Good morning, everyone. We're going to call this meeting to order. Could we get a roll call, please? Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of vice mayor Fleming and councilmember Tibbitt. Thank you. Any statements of abstention by council members? Seeing none. Madam City Attorney, did you want to introduce item 3.1? Yes. Item 3.1 is the interview and appointment procedures for the City Council vacancy. And at this step before we begin the actual interviews, we ask that the council confirm the procedures. As you recall, the council met on December 3rd to begin the process. At that point, certain decisions were made. The application periods were open, were announced and opened. The application form was approved. And the council, the mayor appointed an ad hoc to develop advanced interview questions. And then the decision was made to delegate to the ad hoc to make recommendations regarding the procedures for the interviews with confirmation by the council, final confirmation by the council this morning. Council did meet in special session on December 20th and walked through the procedures and gave preliminary approval for the procedures. So I will outline those and ask that the council give its final approval for those procedures. Each applicant will be interviewed in this setting, in this public setting. Each interview is slotted for 30 minutes. It will consist of an opening, I'm sorry, the applicants will be invited to make an opening statement of no longer than three minutes. Each council member will then have the opportunity to question, ask questions of the applicant. Each council member will have four minutes. After the final council member has their opportunity to ask questions, the applicant will have the opportunity to provide a one-minute closing statement. The council did ask that each of the applicants respond to three advanced questions. During their opening statement, those questions are are you prepared to attend the regularly scheduled Tuesday council meetings, of which some start in the mid-morning and continue into late night hours. Two, will you be able to attend the scheduled city council goal setting sessions scheduled for March 12th and 13th. And third, do you foresee any issues with additional time commitments on various city council subcommittee assignments? Again, we've asked that the applicants provide answers to those three questions during their opening statement. The order of the interviews was determined by random draw. That drawing took place at the special meeting on December 20th and the order of the interviews is in your packet and in the agenda. We have scheduled it such that there will be, there are blocks of four interviews with breaks in between. In the event that an applicant is not present at the time their interview is to begin, we will move to the next applicant. But we ask that you consider allowing an applicant that is late to come in at the end of that four interview block. If an applicant does not appear during the time of that four interview block, they will have waived their opportunity for the interview. At the end of the interview process, we will go into the voting. There will be four rounds of voting. During your first round of voting, each council member will vote for four applicants. Second round, at that time, we will look at the voting. Any applicant who receives one or fewer votes will be eliminated from the process at that time. And we will move then to a second round of three votes and then two votes and then one vote. And the applicant that receives at least four votes during that final round of voting will be appointed by resolution to fill the council they can see. I would like to ask you to answer any questions. If there are no questions, I would ask that council approve that process. Thank you. Just to confirm that every council member also received a copy of the question submitted by members of the public. He or she can choose to consider any of them during any of the interviews. That is correct. That is correct. And under our policy, under the policy, each council member may ask any question that they feel is relevant to the applicant's qualifications. And yes, you have all council members have received all of the questions that were submitted by the public. And you are welcome to use those questions if you would like. And I will note that those four minutes are for each council member. And each council member will control kind of how the interview goes during those four minutes. And we do have a buzzer that will sound both for the three minute opening statement and then for the four minutes for each council member, there will be a buzzer that will indicate the end of your four minutes. And I'm sorry, in the one minute for the closing and the final buzzer and the interview will end at that time. And we do intend to keep very strict to those time limitations. Would you like to hear the buzzer? I think we'll have, we'll be able to figure it out. A couple additional things to just for the council members. So I also will advise each person when they come up for the interview that during your four minute segment, if you need to interrupt the person, because you get to ask as many questions and we get the information, I'm just going to advise the applicants that you may get interrupted if, you know, it's your four minutes, you get to use it as you deem appropriate. And then also, just so you know the questions, I'm going to start to my far right. So with our first applicant, Mr. Alvarez will ask the first question and we'll just go through each. And the second applicant, Mr. Soya will ask the first question and we'll go through it. We'll just keep rotating that way through all the questions. So with that council, is there any other questions you have for city attorney, city manager or anyone else? Ms. Vice Mayor, are you prepared to make a motion? You had this item. So moved. Second. Any additional questions or comments? How do we want to do the vote? Well, there we go. Your votes, please. And that passes unanimously. Thank you. Okay, with that, could we please invite our first applicant, Mr. Pedgriff? I'm going to speak to Mr. Pedgriff. I'm going to get you settled in, Mr. Pedgriff. First of all, thank you for applying for this position. I'll just give you a brief overview of the process right now so you'll have a three-minute opening comment opportunity. There will be a timer up there if you wanted to check on it and you will hear a buzzer when your time is up if you have not stopped before that. Each council member will have an opportunity for four minutes to ask you any questions and just give a heads up if a council member has asked a question and you're talking, they've only get four minutes so they may interrupt you in the middle of a question to ask another one but that will be the purview of each council member. And then you'll have one final minute for closing comment. Okay. Questions about that? No, it sounds a little rigid perhaps but I'm sure it will all work out just fine. 19 interviews, some rigidity. Yes, I understand. I don't envy your task. Please, you're on. Okay, thank you. Good morning to all of you. Thank you. During the eight years that I was on the city council, we never had the need to appoint a temporary replacement to fulfill a term. Since I left the council, there have been two occasions where the councils had to appoint someone. I did not apply for either of those occasions. I felt compelled to apply on this occasion due to the nature of the resignation. I voted for Julie when she first ran for the council. She was a neighbor and she worked very hard running for office. After being installed, I felt Julie was unnecessarily difficult to work with but finally it was her resignation that left me in shock. I found it hard to believe that anyone would actually think they could appoint their own replacement. Then she added, if she couldn't designate her successor, she wanted the council to appoint someone she recommended and she gave you a short list of approved candidates. I was left dumbfounded. I asked myself, what would I do if I was on the council and had to find a replacement for her? There would be three assurances I would ask of any applicant. First, an applicant should assure the council they will not run for the council in 2020. We should leave it to the community to decide who they want to represent them and not give anyone a head start by being appointed to the council and then running as an appointed incumbent. Second, an applicant should be able to meet all the meeting obligations including goal setting and subcommittee assignments and be ready to contribute on day one. With an 11 month term, there's little time for on-the-job training. Thirdly, I would ask for an assurance given my vision of how I believe the council should operate. To my mind, the council is a team of seven, not two teams that work across purposes. I'm not suggesting everyone should always be in agreement. Differences of opinion actually make policy decisions more robust if the council respects and trusts each other and confidently work together for a common purpose to do what's best for the community. The third assurance I would ask for is to work respectfully with all the other council members, especially those with whom they disagree that I asked myself, would I be able to make those assurances to you, the present council? I give you my word that without reservation, I can give you those assurances. So rather than wait for someone else to step forward, I thought maybe it's my responsibility. So here I am. Thank you. Mr. Alvarez. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Mr. Bedriff, welcome and thank you for your many years of service at the City of Santa Rosa. It is no surprise that our community and the entire region has been dealing with some significant homeless issues. And I'm sure that you even dealt with some of these to a certain extent when you are the council in the past. In your opinion, what is missing from this council's effort to address our community's homeless issues? Oh, my heavens. I was afraid this. My wife, by the way, my support team right back here, said be sure to answer all their questions and don't lecture them. Being a teacher of 40 years experience, that's kind of what I've done professionally as lecturer people, but I understand answer the question, don't lecture them. And you open with that question. So to answer it, yes, we have a problem. Yes, we need to do something about it. And yes, it's complicated. Now, but I don't want to lecture at you. Oh, my heavens. Well, Mayor Tom wrote a letter to the community dated just about a year ago, March of 2019, in which I thought his statement was outstanding. I thought it really explained to the community what the council intended to do, what their intent was, what they have been doing in a brief history of their accomplishments since 2011. I couldn't add anything to that. I think you should be really congratulated for having really seriously wrestled with the issue of homelessness which is a problem the causes of which are well beyond our ability to do anything about, which requires a cooperation of the problem that prompted all this, of course, to Radota. Well, that's county property. That's the fifth district. Have the Board of Supervisors stepped up? Well, in the past it's always been kind of an issue of cooperating with the county and getting along and agreeing on working together. I think they've shown and improved attitudes since I was on the council and I think they've recognized their responsibility, but in some sense the immediate issue that we're working with here the ball is in some sense in someone else's court and we have to work with those people and cooperate and that's the best I can say at this point. I believe in a broad spectrum of responses. Most of the problem right now you're dealing with is what do we do tomorrow? Could we get a problem today? We've got a helicopter by the Sheriff's Department seeing rats running around on the trail. We have to deal with that now. So I don't envy you this. Have you missed your questions of what have we failed to do? I think we're really working hard at it and I think we're serious about it and I actually congratulate you on what you have done. But I think you have been obviously the rest of the community observing and seeing the issue continue to grow. There's a lot of anger in the community about how it's being addressed and I'm sure that you've been aware of some of our efforts to deal with the issue based on what you've seen so far. What is missing? What's something that we're not doing yet that we should be doing? Cooperation with the Sheriff's Department. We're looking at the old senior center over here. I guess we've got to put a new roof on it and there's a suggestion of that becoming a facility. Well, how long is that going to take? I'm sorry. If this is supposed to be a softball question that I hit out of the park, I'm clearly failing. I'm striking out. Yeah. I'm sorry. Thank you, Mayor and thank you, Mr. Pettigrew, for being here and for your service throughout the years. How do you believe our local political environment has changed since you were last served as an elected, if at all? Oh, interesting. Well, we've become more progressive when I served on the council first elected in 1988. I was the liberal general on the council. I was the environmentalist. I was the candidate that ran with the endorsement of the Sierra Club and I served with four people at that time who were all endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce. So housing was the issue and growing slower was what I was supposed to advocate. Well, a lot of that's changed when I look at your goals that you've set for your tier one goals. Holy cow, I don't think those would have been the goals that we would have adopted when I was first on the council. Yeah, we've become bluer than we were when I was on the council, which I guess is the way we're growing. That's neither to be celebrated nor shunned. That's just the way we are. The council and the work that you do is much more complex. You've added a couple. We've got a computer department as a part of the city government. Well, that's all new. There were several jobs that might have been assigned as collateral duties within the city manager's office that now are departments. We've got a homeless, and a full-time job here on housing and homeless related issues. That was just a part-time responsibility. City government has become much more complex. Allow me to shift gears just slightly. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? I'm sorry. Say again, please. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? Getting along with one another, finding a common purpose and working together. This council, as far as I know, I don't really know any of you very well. So I can't speak with full knowledge here. But after I got off the council, there was a decade there in which the council was quite divided and I don't think the community was well served by that.  