Okay. Here we go. We're on. We're on live. All right. Welcome everybody. Let's go ahead and move into our study session and then we'll talk about all the cool tools we have in here later on. I'll do a brief introduction here. This afternoon we have a study session on the 2012 short-range transit plan and a discussion of a proposed fare structure and Anita Winkler will lead that discussion. Anita is our Assistant Director of Public Utilities for Transit or Public Works, excuse, Transportation and Public Works. I have utilities on my mind, I think. So she's in the other department that handles things out in the field services. So without further ado, please take it, Anita. I'm not sure which one of those jobs I want right now. So good afternoon, Mayor Alvarez and members of the council. I'm Anita Winkler. I'm the Deputy Director of Transit in the Transportation and Public Works Department and I'm quite relieved that somebody else still struggles trying to get that right at times. So the study session today is intended to update you about city bus service and fare proposals under consideration as part of our short-range transit plan process and have an opportunity to hear your questions and any concerns you may have about the proposals we're presenting. It's kind of fun to give the test drive to the new technology, so this is going to be exciting. So the overview for today, just to give you a quick sense of how we're going to carry this through, an introduction now and a quick financial update. And then I'm going to turn this over to the rest of the team to talk about what we learned at a series of public outreach meetings, the proposed fare increase, the proposed transfer policy reform and the proposed service modifications, and then the next steps. So to sort of get it started, skip that one. Let me introduce the team because otherwise I'll forget to do it and they're really the important ones here.  Michael Ivory, who's a transit planner. Joy Gibson, who's our marketing outreach coordinator. And somewhere between the transit operations building in here is Steve Horace, our transit superintendent. You'll recognize him when he walks in, rather out of breath. When we started this whole process, I made a commitment to this team that there were no rules about how we tackled the issues in front of us, that the past was past and the door at this point was open to innovation and new ideas, that we needed to tackle service reductions with a scalpel, not a meat ax, not just ax the whole route but do this very carefully. And that we needed to do the best we could to match our service to the community needs and demands. When you and I last talked, it was during the budget review and at that time we talked about some financing uncertainties that we were facing. Do you not have a copy of the slides in front of you? Okay, hard copy. Okay. At that time, we didn't know what Congress would do, if anything, about transit funding and I was extremely nervous about not being able to use federal funding to help support our operations. In the last couple of months, Congress did enact legislation known as the MAP-21 and I didn't have a chance to get the actual what that MAP-21 stands for but you'll probably be happier just knowing it's MAP-21. That did include provisions that will allow a transit system like Citibus to continue to use some federal money for operating. That's the good news. The harder news is that it's a two-year bill, so we have some relief for two years, but the other part of that is it requires congressional appropriations each year, so we'll see if that part happens. We, however, being somewhat optimistic or operating on the assumption that given Congress got it this far, we'll see some of that money. The second part that we talked about was Transportation Development Act money and Measure M money. Those are both sales tax money and we all know what sales has been like. We managed and have taken a great deal of pride in not cutting service over the last many years when other transit systems were making huge cuts as much as 25% of their service. We had what we call, probably really inappropriately, a TDA reserve. It was kind of a savings account of TDA money that we didn't use every year and that's allowed to accumulate for us in an account and we can draw from it later. The term reserve, when I use it that way, gives the accountants a real nightmare, so I use it very cautiously when I say it here. But we've reached the point now that that's becoming more difficult. Those two sources of money, both sales tax, I'm trying to see how this is going to happen. Amount to 46% of our budget. It's huge. I knew it was big. I didn't know it was that big until we ran some recent numbers. So we're now facing a situation where a source that we're relying on for almost half of our funding is not sufficient to meet that. And our reserve that we've been using is almost depleted. We have enough to make it probably another year and a half, maybe two years. And hopefully the economy is turning around and that will begin to grow. But I don't want to bet this transit service on that happening. So that, let's get the other part here. That brings me to the charge that I gave to the team. And that was I asked them to find a million dollars in either service reductions or revenue increases as the first step towards addressing this problem. It's not the final solution. It gets us a couple more years down the road and gives us a chance to really fine tune things. And then we'll talk a little bit about that as we go on. Well, that next step will be a very intensive evaluation of the overall system. And even the design of the system and really just cutting to ground zero and rebuilding a transit system that will meet this community's needs. The design of that system is as old as the transit system itself from the 1950s. And it worked great when we were a fairly small compact community and everybody could come downtown and go back out. It just doesn't work very well for that anymore. And we're finding that out. So the package of proposals that we're bringing to you today represent well thought through ideas that are supported by statistical data are intended to spread the impact as fairly as possible throughout the community and to form the foundation for the next steps for city bus. It's a creative approach combining service reductions, service improvements and increased revenues. And it's probably one of the most difficult packages that this team has ever had to bring to the council. As I mentioned, City Bus has prided itself on being able to main service while others were cutting service, but we've just reached the point where we no longer can do that. As most of you know, I was here for a long time, a long time ago, and I don't remember ever bringing a service cut to the council during that time. City Bus, well, we recognize as a team and individually that our transit service is critical to many, many of our riders, if not most of them. And we have not taken the impact of these changes on people, of the impact of these changes on people's lives lightly. I need to commend the team for the public outreach that they've undertaken and they'll explain some of that to you. It's very extensive over the last couple months and for the quality of work that they've done to bring something that's creative to you. And we understand that we're asking you, we will be asking you in a couple months for some really tough decisions. We hope we're giving you the information that will help you through those decisions. But we just want you to know that we're very sympathetic to what we're asking you to do. With that, I'm going to turn this over to the rest of the team who will explain the work that they've done. I'll remain available for questions if needed. Good afternoon. I'm Rachel Ede, transit planner. Before we launch into the main part of our presentation, I wanted to take just a few minutes to talk about the public outreach we've done over the last few months and what we've heard in those meetings. We initiated this effort back in May with two traditional public meetings, one at the City Hall Annex and one at the Transit Operations Building. We had about 55 people participate in those meetings. And then throughout the course of this summer, we've been going out in the community and doing meetings and interacting with folks at the other locations you see listed on the slide. And then we've come back to do three public meetings last just last week. One at the downtown transit mall in the old bank building, one at the Bennett Valley Senior Center and one at the Transit Operations Building. And we had over 60 people attend those meetings. So we've had very good attendance. We feel like we've had a good opportunity to talk to a real cross section of the community. So just to summarize in broad terms what we've heard from the community, first on the topic of fares and transfer policy, we received surprisingly mixed input on the concept of a fare increase. Obviously a lot of people said to us, please don't raise fares. These are hard times. Any increase in either the fixed route fare or paratransit fare is going to be a real hardship for me. But we also heard people say, if you have to do something, we'd rather that you raise the fare a little bit rather than cut service more. We've heard a lot of support for preserving the service as much as possible. And then we actually did have a few people who said, you know, city bus is a real value compared to a lot of other operators. You haven't been in for a fare increase in four years. We understand that you need to do this in these times. So we did hear that too. So it was surprisingly mixed. Regarding the transfer policy, we heard a lot of frustration both from our drivers and from the public about the transfer abuse that we'll talk about a little bit that folks are seeing in the system. The way our current transfer policy operates, there's a lot of opportunities for people to hand slips between each other for folks to avoid paying a fare that they should be paying. And the riders see it, the drivers see it, and it's a source of frustration for people who are doing the right thing and paying their fare and using their transfers appropriately. We, of course, also did have people say that if you do tighten up the transfer policy, that will have an effect on us as well. Some people may have to pay an additional fare to complete their business in a day. And that's something that we were working to take into consideration and try to find some ways to mitigate. And then finally, we heard a lot of support throughout the community and with the drivers for the concept of the day pass, which is not something that's included in these proposals for February, but something we're looking very closely at for the future. And this would be a pass that would be unlimited rides for just one day. It would be purchased on the bus. And for someone who has to make a lot of trips in one day, they would pay something less than what they would be paying if they were just paying for every single trip. We haven't priced it out yet. But it would enable people who don't use a transit system enough to buy a monthly pass but want to run all of their errands on one day, which many people do. It would give them a lower cost discounted way to do that. In terms of service proposals, we heard a lot of specific comments on routes, far beyond what we're proposing to you here today. As Anita mentioned, we'll be looking forward to do some more deep work with the system in the coming year and beyond. A lot of folks had very specific comments about route alignment, about major destinations where we should try to find a way to find more or provide more direct service. A lot of comments on our overall system design, frustration with the one way loops we have in our system. One way loops are a great way to provide coverage with a limited resource. But there's a lot of frustration without having, with a lack of two way service, both for riders and also confusion. We heard a lot of suggestions that we need to do more to integrate with our transit partners, including Sonoma County Transit. A lot of our riders are using both systems and want us to continue to work to see what we can do to coordinate and also some comments about future coordination with SMART. Earlier service on Sunday is always a request. We've had this request for years, as well as later service in the evening. And then a series of comments about on time performance on specific routes. Route 6, which is West 3rd Street, route 9, Sebastopol Road, route 14, which is County Center, and route 17, Piner Road. We are addressing on time performance issues on all of those routes as part of these service proposals. And finally, the last comment we heard a lot was that school bell times were seeing some real impacts in the system. We know about this, but some requests both from riders and drivers to try to get a little bit more supplemental service out there to help with those loads. So before we go into fair analysis, I actually, I wanted to end that slide by saying, acknowledging, as Anita mentioned, that what we're really focusing on today is our fair and service proposals for February. But all of these larger issues that the public has raised will be incorporated into the larger short range transit plan. We will be bringing those in as proposals, either for things we could do if we reallocated hours within the system or things we could do if additional operating resources became available. