Madam City Clerk, are you ready to begin? Yes, I am, Mayor. Okay, we'll reconvene the October 27th, Santa Rosa City Council meeting into open session. Madam City Clerk, could you please take a roll call? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Council Member Goud. Here. Council Member Tibbetts. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Here. Council Member Oliveris. Here. Vice Mayor Fleming. Mayor Schwedhelm. Here. Okay, let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Vice Mayor Fleming. All right, thank you for that. So a couple of housekeeping reminders. Remind all council members, keep your audio on mute unless you're speaking. Staff will remain muted until meeting to speak and then as members of the public join the meeting, you'll be participating as an attendee. Your microphone and camera will be muted. Only today's panelists will be viewed during the meeting. 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If you provide a live public comment on an agenda item but also submitted an email, e-comment or recorded voice message public comment, your email, e-comment or voice message public comment will not be duplicated or played during the meeting. Additionally, there are two public comment periods on today's agenda to speak on non-agenda matters, items 13 and 17. This is the time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on the agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. Thank you for that information. All right, Mr. City Manager, item 3.1. Item 3.1, Enhanced Infrastructure Financing Districts continued from September 29th, 2020 regular meeting, Ryus of De La Rosa leading us up. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwaatham and members of the council. Before I hand the floor over to our financial consultants, Bob Gamble and Chris Lynch to lead you through information on infrastructure financing districts. I'm just gonna give you a little bit of a background on how we got here. So as devastating as the 2017 fires were, they were the catalyst to identifying new and more effective structures to quickly facilitate and really substantially increase housing development that we needed and still need. Ideally in areas that need our stated public policy goals for increased density, access to transit and protection of open space and also to advance and ensure equitable access to housing. As it still is, housing is a key element of our community-wide economic recovery and vitality efforts. And as much as then as now, it's a means by which we can retain and attract our diverse businesses and workforce. One of the outcomes of our early joint recovery efforts with the county was what eventually became the Renewal Enterprise District in 2019 also known as the red. It's through the red structure that we researched and discussed various forms of tax increment financing as a means to attract developers, blend private financing and public funds, leverage state and federal grant funds and facilitate the creation of housing that meets our joint policy goals. As Mr. Gamble will get into, these financing districts can be used for a broad range of projects and needs and really importantly can be used as part of a developer's financing plan as a source of funds toward the development of the infrastructure of a project. I have to say it's not the end all for getting the downtown infill housing that we want but rather this is one more important element to try in the pursuit of our housing goal. It layers onto all of the policy work that you've done over the past three years and the efforts you, the red, our community partners and the county continue to do. And so with that, I'll hand it over to Mr. Gamble. Thanks very much. Good afternoon, everyone. So what I'm going to provide today is a very sort of brief conceptual overview on how EIFDs work and what they are used for. And we also have with us Chris Lynch, the city's bond council, who can comment on various aspects of both the process and the substance of this law. So let's go to the first slide. So a little quick legislative history for those of you who have watched this over time. The first version of EIFDs were passed in the early 1990s but they were very sparsely used because of the availability of redevelopment as really a better tool at the time. As you all recall, redevelopment was dissolved in 2011. The first version of this legislation was passed in 2014, the enhanced infrastructure financing district legislation. It's been amended several times subsequently. It was originally billed as and intended as redevelopment 2.0 but it doesn't really work quite the same way and is significantly more difficult to use actually. And so as a result, we've seen a number of districts created around the state but no actual bonds have been issued so far. And I think that's partly, I'll just say, a reflection of some of the difficulties, the political difficulties of cities and counties working together to make these projects happen. Now let's go to the next slide. So just some key terminology that you'll encounter both in the law and in the application of the law. Enhanced infrastructure financing district is a governmental entity established by a city or county that carries out a plan within a defined geographic area to construct, improve or rehabilitate infrastructure. Part of what is used and created in the creation of an EIFD as a public financing authority, which is a legislative body that governs the EIFD. I know that the city has contemplated using the red for this purpose in this situation and we can talk about that more. A key part of the process in creating an EIFD is the development of an infrastructure financing plan which is adopted by the city and county. It describes the public facilities and development to be undertaken by the EIFD and it's implemented by the PFA, by the public financing authority. Next slide. This slide is intended just to give a sample of the kinds of uses that are envisioned for EIFDs and are to some extent spelled out in the law. They can be used for the purchase, construction or improvement of property for public capital facilities or other projects of community-wide significance. There is the ability to provide capital investment in projects outside the boundaries of the district as long as there is a tangible connection with the work of the district. Some examples of types of projects which are seen investment or contemplated in the plans are transportation facilities, parks, brownfield restoration and environmental mitigation, creation of industrial structures for private use, projects which implement a sustainable community strategy and transit priority projects and of course affordable housing. This is not to be a limiting list but just a sort of a sample of the kinds of things that can be financed. Let's go to the next slide. The law does contemplate the use of multiple revenue sources that can be combined and utilized in different ways to achieve the goals of the infrastructure financing plan, private investment, RPTTF monies, which are mostly gone now of course. CFD taxes are definitely something that can be used as part of the sources of funds for a district. Sales and use taxes can be used, development agreements or proceeds from development agreements, user fees, city and county, special district loans, transit occupancy tax, benefit assessments, contributions from special districts, taxes levied by the EIFD vehicle license fee. And again, this is not to be a comprehensive list, but it's to show that the intent of the law is to be able to combine multiple sources of revenue again to achieve public objectives. And of course grants can be used from various sources. We'll go to the next slide. An outline of the first part of the process, the beginning of this is really beyond what we're doing today would be a resolution of intention, sorry for the misspelling there, approved by the city council and other participating entities. The public financing authority is created by the participating entities. The resolution of intention is mailed to every effective taxing entity. Sales tax revenues, motor vehicle, in lieu taxes can be included as I noted before. And then there's the preparation of the plan, which we'll get into a little bit further. So let's go to the next slide. So the plan requirements include a map and legal description, description of the public facilities and other forms of development or financial assistance to be utilized, specification of a maximum amount of tax increment projected annually and over the life of the project, a limit on the total number of dollars, a financing plan that talks about uses of debt and other revenue sources, an expiration date and a fiscal impact analysis, which attempts to calculate and clarify the potential fiscal impacts of the project on the city and other jurisdictions as well. That is the tax impacts and the budgetary impacts. Next slide. Completion of the plan approval. Once the plan has been developed, has been developed, three public hearings are held and specified intervals. And those are just hearings so that the public can react to the plan. At the third of these three hearings, protests can be heard. If a majority of landowners and residents protest, then the PFA will terminate the proceedings. If there is 25 to 50% protest to the third hearing an election is required. Otherwise, the PFA may adopt a resolution approving the plan and the formation of the IFD. I realize this is, this may be a little confusing and Chris Lynch can, I think, help clarify this process when we go to questions shortly here. Let's go to the next slide. This is just intended to illustrate sort of possible scenarios of tax increment growth. And this is just a starting point. It's not intended to be specific to this project that you're contemplating today. In the first scenario, obviously, you see just the standard 2% growth rate under Prop 13. And that typically in an expansionary economic period will grow faster depending on levels of private investment. The second scenario sort of shows a more aggressive growth curve that presumably is spurred by investment. In reality, we know, of course, that these curves are not usually quite as mechanical as they look here. They're usually sort of stepped over time. I think in a typical project, if there is such a thing, one would expect to see sort of a more rapid increase at the beginning of the period, say in years five to 10 after the initial investments are made and then sort of a somewhat of a slower rate of growth after that. But again, it depends a great deal on external factors such as the economy. Next slide. So there's been a lot of discussion about EIFD bonds since the passage of the legislation, but the reality is that no one has actually issued an IFD bond in California yet.  So they would be similar in credit quality to redevelopment bonds. What we've seen in other jurisdictions, several of the places that Chris, Lynch and I have worked together, there's often a combination of CFDs with IFDs. And in some cases, even the use of the CFD as the bond issuing mechanism with the revenues being supplied by the IFD, that's just one model. It's just, it doesn't mean it's the right model for the situation, but it is one that has been used in other cases. The issuance of the bond requires the approval of the PFA. That's a change from when the law was initially passed. And it is important to keep in mind that tax increment will likely need to accumulate for several years after the creation of the EIFD in order for there to actually be debt capacity created that can be used for infrastructure investment. So to the extent that there's a need for investment upfront, the city would have to consider other alternatives to essentially compliment the EIFD. So that's just an important provision to keep in mind. I think that is our last slide. So at this point, I think we can open to questions about process, about substance, or anything else that may occur to you. Hey, thank you for that presentation. Bring it back to council. Any questions over that presentation? Mr. Tibbetts. Thank you, Mayor. It always takes me a second to go raise my hand when you ask. Thank you, Mr. Gamble for that presentation. The question I have is, so I understand that the delta, the tax increment financing is bonded. This is just a conventional underwriter like JPMorgan Chase, some Wall Street Bank. Are they the underwriters of that debt? It could be, I mean, there are multiple ways to sort of use the revenues to create capital. Certainly one would be through a conventional underwriting process of the sort that you're suggesting here through any underwriting firm. I mean, you could also use it to, for example, for a private placement if that made more sense. So there's nothing about the process or the law that stipulates how you choose to access the capital markets. Obviously, that's part of the role that we would help play is to help ensure that you leverage the revenues in the most effective way. So private placement, I'm not familiar with that term. Can you expand upon that? Sure, a private placement is a process in which rather than going through an underwriter who would buy the bonds and sell them out in the market, you would place the debt directly with a bank of some sort. Usually there are, at any given point in time, usually between 20 and 30 banks in the market who have an interest in buying debt themselves. I would say in general, that's a less preferable method than going through an underwriter. Sorry, I just lost my screen. I don't know if you can hear me. Yes. Yeah, you're good. Okay, yeah, so it's a less preferable process because it's inherently less competitive. So we wouldn't recommend that as a first choice. We would recommend that you go through a conventional underwriter as the top weight. But I just want to make the point that there's, again, nothing about this process that suggests that you use the revenues or the capital capacity in a particular way. It's just, that's a separate question. So now the borrower, the borrower I understand can be the city. We can use one of these community projects or projects of community significance. I think the slide said, what about a private developer? And I'm asking these questions because I'm one of the city's representatives on the renewal enterprise district. And a lot of what we're doing over there is trying to just help developers build out our downtown in an infill and transit oriented way. Can a private actor be the borrower? Or the beneficiary somehow? Well, I'm going to ask Chris Lynch to weigh in on this as well because it's a matter that also brings federal tax law into play. But so Chris, I'll start out and then you can correct me. I believe that within the law you can use this to invest in private projects that promote public purposes. But if you do that, I believe that you do have to consider the potential impact of federal tax law and whether you essentially ring the bell on taxable debt rather than tax exempt debt, which there's nothing wrong with doing that. It just is a higher cost of borrowing. Chris, do you want to comment on that question as well? Sure, thanks Bob. The other thing to say was that most development projects have usually two elements. They usually have a private development component. So the private facilities, and then there's usually some kind of public infrastructure cost to their project. So one thing that we typically would use taxes and financing in particular, either Belarus