So maybe that comes and goes. There have been people on the council who just seemed ordinary for lack of a better word. And I don't know how I never saw that when I was on the council. I said I was the environmentalist that joined four folks who were more business-oriented. They never treated me with disrespect nor did I respond in kind. I had people say you ought to be more screaming and hollering down there. No, that's not the way you get things done. You work with people. And if you have a good idea some of the specific plans that we had for the southeast Santa Rosa and here in the southwest, I brought those. We hadn't been doing those kind of specific plans in the past, but this was this was the future. And it was clear to my compatriots on the council that this is what we needed to do. Small, neat approvals. Thank you. Thank you for your service and thank you for coming in today right and early. I'm curious to know going into goal setting, what would your perspective, what perspective would you bring to setting our priorities in March? Thank you Victoria for asking that. You clearly made it clear to everybody that they needed to have those dates the 12th and the 13th of March set aside for just this purpose. And it's clearly an important function. It's the one time in which you can kind of step back. I really appreciate it. Why don't you tell me your perspective because we have such limited time. I'd love to hear what you bring to it. I'm lecturing. Having been away from the council I can take a broader perspective as I look at your goals, the goals that you set in 2019. I don't want to fall to one of them, but none of them really contains what I call a vision. Goal setting where there is no vision that the people perish tells us the Old Testament. Where's the vision? Where are we going? Well I've been working with the Bicycle Advisory Committee. Are bicycles really going to become a serious part of our transportation network here in the future? I think so. Do we have a goal that we want to be working toward that brings us your goals are all functional. They're all five year goals. How about some 20 year goals? How about something further off? I think we have options along Santa Rosa Creek for really making something exceptional for this study, but it may be maybe 50 years out for all I know. That's okay. It's okay to plan 50 years into the future. Hold that vision because that's what draws us into the future. Are there any particular causes or populations that are dear to your heart or that you'd be looking out for that maybe aren't represented well by the council as it sits? No. No, actually your sort of implies a potentially divisive stance. I know that's not your intent. I'm looking for actually just an addition, not a division. I see. Well, I was the senior representative on the bike advisory committee, so I was supposed to represent seniors interest. Well, that's kind of interesting because I don't know that as a senior citizen I have any different opinion in regards to bicycles than with an 18 year old. It always seemed like I was sort of given a special niche, but I don't think there were special needs. There might be for handicapped people, but not necessarily seniors. So, but there I was. We pointed out a potential challenge in that seat that it implies disability with age, and I do appreciate that you don't want to create divisions, but I do really believe that additional perspectives are, especially with this council where we are, as you pointed out, not divisive. We intend to listen to each other are useful when we have vision, when we set visions and goals. I know from the questions that were submitted by the community to be asked, there's an ongoing resentment from people on the west side of town who feel as though they're either underrepresented, even though districtings should accommodate that issue, and I am from the east side of town. I live over by Spring Lake. Does that mean I can't sympathize or help be a part of solutions for people on the west side of town? I think not. Thank you. Waiting for that lovely buzzer. Question I have. What would you consider to be your biggest challenge at the end of the day today? We select you. You start on councils tomorrow. What do you see as your biggest challenge? My biggest challenge? Well, I think when I went through the process of deciding to do this that I tried to explain to you here in my opening statement, I thought having been on the council for eight years and been mayor two times, you know, that I could be someone who could promise you that from day one I'll move right in and be ready to go. No, I don't want to oversell that. That would be false advertising. No, the job is more complex. The community is more complex. The immediate issues that you're dealing with have been there forever, but the responses are as complex as they've ever been. All the faces have changed with all the professional staff here, and I think the effectiveness of a council person, no doubt, is built in some extent on their relationships with staff and all the people that I knew are no longer here.  So I'm just slower, I need reading glasses. I was offered two classes at Sonoma State for the spring semester, which is what I've done for a number of years, and as the budget got finalized, they said, nope, those classes were cut. So I'm not teaching spring semester at Sonoma State. If I were, I couldn't apply for this job. That's a half-time job. This is a half-time job. I'm 77 years old. I don't need a full-time job. For me, this will be a full-time job. And fortunately, I've got the time to do it. In your application, you talked about how you've been staying up to speed with council activities. You called yourself a community news addicts. Can you talk about a decision that this council has made during the last year that you disagreed with, and what would you involve? Oh, you were asking me to step on a mine, aren't you here? Yeah, right. Thanks. Craftfully dons them. Dance carefully through that minefield. Let me give you a perspective. I was in class number one Leadership Santa Rosa. I'm guessing some of you may have gone through the same program.  We'll go out, we'll find a sculpture. We'll get a public sculpture for the first responders and the victims from the 2017 fires. Good idea. That's a community-oriented thing to do. Well, we came in at the time, John was mayor, and so we met with John. He may remember it, and he may have a different perspective that he can share. But my takeaway from that meeting from John was that good, good thing.  Go work on it. Don't involve the city. Just, you know, don't involve the city. You can do better on your own. Well, the sculpture's now out at the LBC, right in the front. I don't know if some of you have seen it out there. And so a mission accomplished with the group. Why not work with the city? We thought maybe that's what we were supposed to do.  No. Thank you. Is that a fair assessment, John? Go ahead. We're into Mr. Tibbetstein now. Thank you, Mayor. I actually do want to try to follow up on the mayor's questions. That's what I had written down as well about. Has there been something recently that this council made a decision on that you may have picked up in the paper and read and thought, you know, I would have done this differently. And if you don't want to know it, I would have done it differently. I would have done it differently. I would have done it differently. I would have done it differently. You have to present it with a land mine. It's to really gauge how we as a body work together because very frequently this body disagrees. And as you pointed out I think we do a good job of being cordial about it and then massaging the outcome to a decent public policy most of the time. So, yeah, if you with that. You phrased a little differently here. About a week ago, the six of you all got a thumbs down from the editorial staff of the press democrat. Do you remember what it was for? It wasn't for what you did, it was for what you failed to do. You remember? You failed to provide laboratory facilities at our courthouse square. Why not? Well, the fear is that if you make it too comfortable for people down at our new courthouse square, it's going to be inhabited by what less desirable elements of the community. Stop and think about that for a minute. What have you not done? How have you made a mistake? Well, on July 9th, you did something that made all of us that have been working with the Southeast Greenway for a decade very happy. But let me tell you, it was a long hard struggle to do work on our own before we got any encouragement from the city council. Now, my leadership in the Southeast Greenway will applaud what you've done. I'm being candid with you. I sat in the office of Chuck Regalia who said this is never going to happen. Caltrans is impossible to work with. We put that property out of sight, out of mind for a half century. Oh my God, who knows what will ever come of it here? And we said, well, we want to do something with it and we want to do it now and we want your help and encouragement. No, I don't have any money. No, and even if I give you staff time, that still has to be budgeted. I don't have any extra staff time. No. The initial response from the city was good work. Go do it on your own and good luck. Now, I resented that myself, but fortunately cooler heads in the Greenway effort who are more congenial perhaps. Well, let's keep working with them. Let's keep doing what we can do and maybe we'll get back to them. And it has worked out. So on the 9th of July, you entered into an agreement that you are going to negotiate with Caltrans. We are going to acquire that property. We are going to turn it into amenity for the entire community. And what's the one thing that gives anyone any reservations about what we're planning to do? The fear that the new Greenway would be turned into another Joe Rodota trail. And that prevents us from doing something good for the community because we're afraid that because we've neglected a segment of our community that they're going to ruin it for all of us. I mean, that's a horrible statement about either who we are or how we see ourselves or how we see ourselves relating to the unfortunate that live among us. Okay. Allow me to thank you for your efforts on that. Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Pedrogrypt. Good. So I'll jump right in. One of the more contentious or difficult decisions our council has had to make was given the trajectory of the Hanley and the Tubbs fire, do you think people from Fountain Grove should have been able to rebuild their homes and should the city have helped facilitate that? I'm not sure. Could you rephrase that? I'm not sure I kind of understand. I mean, it seemed like the question. So obviously, of course, but so there must be something deeper that I'm missing. Yeah. Do you believe, given that we've had two fires of similar paths? Yes. That a third one is inevitable and therefore the city should have done more to try to relocate people out of that path? Wow. Well, you know, along the Russian river, we seem to have a hundred-year flood, you know, a couple of times a decade. And, you know, as people go back into the flood zone and they want to rebuild their homes, insurance companies say, well, we're not going to insure you and then government regulation would say you have to build sort of above them. So you do have to accommodate the fact that you're living in a flood zone and these happen regularly. And the fact that we would put regulations upon people who want to rebuild their home was understandable. Yeah, you don't go back there and do the same thing you did. So now we're asking the same question in regards to fires. Are fires so predictable that we're going to treat fires in the north part of the city here in the county? The same way we count floods inevitable. You count on them. And a fire that happened 50 years before the 2017 fire, with almost the same footprint, now happens just two years later. So it's bound to happen again. Don't rebuild. Wow. I mean, we can't solve the problem that causes these fires. You can't stop a flood. It's going to rain. That is definitely beyond our control. But the ability to stop fires, I mean, haven't we been pointed? I don't want to put all the blame on PG&E. Those were exceptional wins. But can't we do something in anticipation of the risk that we have that mitigates the effects of these things? I would say that'd be giving up if we're just going to turn our back on the people that live there and haven't lived there for a number of years. Just say, well, it's inevitable. Your place will probably burn down.  But I do want to make sure we also ask, what's your understanding of the operations? Well, as far as I can impact that the public safety power shutoffs have been having on city staff. What's been going on? I don't know that PG&E has coordinated well with the city. It looks as though power has continued at all the fire stations.  But if that's not the case, you lost power or you lost internet connection or you lost something. I think there could be probably much greater coordination and advance notice than maybe not only the addition to keeping electricity running for our fire departments. How about our schools? I think there could be greater coordination and cooperation between the city and PG&E. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. All right, Mr. Pettigraf, is your opportunity for a one-minute closing? Okay, yes. Well, I actually laid out my intention of running, but I thought fairly well in my opening statement, I assured you that you can count on me on my sacred honor, that I will live up to the three promises that were spelled out. I will not run in 2020. I'm a fast study. I don't have to go all the way back to square one in learning the job of being a council person, and I will dedicate myself to catching up to speed, and I promise that I will work cooperatively with all of you. I'm not a divisive person. I'm a school teacher, so I've learned how to ask questions and listen carefully when people answer and be respectful. And I don't pose enemies, and I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much, Mr. Pettigraf. All right, next is Clint Saunders-Aunt. Well, sir, thank you for applying for this position. Just give a brief outline. You'll have a three-minute opportunity for a three-minute opening comment, and if you'll notice it is being timed, you'll hear a little buzz when your time is up, and then we'll have opportunities for each council member for four minutes to ask you questions. You may get interrupted because the council member gets to use those four minutes as he or she chooses, and then you'll have an opportunity for a one-minute closing comments. Okay? All right. Opening statement. My name's Clint Saunders. I've lived in Santa Rosa for, actually, born and raised in Calistoga, and traveled to Santa Rosa a lot through the last 40 years, and moved to Santa Rosa about a year ago, over in Walter Road. And I see, well, I've had firefighting experience in the late 90s with Napa County Fire and EMS, then I was a commercial driver for a while, then I'm now my realtor for the last two years, and I see about bringing my values or services and skills to the community as a value. Okay. All right, then we'll go to Councilman Mr. Sawyer. You're going to start this round of questions. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for being here, Mr. Saunders. Thank you. What role do you believe personal philosophy should play in your decision making? I would say the knowledge to be able to gather data and experience about each issue, like homelessness in a community, and exercising those knowledge with the team in the community, to overcome the solid plan that'll actually work as a good solid foundation. