I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence translation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Interpreter, will you please restate this in Spanish? Welcome, everyone, to our November 14, 2023 Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now 12.33, seeing a quorum. Madam City Clerk, may you please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Stapp. Councilmember Chris Rogers. Here. Councilmember Okrepke. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor McDonald. Here. Mayor Rogers. Present. Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of councilmember Stapp. We will now proceed to item 2.1 and 2.2, which are our closed sessions of the day conference with legal counsel for existing litigation and conference with labor negotiators. Madam City Clerk, may you please facilitate public comment. We are now taking public comments on item 2, closed session. And, Mayor, there is no one in council chamber to provide public comment. Thank you. We will now recess into closed session. All right. Welcome back, everyone, seeing a quorum. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll. Thank you, member. Councilmember Stapp. Councilmember Rogers. Here. Councilmember Okrepke. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor McDonald. Here. Mayor Rogers. Present. Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of councilmember Stapp. Moving on to item 3.1, which is interviews for the public financing authority. The council will be able to interview applicants to fill one vacancy for the joint city of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County representative for the public financing authority. Council needs to make one appointment later on in the agenda for a public member to the public financing authority for the downtown infrastructure financing district, which from now on I will refer to SPFA. And we will make that determination on 11.2.1. The final, it is the final seat for the PFA board. So we will begin the interviews with Arthur Dickey. It's magnetic. You can just the other side. There you go. Hello, Mr. Dickey. And thank you for being here today. And thank you for your interest. Can you please take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself, why you're interested in this position and why you feel you would be a good fit? Well, this is a little awkward. My good friend Mike Hogan and I, we haven't seen each other for a while. And when I knew he was up for this too, I called and talked to him and then we say, well, who is who is Carmen Gonzalez? And we were anxious to meet her. And once we met her, we figured, well, that's who should be selected for this appointment. And so we decided to stay with the interview just because of the process. But I think she'd be a wonderful candidate with her experience and everything else. And we're just a couple old white guys anyhow. So we want to keep the diversity going. So anyhow, I'll answer any questions, but that's really my statement at this point. Sorry, I needed to take that all in. But thank you so much. Council Member Alvarez. Council Member Rogers. Mine's quick. I just want to say I love you all. That's great. Council Member Alvarez.  What's that? First of all, Senators, I thank you for looking at the bigger picture.  I think he must be mistaken. I'm just a regular human being, that's all. I can't even blame my parents because after how many years I've been alive, things change a lot. Thank you, sir. Okay, thank you. Is there no more questions or comments? Thank you so much for your time today. Mr. Hogan. I echo what Art said. We got to meet Carmen here a little bit and talk to her. And she's very enthusiastic and really has the kind of experience that would be good for this position. And I appreciate the consideration. But I think that when there's a better candidate, then I would like to bow to her. Thank you so much. Seeing no comments, we would like to thank you for your time to come. And see this process through. You bet. This is unprecedented. I just made two new friends. This is through the moment. That graciousness, gentlemen, I thank you. I really do thank you. My name is Carmen Gonzalez. And your question, Ms. Mayer, was why do I want to be on this board? And why do I think I'd make a good fit? Number one, it all comes back to, I think, obligation and responsibility. Any community I've been a part of it, I think it's always been, I think, an onus on me to get involved civically. Not just voting, but getting involved with the nuts and bolts of civic engagement. This board would offer that opportunity. Secondly, it tickles both sides of my brain. The left part of my brain, that's very analytical. And there's definitely plenty of analysis that would be involved here. But beyond that, there's an artistic part too. Because the potential with infrastructure is also making it beautiful to allow in a Bauhausian sort of view, form to follow function. And that potential, and I think even council member Fleming spoke to it at the last meeting where she said, this should have vision. This should be a destination. And if we can make it so, that to me is very, very exciting. So for both of those reasons, I would like to serve. Thank you so much. Council Member Rogers. Thank you, Mayor. I did also want to just thank you for coming to the last PFA meeting and contributing and adding comments during the public comment as well. So I was going to call that out even before. And I don't really have any questions other than hopefully this isn't the most awkward interview you've ever had. It's delightful in a very good way. Are there any Council Member Alvarez? Thank you. My question to you is, your experience that you've had in Los Angeles, what have you learned there that can serve the residents of San Rosa? So I moved here to San Rosa last year where I bought my condominium and not a day goes by when I'm not enthralled by