special taxes or these types of tax increment financing districts is to pay the public infrastructure side of the equation bringing down their cost of capital to build the public infrastructure that goes with their projects. So that's a definite yes. Bob's right, the EIFD law does allow some specific types of private improvements to be financed as well. Thanks you guys. Because the renewal enterprise district, it may be receiving a large sum of money. The city of Santa Rosa is receiving a large sum of money to our PG and E settlement funds. So the reason why I asked about who does the underwriting is I think is an important question for us to understand more as this process evolves because a lot of these projects that we have been trying to develop downtown do not pencil with these conventional underwriters. So I'm trying to piece together is there a way that the money can be borrowed through tax increment debt, but the money is getting borrowed from PG and E settlement funds or from the red fund. And then that entity is what receives the interest payments as opposed to JP Morgan on Wall Street because it keeps that interest money here locally. Is that, do you think that would be a feasible approach? Well, I think you're talking about who the identity of the purchaser of a bond would be. And so I don't know if those entities you just described meet that criteria. So we'd have to think about that one option. Sometimes cities buy their own debt. So the city might buy the debt of the EIFE with those funds. And that's a possibility depending on what kind of conditions come with those funds. Yeah, both typically these types of revenue streams end up being combined with those other types of revenues to be different parts of the capital stock, capital stack, but typically it's cheapest to get those bonds being purchased out by traditional investors. Okay, well, in the future, I'd love to explore that possibility more of buying our own debt because again, this is getting too complicated for me to track admittedly, but I think if there's a process where we're buying that debt and we're then becoming the beneficiaries of the repayment somehow because usually repayment debt comes with interest, I think that's an important thing for the city to explore. And by the way to Bob's point, typically when you're talking about purchasing your own debt that would be taxable debt. So because you're not a beneficiary of paying taxes on interest because you don't pay taxes. So yeah, there's a lot of factors that we can work through and figure out what's the most economically efficient way to use these funds. Agreed. Okay, Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My questions were actually kind of similarly in line with what Jack was just asking about, but specifically walk me through some of the main differences between an EIFD and a Mellow Bruce and how functionally, how different are they? Sure, I'll take a first crack at it and Chris may want to chime in on this one as well. So they are pretty fundamentally different. The EIFD debt is secured by this revenue stream which is created as assessed value grows and that increment and assessed value creates an increment in revenues. That revenue stream is then essentially sequestered if you will and can be used for the repayment of debt. So that is, if you think about it, it's based on incremental growth in tax revenues. So keep that in mind for a moment. Then a CFD is based on a special tax which is imposed on a development parcel and essentially the private entity or private entities agree to pay an extra tax amount. So in Prop 13 terms, again, to contrast the two, tax increment is under the 1% cap under Prop 13, whereas the special tax for the CFD is above the 1%. So it's an extra tax that's imposed over and above the 1% on just those development parcels. And so then that extra revenue created by the special tax can be used to leverage debt that is used for public infrastructure investment. So they are different in a number of ways. Credit quality, CFDs are typically unrated debt, but they are, there is a well understood market in California for that debt. So even though it's not what you would call the highest quality debt, it is well understood in the market. The tax increment debt, when it was being issued under redevelopment was a higher rated form of debt. It actually has a higher coverage requirement also than the CFD bonds. And I apologize if I'm talking in some sort of jargon here that may be confusing, but just trying to give you a quick summary of the differences. So the other thing about the CFD debt, in addition to the special tax, it's also secured by the value of the property itself. So if there were defaults on the bonds, the bondholders would have a fallback to the value of the property as essentially a way to repay the debt. So having probably utterly confused you, I'll stop there for a moment and see if you have questions. No, actually I'm most familiar with Melrose through the way that it applies in the PACE program. Oh, okay. And the way that it is tied to an individual property through much of the same mechanisms that you're talking about here with the EIFD. And what I'm trying to suss out and it's a little bit back to Jack's perspective is can an individual create their own essentially EIFD for the purposes of one project? Or is it generally agreed that it's better for the city to create some larger EIFD to capture multiple projects that fall within it? So Bob, maybe- Yeah, go ahead, Chris, yeah. I was just gonna step back really briefly to the CFD question to make sure you understand what are the thing. The ways that the EIFD and the CFD might work together is that the EIFD as Bob showed you in that graph at the end of this presentation grows over time as values grow. In other words, the increment grows as the project is completed but it's not available early in the development cycle. Those special taxes can be available immediately in the development cycle. So they can often be available to kickstart a project. One thing to point out is the EIFD allows the city to allocate a portion of its RPTTF funds to the EIFD and that is also one opportunity to kickstart a project because that money is available immediately. It's not dependent upon increases in assessed value. The other thing is the EIFD law doesn't contemplate that a developer or a builder could create an EIFD itself. It's the city that has the authority to create the EIFD. The city can allocate the increment to a particular project to assist it in its development but it is always gonna be the city that's forming it. It's always gonna be the city that's allocating its property tax, sales tax, RPTTF or motor vehicle in lieu fee revenue to that EIFD for purposes of financing that discreet list of improvements. It can benefit the developer but it's still the city that does that first part. And can the city do multiple EIFDs within the same restrictions? It can but Bob described the credit for the EIFD. The fewer properties you have in a financing district the worse the credit is because you're taking unique risk a particular building or a particular project. So what might make sense is to have a larger EIFD if you have a downtown area where you're planning to do a number of, to assist a number of projects to a larger EIFD and choose how you allocate the revenues to specific projects when you have them but don't necessarily limit the EIFD just a particular area. Yeah, I'm asking specifically because of the process for the formation of the EIFD and the public vote that has to happen from folks. So sometimes I think about it in terms of how we do our parking districts as well. Sometimes drawing a parking district based on the people that you know are interested in utilizing it makes it easier for you to move forward in that process. Obviously very different a parking district versus the finance mechanism but in terms of the creation of the district it's very similar. That's kind of why I'm asking that question. Yeah, so CFDs have a vote. They have to have a two thirds vote of the qualified electors which is registered voters if there's more than 12 of them or landowners if there aren't registered voters. For the EIFD the way it's set up there is no, there's no vote required unless as you go through the sequence of the three public hearings that Bob talked about you don't run afoul of the 50% plus one protest but you still have 25 to 50% of protest. In that case you have to have an election but otherwise you don't need an election. Right, understood. And on the question of the willingness of participants to join an area I think there's another big difference between a CFD and an IFD is remember when you're creating a CFD the landowners have to have a clear incentive to do it because they're agreeing to tax themselves at a higher rate. You don't have that particular issue with an EIFD because they're not paying any more tax than they would otherwise. So their incentives are somewhat different with those two mechanisms. Okay, great. My last question for you, you mentioned that no bonds have actually been sold related to EIFDs even though a number of jurisdictions have created them. And I just, I'm wondering why. Yeah, that's a good question. You know, there's a bit of data out there because there are a number of districts I think as I would say, A, it's a little bit of a fear of the unknown.  My own view is someone who was involved with redevelopment debt for many years before that went away is that, you know this acts and talks and quacks a lot like a redevelopment bond. So I don't think it's going to be viewed very differently in the credit community. I think the same credit considerations would come into play. And so I don't think it's anything to be afraid of but it is, you know, it's important to point out that it's, you know, literally no one has done it yet. So I think that's probably the main issue. It's also I think the timing issue Bob because the increment doesn't arise until later in the project cycle. It may be that the projects that started being you know, the EIFDs were formed in 2014 and it's in anticipation of using it. They just haven't matured to the point where they have enough increment. Bob and I are working on a couple of large master plan projects in San Francisco together where they're using CFDs for that early money tax increment is kicking in later on either as independent bonds or as a source of funds to pay off the melody response and give the band owners credit against their special tax. But by definition it just takes a while for the increment to show up. Right. And so Raisa, I guess this is a question for you is sort of the thinking and part of the presentation potentially utilizing the renewal enterprise district to kick things off until that increment starts to show up and using that as a way to help finance some of our housing projects downtown. Exactly. Yeah, this is what we started talking about back. I think the first time the red reviewed this was back in April of 2019 for exactly that purpose. Yeah, great. All right, thank you so much. Mr. Sarger. Thank you, Mayor. I'm curious as to the costs. What are the upfront costs or and does that have anything to do with the number of EF or EIFDs that have been developed in the state? Are some of these costs considerable? Just sort of the cost of starting a project, you mean? Well, just getting ready, setting up an EIF. Right. Yeah, I mean, there is some cost and some brain damage associated with it. It's basically, financial advisor, it's your lawyers. I would say the single biggest cost is probably the creation of the plan. And typically, there's a consulting firm of some sort hired to help you develop the plan, to articulate it clearly, to put it on paper in a way that doesn't, that gives you the best chance of success as you move forward. So there is some transaction cost. I think it's pretty comparable to what was usually done in the redevelopment days, though. So it's not extraordinarily high. In fact, I would say if anything is probably a little bit less, there are sort of, the law is actually somewhat less restrictive than the redevelopment law in terms of what you have at the beginning of it. But there's something there. I mean, I certainly wouldn't advise someone to do it unless they really felt like it made sense and they wanted to do it. Yeah. I think the other reason there aren't a lot of EIFDs around there, out there right now is that redevelopment used to have the benefit of cities and counties being able to spend other public agencies' money. EIFDs is voluntary increment.   If you can line up another taxing entity to contribute its general fund, then it can do it also. But it's just not as easy to spend your own money as it is other people's money. And so that's why we're not seeing too many of them. Yeah. Yeah, that's a really critical point. I mean, I don't know, and maybe Chris, you do, of any example of cities and counties outside of San Francisco, which obviously is consolidated working together on an EIFD. That's just, it's indicative of the ongoing sort of tension between cities and counties and really the fundamental difficulty of working together. There are a couple of instances in Southern California where a city has formed an EIFD in anticipation of the County of LA kicking in with, I think, some transit funds. Those are starting to, we're starting to see those actually happen, but you're right, it's generally not happened. It has to be a regional project that is so important that one of the more than one public entity really wants to contribute its general fund on East of the project. And there just aren't a lot of those. Right. Thank you. All right, council, any additional questions? So the questions I had been asking, if this is such a thing, how come no one else is doing it? And the other question about any other cities or counties coming together. But one of the questions that hadn't been asked on slide nine, you talked about potential revenue. And this may be that unknown, but what would you anticipate being any impacts related to the current pandemic? I think I would start by saying I don't know to be perfectly honest. I do, I think this is all a question right now of how the pandemic affects our economy in some fundamental ways over the long term. And it's always a difficult judgment to make in the moment, I think. I mean, I am not for myself, assuming that that we don't have that we don't have downtowns with density in the future. I mean, if you're in the real estate world right now, a lot of people are running away from the concept of urban centers, but I don't claim to be an expert in that myself, but I find that difficult to believe that we would reach a point where everyone wants to live in the suburb all the time. Yeah, I think the impact of COVID will be also that the EIFD is dependent upon the city of Santa Rosa and some other taxing at allocating general fund revenues, either sales and use tax revenues, which obviously have been impacted and may continue to be impacted by COVID and then also property tax revenues. So if you see where to see long-term unemployment with long-term delinquencies and perhaps reductions in assessed value then depending on the timing of forming the EIFD, that may impact the viability of an EIFD to generate property tax revenue. All right, that's a good question. It may be a timing issue, starting, although I just, to play devil's advocate, you could look at it the other way. If you're in a period of recession and you're counting on tax increment growth in the future as a way of creating debt capacity, one might argue that it's a good time to do it when property tax values are depressed with the expectation that they go up in the future when prosperity returns. Yeah, and I just wanna add to that. Again, I go back to the fact that this is just one element of the total policy package that we're looking to do. So it's layering it onto the other elements that we've already put into place that keeping us more attractive to new developers.  