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? Honesty. And I think that's good. Thank you. That's fine. Thank you so much for coming in. I really do appreciate it. Thank you. Sometimes on Council, we have not so much. Pretty much every week we have two competing interests and multiple different topics where we have to deal with people who are going to be unhappy no matter what we decide. How would you deal with that? Not just from the Council. I mean, we're fairly gentle with each other about that stuff, but the public sometimes doesn't have that same commitment to, you might get nasty emails or people who say things to you. How would you deal with that? That's actually pretty easy for me. It's what it is. People speak their mind to me. I'm like, okay, thank you for your input. It's nothing that's going to bother me. Okay. How would you approach our goal setting process in March? How would I approach it? I would have an open mind to learn and be new to the city member and definitely put my efforts towards helping create different newer ideas to solve the problems in the community. That's a really big question, so I understand. It is. I'm not trying to give you a hard time. Anyway, I'm going to see my time and let the mayor go next. Thank you again for coming in this morning. What do you see if you were to be selected? What would be your biggest challenge for serving on the Council? I think my schedule is pretty open. Right now, my main income is being a ride share driver, so I'm out picking up people in the community all day. I'm talking with them. I'm gathering information and being a realtor, training that it's optional to go to, and then I set up a few appointments for my clients every now and then. But overall, availabilities, I could put it in my account. I probably put the goal setting date on my calendar already. So I'm not talking so much about your availability, but you're actually now serving. You've got the time. What do you see as your biggest challenge with all the issues that this City Council is dealing with? What do you see as your biggest challenge to be able to provide in those services that the community wants from its Council? I don't see any challenges. It's just bringing in different ideas, talking with my co-workers, gathering information, talking with the community members, and ultimately bringing my values of being a voice for the community, and then bringing that as a value to a community within the Council. So conversely, what do you think would be your easiest area of expertise as you would transition onto the Council that this is your sweet spot? You're really going to be strong in this area that the Council deals with? Right now, I'm a little shy in front of a microphone outside of a courtroom. I love talking in a courtroom, but I'm pretty open. I'm very versatile to be able to fit any position. I can go out and talk to anybody in the community. I've talked with homeless people. I've interviewed them. I've gotten different input about some of them want to be helped. Some of them don't. Some probably should be assessed from mental status to what we can do to build a plan to get them back into the community as functional people. Okay. And then I know in your application you'd mention that you attend a number of Council meetings. So we've established some tier one priorities. Do you agree with those tier one priorities? And if not, what would you substitute again, limit it to five different priorities? If you have another priority out there, what would you want that to be and what would you take off our priority list? I don't remember any exact emotions that you guys made for what I disagreed with or agreed with. Okay. I'm flexible as long as it does good for a community, you know, if it's the budget. Okay. Thanks. That's all I got. Thanks, Mayor. Mr. Saunders, you seem like a young guy and one of the reasons why I wanted to sit up here is because I felt like the city wasn't doing enough to create futures for young people. How do you feel as a young person in this community? Do you feel like it's a place of prosperity? Do you feel that it could be improved? If it could be improved, how would you improve it? Could you share your thoughts? Well, I'm not too young anymore. I'm 40.  You're way behind, but I promise. That's all right. The next 10 years is a goal. But the community is good. I mean, there's always good and bad things about all every community, but each strength and participation of the members of the community to make it a better community is always a plus. Okay. And I still consider 40 young, but as a 40-year-old man, do you feel like there's something specific that needs to be improved? I mean, one thing, let me try to, our downtown, for example, you know, it's been pretty asleep for a long time. This council has made tremendous efforts to try to really activate the space. I mean, the council prior brought forward the courthouse square, the Chamber of Commerce and local businesses are very active in the space. But development there seems to be slow to start. Is there any specific actions that you think, I mean, especially given your background in real estate, that we could be doing to make that a better and more inviting and attractive space to both participation among community members as well as investors? Okay. I think the first problem help is clean up the homeless sleeping in the gutters or the front of the businesses and clean up the atmosphere with that. But that would definitely be something I'd have to go out and talk to the business owners in the community and the people and see if they have any... Assess what their needs are, basically. Yeah, success with their needs are, because I had one guy, he worked at a restaurant down in Tarnia, he said, one homeless guy come in demanding food one night and everyone's like, okay, and I don't know if they give him food or not, but he kind of came in and made a scene in the restaurant. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. You're welcome. Good morning, sir. Good morning. All right. Let's have one step beyond council member. You're suddenly king. How do you solve homelessness? That's a good question because there's many different levels of what the homeless people need individually. As I said, my experience interviewing them, some of them want to be helped. Some of them don't want responsibilities in life and some of them, I think, should be assessed mentally to see because they're using substances or such. So it's a quite different array. And then when you do help someone, I wouldn't want to be on the... Just give them everything because then I think they're entitled. I would give them something to want to build their lives better. So as a council member, how would you balance the rights of a homeless individual versus the rights of neighbors? That's more research. It needs to be determined like doing a neighborhood survey before you put in a homeless encampment or a rehab center. Okay. So if you were going to be working on a homeless center, rehab center, whatever have you, do you have any ideas for current places in Santa Rosa that you would like to see them? Well, there's a corner lot at the fairgrounds over above Berkwood. There's the old Kmart lot and then there's the motel, well, boarded up motel on Santa Rosa Avenue at Mill Street. Okay. Those, prospectually. And maybe the area off of the Stony Point Road, trying to think what street it is, back over by Amy's warehouse, the warehouse for Amy's kitchen, but across that old field. Okay. If you were to serve on the council, which subcommittees would you want to serve on? Could you name a couple? We've got the Long Term Finance and Cannabis and we have the Leadership Council for Homelessness and we have Snop County Transportation Authority and the Waterways Committee. We have quite a few. Okay. Out of those, I want to do the Leadership for Homeless Committee. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Mr. Allbears. Thank you very much. Mr. Soldiers, in your application, you mentioned the two top pressing issues facing Santa Rosa homelessness and affordable housing. Based on your real estate experience, give me some more perspective on the affordable housing issues and how do we address that? How do we solve that issue here in Santa Rosa? Well, it's been a realtor. The hardest problem I have with finding clients is finding people who can actually afford this area. You know, by the time I put all numbers on the table for them, they're like, I can't do it. That's a solution. Well, I did watch a couple of months ago when I was getting my car serviced, I took my computer and I did watch the California Assembly, went back in the videos where they did have a formula where they were talking about housing prices and where they had to have a guy watch a video again to understand their formula to figure out different housing prices in different parts of California. But I would definitely research that to see what we could do, you know, to help lower the housing prices in the community. Good. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Soldiers, do you have an opportunity to give us a one-minute closing statement? I feel my skills and knowledge would be very helpful to the community as a team on the council member or in the city members and a value to the community. Okay. Yeah. Thank you for your application. All right. Thank you. Welcome, Jacqueline. Thank you for being here on time since we're running an actual little bit early, which is a very encouraging sign for this day for us. So I'm just, I know you've been given these time frames, but we'll just reiterate them. So you will give me an opportunity for a three-minute opening comment. Then each council member will have up to four minutes to ask you any questions here she may want. Just give it a heads up. You may be interrupted because against the council person's, his or her time to actually get the information from you that they want. And then they'll have, you'll have an opportunity for a one-minute closing statement. Okay. Thank you. You're on. Good morning, Mr. Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, council members in the assembled community. Thank you for your time. I'm asking to be appointed to city council because I represent a generation of working Santa Rosaans who are struggling to create and maintain economically sustainable lives. Despite being highly educated and having obtained a measure of professional success, I find it alarmingly difficult to achieve economic security for myself, my family, and my employees. I've lived in Santa Rosa for 25 years and was educated in the Santa Rosa City school system from elementary school through senior high school. I graduated from Santa Rosa Junior College before transferring to UCLA. I'm a small business owner and a second generation family firm. As a licensed California private fiduciary, I manage trusts and estates and I'm a corn appointed conservator for the elderly and the disabled. I'm experienced in investment management and taxation, business operations, real estate purchases, and contract law. I'm a national certified guardian and a public notary and I took an oath to uphold the standard of care that protects the best interests of my clients and to oversee their financial stability for them and their future beneficiaries. I work with senior citizens who have contributed their entire lives to this city. Yet despite the progress our city has enjoyed, a significant portion of this population is being left behind. Many elders face increasingly vulnerable economic conditions that threaten their inclusion in our society. The lack of affordable housing and services for this sector is approaching crisis mode. I'm an elder justice advocate. I serve on the board of Sonoma County Legal Aid and I believe in creating an age-friendly city to ensure seniors vibrant participation in our community. I'm an environmentalist and I support building up within urban centers to safeguard our green spaces. I believe in responsible urban planning and leveraging collaborative partnerships. Yet we must bring into focus established and vulnerable populations so that we include and not exclude or displace them. City subsidized development should continue to be a tool to build bridges between residents and investors while also holding ourselves accountable to the underserved. I'm driven to action because of a deep commitment to climate justice because climate injustice is very real. It is widely recognized that vulnerable populations are most impacted by climate change and as learned from the recent fires, our diverse community is suffering from disparities in recovery. This is a direct consequence of existing income inequality, disproportionate access to recovery services, local immigration policy and systemic racism. As we continue to embrace economic development in Santa Rosa, we must close the opportunity gaps and increase truly equitable investments. My life experiences and my professional expertise make me an excellent choice for this opportunity. I'm able to attend regular and extended Tuesday council meetings. I'm available for March goal setting sessions and I am excited to learn about this subcommittee assignments. I'm prepared to accept this opportunity with curiosity and dedication and I thank you for your consideration. Great, thank you. Ms. Flaming, you're first. Thank you so much for coming in and for touching on so many topics that are dear to our council. I'm curious to know how your perspective on seniors and persons with disabilities and financial responsibility would inform your philosophy going into our goal setting. So I understand that housing and homelessness are the most important topics going into this next year and housing for senior citizens is a very important priority that I think we should be considering. The rise in renters in Sonoma County and on a national scale is primarily due to senior citizens who are downsizing based on reducing their monthly expenses in homes and because they are suffering from isolation. And so unless we begin to consider this influx that is going to be on top of young people and on top of homeless people, then I think we're going to be in a difficult situation. And then apart from that, I'd just like to say that as an age-friendly community, I think that public restrooms are a huge priority for us. I understand that the council just approved public restroom downtown, but public restrooms and resting places for senior citizens is one of the biggest deterrents for why they don't come downtown because it's hard enough to find a place to park, but then once they're walking, there aren't places to sit down. And a lot of people don't have disposable income in their 70s and their 80s to go into a restaurant and use the restroom. Do you have a sense of how open senior citizens would be to an improved and more user-friendly public transportation system within the city of Santa Rosa and if that would be of any use to your clients and their families? Absolutely. I do understand that there is a city bus that goes out to Oakmont. There's only one and there's only one route, but and it can be quite intimidating for seniors who have a lot of mobility access or problems to get on those city buses. I think that also digital rideshare services like Lyft and Uber are very complicated and intimidating for senior citizens. Most of them don't even have smartphones in order to use those. So I think some sort of a city sanctioned taxi service or rideshare or an encouraged rideshare group that senior citizens can trust as city sanction would be most helpful. In addition to restrooms and improved transportation, is there anything else that you could see? I mean my perspective is that when we help any particular group of people who are less than you know standard able-bodied adult that we tend to help everybody. Is there any additional ideas that you have and it's okay if not this is a really broad question that would improve both the lives of seniors and the community as a whole? So one of what I think the most important things is eliminating isolation in seniors and so by having co-ops and encouraging intergenerational co-ops for seniors would be a really good first step. I think also senior villages there's something very similar happening in Petaluma and in Sevastopol right now where many senior citizens live in independent small tiny houses or apartments and there are contractors who are contracted with those groups that charge a little bit less that have been vetted by the community that a senior citizen can call and trust that this stranger is going to come into their house and fix their plumbing or whatever they need. And so I think