lidarity that that we Rejoiced that each one of us Come from those origins our emigrant community Those that that they had a vision of something greater than what they knew in the comfort of Other native land his name kanaye nagasawa Thank you. Thank you so much. Mr. Vice mayor a couple of quick updates Wanted to report back on our economic development subcommittee meeting from last week We did receive a very robust and substantial conversation With our first five partners as well as our economic development team on the city's arpa That's the american rescue plan act funding As you'll remember san rosa is investing heavily in children as councilmember mcdonald pointed out We've seen the need here in our own community. So particularly our child care programs as well as our basic income and baby bonds or Uh 115 trusts For uh for our kids are starting to be implemented. We have the program parameters are being developed And we should see those programs out and about on the streets soon. I think I'll have a big impact So that was a great one for us to to sit through We had our sonoma clean power meeting Previously we did sign off on two new energy projects including a geothermal project as well as a local solar project Those will help us to continue to provide 24 7 renewable energy for folks who are on the evergreen program As well as meet additional needs. Uh, so that was a great one We had sonoma county transportation authority and regional climate protection agents Climate protection authority Last monday where we received a good presentation from Bay rent that's the bay area regional energy Network on their strategic plan and building out our charging infrastructure network and what sorts of resources We can collaborate on and partner on to try to address climate change Uh, and finally uh last week We had a visit from our regional administrator for the economic development administration Who got a nice tour of our facilities and a couple of ongoing projects that we have across the city Really just meeting with staff to find available funding and wanted to thank her for coming out and spending Most of the day with our team. Now that was a good and productive meeting Last thing before we move on and go to public comment. I want to issue a huge And well deserved good luck in retirement to Naomi fuchs Who has been leading the santa rosa community health network? When Naomi took over that network there was one facility She's grown it to eight including rebuilding one of the facilities that were lost in the tubs fire With a particular emphasis on low income communities of color here in sonoma county in santa rosa Naomi has big shoes to fill But she is very excited for her retirement We were happy to issue a proclamation and be at her retirement party to say a few words On behalf of the council With that, let's go to public comment and see if anyone would like to provide an input on council member reports I see no hands raised. We have no voicemail public comment and nobody rising in the council chamber Okay We'll move on then to item 11 It's approval of minutes. We have minutes from april 12th 2022 council members. Did you have any amendments to those minutes? I'm seeing shaking hands. Let's see if there's any public comment on the minutes Mayor no public comment on minutes. Okay, uh, we'll show those approved as presented without objection I see no objection We are going to pull item 12.12 From tonight's agenda. I will be bringing it back at the next available council meeting. My understanding is that there was Some language in the notice that we needed to correct before we bring it forward for final adoption So we'll be pulling item 12.12 Madam city manager, do you want to introduce the rest of the consent calendar? Thank you, mayor Item 12.1 is a resolution approval of secure family's collaborative grant agreement for fiscal years 2022 and 23 and 2023 and 24 Item 12.3 is a resolution purchase order for firewall upgrade item 12.4 Is a resolution waiver a bid and approval of a purchase order For 21 ford f 150 lightning electric vehicles to handle ford santa rosa california Item 12.5 is a resolution split bid award invitation for a bid 22-28 LED street street lights to asco supply ink and solar max led ink Item 12.6 is a resolution approval of management and operations agreement with luther burbank home and gardens association Item 12.7 is a resolution merger of two parcels comprising city-owned property at 3499 idaho drive and related summary vacation of portions of idaho drive right away and public service easements Item 12.8 is a resolution authorizing submittal of a matching grant application to the sonoma county agriculture agriculture preservation and open space district for the lower colgan creek restoration project phase three and lower colgan creek neighborhood park project Item 12.9 is a resolution seventh amendment to professional services agreement number f 000 1238 with r3 consulting group ink of roseville california 12.10 is a resolution appropriations limit physical year 22 and 23 resolution 12 excuse me item 12.11 is a resolution general municipal election november the 8th 2022 calling the election requesting consolidation with the statewide general election and adopting regulations pertaining to candidate statements item 12.12 is a resolution fourth amendment to agreement number f 000 424 for the campaign and lobbyist disclosure system agreement with netfowl ink item 12.13 resolution professional services agreement with frost drullis kussenberry architect ink for completion of the herne avenue community hub needs assessment and collaboration project and item 1214 the resolution making required monthly findings and authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing for public meetings of the city council and all city boards commissions and committees pursuant to assembly bill 361 thank you he makes some corrections item 12.2 is a resolution the third amendment to agreement f 000 2014 with legal aid of sonoma county and we are striking item 12.12 thank you excellent thank you so much council do we have any questions on the consent calendar i have a question on item 12.4 is it a question or do you need a poll for substantial discussion ask the question yeah go for it does ford give us a discount when we buy a fleet of cars like this or are we given any opportunity to negotiate that with them can you see if zack our brandolin can thank you good afternoon council um regarding the question about discount uh yes ford factory does provide government discount for fleets on the agreement that we will operate vehicles for a certain period of time i believe it's normally about three years which we never have a problem doing um and we often compare those prices to other cooperative uh purchasing agreement discounts thank you so much that's it thank you mr mayor i just have a question related both 12.1 and 12.2 staff report at least on 12.1 indicates that the city must report expenditures and accomplishments due to the use of arpa funds and then it also indicates city staff will be in regular contact to obtain this information um so how and or where will this information be available to the council and or the community again i'm supportive of both of these agreements but where would we find out how they're doing thank you for the question it's actually a very good question i have actually compiled all the project reports um and getting all the information ready to submit to council uh a couple of the team members needed to finalize their project reports before they were finalized so you will get ongoing reports on the arpa funding great thank you any additional questions okay let's go to public comment if you have a comment on tonight's consent calendar go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom we'll go to legal aid hello we can hear you okay great thank you um hello uh thank you uh my name is sonny no and i am the legal services manager for the housing team at uh the league at legal latest sonoma county on behalf of legal aid we'd like to thank the council for approving this amendment and continuing to fund this important work this expanded funding allows us to fully fund a full-time housing staff attorney and to provide legal services to both low-income renters and landlords and allows us to expand our outreach in the city of san aroza focusing on reaching our bi-pop community members over the course of the last few months as many of the state COVID tenant protections have expired we have seen a steady rise in threats of eviction among our most vulnerable community members these funds will support our efforts to ensure all low-income community members have access to important legal advice and services in unlawful detainers and in other housing matters in the coming months we will likely see the end of the remaining state and local COVID protections with that we expect to see an exponential increase in eviction related issues and tenant displacement this funding will be imperative in allowing us to meet that need and serve as many community members as possible thank you i see no other hands do we have the prerecorded voicemails we have no prerecorded voicemails on this okay oh i do see one more hand popped up let's go to andrea hi can you hear me yes we can hi please excuse the delay um so my name is andrea guarino i am the grant writer at ywca sinoma county you may be familiar with our ceo madeline keegan o'connell she regrets that she could not attend as she had a prior commitment uh i would like to talk to you today about um our request of uh 25 000 increased in funding per year for our uh san rosa shelter bed contracts we have a safe house uh shelter for domestic violence victims and their families we welcome everyone to that shelter as you may know there has been an increase in domestic violence related reports both um during and after the pandemic more so after as we're seeing a huge spike in calls to our hotline etc um i have data to share with you if you'd like to see that data but i will just keep it brief in the interest of everyone's time i just want to remind everyone here that ywca holds a singular and vital role in sinoma county as the only domestic violence service provider uh we've been doing this for over 40 years now and we answer our domestic violence crisis hotline if anyone needs that hotline it's<PHONE_NUMBER> around the clock 24 7 short on volunteers we are just doing everything that we can and hustling as ever before calls to the domestic violence hotline in 2020 we're on par with 2019 but in 2021 we saw a startling 46 increase in calls for support from local families experiencing violence in their own homes uh lastly i'd like to offer to provide any additional information for your review and i'd like to thank you for your time all right thank you so much mr vice mayor do you want to put a motion on the table please i'd be honored to mayor thank you i'd like to move items 12.1 through 12.14 with the exception of item 12.12 as it was struck down and wait for the reading of the text second second we have a motion from the vice mayor and a second from councilmember mcdonald any additional discussion let's call the vote councilmember schwedhelm aye councilmember natalie rogers aye councilmember mcdonald aye councilmember fliming yes vice mayor alvarez aye mayor rogers aye let the record show that motion passes with six ayes and one absence it's not yet five o'clock so we'll skip a public comment for and on agenda items for the moment we'll go on to item 14.1 item 14.1 is a report parking fee schedule revisions uh chief financial uh allen aughton will present thank you mayor rogers and members of the council um good evening and i'll wait for the presentation to come up so this item is uh proposed some revisions to the parking fee schedule if you go to the next slide please so uh back in 2020 the council approved various temporary parking fee waivers at the outset of the covid-19 pandemic the needs fee waivers were intended to provide business uh or provide relief to downtown businesses and visitors and the waivers are set to expire there's a typo here they're set to expire on june 30th 2022 uh we um we had extended uh the the waivers several times during uh the two years uh or the last two years and um but this was coming up on the final time of doing the extension given the health of the parking fund next slide please the staff reached out to uh the downtown action organization specifically their executive uh director kate and tallison uh to see what we can do uh to help the visitors and the businesses in the downtown after the fee waivers expire so one proposal was to provide uh for first hour pre parking to all five garages uh specifically it was uh a part of concern was was that we have uh inconsistent um fees in the uh for all of our garages and that consistency would be able to provide uh that's forth that we were looking for for the businesses and with and to help uh our the visitors so the seventh street garage which is known as garage one and the first street garage which is known as garage 12 uh they currently offer first hour free parking so we're looking to expand that uh to all five garages and then the other proposal would be to make permanent our our free weekend parking in the garages during the holiday season uh we began this this program i believe it was in 2017 it's very popular uh but every year we would come back uh um prior to the program going into effect and request that of the council uh it makes it difficult for uh the businesses uh and visitors to uh count on on that particular program so we uh what we're proposing to do is just make it permanent uh going forward next slide so we uh after meeting with the with the dao we we said we would take the uh the items back into uh for analysis uh which we did um and while we we do anticipate a lot of revenue by doing these we think that uh overall uh we can support it um and uh this is again it's one of those things where um i i think we need to to give a little to hopefully get a lot back it'll provide uh the necessary um uh continuity in our in our uh charges uh it'll provide that stability it's something that that that both the city and the um uh and the dao and the businesses can promote and uh uh so we we thought that there was good to move forward uh we reached out to cadence and and uh let her know that and um and the dao uh is is in support of of this program uh we did include these fee reductions in our parking fund uh estimate for 2023 and while the parking fund does have an operational deficit for 2023 fiscal year 2023 our hope is is that once we get back to pre-covid uh uh parking that we'll be able to balance that that fund in our forecasting does suggest that um so with that we we are uh hoping to move forward with this program uh next likely one of the things that we also want to do with this is to uh like i said uh provide a lot of outreach uh this was something that the council had brought up in the past and it's something that we are working very hard towards so uh um uh we will make it clear on our parking garages that of uh the first hour free uh uh we will um clearly identify that we will look at any promotional measures that we can including the presence of the women wincing our markets uh developing brochures and flyers meeting with business owners and of course using the city's website and social media uh to help promote um uh these new um parking hours and next slide please so with that it's recommended uh by the finance department that the council by resolution proved changes to the parking fee schedule to include first hour free parking in the five public parking garages effective july 1 2022 and free parking saturdays and sundays uh in the garages uh from november 26 to january 1 of each year and with that i'm available