I think for Bob's presentation, it depends on what model you go after. Well, yeah, actually, I mean, if you're just using the EIFD, you're not going to pay any more taxes than you would have otherwise paid. So for you, it's literally a benefit. You're getting more investment in the area in which your property is located than you would have otherwise, but you're not paying any more for it. So in that very basic sense, I think property owners are kind of incentivized to support something like this. Great, thank you for that clarification. And then also completion of the plan approval. If we do have more than one entity engaged with that. So when you said three public hearings, would that be the public financing authority holding those three public hearings? Yes. Yeah. Okay, thank you. All right, council, any additional questions on this? Mr. Dowd. I'm reminded as this discussion has gone forward, I happen to be on the feasibility study team for the prospect of forming the Sonoma Claim Power Agency under the CCA rules. And we were fortunate to have Marin Clean Energy be the pioneer. And they were very helpful after they'd been in existence for probably about a year. When we were doing our feasibility study, they really pitched in and told us what they thought they had done well and they told us what they thought they could have done better. And so while I think this is an interesting concept, I don't know that I can support us being the very first pioneer in California to do such a thing. Yeah, I would want to clarify that I'm guessing there are 15 or so districts that have been formed already. It's just the one thing that has not been done is to issue debt from the district. San Francisco because of their significant master plan projects on Treasure Island Hunters Point along the waterfront. And because they're a city and county, they control a large amount of the property tax dollar, something like 65% can be allocated to an EIFD. So they have formed IFDs under their own specific IFD law that was approved by the legislature. They have approved an infrastructure revitalization and financing district or IRFD for the Treasure Island project. There's been a lot of work done on forming those projects. City of West Sacramento has formed one. I don't know what the status of their project is, but I don't think you'd be inventing the wheel within the EIFD. It just, it hasn't issued debt. Right. Okay, council, any additional questions? Seeing none. We're not gonna take public comment on item 3.1. You wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Zoom host, would you please facilitate public comment on item 3.1? Thank you, mayor. A countdown timer is on the screen for the convenience of the speaker and viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute yourself when you're invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the end of that countdown or at the conclusion of your comment. The first public comment will be from Hugh. Hugh, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm me? You can see the timer on your screen. I can see the timer on my screen. Thank you. Please identify yourself a public record if you so choose and your time begins now. Thank you. Hugh, future 200 4th Street. I'm thrilled that you're having the study session and I'm here speaking on behalf of the DAO, which has taken a formal action of support for creating the EIFD and for myself as a downtown property owner and developer. Just a quick reminder that we have invested, speaking of my firm, $110 million in the downtown core. Within 24 months, we'll hit 170 million. They have 108 units that are about to begin construction grading has started within the downtown core and we have another building that is under construction as well. So when there's discussion about the cash gap, we don't have a cash gap and the city may want to inquire why we don't and others seem to. I'd like to make three quick comments and then a more general one since I know time is short. First, the EIFD is a core mechanism for market rate project specific subsidies for a variety of technical reasons and I strongly encourage the council to pay attention to the EIFD as a community wide infrastructure project that involves public works and other sorts of investments which can create a powerful environment downtown to attract outside investment which apart from my firm has largely not occurred. EIFD is simply not a cash gap mechanism for project specifics, it simply is not. And there are technical reasons why that is the case. The RED is not either for technical reasons. Now, for affordable housing projects, different story. I'm talking now about market rate projects. Secondly, you have a wonderful opportunity now with the county to begin to put this together that's been an issue in the past. This requires two jurisdictions, your own tax increment income or your share of tax increment income would be relatively trivial. In order to launch the district, you do need the county involved. I know you've been working on that. I think that's very good. I would also make a comment, Dick. There is 30 years of redevelopment models to show how from a practical standpoint this can work. There are technical differences between EIFDs and redevelopment, but they are relatively limited differences. So you would not be pioneering if you move forward. You just spent a great deal of time on the station area plan. The EIFD is more important by a multiplier. And we have specialized knowledge as the city manager is aware, our background in development and public finance on both the public side to private side is what informs my conclusion. This is the most powerful vehicle you have to rejuvenate the downtown. And I hope you will proceed. And so does the DAO. Thank you. Thank you, Hio. Again, if you wish to make a public comment on item 3.1, the EIFD, please raise your hand now, we assume. Okay, mayor, I'm not seeing any additional hands being raised on this item. I will go ahead and move along to the voice message public comments, which there were none. Likewise, we received no email and no e-comment public comments on this item. Okay, thank you for that. Bring it back to council. If I could start maybe with Ryza, could you frame the question you would like or feedback you would like to hear from council on this item? Well, honestly, it's just simply, is this something that the council has the desire to pursue? And then we would go into the various elements of it as Bob and Chris have laid out. Great, thank you for that. Okay, I'll just go around, Mr. Sorry, you're first on my screen. Thank you, mayor. Well, I'm definitely looking for any kind of advantage that we can use to further our efforts in creating that downtown that I think we all agree we need to have. But if this tool is available to us and we can take advantage of its, take advantage of that value, I'm in favor of moving forward. Okay, thank you, Mr. Rogers. Yep, I'm in complete support of it. Let's keep moving forward. And I don't mind that nobody's figured out how to do it yet. Let's be the first ones. Great, Mr. Tivis. I'm good with it. Ryza, my only question is, is I know that you're busy with a lot of other things these days. What will pursuing this, it'll be at the expense of what else, I guess is my only question. Honestly, thank you for the question. It would be actually in support of some of the development items that we're pursuing and that are top on my priority list. So you'll be hearing another thing later this evening. Once we get that project rolling, it really frees me up a lot to focus on the development projects. Okay, sounds good. Mr. Down, I've been favor of doing more research and moving forward with this, with the stipulation of what I said just a few minutes ago. And it was responded by the consultants that we wouldn't be a pioneer, but I thought at the beginning of this presentation, it said none had been formed previously in California under this concept. So I'm a little bit nervous, but willing to have us forward, go forward and investigate it for you. Thank you, Mr. Oliveros. Mayor, we've done a lot to help our downtown move into the future. And I think this is a logical next step is having this new way. I think it's an amazing tool to get us there. Thank you, Vice Mayor Fleming. An enthusiastic yes. Thank you. I'm also very supportive of this. This is done, I think it's gonna do a lot. It's another tool that'll help us. And this is just another thing that's gonna help us continue with the progress that we are making downtown. It's also enhanced my acronym vocabulary. So I really appreciate that to just throw more things into the brain to keep straight on. So thank you also, the priority for you, Ryze, and your team for bringing this forward, because it really is, I think, another step in that right direction is that we really are making a difference for the city of Santa Rosa. So thank you for that. Do you need anything else, Ryze? Are we good on this item or Mr. City Manager? Well, from my perspective, we're good. And we'll work through the Economic Group Health Task Force and or the Economic Subcommittee and bring forward a timeline for you. Great, thank you. And Bob and Chris, thank you for the presentation, providing that information, very helpful. And with that, we will now recess and reconvene the City Council meeting at four o'clock. Thank you all for your participation. Madam City Clerk, are you ready to start? Yes, I am. Great, thank you. Okay, we will reconvene the October 27th, Santa Rosa City Council meeting. Can we please do a roll call? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Council Member Doud, Council Member Tibbets. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Here. Council Member Oliveras. Here. Vice Mayor Fleming. Here. Mayor Schwedhelm. Here. Let me go back. Council Member Doud, are you with us? I'm here. Okay, let the record show that all council members are present. Great, thank you. Item five, Mr. City Manager, anything to report on our study session? Nothing further to add. Thank you. Madam City Attorney, anything to report on our closed session? Sorry, I pressed the wrong button there, so it disappeared for a moment. Yes, I want to report out on closed session on item 2.1, council met and discussed and gave direction to the labor negotiator. And on item 2.2, the council discussed and gave direction to the city attorney. Great, thank you. We have no proclamations. Item seven, staff briefings. Mr. City Manager. 7.1, there is no staff report this evening. 7.2, I will turn it over to Magali Teyes. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedhelm, members of the council. Thank you for this opportunity to briefly go over an update for our community empowerment plan. And I just wanted to showcase this slide here. However, I do want to note that this slide was not, this slide or the next slide were not provided to council ahead of time, but staff will help us post that after the meeting. So I just wanted to quickly go over sort of our process for community to better understand where we are. We have been receiving quite a number of questions about this and I just wanted to let everyone know where we are right now, we are going through the transcription, transcribed documents, I should say, of the council meetings that took place in June and July. And we're also working with the summaries that were provided and are available to community on our website, on the city page website, that summarize the conversations from the listening sessions. Those are available, we'll be wrapping up the sort of research end of that portion on the 30th and then we're going to be developing a draft report. As a result of the fires that have happened, wall bridge, glass fire, some of our listening sessions do take place with community members who one, do not have adequate access to broadband and also may not be very familiar with Zoom functionality. So they do take place in person, they are in small groups, we take all sort of safety measures necessary for COVID. So some of those planning sessions have moved over and have been rescheduled and we have until November 15th and that's when we'll sort of end holding those sessions for the report and I'll give more information about that. So the deadline, what we're gonna do is once we develop the report on 30th of November, we're going to then have the full report translated, give it back to community who participated, make sure that it's accurate, that it reflects the information that they had given to us at the listening sessions and then we'll go ahead and send it over, send it in the draft form to our community empowerment task force which will then give some feedback, we'll discuss the report with them and then we're gonna finalize translation and edits on that. Once that's finalized, then we're gonna integrate the feedback from the task force and finalize a graphic that we want to submit to council once we're all finished and to community and the graphic will be sort of a representation of the themes that were pulled out, came out, community is giving us resources, different themes that have been prevalent through these conversations and we wanna make sure that a reporting format is accessible to folks in multiple modalities, right? And then we'll be presenting to council all of this information at the first meeting in February. So we're gonna go ahead and go to the next slide please. And you may not be able to see the very right part of the slide, but I just wanted to give you all some more information. The sessions that we have coming up, the listening sessions are with monolingual Spanish speaking folks, our history and community, different indigenous groups that are local and our Asian Pacific Islander community, those will be included in the report. And just an update on our multicultural roots project, stories from black indigenous people of color, that will be launching on November 5th, granted. We don't have any fire emergencies. We do of course give priority to all communications having to do with fire.  