if the city encouraged those co-ops that more seniors would more especially low income seniors would consider moving into them that's what mobile home parks are right now. Thank you so much for your perspective. Yeah. So keeping one question about some of your comments regarding seniors you talk about seniors coming downtown and some of the barriers are you know parking, restrooms, places to sit down. What would the solution be? What could this council and if you were to be on this council what would you be advocating to attract seniors to come downtown San Rosa? So again public restrooms is a huge thing I think seating places I think one of the biggest deterrents is access and seating and there's been all kinds of studies about this in communities that have increased resting places for senior citizens that they become locations where people a lot of homeless people spend a majority of their day on and that is a deterrent to seniors and so you know something where you know on the bus where the first couple of seats says this is reserved for disabled or senior citizens maybe that would be helpful I'm sure it's a very complicated issue. I think parking is is a huge one for us I'm not sure how to go about that other than the disabled parking also I think that we need more disabled parking all over the city one or two spaces is not enough for the bulk of seniors to come downtown. Okay you talked about those top two issues San Rosa demand for affordable housing and higher paying jobs and a need for urban innovation focused on underrepresented groups. So the housing is one of our tier one priorities what which one of our tier one priorities would you say we should replace if urban innovation focused on underrepresented groups would be a priority for you because one of the challenges that we have on council we'd love to do everything and then the folks sitting at the table with you staff capacity so what would you change and what would you drop off our tier one priorities to hit this I am. Well I don't necessarily believe that we need to drop anything off I think that we just need to incorporate more solutions to bringing up some of our underrepresented members of the community. So for example in our long-term housing policy we should be considering you know catering to communities that may have been displaced from Opportunity Zone equity building and development and those that long-term housing should incorporate parts of the community that are now underserved for low-income people so for example the east side of Santa Rosa bringing in more affordable housing over there and inclusionary developments and then I also believe that that emergency homeless situations could incorporate the the innovative planning allowing for very low-income people to take advantage of some of the emergency housing that we are creating for homeless people. Okay I want to ask a quick question about emergency preparedness as you know this community is experiencing a couple disasters going back to 17 the way they can cave fire in the PSPS is from what your understanding of the city's preparedness to emergencies what do you see as our strengths and what do you see as the areas we need improvement. So I think one of the best strengths that the city has developed in the last year or two has been focusing on bilingual communication. I worked in the EOC during the 2017 fire I did the overnight shifts I was the only bilingual speaker for the telephones for the first two days before I requested that students from the Santa Rosa junior college come to help me to cover shifts as the as media came out that there were Spanish speaking people available to discuss what's going on and how when they might be able to return to their homes the influx of telephone calls increased enormously this year during the fires I was a part of the Corazon Hillsburg and the Undocu fund and I believe that with city attention city sponsored attention that more people had understood that there was access to them. So I applaud the city for doing that. I know that we can get this to this. Thank you mayor and thank you Ms. Ocanya I'd appreciate how detailed and granular you're getting in your policy proposals and I especially appreciate what you're suggesting for seniors but I'm curious about what would you do for younger folks living in this community do you what deficiencies do you see that you could put your policy prowess to work on? So again one of the biggest things is housing I think that if if you're privileged enough to live in a household and go to the junior college or Sonoma State for example and not have to pay rent that your chances of succeeding are far better than someone who does not have that opportunity. I think that it's wonderful that the junior college has created this new dormitory style building. I don't know what the price price points are going to be for that but I think that the city should be in collaboration with that project so that we may be able to substitute or to encourage additional building to to support students who can't afford to live in those dorms. I also think that part of the urban innovations that the city could sponsor is startup capital for young underrepresented people who don't necessarily come from families of educated parents or career parents promoting funds for business improvement for young entrepreneurs. I think a lot of people in this this community is very encouraging to entrepreneurs but it's very expensive to live here and so with some startup capital I think people have a better chance of going farther and that could include something like micro loans or low to no interest loans to young people who might qualify. Okay that's awesome. Looking at the city as a whole right now what would you say is the most pressing issues affordable housing? So I think I think obviously homelessness is the most pressing issue and a huge part of that is because there's no and I may not have all of the information here but I think that the majority of other cities in our county are not pulling their weight as far as contributing to the solutions of homelessness. I think that city-sanctioned homeless encampments are probably the most important emergency thing that we can do there's they just formed a city-sanctioned homeless encampment in Oakland last winter that's been very successful that offers it's a it's considered a city safe zone that offers hot water, access to electricity, food, medical services and social services and the key point here is that the city is fostering collaborative partnerships with private entities including nonprofits, faith-based organizations, businesses and schools so those social services and medical services are being contributed on a volunteer basis by nonprofits and by clinics for example so I think I think the city could contribute to that. Okay thanks I don't have any further questions but you still have a minute is there anything that you wish I had asked you? One I think that so I've been following this CASA initiative with the MTA and I understand that the first renter assembly is coming up on January 25th that's through the Sonoma County Tenants Union so I think that that's something that the city should encourage and be a part of the again those tenants are for that for the CASA project is the protection preservation and production of affordable housing and so I strongly believe that that's where we are going but I think that obviously we have some major crises that we have to attend to right now and I think that that's sponsoring sanctioned homeless in camp mills is probably the best way to get to that. Thanks. Good morning. Hi. I wanted to redirect you a little bit you mentioned climate justice yes and I think we've talked a lot at this council level about how difficult it is to be a part of the solution for climate change when you can't afford to put food on the table so what role do you think that renters and low-income folks in our city have in addressing climate and how would you help encourage them to be a part of the solution? So I think one major thing that the city could help with is sponsoring an organic compostable system through I guess it's the Recology now so right now we have the recycling and we have regular garbage but I think that a lot of people would be receptive to having a compostable container on their property. It's worked in New York City it's worked in Dallas, Fort Worth and that's something that I think has been in the works that we could establish and that's a way for all parts of all economic sectors of our community to contribute. I think making public transportation more accessible to lower-income families the smart train I think is a fabulous idea but I think it's also fabulous expensive and so finding some kind of a median something perhaps like paratransit or you know public benefit recipient discounts in order to use the smart train might be helpful as well. Great and then for the first time kind of on a similar thread for the first time the city made climate change a tier one priority and to the mayor's question do you see it as a tier one priority that you'd like to maintain and if so is there more that you'd like to see the city doing on that issue? So absolutely I think that should be a tier one priority and again like I said I think that there are small things that the city can demand that would assist in making climate change more of a priority for all community members so if you see a compostable can on your sidewalk you're going to use it well the majority of people will be motivated to use it and so if the city demands those small changes in people's lifestyles I think that the popularity of it will be accepted. One of the other challenges that the city really struggles with in terms of long-term finances is ongoing pension obligations. What would you bring to the table for those discussions and what perspective would you have to help the council as we try to address those issues? So pension is not an area of my expertise I'm eager to learn about it I do understand as far as our orientation yesterday that instead of for every two people working we have one person in retirement now we have two people in retirement one person working and so I again I'm eager to learn about that I think that the pension system is what allows people to live their best lives after contributing service and so I still feel that it's very valuable and I would be interested in learning more about it. Excellent final question from me we've talked a lot about recovery at the city that's also been a priority where do you see recovery going in the next year and in particular the council is going to have to answer the question when are we no longer in an emergency have you started to contemplate what that actually means for our city? I don't think we're ever going to be in a situation of no longer in an emergency I think that the fires have put us have put at the forefront the potential of what could happen at any time and one thing we're no one's talking about is a major earthquake so if it's not a fire if it's not an earthquake if it's not an economic recession then what is that going to be and so I think that having a heightened sense of urgency in crisis management is the only way that we're going to get through anything that's going to going to present themselves to us. Great thank you so much. Mr. Kanya in your application you mentioned your opinion that the city needs to be more involved in alleviating emergent issues related to public health give us some ideas about how the council can be more engaged in that. So again my idea of the city sanctioned encampments was where I was going with that so I understand that in today's paper we there's a possibility of opening an encampment towards the airport I think that any location that's in an industrial zone that's going to eliminate complaints by as many neighbors as possible is a good option but that's about as far away from services as you could possibly get and so and it's people can't afford to take the smart train into downtown so I believe that in managing these homeless and if if we do intend to go down that pathway in managing those we have to be conscientious of the whole person and how that person's being served. Thank you. Mr. Kanya thanks for being here this morning. How do you balance the need for infill development for seniors and and others with protecting our various historic neighborhoods virtually which virtually surround our downtown and in other sensitive parts of our city which would and those not only do we need the infill housing but those historic neighborhoods also contain a fair number of seniors how do you balance those two needs? Well I think one of the greatest complaints from people is that infill housing is out of line with the character of the neighborhood and so if we are conscientious about how that infill housing contributes to the vibrancy of the neighborhood then I think people would be more receptive to it. One thing I did want to discuss was an updated cooperative housing ordinance for Santa Rosa. I think that some of these beautiful old buildings in the Cherry Street neighborhood for example could easily be turned into co-ops a lot of them have already been turned into apartment market rate apartment buildings if the city was able to sanction or sponsor cooperative housing in low and high density areas low density areas being the historic neighborhoods that it would foster vibrancy it would it would reduce isolation for seniors and I think that it would allow space for young people who are working professionals who are artists who are musicians to afford to live in downtown that's what makes downtown vibrant we can't just have all wealthy people living in downtown they leave or they don't hang out on the square. Thank you and what role do you believe personal philosophy should play in your decision making? Well I think my background and any personal experience and business experience would guide me in any understanding of city policy and I think that being able to offer a perspective of someone who is bicultural bilingual and who has been a community activist as well as the business woman would would offer a additional opinion additional perspective so I do think that personal philosophy drives an enormous amount of debate and discussion but I also think that it's important to balance that with the greater good and the ability to actually create policy and get actions done. What do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess? So one of the um I gained this perspective because I was on the art council on the art committee and what I learned from that was that developing that wider perspective on why things can or cannot get done or why things take a certain amount of time to get done in a certain amount of expense allows you to developing that perspective gives you a greater opportunity to maintain your goals while also being practical and pragmatic and learning to navigate relationships for people who have different political and world view opinions is in a diverse working style was very educational to me and then also balancing that bureaucracy while continuing to stay motivated thank you okay thank you okay you have one minute for a closing statement okay so I'd like to thank the council for considering my application I'd also like to recognize the privilege that I have sitting here before you today I hope the council will recognize the value of having a young Latina business woman contribute insight from underrepresented communities specifically those of the elderly and of people of color I'm bilingual and bicultural as a Mexican American I'm part of a rapidly expanding Latino demographic in our city this demographic success depends greatly upon the policies created by our city government Santa Rosa Santa Rosa's economy is driven in large part due to the economic contributions