for any questions should you have that right thank you so much alan let's see if there's any questions councilmember mcdonald just a comment i just want to congratulate you alan and chad hedge for reaching out to the downtown um action organization and collaborating on this particular project to really listen to the businesses on the hours of operation to make sure that we're doing what's best to support our downtown um businesses so i just want to congratulate you on that i received a letter saying thank you and so it's not often that we get thanked for the work that we do so i thought i'd pass that along tonight and say thank you so much for your work on this let's go go to public comment see if anybody has comments on this item i see no raised hands nobody going towards the podium and we have no voicemail public comment so i see one popped up we'll go to eric yeah yes thank you this is eric with greater cherry at gmail.com and uh yeah thank you for um bringing this item to the table um i do uh also appreciate councilmember mcdonald's comments to um to honor people working together on policy in the city uh and looking at this though i find that it probably doesn't go far enough to really solve the issues that uh the parking policy uh creates as far as negative impacts for businesses and visitors into the business core um the the thing to remember is that it's not about the price of parking as much as the price of violations for parking uh and so it's really the parking violations that are the cash cow for the city that money goes into the general fund and parking violations have a larger impact on lower social economic citizens of santa rosa than the cost of parking the other thing that's important to realize is that the parking structures really represent a largely unused asset for both regulating parking that's near the structures which for some of the structures means like a lot of residential parking and the impacts between business demands for parking that extend beyond you know meters usually dumps into the residential parking zones and so strategies that don't consider the neighborhoods that are by the parking structures uh is quite defective and while I appreciate again the spirit of working together with the downtown action organization I just want to remind folks that there's more um buy-in that's necessary and there is this belief that the parking district uh already is has a lot of mysterious things about it that are not appropriately represented to the public and so since there's a change in leadership there there's this opportunity to sort of become a little bit more transparent let's really live the belief that mayor radgers brought to the dais a few years ago when he wanted to make santa rosa this really transparent city a well planned city and we look at something like the parking department and it just doesn't appear to be that way and this policy recommendation probably doesn't go far enough and so um so that's sort of regretful but thank you so much and there's nothing wrong with your timer sometimes it's stuck up sometimes it speeds up it's like buying gas at a unscrupulous filling station during these high prices but thank you so much I appreciate thank you thank you Eric I'll go ahead bring it back councilmember Fleming I believe this is your item it's my item and I'm going to bring forward a resolution but first I'm going to tell you all a little bit about why but this does is I want to connect us back to what the council's goals are which is to encourage economic vitality in our downtown to reduce confusion for the people who use our um underutilized garages encourage them to use these garages and also as a result of using these garages thereby reducing or actually eliminating your chance of getting a violation so when we do something like this which costs us a little money and thank you to our CFO Mr Alton for explaining that we will make up the revenue we are investing in our economic drivers and reducing the stress on both our our consumers and residents and our business owners of those really um unpopular violations so with that I gladly move a resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa approving at the five city-owned parking garages first hour free parking and free weekend parking on Saturdays and Sundays from the first Saturday after Thanksgiving for New Year's Day annually and they for their reading of the text second we have a motion from council member Fleming in a second from council member Rogers any additional comments it's called the vote council member Schwedhelm hi council member Rogers um hi but can I just say one thing really quickly I too would like to uh compliment staff on getting out there and getting the opinions of our business owners and our community members and really taking it back and seeing how we can go back to the drawing board and how we can all work together um and I know it might be a step but it's a good step in in the right direction and we're not going to answer all the questions um and solve all the problems at first but we are going in the right direction so thank you very much uh Mr Alton and your team for all the work that you do thank you council member mcdonald hi council member Fleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show this resolution passed with six eyes and one absence of council member Sawyer all right thank you it's five o'clock so we'll go on to our public comment for non-agenda matters item uh if you would like to provide comment on something that falls within the city of santa rosa's jurisdiction but is not on tonight's council go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on zoom or approach the podium we'll go to eric thank you very much eric frazier with greater cherry at gmail.com there may be some people in the audience that will be commenting on this very topic so i don't actually want to jump in the front of them that much but that's just fate here so let me go ahead and talk about the residential parking permit renewal the issue is that the program has gone digital and there's a lot of people in the neighborhood that are subjected to the residential parking program that don't like the changes uh in addition to the permit going digital uh thereby eliminating the physical placard that would act as a hang tag off the rearview mirror that provided a level of portability for that identification so it made it easy for friends and caregivers and workers to have access to a pass without jumping through a lot of hoops with the city but there were some additional restrictions on the number of temporary permits you could get the length of time that the temporary permits are active and just a whole number of of additional considerations in the program that again weren't discussed they're just sort of like happened and it's like it's always sort of funny because we want to be very appreciative of us our city working together to solve problems but for so many people in the city they're left just to respond to like stuff that you guys serve up that's sort of half baked and really ends up being really expensive for the city in the end it's like not even best practice it's just somebody gets an idea to do something I think other people that may step forward this may not necessarily be my specific concern but probably should be there definitely are people that are concerned about the erosion of their privacy rights that come forward with this change to a digital reality for the parking permits I'm I haven't researched this there's other people that asked me to participate on behalf of our neighborhood association I certainly provide my leadership to stand and deliver on important issues that other people think and I agree with but this privacy issue is one that has significant impacts for people and again that's not really something that I think all that much about in this modern era but some people really really really do and in talking to them I really do understand that there's some legitimate significant concerns there that again you guys didn't really pay attention to and I just I don't know it just felt like this is a good idea but thank you so much I appreciate time and I appreciate your work thank you thank you Eric let's go ahead go to Shelly do you hear me yeah okay hi hi everybody um this is the first time I've been here since the COVID lockdown and I came in the heat just because I wanted to see y'all face-to-face and say hello um this isn't about public banking for the first time ever I've been at the podium it's not about that um but I will say LA put forth their RFP last week for a viability study and business plan for public bank of LA so that's exciting but I am here to speak about what Eric just now spoke to I'm a resident in the Cherry Street district I've owned a home on Humboldt Street for the past 18 years and for the first 17 years if we wanted guests we were given placards to place in our guest car if they were to stay more than two hours um however um a year ago this new policy was imposed upon us where we are now only we are limited to seven guests per 30 day period and that means if I if my family members come just visit me for a couple of days a few of them I'm done for the month having guests and it used to be very easy to have friends over walk downtown leisurely hang out shop dine support the downtown businesses contribute to your sales tax revenue and that is now limited it's a huge frustration as a property tax owner as someone who pays a hefty amount of property tax and this is being imposed upon us now and I was very concerned about my privacy because initially we were informed that we had to give them make a model of the car to have guests over so I did a little investigating I asked the parking department to provide me with our parking policy which I was told they would give me if I would keep it private well I'm not because they've invaded on our privacy and within that policy um it's state I wanted to know who has access to those records they keep on record who my guests are yes they do who has access to that to what they refer to in the policy as surveillance records who has access our private litigants journalists and others may utilize the freedom of information act or california public records act to request surveillance records is very unsettling to me that I'm now limited on the number of guests I can have and they're being surveyed and now I've been I've learned that we can um bypass entering to make a model of the car but it's not a user friendly website that comes up first and you got to keep scrolling to get past that it's not obvious so what I'm asking is that they bring back the placards number one and um and that's basically just it is that that would be my very simple request we have a long list of requests we will follow up with the parking department share them um I'll email you guys to what the requests are beyond that but um essentially that's it and I thank you for your time thank you thank you shally let's see if there's any other public comment are we on yes roger mcconnell I am with the santa rosa manufactured homeowners association wanted to talk to you briefly about our rate control ordinance here in santa rosa we've been struggling for several years seven or eight years trying to get on to this council as an agenda item as we speak I understand the ordinance is being tweaked and turned and being looked at by the people over in the annex our our ordinance here is tied to the bay area cpi many of our residents that live in our communities are there on social security only the difference is about 33 to 35 percent over an eight to 10 year period these people lose their buying power we're asking for a reduction in the amount we come to each year let's do a percentage of that the money to administer this ordinance is a great big balloon number somewhere around 540 to 50 thousand dollars just sitting there we're asking to stop taking that out please it's it's very difficult for these people who are there on social security only and we're asking if this can be done we're about to be hit I think late July or August the new cpi out of the bay area comes out it may max out at 6 percent as allowed under the ordinance we have now is there any way we could put a freeze or a moratorium till this is all taken care of all worked out the negotiations with the owners all of that and that's what we have to do with that it's just been going on for a long time I would remind the council there's a great big barbecue happening on July 23rd that you've all been invited to I hope some of you can make it out there we've had many of the council members in the past I have heard from Mr. McGuire's office he can't make it this year and I would like to thank Mr. Schwunhelm and Mr. Sawyer for their time on this board our people out in the city here we appreciate you guys I understand you're not running again it's what it is right we all get older and tired of what we're doing anyhow appreciate your time thank you guys very much thank you Mr. McConnell and I will have staff circle back with you we had a study session item earlier today to talk about our housing element and that was one of the elements that generally received the thumbs up from council so not a done deal we're bringing it back but it continues to move forward and make progress on it let's go back to zoom and go to Cindy can you hear me yes we can okay great um so I'm okay I'm in the cherry street neighborhood and I finally figured out how to do the comment sorry I meant to go right after Shelly um excuse me being a little nervous just talking in front of a group Shelly and Eric and some other neighbors conferred with those of us who are on an email uh group about the parking issues and I was really glad that they reached out because when this new parking non-placord policy went into effect it was a surprise and not a pleasant one and I had not talked to any other neighbors about it so I welcomed the opportunity to learn more and confer about what we were not happy with and Shelly alluded to other points that she would bring up later and I would like to bring up those points that were put together by conferring with various neighbors about what hasn't been working for us since the simple placards which worked so well I've been a resident with my husband for 23 years in the cherry street neighborhood and we were just fine with the placards um it feels very much like we're jumping through hoops and the privacy issue of uh guest is an issue let me read if you don't mind some of these points first we'd like to bring the placards back one placard per registered vehicle and hopefully one per guest per address to help benefit those without driveways or shared driveways continue for those who want to utilizing the printed parking permits as an option for residents who prefer them I never use them myself again it's jumping through hoops that I don't wish to go through um and if um the one day if the one day permits remain we ask the parking division to consider granting at least 15 per rolling 30 day period instead of seven like Shelly was talking about for family visits that's it for the month um on the website apparently I've never used it to request a permit but it says optional enter the plate and make of the car that we're requesting permits for and that's a privacy issue that I'm hoping will be eliminated if the requesting of permits is continued um we would like to request permits for contractors via the parking divisions online self-service parking site and not require us to go to the parking division for those permits and we'd like to change the two hour maximum parking time limit to three hours and to remove the orange placard on the parking signs which states vehicles must leave the block for the day upon expiration of time limit thank you very much