You'll see it on a number of modalities. You'll see it on our newsletter, social media, council meeting slides. Our community partners will be sharing it. So these are just a few of the areas that you will be seeing that those projects, we have been receiving a lot of great questions and feedback so far. All the way on to the right is our ethnic studies with the COP, which has launched already with our cohort through our distance learning programs. And we started that on the 20th of this month and we have 12 to 15 youth and their grades three to six, and it's a six week pilot program. At the end of it, we will be surveying the youth, surveying our staff and our officers that participated to make sure and just kind of get an idea and be able to report back to council, you know, sort of what came out of, you know, this made an impact for these young people if it made an impact for the officers involved, for the staff and just kind of continuing on some of that work with visibility. So that is the end of my report. Thank you. All right, Magali, thank you for that presentation. I have a question. One of your slides mentioned the CEP task force. I'm a familiar with that, but could you share with all our listeners and the rest of the council, who is that group and what role do they play in this plan? Sure. So that group formulated before I came over to the city and it was sort of the initial folks who were able to put together this plan and our staff, Raiza de la Rosa was one of the folks that helped formulate the plan and I don't actually have the exact news for you right at this minute, but I'm happy to get that to council ASAP. So again, what role will they play? So you talked about combining all, here's the comments and you go back to this task force and then what they're gonna discuss it and move forward? Yeah, so we want to, you know, once community has given us feedback, then it would go to the task force and we would, you know, hope to get maybe some further recommendations to consider based on what community has said and the resources available that the city, maybe programs that I may not be familiar with being so new to the city or other resources that we could plug into the staff recommendation and. Great, thank you. Council, any questions on that report? Seeing none, thank you for them. Can't wait to see the product in February. Thank you. Mr. City Manager, 7.3. 7.3, glass fire update, Kimplin-Robbins, Assistant Fire Marshal is gonna give you some update on some of the work involving recovery. Thank you, Kimplin. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council members. First, I wanna introduce myself. My name is Kimplin-Robbins and I'm one of the Assistant Fire Marshals for the San Jose Fire Department. I, along with Assistant Fire Marshal, Paul Lowenthal, who is also on the meeting, are the leaders of the city's glass fire debris task force. And we've been working closely with the joint county debris task force in an effort to maintain consistency in our messaging and activities within our respective communities. Ped, water, public works, the city's attorney's office, fire and PD have all been working collaboratively to facilitate a successful recovery operation. So first I wanna talk about the two phases. The first phase is the household hazardous waste or HHW removal. Cal OES will be the state agency managing the phase one activities. They're gonna be utilizing the Department of Toxic Substance Control or DTSC for the sweeps and they're planning to commence work next Monday, November 2nd. Every parcel and Cal Fire's damage assessment or the DINs report that was identified with damage will be required to participate in the sweeps. Phase two is the removal of the remaining structural ash and debris as well as soil testing to ensure the site is clean and safe for the rebuild process. Phase two can only initiate after phase one has been completed. Cal OES has announced they will, they will have a phase two state sponsored program and it's slated to begin the beginning of December. At this stage, residents may opt in to the state managed debris removal process or opt out and apply for the city's private debris removal process. And more information on both of those phases as well as all the forms that we'll need to utilize are gonna be available at srcity.org forward slash glass fire. We are working on finalizing those documents as we speak, so we should have those up shortly for everyone. So in the last few weeks following the fire, our team had been meeting multiple times, we're still as meeting multiple times a day, working on several items to ensure our residents receive information in a timely manner. At this time, we've updated all the forms and applications for the opt out private debris removal process. We're finalizing the DINs and PED residential structural habitability report. And we're finalizing that for public use and we're working with the state and county to coordinate the phase one and phase two of the debris removal process. Just a little snapshot, during our daily check-ins, the task forces give situational report updates. We get those from PG&E, the watershed task force and we get partial reports from the city and county. We also follow up on any actionable items and those include phase one and phase two items, damaged trees, best management practices and communications and outreach, along with some other items that come and go as needed on the agenda. So with that, I just wanted to give a quick overview, introduce myself and say that it is and will continue to be our priority to keep our fire survivors and community members up to date with new information. And we're gonna continue to work with the county and state to make the process as seamless as possible. We learned many valuable lessons from the 2017 Tufts Fire and we're using that knowledge and experience to provide a successful program for our residents for this glass fire. And with that, that is the end of my report unless there's any questions. Great, thank you for that presentation. Council, any questions? Go ahead, Mr. Dowd. This is particularly about the glass fire update. And the first thing I wanna say is Council Member Chris Rogers and I had an opportunity to go through the glass fire damage in Oakmont and Los Alamos Road and Skyhawk and Piedmont shortly after the fire. And I know Deputy Chief Paul Lowenthal took, it was Council Member Olaveras and Council Member Sawyer through the same area right with us. But the important thing was to recognize what a great job members of our city staff whether they were fire department, police department, water department, transportation and public works did do this, how much they've learned since the fire of Tufts Fire since 2017. And I've had a conversation with City Manager, McLennan and Mayor Tom Schwedhelm to come up with a way to show our collective appreciation for the great job that they did. They saved a lot of this community in ways that is unimaginable until you really see what they did. Thank you, Mr. Dowd. Any other questions? I had one, Kremlin had an occasion to drive down Highway 12 through Oakmont on Monday and notice there's the PG&E staging area and then a lot of the trees that you had mentioned are coming down. Hey, who makes the decisions about which trees to cut? You know, I'm guessing, is that a PG&E, a Caltrans? Who makes that decision? And how long are we anticipating PG&E having that staging location there on 12? Do you want me to jump in? Go ahead. Yeah, so PG&E is there for two different purposes. One is for restoration of their services and then twos for their wood program. So PG&E has identified two different types of categories that wood falls into or the dead and dying trees that they determined to be a loss following Arbus report. And they're categorizing them as a phase one tree and a phase two, a P1 and P2. So the P1 trees, they've got out of several thousand, only about 200 or so left to complete. And then in the P2, they have several thousand and they're just starting to get to work on those. So it has been moving relatively quickly. The volume of inspections and miles that they're going through is pretty impressive. There's some differences that we've noticed this time. Wood was eligible for a removal program. I'm sure you remember a lot of the feedback we got from Copy Park residents was the status of the trees that were removed. We leaned into that pretty quick on PG&E this year. And right now they're removing everything under four inches in diameter. But anything that's left on private properties ultimately they're going to leave for the property owner to dispose of right now. We're still working through the final timelines, but they are moving quickly. I know that they're going to be there long enough to where DTSC is not able to use that land for their setup of the phase one household hazardous waste removal. So that did kind of give us a snapshot of how long they'll be there. We anticipate DTSC will be setting up their camp potentially off of Montgomery and Channel Drive for a small little setup there. And that may be going into effect as early as next week. Great, thank you, Paul. Helpful information. Anything else on council? Again, thank you so much for the report. And I want to echo Mr. Dowd's comments. Everyone's been a fabulous job. The whole team Santa Rosa very well represented. Thank you. Mr. City Manager, 7.4. 7.4, Public Safety Grants, Chief Navarro presenting. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedhelm and members of the City Council. Rainer Navarro, Chief of Police. I'm here to provide a quick update on the police department's effort looking into Public Safety Grants. The Santa Rosa Police Department is eligible to apply for competitive grants that come from a variety of federal, state and local agencies. Competitive grants have a very short deadline, usually within 30 days from the time they open up to the time they close. So it's very, very quick. And it does not allow, does not allow for time to come before council for approval prior to submitting an application. However, however, we do come before this body for final approval and acceptance of grants in excess of $500,000. In the past, we have to receive grants from several agencies such as Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Traffic Safety, California Office of Emergency Services and Alcohol Beverage Control to address different issues that we see in Public Safety. Grants do provide us with opportunities to create and deliver innovative programs that are possible with their current funding. We are currently awaiting announcements right now of grant opportunities from the federal government through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Those usually take place sometime between winter and springtime. And grants such as federal grants and also state grants allow us to address several police department priorities, such as traffic safety, emergency response and technology. We also anticipate opportunities to address city council priorities, including community safety, environmental cleanup and areas around your crisis response priorities that you've created in public safety priorities and reform, fiscal stability and funding, homelessness and inclusion and equity. Some of the examples that we've had of grant funding in their recent past include purchasing safety equipment. For example, this last year ourselves and also the rest of the city have applied and they've received COVID supplies. And those COVID supplies have assisted us in maintaining our equipment in a safe manner that makes it safe for both our employees and the community. We've also received grants on traffic education, safety and enforcement. And this has allowed us to address DUI's safe seatbelt education. And then most recently, issues around the sideshow events that are occurring on a weekly basis. Excuse me. Another grant that we were just awarded a few weeks ago is a grant to allow us to work with our community partners in creating and training, sworn and civilian staff in racial profiling and implicit bias, community policing and cultural diversity training. So we're very excited about that. We also anticipate further opportunities to address staffing for special programs and projects in the areas of environmental issues and illegal waste disposal, power safety shut off equipment and emergency preparedness. We're hopeful that we can seek grants for mental health and homeless crisis intervention, community engagement and recruitment. Grant funding, if received, is a one-time allocation. It is usually, it usually has no impact on general fund since it's not part of the general fund revenue. And it's only used for approved grant activities. We usually focus or we have focused in the past on grants that do not require a match from the city, but there may be some opportunities in the future that will come available that the department may look into to address certain things like mental health reform and homeless issues. Again, the police department, if it is awarded grants above $500,000, will come before council for approval. We look forward to updating you in the future on these programs that promote the department's mission to make the city a safe place to live, work and play and also the city's mission to provide a high quality public services and cultivate a vibrant, resilient and livable city. That is the end of my report and I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any. Thank you. Great, thank you chief for that presentation. And I would just add, please don't hesitate to ask if any assistance from city council, from myself or anyone else to support any of those applications were more than happy to help. Council, any questions from chief or for chief Navarro? Not seeing any. Thank you so much for that update. Mr. City Manager, are there any other reports? Staff briefings? No more staff briefings for this evening. All right, thank you. We're not taking public comment on item seven, staff briefings. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Madam Zoom host, would you facilitate public comment on our staff briefings? Thank you mayor. Countdown timer will appear for the convenience of the speaker and viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute yourself when you're invited to do so. Your microphone will be muted at the end of the countdown or at the conclusion of your comment. Again, this is for public comment on item seven, staff briefings. Mayor, I am seeing no hands being raised for public comment on staff briefings. And we did not have any voice message public comments. Okay, thank you so much. Onto item eight, city manager, city attorney report. Mr. city manager, do you have a report for us this evening? I do not have a report. Madam city attorney, any reports for this evening? I have no report this evening. Thank you. Okay. Onto item nine, statements of abstention by council members. Are there any statements of abstention on tonight's agenda? Not seeing any. Thank you very much. Mayors and council members reports, does anyone have anything they would like to report? Mr. Dowd. I want to report first at last Friday, 10, 23. We had a water advisory committee subcommittee meeting, which involved the Potter Valley two basin project that's being managed now by Sonoma County water. And it's a very interesting time in that. And if you, it's kind of moving forward, there's a lot of work to be done, but if you read the press democratic a couple of days ago, Congressman Garamendi, who represents Sonoma County area and up into Lake County would like to have had Lake County more involved. And so there's going to be a lot of work yet to be done on that, but it's a very, very important issue for our region's water supply and et cetera. And then the other one, which I attended today with Mayor Schwedhelm was the city of Santa Rosa expanded water supply, mostly dealing with what are we going to do with the groundwater supply? And it's just a thing moving on. There's a lot of things that have to be done yet, but it's in motion. So I don't know if Mayor Schwedhelm wants to add anything to that, but that is an important issue that we're all dealing with. Thank you, Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So we had a Sonoma County transportation authority meeting last week, which honestly was not that impactful other than to say that we finally have now