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Joy Gibson to talk about the fair proposals. Good afternoon. I'm Joy Gibson, marketing outreach coordinator for Santa Rosa City bus. As part of our fair analysis, we looked at the California Transit Association's 2011 fair summary. These are the California transit providers whose fairs we looked at. The averages for these providers are shown here for their adult cash fare and their monthly passes. Many of these providers have other media that they use, but these were the ones that were most consistent with what we offer. In the next column, you'll see our current fairs. And you'll notice that we are quite a bit lower than average for the other California transit providers. And the last column shows what our proposed fair increases are that we want to present to you. So even with the new proposed fairs, you can see we're still very competitive and very right on point with what the other transit providers are offering or charging, I should say. In addition, some of the things that we want to do to help mitigate the fair increase is to keep the prices of our ticket books at the same rate. Currently, they are sold at a five cent discount off of a cash price. So we would like to maintain that for people for at least the next six months or so until we can see how that works. Also, as part of that, we want to sell the tickets in 10 ticket increments. Currently, the ticket books for adults are sold in 50 ticket increments and seniors and youth are in 20 ticket increments. Part of our public outreach, we talk to a lot of people that do get paid weekly. So those expenses are significant. The other thing that we've discovered is often people want to get a monthly pass, but so now we're going to offer them at the prorated amount of 50% off on the 15th of the month. Since they're only good for half the month, they'll be half the price. The last thing that we have to take into consideration is increasing the paratransit fare, so that will be double the proposed adult cash fare and that will be $3 per one-way trip. Another important component of this is that we are mandated by our federal regulations to have a 20% fare box ratio for our fixed route service and 10% on our paratransit service. Our fixed route service, we're very close. We're just slightly under that. However, paratransit is significantly under that and we'll be augmenting that going forward with some measure M funds. The second part of the revenue increase is a transfer policy reform. Our current transfers are issued for free with a paid fare. That means if someone gets on a bus and uses cash or a ticket, they're given a transfer. People that have a monthly pass, that's good for unlimited rides so they don't need a transfer. Currently, those are good for two hours. This is a history of our transfer use over the past six fiscal years and you can see in fiscal year 1011 that we broke the one million trip mark on transfers and you can see that the transfer use has gone up significantly over the past six years. By changing our transfer policy to make it a one use transfer for either city, county or golden gate. What that does is anytime somebody boards the bus, they need to give the driver something, either cash, a ticket, a transfer or show them their pass. So that should help with boardings and help mitigate a lot of this passing of transfers around. They would still be valid for two hours and they would be issued on request only. What our projections are, if we can reduce the transfer use and convert those into a paid fare, you can see on the left that if we can reduce them by, say 25%, we have the potential of increasing our paid fares up the amount of 255,000 fares. So it really is significant and we really feel that it's important to make this change to people that are taking advantage of the transfers as opposed to an additional fare increase for people that aren't taking advantage. The impact to the budget with the proposed fare increase and the proposed transfer policy reform would close at about 50%. We're looking at about $500,000 from those two changes is what we're projecting. The rest of the gap will be closed in service reductions. The reductions that we are proposing only account for a 5% reduction in the total city bus service. And I'll turn this over to Rachel, so you're going to take this one? We're bouncing around a little bit, but you have the full team here. We're going to start the section of the presentation where we talk about the service modifications we're proposing, and Michael Ivory and I will be presenting on this topic. As we've discussed, what we're proposing for February that's under discussion here today is really a focus on the fundamentals of our system's viability and health. So the first issue we've really tried to tackle, as I mentioned before, is the reliability of the system and on-time performance. The system runs at least on half-hour headways, if not hour headways. And so when our time transfer system starts to break down because of on-time performance issues, people begin to have real issues with reliability and with trip time and being able to ensure they can get to work or to school or their other destination on time. So for the viability of our system, we need to ensure first that our routes are operating reliably on time. Secondly, we have the financial issue we need to address, which is the $500,000 service reduction. And I want to walk you through, before we talk about the specific reductions, and we're going to go route by route and address each specific one that we're proposing. I just want to walk you through what our process is for identifying routes for reductions. We look at a number of things. Of course, we look at ridership, but perhaps more important is the productivity, which is the number of passengers carried per hour of service we invest in a particular route. And I'm going to walk through a couple of slides on that in a minute. We also look at on-time performance. There's one route that we have a proposal for, Route 6, West 3rd Street, where if we reduce the frequency somewhat from 30 minutes to 45 minutes, we can get it back reliably on time. And so that is a slight reduction in service for the rider, but it means they'll have a route they can really count on. We also look at duplication with other routes. If there are places where we can pull back service, but there are other options for people to get where they need to go based on overlap of routes that's obviously attractive. And then finally, we have really genuinely taken riders' input into consideration, the input of our drivers for several different meetings this summer, and we'll be taking your input into consideration, of course. So this chart is an illustration that provides a shorthand way of looking at what we evaluate when we're looking at service reductions. So the light blue bars on this chart represent the number of hours we have invested in each route in the system, which are the numbers along the bottom. And as you'll see, at a minimum we have about 4,000 hours a year invested in each route, but that can go up to as many as about 100 on Route 15. The red line is the amount of ridership we're achieving on each of those routes. So in this particular illustration, the ideal would be to achieving what we're seeing in the routes highlighted here in green. These are our top performing routes and what you see here is that the ridership line matches up pretty well with the bar for the amount of hours invested. So that's what we're really trying to get to. You'll see Route 10 is our productivity all star, and in fact we're getting more ridership on Route 10 than we would even expect based on the amount of service hours invested. That's the Codding Town route. It's a very good route. At the other end of the spectrum we have some routes where we have a lot of hours invested, but we're not seeing the amount of ridership that really makes a productive route that meets our standards. So we are targeting the routes here highlighted in yellow for some service reductions to try to bring the hours and the ridership in better alignment. So that's Route 2, Bennett Valley, and we'll talk about each of these in more detail. Route 15, Stony Point Road, and Route 17, which is Piner. And then we have three more routes that we're looking at for more minor service reductions on a service hours basis. And that's Route 1, which is Mendocino Avenue. That would be for Sunday only. Route 12, Roseland. That would be for Saturday only. And we're not talking about elimination of the route. We're just talking about a reduction in frequency, which we'll talk about soon. And then Route 8, actually on the Route 1, I take that back. On the Route 1 we are talking about eliminating the route, but we'll do that just for Sunday. And then Route 18, we're talking about just removing a couple of trips from weekday service. And then finally, there are two more routes that we're looking at for a priority on on-time performance, which are Route 6 and Route 14. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Michael Ivory who's going to walk through each of these routes and discuss exactly what area that route covers and what we're proposing in terms of reductions. Good afternoon. As Rachel said, we're going across the board. There's not going to be much that's not touched, but it's only going to consist of 5% of our total service that we're currently providing. The Route 1, over the last after we identified, you can see that the system average identifies the Route 1 as the second lowest performer in the system on Sunday. So we had the drivers doing surveys for the last couple of months and counting how many passengers we're actually carrying up over Shinnate and over Fountain Grove. We do five trips a day with the Route 1 and we're carrying an average of 6 passengers all day long. That's right around $100 a trip and carrying 6 people. That's just really kind of a no-brainer.  And all of that will be covered. Mendocino Avenue is still covered on the Route 14 and the Route 10. They come in bound and go out bound on them. So everything is duplicative service with the exception of the Hill and our proposal is just to remove that from the service on Sundays.  We've got low ridership and then everything is really already covered on Mendocino Avenue where it's important on Sundays. The second one, this is the Route 12 and this would be a Saturday change and this, on Saturdays, it's the second lowest performing route. Now we changed this route three or was it four years ago? 2008. 2008. We increased it because it did have good ridership. It was running once an hour so we increased its frequency to every 30 minutes and saw no corresponding change in ridership whatsoever. So we propose to reduce it back to the one hour performance time and that brings up our productivity numbers to make it where we need it above that red line. Change frequency to 60 minutes and eliminate the low productivity and we have the Route 2, the Route 15, the Route 18 all below our average and this is on the weekdays. The Route 17 is, we can't keep it on time. Currently runs for 45 minutes and it just never does get back into the run time. You can't depend on this route to get you where you need to go or to know when it's going to show up where you're at. So we're proposing to change that to 60 minutes run time. Give it that extra 15 minutes to recover and hopefully that will take care of the productivity. People are not going to go stand around next to a pole and wait for that bus to show up. The Route 2 same thing. It's out there running, it runs out in Bennett Valley and it actually does a good productivity is at school bell times. So we're proposing to cut it back to 60 minute service and depending on how it's impacted at the school times we have hours available to compensate for that. Route 15 just low productivity. It runs back and forth from Southwest Community Park to Codding Town. If we reduce this by 30 minutes we can make it a one-hour route. All of its service generators are covered by other routes if you look at Southwest Park the 12 and the 19 both go there. Safeway on Marlowe the 11 goes there though there's we're not taking any service generators out of this. It is fully covered by other routes so it going to make that a 60 minute route and the route 18 it's our circulator it goes all the way around the community it's most of the senior residential facilities all the shopping centers but nobody rides this thing the first hour in the morning or the last hour in the afternoon we've done numerous surveys on this route and it they're just not getting out of bed so word proposed just to take the first that should really is it is a very popular route as we went to Bethlehem Towers and some of the other facilities they love this route they don't have to think about doing transfers they don't have to think about anything but getting on this route go to the store get back on the route and it gets them back home they're they love it so it'll probably be one of our top performers in one of these days so we're just taking the first two hours off and those hours will be available if needed and the route 6 can't keep it on time it's a great route it goes all the way out to Fulton Road and around and comes back downtown on 3rd Street and West College but we can't make that loop and the amount of time we're providing so we're proposing to make it a 45 minute route and that should take care of it people can depend on what time that bus is going to get there for them okay so and if you use Santa Rosa Avenue and Mendocino Avenue corridor the routes are split pretty well evenly on both sides of that corridor we're going to show you what it looks like we're going to fly in each one of these routes now Joy did you do these like for could you just adjust okay there at the route 17 that's going to be we're just increasing the time allotted we're reducing Sunday service route 2 reducing the amount of time that it we're going to take it make it a 60 minute route and 15 make it a 60 minute route and 12 just reduce it by 30 minutes on Sunday Saturday route 6 and give it more time to run that loop 45 minutes and what do we got there that was 18 thank you boy now you just look at your blue bars and the red line now it really really stabilizes our productivity makes it look like something that we could be proud of and the on-time performance will be to the point where our clientele will not be standing out there wondering where we're at so you're going to do this for me thank you this just sort of gets back to you thanks Michael this gets back to the earlier issue that we were discussing about restructuring service and we just still be some roots that are a little bit out of line in terms of the investment of hours and we are not proposing changes to these routes at this time that's Route 5 Santa Rosa Avenue right at 18 beyond the couple of trips removed we're not considering restructuring or any other changes at this time and then Route 19 which is the South City connector which runs from Southwest Community Park over to Santa Rosa Avenue these roots all sort of come up in each other for lack of a better description and what we really see here is a need to look at the Santa Rosa Avenue corridor service in a holistic way and do some restructuring of that service so that it's more efficient and it serves the riders in a better way so these are three roots that we are planning to look at in the coming year for some restructuring is a starting point so we haven't included them for February because we think they do need as Joy discussed the proposed fair increase and transfer policy changes close about half of our million dollar gap the proposed service reductions would close the other half a million of that million dollar gap we also wanted to mention we didn't include these in the earlier slides because we didn't want to over promise to the public or anyone else but one thing we are looking at is whether we could find a way to have limited 30 minute peak service on the three roots that we're proposing for the change on weekdays from 30 minute for Route 2 Bennett Valley Route 15 Stony Point Road and Route 17 Piner we would be looking at hopefully being able to retain some level of 30 minute service in the peak of the peak so we could get people to work in school with a little bit more of a frequent service and so that's something we're really looking at for those three roots to ease the pain a little bit for the riders and then finally as we've mentioned a few times in this presentation we will be looking at restructuring roots to improve service and efficiency I just mentioned and then moving throughout the system as part of our long range planning process so just to wrap up our presentation the next steps are to make adjustments to our proposals based on your feedback here today and we'll be continuing to sort of sift through the public feedback we got just last week to see if we can address some of the concerns that were raised the draft short range transit plan including these proposals as well as the larger service plan will be released in mid October for public review we're currently scheduled to come back to you for public hearing on November 13th adoption could happen at that meeting or it could happen at a later meeting in December and on whatever is approved ultimately in terms of our proposals we would immediately begin doing outreach to the public and marketing to let people know about the changes and make sure that no one has a surprise on the 1st of February when any fair or service changes would go into effect so that concludes our presentation and the whole team is here to answer I just had one question for clarification we talked on some of these routes about I'm not sure what words were used maybe anyway their inability to be on time what causes that is it traffic congestion another factor what is that Steve do you want to talk about that it's a combination of factors but I think Steve would be the best person to address that the main thing I look at when I'm looking at a route and it's ability to keep on time is average speed where I have a this route to maintain its ability to be on time the industry