thank you so much Cindy thank you do we have any pre-recorded voicemails we have one pre-recorded voicemail one moment please public comment on non-agenda item number 13 name is Dwayne D. Witt from Roseland on the 11th of June Santa Rosa City employees visited the southwest community park at Hearn Avenue and the end of Burbank Avenue there was easily a dozen city trucks there it was wonderful that day that they were helping the community and there were some volunteers out to help volunteers from there went down to Roseland Creek area where a number of behavioral health transient vagrants have moved into the city-owned land and have been destroying some of the campsite area making campsites destroying some of the area it should be said excuse me and when uh Eddie Alvarez came there that afternoon at 11 o'clock to talk to members of the Hughes Avenue neighborhood association on McMinn Avenue over 29 people came out most were quite concerned about how these free range transient vagrants are essentially taking over area that was open for the public to walk through have a chance to see some nature the children could walk to school and now it's blocked off by these people who have no respect for Roseland or the nature it's a quite sad situation and one would hope that the city would help the community to get these people out of that area we're grateful to the city workers at the parks and rec department the debris removal team from the streets department and for Eddie Alvarez to come out there it's a dilemma though that the city as a large organization seems too slow to react to getting these folks who are burning fires you know oak woodland an area that's dry and it's like tender waiting to be lit on fire and the city's talking about wildfire prevention please move these hurtful people off that city owned land so that the city's not responsible if the neighborhood catches fire and the fire goes over in to private houses watch out for the taxpayer owned resources of the roseland neighborhood but that concludes pre-recorded voicemail okay let's go on to item 15.1 14.2 no no uh 15.1 our first public hearing item 15.1 is a public hearing flora terra dispensary appeal susie murray senior planner will deliver the report while susie pops up we'll do our ex parte disclosures from council members i'll start on zoom councilmember rogers do you have any ex parte communications to disclose no how about councilmember fleming no mayor councilmember schwetl i've viewed the site uh talked with the chair of the planning commission but everything i learned is contained in the staff report thank you councilmember mcdonald no i was just contacted by the applicant but i didn't respond so everything is in the in the package it's public okay and i did go out and uh walk the site but had no contact elsewhere all right susie do you want to take it away my presentation come on up there we go so the item before you this afternoon is the appeal of the flora terra conditional use permit to operate uh cannabis dispensary and the site is located at 1226 fourth fourth street next slide please before i give you the background on the project i wanted to give you a little bit of background on the cannabis uses in santa rosa first um back in uh 2000 december of 2017 the council adopted a comprehensive cannabis ordinance that went into effect um mid january of 2018 um part of that ordinance established zoning districts where cannabis dispensaries were permitted uh most well all of the zoning districts where they're permitted are commercial and industrial and then of course business parks um not all commercial districts but certainly it's permitted in the the general commercial zoning district um all dispensaries are required to obtain a major conditional use permit which includes a very public process um first of all if they're located near residential which uh flora terra would be um they're required to have a neighborhood meeting which this project did um second was when the application is uh submitted we're uh required to send out a notice of application to all neighbors um and not for any uh cannabis or any major conditional use permit um cannabis or otherwise um and then of course the public hearing process includes noticing again um and a public hearing before the planning commission so then on on march 24th the planning commission approved the flora terra conditional use permit to operate the the retail facility at 12 24th war street that was a unanimous decision um and then on april 20 um april first um which was the end of the appeal period we received the uh the request to appeal the planning commission's actions so next slide please when the appeal um was received the grounds for appeal provided i'm going to quote the project impacts on the mcdonald historical district have not been studied nor have the valuation of properties of homes impacts tested value been analyzed for the historical district next slide the uh the location 12 24th street is shown by the gold star um and the mcdonald district is in the uh kind of greenish color to the north and then um it's surrounded by um residential uses kind of to the east and south as well so there's there's quite a few residential uses nearby um the night of the planning commission meeting we had one person from the public comment on the the proposed conditional use permit and that person lived in the neighborhood out not the mcdonald preservation district but the neighborhood more to the um to the east next slide please so as i mentioned um the zoning code table 26 uh that that requires a major conditional use permit for any cannabis dispensaries in the general commercial or cg zoning district um that that section also regulates the location for cannabis retail uses and says that um uses or cannabis uses cannot or retail cannabis uses cannot be located within 600 feet of another cannabis retail use or um a school it does not regulate the proximity to preservation districts next slide please um there are six required findings the first three are shown here um the project is consistent with the general plan and zoning the site uh it was analyzed and determined that the site was appropriate for the use next slide please and i think i just want to summarize without the planning commission found that all six findings required findings could be met so next slide please so with that it's recommended by the planning commission and the planning and economic development department that the council by resolution deny the appeal of robert Jacobson and uphold the planning commission's decision to approve a conditional use permit for floratera a 1140 square foot cannabis retail facility at 1226 fourth street and that concludes staff's presentation i'm here for questions if you have any i know the applicant would like to make a presentation as well council do we have any questions council member mcdonald thank you thank you for the presentation i know in the report it mentions santa rosa middle school but what i didn't see in proximity to where the dispensary is um planned is proctor terrorist elementary school and i was wondering up on the map you could tell me if there's any other schools that are within not just 600 feet but up to a thousand feet away from this dispensary i i can't tell you that right off the top of my head without going and just doing a quick review and gis can i can i report back on that in a couple minutes and i would like that information um before i'd be comfortable to make any decisions tonight so if you're able to to pull that up for us um before we can before we move to that would be great thank you absolutely i will i just don't want to hold everything up well i'm looking for that but i can pull that up on my my gis thank you so much i appreciate it and we can come back with that answer let's see if there's any other questions from council members and while susie looks at that we'll go on to the applicant presentation i have actually let's see uh i apologize we have the planning commission chair i believe karen weeks and i'll see if karen had anything that she wanted to add um thank you mayor rogers uh can you hear me okay i hope yes we can thank you um so mayor rogers members of the city council my name is karen weeks and uh as chair of the planning commission i'm here tonight representing the commission i'd like to provide you just a brief overview of our actions as it relates to the item before you tonight as mrs mary said on march 24th the commission reviewed this item all seven members were present to review this project as we stayed at the beginning of each meeting the planning commission is charged with carrying out california planning and zoning laws in the city of santa rosa which includes the implementation of local ordinances and policies relating to land use matters during this meeting we heard from two members of the public one opposed as it related to traffic and one in support commissioners asked questions regarding the issues of the applicant and staff and the the application was very thorough and complete and met all the local and state requirements at the end of the meeting the commissioners approved the project with a seven zero vote and i'm happy to answer any questions if you have them any questions for the planning commission chair go ahead thank you karen um do you know if there's any other schools in the closer proximity just off off topic um since that was the last question i asked it was that something that you considered when you're i know it says 600 feet is the state ordinance but i was wondering if you knew they were close to that i don't and we look at what is in the state and local ordinance with respect to schools thank you okay let's go to the applicant oh go ahead sue i did want to mention in terms of setbacks our code also provides for requires a 600 foot minimum setback from any k through 12 school uh as defined under state law um i know at the time that it was adopted there was consideration of having um a setback a greater setback and that was not moved forward so under our code the requirement is simply the 600 foot minimum setback thank you suzi go ahead yeah i just wanted to let you know that i could get back so generally when we do my staff reports i i add the closest you know the um the number of feet to the closest school so the closest school is santa rosa middle uh school the proctor terrace elementary school is about 2300 linear feet away from the site and that says a crow flies so that's a straight line thank you keep that okay now we'll go to the wing guards you'll have up to 10 minutes for your presentation wonderful thank you um i so my name's alisha wingard and i'm joined this evening by with my husband david and we are here to talk about the appeal um if you could move on to the next slide um i will just summarize suzi has already said this uh that we were approved unanimously in march and then at the end of that approval or at the end of the appeal window someone had filed an appeal based on issues pertaining to the historical district um there we go hello if we could go on to the next slide i will try to make this brief just in an effort to get through this so my name is alisha this is my husband david and we are owner operators of flora terra we are a licensed cannabis dispensary in santa rosa we are looking to expand to a second location at 1226 4th street um we both have backgrounds not in cannabis so we're coming into this industry uh you know with a different perspective than some who have been in for you know an extended period of time over we have learned a lot in the past two and a half years and we are hoping to continue growing and servicing the community that you're in if you could go to the next slide do the next slide please i think we're having a little technical difficulty at the moment oh can you hear us or is it the slides perfect okay so um as outlined our project does meet all of the requirements set forth by you know the city um this is the same presentation that we gave the night of our um meeting with the planning commission um we are design aesthetic is going to be similar to that of our existing location which is shown here and again we're consistent with the general plan um for the city of santa rosa we go on to the next slide we discuss security measures um we have enhanced security age verification is done by all staff um anyone that is an employee would enter through employee only doors with you know a key card we will have up to 20 high definition cameras to monitor all the entrances and exits all limited access spaces with recording 24 seven maintained for 90 days um and we make that information available to the police department or a designee from the city upon request we've actually offered this information up on multiple occasions one of which allowed our neighbors to identify somebody who hit and run their fire hydrant the person was leaving their building and rounded the corner and we were able to provide that information in addition to a domestic violence dispute that was in our parking lot um so our alarm system again it's monitored and maintained by first alarm their local company we have panic buttons installed throughout and again monitoring 24 seven um shipping and receiving we will utilize our existing location and perform weekly deliveries from there that way we can monitor or we can have absolute control over when and where those deliveries are taking place at this new location um next slide please so when it comes to community impact we provide jobs at our existing location we employ 15 people in our retail department and all of our all of our employees are Sonoma County residents most of which are currently living in Coffey Park um at our new location we'll anticipate hiring between six and ten additional people up to two security guards and we'll utilize our existing location to train all of our staffs to avoid any hiccups that new businesses experience we generate tax revenue um as you guys know there is a three percent tax on all cannabis purchases and to date we have paid anywhere from twenty five thousand to thirty five thousand dollars per quarter in tax revenues since uh since we opened in 2019 um some other ways that we impact the community would be our collaboration with the california community colleges um we work closely with them um speaking on panels and working with college professors they are trying to determine a way that we can have cannabis education at the jc level and so this is a project that's near and dear to my heart to you know further continue education um at the jc level in this industry is heavily needed in addition to that we're making donations to various public schools as well as hosting toy and food drives for the redwood empire food bank um on this next slide i just wanted to highlight our demographics there was some concern about um the distance to schools and potential marketing to children and so i wanted to show the demographics of our existing customer base mostly just show you that 63.5 of our customers are over the age of 30 um we don't market to children we never will that's not what we're here for um we serve anyone currently serving anyone over the age of 21 but again most of them are over the age of 30 so on this next slide i just want to talk about the appeal um the appeal was filed by a community member who has concerns about the impacts on the historical district um including but not limited to financial impacts on property evaluations so unfortunately there's really limited data that we did building but we do border the district um and the data that i have found almost supports the opposite um there is a company called clever real estate and clever real estate's mission is to be the most trusted real estate education source on the internet and so when they conduct their studies they