of documented and undocumented people yet exploitation of these contributions persist and people of color suffer from a lack of cultural competency across our public and private institutions Latinos and people of color deserve greater representation in policy making and leadership roles if elected I will work to build bridges within the city council and among private and public entities I appreciate and value mentorship and if appointed I will be seeking opportunities to learn from current and formal council members thank you thank you very much welcome Brian thank you for applying for this position you're probably all aware of the timing but I'm just going to reiterate it for you so we'll give you an opportunity for a three-minute opening comment or statement then we'll go around each council member will have four minutes to ask you any questions he or she wants you may be interrupted because it's really the council's person's time to ask the questions that's really relevant to them and then you'll have an opportunity for one minute closing statement so with that please provide your opening statement well hello good afternoon my name is Brian Flores and first of all I'd like to start off that I've been a resident of the Rosen district my whole life and Santa Rosa is really the only thing I've ever known for me my parents coming from immigrant parents this is the only place that would actually give them a chance in order to live and thrive for me for in my mother's words how she would always say that this is the only place that has made her feel like family and home away from home for me I in their instance for my for them to get motivation to work long hours such as my dad who goes up in the morning all the way to Petaluma and come back all the way in the night and my mom to take up as many cleaning jobs as she can it's the only place that she feels like home and it's they have such joy here and it's for me it's giving me the motivation to do whatever I can to in order to help it I have done multiple and feats of community service since ever since nine years ago which I guess if you count the numbers I'm 18 and that's probably literally half of my life I've done multiple different things in programs dealing with drugs and alcohol homelessness and people have just been dealt bad cards also every now and then a couple odd jobs even with the city of just you know some park events and just doing any kind of community service that I can pick up it's from there I've gotten recognized for my community service as in 2019 I was given the youth leader of the year award from the center for well-being and I was a nominee of the press democrat health service award for me community service is just any way I can give back to the community and it's immediate action that I know only works in certain ways but the reason why I've wanted to take the city council step is that it's policy that is more permanent for me I've never been invisible to the problems I've only been recently able to afford a car and parked it outside with the fear of the parking meter but I've been biking everywhere all the way from southern Santa Rosa all the way to my workplace at the airport and I've seen multiple different discrepancies in the community within homelessness I used to bike here all the time to stay informed and I would always see the drover daughter trail slowly increase for me it's kind of a whole thing where I've stayed informed from coming here to the city council meetings seeing everywhere in my community and also going to any locian communities that I could go to it's been quite a problem I guess as of right now dealing with money problems and that's why housing is another thing that's I'm passionate about as I'm trying to I take in a year off school and maybe a second year where the conversation of my parents that basically I'm trying to do whatever I can to help with the rent and allow them to stay in the city and yeah that would be great thanks right what do you see if you were to be appointed for this position what do you see as your biggest challenge actually serving my biggest challenge well for me it's kind of just like staying it's more or less just learning with the curve right here I know I've been able to see it within the public standpoint and also being invited to the dais but I really just want to learn as much as I can for the policies I know working at the airport I've done dealt with multiple like learning multiple different tsa policies and seeing how long gated and informed that they can be but I feel like just learning about all the policies and the different instances and I guess different parts of the city is just kind of the problem as you mentioned you grew up in Roseland so as you're aware in November of 17 we annexed Roseland into the city of Santa Rosa month after the fires what do you see the biggest needs being in Roseland and what do you wish the city was doing that the city is not doing well a lot of people are having problem of just attention they kind of feel like some of the services are just not being spread out evenly for me I kind of feel like it should be spread out evenly as it is I don't want to give Roseland any like I guess higher standpoint but there's certain things like the rosin library that some people are saying or people keep feeling that the homeless problem is just being pushed on them and as they do solely feel that they have a right to be here and have accommodations but it's the whole thing where some people feel a bit neglected as some of the problems are being more prevalent in their area and just being pushed off as it is okay one of the priorities for this city council is climate action and coming before the council in the coming weeks will be a discussion about whether or not the city as an entity should go to evergreen which is a little bit you know clean energy but it's probably going to cost approximately a million dollars what are your thoughts on that and is that the direction you think the city should be taking well personally I've always focused on local problems as it is within homelessness and all that but climate is a big thing I guess nationally and everywhere so it's kind of a whole thing we're taking that big change I would agree with that seeing how the I guess the news as of late with how climate change and problem problems within the environment are really becoming more prevalent as like Australian bush fires and other things like that it's it's quite scary and I'd rather do whatever I can to help the environment as well so one of the benefits of being on council so if you want to go in that direction there's a cost-benefit analysis the benefit is the environment the cost would be what would we stop doing what million dollars worth of services would you recommend we tell the city manager stop providing so that we can go evergreen when it comes to that that's more or less another one of my problems to understand all services that are provided areas as of when I would be here I would like to take an account of all services that are being provided different areas because I'm not entirely sure of all services there are areas that can be considered I guess not needed so from there I would just want to learn okay one of the things that we were trying to focus on is a revitalization of downtown Santa Rosa do you have any suggestions for that the city should be doing to help revitalize our downtown well it was a whole thing of maybe like I believe we had more things out there but modern art as it is any kind of art that is allowed and maybe more allowance of community events maybe some things like rosin and their dancers and everything that's kind of like anything that revitalizes rosin as just you know more than just the city but just like the culture of the city and inviting different I guess standpoints of people who've come from all over as I've seen in my place thank you Mr. Flores it's great to see you here I think you found your stride with the public microphone I mean that sincerely I wanted to ask you so of the the vast number of public policies that we deal with up here what would be the area of interest that you are most compelled to work on or interested in I should say well as it is I do understand if it becomes second priority but more or less proper annexation of rosin and bringing services to them but the main problem that's really striking me at the moment would be homelessness as seen like I'm saying biking here from the joe redotta trail and seeing it's kind of heartbreaking seeing the joe redotta trail slowly in large as it was over the course of a couple months and seeing that became one of the biggest in the city I mainly focus on homelessness and housing as it's a problem within housing is a problem within my own home and homelessness is a problem within my community any specific policies around homelessness that you would want to employ as a member of this city council is there anything let me try to drill down a little bit more specifically is there anything that this council is not doing that you believe should be done well for me it's more or less just like the long-term standpoint would be a come and housing for these people if it is just a big shelter unit that gives them off their feet but more or less I didn't want to at least grant services that allow their safety and more or less just I guess protection of them because there's a whole thing with I guess just a crime that goes on there that's kind of scary for all of them and it's sanitation services so it's sanitation and police kind of bringing security there in the moment as a short-term solution okay one thing that I've been asking a few folks as has the mayor is there has there been a moment or a time when you picked up the press democrat and read about a decision that the city council has ruled on or decided upon and you thought this really missed the mark or they decided the wrong way or they missed an opportunity to do it better well coming there I never really gotten to press democrat but more or less coming here physically as a I used to be able to come here more prevalently but it was a whole thing where it was a can like a cannabis dispensary it was a whole thing where I didn't really get to see the ruling act of it but they were they were fighting with a local preschool and and basically that whole factor of a local preschool and I forgot but basically it was within traffic solutions and it was kind of interesting the rerouting way of traffic that whole thing where I felt like people should have been fine for like smoking outside or anything that would have been basically basically it would have been harmful to any of the students around the area and scare them off in any way just something that would allow penal action for I guess smoking around the preschoolers in any way so you felt like the and I if I'm paraphrasing for you incorrectly please jump in but you were it was the trailhouse decision trail and you felt as though it was just probably too close to proximity to the preschool because you didn't want children to be exposed to cannabis smoke yeah yeah that's okay well hey is there you got 30 seconds is there anything that you want to say that I didn't ask that you wish I had asked you I mean for me it's more or less of just what it might take on Rosen isn't just growing up there I guess okay thank you mr. floors morning morning so one of the things that the council has discussed and struggled with over the last couple of years is development in the fountain grove area and specifically after seeing the trajectory of the Hanley fire the trajectory of the tubs fire the trajectory of the king cave fire if you were a council member would you want people to rebuild them in fountain grove would you want to put new development in fountain grove and should the city help people with that well I definitely feel there should be new development considering I get a whole loss of housing that is there and it's basically still an area that is still usable but the only thing that I would really know is more fire services and more I guess recovery options that would allow for I guess roof fire prevention in a certain way keeping everything up to code and making sure that everything is not basically not in in direct harm of it but the only thing I would really know is to just make sure that fire services are always there to at least defend the fire or if anything I mean it's kind of thing but controlling I don't know if it would work too well but control burns around the area or keeping less flamble areas in the border of it okay so this march in the primary there will be a ballot measure that's on fire services in hopes of fun fire services have you had a chance to look at that and if if so do you have any thoughts on what the county is proposing from there I can say I have not had a chance to look at that okay go ahead take a look at it it's something that we talk about in conjunction with our fire services as well is there anything else related to emergency services that you think the city should be doing better or could do better it's more or less just a thing with emergency services just as police I know they are busy and offhand and how there's vacancies but again just keeping more I guess in the area of homelessness for security okay I guess for the residents but also the homeless as well they don't deserve to be defted or assaulted anyway okay how would you build relationships in the community to make sure that you're doing adequate community engagement around the decisions that you're making as a council member well as it is I've already been doing community service for as long as possible for me I have been doing it within programs but I kind of want to do something well do it more or less on my own and on a tackle of homelessness I want to I guess regularly go there and I do I have in contact with one of the homeless advocates with an Mike Chase who comes there regularly and I mainly want to focus on my public relations with homelessness on the Joe Goddard trail okay thank you so much Brian I'm very impressed with your work so far as it relates to community engagement and your civic engagement as as a young man what are your ideas coming to council in helping to increase youth civic and youth civic engagement in center rosin well personally one thing that kind of helps is more more city involvement as it is to know that the city is prevalent I know another thing with rosin is that's a problem is that they didn't really feel the presence of more of a government there of like who are the people in the head some people don't even know the city council names or anything like that the department heads it's more or less of just coming to these schools that are in the rosin area or coming into schools in any other area and and choosing yourselves them see what they do and want to make them more interested in the city and make them feel more part of the city for me it's just kind of that way of just being feeling more part of a greater action that led me to go to these services and give me the motivation to go out and do whatever I can your work has been primarily in the rosin area how would you go about uploading more civic engagement with youth in other in other parts of center rose as well well that's a whole thing of just being more prevalent like I guess it's still the same thing of coming to the other schools and being more prevalent there and more or less just saying what could be done the city city services or even city jobs I know a lot of students would be more interested in that as well it's more I remember getting higher into the city was not a thing that I really knew of and I only really learned it once I was coming here and that was on the website and not many people were very like very much knew that and all the thing where I had a problem where I didn't