standard is somewhere between you know 11 to 14 miles an hour a route like 6 if you look at a 30 minute well a 25 minute cycle time actually with a 5 minute recovery we're asking that bus to maintain an average speed of 18 miles an hour which is virtually impossible in transit land so by extending the cycle time by it gives it what it needs to stay on time some routes of course are going to need a little more they're going to need 10 miles an hour 11 miles an hour is an average on time based on where they go the amount of traffic lights they encounter the loads they encounter and things like this so there's a lot of factors that go into trying to create a route that's going to stay on time at least most of the day and at the same time keeping it safe exactly good yes thank you thank you very much I also wanted to echo the mayor's comment about keeping it safe we all saw in today's press democrat the letter to the editor the concern about keeping it safe you know when they were pursuing the car chase I know that the bus drivers have an incredible responsibility to the riders but also everyone else they come in contact with to me they do just an exemplary job I wanted to thank you for your excellent presentation it went really quickly I know that you're all under the pressure to keep presentation short but I know that there are some people in the audience here and also at home who when we talk too quickly they have a difficult time understanding so I'm really concerned about the rapidity of performance so that's just something else I did have a few questions we're in a very high tech new environment and I really appreciate all the work that's gone into that I'm sure that it will be given to our techies but in a couple of the slides I noticed that for those viewers at home one of them being my husband where we have these beautiful like the service plan analysis where it let's see these are not numbered pages but it's probably about the six page in service plan analysis after service modifications the light blue compared to the green there was no difference that was distinguishable that's not a big deal to me but it may be a big deal to some people because I've got the wonderful hard copy you know I'm always worried about trees and being decimated but you know it came through as being important another question I have is and maybe I missed it but I didn't see the one that we have and that was about the Roseland so I don't know if for some reason that slide was not presented or I just missed it another one is about how do you keep your stats is it all based on money that is put into the fare box which I know that sometimes people put in let's say a quarter instead of a dime and that would you know askew the stats I'm quite sure that it doesn't mean that a driver has to do a paper pencil kind of a thing because they have already owe so many things to do another question I had is the bus driver has so many things that they're dealing with and I'm wondering I'm sure I'm not the only one who wonders what does a bus driver do when a person for example I know when traveling in another country and my language is going to be English and theirs would not be and I want to go to let's say how do I get to a certain region and that bus driver has absolutely nil so how do our bus drivers cope with someone who may be only able to sign language and or have another primary language I think I'm about at the end of my queries oh I see on your fourth slide when you talked about the public meetings one was through May 12 you had about 55 people one you had three meetings in September of 12 and you said about 60 people my guess is that they probably were the same base of the original 55 although maybe you reached a completely different group I just like some answers to those councilmember you have a number of questions there I'm not sure which ones you want some answers I'm going to let them grapple with what they want to answer and if they that's what I'm trying to clarify those are a lot of questions with a lot of detail so are there specific things that you want to answer for at this moment right now for them maybe we can ask those questions one at a time they're a very sharp group I think they could probably bullet to answer many of those things very quickly and I have a feeling that I'm not the only one who's wondering about these things let's see if they were able to capture all that so regarding the driver's ability to communicate to someone at the start of hearing you do have several operators who are proficient we also let them know that the ability to write notes is often used by how the bus driver has seen us for 12 years and that's the method I use for people who have hearing impairment with regards to people who are on-ing speakers we actually pay the premiums who are proficient so it encourages people to come on to work with that skill and even so our existing employees have actually gone out and taken classes to get that extra premium that's great thank you thank you and actually we could probably have them get to look at the finance sheet to get what we have to go for 61 people that would be different individuals great thank you very much for the wonderful work you do thank you for the presentation to staff Anita at the very beginning of the presentation you talked about a redesign of the system and yet I just see modifications to existing routes can you elaborate on that okay got you so you'd anticipate or the council and the people public at that time would anticipate an integration with smart as well as Sonoma County would there also be a discussion as to integrating any proposed day passes okay appreciate that how many routes do we have that serve the junior college for is because I've always loved the idea of approaching the junior college for a semester fee they can write all the area buses and I would love to see that effort continue or start along with Sonoma County Transit and perhaps smart it's more of a comment than a question this was that they cite a reason why or they've quit doing that because of their funding issues so I'm not sure if that was one of the reasons why they quit probably have to pay for that big garage yeah the big parking garage right joy you also talked about a farebox ratio could you go over that again what would you want real quickly I missed two or um has a short court the the farebox recovery is the ratio is the ratio of the farebox revenue to the operating cost so a 10% farebox recovery means you're recovering about 10% of your operating cost from your fares and there are guidelines from the federal and state government it's actually state for transportation development act and it's 20% for the fixed route and 10% for the paratransit service okay and then lastly what I would like to see is on your California Transit Association all these various operators throughout the state some of them don't quite seem comparable and there's three San Luis Obispo Davis and Santa Cruz that jump out as being really analogous to us do we have a night because those are college towns and roughly the same size and maybe there's one or two more can we get an average from comparable operators as opposed to some of these larger systems and then and then lastly I'd like to have a discussion with you some of us are aware that there's some proposed changes that war our hospital so it concerns me that route 2 would be diminished because what might be going in there they're going to need the bus thank you was anybody aware of that that's that's the first we've heard of those changes we'll follow up and get some information I'd be happy to have a discussion with you thank you Mr. Bartley leave it down okay council member Gordon I have a question regarding the reduction of service on route 1 which serves Sutter hospital and though I recognize that Sutter is going to be moving they're still there now and mental health outpatient facility is there and a number of other county services there that may or may not need service on a Sunday and I'm sure obviously your survey has taken note of the ridership on a Sunday but that is a facility that is serving the lower income population and they would have no other way to access those facilities in that location there has been employees doing shift work also at Agilent and Medtronics but I'm not sure that they actually have a great number of employees that would use the service on a Sunday so I'm just a little concerned about the total elimination of service on a Sunday for that route so yeah I mean this is one that is a tough one because that's the only component of what we're proposing that is an elimination as opposed to a reduction in frequency and while the ridership is very low and we've been doing counts on Sundays to see the on's and off specifically at Sutter and there's been about five or six a day you know we did also hear from the public that I need to get there every Sunday but people were a little uncomfortable with the idea of having no way to get there on a Sunday so that that was feedback we heard as well it's hard you know it's important to have feedback from you folks on this issue I mean it's it's hard to justify the cost of running that route for the level of ridership but not everything we do is strictly based on the bottom line it's something that we would see guidance on as well okay go ahead I did talk to one of the coordinators at Vista Health which is on round barn she was quite concerned when she first saw the notice and then I asked her if they had appointment scheduled on Sunday and they don't so she was really quite relieved to hear that so we could certainly check with Sutter and see if they do have appointment schedule or if it's just emergency use you know they have the public health facilities there they have the mental health facilities there I would outreach to them it's one of our hilliest areas as you in the bus really know and for those of us on bicycles really know so to suggest to folks that they just use bikes or walking doesn't make a lot of sense I know that I've had discussions with Vista and just looking at a some kind of circulator bus that might round robin for some of the health care facilities with the new location for Sutter Kaiser Vista and we might be proactive in outreaching to those areas or those uses to see if there is a need for a circulator bus and how we could get that even though it's outside of our service area with the new Sutter hospital and I think some of us suggested that loudly and clearly to the managers and the executives of Sutter but it is what it is but there will be and probably is an emerging need for us to consider more circulation among 247 or 7 days a week or 5 days a week or something but we should be proactive in that as well but I am concerned about the elimination of service and maybe there is a way that Sutter and or some of the major users along that route could be more proactive with their employees and especially but just responding to a change or a decline in ridership thank you thank you councilmember hours I just want to say thanks for a very logical and seemed well thought out presentation so you have given us the tools I think to move through this system and it was a good one thank you very much and mr. vice mayor you have a question thank you mayor what kind of reduction in revenues or ridership do you expect right after the proposed increases if any historically and when do you generally recover after people kind of get used to it and first of all I want to appreciate your creativity and flexibility and you probably showed some restraint in your recommendations as well for the fair box so I'm just curious what's a little bit of a fall out that you might expect the past history of city bus stretching back to what I was here before is it seemed like we could raise fairs almost with impunity and not see a loss in ridership I think that's because of the large number of our riders that are dependent on transit the part of when we said creativity and new ideas is the transfer policy the change in transfer policy is something that we haven't tried and we haven't been able to find many people who've done it to be without one we could make enough people irritated that they don't ride the bus I don't think that's going to happen but that's the one that I think is probably the riskiest of the there's typically some ridership elasticity when you make some route changes and certainly I think when you move from a 30-minute frequency to a 60-minute you're going to lose some of the people the commuters for instance those typically aren't the people that are riding those buses and we didn't show you the work that these guys did and looking at hour by hour ridership on those routes and we didn't see huge numbers during the commute or that would indicate to us that there are people who have that pattern that would be moving to an hour would be have a huge impact so in the end I don't we don't anticipate a major hit of what we heard from the public is we don't like it but we understand you need to do it and you haven't done it in a long time and the transfer policy we've given you the best estimate that we could about the impact on that Does that answer your question? It does indeed I appreciate it Thank you Mr. Bartley Yeah just the comments regarding the elimination of the Sunday service I have to say I'm very impressed there is to the system given the situation we're in I mean it comes back to showing how important sales tax is to our city and the things it does that a lot of people don't realize Obviously if we were to somehow get not eliminate that service it's going to have a trickle down and a bunch of other things which I suspect will prolong I'm assuming it'll be sharing the pain or imposing greater pain on any particular one that you must have looked at it Why did you choose to eliminate this one? I mean there must have been a more compelling reason or a compelling reason why you didn't look elsewhere The package that we presented is our best proposal to you based on ridership and productivity We have a pocket full of other things we could do and if if we needed to that will impact more riders The route one and that set our issue is one that we've really struggled with it's five or six people getting total on's and off so if you assume somebody's making a round trip it's three people it's not clear that that's the case because we don't know and when push came to shove as kind of unpalatable as it is to not serve a hospital seven days a week it was the one place that had the least impact on our riders We have lots of others on all pieces that we can change if we need to and if the council directs us to the other thing is the council can say don't make that change on route one and don't make any additional changes we won't hit the million dollar mark and that has kind of an impact in out years on the budget and if we're really lucky sales tax turns around if we're not so lucky we'll have to deal with it in the next round of service cuts so there's any number of options that we can follow based on where you all want us to go and you're coming to us at this point because of the time frame and the complexity of the long range plan which I assume is going to be a you know we've had the discussion before that we're dealing right now with a hub and spoke sort of transit system to council member Gorin's comment about connecting all these future things that could very well be a completely different type of system I'm assuming to make really clear is we don't intend to wait four years to bring another set of recommendations to you for service adjustments you know the biggest expense for us when we do it is basically printing the map and the schedules so we're looking at at least every six months and maybe more often to come in and keep tweaking the system if we made a mistake in something that we recommend and that you