scheduled our very first transit consolidation and coordination subcommittee meeting, which will be taking place this Thursday for folks who are interested in seeing Santa Rosa city bus, Petaluma city bus and Sonoma County transit better communicate and coordinate and potentially some consolidation moving forward. We also want to put it on the city council's radar have on Thursday as well, our open government task force meeting, where we are hopeful to finish our sunshine ordinance to be able to send it to the city council soon. And then the last thing, Mr. Mayor we just found out yesterday that tomorrow I am being appointed as the chair of the California League of Cities Environmental Quality Committee, and we'll be leading on that as well as on the executive board going forward. Thank you for that important congratulations, I think. Mr. Timmits. Yeah, I agree with Tom. My condolences, I'm just kidding. Congratulations, that's awesome. I apologize, Mayor, I was supposed to let you know about my abstention on item 12.2, so I'm doing that now. All right, anything else to report or is that it? And I'm sorry, can you state the required to state the basis for the recusal under the Brown Act? Yeah, it has to do with non congregate COVID-19 shelters for people experiencing homelessness. And I believe some folks from the facility I operate may end up over there. So out of abundance of caution, I'm stepping back. Thank you for that. Any other reports? I just want to report on two things. One regarding what Mr. Doud said about the Grand Law and Sustainability Agency, we have a meeting on Thursday, the second one this month. So I'll be reporting out at our next council meeting, the outcome of that meeting. And then also last week, I want to report out that I participated in an outreach workshop, a virtual outreach workshop for boards, commissions and committees. Mr. City Manager, I want to thank all of the city staff that participate on that and the boards and commissions. Many of the chairs also supported and made comments with that. So if there are members of the community who are listening to that, feel free to go to the city's website. You can watch that webinar in here with each of the boards, commissions and committees due to contribute to the success of the city of Santa Rosa. It's a great opportunity to get involved with. And with that, we will then go to, that's up here, approval of minutes. So we had two sets of minutes from May 19th and June 2nd. We'll start with 11.1. Are there any adjustments or corrections to the minutes from the May 19th meeting? Seeing none, we'll accept those as submitted. And then 11.2, the June 2nd minutes. Any additions, corrections, deletions to that one? Seeing none, we'll also accept those as submitted. Mr. McGlynn, consent calendar. Item 12.1, resolution environmental services and preliminary engineering, architectural design, professional services agreement for the relocation and reconstruction of fire station number five. Item 12.2, resolution ratification of the purchase order for procurement and ongoing use of hotel rooms and appropriation of related funds for the provision of non-congregate shelter for at-risk sheltered and unsheltered persons during the COVID-19 pandemic and authorization for the city manager to procure rooms through December 31st, 2020. Item 12.3, resolution removal of assessed single-family residential property in Railroad Square Community Benefit District. Item 12.4, resolution professional services agreement with the Plural, a California corporation to provide landscape architectural design and engineering services to amend the master plan and prepare construction documents for Dutch floor neighborhood park. And thank you, council. Any questions on our consent calendar? Seeing none, so get my right page here. We're not taking public comment on item 12, the consent calendar. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. For dial-in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Madam Post, would you facilitate public comment on item 12? Thank you, mayor. As you can see, a countdown timer has appeared before the meeting for the convenience of the speaker and viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please be sure to unmute your microphone when you're invited to do so. At the conclusion of your comment, your microphone will be muted. Again, this is for public comment on item 12, consent calendar, dial star nine, if you're participating via phone or raise your hand via Zoom. All right, mayor, I'm seeing no hands being raised for consent and we do not receive any voicemess's public comments on this item. All right, thank you. Bring it back to council. Vice mayor Fleming, you have this item. I do. I'd like to move items 12, one, three, and four. Wait for the next. Who got that second one? Or who was, or? I second that, if you haven't gotten one. Sure, we'll go in motion by the vice mayor, say by Mr. Dowd. Any questions or comments? Madam Clerk, can we do a roll call vote, please? Yes, thank you, council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tibbets. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Thank you, and now I'll move item 12.2. Second. Motion by vice mayor, second by Mr. Sawyer. Roll call vote, please. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with six ayes, and council member Tibbets abstaining. Great, thank you so much. Not quite being five o'clock, we'll go to item 14.1, Mr. City Manager. Item 14.0.1, report wastewater revenue bonds, series 2020A, and wastewater revenue refunding bonds, series 2020B, federally taxable, Kimberley Zino, deputy director of water administration presenting. Good afternoon, Mayor Schwedhelm, vice mayor and members of the council. Santa Rosa water is bringing forward this request for approval of a new bond issuance and the advanced refunding of an older debt series. The bond funding is being secured for the replacement of the ultraviolet system and the associated construction of a diversion system at the sub-regional treatment facility. The total estimated project costs are $70 million, but as you will see through the presentation, we are likely not to need to secure that total amount of debt. Can we go to the next slide, please? All right, thank you. As I was saying, we would not need to secure that total amount of debt as there will be some bond reserves released during this process in addition to some premiums that you will also hear about during the presentation. All of those funds will be applied directly to the project as well as any cash funding that may be under consideration by our partners. Our financial advisor, Sarah Hollenbeck, a managing partner at PFM will be taking you through the current market trends, expected total for funding, the estimated interest rates and annual debt service, as well as the opportunity that arose during this process for an advanced refunding of the 2012 A bond series, which will save our ratepayers a significant amount of debt service. I also wanted to mention that the BPU saw this item on October 15th and has recommended to City Council the approval of the bond issuance and advanced refunding. In addition to Sarah and myself, we have Chris Lynch, our bond council from Jones Hall and Eileen Gallagher from Steful who leads the underwriting team to answer any questions throughout the presentation. And just before we go to Sarah, I will mention that we actually just got within the last half hour, the official rating from S&P Global, which is that AA or AA stable, which is very good for us. And we'll just be that much more of an advantage as we go towards the market. So with that, I am going to now hand it over to Sarah Hollenbeck. Great, and good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and members of the council. Sarah Hollenbeck, managing director at PFM and it's a pleasure to be before you again. We've had the pleasure of working with the city, I think since 2006 and have been here to talk with you about a number of wastewater issuances over the years, including other refinancings. So if we could go to the next slide, please. So as Kimberly mentioned, we're going to do a little bit of a touch upon what's been happening in the market. As you may be aware, interest rates in general are extremely favorable. One of the perhaps only positive outcomes of the global pandemic that we've all been wrestling with and suffering through since March or maybe even earlier has been that interest rates have been very, very low and continue to be so. So as the chart before you depicts, as of the date that we prepared this about the second or so of October, interest rates had been lower than that time, only slightly over 1% in the history since 1993 which is the time that the date when this tax exempt index, which is the benchmark we use in the tax exempt market called the MMD index was established. So extremely low rates. I did take a look at the market activity since then and rates have crept up slightly but under 10 basis points. So we're still in extremely favorable territory with the 30 year tax exempt rate today being at 1.72%. So for 30 year borrowing, that's fairly attractive. If we could go to the next slide please. This graph is showing the taxable market, the treasury rates and the reason we're showing you both of these is as Kimberly mentioned, one of the series that's being proposed here for the new project financing will be issued on a tax exempt basis and the proposed refunding bonds would be issued on a taxable basis and that's just simply to comply with federal tax law given the character of the bonds that we are refinancing. So here you can see that the two year rate at the time this was prepared was yielding 13 basis points or 0.13%. And the 10 year bond was a 70 basis points or 0.7%. Today again, rates have crept up a little bit because of some volatility in the market leading into the election and other world events that are causing a bit of movement but still the 10 year today was at a 0.79%. So we're certainly in range of these and we're not bringing these bonds to market for several more weeks. If we could go to the next slide please. So as I described and Kimberly mentioned the intent of the 2020 A bonds, the tax exempt new money bonds or bonds being issued to raise new capital for this project is estimated to be issued in the amount of approximately $57 million to fund that $70 million of projects. And the reason that the borrowing amount is less than what we need to pay for is twofold. One is that as Kimberly mentioned the totality of this financing both the series 2020 A new project funding bonds and the advanced funding bonds series 2020 B. The one of the effects of issuing these is to allow will allow us to release some funds from what the debt service reserve fund. It's sort of like the security deposit that you might put down when you rent an apartment. We have a security deposit of sorts that's being held by the bond trustee and a portion of those funds will be able to be released as a result of this combined transaction. And that's estimated at about $4.57 million. So between that amount of money becoming available as well as the expectation that the bonds will be sold at a premium meaning that the purchasers of the bonds will pay more than one cent on the 100 cents on the dollar. We will be able to, we expect I should say to be able to issue less car amount of the bonds or the face amount of the bonds to be lower than the amount that we need to raise for the project. The estimated sort of effective interest rate or what we call the all in true interest cost in bond jargon is 3.11% and that would result in annual debt service of approximately $3.5 million. This component of the financing is expected to be issued on a 30 year maturity basis given the long life of the projects being funded. If we could go to the next slide. This, as Kimberly mentioned in the course of working on the financing for the UV project, we identified that with rates as low as they are, there's an opportunity to refinance the existing 2012 A bonds which are outstanding in the amount of about $50 million and generate significant debt service savings in doing so. We estimate those savings as it notes here at about $6.8 million on a net present value basis and that equals about 13.4% of the refunded amount. That's net of all the transaction costs associated with doing this refinancing and that generates cash flow savings, so annual savings of about $560,000 a year assuming the interest rate of about 2.26% as is shown here. So it's a very attractive opportunity and just for reference as I know we've spoken with you about in the course of working on previous refinancings, the industry standard benchmark for a refunding is to generate somewhere between three and five savings as a threshold. So the fact that we're at something in the neighborhood of 13 is certainly a very favorable outcome. If we could go to the next slide, please. So as Kimberly mentioned, we did just have the very strong AA rating on the wastewater enterprise affirmed by standard pours with a stable outlook. So we're a little bit ahead of schedule and we hope to be in the market with the bonds either the week of the 9th of November or the week of the 16th. We're still discussing that amongst the team. We wanna hit the market at the most favorable time to see how things unfold over the next. And the readiness if the council is so in kind to authorize these transactions this evening. And if there are any questions, I would be happy to respond. Okay, no questions there. Then we can go on to the actions that are being requested of you. There are resolutions authorizing the staff and professionals involved in the financings to execute financing transactions, excuse me, that meet the following parameters. The maximum principal amount authorized for the 2020 A bonds that's the new financing is 70 million. As I noted, it's expected to be less than that, but we wanted to be sure that we have adequate capacity in the event that the bond structure changes and the investor preferences change between now and the time they come to market. And then 60 million would be the maximum authorization for the refunding bonds. We have a minimum savings threshold for that refinancing transaction of 3%. As I mentioned, that's an industry standard. And the underwriters discount is not to exceed a half a percent. There are other documents that are being have been presented to you in substantially final form and indenture continuing disclosure certificate of preliminary official statement, which is essentially the offering document that discloses to investors all the material information about the bonds and the enterprise, the bond purchase agreement, which governs the sale of the bonds from by the city to Steve Fulney underwriter and then through them to investors. And then finally an escrow agreement, which governs the funds that would be held by the trustee until the 2012 bonds can be redeemed. Next slide. So Kimberly, would you like to take this one or with someone? Sure. All right. So it is recommended by the finance department, the water department and the board of public utilities that the council by resolution approve the forms of the preliminary official statement, continuing disclosure certificate, 21st supplemental indenture of trust, escrow deposit and trust agreement and bond purchase agreement in connection with the issuance of wastewater revenue bond series 2020 A and wastewater revenue refunding series 2020 B. The 2020 A