenses next slide please there was 3 billion included in in arpa that's the acronym for for the bill american rescue plan act 3 billion for economic development for the economic development administration they're currently putting out guidance for those funds and i you know we've been working with city staff to review that and i know uh they're they're working hard to go through those uh notices of funding opportunities now uh extension for paid family leave uh there was a significant amount of money put in for emergency rental assistance that funding uh was limited to areas above population threshold um and sonoma county was allocated funds for that and i know your your staff is working uh collaboratively uh with their county counterparts uh 47 billion as i said for the program the county's allocation uh the first round was about 14.7 million 15 and then about 17 million in the second uh tranche for emergency rental assistance uh seven seven billion in for broadband i know that's uh a significant uh priority that was laid out by the council that funding is being rolled out now by the administration uh there's significant funding for for families and households to to get service and offset the costs for that but also money for schools and libraries to to provide things like hot spots and equipment for for families that need that uh voucher assistance was provided in the bill five billion for emergency housing vouchers the city of santa rosa was awarded 131 vouchers i know megan and her team are working uh to move those um move those forward next slide please um so that that covered a snapshot on the covid's covid funding and recovery um funding that was included in the american rescue plan act that the council uh advocated for the next this next slide covers the policy and infrastructure priorities laid out in the 2021 federal platform resolution that you you adopted on the first category wildfire resiliency as john mentioned earlier there was a new process put in place this year for members to be able to ask for community project funding or member directed spending for community projects and priorities the city submitted a one million dollar request for a permanent emergency operation center representative thompson both senators uh feinstein and pedia both secured one million dollars in the fy 22 commerce justice science appropriations bill again this this was made possible and we worked closely with you know your staff the chief chief west strip uh neil bregman and and others to to get the the necessary paperwork and and information together community support letters and working with cal oes to make that project eligible and considered for funding and as john mentioned we we won't know that outcome until they the congress finalizes the fy 22 appropriations bill about 34 million dollars was allocated this year in 2021 through the hud's dbg mitigation and and the cbg dr infrastructure ram that funding was supported by your delegation that funding will be used in some respects to do fire station five relocation and and other community infrastructure needs as a result of of damage that the community sustained during the 2017 wildfires uh there's also work that we we did on your behalf um to really impress upon congress and and the administration um that certain language and policy reforms are necessary um for uh FEMA funding uh we found out uh you found out that um you know certain policy like around relocation assistance with prohibitive uh for relocating uh infrastructure that have been damaged uh during wildfires um back in august senator pedia uh held a roundtable discussion in the community uh i know mayor rogers and chief west strip participated in that discussion and really um talked to the senator about the importance of updating the staffer act to to reflect uh the uh challenges that you all faced uh during the the wildfires and the challenges urban areas face um you know as a result of of wildfires which are much different than flooding damage and and hurricane and other damage uh senator pedia introduced the fire act which includes language the city requested um for uh FEMA to take into consideration infrastructure there that is located in the wooey uh that that bill has been introduced there's been a companion bill on the house side supported by both uh congressman thompson and congressman huffman you know we're we're optimistic that that will move forward it's certainly um you know a packed calendar but uh it's it's at the beginning of that process so we're optimistic that that will uh move forward sometime this year hopefully uh by the end of the year if not then uh then next year the infrastructure investment jobs act included 500 million for at-risk communities i know the city staff are working on identifying potential opportunities in this regard city and county and mayor rogers i want to thank you for leading a letter uh to the delegation um requesting that the transportation bill part of the infrastructure investment jobs act include language that uh directed dot to prioritize uh federal infrastructure funding to areas that have experienced wildfire and also uh i know congressman huffman supported language that allows federal transportation funding to be used for things like vegetative management along roadways so those those things are are now into law and i know that as the administration gets those programs up and running we'll be talking to them about how that funding should be spent locally under the next section of community environmental infrastructure there's 108 billion dollars in the bill for public transit i know your transit department are working closely with their counterparts um but mtc and at the state and at fta to get you know operations back on track um you know covid certainly took a big hit on on transit um so this this funding uh is there to help bolster uh infrastructure spending on transit also do things like electrification uh there's 27 billion in there again for uh there the 27 million i'm sorry for uh santa rosa urbanized area for for transit there's also um a project uh martin luther king uh park uh renovations an update that the city submitted uh and is currently pending before the national park service to do uh infrastructure improvements uh to mlk park the delegation has weighed in uh and support of that project and uh that that will hopefully um will at least hopefully know uh sometime in april or may uh the outcome of that there was five billion included under housing community development for the home program of which the city received about 2.7 million for affordable housing purposes um we've been working closely uh with alan and his team and and scott uh to really uh work on reimbursement for costs at the salmon hotel uh the city uh incurred during covid about focused on on on those programs so thank you for raising it and then uh on the the climate front uh do you have sort of the leeway within the policies or what's being presented for the platform to really be aggressive on climate change uh not just policy changes not or policy changes as well as going after funding to help the city i i have to go back and look at the language i think i think it's there scott i mean do you think that the the language that we've currently got is is yeah i i i think mayor rogers under the the water and energy resiliency section we do have some language there on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage so i think the platform does cover it but we can certainly make sure that's top of minds you know as especially as built back better evolves um and we and we see the infrastructure bill being implemented and that's something that uh john and kirie office are uh following very closely with us and so i think that's something that we can certainly take a look at especially with this infrastructure funding uh coming online great thank you and again just a another thank you for all the work that you've done for the city i know we've had more more meetings than probably on most topics on going after funding for in response for going after funding for the herne avenue uh over crossing the bike bridge the hot eoc you guys have really been there to help us on a lot of these projects councilmember rogers all right hi thank you for being here tonight really quickly i just wanted to say that i i would like to see um some policies around helping our older adults um that don't yet meet the age where they can get help from like a ps um necessarily or fit that criteria but they still need help um i see it when uh we have people that fall under they have mental health issues or or they're homeless but they don't um they can't get out and go see uh a place for rent as quickly as like i would be able to or they can't move as fast um as other people would be able to so by the time they get ready to go see the place it's already taken off the market right so they don't have the same abilities as other people do and they just don't really have the the safety net um and they don't have the wraparound services um in order to do that or the support or the the transportation or whatever it is um that other people have and also for those that are housed the 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