accept so we're not going to let this language and I don't want to leave you with the impression that we're done doing this kind of work once we start the long-range transit plan this will be an ongoing effort for us and we'll be back here regularly so you're not facing big pieces like this again okay thank you I appreciate your hard work and your candor and acknowledging thank you council member Busta pray yes three points one is that I think public bus is one of the most significant socio-economic devices of equaling the many issues that we all face and and you've recognized that you need the council input because you know that not all the people who attend the public meetings are you know going to be representative of the writers for whatever reason the writers are busy with their families they're not able to come to public meetings for whatever reason so I'm glad that you're giving us all this input and opportunity for additional input we as a city council used to meet with Santa Rosa city schools Santa Rosa city schools is just one of the feeders to our middle schools and high schools and you serve you know pretty large geographic distribution when I spoke about the socio-economic issue I'm reminded yesterday I attended a lunch in Luther Burbank Home and Garden volunteers and one of the volunteers is a person who works during the week making electronic equipment and on the weekend he volunteers at the Luther Burbank Home and Gardens and he rides from the northeast and he depends on the bus to get him there you know at 8.15 a.m. he could afford a car but because of his environmentalist beliefs he believes in taking public transit also he said much less stress and it's always on time but of course we know that there are reasons why sometimes our buses for safety reasons are not on time or whatever but you really are the equalizer effect and you know my hat is really off to you on that but with the Santa Rosa city schools I mean we can address all of the public schools and you know to meet with them but I'm hoping that with the new superintendent that we will reorganize and meet again and maybe it's only quarterly with Santa Rosa city schools I am still very upset when I drive by any of the high schools and I see their parking lots are just flooded with cars and I think of the environmental impacts on that and so you know it may be that at least one of those meetings we do have someone from transit to meet with us to talk about you know the positive aspects and it's also going to increase ridership therefore fare box blah blah blah blah I just think that this is an opportunity that I would like to pursue the other comment is about the junior college I really would like to see us pursue again this I don't know if debacle is too harsh a word but I think that there's an opportunity to try to work with the junior college I know that the email that we all receive from Mr. Burtlebaugh yes it's in the future about the over crossing yes it's in the future about smart the stations but I would like to see us do some proactive planning with transit and with the city council as to how we are going to address the needs of students who represent a variety of the socio-economic levels represent a variety of ages on the over crossing on the smart and on the existing ways of getting to the junior college so thank you council member gore just one final comment the the number of comments that I hear are not related to the to the fair size I I think it's as you demonstrated pretty pretty modest it is the sheer amount of time that it takes to get across town and two hours to get across town as they say their words is unacceptable and so what we're proposing here is to decrease the frequency of a number of routes that would potentially increase the amount of time that it would take to get across town so I guess I need to hear in the future an analysis or some descriptor if someone from Bennett Valley were going to Coddingtown at certain times of the day how long would it take them someone from Fulton Road to get to Sutter how long would it take them to go through the transit hub and to get there with the amount of time that we have scheduled on those routes and if it moves beyond the two hours then we will accomplish nothing and our bus system really will only serve those folks who are totally unable to drive we will be encouraging everybody else to hop in their cars Mr. Mayor if I may that issue is exactly why we want to look at redesigning the system when you have a system that focuses primarily on the downtown with some satellite transfer opportunities there is almost no way that you get from one end of town to the other in less than a couple of hours but one of the pieces that we've tried the hardest on is that gets far worse if you miss your connection when the buses are not running on time and we're trying to rectify that that will probably have a better impact than the offsetting tough impact of reducing the frequencies because people will know when to leave home they'll know that when they get to the transfer point their bus is going to be there they won't have missed it and they can get where they're going so I'm I'm not real hopeful that we can design it given the system we have right now that we can really address that to our problem other than try to make sure so there's a little more certainty in what they do it's going to take some other major work to redesign the system and the hard part of that is it probably means they have to transfer more than once to make it happen but hopefully they can make it happen more quickly the one you didn't mention is just north south on the east side of town to get from Venet Valley to Rincon Valley that's a brutal one that probably takes two and a half hours so it's something we're really aware of but I think we're so confined with what we can easily solve well again hats off to you good luck with this and I know that this has been an issue for a number of years we did have a proposed vehicle registration fee that would help us make up some of the revenue losses to our transit system that we've been absorbing for the past couple of years sadly we know that that did not pass and here we are faced with the reality no one likes the choices but you're doing the best you can we're doing the best we can and we recognize that we're going to we will I'm firmly convinced lose even more bus ridership by the changes that we are being forced to contemplate so thanks Anita I want to thank you and your team for the presentation and I think we appreciate that we're not looking for a one-time fix and that you're willing to continue to look at this as needed because sometimes you try to fix something maybe a new problem pops up that we have to address so I think we'll recognize that so thank you for the effort that you've put into this Mr. Birtlebaugh you've been patiently come on up and make your comments please thank you Mayor Alvarez and members Steve Birtlebaugh with friends of SMART we're looking forward to the integration of city bus and SMART in another couple of years and in the meantime we've been watching the declining revenues with a good deal of concern I was happy to hear staff talk about the idea that six month tweaks to the system are in order and I really appreciate the level of analysis that's gone in thus far what I would like to see and I hope we can see it in the short-range plan is some level of funding that we're going to need in order to accomplish the kinds of changes that we're going to need to make in order to make the system truly useful to the writer who is choosing to ride as opposed to the transit dependent writer we really need to attract the commuters other people who will ride out of choice and who don't need to take two hours to get across town who aren't willing to do that so what we're going to be looking for over the next we hope in this plan but certainly in the process of getting into the long-range plan is a sense of what we need to include in these various measures that come along that are going to enhance our income side of things and not always looking at cutting service to match the available income but being able to offer people some options in terms of if you're willing to spend a little more money this is what you're going to be able to get so we're looking for that sort of analysis as soon as we can get it thank you very much thank you Mr. Rordela so that concludes your presentation and we appreciate it and we'll see you soon with more information so that concludes our study session let's take a minute stretch and we'll get ready with our regular session check check check check one two one two one two two one two one two one two one two one two can you hear me good Mark one two two yeah one two one two better Justin one two one two check one two one two three we've got a little headroom one two I've still got about 20% okay let's go ahead and call our meeting to order please we'll begin with the announcement of roll call let the record reflect that all council members are present councilmember Goren has stepped away from the diet thank you and we'll report on our closed session the council met in a closed session for two items as listed on the agenda and no action was taken I think inclusion of that section and subsequently the council met at 3 p.m. in a study session to hear about the 2012 short-range transit plan and the proposed fair structure and no action was taken on that as well thank you very much and today we have three proclamations the first proclamation is going to be for the San Rosa International Film Festival and actually one of the films being shown during this event is very appropriate for today September 11th today is a day of remembrance I think a day that we will probably never forget but we do have here today Stephen Ashton co-founder I believe a director of the San Rosa International Film Festival to accept this proclamation and Steve I'll ask you maybe some of your group to come up and talk to us about what's going to be going on during this this event that's coming back to Santa Rosa and either of you are Steve Mr. Zan Ednister Ednister so I think we have a little bit of a can we just say a few words and then we're going to pass it on I just want you to share with us what's going on oh Jesus this has got to be one of the best film festivals in the world I have to tell you and I'm so proud that Santa Rosa has accepted it and embraced it and I know you have in your own way and all of you have and thank you so much it really is a representation of the pulse of our community and we have brought together so many nonprofits and other organizations along the way so you have to go and see the program you got to come out and see the see some of the film so you get a real sense of what this is all about and just thank you so much city of Santa Rosa for your support I really really appreciate it I'm going to turn this over to Suzanne she's going to tell you a little bit about cinnamon art a duet dialogue which is unique to this film festival has never been done in the world and then of course the vets fest which has never been done in the world and this is a celebration of our veterans and her Williams will speak to that thank you very much thank you I am Suzanne administer I'm a local artist I have a studio in sofa south of a street another upcoming area and this isn't an absolutely unique thing cinema is art art is cinema and the idea that we bring together two kinds of visual art to make something new so I reviewed a film upside down from India that has been rarely seen and as a painter I did a response to that film my painting will be shown at the opening of the film but also all the artists you can see them at Glazer Center this Friday between five and seven there's reception so upside down pretty wild huh I live I lived in India so I have a right to speak to India I think I lived there for two years in Bangalore which is like the most developed part of India it's a film about a little boy who is from a very rural part of India and he gets it he gets a chance to go see the circus in Mumbai and his world is turned upside down the top part of it has traditional designs that are found in houses and clothing in his part of India and then the bottom is more the chaos and joy of the circus and modern India so thanks for supporting this innovative program we look forward to seeing you thank you mayor as a member of the council my name is Herb Williams a year ago a man by the name of Kevin Mencio who my son designated to look after my granddaughter's finances did a bicycle trip from his grave site to 9-11 in New York City by bicycle in 93 days and arrived on the celebration of 9-11 in today is 9-11 also significant is that he joined the army because he was there working at sacks in New York when it occurred and he put all of his money into trust and joined the army my son with was in his mother visiting the site and said I have to go to and they met in Iraq on Jesse's first tour and became friends ever since since then they did that bicycle trip they had a videographer through a grant and when they saw the rushes when they got back the the producer of Godfather 3 said I want to do a documentary on this and it won fourth place at the Seattle Film Festival with 79 other documentary films it is one of the links is being shown twice this next Sunday during the film festival and Lou Rado and myself purchased 300 tickets that we're giving out to veterans so they can attend it what I really like about this is that the originators of the film festival turned it into Sunday into what they call the vets fest and they have the Patriot Guard are showing up in your parking lot at 11 30 next Sunday for a parade downtown to the Glaser Center to the opening of the long ride home which is a film about Jesse's friend going to New York I need to tell you and I've never had the opportunity before and when does anyone in politics not take advantage of an opportunity to thank the people of the city for they gave $36,000 to my granddaughter's education fund which I just think was phenomenal and he is now raised with that foundation over $180,000 for her and so I made them stop and on this trip they raise another hundred and twenty thousand which are donating to other families of children the children of families of the fallen so 9 11 is a great day for us to be here under the circumstances that it's sort of serendipitous that we're here today we invite you all to come and if you're a veteran I don't care what part of the party you're in you get a free ticket all you got to do is ask for it and we thank you very much for making the decoration today for the film festival thank you thank you thank you next we're going to have a proclamation for Creek week and we have Denise Cadman who's here to receive his proclamation from Vice Mayor Gonswere thanks for being here Denise you know it's this is doesn't really do that the Creek's justice some proclamation of the size and all of the work and all of the volunteers that dedicate so much of their time and their lives to protecting and maintaining our creaks and being great stewards most people don't even know how many miles of creaks we have so I want to give us a little a little background as what's happening in Creek's week and you know it's a week Republican here what's going on sure well there's an incredible week planned starting on September 15th and going through the following weekend and there's activities every day and evening that involve creeks there's something for everyone it's a great lineup and I'll plug my own Laguna walk and talk on September 22nd which is going to be a lot of fun all the information is available at srcity.org slash Creek week excellent thank you very much in that I saw an Alistair's here too I think of him as Mr. Creek but I don't know if that's something it's not an official title it's always been a pleasure