know the services as of earlier but it would be nice to know I guess the extension of services that we do provide and tell exactly what I guess what to them what we are doing thank you Brian a follow-up question to is what ideas do you have for the city council the city to be more engaged with our rapidly growing Latino community oh I'd say I know there's more of an obligation for city council members to I guess come to some of the events but you know come to more of events as it is I mean I still remember like it's kind of seen someone in power in any case just dealing with the city it's kind of like a capturing thing coming to your event I remember I guess when I was little in the fifth grade I still remember with Tom Shredhelm he came to a pozole feed when I was in Rosen and I still remember to this day and it's kind of a whole capturing thing that you know someone from the city that deals with the problems and deals with the policy comes here to care thank you Brian this floor as you mentioned in your and first of all thank you for being here this morning it takes a lot of guts for someone of your age and your background and your position in life to be able to come and apply for this kind of position so I really I honor that and I appreciate it thank you you mentioned in your application the second pressing issue was the proper annexation of rosin what is the proper annexation of rosin look like to you well for me it's um as it was um it is annexed but what I mean like I guess proper integration uh more or less just uh feeling as it was more a part of the city because it was a whole thing where a lot of people didn't even know a lot of people already knew like already thought that they were annexed and they just thought that they were a part of the city this whole time and they just kind of went along with it it was just a whole thing of maybe more services coming to them about um I guess mean more informed if that is like more of the city council members or other people coming here to I guess either teach anything at the rosin line berries or just make sure that like the people are updated about services that are coming to them and what like I don't believe that many people do know but when with the annexation of Santa Rosa many people didn't know the services that came to them so it was more or less of just information and more help also like you know updates within to them about um the certain issues like homelessness thank you and um you mentioned the it's a communication issue also a couple of times um the communication with the rosin um neighbors has been challenging what would be your way to increase that communication to bring the information that's that is important and necessary to the rosin community uh I'd say one big factor that actually does scare off a lot of people in the rosin community um I'd say I know we have done things like with coffee with a cop if I remember correctly but uh more duration of also the police um I know that some people are more scared authority there because police but more or less uh showing them that they're more of a helpful figure uh I mean I know within my family and go into Mexico and in Urapan which is kind of I guess card tells it if you actually looked at it people are scared of the police and authority and coming back from there those areas and corruptions and basically all that they come that with that same sentiment and it's more or less just a thing to come over there and show like the police and how they're more or less like they're an actual like uh valuable authority that are not there to just harm them or call for bribes or anything like that it's just to help them by um showing that they're a friendly figure that they can trust thank you and what does governance mean to you governance is more or less um I know with me there's certain things of immediate action that um that I've done over the course of years that provide a short term solution but governance for me is more or less um I guess proper proper delegation and debate of policy that creates more of a permanent solution thank you mr floris thank you mr floris for coming in you're quite impressive I don't know that any well I will speak to myself when I was 18 I could not have done this nor done this as well as you have done it today it's been said before and I did not make this up um but I wish I had that you can't get ahead if you can't get around and you touched a little bit on that you would bike up to your your workplace near the airport until you could afford a car and I'm curious to know what you believe or your philosophy toward the future of transportation as it relates to pedestrians bikes cars parking and public transportation not a softball question I know but as it as it pertains to you and your generation that are this year getting the ability and the right to vote uh well more or less it's just like an expansion I mean I don't exactly know if there's a call for this but expansion of routes within the bus routes or anything like that because it was a whole problem with me where there was only one bus that went to Santa Rosa but it was more of like that sound to the airport and it was a county transit that would only pop up at very inconvenient times that would never work with my schedule uh it's kind of a thing where like not only I was just like more or less different routes that would go into the areas because it was a bit of a troubling problem having to go over the airport it was an hour bike ride and all that and I'm so glad that I've gone a car before the rain season um and it's a whole thing we're even just parking that that's a bit of a problem as well for people I mean this is the first time I ever parked actually at a city to pay and I'm a little bit scared of the meter still but and a lot of people are scared away from certain services in the city as well because some people will be attained like in rosen some people more likely to stay in rosen because they know that they have to pay for parking in city service like pay for parking in more areas of time in the city that's how they'll avoid the city do you believe there are ways that we can more tangibly improve bike access and pedestrian access for people from roseland and other areas that are immediately surrounding the sent the courthouse square area in the downtown well if I if there's anything that I do know um it's the I guess would maybe reduce some of the hours of payment of parking uh one of the biggest things within growing up my my mom and dad they they would avoid the city almost at all cost I've I almost never went here as a kid uh because of parking they they felt like they had no reason to be there at all because they could have all the services provided them in rosen and not have to pay it's more or less just a another expenditure that they didn't want to deal with and with the children problems with the rent that they already have they can they would want to save as much money as possible so the parking is a barrier to people coming downtown are there other ways that you envision that we can encourage people to come downtown regardless of their neighborhood that are not in their vehicles not in their vehicles well you're particularly good with the bike it sounds like yeah um more or less I guess this would less your people but another thing with like a common housing with the homeless some people are scared to use some of the bike routes because the homeless I know myself that you can't just assume that they're all criminals in any way but some people have that sentiment and are less likely to use the bike routes around this area and basically they're just fearful of anything that to come here within bike routes a lot of people feel like they're gonna get robbed I remember buying when I told people that I was biking everywhere they they would tell me every instance every location of where something where I could get robbed or anything like that that's their fear there so improving the safety of the existing bike corridors is what you're saying might be helpful yes okay thank you all right all done thank you brown k you have one minute for a closing statement okay um I know as it is being there before at the dice that this is still a really wonderful group to work with and how they come together not exactly debate I guess two opposing solutions but more debate how to go about the solution so I know that this is a wonderful group to work with and improving delegation in policies for me I believe that this is just you know it's just a great play it's a great city I really do love it and I want to do whatever I can but it's a bit of a problem of staying here and I just want to do whatever I can for as long as I can afford to live here if I could really say I just this place has really come out to be my family and I don't want to I guess lose it in a certain way great thank you very much Brian okay with that little head of schedule we will take a break now we're gonna go every interview do four interviews we'll be taking a break so I'd ask the council to be prepared to start the next interview at 11 10 thank you 11 10 was the next call so we'll reconvene the city council meeting welcome Judy I will give you a brief outline that you're probably all well aware of but as we start the interview you'll have a three minute opportunity or three minutes to provide an opening statement and we'll be rotating through the council members each council member will have four minutes to ask you any questions just give you a heads up they may choose to interrupt you if they've got enough information they have had the questions because they're each of them only has four minutes and then you'll have a one minute closing and there is a bell a very sophisticated sound that will be the clue that your time is up and you also have the timer right okay so with that Judy please give us your three minute opening okay Doug good morning Mayor Schwendhelm and council members city council is an elite group of elected officials but but today you offer 19 city residents an opportunity for a position on city council and I thank you for having me here today for consideration in this appointment process if appointed I'm prepared to attend all regularly scheduled Tuesday council meetings I'm available for the city's goal setting sessions scheduled for March 12 and 13 since I am retired a free agent and very flexible time wise I see no issues with additional time commitments on city subcommittees or other assignments I look forward to attending city celebrations neighborhood events and special sessions with other city county or state entities in addition I would be happy to take on any of Julie combs commitments to city and county agencies and fill in where needed in addition I will not change any of Julie's appointees I trust her judgment completely I live in district five and have no desire to run against Councilman Rogers in the 2020 election my first priority as an at-large council member is to represent all residents and neighborhoods in Santa Rosa with determination and thoughtfulness something I have done in my own neighborhood for years Miss combs was twice elected to this at-large seat in 2012 and 2016 I cannot fill Judy's shoe Julie's shoes but I can work to fulfill her pledge to Santa Rosa's voters and eventually I look forward to handing this seat over to a new district election elected council member next year I have been a neighborhood advocate and an arts advocate for many years and I look forward to working with council in these areas in the future whether I'm appointed today or not again I thank you Mayor Schwendhelm and I am ready to answer any questions from council great thank you Mr. Titus can start this round hey Miss Kennedy good to see you good to see you I have a couple of questions for you what policy issues are of the most interest to you well as I said in my application the homeless issue is a serious problem for the city and unfortunately it is impacting neighborhoods which is something that I find harsh and hard as a as a person that lives in a neighborhood I know that this is causing a great deal of problem the second issue of course is climate change for me and and I think that's a big issue for the city council as well you've already done a lot of good work the city council in the city at large has done a tremendous amount of work putting efforts into your plans for climate change building your buildings and wastewater treatment and all and the the green building codes that have been implemented I would like to see neighborhoods which is sort of my bailiwick to come forward with some efforts like we did when we started talking about water wise planting and I think and a lot of people took advantage of the city's opportunity to take out their lawn and put in water wise gardening and I think that's things like that can happen in the neighborhood that would can really help climate change so those are the two issues in fact I think the homeless issue and climate change are hand in hand because we are seeing degradation of property and the creeks because of human waste and human ignorance so I do see that this is those are my two main concerns and I look forward to working with Mayor Schwendhelm in his task force and any of the supervisors that it's amazing how many different ideas are coming up I mean just this morning I talked to Mayor Schwendhelm not long ago about the it's not possible to put the homeless out at the airport and now just this morning there's a new idea about putting the homeless at the airport and and I'm I find it unfortunate that there are people like the man that was interviewed in the paper this morning who says I'm free I'm living the dream I'm living America's dream because I get to live in a tent you know and poop in somebody else's yard so I'm really upset about that kind of talk when someone is not interested in helping themselves or you know being proud of the neighborhood that they live in even if it's a tent city but one thing that I like to ask and this is not meant to make you lose your footing or be a landmine but you know we all disagree from time to time and has there been an issue or two that really stuck stuck out to you and I know that you track us very closely and you're very active and engaged is there a decision that we made that you felt was boy they really missed an opportunity to do that right and if so what what issues were they and can you tell us what you would have done differently um I'm gonna say the when you reunited courthouse square and there was absolutely no curved lines there was no flowering trees um I think that was a mistake to have it so clean and neat maybe a little too neat so we'll come back to that in a minute I've got a couple minutes here to ask you some questions so first and foremost we met years ago when you were working on the art and smart project that's right we got to know each other a little bit better as you were doing the crosswalks in Burbank Gardens what piece of art or project that you've done in the community are you the most proud of I think I'm gonna say the the wall that I painted at the redwood gospel mission I'm really I was really excited when um the when Jeff Smith of the bike partners and um the director of the redwood gospel mission asked me to come up with a mural for that wall and um I have never been a drug abuser but I did smoke for years and I know that when people are in recovery or quitting um you know a really bad habit there's a saying another dawn another day and that saying that pledge sort of reinforced to me what this wall could look like um it's it's a wall of hope it's um it it's sunrise and it's on the side of the street where the sun rises and what I really I really feel like I stepped up to the plate by not only incorporating the people that live that were living at the time at the redwood gospel mission