bonds will be issued to fund capital projects of the wastewater system and the 2020 B bonds will be issued on a taxable basis to redeem certain outstanding wastewater revenue bonds for debt service savings. All right. Thank you, Kimberly. Right, council, any questions? Mr. Tivis. Thank you, Sarah. My question is, I'm a little bit confused. Are you refinancing the bonds at a lower interest rate and extending the term? The intent is to refinance the bonds at a lower interest rate. We have not as of now structured the refinancing bonds with an extended final maturity. We have what was presented to you in the presentation assumes that the refinancing will be, will share the same final maturity with the bonds being refunded. We have, we are continuing to look at to change the way that these two markets that we're issuing in both the tax exempt and the taxable are changing and relating to each other. And we would, we would hope that the bonds and we would hope to have the flexibility to create the most overall efficient transaction. So there's not a current intent to change the final maturity of the bonds being refinanced. However, it's, we haven't ruled that out from consideration at this point in time if it lowers the overall borrowing costs of the financings as a whole. So you're only gonna extend the maturity date if the total borrowing costs principle and interest is still lessened? Absolutely, the refinancing would have to generate on its own would have to generate at least the 3% savings, which as I mentioned today is at 13%. And the only reason we might consider extending the maturity of that component would be if we could enhance the savings even further. Because something the way that tax exempt rates are lower or higher in a certain section of the overall maturity range than the other. I'm sorry, I think it's a little bit complex, but I hope that made some sense. No, I understand. My concern was that, you know, if you were trying to achieve a better cash flow monthly for the water department, you know, I would want to hear that and at what cost long-term in the P&I, but if you're just shortening the maturity or excuse me, if you're extending the maturity at the overall cost of the loan is still going to be equal to or less than of what it currently is, then it's a no-brainer. But if it for some reason is not the case, I'd hope to see it again. Right, and we would certainly only want to do an extension. We would, the fall, but then sort of the assumption we go in with is that we wouldn't extend. And that, as I said, that's the way the numbers have been structured. We would only consider doing that if it lowered the cost to the city overall. Thanks, Sarah. Council, any additional questions? Kind of related to what Jack was asking. Hopefully, Kimberly, this is within your wheelhouse with the product, the UV system. What's the life expectancy of the UV system once it gets installed? So the UV pieces, so the UV panels themselves and some of those parts, they will only guarantee, they have their guarantees for about 20 years, but everything else with the project is probably 50 years or more because the rest of it is mostly the structures that it will be installed in. And that's the most expensive part of the project and the piece that will last the longest. So we did an entire, we lined that out completely for each piece of the project to be attached to all of the documents that will go out for the bond. Great, thank you. That's helpful. And then Sarah, given this municipal market conditions, what impact historically have presidential elections had on that rate? The anticipate, regardless of who wins, does that impact what we're looking at today? So I think what I would say is the impact elections typically have is to introduce volatility. We've seen a lot of uncertainty and both the municipal market as well as the taxable market tend to respond to news. So be it, people's prognostications about whether there will be a stimulus deal between Newton and Pelosi or whether what the COVID rates are doing around the country, certainly in the most recent presidential election, I think for many it was an unexpected outcome and there was a tremendous response to that, a great deal of money moving into stocks which had an impact on bond rates. But I think, no one knows what will happen. So there's just a lot of uncertainty which creates volatility. Our market tends to overreact to uncertainty and then correct itself over the course of several weeks or even sometimes a little bit longer. So there has been a lot of issuance last weekend, this week have been extremely unprecedentedly busy in the bond markets because of people trying to get in ahead of the elections. I think, and Eileen Gallagher at Steful is also available, I think to share comments on these market questions if you would like to call upon her. But what we've said is what we've been hearing many underwriters say over the last several weeks is, once the market has absorbed all the supply that has come into it last week and this week as people rush to get ahead of the election, we're hoping for some calm and stability to return. And I will say that as I mentioned at the outset, all rates have risen a bit since the beginning of October with all of the literally unprecedented levels of bonds being issued, rates have still only moved by about less than 10 basis points, which tells me it's a robust market and we expect that it will be able to be digested and in several weeks when we come back to enter the market, we hope to find favorable conditions. Great, thank you, that's very helpful. Council, any additional questions? Seeing none. We're now going to take public comments on item 14.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 14.1? Thank you, Mayor. As you can see, a countdown timer has appeared before you for the convenience of the speakers and the viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone when you are invited to do so. If the conclusion of your comment, your microphone will be muted. Again, this is for public comment on item 14, wastewater revenue bonds. Right, Mayor, I'm seeing no hands raised for item 14 public comment and we did not receive any voice message public comments for this item. All right, thank you. Mr. Dowd, you have this item. Thank you, Mayor. Having served on the city's Board of Public Utilities for 25 years, this is a very common kind of process that we go through trying to make because we have to borrow to get these high cost infrastructure projects bill. And then as we go through the time, what those bonds typically are 25, 30 years long, we've consistently looked at times when interest rates are low to refinance them to save our rate payers money. And in this case, the finance department, the water department and the BPU have all supported this. So I move and I'm sorry that this is so long but it is a long resolution of the city council which is resolution to council of the city of Santa Rosa authorizing the issuance and sale of city of Santa Rosa wastewater revenue bonds series 2020 A and city of Santa Rosa wastewater revenue refunding bonds series 2020 B, federally taxable refinancing of all or a portion of the outstanding city of Santa Rosa wastewater revenue refunding bonds series 2012 A, approving and authorizing and directing execution of a supplemental indenture of trust and an escrow deposit and trust agreement, a bond purchase contract and other related documents approving an official statement and authorizing official action and waiving the remainder of the test. I can. Okay, a motion by Mr. Dath second by Mr. Tibbets any additional questions or comments from council? Seeing none, Madam, Mr. Sawyer, are you about to, oh, you're getting ready to vote. Madam city clerk, can we do a roll call vote please? Yes, thank you, mayor. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tibbets. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay, thank you so much for the presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I see that it is five o'clock, so we'll go back to item 13, public comment on non-agenda matters. So we're now taking public comments on item 13, non-agenda matters. This is a time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. We'll take 10 speakers under this item. If we have more than 10 public comments on item 13, the remaining speakers will be afforded the opportunity to speak on item 17, non-agenda matters to provide public comment. Madam hosts, would you facilitate public comment on item 13? Thank you, mayor. As you can see, a countdown timer is before you for the convenience of the speaker and the viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute yourself when you are invited to do so. At the conclusion of your comment, your microphone will be muted. Mayor, I'm seeing no hands being raised for live public comment on non-agenda matters under item 13. Additionally, we do not receive any voice message public comments on non-agenda matters. Okay, thank you for that. We'll then move on to item 14.2 Mr. City Manager. Item 14.2 report, allocation of $2 million in CARES Act fund reimbursements to seed a Santa Rosa child care support pilot program and approval of funding agreements with service providers. Ryusen Dolorosa, Economic Development Division director for presenting. Alrighty, good afternoon, Mayor Schwetholm and members of the council. So I'm here again this afternoon and actually Madam City Clerk Angie Dillon-Schor, the executive director of First Five Sonoma County is also on the line and may need to pop up to answer any questions. But anyway, I'm here with the executive director of First Five Sonoma County to present to you our child care support pilot program. So in assessing investment program options that would be most impactful to the economy in the short, mid, and long-term, the Economic Recovery Task Force narrowed in on childcare. Specifically by targeting this industry in crisis that has direct implications on the productivity of other businesses and is importantly dominated by women and minority small business owners. The task force recognized that any investment made towards stabilizing and helping to sustain the childcare sector will have a long lasting and multi-tiered benefit. I'd like to point out too that the fact that we've been pursuing programs policies and funding to address childcare needs since it was identified as the second biggest crisis after housing when we surveyed businesses in the aftermath of the Tubbs Fire. In fact, I did confirm that you'll be hearing an item on November 17th for code amendments related to streamlining childcare facilities. So we are moving forward and some of our policy efforts there as well. So in speaking to a broad range of businesses now during our current series of crises, childcare still remains a critical issue three years after that fire. Hence we came up with the childcare support pilot program. But before I get into the program I wanted to just take a step back to share some data called from a number of studies from places like the Annie Casey Foundation, the Economic Opportunity Institute, Ready Nation, next slide. Investing in childcare and early education not only helps today's workforce, the share of parents now in this COVID and the pandemic are reporting an increase in work-family conflicts just that has skyrocketed. But I have to say that work-family conflict has continued to rise steadily over the past 40 years. But in addition to today's workforce as you likely know it, it has a measurable impact on our future workforce. Research shows that babies form over 90% of their brain connections that determine how they'll talk, think and learn by the time they're five years old. And studies also show that investments in early childhood education result in higher wages later in life, increased tax revenue, more effective, effective public schools, improved personal and public health, less crime and more educated and skilled workforce. The difference between low income and advantaged children are noticeable starting in kindergarten and just continue to widen through the years. To this point, studies have shown that children who attended quality preschool are more likely to graduate from high school, less likely to end up in jail and more likely to pursue advanced education. In fact, out of the 2.5 million students nationwide who dropped out of high school last year about 1.6 million of them were firmly set on that path by the time they were eight years old. If a child is not reading at grade level by the end of third grade, that child is four times less likely to graduate from high school and high school dropouts are 63 times more likely to be incarcerated. One data point that has always stuck with me since I started digging into this issue of access to quality childcare is should the American prison system choose to do so, they could accurately calculate future bed need by looking at current third grade reading levels. So that's about our future workforce. In terms of our current workforce, on average parents miss over eight days of work a year due to childcare issues, which is compounded by productivity issues from childcare concerns. That is access to stable care helps parents improve their labor productivity by increasing work hours, missing free work days, and then also allowing them the opportunity to further educate themselves to advance their own careers. Also from an equity standpoint, pre-COVID data shows that parents without affordable childcare reduce their hours or opt out of the workforce. And 94% of workers in voluntarily working part-time due to childcare problems are women. And data also shows that of full-time female employees in the US, 50% leave their careers to raise a child. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, we entered the pandemic with a deficit of available childcare spots and providers. Not only did the 2017 fires destroy 15 licensed childcare centers, which displaced over 400 children, but over the seven years leading up to the fires, we lost around 266 childcare providers to retirement, which is a decline of 22%. And then the pandemic came along. And of course, all of these numbers that you see here on this slide have just gotten worse. Next slide, please. So pandemic are not, most of the county's childcare programs are actually located within Santa Rosa city limits. These childcare businesses that remain open are operating at about 45% of their normal capacity with a maximum of 16 individuals per cohort. And a cohort consists of both the adults and the children. So that 16 includes the adult teachers. As of the most recent data I received earlier this week, 55% of the center-based providers are inactive or have permanently closed. And for home-based providers, we're actually doing a little better at this point in that we're only at about 21% that have closed within Santa Rosa city limits. Next slide. Unfortunately, I didn't have the Santa Rosa specific numbers when I put the following slides together. So what you see here are countywide figures. So I'm going to walk you through the Santa Rosa specific figures. So for the pie chart on the left, the pre-COVID of the 608 childcare providers countywide, 299 of them are located within Santa Rosa city limits. So we have 49% of the countywide providers within Santa Rosa. And that's comprised of 160 or was, I should say, comprised of 160 family childcare sites and 139 centers. For the current pie chart on the right, the Santa Rosa specific figures are, let's see, for the blue, of the 139 Santa Rosa childcare centers we had pre-COVID, only 63 remain open. And of the 160 family childcare sites, only 127 remain open. So the Santa Rosa figure for the gray portion, the gray wedge there of closed and inactive is 109 equating to 36% of our Santa Rosa facilities. Next slide. So this slide shows spot availability or how many children can be accommodated in the available programs identified in the previous slide. So again, the numbers on this slide are for all of Sonoma County. But for Santa Rosa pre-COVID, we had a total of about just over 6,000 spots available. Due to the closures as well as public health limits on group size, availability has dropped to around 38%. Though I have to say, I just saw a late comment submitted by the executive director of Four Seas, Melanie Dodson. And she noted that Santa Rosa's current reduction of childcare slots is actually 63%. Next slide. Okay, so getting into the program. The goal of the program are, goals I should say the program are threefold. And that is one to stabilize open businesses through grant funds so that as the pandemic continues, we don't lose more providers. The second goal is to expand capacity initially by building the supply of infant and toddler care. And then the third goal is to identify and enable new facilities and rehabilitate existing sites. And to accomplish this, we are asking for $2 million of the $2.145 million in general fund reserves that were made available by reimbursements of COVID-19 expenditures from CARES Act funding. An initial investment of 600,000 of these funds will be made available as soon as we can get the funding agreements approved with First Five Sonoma County for a grant program to stabilize Santa Rosa-based providers. And also with Four Seas Sonoma County to expand their childcare initiative program that provides training and business startup assistance. Next slide. The First Five Sonoma County Child Care Resiliency Fund addresses the first goal, as I mentioned. The funding agreement we're seeking to negotiate and execute is for $500,000, which would be added to First Five's pool of grant funds providing direct support to local childcare businesses. And though the city's contribution to the fund would be available only for Santa Rosa-based providers, it will be leveraged by a $405,000 contribution from First Five. And I think in the staff report, it lists 200,000, but I believe just yesterday this increased by another 200,000. Also in the pool is, I believe it's $177,000 from the Community Foundation Sonoma County Resilience Fund. So all told with those three contributions, the grant fund total will be at least, will be over, excuse me, will be over a million dollars. Next slide, please. Awardees can use the grants for a broad range of needs, though we're hearing that what is most important at this time are funds to help cover the increased expenses of maintaining a safe environment, as well as general operating costs and the cost of equipment and furniture to accommodate distance learning. Priority weighting will be given to those providing childcare services to the most vulnerable residents, those that demonstrate fiscal sustainability and those that participated in Quality Council Sonoma County, that program prior to March 1st of this year. Next slide. The grant program, as I mentioned, will be administered by First Five and only program serving birth to 12 years old will be eligible. The operators must have been in business prior to March 17th of this year to be and have to be currently open, though if they were closed due to COVID, we will accept them if they have a feasible plan to reopen by January 15th of next year.  Lastly, I noted in the staff report that state contracted programs would not be included. However, since writing the report, the state contracted programs are in the methodology now, but they're only eligible if at least half of their enrollment pre-COVID was a tuition or voucher base, which now would compromise their sustainability. Next slide. So moving on to 4C's childcare initiative project, which is focused on building Sonoma County's supply of infant and toddler care, the funding agreement we're looking to enter into is for $100,000 to be used for training and consulting staff, recruiting participants and incentives for business startup in order to eliminate the barriers that prevents prospective providers from opening their own businesses. They'll also be provided with disaster planning kits for all the trainees as well as existing providers to attend a targeted disaster planning trainings that are offered by 4C's. Next slide. So 4C's has identified two core desired outcomes, which are the number of prospective family childcare providers enrolled receiving their childcare license, as well as increasing the available infant and toddler care capacity within the county, in the county within family childcare homes. Next slide. With the remaining 1.4 million, we'll add and expand programming working through the Economic Recovery Task Force or the Economic Development Subcommittee and of course, seeking council approval for any new program elements and substantial expenditures. Specifically, our interest is in addressing the third of the program's goals, which is enabling new facilities and rehabilitating existing sites for childcare use. So there are a number of models that will serve as resources for developing the program. So for example, in considering what we might prioritize in subsidizing childcare center integration into new development projects, I looked at the Renewal Enterprise District, where for example, if a project may through the red, products may receive a priority funding for a center that would be integrated and submit to high density developments and or one that is located within transit priority area or priority development area or a specific plan area. So in this way, I'm looking to sort of capitalize on existing areas in which we're promoting new development and integrating childcare into that as a community benefiting option. Other models we could look to are childcare trusts that some communities have established or for an example, other programs dealing with affordable housing, they might offer us some pathways for how we might address the additional funds. Regardless, anything we do in this area, again, would be in close consultation with developers, providers, community partners and would be vetted through the task force or subcommittee and then again, go to council for approval. Next slide. So with that, it is recommended by the economic recovery task force at the council by resolution due to three things. Allocate $2 million to support a childcare support pilot program from CARES Act funding in the general fund reserves, authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a service agreement, 2021-025-00 with first five Sonoma County Commission in an amount not to exceed $500,000 to fund grants to Santa Rosa childcare providers and three to authorize the city manager to negotiate and execute a professional services agreement with community childcare council Sonoma County in the amount not to exceed $100,000 to fund childcare program trainings. Both agreements are subject to approval as to form by the city attorney. And again, both Ms. Gillenshaw and I are available for questions. Thank you for that presentation, Ayesha. Before we go to any other questions, just provide an opportunity for the task force, either Mr. Sawyer or Vice Mayor Fleming, any additional comments you'd like to add in addition to what we just heard from Ayesha? Yeah, I would like to add that, the reason we came to this is that we heard really clearly that businesses are suffering and tried to figure out the way that we could have the most impactful investment of the CARES Act funding in a way that would both address the cause or a partial cause of the problem and help mitigate against the devastation. And so, we saw this as a win, win, win, a win for families, a win for business, and a win for children, as well as another win, which is the secondary effect of supporting all these women-owned small businesses. So, it was a really wonderful collaboration and I'm so, I mean, I'm really beside myself to see it come forward. And really, I wanna thank Ayesha and her team, which is not big. I think it's a lot of Ayesha and Raphael for their work. So, thank you and thank you to Council Member Sawyer for working with me on this one. Mr. Sawyer, would you like to make any comments? I would, thank you, Mayor. And I want to, not having children, it's hard to understand the challenges that families face. And I want to, for the economic recovery strategy, this is an important pillar in our effort of economic recovery. And in the task force, I learned, I learned of the importance. I learned how violent was and how much of an investment this really is not only changing the trajectory of countless children, but also an investment in our community and in our nation. And so I learned a lot and a special thanks to Ayesha and her team to help educate me and special thanks to Vice Mayor Fleming who really personalized the need in my mind. So I had a bit of a little learning curve in there to understand the importance of this investment. And so I just, many thanks to the entire task force for kind of educating me as to the importance of this investment. Okay, thank you for that. Bring it back to Council. Any questions regarding the presentation? Seeing none, we are now gonna take public comment on item 14.2. If you wish to make comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. You'll have three minutes. Madam Hoax, would you facilitate public comment on item 14.2? Thank you, Mayor. As you can see, a countdown timer is before the audience for the convenience of the speaker and the viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone when you are invited to do so. But the conclusion of your comment, your microphone will be muted. First public comment will be from Ananda followed by Luke. Ananda, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? I can see it. Thank you. Please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so and your time begins now. This is Ananda Sweet with the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber. Good evening, Mayor Schwethelm and council members. First, I just wanna thank you for making childcare a top policy priority. For the policy decisions you've made to date in a first round of work to ease permitting process for childcare development and to begin to encourage new solutions such as incentivizing childcare and housing development. I also wanna thank city staff for this work and raise the LaRosa for engaging in this effort in such a meaningful way, beginning with our recovery efforts from the Tubbsfire and consistently engaging in this critical work over the last years. As you know, Santa Rosa was facing a childcare crisis before October of 2017 when the crisis was magnified by loss of childcare spots overnight. Of course, now again, this crisis has been exacerbated by COVID-19 and we are all feeling this impact. Parents are trying to balance childcare and work, employers are trying to determine how and when their working parents can return to work and childcare providers are really struggling to stay open or reopen with incredibly challenging new business model due to COVID health guidelines. As we advocate for support for small business owners, it is crucial that we acknowledge how fragile this small business sector is and the community wide impact of a breakdown of the sector. Beyond the immediate workforce demand, childcare is a two generation workforce issue. In terms of our future workforce, the most conservative studies from economists say that communities receive an average $8 return for every dollar invested in early childhood education. This comes from savings in special education and remediation, better health outcomes, reduced need for social services, lower criminal justice costs and increased self-sufficiency and productivity of families. Investing in childcare brings a higher return than the stock market and is the best way for a community to ensure its economic and societal success. Our economic growth and recovery depend on our treating childcare as essential infrastructure and investments in childcare will result in immediate and long-term returns on that investment. Thank you. Thank you, Ananda. The next public comment will be from Luke, followed by Angie. Luke, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? I can see it, thank you. Thank you, please identify yourself for public record if you so choose and your time begins now. Thank you and good evening, Council. My name is Luke Lindenbush, Project and Policy Coordinator with Generation Housing. As you may know, Generation Housing advocates greater affordability, supply and diversity of housing in Sonoma County. Although this childcare support pilot program is not directly related to housing, we enthusiastically support this proposal because access to quality childcare will improve outcomes in our economic recovery, especially for those who most need it. This pandemic has exacerbated the financial burden on low-income working families in Santa Rosa. As an economic development director, Dela Rosa noted, our childcare affordability crisis is a critical issue inseparable from our housing affordability crisis. The strong proposal to ameliorate this unprecedented financial burden on Santa Rosa's working families and Generation Housing enthusiastically supports its approval. Thank you. Thank you, Luke. The next public comment will be from Angie. Angie, I've enabled your speaking permissions. Can you please unmute your microphone and confirm you can see the timer on your screen? Yes, I can see the timer. Good evening. This is Angie Dillon-Schor, Executive Director at First Five Sonoma County. I want to give the Council a huge props for making childcare a top priority. With this investment, you're really walking the talk around childcare as a driver for the economic recovery and economic development that it truly is. And when we get to the other side of this pandemic and we're actually able to reopen in earnest, if we do not have the adequate supply of childcare, there will be many parents and caregivers that will leave the workforce, particularly women, or even leave in the area, resulting in billions of dollars in lost wages and local economic activity. There are a lot of cities and counties across the state that have recognized the importance of childcare as part of economic infrastructure, but the city of Santa Rosa is way out in front, leading the pack. So on behalf of the First Five Commission, we are thrilled about the prospect to partner with the city on the Child Care Resiliency Fund. We will be leveraging our staff time and existing infrastructure to administer the grants in kind. So all of the city's funds that are contributed to this Child Care Resiliency Fund will go directly to childcare operators. So much appreciation to the Council and to the staff for your work on this initiative. Thank you, Angie. Again, this is for public comment on item 14.2, Child Care Support Pilot Program. All right, Mayor, I don't see any additional hands being raised. I will go ahead and move forward to the voice message public comment received. Yes, hello, my name is Amy McIntyre and I'm the owner of Child Kind Preschool in Santa Rosa and I have been in business for 35 years. I'm leaving a