to serve on the on the waterways committee we usually get a lot more information than the public because of being on that particular committee but hopefully the word will get out and people will be able to take advantage activities because they certainly the creeks deserve it. Thank you Alistair why don't you come on down another great body of water that we have in Sonoma County is the Russian River provides water for agriculture recreation wildlife etc and every now and then we've got to get in there clean it up so we have a Russian River cleanup they coming up or so you can tell us a little bit about this project as well. Right September 22nd is a Russian River cleanup and from Cloverdale down to Duncan's Mills there are various cleanups from canoe from the shore on the beaches and last year 250 people turned out and they spent one day cleaning up and then others came back on the Sunday to kind of sort out recyclables get all the tires sorted out and everything ready to be disposed of and all the information you need is at Russian River cleanup one word org and you know this nice weather we're having it should be a great day on the river and I'd like to thank you mayor and all members of council just for recognizing the Russian River and acknowledging the clean water and the wildlife habitat and recreation everything that provides to the county watershed in our city. Thank you Alistair I think the thanks goes to you too for your leadership because you've been there year after year after year to help keep both our creeks and the river clean so thank you for all that you do for our community. The thing is Vice Mayor Sawyer knows it the creek stuff that is not just our stormwater and creek steam doing this but we work with utilities department, public works, police, parks and just about everybody in the city to pull this off. Okay and no we're not gonna have one of the films here at this chamber just seems like it is but that's not it that's not exactly a new car smell that we're smelling either if it's probably a little bit worse than that but we're gonna have a little bit of a study session today right to talk about the new technology here I think we have Eric McHenry's gonna be doing this for us. Yeah we have a few staff briefings and they will be brief we try to keep them to five minutes or less. Our first one is the report on the council chamber audio and video updates and Eric McHenry will make that presentation and he has a team of technicians supporting them this evening making adjustments. Thank you Mayor and members of the council I'm really pleased today to present to you the new audio video system in the city council chambers this has been a project that we've been trying to do for the last probably five years and with the availability of money from the state franchises for audio video franchises we're able to clearly redo what's in here so let me take you on a quick walkthrough of what you see in front of you and different screens. I first though want to introduce Mark Latimer sitting at the table he's the CEO of the company Coda Technology that was a successful bidder and he and his team were the ones that have spent three weeks here over the council break and you can see many of them the pictures here other people like to thank as a community media center who is sitting back in that room back there trying to figure out how to use this new equipment and it's great stuff so what we did is the most amazing thing is the screen you know for many years we've had the screen over in the left now it's up here on the front and you can get a sense of what the quality of the audio and video is. We have full high definition content in the council chambers so the presentations are crisp they actually go out to Comcast and AT&T and our web streaming partner at the same quality but to this point we're not yet ready with those providers to actually have high def to the homes but we now sending a signal out from the council chambers that as good as most residents are typically used to getting on their home sets. So the monitor here and for those in the audience the monitors here to my right and to my left on the walls those are for the City Council only they are showing exactly what's being shown behind the council as are the dais monitors so just like before what you see in front of you on your monitors and on those two on the wall here are the same as what's on on the wall back there. We've added another monitor which on the wall behind the elevator and you can't see it from where you are but that's one of the most exciting ones for me that actually is showing the broadcast feed so on that monitor over there and why you'll see people looking at it is that that actually shows what you see at home. In addition it also shows the closed caption content so for the first time ever we're able to broadcast with live closed captioning and again thanks to the media center and the agreement you guys agreed to a number of months ago but this is our inaugurative view of closed captioning it's going out over the web stream as well as going out of our live broadcasts on Comcast and AT&T. The part though that was the most work is the part you can't see and Mark and his team here are still working on that and that's to get the signal content from here from the microphones from the cameras and from the presentation system but especially the sound getting that so it actually sounds right and as you can imagine it's one thing to adjust the sound in the empty council chambers which they've been doing over the last probably two or three days but now that we have a full council chamber they're making tweaks on the sound system right now and really appreciating feedback you have we can't hear what you hear over there and they're sitting there right now so they can hear what's happening kind of right behind in the middle of the auditorium. So next after this upgrade is we're going over to the utilities field operation to complete the last phase of the project which will enable similar but less expansive technology such that in an emergency we can actually live stream and broadcast from our emergency operations center which is over in the city the utilities field operation building on West College. So it's a pleasure please give us your feedback. The next phase of the project we hope to address the monitors on your desk we've heard from you that we'd like to get those recessed or done differently and that's the next phase of the project which funds allowed will hopefully start in the early part of the next calendar year. Thank you. Questions for Mr. Henry customer Gordon. Wow this is pretty terrific. When we first started talking here and I think our city manager may have been talking it was difficult for me to hear her and now I you must have raised the volume a little bit so that it's it's better for me to hear it still feels a little echo echo it does. Yes perhaps and I don't know whether that is going to be part and parcel of who we are and what we're doing or are you going to tweak that. We'll work on that in fact me standing here. I hear it for the first time also you don't hear it back there but you hear it right here. So again those are the things that a full council chamber allows us to do you know initial room turn on and testing even the Green Center did some of that also in their original testing as well and so we're no exception with audio video balancing and I know for those of us who are aging we have a little hearing loss and I include myself in that for those folks who and I know Mr hours often has his earphones and for members of the public will the system the loop system work for those folks who have the hearing assistance and so it can amplify that but where are the headphones or other devices for them to take advantage of. Yes so the loop system we have I'm not sure how many headsets we have at least a couple the city clerk can get those to be able to say we have four for in addition to the loop as I mentioned we have live close captioning going up on the screen so if even a loop doesn't work then you can look at the close captioning up on the screen but the loop functions as it did before in fact in all of our public buildings where we have meetings we have the loop system and we have that for many years. So for those folks who need access for the headphones who should they contact they should contact you. Do we have any explanation in the back of the chamber that headphones are available and they should come and see the city clerk. That's a really good point. We don't have that. I don't believe it's on the speaker card. It's on the speaker card. Okay. It's also on. Myosferus is saying that it's up there but we may want to maybe put a sign on the door suggesting that we have headphones available and that would be helpful. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. Yes I just wanted to thank everyone you know in the cooperation with the community media center. I think it's a wise use of funds. The only reason I have my monitor down is because Anne Sealy told me I'm too short. Can't see over it. So if this is going to be recess that may help. But you know the person who's going to be sitting in this seat after December 12 may be really tall and no problem at all. So I'm sure that you'll adjust to all those issues. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Bowers. Yeah this is a subject that's kind of dear to my ears. Or what's left of them. It's it's working. There's still things I think these bugs that you got to got to work out with this system. You know it was more than a year that I was here before I was aware that there were headphones available. So it is that's a great idea that you had in it. We there's a lot of people like me that are getting old and they don't hear and they've done bad things to themselves over the years and it's really good that the system works as well as it does. So thank you for that. Thank you. Thank you. The comments or questions from Council. I have one card on the side of Mr. Osborne. Jack Osborne 5636 Del Monte Court. Haven't improved the sound at all. I'll tell you what the problem is and I've been tainted for a long while. You have no mic control. You people talk over this way. You talk over this way and you don't talk into this. Now the problem lies in the fact that unless you have someone down there writing to gain control even at home I can't hear people when I have the volume on my TV set up and the same the same thing here unless you have my could I barely hear him said because he was up here and the mic was down here. It's it's a question that either you have to have someone writing the mic control control at the gain of the audio on the transmission into the speaker. You will never have a satisfactory audio system. Because we have soft speakers like Marsha and and then we have loud speakers.  We deaf people have trouble hearing almost deaf and it's a problem even at home because the audio level changes when there's no one writing the game control mixing the system. I hope you take what I mean seriously but I've been saying this for almost 30 years that this is the politician's friend make love to it so that people can hear you. If you don't want us to hear you just back away and not say thank you very much. I might stay in here long. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Osborne. I think the folks might want your name and contact information. You come back and kind of be their their test here. OK. But thank you that Mr. Osborne that is valuable information. It is important. I think we have an opportunity right now that we're making these upgrades to to hear these concerns and try to address them as best we can. Mr. Henry. OK. Yes. Thank you very much. We've heard that in the media center people were smiling in the back room. They put their head out and said yes please have good mic control and even I not even I have the same thing to remind to keep my mouth close to the mic and even distance apart. Thank you. And that is problematic sometimes for us up at the days when we're looking at each other making you know having a conversation. So we will definitely work on that mic control for everybody. Thanks. What I will say also the media center is writing the mics in the back. That is what part of what they do is that it's a laborious task to try to equalize the sound level between speakers that is part of their job function back there. And that's why are the quality of our broadcast is as good as it is because we have live people manning the microphone levels. So thank you back there. OK. Well thank you. Well can I just say that I have embarrassed my children to tears by projecting across department stores. So Mr. Osborne it would be really helpful if you would tell each of us individually who you can hear clearly and who you can't hear. And so OK. We we we will speak up but also it would be helpful if you would borrow one of the earphones and then give us the same information as to whether or not we are projecting accurately. Well can we we want to know which one of us cannot be heard so that we can help you with what we're saying. OK. Councilmember hours yet another question. I do have to say that these headphones work very well. And if you do want to hear all of this I would suggest to get a pair of them. We have them for you. It's a good solution. If you don't want to wear them I guess you're going to have to put up with what what you can't hear. But the fact is they work. So give them a try. Good. OK. Thank you Mr. Henry. We'll keep working at it and hopefully we'll get it as best we can. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll move on to item 7.2. Our next briefing is a Spanish language community education project on the sewage treatment process and water use issues. Good afternoon. I'm Denise Cadman natural resource specialist in the utilities department here to brief you on a new Spanish language education program that we're going to begin this fall. This is a collaboration between the utilities department environmental services and the Santa Rosa Junior College. I worked with Abigail Zogger from the life science department and Darcy Rosales from Mesa which is math engineering and science achievement. And the idea was to provide a Spanish language tour of the Laguna treatment plant and make that information available as well as other water related issues to what we believe to be a growing and underserved community. What we did was recruit a couple of top notch biology majors from the life science department who happened to be bilingual. We brought them out trained them on the really important take home aspects of sewage treatment and related water issues. They went away and worked together and also with instructors at the college to customize a tour that they will present to four different school groups this fall. The first one is going to be this Friday for the Roseland accelerated middle school and we will follow that with three more tours in October and if all goes well and there is interest and funds available we would like to continue the program in the spring and perhaps even grow it bigger so that we can reach more schools. Two of the tours take place. It's all after school programs so we expect quite a bit of family participation two of the tours occur on Sunday. And this particular series of tours was sponsored by Mesa. They came up with a one time grant that we could use to provide a stipend to the students and part of the stipend will be received when they train the next student tour guides to replace themselves. Hopefully that will occur next spring. I have some fliers here that describe the program and have all the dates in case anybody is interested in joining us on any of those tours and I am of course happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you to these council questions. We have done. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Just a great job. Thanks. This is very exciting. That brings us to the approval of minutes for August 7th and August 14th. Any corrections for those minutes? See and then we will approve those minutes and move on to Mayor and council members reports. Any statements of abstention for this evening? Mr. Mayor I thought there was an individual in the audience that had a comment on the minutes. Did you not get the car I was told. I don't have a card on the minutes. I think this is what is your name sir. Okay. Yeah you had it down for public comment. You wanted to comment on the minutes. Okay. Come on down. That's a little neggy Santa Rosa. Yes specifically in the minutes I understand that you had passed or I'm not sure exactly how to put it regarding the car impound raising the fee and I would ask you to reconsider that considering who is actually going to be paying the fines and its lower income people. I'm sorry was there a question about the minutes specifically Mr. Yes I understand that you had passed a resolution or raising the fine. Right. Can I ask you to reconsider that at this time. I think I'd have to ask for a point of clarification. This is not a question of minutes. This is actually speaking to an item. I'm not sure about the formality of this. An action or motion for reconsideration would come from a member in the majority but it would have to be the following meeting I'm not sure which item or which meeting the action occurred at but we're also not talking about I mean that would that would be something that would originate from the. So the time the time period has passed for us to take that up for reconsideration by the council and that reconsideration has to come from this body from the city council itself from a member. And that time that time has passed. I see and can I make a comment on the sound system because actually I'm not hearing very well here it seems like it's out in a room somewhere but it's it's kind of interesting. It's not like having a monitor right. Thank you hopefully they heard you back there. I'll take that down as well. Okay. All right. Well yeah I just didn't understand the formality. Very well thank you. So we did not have statements of the session for this evening so move on to marriage and council members report we were away for a period of three weeks I know a lot has happened. I guess more recently yesterday I was at the 6th street under crossing ribbon cutting great event great to see the neighborhoods come out business districts come out to celebrate that I think it's going to be a good thing for that part of our of our community. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you mayor only one official. Item to report on the snowman county transit authority I was filled in as an alternate for council member waizaki and I've actually asked staff to come back to us with a with a briefing. Because there was an update on the various projects coming going up. Both in process near completion and some completed throughout the county and it's really there was three pages of projects that a lot of stuff great deal was reported on yesterday but it was given to us in we got a sheet that had all the information I'm asking staff to kind of condense it along with some people from the county so that we can get it council can actually get a briefing on what's on what has happened what and what is near completion because it was a large body of work and I couldn't capture it while the gentleman was speaking so they're going to come back and give the council a full briefing probably in the next week or so. Thank you. Mr. Bartlett. Well I likewise along with the majority of the council and the sixth street under crossing. And last week I was down in San Diego at the California League of Cities conference with the mayor and manager. Very interesting conference and actually I think one of the more interesting things. The manager may think that also to have a set for a presentation on the city of Stockton. And their experience with bankruptcy. And how they got where they are and I think I can speak with some certainty that both of our jobs were on the floor when we heard of some of the things that they've been doing over the years. And my particular thing was the amount of redevelopment money that they were using to fund general service provisions in the city. It was terribly reassuring in terms of how solid we are relative to them. And I actually pick up some information as soon as I get it I'll send it out to everybody on the council because it is a good primer at least on the bankruptcy process. And the experience that they are going through and how they got there which is was real eye-opener. Thank you. Council Member Gordon. I did attend the technical advisory committee. This is the staff members working with the water advisory committee. And I want to let you know there are a couple of items moving forward. The water agency has contracted for a consultant to evaluate the current model of funding water for the water agency. We have consistently said as the contractors that we'd like to see more rate stability on the part of the water agency. And as you may or may not know the water agency funds their operations through the sale of water rather than fixed rates to cover their cost of operations. So they are looking at that model. They will be working very closely with the contractors and customers to evaluate that. And they expect to have some check-in times over the next couple of months. And so that and come back with a final recommendation. Now this may affect our restructured agreement because that does specify how we purchase water from the agency and how much water we are entitled to. And so there may be some interesting reactions on the part of the contractors who are less than anxious to even open those discussions or renegotiation with that agreement. And that was made patently clear to the consultant at the meeting on Monday. And there was one other item moving forward. The water agency is exploring selling $50 million worth of bonds to finance energy efficiency improvements, not only with municipal facilities but perhaps streetlights. And I've alerted our city manager to the fact that the agency is starting discussions about that. And they have sent a request for qualification out to a number of very large energy retrofit firms. So we best really understand what it is they're looking for and whether or not it makes sense for Santa Rosa to participate in something like that. So thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Rosseiro. Yes, thank you very much. Pardon me. What do you want to watch? That's the television feet up there. OK. OK. Councilmember Rosseiro. Mr. Osborne, if we could see ourselves, we'd spend all our time looking up there and not looking at you. I'm sure it's one of the kings that will be worked out. But I understand what you're saying. One of the points of clarification that I wanted to try to make, a member of the audience, Mr. Attila Nadja or N-A-G-Y Nagy, wonderful little Hungarian name, was referring to our minutes of August 14th. And I, you know, it is a technicality that he wanted it to be reconsidered the towing charge and the impoundment. And I will talk with him that it has to be from a member of the voting majority to vote that we would reconsider that. And that's what part of that protocol is about. As has been indicated, we were off for a very nice long recess while they were doing all of this modernization of the sound equipment. And so I'm just going to mention the August 15th event, it's called Circle of Honor at Santa Rosa Junior College, was fabulous. The number of people from Sonoma County and outside Sonoma County who contribute toward scholarships at our Santa Rosa Junior College, that's what happens. It's open to the public. It's usually the third Wednesday in August. But it is really heartwarming to see these young students come forward and receive the funding that people in our community and beyond have given to furthering their education. I did briefly mention before, yesterday was Luther Burbank Home and Garden Volunteer Luncheon. And we as city council members are invited to those events. And a more wonderful group of volunteers, hard to find. For any people who are out there in the audience or present who do have discretionary time and want to volunteer, our Luther Burbank Home and Gardens is a very, I think, worthwhile endeavor. It's on the historic registry federal and state. And although that means they don't get any additional funds. But we do have a jewel right here. And they did mention that the mayor attended one of their fundraiser dinners. So there are many other things that have happened, the Sixth Street crossing, et cetera. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Roberts? Yeah, the Sixth Street undercrossing was interesting in a number of ways. It's a great new way to get around town. But also it was kind of sad in a way. It was one of the last uses of redevelopment funds that you can visually see with the kind of thing that we're not going to be able to do anymore. Thank you. Councilman Roberts? Yes, I also attended the Sixth Street undercrossing and I do hope the drainage does work. But we won't know until the rainy season. So you could feel it on the bicycle going through there. Also, Sunday night, I attended the gathering by the Santa Rosa Interfaith Council, but not in our town, in support of our Sikh community up on Bennett Valley Road. And just a wonderful cross section of our town in support of our members of our Sikh community to basically say that what happened in Wisconsin when the Sikhs were gunned down will not happen in this town. Wonderful, wonderful evening of solidarity in our town. It was a good vacation. Also would like to request that we get a report on the taxi ordinance. I got a communication, perhaps many of my colleagues did too, from AC Transportation Services, wondering why there's been a delay in implementation or enforcement of that ordinance. So I said I would request that some featured meeting. I'd appreciate the presentation on that. Thank you. I think for clarification, I do believe everybody received that letter so we could get some communication back to the council on the status of that. This is with respect to the taxi ordinance implementation. Yes, we'll do that. Thank you. Alison Burke, our team council member, you have two more meetings to go. I think next week is your last meeting and you're headed off to college. What's going on? Yeah, in two weeks I'll be off to UC Davis, but there'll be a new sea of faces to film my seat when the fall session between council resumes. And I believe that they will be rotating so that there will be a different person each week. And you've been spending some time in Spain, I believe? Yeah, I took a trip to Barcelona. It was a wonderful experience. Well, we're going to miss you and we'll see you. You will be here next week. I will be here next week. My last meeting. But I'm going to miss this. We're going to plan a roast or something for you for next week. Is there a sorry, Justin? OK, thank you. City manager. Thank you. One of the things I also attended the legal annual conference and as the council member and the mayor said, there were a number of sessions of interest. I probably went to three different sessions on what the meaning of the voluminous changes to the public employee retirement system will become January 13th if the governor signs the bill, which all indication is that he will. And I went to three different sessions and basically got three different opinions on certain things. So I think what it tells you is that the three-page analysis and summary that we have in a lot of these things is probably not going to be good enough for explaining a 700-page bill. And there are many details to it. It will have effects where our staff is going to be spending time with their professional organizations and with the PERS folks to try and understand this as it goes forward. That probably won't start until after the governor actually signs a bill if he goes forward with it. And we'll also need to be spending time with our legal team here as well. But as soon as we have some notion of how we might be impacted, how it works with existing programs in place, what changes there could be in the immediate or longer-term future, because there's some staged implementation within the bill. And so there are a number of aspects that it certainly, based on my overview, it answers some of the questions that we raised in our studies a couple of years ago that really were outside of the council's purview that really rested with the state legislature to enact, but certainly did not answer all of those questions. And so we'll get back to you as soon as we can with some additional information. And maybe we'll try to give you some initial points for discussion, because I'm sure you're getting questions from constituents about that impact. So it's a major statement. It doesn't make all the changes that everybody wanted, but it sure gets a start on a number of major ones. The other thing I would like to do, I'd like to take a moment here and introduce a new member of our staff. Bethany Fossendini has joined our staff as our new Gang Prevention Intervention Services Manager. She's coming down to the podium now. Thank you, Bethany. And I would like to say that Bethany competed well in our selection, and we're really delighted to have her here. Bethany's experience in developing several award-winning programs for youth and families in high-risk environments that would connect them to parks, neighborhoods, and their communities, as well as building a lot of partnerships in the community really put her in the top ranking for this position. And I think we're going to see some positive traction on that fairly quickly. Bethany's been on board for just a little over 24 hours. So I think she's been in meetings from dawn to dusk, and both internally and getting out into the community. We scheduled quite an introductory route for it. And as you know, there are many community partners to be introduced to. But I want to tell you a little bit about Bethany. She's not new to Santa Rosa. She actually graduated from Montgomery High School and also attended Santa Rosa Junior College. So she is returning to one of our locally educated individuals now returning to the community, which has always been the question that we've had in our communities. Do we train people and educate them and then send them out? And we don't bring our best and brightest back to the community. So she has gone on at several different universities but culminated in her Masters of Arts in Environmental and Social Justice at Sonoma State University and comes with some pretty high remarks from the faculty in that discipline at the university. So Bethany was most recently with the East Bay Regional Park District in Oakland and has also been involved in many separate programs, literacy for adults, AmeriCorps, California State Parks, Hope Services, Communities for a Better Environment, and has worked diligently and at the community level and I think is pretty well grounded in our local government and community services. So with that, I want to welcome you Bethany and you may wish to say make a few comments to the council. So thank you very much. Thank you very much for that introduction. My name is Bethany Fachendini and I just wanted to take a couple moments of your time to just say that it's a true honor and a pleasure to be working for the community and I'm very much looking forward to working with all of you and all of our extensive community partners to implement the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force goals and objectives and I'm very open to building relationships and it really does take a community. So I look forward to interacting in the future. Welcome Bethany. Thank you. Report to the city attorney's office please. I don't have anything to report and I'm filling in for Caroline Fallow our city attorney tonight. Very well thank you. We'll move on to the consent calendar. Our first item is a motion for approval of additional funds for Howard Park Pony Ride concessions. 