but also the neighbors that lived that live in the west end neighborhood I had the opportunity to go to their neighborhood meeting and explain the um the mural and ask for people to raise their hands if they wanted to come forward and I had so many volunteers from the west end neighborhood and that's a tough one because they have had a lot of conflict with the redwood gospel mission but when it came time to work with them on a project like that I had more people than I could use that's great it was and I don't want to cut you short but I did that's okay I thought it was an important question as well you've been involved in the um putting the square in railroad square you've been involved in the downtown specific plan I just wanted to give you a minute and a half what's your vision for railroad square for the santa rosa corridor and for downtown what would you like to see well in this the courthouse square comments I think are a part of that yeah so um yeah I I'd like to expand on that I'd like to see um both railroad square and courthouse square have rotating art exhibits um I would like to see a lot more um events going on I had an interesting conversation with Ernesto when I was showing him the uh my plans for the railroad square and he said you know if the if courthouse square is our front room railroad square can be our den and I really like that idea that we have a large capacity event place an open air courthouse square and then we have railroad square that would be a small capacity event area and also people get off the train they're right there so I'd like to see a lot of programming that that develops the tourists and the train and my vision for santa rosa avenue of course is the road diet and the bike lanes are so important again climate change if you see this Judy Judy uh you mentioned that you would be willing to take on um former council member combs's committee assignments that's right if those are not available what would be your top three choices for committee assignments oh well I would love to be on I don't want to push anybody off but I would love to be on the downtown subcommittee because I've been going to that subcommittee for 15 years um as a I consider the burbank gardens and the juliet park neighborhoods as downtown neighborhoods anything that happens downtown is going to affect those two neighborhoods so I've always been very keen on finding out what's going on I want to be ahead of the game um so I would love to be on the downtown subcommittee um the I don't know what other I don't know what committee's that julie was on so I don't know the top three but the downtown subcommittee would be one that I would like to be on and anything I would like to be on the mayor's task force for the homeless situation you know because I think that I can bring something to the table as a neighbor and a person who was advocated for neighborhoods but I also understand that we need to show a lot of compassion for these people that are living homeless especially um people that are in recovery or have lost recovery so that would be important to me also I know that there is a there's a committee for for climate change and you know that would be right up my alley too I would be happy to be on you know I those three would be really good for me but I'm open to filling in wherever I'm needed thank thank you julie you're stating your application that you are ready to jump in to hold the fort uh and that you are willing to educate yourself on subjects that you're not familiar with what kind of subjects are those and how will you go about educating yourself on some of these things that you're not too well one of the things I don't know anything about really is waterways and um I would have to start either going to that committee and or going back through um minutes and agendas to see what is going on there and how how I can be effective okay you also uh stressed in your two top pressing issues for Santa Rosa climate change what do you believe would uh should be the next steps that the council should be taking in the area of climate change you know whatever you can do as far as getting rid of single-use plastic styrofoam I don't know how you do that you know on a major scale with large retail businesses and large grocery stores but I would really like to see a ban on single-use plastic if the if the council could do that I would be very excited if we could you know really eliminate plastic bags even the little thin ones that you use in the grocery store for your tomatoes and your you know and your string beans if there's a way for us to get away from that um I would be uh really um a proponent I would get out there and talk it up that's for sure thank you Judy it's good morning yes good morning Judy thanks for being here this morning um you mentioned a new opening statement and in your um uh you're in your application um about the importance of our historic neighborhoods how do you balance the need for infill development and housing uh with the protection um of our historic districts which almost entirely encircle the the downtown and um they are um sensitive areas how would you balance that um I would first look at the edges of the historic neighborhoods where where um development would be less impactful for instance in the Santa Rosa on the Santa Rosa Avenue um you've got Juilliard Park on one side Burbank Gardens on the other in Cherry Street you have a whole residential neighborhood and then right up against it is downtown uh I think we have to look at those those zones those transition zones as the place to do um infill that makes sense housing in particular and I know it's going to be a hard task when when members of the public come forward constantly and say not in my backyard not in my front yard I don't want that even I don't even want to see that you know a block away we just went through this at Burbank Gardens because someone had come forward with a hotel idea on where the economy in is and people were without even really paying attention to the the the structure itself and where the shadows would be cast on people's houses or backyards people just from the whole neighborhood came forward and they were very angry they don't want to you know I don't like tall buildings that kind of thing I think it's going to be really tough John really tough but I think we I know we can do it I know that that with step backs you know you can provide neighbors with you know less of an intrusion and I think if you look at how the shadows are cast from larger buildings you know how to and and also I would encourage that when someone says oh I don't want that three-story building next to me plant a tree you know and and have that be your your horizon your trees and not the building next door thank you it is tough what do you believe is the most important ability a council member should possess probably tactfulness how to handle those awkward situations where people just come up to you in the grocery store or on the street and go well what were you thinking when you voted that way or what are you why are you doing this or whatever I think tactfulness and keeping you know keeping the good face and keeping the face you know um I think that's going to be a hard one for me because I tend to speak the truth sometimes when I should be a little more cautious but yes I think compassion and tactfulness are really important in that when you're out in the world and when I'm sitting behind that desk there you know it's listening it's listening to everyone listening to council members and your opinions listening to the audience and paying attention to staff you know and that's our tactful bell today isn't it much nicer than the buzzer yes I'm glad we went with that and I do appreciate that you brought up tact and listening and just generally keeping it together and one thing that you've done really well is keep the faith for our town for a long time and your tenacity is is noted thank you you're welcome I'm curious to know since you are probably our most visionary public art and public places citizen as far as I'm aware I know offense to any others but you're the most active and in terms of where we should go and how we should do things I'm curious to know if you have any ideas on how we can create stronger connections between downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods through the use of public art well as far as public art most of the neighborhoods around downtown have a park Juilliard Park is one of the parks in my neighborhood west end has two parks the there's you know little little parklets even over in like around Montgomery Village there's small little parks I would like to see a public art program where all of those parks are used for art on a rotating basis either small scale sculptures that maybe are environmentally correct and made from environmental materials or or stuff that can be put together and taken apart I think you can have fun with public art I think you can certainly engage families and kids we're getting ready to paint two benches in my neighborhood that were used as bus stop benches but they're no longer a bus that goes through the neighborhood and we're looking forward to putting together some ideas with kids and painting those benches to keep them from being graffitied do you see there I'm sorry to cut you off go ahead but I wanted to be more specific okay see that there's a way to use art to encourage bike and pedestrian connectivity between the surrounding neighborhoods and downtown I absolutely paths that are underutilized for safety reasons right or just because people aren't aware of them or they're unattractive I think wayfinding is so important as far as what you just said people may not know that the trail is right there or they might know that there's a bike path here or a you know I know that we're trying very hard to connect Santa Rosa Avenue south of highway 12 to the city to downtown with wider bike lanes but I think that you can use wayfinding strategies that are can be very artful and and and not only the wayfinding but also the idea of neighborhood identification when I did these banners that you see in the different neighborhoods I would like to see that expand so that people have a little pride you know have pride like oh yeah I live in this neighborhood and and I'm proud of it you know I do I really do and I had some ideas several years ago about wayfinding in the south part in Roseland that was they were trying to put a bike lane and trail lane somewhere and I can't even remember now between west and Dutton or someplace and and we had idea I was on the art and public places committee at the time and so some of the ideas were using art to make the signposts that lead people to the trails thank you thank you so I'm gonna follow up on some things we've already talked about so we talked about the railroad square making that a square and I loved it when you know shared that idea with me ideas are great and then up here implementation can be the challenge yes you're now one person's up here what steps would you advocate for us to make that a reality to make railroad square reality well there was a lot of ideas at the meetings that I was at with people in railroad square the merchants and the business owners and the property owners and they had hoped but it was never made clear that when there's new construction that there's funding for parks in new construction and there's about to be some major construction going on right now there's the new hotel that's being built they just added rooms to the to the Hyatt and the the whole backside of the train station is going to be you know on the other side of the railroad tracks that whole thing and then there's I mean there's just so much happening in in railroad square and in the west end neighborhood I would like to see those funds be specifically earmarked for railroad square for the square in railroad square and um yeah I just yeah that would be my first step is to see if we can get our hands on some of that park funding money okay one of the things you talked about was about climate change too in your application you mentioned it several different times one of the upcoming topics that council be dealing with is should the city go to evergreen what are your thoughts on that say tell me briefly whatever green 100 renewable versus the way we're now where it's not 100 renewable energy for the city well we already we do have Sonoma clean power right correct okay so um whatever council is considering as far as um building green or evergreen or you know totally renewables I'm definitely in favor of okay I think I think we're already too late so okay that discussion when we come to the council then the other decision that should we choose to let's go evergreen it comes at a cost preliminary estimates million bucks a year so how would you pay for that million dollars to go 100 renewable energy what are your thoughts a million a year doesn't seem like very much so maybe what would you suggest we do where would that million dollars come from well I'm going to have a really long look at your budget and maybe we can figure that out um I don't I don't have um an idea without knowing you know the budget and okay but I think evergreen is a great idea if we're going to build rebuild let's say this um building um I think it could be a model okay I also want to ask is uh I know you're big advocates of neighborhoods and uh recently back in 2017 the city annexed roseland what are your thoughts about uh enhancing the um roseland into our Santa Rosa community what things could we be doing to better accept them into the community okay number one um I would hope that everyone on council would consider putting roseland um residents on boards and commissions and and sort of um you know foster a real political movement so those are the questions to now but wait there's more an opportunity to provide a one minute closing statement thank you thank you it has been a pleasure it really has been a pleasure to be here this morning to answer your questions and to give council members um a chance to get to know me a little better I would like council and voters to know that I will continue Julie comes tradition of being a compassionate trustworthy and dedicated council member thank you thank you hey thank you welcome Mr. Herman thank you for applying for this position uh so the process will be following you'll be given an opportunity provides three minutes is an opening statement then each council person will have about four minutes to ask you have questions just be aware you may be interrupted by the council person because it's it's rather um aggressive time frame so if they have more questions within those four minutes they may catch off and you'll have an opportunity to provide a one minute closing statement okay so with that three minute opening statement hi thank you for the opportunity of being here I'm Penny Herman uh I've lived in Santa Rosa for 15 years moving from uh Pacifica uh where uh I came from Iowa I'm a business owner and I've been in business since 1999 with my husband I have three kids and all of them are uh one is in college and two are still in high school um I do uh have the the time and the opportunity of being able to uh give all my Tuesdays uh all day long for my husband's very supportive of me doing this unfortunately uh I'm not able to meet the March 12th and 13th um way back in July and my extended family from Iowa uh we set up a cruise together for one of my cousins turning 50 however though I am able to set on any kind of subcommittee and um meet all the needs for Tuesdays miss Rogers you're starting this question thank you well good morning almost afternoon now thanks for for being here uh one of the issues that we struggle with sometimes as a council is balancing the rights of homeless individuals versus the rights of neighbors