message about item 14.2 that is on the Santa Rosa City Council meeting tomorrow for the Santa Rosa Child Care Support Pilot Program. And I would like to put my support behind this as a strong supporter of funding $500,000 to provide providers sustainability grants through what they are calling, what you're calling the Child Care Resiliency Fund. And also as well the $100,000 to support four C's for the Child Care Initiative Project. Child Care is at deep risk of losing thousands of slots. I'm a private provider and are only allowed to serve 12 children and usually serve 24 and working at 50% capacity does not pay the bills and it's been very, very challenging to stay open. And as I know from talking with many other providers throughout the pandemic and various times weekly that they're all struggling and everyone is really considering, you know whether or not they can even stay in business. So I want to strongly, strongly encourage that you adopt the Child Care Support Pilot Program to provide funding directly to providers through the Child Care Resiliency Fund and to support four C's and their Child Care Initiative Project. Amy McIntyre, director owner of Child Kind Preschool 2200 Laguna Road, Santa Rosa 95401 and my cell phone phone number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. And I'm calling today, Monday the 26th at 4.55 p.m. Thank you. Right Mayor, that concludes the voice message public comments received for item 14.2. Great, thank you for that. Bring it back to council. Any additional questions? Okay, so why don't we get a motion and a second then we'll open it up for any comments by council. Mr. Sawyer, you have this item. Thank you Mayor and thank you to the entire council in advance for your support as I introduce a resolution of the council, the city Santa Rosa allocating $2 million of CARES Act funding in the general fund reserves for a Child Care Support Pilot Program and to authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute a service agreement 2021-025-00 with first five commission for grant funding to child care centers and family child care businesses and three authorizing the city manager to negotiate and execute a professional services agreement with community child care council Sonoma County to provide training and support for child care providers in a way further reading. Second. I think the Vice Mayor Beach and Mr. Alvarez. So we have a motion by Mr. Sawyer, seconded by Vice Mayor Fleming. Any additional comments? Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just wanted to say a huge thank you to Raissa and staff. This is an incredible program. It is something that we've been talking about figuring out how to tackle over the last couple of years. And just as a reminder, this council did two years ago put child care and supporting our children as a tier two priority as high as we could get it up there for the first time. This is the kind of thing that I was thinking of when we did that something to help prop up an industry that is vital to our success that we've already seen challenges with and obviously through COVID it's gotten much worse. So thank you so much for your leadership on it. Thank you to the subcommittee for your work on it. I think that this is one of the most impactful things that we've been able to do as a response to COVID-19 and it's not just a response to COVID-19 now it's a full-fledged program that I think will reverberate through our community for the next couple of years, if not longer. Mr. Alvarez, did you have your hand up? Yeah, great job. This is big. Just thank you to everybody involved. This is a big thing as Councilor Rogers says. So congratulations to everybody and the entire state for this. Thank you. Vice Mayor Fleming. Yes, thank you very much. One of the main reasons that I decided to run for city council was as a commissioner for the Sonoma County Commission on the Status of Women, I was appalled to learn that Sonoma County ranked number two out of 58 counties for most affordability in terms of childcare. And when I realized as a parent of a young child just how expensive it was and that we were really ahead, there's no way that this is really possible. And I started looking around and trying to connect the dots and I really thought that there might be some opportunities although I was told time and again that the city really wasn't the place to do it. And I said, I'm still gonna keep trying. And so I feel so grateful. They say that these things are really difficult to do when you don't have 30 to 40% of a council of women. I wanna say that this council and this staff have been great allies in an issue that predominantly affects women and people of color. And I just could not be more grateful for your support and pleased that I made the decision to join your team. And just not feeling great today but felt like putting on the camera and showing up to just say thank you so much in advance for your support. So thanks. Thank you. I would just like to add when I heard Mr. Sawyer's comments, I first started learning of this issue. Obviously I have kids of my own but it's about 15 years ago which is kind of scary to me that long. When I first started working with Four Seas and had another later opportunity to participate and volunteer with the school as a hope program. And this was when I was a city staff member and getting to know Melanie Dodson from Four Seas and Angie Dillon-Schor through a variety of different connections. You realize the importance in the upstream investment that this investment will make. And I think Raisa mentioned in her report that kids are learning to read through third grade. And then after that, they read to learn. And so if they don't hit that third grade threshold which you talked about about CDC, it's not a good thing. So this is something where we actually can make a difference. It's a huge investment. Our motto is being the leader of the North Bay. They were the leader in California. I think this is such a wise investment and I'm thrilled with all the work the team sport this entire community is going to be supporting of this. And I can't wait to see the game changer that this is going to be. So with that, Madam City Clerk could we do a roll call vote please? Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Dowd. Aye. With enthusiasm. Council Member Tibbets. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Absolutely. Council Member Olivares. Aye. Vice Mayor Fleming. 100% aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. I think I could read your website Victoria. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Thank you for all the work. Thank you, Riza. There would be clapping in the chamber if we were in the chamber. Thank you all so much for your support. All right, thank you all. All right, on to our public hearing. Mr. City Manager, Item 15.1. Item 15.1, Public Hearing, Urgency Ordnance, Resilience City Combining District, Clackfire, File Number, R-E-Z-2-0-Cash-009, Amy Lyle, Supervising Planner, Presentation. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the council. And I'll wait for Dean to put up the, thank you so much. All right, so we have our presentation up. So tonight, this item is an urgency ordinance to help facilitate rebuilding and recovery related to the recent glass fire. Next slide, please. So as you probably know, the glass fires started the evening of September 27th and impacted Eastern Santa Rosa, including the communities of Oakmont, Melida Los Alamos Road area, Skyhawk, and then areas of Piedmont Heights off of Calistoga Road. So 30 homes were destroyed or determined to be uninhabitable and 13 homes are considered habitable but with damage. So there is recovery required for this effort. And tonight's urgency ordinance is considered urgent because it would be effective on adoption, which would allow for the ability for homeowners to apply for permits, but also to do temporary housing and a variety of other needs related to fire recovery. Next slide, please. So we do already have some experience with recovery and have an existing resilient city combining districts. And this was really to expedite the rebuilding as a result of the nuns and tubs fires. And so our existing ordinance right now is also to expedite the rebuilding and to allow for the construction of Adoos and also has a language related to non-conforming uses and extension of construction hours among many other provisions. Next slide, please. So part of the requested amendments under this ordinance would be to add the new areas. So this includes both text and map changes. So this shows the two maps that will be added to the ordinance, representing the Piedmont area and the Skyhawk area. The properties that were damaged within the Oakmont area are already within the RC combining district area and have already been rezoned as part of the tubs and nuns fire effort. Next slide. So staff has done a thorough review of the existing ordinance to make sure that the language is appropriate for the new recovery. And as part of that have identified a number of changes and amendments for you tonight. So the first is related to construction noise. So the existing ordinance exempts the rebuild areas from our noise ordinance. And that's primarily because of the impact from the 2017 fires covered a large area and there were no occupants within the area where rebuilding needed to occur. And so it really facilitated that rapid rehousing. And now that those areas have been predominantly rebuilt or majorly underway, there are certainly a larger population area or a larger population living within those areas amongst the construction occurring. And with the areas that are impacted by the glass fire, those are also in established neighborhoods with minimal large areas that need to be rebuilt. So it is our staff recommendation that we no longer exempt rebuilding from the noise ordinance standards. And in addition, due to the 2017 fires, there was some language in the ordinance related to mobile home parks. And the mobile home park that was damaged 2017 has gone through its closure. So that language is no longer necessary. So the proposal includes to remove that language. In addition, the 2017 fire rebuilds are exempt from the all-electric requirements under a state law. And so for consistency with those rebuilds, staff is proposing to exempt the rebuilds under the glass fire from the all-electric requirements. The ordinance also includes a new expiration date knowing now that we need to create opportunity for a new rebuild and that there are still rebuilding needs related to the 2017 fires. The staff's proposal is to extend this ordinance to a sunset date of December 31st, 2023. And then the ordinance does include other clarification related to permitting and new development that could occur within the rebuild areas as well as a clarification or requirement for the Oakmont area that any structures rebuilt within the Oakmont area as a result of the glass fire would need a sign off from the Oakmont Homeowners Association. And that section did come out of outreach to the Oakmont community. We did do a fair amount of outreach to the neighborhoods that were impacted by the glass fire through direct contact or also through the local assistance center. Next slide, please. And it is a staff's recommendation that this ordinance is exempt from CEQA based on this being related to a emergency that locally declared. And next slide, please. And our recommendation is that you adopt an urgency ordinance tonight and that will include text amendments to the combining district and also to rezone the impacted properties. And so their zoning will actually have an RC on the zone to facilitate the streamlined rebuilding and resiliency. Next slide, please. And then this ordinance is an urgency ordinance. It has been publicly noticed and a summary ordinance has also been separately published in the press Democrat. And this would be effective immediately upon adoption. And because this is an urgency ordinance it does require a four fifths vote of the council. And with that, we'll be happy to answer any questions that you have. Also present this evening is Jesse Oswald, Chief Building Official and Gabe Osburn, Deputy Director of Development Services. Great, thank you for that presentation, Amy. Council, any questions? Not seen any. Okay, this is a public hearing. So I'll go ahead and open up the public hearing. Madam host, would you facilitate public comment on item 15.1? Thank you, Mayor. You're now taking public comment for the public hearing on the glass fire urgency ordinance. As you can see, there is a timer before you for the convenience of the speakers and the viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute yourself when you are invited to do so. At the conclusion of your comment, your microphone will be muted. Again, to make a public comment, please raise your hand via Zoom. If participating by telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. All right, Mayor, I'm seeing no hands being raised for live public comment. Are you okay if I move on to voice message public comments, which there were none? Absolutely. Yes, you know, additional hands being raised and there are no voice message public comments there. All right, thank you. Seeing no one else wanting to address the council on this item, I will close the public hearing, bring it back to council. Mr. Tibbets, you have this item. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Before I move this ordinance, I just want to say my deepest thanks to you, Amy and Jesse and your whole team. I saw that you were in the local assistant center and doing the hard work and I know that you help people get it done in 2017 and you'll do the same here. So thanks for all that you guys do. And with that, I move in urgency ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa amending title 20 of the Santa Rosa city code to add recognition of new recovery needs as a result of the glass fire rezoning impacted properties and text amendments to section two zero dash two eight 100 comma resilient city combining district file number are easy to zero dash zero zero nine and wait for the reading of the text. Second. Motion by Mr. Tibbets saying my Mr. Dowd any final comments or questions from anyone on council? I also want to echo my appreciation Amy to you and the rest of the staff and PED. This is another example what I see paying it forward. We're doing a much more efficient, effective job, I think in 2020 and fortunately, then we had to experience in 2017. Definitely paying it forward. Very good thing, very good move. Madam city clerk, can we do a roll call vote please? Yes, thank you, mayor. Council member Dowd. Aye. Council member Tibbets. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member Oliveris. Aye. Vice mayor Fleming. Aye. Mayor Schwedhelm. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Great. Okay, we have no written communications and Madam city clerk or Madam host would you facilitate any public comments on non-agenda items regarding item 17? Thank you, mayor. Now's the time that we are taking public comment on item 17 non-agenda matters. To make a comment, please raise your hand via Zoom. If you are participating by a telephone, please dial star nine. As you can see, a countdown timer has appeared before you for the convenience of the speaker and the viewers. The first speaker will be acknowledged and invited to speak. Please make sure to unmute your microphone when asked to do so. Yeah. At