11.2 is a resolution for contract award fleet management system software and item 11.3 is a resolution approval of agreement for election services. Council question on our consent calendar. Do you want to speak on one? I know you don't have a card but come on up Mr. Osborn. Jack Osborn 5636 Dell Monty Court. I don't understand. This contract is funded by Recreation and Parks, Budget and Fisheries and will be offset by revenue from the sale of tickets. You mean we get back all of the money that we get from the sale of tickets? Or is there some loss somewhere? And why would they need more money if they're making money? Just a question. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Osborn. I believe that on this one the service is so in demand and so successful the amount of money we budgeted for the program the success part exceeds that and so this is a boost to the expanded service that's going on and it must be budgeted and authorized by the council for such purpose. I think the shorter answer might be is we subsidize the pony rides? No we don't. It is strictly supported through fees that are raised but we're having greater success apparently than we originally anticipated. Then he's got a good question. If there's more rides and we're going to have less, it's not a big amount. I think the more rides, the more ticket sales we have to we pay for services and there's more ticket sales sold that come back to us so it's revenue neutral. So we're just collecting it. We have revenue collection and also expenditure and we're trying to recognize that through the budget. More ponies? Well, how do you know? It's been a great anniversary so there have been a lot of promotions as well. Very well. Mr. Vice Mayor? We have to move consent items 11.1 through 11.3 and wait for the reading. Second. Thank you. We have 7 ayes. We want to 12.1. Our next item 12.1. I'll be giving this report. It's a report on the Board and Commission's 2012 diversity report. The City's Charter does require us to file an annual report on diversity of the Council appointments to the City Boards and Commission's and that report must be done in public session. And so this is now the 8th annual diversity report pursuant to this chapter of the Charter. You will find in the succeeding pages a comparison from year to year of the diversity reporting since we started in 2008. So you have 5 years here. I think we report a little differently because we report the Community Advisory Board as a separate entity compared to compiling the information jointly for all the other Boards and Commission's and that's because we have some requirements for some geographic representation as well. It's a little bit different than the other Boards and Commission's. They're not required but we are scoring that as well. And so I think it's the report is self-explanatory. There's been only modest progress I would have to say. I think our challenge, particularly on the Community Advisory Board as you know, has been getting that Board full in the last two years and so I think some of the recent change that the Council made in terms of complementing both the geographic placement as well as some large placement will certainly assist in keeping that Board full, which we would like to do. It's one of the larger Boards we have here at the City. So with that I would submit the report for the Council's consideration and posting. I would also note that as we looked into this a little bit further, we recognize that the Charter actually says that we should be providing not only the diversity data on those who are appointed but also applications and so we're going to have to change our procedure a little because it's still voluntary. We don't always get our appointees to declare we certainly are going to be tracking that also with the applications including those who may not reach appointment in any one year. So we'll have a more complete report going forward. Thank you. Questions from Council. Council Member Gordon? Just a comment. Actually I think you are very generous in characterizing this as moderate progress. I see this as some major backsliding because you're talking about the other boards and the geographical distribution in 2008 11 members were from the Northeast and in 2012 23 members were from the Northeast and the Caucasian representation was 36 so perhaps district elections may help with this. I'm not sure but I just think we need to be far more aggressive in looking at diversity for appointments for all of our boards and commissions and I still have a vacancy. I'm seriously remiss on that for the community advisory board. If we've had applications turned in for that could they be for me and perhaps other council members who have vacancies on that board? Yes and I think that that's one area where I think we should really take a look at how we might better assist the council in that respect because the city clerk can be and now with our community engagement program we have better opportunities for helping to both inform and recruit individuals to make those applications and so we might use that as a supplementary process to the council's own search for individuals for these positions but yes the current applications we have we can share those certainly. Great thank you. Yes I just wanted to compliment the inclusionary council has been working really closely with our city clerk manager and the staff in trying to think of ways to help the city council in their board and commission appointments as far as the announcement opportunity to various groups that would target ethnicities etc etc so that we would have a more rich opportunity from which to select future board and commission members so hopefully this will reflect our community better in the next report. Thank you. Other questions, comments? Mr. Bartley. Yeah comment I think I think it is something that we all have responsibility for everyone here in terms of assuring the representation of the diversity of our community I think no one is to blame I think everyone is to blame and that's just the reality of it and we need to work harder. Question I held back I have two vacancies now on CAB I held back because I wanted to wait for the CAB resolution to come through which now has now my next question is something for staff to help us with we now have an appointment from one area and one at large but I don't know what area is the one area I have and someone needs to tell me before I appoint somebody. So Stephanie can help you with that. She would have that information. I don't know I don't know she know I don't know I don't know that Stephanie would know which one I think this is going to be new information. This is new I think one of them we're each going to lose one and and so you know I can't pick we've got to figure out who ends up with one so I think it's going to come back to us as I think the assistant city manager was going to start looking at how to make that happen to make it equitable and make it work for us. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? Shawasaki Yes, thank you. I just have a comment I've never had staff will help place advertisement when you are seeking applications for staff and I've always gotten plenty of responses when I solicit applications for my appointments and the geographical location on these years it is quite telling that in many years it's either at 50% or just below 50% for the northeast representation so that's it's quite an indictment against retaining the status quo in terms of spreading out representation throughout the city. Thank you. Other questions or comments? So I think we're taking action on this by accepting the report. Is that correct? That's correct I have it. Motion to issue the annual report on diversity of council appointments to city boards, commissions and committees. Second. We have seven ayes. Thank you very much. We'll move on to item 12.2. Our next item is public hearing Project J winery and tasting room zoning policy review. Good evening mayor Oliveris members of the council. Before you denied as a proposal to revise city's zoning policies and regulations to achieve certain goals with regards to winery and tasting room land uses throughout the city. This is resulting from the city council's economic development priorities initiated by the tier two level of those. Essentially the changes proposed tonight are intended to create new land use classifications specifically winery tasting room and brewery reduce barriers to winery land uses with emphasis paid downtown as well as all the industrial zoning districts and then also to coordinate similar changes for breweries. We got some of these ideas through public interest demonstrated by pre-application meetings inquiries for new businesses also just staff's identification that the current zoning code doesn't identify wineries or tasting rooms as land uses wineries and breweries are a growing industry in Santa Rosa and also the current zoning code only allows tasting rooms within existing wineries. So to determine the appropriate changes staff spent a lot of time doing outreach with the industry chamber of commerce Santa Rosa police department number of specific wineries and wine associated businesses we notified all downtown property owners we notified the cab groups as well as the old main street list of businesses and all the residential properties that were adjacent to downtown so we did a lot of outreach and notification to make sure that everyone was informed of the proposal. The council direction was essentially to increase uses as permitted to help create jobs and expedite reoccupies of existing structures some of the issues as I mentioned are with the current zoning regulations are lack of definitions most winery uses require planning approval so there's a cost and a time frame associated with the start up of a new winery related business and the code or our interpretation of these relied on or our use relied on interpretations of the zoning code so it wasn't clear so I'm just going to go over some of the new changes that we're proposing there's analysis in the staff report as to how we've gotten there and further discussion and I'll be able to answer any questions after. We're proposing to define wineries specifically with two different levels of production boutique wineries and production wineries based on a 10,000 case maximum annual production limit they're allowed to have events four times a year as that's a typical part of winery businesses if they wanted to go beyond that they would use a special use permit process or temporary use permit we're proposing to define tasting rooms to allow beer and wine tasting on site with offsite retail sales and it must be directly associated with a winery brewery so that's the difference between a tasting room and a wine bar we're proposing to define breweries similarly with a brew pub level and a production level the difference in the production level is 15,000 barrels versus 10,000 cases comes from there's an established industry standard for breweries for micro brew versus large brewery and there isn't as much of one for winery so we kind of landed on the 10,000 case limit and also winery production is different than breweries it's once a year very much more intense than a brewery production which is spread out over the year we're proposing to allow tasting rooms by right in the cd and transit village zoning districts boutique wineries with minor use permits and production wineries with conditional use permits in the general commercial and shopping center zoning districts we're proposing to allow tasting rooms with minor use permits boutique wineries with minor use permits and production wineries with conditional use permits in the neighborhood zoning district we're proposing to allow tasting rooms and brew pubs with minor use permits industrial districts throughout the city we would like to allow all wineries and breweries with tasting rooms by right as well as a brew pub in the business park and a conditional use permit required in the light industrial district for a brew pub these changes are also coordinated for the LIL combining district as that's essentially a temporary holding district for light industrial in the Maxwell court area we referred the project to the center as a police department as I identified they had no comments or concerns on the proposal all public comment which there was a fair amount was all positive and supportive there was no negative comments on the project and of course the largest land use issue was compatibility between wineries and breweries in the downtown and transit village zoning designation just because there are production oriented use but we thought that the minor use permit and conditional use permit requirements would allow us to address some of the impacts associated with their production there's also some other limitations such as requiring production to be indoors or at least within the building footprint and other things like that that we felt would be adequate to address the potential impacts from these uses in these cd and transit village districts which tend to be smaller parcels so with that it's recommended by the community development department and the planning commission that the city council by ordinance approve the proposed zoning code text amendments for winery tasting room and brewery land uses and available for any questions thank you council member this is exciting I know that Hildsburg and Sonoma are bristling with over concentration we would like to have that problem in Santa Rosa but it does raise an issue of a number of the I don't think I'll worry about over concentration yet but we would welcome that problem but there is some concern about first of all will the neighbors be notified that there is going to be a tasting room I don't think that there's a problem it's usually not a incompatibility of use events perhaps is another issue and the hours of operation is another issue because if it's spectacularly successful as the Russian river brewery it does have spillover effects to neighborhoods neighbors I'm sure Mr. Sawyer can attest to that and so the notification for a minor use permit is what? when a minor use permit comes in the planner has a discretion to file a notice of application so just let everyone know application has come in but prior to any decision notification goes out to all property owners within 400 feet of the property and events is that part of the minor use permit or is that permitted by right? so the winery uses that are permitted by right such as in industrial districts would be allowed to have 4 events per year events are defined as involving other wineries so like the wine road event when multiple wineries join together to try to drive tourism those would not be notified if a winery was having an event like that within that 4 times a year allowance because the use is allowed by right if they want to do increase beyond that then they would be required to go through a use permit process a temporary use permit process where we would notify the surrounding property owner and does that include amplified music? the events all events would be required to meet the city's noise ordinance the definition of event didn't get into whether they're going to have music or not the winery events that I've been to in the past have some have had some have not so I would guess that would depend on the individual wineries in their setting well I think what we're proposing right here is not exactly compatible or the same scale as for example, Lagunitas Brewery down in Petaluma and