that are being impacted by encampments how would you approach that balance uh and in that topic you know I really feel that everyone knows that they have their own rights and re doing all the research that uh the city is doing and all the I don't want to really use word complaints from the neighbors um but I feel that that I feel that oh sorry I'm so nervous I do feel that thank you um I do feel that um it's a matter of involving the residents more of whether they want to help or maybe getting more of their input on what they think needs to happen for current future uh and going from there so do you think that the city should have the ability to just move people along if the encampment is becoming a nuisance you know I think when it comes to safety um and I feel that a lot of the residents because it looks bad for our tourist it's it looks dirty um so I think if it's a safety issue they do need to be moved along as a business owner I've had to deal with the homelessness I haven't called the police but I think working with them of explaining why they shouldn't be there they've moved along I know that the city is really doing a lot of research on trying to find places for them but I do feel that when it's an unsafe environment and there's crime going on that they do need to be moved along so obviously it would be a contentious topic if we had a sanctioned encampment neighbors would want to be involved how would you reach out to those neighbors to make sure that they understood what the impact is going to be on the immediate neighborhood versus what's the benefit to the whole city um I would go door to door if I needed to or try to put out flyers of trying to have some kind of local neighborhood or making sure that they knew uh of a meeting set up so they could either give their input that way or possibly email their concerns or you know needs for their neighborhood okay and then obviously we're in year three now of recovery from the fire from the tubs fire how do you think the city has been doing in terms of recovery and what would you like to see us focus a little bit more on in this third year um I've never been involved in that kind of catastrophe and I think the resilience of how the city came together the neighborhoods came together and just individual families my daughter herself immediately went to her closet to go through all of her clothes to give to her friends that were impacted by it so I think that santa rosa is going to be the one that that other cities are going to look at for the resilience that we did and I think that that it's been phenomenal on on what what you what the city has done and how uh how the rebuilding has been going great oh thank you so much Mr. Herman I want to follow up on the homeless topic uh clearly that's the big issue for us here in Santa Rosa for many communities across the country and there are times where we may have to have people move along but moving the people along isn't really a permanent solution to deal with homelessness what do you see as some things that we should be doing as a council as a city as a region to work towards ending homelessness you know I from the research I've done I see that there's some beds for them I think that the Catholic Charities has an emergency shelter right now that was about 130 beds um it seems like that that's been a lot of talk on having an area for them to go to uh my thoughts are though people can't really live for free so there needs to be an accountability I think that it brings pride when they have that accountability and I think that we just need to work together to try to find that housing solution for them so that they have some kind of plan set in place that they are accountable on their mental health or if it's drug addiction and those type of resources that if they're doing that then they have their bed that they can be in or apartment to share with someone uh so I do feel that it's more housing that they're in need of and you mentioned housing as another another big issue for Santa Rosa so what are your ideas and meeting some of those housing needs you know it looks like the that finally we're doing a lot of rebuilding or not rebuilding I'm sorry but we're doing a lot of building for low-income housing or low-income families um I've heard just snippets and read a little bit about the old hospital um I know that that would take a lot to change that into some kind of facility that they would be able to live at but with all those rooms you can get a couple of beds in there and I feel that that would be a place for them to be able to go to thank you good morning miss Herman thank you for being here and thank you for your willingness to serve you mentioned in your um application that you wish to make a difference in the city that that in which you live what would that mean to you making a difference you know I feel it is bringing the neighborhoods together more um I know in some of the questions that were put out there that it seems that there was a difference between the east and west side I personally have never felt that way but by seeing that there's uh residents out there that feel that way um that it that there needs to be more um community uh through the parks of having neighborhood um like the city where they have and you know their little communities that they're doing festivals and I think that having a little bit more festivals at the various parks from the east side to the west side and letting the residents know that that that would bring our neighborhoods together thank you and what do you believe is the most important ability a council member needs to possess um all basically all the aspects of what's going on I in doing this application process I never realized really how much of a responsibility that you guys do have to uh the residents and the city workers so I think it would really just be my knowledge of knowing what's going on and better serving it that way thank you and what does governance mean to you I would say knowing the aspects of government and um the ability of who can do what thank you thank you so much for your time today miss herman and um I'm um impressed with your experience I sat on the Sonoma county commission for the status of women for a few years and I noticed in your application that you sit on the um human trafficking task force I'm curious to know if you think that there's a great a role or a greater role for Santa Rosa in addressing the scourge of human trafficking and what the nature of it in Santa Rosa is from your perspective I do in doing a lot of the research I was surprised that it's a lot of the homelessness and I couldn't really find a lot of anything dealing with the trafficking that's going on right now in Santa Rosa in Sonoma county and I feel like it's really gotten worse with the rebuilding and the construction coming here um so I I know a lot of the residents don't realize the extent of what's really going on in the city right now so I think that it is a matter of trying to set up narratives been very good on going even to the hotels and training people on what to look for and I feel that it would be something to expand on on letting residents know what to look for and that human trafficking is not all sex related trafficking exactly lots of different things I'm curious to know as a parent what you think a couple of things the city council could do to improve family life and the participation of working parents in our city government and generally in our community I think it's really going to the schools you know I think a lot of the students nowadays aren't involved or know what's going on in their community so it would really go into the schools to talk to I know ASB is kind of the main one that does the organizations on the on what's going on in the school so I think it would be great going to the various schools in trying to expand on getting them involved and whether it be them sitting in on a city council or having issues that they're maybe they're having at school that they would love the input of the city do you have a vision in terms of how the city could best or better partner with the school board in the school district to improve those types of programs you know I think it's again just goes back to trying to figure out how to tap into the students you know I feel that they're I feel that they're not as in touch with their city and wanting it to be better and grow I myself feel like the even students kind of look down at the homelessness where you know maybe they could do that blanket drive you know they can expand on their you know being a little bit more human I don't know if they're all that way but I've seen some of and just kind of getting the students more involved on partnering with with you know various issues I think compassion is a huge thing I get my most vociferous constituent is my daughter and she constantly gives me a hard time about why I'm letting homeless people live under the bridges so that's one thing that I think that you you might be able to bring to it would be some ideas about how we can partner with the schools you've got another 40 seconds is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to comment on no thank you thank you for applying for this what if you were to be selected what do you think would be your biggest challenge for serving with this council I think at this point not being able to be at the planning meeting okay and then we talk a lot about homelessness so in our community who do you think is responsible for ending homelessness you know I don't think there's one person responsible I was actually trying to look for a poll to see if the majority or some of them were we're in that position because of the fires I feel that we live in a promised land but you know our city is beautiful everyone strives and wants to move to California and I feel like it's really trying to figure out if these are residents that have become homeless or if it's spilloff coming from the city and I think that it's really trying to plug the hole in that boat before taking care of what's going on in our city almost and so I think that I think that that is kind of the one thing that we need to look at we live in the promised land people want to come here and we need to just remind them and give them that sense of pride again so on the same note City of Santa Rosa has about 1200 employees so with homelessness if the city of Santa Rosa has a role in any homelessness what direction would you provide the staff saying we should be start to do filling the blank and if you could be as concrete as possible what steps would be should we be giving direction to staff to do yeah I I really feel that it's housing that we need to and to go that we need to establish vouchers I know and because there's so many questions on the homelessness that we got on our questions it seems like going to research what other cities are doing that they were having these homeless people set up and giving them jobs to go clean up in a sense their own trash and that helps them get money it helped them start and this was somebody coming to pick them up take them to an area to clean up and paying them every day so I think by them having money in their pocket it would cut cut down on thefts and break-ins for the various neighborhoods that they're living in but really starting to give them a job right away but setting it up in the fact of you know someone's picking them up someone's taking them whether it be trash whether it's cleaning up our parks pulling weeds and it will give them a sense of community too okay the city of Santa Rosa is a pretty thorough and comprehensive strategy policy regarding cannabis businesses in our community you live in the northwest part of town some residents in northwest believe there's an over-concentration of these type of businesses in the northwest Santa Rosa what are your thoughts on that and if so what would what solutions might you have to that potential issue um the ones that I've seen are tend to be more in the industrial area so I don't feel that it's um in the neighborhoods and it's spilling out over there I feel like it's around the automotive businesses it's in the area where it should be that I personally haven't seen it that much I mean out on the open it seems that it's more in the industrial okay and um how are you planning on dealing with some of the issues that surface with council discussions where um you're not pleasing everyone in other words we receive feedback from the community sometimes it's not always pleasant have you experienced that and how are you preparing yourself to experience that I haven't experienced that yet and I don't know if it's a matter that you uh that and I don't know how you guys have dealt with it if it's a matter that you're at a council meeting and there's somebody that is saying something wrong or attacking you personally of whether you can go talk to that person at the end or maybe address it at the meeting um whenever I've had confrontations like that um thank you Ms. Herman I wanted to ask you have you been I assume you've been following some of the decisions the council's been making in the last few weeks months or potentially even years and one question I've been asking a lot of the candidates or the applicants rather is was there a decision that you ever watched us make without yourself there was really a way to do this different or do this better you know um that's why I did apply to this position because I'm not I don't know the extent of everything that you guys do I've recently just started watching some of the videos and you guys are very thorough I feel on what you do and um make the decisions I think for your neighborhoods and your community okay well thank you I don't have any further questions and thanks for applying great let me show you okay you have one minute for closing statements thank you again for letting me apply for this position it's really taking me out of my bubble in my box so um I I just want to say thank you again thank you for joining us in our bubble thank you Dwayne while you're hydrating thanks for participating in this process as I know you've received some documentation about how the interview will be going so I just want to remind you that you'll have three minutes for an opening comment and then we'll have each council person we'll have an opportunity to ask you questions for four minutes and then you'll have an opportunity for to provide us with a one-minute closing comment just to give you the heads up there will be a buzzer after each of those timeframes and also council members may interrupt you during their four minutes as it's their purview to ask you the questions and try to get the information that they want from you so with that please provide us with your three-minute opening statement thank you sir Mr. Mayor and council members my name is Dwayne DeWitt and I'm from Roseland and I'm here today to volunteer to try to be the best city council person I could be in the next 11 months to help the city the first questions are will I be able to attend I can attend everything and I'll try to be there 110% for all the meetings goal settings and deal with all the issues of time I specifically wanted to say today to us we should ask a question what is the biggest challenge in public policy decisions for Santa Rosa now until 2030 the next decade in the next 11 months my efforts will be to complement and enhance the ongoing priorities of this council housing downtown concerns could be better served with more people living downtown more multi-story and multifamily residential buildings are needed as soon as possible the council members need to be fair courteous kind and humble while trying to serve the taxpayers and residents of Santa Rosa meet in the middle is what a good public servant should do for our community people are elected to get things done and get g