utilized expert subject they utilize experts in different subjects including real estate agents brokers property investors attorneys mortgage professionals and data scientists to really go through and comb the data um in a recent study they utilized us census bureau data and real estate data obtained from zillow and the what they stated was for every one million dollars in additional tax revenue from marijuana sales they've seen home values increased by four hundred and seventy dollars they also said that home values in areas where they have legalized recreational cannabis um it slept up to seventeen thousand dollars more than places where marijuana is illegal so obviously sonoma county does not need any assistance in increasing home values but again i just wanted to point this out due to the appeal um at the end of the day we were approved by the planning commission um the city has put forth this path that you have to take in order to become a cannabis operator in this city and we have gone down that path we have gone to you know through the application process the neighborhood meetings um and we were given unanimous approval and i really do hope that we can get through this and keep the decision from the planning commission um on this last side i just was going to show our design aesthetic and talk about why we're here when we built this dispensary we had one goal in mind and that was to bring an elevated experience to our community by curating a space that felt inviting to purchase legal cannabis we consider ourselves a wine country chic cannabis boutique we hire well-spoken individuals who are smart and talented and they have an immense amount of knowledge about all of the products that we carry they pride themselves in the ability to make effective recommendations to the members of our community and we were absolutely thrilled to be approved for this second location to continue community or continue um servicing our community um we welcome anyone who has questions to reach out to us on this next slide you'll find our contact information um and at the original planning commission meeting we had also offered this information up to anyone i did have a couple of people reached out who were neighbors two in support one concerned about lighting from the exterior of the building um we've addressed all of that and i've assured the neighbor who's worried about our exterior lights that will make sure they don't shine in her yard um so that is all we have for you today we thank you mr mayor council members mr vice mayor for being here and look forward to hearing your decision great thank you so much council do you have any questions for the applicants seeing them we'll go to a presentation from the appellant yes so mr jacobson if you want to do it i'm sorry my name is bill kuziara i have uh had a law office at uh 7 13 spring street for 38 years bought it in 83 and remodeled it won a award really fast before you get too far into your comments are you here representing no the appellant no no i'm representing myself my wife we have three properties one is where we had i just sold the one of 7 13 to a person who's taking very good care of it so i'll come back to you for public comment oh we're looking to see if the appellant uh is here to make his presentation but we'll come back to in just a couple minutes if that's okay susie did you have something to add no i i don't oh i'm sorry i didn't realize my hand was up no i didn't that was an accident okay another technical challenge it's a phantom hand okay well uh we'll see we have no appellant to make a presentation so oh oh yeah perfect set right up then once again my name is bill kuziara kuzi i a r a i have owned property at uh the 7 13 and i still own property at 7 18 and 7 22 spring street which has a back uh carriage house at 1508 13th street i'm on that i wish i could can you put up that map that shows the mcdonald district and its relationship to uh the project because i think that kind of describes what i would be very helpful and yeah let's see if we can get that put back up i can continue um there it is yeah well as you can see right across the street from the mcdonald district is the project it's on the entrance way into spring street and uh i own that those properties right there in the first uh seven well i did own 7 13 and 7 18 and 7 22 which are the ones and back on the other side of the street i have uh my wife and i have won a couple awards we did it out of a contribution to the community as i believe a lot of people in the mcdonald district do they uh this is the this is a core of the city it's a jewel and if you've ever been down to the mcdonald district on halloween you'll see that people come from miles around just to enjoy the spirit and the ambiance of that era it takes you back uh maybe a hundred years ago but it's a time of fourth of july thanksgiving you can go by look at the direct decorations christmas it deserves a little bit more circumspection than the planning commission has given it and it deserves your circumspection is two i contacted miss murray and i said didn't anybody consider any of the impacts on the mcdonald historical district the answer was well no it's not uh it's not in the district and uh she provided me with a four page well written summary of why there's no jurisdiction well i researched that a little bit too and i found that the city council gives the cultural heritage board its jurisdiction you have not given it the jurisdiction to ever look into this issue it's the for their charter i asked for the charter i got the charter okay well they can consider everything in that district that green district there but they can't consider anything that might endanger infringe upon impact the mcdonald historical district because it's not in their charter and the only one who can change the charter is you and you can change it tonight by a boat by asking by authorizing the cultural heritage board to look into this issue what are the impacts on the mcdonald historical district i'm impacted first so i'm here i'm on the fringe and i hold the line there so to speak in keeping the area protected but you have to protect it too you have a prize right in the middle of your city and the council needs to expand the use excuse me expand the powers of the cultural heritage board to study impacts of the pot shop on the character cultural heritage of the mcdonald historical district nobody can do it but you i urge you to do so thank you thank you sir do we have any questions from council members no no no i was saying if council members had any questions for you uh so the applicant will have a couple of moments to respond if they would like do we still have the the wingards i don't have much of a response i would just like to say in regards to the character of our shop the the store definitely aligns with an upscale boutique so that is all i will that is all i will say at this time okay i'll go ahead and open the public hearing and we'll see if there's any additional public comment that folks would like to make if you'd like to leave comment on this item hit the raise hand feature on zoom we'll go to eric to start thank you very much this is eric frazier and i'm a resident of san rosa just want to be clear i'm not representing either my neighbors in the historic district at greater cherry or people that research the short term rental issue but this issue does sort of touch on all that uh and i have to say that you have to support the applicant here not the appellant because this is a robust process that these applications go through it's a policy that was born out of months and months and months of public hearings and planning commission and um you know a very robust uh process both on the local level and i i didn't realize that the city of san rosa was a pioneer in creating local policy for cannabis so that was sort of interesting but also on a state level and so uh it seems it seems pretty clear that you the the person who came forward as a vanguard to his historic district i i also want to support and respect because really preserving these historic districts is essential and um i you know i wish maybe he came forward a little bit sooner in the process to eras concerns but it sounds like and it really looks like that david alicia would certainly be out to protect the integrity of their neighborhood in this last minute however i do want to say that this yet again provides a way that we can create an interesting juxtaposition between the hassles that you've subjected the str audience to in public policy controlling their use and as this stands in juxtaposition to cannabis regulations we can see clearly the abuses of civil rights that you enacted on on str owners and managers the proximity level the level scrutiny the ability to allow public comment the the idea that neighbors can have control over their fellow neighbors property certainly is at the essence of all these decisions but you unleash the bulls with the str policy and created an amazing case study and how not to do it right and again thank you for the the proud people that came forward with their business concept i hope they'll go smooth for them but you have to support the original applicant thank you let's see if there are any additional hands do we have any pre-recorded voicemails we have no pre-recorded voicemail on this item perfect all right council any additional questions i'll close the public hearing and i will bring it back i'm gonna look to councilmember mcdonald for a motion thank you mayor i move resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa denying an appeal and upholding the decision of the planning commission approving the conditional use permit for floratera and approximately 1140 square foot cannabis retail facility located at 1226 fourth street assessor parcel number 009 dash 112 dash 028 file number c up to 1 dash 061 and wave for the reading of the text second we have a motion from councilmember mcdonald and a second from councilmember rogers is there any input councilmember schwaethelm thank you mr mayor i just wanted to comment that i will be supporting the motion coming from a district where floratera currently resides the original shop and i would venture to guess that district six probably has as many if not more cannabis cannabis dispensaries as any other district and the reality is because i've talked a lot of my constituents i think it applies also to the mcdonald neighborhood there is that fear of someone new coming in the neighborhood but our experience and that's what i can only base it on what has been the experience of you know throughout the city the impact of dispensaries and especially being on council when we created the policy and i think we we did an excellent job but this is where they should be located and the oversight and management of it i i think it's this will be a wonderful addition to the neighborhood because it is illegal it is a legal business and we're treating as such so i'm welcoming them i'm hoping to welcome them to the neighborhood thank you councilmember let's go to councilmember rogers um i was just going to say that i think that i will be supporting it um but i i did want to say i think that pellet has a somewhat of a point that we do need to maybe look at um how we approve um from here on out the businesses on the cannabis um how we approve them going forward that it it has served us as far um but i've heard some say that we're being inundated in certain neighborhoods or just we're being inundated with storefront uh cannabis storefronts um so maybe looking at that as a council um that's feedback that we're getting from the community thank you councilmember councilmember mcdonald i will be upholding the appeal as well um so but i do have a question on bringing back the ordinance to have a consideration to extend the where schools are located i understand that the state law is 600 but i do think that the city of santa rosa could go further to ensure that it's farther away from schools and children um in that proximity to make sure that it's at at a thousand to 1200 feet is where i would be more comfortable i'm glad that this actually meets that um because there's some research and data around that and where children walk to and from school um and i understand that this facility is going to be an upscale facility i don't mean any disrespect to the applicant but i certainly want to make sure that we're protecting our children and i'd feel the same way if it was a liquor store or something else selling something that uh children would have potential access to so i too will be voting to deny the appeal and uphold the approval uh we have created regulations around cannabis that are a model across the state and actually i appreciate eric bringing bringing up the nexus between this and the uh vrbo ordinance because i do believe we put an emergency ordinance in place for cannabis and then came back and did a comprehensive that is now well received which is exactly what we're doing with the vrbo so thank you eric for that point um we have our rules and regulations that are in place the applicant meets all of them is a business owner and good standing in our community uh and so i have no grounds to deny the project after going through all of the hoops the city requires i'm happy to have the the conversation with you council member about 600 feet versus a thousand feet my question would be what does 400 feet actually buy you when you have security plans that are in place robust security plans uh and most kids who get access to cannabis don't get it from a legal business they get it from an illegal grow in a neighborhood uh which is a completely different issue uh so we can have that conversation going forward about what we're actually trying to accomplish uh but with that let's go ahead and call the vote on the motion councilmember schwetham hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonnell i look forward to the discussion i councilmember flamin hi mayor rogers hi let the record show this motion passed with five affirmative votes with councilmember so you're absent and vice mayor alvarez uh recuse of stating thank you so the appeal has been denied we'll uphold the approval of the project uh madam city manager let's go into item 15.2 and then council will take a dinner break following 15.2 and then come back for our remaining items item 15.2 is a public hearing on adoption of the city of santa rosa fy 2022 2023 operations and maintenance budget and capital improvement program budget veronica connor will lead the discussion thank you i'm promoting her now good afternoon mayor and city council members my name is veronica connor i'm the budget and financial analysis manager and i'm going to be presenting to you today our fiscal year 22 23 budget adoption presentation for the public hearing next slide please before we jump into the proposed budget i just wanted to recap for you our budget process for fiscal year 22 23 we did come before council back in february to hold a public hearing on budget priorities when the public was encouraged to speak during this time we also took submission on our website from public opinion to hear their council i'm sorry their budget priorities city council held goal setting at the end of february and so the input from council goals as well as the public was considered when departments were putting together their budgets during the spring the city manager did a detailed review of all department budgets in march and at this time she was also able to approve some additional budget requests within the financial constraints available and then we came before city council on may 10th and 11th with a study session and that was our deep dive into the budget for the next fiscal year you were able to hear from individual departments ask questions offer