we see what an incredible facility that is to enliven a business park or a light industrial park and parking is everywhere events happen on a regular basis and people come from miles to attend Lagunitas Brewery so we don't anticipate so far that kind of scale Lagunitas Brewery is not only a brewery in a tasting room but also a music venue so I would say that's definitely beyond the scope of any allowances within this project and one more question we know that water always is a consideration in production facilities especially with breweries specifically and wineries to a certain extent and we know that perhaps in downtown we might have a capacity issue or replacing water and sewer lines to meet the additional demand and capacity have we had conversations with our utilities department about whether or not that's a concern in various parts of San Rosa definitely not specific to what areas of Santa Rosa may have capacity issues with regards to pipe size but one of the influences in this project was the fact that industrial waste requires all wineries to install a grate that they filter all of their rinse down and wash down of their equipment and all of that that grate must be stored indoors out of rain because obviously you don't want rain water going into the sewer system that restriction by itself helped to allow current community development staff to feel comfortable allowing wineries because essentially it allows or it focuses most of the intensity of the uses indoors or at least within a cover in an area that would be over that grate. Thank you and I'm pretty sure that our utilities department will be working closely with any winery or brew pop to make sure that they have the most water conserving technology as possible because obviously that's where we're going it's exciting and I'm glad that you're working on this I expect that we might have a few ripples along the way but move forward thank you. Thank you Mr. Bartley. Yeah a couple questions Mr. House on the I'll save comments for later but on the small wineries I emailed you regarding the 15,000 barrels and I understand that should come out of it's not in the zone. My apologies there was a typo in the definitions that were in your staff report I should have addressed that in my presentation. Some of the language from the brewery definition carried over into the winery definition in the ordinance it's clear and it's specific to the 10,000 case limit. And also I did note in the wording of the order in the winery definition you refer to annually but in the winery I assume we should be adding if it does in your highlighted thing it does not refer to annually but that would be an annual production. 100% Also on that from the staff report the last line is you've allowed for I guess I'm not sure still what that lasts under the winery production you say in addition users are produced less than 10,000 cases of beverage or less but do not meet one or more of the additional requirements considered boutique winery isn't the only other quote boutique definition the fact it's all happening indoors that's correct that is the trigger so then I would question do you need to put that line in there if it has to be indoors or I was imagining I'd have to look at the specific language but I was imagining essentially a winery coming in at less than 10,000 cases but operating in an industrial area so I did not want them to have to okay thank you councilmember buster pray yes thank you very much and I thank you for this excellent research that you've done Mr. House I was wondering if Kevin Brown is also going to speak to this as one of our long time retailers and the experience that he's been through with this I would like to hear from the public if that's alright with you Mr. Brown I would like to hear how this is I will be taking public comment at a later time but I'm not sure that he's signed up he is thank you thank you thank you know for the report who monitors the four events being that there's a potential for production winery or boutique winery to be principally permitted there would be no check-in process so to speak built into any it would be resolved through code enforcement issues it would be through complaints coming from the neighbors that's basically how if there's a discretionary permit required for a winery minor or conditional use permit then we would specify that as a condition of approval when a use is principally permitted meaning there's no discretionary planning approvals they would come in to get a zoning clearance at the front counter they would be told that that's a restriction on their use so that's correct other questions from council this time I will be opening the public hearing this says the public hearing I do have a number of cards here we'll call those first Ken Mulholt Siebert hi my name is Ken Mulholt Siebert my wife Melissa and I are owned a business called ancient oak sellers we're a winery and we're hoping to open a tasting room in Corex we may be the first to take advantage of this new code language and we're very much looking forward to joining the community in Santa Rosa if there are any questions of me I could answer them thank you Kevin Brown thank you very much council members mayor I really appreciate the city's work on this they've worked diligently we've been using job we've been working on this since mark 6th we're very excited to be able to be the first to take advantage of this but certainly not the last I think that our downtown is a wonderful gem and I think that this is something that will make it much more apparent to all of those people who are starting to come and discover Sonoma County and I think it will benefit the city greatly it will benefit us as well and I think it will make this community much more alive and hopefully help your coffers as well so thank you very much thank you Mr. Brown Peter Chirna you all looked tan and refreshed from your vacation welcome back more alcohol outlets that's a capital idea more money for the city via purchasers and be a great idea that the DUIs should have their fines tripled on behalf of the city but there's something else we should consider that there seems to be way too much wine as evidenced by the tonnage of grapes in California that are often left to rot because they're not used and of course the burgeoning warehousing of excess wines of which some people have taken advantage of by arson and of course they got caught but so I suggest to you that you would consider to pass an ordinance that 50% of all the grapes from these wineries be turned into grape juice for kids and have some tasting rooms for kids with these different types of grape juice what a wonderful idea it's better than wasting it on the vines or sitting in warehouses that people never drink and then maybe these new tasting rooms could have special nights for people in foreclosure to drink away their sorrows good news I understand that a city ordinance resolution so to speak to designate foreclosed homes as historic sites and then claimed by imminent domain and the reason it would be historic is because well we'd all be middle fingering the bankers and the bush regime that were nice enough to give us 9-11 an X amount of years ago so we have every reason to raise up our glass and toast to the teachers general strike over there in Chicago and we have every reason to join that general strike on behalf of freedom for our kids these grape juice drinkers and these adults the wine drinkers how exciting you know I really want to see this strike because about 10-12 years ago I promised I wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol until Leonard Peltier walked out of prison and let me tell you what it's been a strain for 12 years to not have one drop of alcohol so I need your help with this general strike which would shut down these bankers and the bush regime of course that owns both Romney and Obama both so it doesn't matter which way we go on this one but with this general strike we could pick anybody we want for president and I kind of like Marcia Dupre for president that'd be nice or maybe even our mayor Ernesto Oliveira I think he's a serious person he would be able to handle the job and he's not owned by the bankers you know I think the law enforcement ought to arrest these guys but they can't do it because of all this complicated conspiracy stuff so yes let's go ahead and pass an ordinance with the vineyards so that 50% of the grape juice goes to grape juice for kids for free and let's go ahead and start talking to our friends on the e-mail and telephones to join this teachers general strike maybe we could educate this nation to a higher station we're all tired of this and believe me I would love to have a nice glass of port sometime soon with my dinner but I can't do it until the guy who's got the US Constitution sitting in his cell by virtue of the fact that he represents the 500 year indigenous resistance has got the Constitution sitting in his cell in her Peltier it was the Iroquois that gave us this Constitution go ahead and have some wine and talk about this with your friends and let's go ahead and get revved up like Efren Carrillo that's what I want to see you guys you know I heard that he was in Russia with a sound box in an entourage playing the Rocky scene Rocky music to it I'm just about done I got 19 seconds well actually we started a timer a little bit late the last 10 seconds and I appreciate that so let's talk about this general strike let's get on board and shut down this corruption in service to the living lord thank you very much mayor thank you Aaron members of the council thanks for the opportunity to speak to you on this proposed ordinance and at the risk of being a little too rational I want to speak in support thereof as we continue to work our way out of this after effects of the great recession it's absolutely critical that governments city governments do whatever you can to help facilitate re-tenanting the space and the growth of businesses I really want to commend the community development staff Chuck Rogali and his team for bringing forth this particular ordinance and some of the ones that will follow later this evening as means for doing that it's a real critical role the city plays in terms of helping the development of business and with that the creation of jobs in this particular instance I think it's also important because it reflects the change in our economy the trend towards visitors coming here as you all know the chamber working with the city's economic development department spent a lot of time trying to bring visitors to our community and the more we have for the things for them to do for opportunities for them to enjoy wine tastings having them enjoy their stays so I urge you to vote in favor of this particular ordinance amendment and also as we go forward to continue to do those kinds of things that make it easier for businesses to grow, expand and put people back to work thank you very much this is a public hearing those are all the cards that I have on this item but you do not have to let a car to speak on this item if you wish to speak step forward please that was your cue Mr. Osborne Jack Osborne 5 6 3 6 Dale Monicourt I wouldn't come speak on this because I don't care I drink wine and beer and most everything else but what I was concerned a little about was kind of exposing it to the city for the first time I hadn't seen anything about this so here you are and you're going to make a resolution approval but then I say and you're watching this stuff up there and it says public input all favorable so ask yourself what public input all he said was they asked the people who wanted to do it how can you have public input when the public input doesn't know it's going I don't care about that it's just one of those things about the city you say they say public input all favorable people say yes and no so they're only listening to certain people okay as I'll switch my voice a little bit and what's concerned me even more was police no comment or referral what you propose to have 10, 20, maybe 30 more bars and breweries and wineries and the police don't care they don't they're always complaining I mean everybody's always complaining about a bar okay so I'll switch away from that okay the next thing is and then you say it's a right to have it a right what happens if they don't really want to follow your procedures what happens it's a right to have it you can't take my right away without paying me for it that's the constitution and then I watched the last one there and I said well, more than 10,000 barrels I think that's what I read 10,000 I never said 10,000 cases of beer or wine 10,000 barrels of brew 50,000 500,000 gallons of brew in a small brewery sounds like a pretty big one too kind of have to have big tanks but that's all to be worked out in the future anyway I hope they all make money I hope they all have fun and drink lots of wine and beer but for heaven's sakes please don't spring this on the public and then say well we didn't get any negative comment thank you very much thank you Mr. Osborn Ray D'Argenzio thank you for having me Mr. Mayor and City Council I've been in the wine business here for about 20 years in Santa Rosa probably one of the first wineries the Argenzio winery and also Paradise Ridge and probably in the last 5 years there's probably been at least 10 more wineries that have moved to Santa Rosa and probably at least 100 more jobs maybe even 200 more jobs within the city of Santa Rosa there's probably 20 or 30 more wineries that want to move within the city limits creating probably a couple hundred more jobs for the community for its citizens including housing the increase in tourism is going to be great is great for the cyclist the cyclist community are traveling from all the area love to have the experience of the wine industry the hotels I was actually checking with some of the hotels this past weekend this coming weekend for Harvest Fair weekend they said that almost every hotel in the whole city is completely booked which is obviously very good for the restaurants the hotels and the local wineries so I commend you on your accomplishment here and also the staff and the staff here and I think this is going to be fantastic for the city of Santa Rosa and the community the issue about the water issue with the wine waste the wineries are actually very cautious of the wine waste they want to minimize as much water usage as possible so that's something that the wineries have always been very concerned about as far as turning grapes into as far as the shortage of grapes there actually is a shortage of grapes there's not over a bunch of grapes right now the last two or three years have been hard for the vineyards people so now the grapes are coming back I commend you on what you're doing and I think it's going to be very good for Santa Rosa thank you Ray again this is a public hearing you do not have to fill out a card to speak on this item so if you want to speak please step forward I'm sorry, what are you going to speak I'm sorry hold on Mr. Hilton go ahead my name is Rue Furch and I live in the unincorporated area and I like to suggest that agricultural processing in the incorporated areas the infrastructure issues and traffic impacts are managed is optimal for increasing the use and access to all of our tourism drivers in Sonoma County and so I'd like to thank you for considering this and hope that you'll find a way to support the ag processing in the city of Santa Rosa, thank you thank you Mr. Hilton some of your city council members Terry Hilton, Southwest Area Business Association and the Redwood Empire Business Association I want to commend Chuck Regalia and his staff for putting together something that I think is going in long ways and my board thinks turning the public that we've been exposed to have a negative thought about Santa Rosa being anti-business th