feedback and we took all of that feedback into consideration and here we are on june 21st with our budget adoption public hearing we have a final draft of the budget that we will be presenting to you not in as much detail as we did in may but still going over the numbers so next slide please so at the study session back in may council did not direct us to make any changes to the budget we presented at that time we do have one change that does not fall within the general fund it only falls within the housing authority both revenue and expenditures within the housing authority have increased by 30 thousand and 80 dollars just due to updated department of housing and urban development allocations so that's the only change in the numbers you'll see for when we came back in may next slide and so same as we did back in may we're going to start broad and we'll talk about the citywide budget and then we're going to kind of hone in on the more focused perspectives but the next slide please we'll first take a look at citywide revenues by fund so total citywide revenues are 467.2 million for the fiscal year 2223 the general fund is the largest portion of this at 197 and a half million and we'll look at that more in detail in the next section our enterprise funds this includes our all of our water funds as well as parking and storm water and transit as well as the golf course special revenue funds consist of our public safety tax measure our gas tax funds our measure end funds for both parks and streets as well as several other small ones other funds are mostly our debt service funds and special assessment districts and then we have the housing authority and successor agency to the redevelopment agency which are their own discrete entities aside from the city and next slide and this pie chart is a visual of the detail we're going to get into on the following slide this shows citywide expenditures and the big takeaway from this slide is just to show you that general fund that big blue pie wedge is the bulk of citywide expenditures followed by our enterprise operating fund or enterprise operating funds the red pie wedge at 29% and our CIP our capital improvement program totals about 14% between both our enterprise funds and our non enterprise funds and next slide please and this table is just more detail from the pie chart you just saw on this previous slide as I mentioned the general fund that top line item is the bulk of our citywide expenditures and again we're going to talk about that in more detail in the coming section the next line down our enterprise are operating funds the expenditures for those have increased year over year mostly due to the labor agreements that all bargaining units were able to enter for the current fiscal year there have been cost of living raises across the board so we're going to see that in all departments our enterprise CIP fund going down the next line shows a pretty stark year over year variance a decrease of 28.5 million per 43% and this was driven by an appropriation in fiscal year 21-22 for 30 million dollars for the uv disinfection project at the luguna treatment plant that was a one-time project that was not repeated in the current fiscal year or the next fiscal year excuse me 22-23 so that's why we show that big variance non enterprise CIP funds are increasing by about 5.6 million dollars our special revenue funds and other funds are remaining just about flat and the housing authority is increasing their expenditures by 10 and a half million dollars they're spending out the resources they have available and the successor agency has remained flat so in total our expenditures are 478.8 million citywide if you were to compare this to the total revenues from a couple slides back of 467 million I believe it was the 467.2 million it does appear that there's a deficit but I just want to point out that that is not an actual deficit or budgeted gap or shortfall several of our enterprise funds including water and parking have planned spending of their reserves in fiscal year 22-23 and this is kind of a timing issue of having expenditures that weren't able to happen in the current fiscal year to come over to the next fiscal year so that's why that does appear that way in total our capital improvement program that bottom line is 68.4 million and citywide operations net of CIP are 410.4 million we'll go to the next slide please so that concludes our look at the overall citywide numbers and we'll jump into the general fund next to take a look more at the budget for next year next slide so this slide shows our general fund summary of the budget we're proposing to you today total revenues and transfers in are 199.8 million and total expenditures and transfers out are 199.8 million so we have for you a balanced budget and these numbers are rounded but I do want to point out that if you have the full long number here these are balanced down to the dollar there is no hidden deficit or hidden surplus in there this is a truly a balanced budget and we're very very excited to be proposing a balanced budget today this is the first time in probably six years I believe it is that we've been able to propose a balanced general fund budget due to the pandemic and wildfires and PSPS events it just hasn't been a possibility so this is truly an indication of the city being able to get back to basics as the city manager has said again and again we'll go to the next slide please so this slide takes us through the major categories of general fund revenues the top two lines property tax and sales tax are by far our biggest sources of revenues in the general fund and the main point we want to show with these is we do have significant jumps in our estimates from the adopted budget 21-22 to the proposed budget 22-23 simply because when we came up with our budget last year this was in the height of the pandemic and our members then were just far too conservative the pandemic did not play out as terribly as we thought it would so that column of 22-23 truly represents what we think we're going to be this year so those substantial jumps of eight and a half or I'm sorry 8.7% for property tax and 19.6% for sales tax might seem aggressive but they're just an indication of trying to catch up to where we truly need to be utility users tax and vehicle license fees show modest increases other taxes this includes our franchise fees our cannabis industry tax real property transfer tax and transient occupancy tax these are all recovering at a very healthy rate comparable to property tax and sales tax which is why we see an increase I do want to call out the Interfund charges line that shows a decrease of 4 million or 28.7% this is a subject that we'll talk about again in the coming slides and it's a reflection of an organizational change where we moved our water billing function out of the general fund and into the water enterprise funds so when that function was in the general fund water would pay to reimburse for this program through that Interfund charges line so when we moved it out of the general fund we had to reduce our revenues and there is also a corresponding expenditure that we'll see on a future slide so it's really a net zero change to the general fund but we do see the revenue component of that here and then finally the other big line item to call out is that last line intergovernmental interest in other we show an increase of 62.4% it's truly only 3.2 million and that's just because we will be receiving a grant within the general fund and transferring it out to our CIP fund for the highway 101 pedestrian over crossing so that's just a one time thing in this next fiscal year and next slide please this pie chart is a visual of what we just discussed so as I mentioned sales tax that large green wedge and property tax the smaller green wedge this is the bulk of our general fund revenues followed by other taxes and vehicle license fees and next slide please so moving on to the discussion of general fund expenditures by category these total 190.3 million and again this is all expenditures within the general fund for all departments just broken up by categories so our top two lines salaries and benefits are obviously the largest pieces of the pie here within the general fund we have police fire administration we have a lot of fte's this is where the majority of our costs come in general fund fte headcount did increase by 1.0 during between fiscal year 21 22 and fiscal year 22 23 and we also had those cost of living increases which is why we see an increase in salaries benefits also rose primarily driven by our CalPERS unfunded liability costs other major items to call out on this slide would be that drop in professional services of 8.4 percent this was because back in 21 22 we had the the in response contract funded within police that now was moved out to our american rescue plan act fund so it shows a decrease even though this was just moving out from the general fund into a different fund our vehicle expenses are increasing by 18.5 percent this is partially due to gasoline costs that everyone is well aware of as well as our garage is increasing their rates for repair so our garage does work on city vehicles and charges out to general fund departments as well as enterprise fund departments so departments across the board are seeing an increase in rates utilities increase due to electricity and gas going up our liability and property insurance line item a couple down that had a substantial increase as well of 37 and a half percent and this is industry-wide this is certainly not anything specific to the city of Santa Rosa and overall citywide expenditures are 190 i'm sorry general fund expenditures are 190.3 million that's an increase of 7.8 million or 4.3 percent from last year and next slide please so this pie chart is a visual of what we just discussed and as i mentioned salaries and benefits the largest pieces of the pie when we're talking about general fund expenditures and then all of our services and supplies over there on the right hand side total up just about 23 percent of all our general fund costs and next slide so this is my final financial table for you today this shows the general fund expenditures by department so if you look down at the bottom line of the 22-23 proposed budget 190.3 million this is the same total that we just saw on the last financial table this is still all of our general fund expenditures but now they're broken out by department instead of by category so we can see the year over year changes in departments at the May study session departments had the opportunity to do a deep dive of all of their funds this is just the general fund portion of these departments so for example Santa Rosa water which is second from the bottom is just 0.7 million when obviously we know that's a much larger department but this is just general fund so our top line administration that includes our city council city manager human resources finance and communications departments this shows a decrease of 2.3 million or 10.3 percent and that is from that organizational move i talked about earlier of the water billing program going from finance out to the water enterprise funds so we're seeing that corresponding decrease here where we saw the revenue increase on the other side most of the other increases within these departments as I mentioned we are staff heavy within the general fund are primarily driven by those cost of living increases in our labor agreements go to the next slide please and then finally this pie chart is just a visual of the table we looked up before which shows by department all of our general fund expenditures police is the largest department at 68.5 million and fire follows that one at 49.8 million tpw is a 32.6 million dollar general fund department they obviously have a much more significant capital improvement program budget that is not included within this snapshot same with Santa Rosa water and housing and community services which have very tiny pieces of the general fund but much many more expenditures and other funds as well and next slide next slide please thank you so that concludes our discussion of the overall general fund and we're kind of focusing in more on some important pieces of this budget within the general fund we spoke in May about a replacement schedule for fire equipment up until this year whenever the fire department needed to replace any general fund funded fire engines or apparatus we would just do so on an as needed basis this obviously caused some problems with such expensive equipment when it came to planning and there were financial constraints of resources so we all put our heads together and are proposing to put these general fund funded equipment on a replacement schedule we can put aside a piece of those replacement costs every year so the funding will be there when it needs to happen this is going to require an appropriation of 2.7 million initially in the first year to kind of catch up a lot of those pieces of equipment and then thereafter ongoing from fiscal year 23 24 and out you will see an increase in the fire department's budget of about 1.2 million so I do want to call out specifically that this initial 2.7 million dollar appropriation is not within the annual budget this is going to be a separate piece there's a separate resolution asking counsel to appropriate this and this is coming out of our general fund reserves that have been set aside for fiscal stability funds but again going forward starting at fiscal year 22 23 we will see this as part of the fire department's annual general fund budget and next slide please and then finally our public safety tax measure does have a stipulation that requires the general fund portions of fire police and violence prevention to not fall beneath a certain baseline funding amount so for transparency's sake we do like to call out that these three departments are well funded and well over their baseline this council item also does have another resolution to amend the implementation plan for measure o that has to do with our special revenue fund and so while we're discussing measure o we do just want to mention that the implementation plan has been brought before the citizens oversight committee back in april they approved it and they're recommending counsel to approve it as well and next slide so in the final section of my presentation today i'm going to go over again a summary of all the staffing changes proposed in the next fiscal year's budget next slide the next two slides will show the fiscal year 21 22 headcount as compared to the fiscal year 22 23 count for each department our city attorney's office does not have any staffing changes the city manager's office does have an increase of two fte's these are the two assistant city managers that were moved from other departments into the cmo office so we'll see corresponding decreases to offset this plus two the communications and intergovernmental relations office did not have any staffing changes finance shows a decrease of 27 fte's but that's that water billing move that i keep mentioning and we're going to see the corresponding increase when then on the next slide when we see the 27 fte's moved into water the fire department had nine fte's added year over year seven of those were done at mid-year as part of the in response team and two of them are firefighters that have been added with the annual budget housing and community services has added in 3.0 fte's they had i believe it's three of their texts three housing and community services texts excuse me one within the homeless services fund and the rest within their housing authority fund human resources did add 1.0 fte human resource analyst at the mid-year budget amendment and next slide please it added a media services technician and that was done at the mid-year budget amendment as well and that is funded by pg&e funds by one time funding planning and economic development had a total of 6.0 fte's added this is a net total it was actually seven fte's minus the one acm that was moved over to city manager's office they added a director of planning and economic development they also added three planners mid-year that are all funded by grant funding and then they had some staffing to help with their operations including a development review coordinator a civil engineering tech and a building plans examiner tpw also added a director of tpw when they moved out their acm to the cmo office they also added in 4.0 fte's for real estate services that was an organizational change as well a reorg that came from water that staff that used to be housed in water were now moved into tpw and then finally water we see 27 and a half fte's being increased 27 of those are coming from finance when they did the water billing move they also had other various reclasses within their departments and next slide please so before the public hearing is opened and i'm happy to take any questions from council i just wanted to summarize that we have a total of nine resolutions today involved in passing this budget seven of them are specifically to pass the budget we have one additional for the amendment to the implementation plan for measure o and then the final one will be to appropriate that 2.7 million of general fund reserves for the fire equipment replacement program thank you that's the end of my presentation great thank you so much so madam city manager i'm gonna ask a question right off the bat because it's something that you and i have talked about when we talk about the budget we talk about positions we talk about staffing levels in each of the departments but what we're really talking about is the impact so this is the first budget you've had a chance to present to the council what is the impact if we approve this budget what is going to be different that the people of santa rosa are going to see than from previous budgets well one one of the things that they they will see but what they won't understand is that it's structurally balanced because one of the things that i would like to get to is you'll hear conversations about mid-year and i think one of the things that we need to focus on we have our core services but oftentimes what i hear from council members is that they would like extra um projects completed but we don't have that money so when you pass a structurally balanced budget what it helps me to actually see moving forward is how we can get those projects completed how we can allocate those funding how allocate that funding during the mid-year cycle so for instance and i will say it because i've said it a couple of times when i talk about basic services i'm looking at quality of life issues here in the city so we talk about infrastructure we talk about roads we talk about tall grass and weeds we talk about crime and we talk about finding ways to recreate passing this budget allows the departments to come back one it allows the departments to focus on their core services then it allows me to come back and say we have maybe two point three million dollars these are the projects that we would like for you to approve based on the conversations that we've had either prior through the prior years budget are during ongoing work plans so one of the things that i have brought to you is tall grass and weeds i think it's an issue i will talk about the broken window theory trash begets trash right it's one of the old adages that we've talked about probably for 20 30 years we have to be able to invest in the community and make it beautiful and those start with the quality of life issues when we talk about something as simple as vehicle replacement and i want to thank jason and his team for actually having done the homework on the back end so i can actually have a number for vehicle and replacements you know you're talking to someone who's purchased and specced out more than 3,600 pieces of equipment from fire trucks to lawn mowers our staff needs the tools in order to perform their job well we can't expect firemen we can't expect our grass crews to be able to go out and perform their functions daily functions if we don't provide them the resources when i present you a budget that is physically sound those are things that we can actually tackle and those are things that will allow our employees one to do their job and do their job well so you know i mean we can't i can't go back and you know in the past of course we haven't been able to pass the structurally balanced budget because of the wildfires maybe the floods and some of the other things but i think we're at a point where we can actually manage revenues and manage expenses and i can come to you to say this is where i think we need to start do i need more staffing i need more staffing do i need more technology i need more technology but what it just helps me to do is to be able to stop being reactionary and be able to be prescriptive one of the things about government is most of our plans were put into place when we had a stable government now we've turned the corner you know we've had recession after recession after recession and now we have to do business different because now we're a little bit reactionary right so now we have to be able to to adjust our policies for this new wave or this new era that we're in so while it was it was extremely tough because as i meet with the departments i understand their need i've been on the other side of the table when i look at police and i look at fire and i look at some of the other departments especially utilities and they have a lot more money than some of your general fund money but the departments did a very good job explaining their budget explaining their needs and explaining their core services and for me as i sit in this seat i just want to get back to good government and what does that mean so like i said it was very difficult but i believe that i'm putting something in front of you that allows us one to get back to core and basic services and be able to plan uh in the future you know i would like to look at our streets and roads and be able to present you a plan to say well maybe we can bond out some money for a million dollars and what does that get us does that get us three million does that get us four million so while it was just a tad bit conservative i think this is the best budget i could have delivered and you know i have to thank the team city attorney's office and all of my directors for coming to the table and working together don't turn off your mic yet i'm going to let you also tout what you did with fire that you were telling me earlier yeah so i'll let that can you actually promote cheap westrop i'll actually let him because um this is of course he's coming into his first year as fire chief and you know when you take over an organization it's much different than being in the rank and file so um chief westrop thank you city manager smith and thanks mayor and good evening members of council scott westrop fire chief of the city of santa rosa so what we saw in this year's budget um is something that we actually haven't seen in santa rosa before um there's a couple different pieces to that that i'll go back to uh city manager smith was referencing core services and so number one is what bronica now and um and the team put together in a capital fleet replacement program that's something we've never seen before and council knows all too well that every year we come with our handout we need to buy a $750,000 fire engine or $1.2 million ladder truck and um and one of the problems we ran into was you know we wanted to build a fleet replacement program but there was no capital initial capital investment to put in there so working with the team and working with council to put that together is a is a huge huge accomplishment for us to where we can actually plan how we replace our fleet um and put the right tools in the hands of firefighters that are on the streets on a daily basis and speaking of those firefighters the two positions that were restored in this year's budget are pivotal for us so as i've explained before we have a daily minimum daily staffing of 39 10 fire engines two ladder trucks and a battalion chief on duty on a daily basis and we've been very good about maintaining constant staffing and constant staffing is 39 39 people for 39 positions but what these two positions do is put us into a position where we have one over per shift the big difference is we've had those positions before in previous budgets we've never been able or been authorized to actually fill those positions so they existed vacant on the position control list and they were used for other purposes so the fact that we're actually have them and we're authorized to fill them and they're already we already have interviewed these potential employees and they start a little start in august is the big catalyst change so we'll have 40 people for 39 writing positions that helps financially on the overtime side but really helps is it takes the pressure off those firefighters who are working a lot of mandatory overtime right now to maintain the core services that we provide to the community so so it's a huge step in the right direction i'm right i'm right with city manager smith we're we're heading the right direction but it's a it's a huge win we've never seen this before we've actually filled over where we need to be and so really it's the highest level suppression division staffing that we've seen in the organization in my history nobody can remember us ever actually filling those those over position so thank you to council thank you to city manager smith thank you to alan and his team uh human resources Amy and her team thank you all for getting this done um we're definitely heading the right direction appreciate all your support thank you chief and then uh madam city manager or if we have uh in term chief cregan on can we talk about what the impact of the three additional sworn officers will be what they'll focus on and what the community should expect from them sure can you promote chief cregan please good evening mayor and city council member and we're happy to participate in this process for us one of the things and i've i've met repeatedly with city manager uh smith to discuss our focus with these three new additional staff members is going to be focused on violence reduction and the city of santa rosa we saw uh 471 reported shootings uh last year in the city of santa rosa with six homicides and so far this year we just had our seventh homicide of the year and it's only in june so we're really focusing holistically on what we can do to be able to reduce some of the firearm violence on our street and be able to get these uniformed officers making an impact not only with the firearms with the violence but as we saw again this weekend with the side shows and that's something that we have strong community support to put more resources to we launched with the support of our city council and our city manager last year our new special enforcement team which has been making an impact but we're seeing clearly that we need additional bodies for the special enforcement and for some of the gang violence that we're seeing across our community and that's where these focus these resources are going to be focused on for this next year thank you chief um uh last one i'll ask about although there's a lot of good in here is the additional code enforcement positions certainly can you promote um deputy director uh claire oh excuse me director right yes good evening um claire hartman director economic development yeah so for our code enforcement we're looking at one-time funds which is fine because it allows us to test performance and as well as address a backlog in code enforcement cases so with the one-time funds what we're looking at for code enforcement is the hiring of two code enforcement officers by contract one would be dedicated to short-term rentals as you know enforcement is a big community expectation when you adopt a when you adopt an ordinance like the short-term rental ordinance the expectation is we have the resources to support the enforcement of it so we we do need those resources and we will not only address the backlog of code enforcement cases but really be able to get a handle as we enter into the comprehensive ordinance process the second code enforcement officer um will also be caught by contract and that will address a backlog on our top priorities just the general enforcement cases throughout the city um and will allow us to address performance with our priority ones which are life safety cases um and to better handle customer service excellent thank you so much director and then alan the last one and then i'll kick it over to other council members for questions uh obviously we're coming out of the pandemic there is a hundred thousand dollars in the budget specifically for programming community spaces and events and i'm hoping you could talk a little bit about that and the process moving forward on on that sure so um we do have uh those funds identified in the budget um uh for that um excuse me uh the the process though is that uh given the the award authority on it will need to come back to council for uh um for the actual execution of the contract but uh the appropriation there wouldn't need to be an appropriation because those funds are uh contained within the uh fiscal year uh 23 budget great i just want to say thank you to the team for all of the hard work i know we've we've talked about it but we do see the cracks uh after years of dealing with disasters and this budget does feel like we're turning a corner and getting back to being more proactive in addressing the needs of the community and not just reactive so i want to thank you to the entire team i'm going to turn it over for questions from other council members go ahead council member mcdonald he knows i'm going to have a few questions for you um so first i want to just say thank you so much for a balanced budget it's really nice to see that coming into an organization which i haven't that had the opportunity to do that actually ever with anything that i've been a part of so i do appreciate the balanced budget um a couple things i do want to call out is the establishment of the 115 trust for calpers i think that's a huge accomplishment at mid-year that we saw but moving forward i think for the security of our employees is and their pensions is so critical i also wanted to just note on measure o because that was something that is really in the document but we didn't really talk about the importance of measure o and how much that funds um in all of our programs and i think it's critical to call that out for the public so that they realize how many of our fire and police are actually covered under that particular measure and i just wanted to specifically call that out well done to um alan for your 325 page documents to you and your team i read every single page of this i want you to know so i do appreciate the detailed work and everything that your team and everyone had put into this i did see that you do have a um a projection of a two percent uh or it goes from four percent to two percent i believe for property taxes do you have any decline in sales tax revenue as well and then i have a few more just clarifying questions i didn't see that projection under sales tax because it was quite high as an increase in this budget um i believe you're referencing our long-range financial forecast in the budget draft where we do project um property taxes to yes behind and taper off of it sales taxes those numbers that show the year over your growth rates those specifically came from our consultant for their most likely scenarios and in their you know the our long-range financial forecast only goes out five years within that timeframe they do not anticipate a downturn at this time great and then um a couple more things under um let's see on salaries and benefits i notice that it's 77 percent of the city's budget can you tell me the average of a city our size and how much they appropriate for salaries and benefits i have to come back to look at an average for cities of our size but i do know within a general fund that is um personnel heavy for things departments such as public safety and administration that is that is reasonable but if you'd like us to look at similar cities i'd be happy to do so and come back with that sure at a future time that would be great um also on page 74 it's actually 82 in the presentation there was a presentation about sam jones hall and it looked like in 2008 there was 849 beds or slots that we were able to use and now in 2022 we only have 650 is that is that correct i'm just curious why there was a drop if if someone could tell me that if the contract or something had changed council member mcdonnell i need to know what page you're referencing because i don't believe that page 74 of the budget it's actually page 82 of the presentation it looked like there was a drop in in beds and it's not really anything to do other than if we're in contract for something i'm just curious as to why maybe we lost beds i know they're currently in a transition with remodeling so potentially that could be it and i'm trying to pull it up right now to help out but i believe that that would probably be a question for our homeless services yeah can you promote megan thank you good evening council and megan bassinger director of housing and community services uh unfortunately off the top of my head i don't have this information but we'd be happy to look into it and provide you with more information on why there is a difference in the numbers thank you i would really appreciate that and i just have a couple more things here um on the cip budget on page seven it's page 21 of the presentation um there there were three garages that we mentioned in that particular budget do we have a map of where those garages are i know that it said it i think in another document i was able to read where we were where they were located because i looked it up on my phone but is there a map when we reference things like that someplace in the city i assume you're referring to parking garages yes um yes uh we do have a map of those that believe it's on our parking site um i could off the top of my head tell you where those where they are they are they are been burned into my brain um so we have uh let's start with garage one which is on seven street then we have uh garage three which is laid up on fifth street and garage five which is on third street so both of those are are over in the in the downtown area there we have garage nine which is on b street so right out where the annex is and then garage 12 is on first street by the roxy theater that's a very general uh idea where they are i just realized i'm not giving you cross streets but uh that's that's generally where where they are we do have a map thank you i'm aware of the streets in our city but that i appreciate that map that you just drew for me in my head so i really do appreciate that so i just have one more thing and it has to do with the work councilmember mcdonnell we have a couple of clarifying uh some clarifying information for you oh great thank you so on that last question you were asking um uh the chief financial officer alton uh just wanted to also clarify that in the budget book in the capital improvement project section with each of the projects there is a project identifying number a p id if you go on to srcity.org slash cip you can actually input you can actually input that into the map uh component on it and it will actually take you to the project identifying page and show it to you on the map as towards located within the city that's really cool thank you i appreciate that and your question regarding sam jones hall so that is a cumulative number so that's the total number of people that have been served filtered at the annex so you have eight forty nine seven 64 number of people served okay thank you very much for that clarification that does change things okay and so my last comment or question really comes down to the workers compensation issue and i know i've mentioned that before and i called city manager about this issue before um a lot of times in budgets we just end up paying insurance and liabilities because we have to we're um you know we get billed for it and um i was just wondering if in the future you could bring to us um maybe a study session perhaps around our workers compensation rate to see if we could draw a nexus between when we were fully staffed and and our workers were not having to do as much over time perhaps and where we're at on our current rate and the reason i mentioned it is because um if we're having fatigue or we are understaffed in some way sometimes there could be additional injuries and um it can be physical injuries or just mental health as well so i'd like to have us take a look look at that because when you have a budget our size it can actually be quite expensive just by going up a percent or down a percent specifically on workers compensation and so i i know everyone's working really hard to make sure that we're all safe all of our employees are safe out there and we're doing our part but i just think that that's an important thing to actually drill down into so that we would know if we needed to add some staff and and as she's uh rest throat uh actually mentioned today that adding the two people does a huge huge um benefit to our our firefighters and so i just want to make sure that we're looking at that in all of our departments so that we can really be mindful of that particular issue and then i did notice that we are getting closer to the full-time employee numbers from 2018 compared to where we are now so i just want to say thank you so much for the work on that we know that there's not a lot of folks out there that you can hire and it's not just city of santa rosa that's down folks it's all across our nation and so i really want to commend uh you our city manager as well as all of the departments for working so hard to find such great employees that represent our city so thank you great budget thanks any other questions from council members seeing none we will open the public hearing if anybody would like to provide input on this year's budget go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom we'll start with eric yes thank you very much mayor rogers this is eric frazier speaking on behalf of truth in tourism at gmail.com hats off to city manager smith for this tremendous effort organizationally as well as personally her own personal fortitude to deliver a balanced budget to the city of santa rosa i i can't think of anything more responsible as a manager a city manager and again hats off to her team uh jason uh everybody else the uh the presentation however gives me the opportunity to revisit my favorite topic which is the uh aberrant uh urgency ordinance uh regulating short term rentals within this presentation i see again something that totally went off the rails uh urgency ordinance was truly a waste of money in its approach uh irregardless or regardless of whether it was used for cannabis policy uh it's a mess when it was applied to short term rental policy several million dollars in opportunity lost costs lost already few hundred thousand dollars in tot on top of the millions of dollars that you forgot to collect over the past several years really quite a big scandal uh and litigation costs and the possibility that srt bi might need to be clogged back but i do want to say however that in spite of all these uh difficulties and challenges showed by the really irresponsible approach to str regulations what we do see as a major disconnect between the costs that were incurred in the last fiscal year concerning us and then the upcoming costs that are anticipated so just sort of a review of reality because i know uh enforcement was an issue and so of course we've been tracking enforcement on strs and we see that there's been over a hundred citations written but they're pretty much all fictitious there's only four or five that had to do with quality of life issues uh the rust were advertisements and people getting citations because they came forward in the permany process and out of the four or five that alleged quality of life issues they were pretty much all across the board refuted by evidence that the owners provided and so on and so forth so i would hope that your uh code enforcement gets up on protecting civil rights due process and that's incorporated in your approach to the budget but again hats off however to the new city mad i know she's just sort of inherited this poo poo platter upon arrival this this political stunt this str thing but hats off to you thank you and i'm glad there is some sanity some adult in no thank you let's see if we have any other comments tonight do we have any pre-recorded voicemails we have no pre-recorded voicemail on this matter okay i'll go ahead and close the public hearing councilmember sweatham do you want to make the motion sure and i would also like to add my thanks to the city manager alan and veronica and i really want to appreciate uh veronica with your depth of understanding and knowledge of this budget and the way you explained it not only to council but the members of the community excellent job i really appreciate that veronica so this is one of nine resolutions just fyi dinners nowhere soon but i will move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa approving the budget for the city of santa rosa for fiscal year 2022-23 the capital improvement program budget for fiscal year 2022-23 and establishing reserves for the 2021-22 fiscal year and waive for the reading of the text second we have a motion from councilmember schwedhelm and a second from councilmember rogers uh let's go ahead do comments now from council members if you have any additional comments as tom mentioned we have quite a few ordinances excuse me resolutions to pass so let's get comments out now and then work our way through councilmember rogers i will make mine very quick um i just really sincerely would like to thank the the city manager um we gave you um i think eric um said it best we gave you a lot of stuff to deal with and you have gracefully came and started to to deal with it and with that came a lot of change for a lot of us um but i sincerely would like to thank you for taking on the task and coming to our beautiful city um and starting to write our ship so thank you very much and thank you to um the assistant city manager um also the city attorney's office our wonderful staff and my wonderful colleagues for also seeing that you have what it takes to come here and to write our ship i think that um it was a lot we knew you were gonna have to come here and deal with um and this budget and you holding firm to what you said you were gonna come do um is just the the beginning but i just wanted to thank you for that any other comments mr vice mayor well it goes without saying you showed up and i appreciate you showing up and to the rest of the team of the city of san rosa and as stated before uh as as as a native of san rosa i'm appreciative that i see this city of san rosa moving in a in a positive direction and i'm very thankful for the effort that each of you have put forth thank you councilmember schwedem just a brief moment i just do do have to give a shout out because of my time on council i've never seen what was on slide nine the surplus slash deficit and it was a zero thank you thank you councilmember fleming so uh i won't uh repeat all the things i will just put an exclamation point behind all the things to you for today and then i'm gonna highlight something that i think needs to be pulled out which is to all of our line staff who have had to put in mandatory overtime and work with reduced ranks um i thank you for your service while waiting to get to this point i know it is not a perfect fix i know that we need a lot more staffing in most of our departments and that you're still understaffed and to our community we know that conditions are not what you want them to be we are moving towards getting things how they need to be and we're working on fixing our fundamentally flawed budget um deficiencies and it's going to take some time but i think in this budget what our line staff and what our regular community members can see is a move in the right direction so um a sincere thank you to everybody who shows up you know at all hours of the day to make our city function with less than optimal support here we are trying to fix that thank you councilmember well since i i was thanking you when i was drilling you for questions i just want to straight thank you all now and and i am tough when it comes on budgets i do read it and take it very seriously but it really is hats off to you city manager and for the whole team and i do feel really lucky to be able to join this team to be able to adopt a balanced budget is is a huge thing and and all of you should be applauded for that so thank you so much the final thank you that i have it is for every employee of this organization um last year we went through contract negotiations with all 13 of our bargaining units and it was a conversation around how can we pay you enough to live here and a sincere desire from the council uh to support the good work that so many folks are doing while also talking about the longevity of the council uh of the of the community's budget of our ability to deliver services for the folks who live in santa rosa and i think because of those productive conversations that's why you see for the first time in years that we're not cutting from the budget that we actually have a balanced budget and i think that there needs to be an acknowledgement for every single one of those employees who understood that conversation and got us to this point today there's still the commitment for from this council to grow the economy locally that allows us to deliver those services and continue to pay competitive wages and fill those positions that we do know are vacant and so i just want to thank everybody for working with us to do that and this is certainly it's a it's a good day for us and it started last year in those conversations uh with that let's go ahead and call the the role on the vote councilmember spudhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember phleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show that this vote passed with six affirmative votes okay next uh i'd move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa amending the city salary plan and schedule and authorizing the city manager to implement these changes including the fiscal year 2022-23 budget and waive for the reading of the text second motion from schwedhelm second from rogers let's call the vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember phleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show that vote passed the six affirmative votes and then move a resolution of the council the city of santa rosa authorizing that public facilities improvement fees funded pfif projects contained within the city budget and the capital improvement program document continue to replace the pfif map and list on file with the city engineer in making certain findings with regard to sequa requirements for the adoption of the city budget and waive for the reading of the text second motion schwedhelm second mcdonald let's call the vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember excuse me councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember phleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show this resolution passed with six affirmative votes and i move a resolution of the council the city of santa rosa setting the stormwater utility budget in determining the amount of eligible funding that has been received from the flood control zone one a benefit assessment in fiscal year 2021-22 and based there on setting the stormwater assessment per equivalent residential unit for the fiscal year 2022-23 and waive for the reading of the text second motion schwedhelm second rogers let's call the vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember phleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show this resolution passed with six affirmative votes now move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa approving certain project within the fiscal year 2022-23 capital improvement program budget year which is a roseland pavement maintenance and waive for the reading of the text second what helman rogers let's call the vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember phleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi and with my eye i want to thank the city of santa rosa for investing into an area that historically seemed a lack of attention so thank you to the city santa rosa for not only their annexation for their but also for the support mayor rogers hi at the record show that this resolution passes six affirmative votes now move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa approving certain project within the fiscal year 2022-23 capital improvement program budget year this one is the b street high traffic slurry and waive for the reading of the text second motion from schwedhelm second from rogers let's call the vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember phleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi and madam city attorney did you have something to add uh yes i'm a little concerned these three cip projects were pulled out from the uh general primary resolution uh because of the need for certain council members to recuse themselves because of uh either a home or a business near these projects um i unfortunately do not have the list of um who those were for i'll be able to help you out sue sorry about that um the roseland pavement maintenance that is a conflict of interest for councilmember alvarez so we should redo we will uh we'll revisit that motion for a cip project 2113 yes do we have to vote to request for reconsideration or can we just retake the vote we can read just thank you um we have a motion we have a second let's recall the role on that one so are we going back to the roseland one at this point are we doing that okay cip project 2113 great thank you it was a motion from schwedhelm and a second from rogers go ahead city attorney before we before i recuse myself from that item could i be informed why i am i am is it proximity to my home it would be proximity to either your home or your business um i don't have the data in front of me right now okay very well very well understood thank you thank you okay thank you councilmember schwedhelm hi hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonnell hi councilmember fleming hi councilmember al or vice mayor alvarez will be recusing abstaining mayor rogers hi let the record show this vote or this resolution passed with five affirmative votes okay i'll move a resolution to the council of the city of santa rosa approving certain project within the fiscal year 2022 23 capital improvement program budget year which is garage one repairs and wait for the reading in the text okay and do we do we have the identity of the councilmember that must recuse i'm sorry could you say the project id number again on that one 2264 yeah that i'm sorry that is a conflict of interest for both councilmember natalie rogers as well as councilmember fleming thank you do we have the right number because the one i just read garage one repairs is 1822 no i think we're on the second one i was on the i'm sorry i was on the second your well oiled machine for a moment here it was 2264 was where we're at we just did 2113 which was the roseland so we have cip project 2264 which is the b street i believe so 2264 the b street high traffic slurry is a conflict of interest for both councilmember natalie rogers as well as councilmember fleming or the mayor may i ask what the address is because i can't i don't hold a business or a residence anywhere near that location and if you give me a minute i can look this up councilmember rogers is that near your business um that is where my office used to be prior to covid on the corner okay but i i work from home i tell her i tell the word so i do i do have an address here that is a conflict of interest for councilmember fleming but i'm sorry i'm not sure if i'm going to be reading aloud councilmember fleming's home address so i don't necessarily want to jump in and do that but it does show me i'm okay because i i recently moved in the last couple of weeks i'm guessing it's an old address what is it it's 555 fifth street um that's an address of a former business i no longer hold oh okay okay thank you so councilmember rogers it's probably do you still own the business in the area uh no okay i don't have a business downtown okay then i think everybody's good to vote on this one it's good to vote yes so we have a motion from councilmember sweat helm and a second from councilmember rogers let's call the vote councilmember sweat helm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember fleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show this resolution passed with six affirmative votes and i suspect for this next one if it's garage one and that address is not a valid address for councilmember fleming was that the conflict or the perceived conflict i believe one i'm sorry it was a conflict for councilmember natalie rogers oh okay it's probably for the same reason i think we're all good to vote on it then yes i understand the conflict would have been a former business address which is no longer um no longer a business address so we're all fine to vote okay councilmember so move a resident here right we were a finely tuned machine here i don't have this all out okay resolution of the movement resolution of the council city of san rosa proving certain project within the fiscal year 2022 23 capital improvement program budget year which is the garage one repairs and waive for the reading in the text second motion from schwedhelm second from rogers it's called the vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember fleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show this resolution passed with six affirmative votes only two more promise okay i'll move a resolution of the council the city of san rosa amending the transaction and use tax implementation plan for gang prevention slash intervention services and waive for the reading in the text second motion schwedhelm second rogers let's call the vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember fleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show this resolution passed with six affirmative votes is this the last one too okay so i'll move a resolution of the council the city of san rosa to approve and appropriate funds to set up the fire capital equipment replacement program for the replacement of fire fleet vehicles and waive for the reading in the text happily second and let's call that vote councilmember schwedhelm hi councilmember natalie rogers yes councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember fleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi let the record show that this resolution passed with six affirmative votes i swear that was not hazing councilmember schwedhelm it was a sign of respect and with that we have a budget congratulations to the whole team and again thank you to everybody who worked hard on it we will take a dinner break uh we'll come back let's say at 740 we'll give council a half hour dinner break and we'll be back at 740 let's go ahead bring us back madam deputy city clerk can you please call the roll certainly mayor councilmember schwedhelm here councilmember natalie rogers councilmember mcdonald here councilmember fleming councilmember or let's see here councilmember natalie rogers have you joined the meeting present thank you vice mayor alvarez president mayor rogers here let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember fleming and councilmember soyer all right madame city manager item 14.2 item 14.2 is a report propose city charter amendments i'll turn it over to city attorney sue gallagher thank you thank you uh madam city manager and uh thank you mayor and councilmembers so i know we've had a long day so far so i'll try to move through this pretty quickly um we're back to talk about the proposed charter amendments um based on the recommendations from the charter review committee um as you recall on may 24th we had the study session um and uh we are now back to look at the final three ballot measures that were recommended by the the charter review committee uh if we get the green light uh tonight um we'll come back then on july 12th with the full ballot language uh and with the resolutions that will be necessary to place um the measures on the november 2022 ballot so next slide um i think uh you're all familiar with this so just very quickly um this process started last august um when the council adopted resolution 21 20 21-147 um establishing the charter review committee and initiating the charter review process the decennial review process um and just a reminder as you all are familiar with um the committee was comprised of 21 individuals it was a very diverse group both by age race occupation background and really that group was very highly engaged i was impressed with how involved they were in all the discussions and how our attendance level remained high throughout the the the entire process so the committee worked over about six or seven months reviewing a series of proposals and made key recommendations and of course at the may 24th um study session uh the council did hear the committee's final report and recommendations next slide so at the end the end of the day the committee recommended three measures to present to the voters for the november 2022 ballot they had other recommendations for maybe down the line but those were the three that they felt were appropriate to move forward with this year and the three were the ballot measure to increase council compensation that would tie council compensation to the area median income second the ballot measure to align the charter with the city's district-based election of council members and then third the ballot measure to update and modernize the city charter and that included kind of three areas i'm wanting to remove some ambiguities second to add some flexibility in city operations and then the third is to ensure gender and citizenship neutrality in the charter language so the committee also considered another number of other issues the next slide um and among those the committee considered the expansion of voting rights to non-citizens and the committee did unanimously urge the council uh to move forward to just to study that proposal but not for this november's election but to study it in the future um the committee also considered two other um issues at some length the directly elected mayor and the ring choice voting on the directly elected mayor the committee recommended on a 10 to 7 vote against moving forward with the proposed transition to a direct elected mayor at this time um generally feeling some concerns about equity issues and some concerns about let's let the districts um mature see how it goes on ring choice voting that was a stronger vote it was a recommendation on a 17 to 3 vote and not to move forward with the ring choice voting at this time so next slide so i'm not going to really focus just on the on the three recommendations and then of course the council can consider and discuss whether there's anything else they want to add so next slide um the first is the ballot measure to increase council compensation next slide um as you all well know council members currently receive 800 a month and the mayor receives 1200 a month there's been no increase in that salary since 2005 um the committee heard about the workload saw the calendar the calendar of the mayor um heard from council members and really did recognize very strongly the difficulty of balancing private employment child care family uh and the responsibilities council membership they also received information on uh council compensation and other northern california cities next slide so the committee unanimously agreed that council compensation should be increased and they found that the increase is necessary to enable a greater diversity of council membership again to enable those with young families those with lower paying occupations those without independent means of support to enable those individuals to be to participate on the council also felt that the increase in compensation would ensure continued strong commitment and professionalism not that they had any questions about the commitment professionalism of any of the current council members but they did recognize that in some other councils um and and arguably even in ours um we had young um younger council members with often with young families deciding that it was just too much um uh to continue to be on council so really recognizing that pattern and a couple of different councils in the area and then really just reflecting the fairness and respect for the extensive work um of council members so next slide um they they discussed a lot of different options um and again at the end of the day they recommended to set the mayor's salary at area median income for a three person household so that and then to set the council member's salary at two-thirds of the area median income for three person household and that parallels a measure that was passed in berkeley in 2020 so there is um there is a uh a precedence for that the recommendation would permanently tie the mayors and council members salaries to area median income for a three person household and to explain that that's the area median income for sonoma county uh the median income of a three person household um the committee also recommended um that the council consider establishing a penalty or a reduction in that salary for unexcused absences or if the city imposes a salary cap or pushes down salaries city-wide that that should also um perhaps apply to the council as well um we talked about this at the uh study session back at the end of may um but i did not hear clear direction from council so this is um something that i would like to um have a little clearer direction whether you're interested in adding that provision or not um if you do want to add some provision for reduction in salary for whatever bases um you are interested in um i would recommend um that what we do in the ballot measure is to have council able to adopt whatever those standards are going to be by ordinance so that they're not embedded in the in the um charter itself but gives us some flexibility next slide uh we talked again at the study session about some of the alternatives there was a strong minority of the committee members that uh encouraged a higher level of compensation suggesting 140 percent of am i for the mayor and 100 percent of am i am i of course this area of median income for council members um at least two of the council of the committee members i'm sorry um wrote separately to recommend that council utilize the existing authority under the charter and under state law to increase uh council comp