the beauty of the place. I made the right choice. I know I made the right choice. I have served as a commissioner for the City of Los Angeles on its Human Relations Commission back with the Bradley Administration. And when I moved to the City of Torrance, they served on its Water Commission. So I'm familiar with, again, the nuts and bolts of government engagement on boards and the pacing of it. Some people might think it plods long, but it doesn't. It really requires oversight. It requires transparency. And I'm familiar in reaching consensus on boards where people might differ. All of those things to make government work for all of us. Are there any additional comments or questions? Well, thank you so much for being here. And I probably in early congratulations, but congratulations and thank you for your willingness to serve. I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. And with that, we will move on to item 4. 4.1 and 4.2. It's agendized for 2 p.m. Mayor, it's agendized for 2 p.m. All right. We will recess. Seeing the quorum, Madam City Clerk, may you please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Stapp. Here. Councilmember Rogers. Here. Councilmember O'Crepke. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Here. Vice Mayor McDonald. Here. Mayor Rogers. Let the record show that all council members are present. Moving on to item 4, our study sessions for today. Madam City Manager. Good evening, Mayor and members of council. Item 4.1 is the park's capital improvement funding and prioritization. Staff could introduce themselves for the record. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers, Vice Mayor McDonald, council members. I'm Jen Santos, parks deputy director with recreation of parks. This afternoon we're going to talk about parks capital projects. I think for the first time in this much detail at council. So we're really excited to, I'm really excited to talk about it. We wanted to present, I wanted to present this map as an overall general plan parks map from the 2035 general plan. And it's a nice graphic that I like to show the city with the little red trees in it. Those little red trees that you see in there are future planned parks. So it's nice to kind of get a sense of the visual of where do we need to have parks and where should be placing parks. And that's determined by the general plans where housing is going to be and the density of housing. So parks follow housing, new parks and new development for parks follow housing. So those trees will be following housing development that you see in the city. We saw the few trees or a few parks to be placed in other parts of the city. But that's the basic gist of this. The existing parks are shown in green. Another way of looking at this same map is to look at it from a quadrant base. The city collects park development impact fees from residential housing developers. And those fees are used to acquire and build new parks so that we have new parks going in with housing so that there's a complimentary availability of parks to housing. And there's an equity throughout the city of the parks. So we've done a lot of building in the northeast and we still have a lot to do in the southwest. There's still some parks here and there. But each of those, when there's a housing development, for instance, in quadrant two, which is the southwest, those funds stay in that quadrant and are used to develop and acquire and build new parks in that section. It's the same for each of the one sections. And that's enacted by the Quimby Act, which we follow to ensure that there's equity among parks amongst the city. So that's the big overview. We'll dive into some actual projects this time. So remembering back to our zone one, we're going to be talking about the northwest quadrant of the city. And I'm going to spend some time on this slide and we go through the other zones. We'll spend a little bit less time. I just want to do some explaining here on this first sheet. They're all kind of the same. But on the left, you'll see the projects that we have that are current projects. These are either projects that are super active or moving forward on them or projects where we know certain funding is coming. So we're getting ready to advance those projects. We put some council districts there in the middle. So you can kind of get a sense of where these are located in that northwest zone. There's a column on the left for cost estimate. So this is an active at the moment snapshot of what was happening at the time. These are actively being used. The funds are being utilized. So this cost estimate is the big picture for us. It doesn't always have to be the exact cost estimate, the cost of the project, but that's our estimate. And then the budget available talks about the different funding sources we have to fund that project moving forward. The next column says PDI. That's just short for park development impact fees. You can kind of get a breakdown of where that $5.3 million is coming from. It's coming primarily from park development impact fees. And there's a little bit for the general fund as well. And then we're showing an unfunded balance of $383,000. And actually this project is fully funded. That was based on our original cost estimate. So we do have enough funds for this, but I wanted to leave that in there to show you, like this is what we go through every month, every all the time with these projects. We have an estimate and once we get that final budget, then we can really get a sense of where we're at. We also have $100,000 from general fund, and then we also have some grant funding. It didn't make them into the far right column, but we do have some funding from the Americans with Disabilities Act funding that the City Council provides for capital projects related to Americans with Disabilities Act. And we have combined with that project. This project will not only give us a new splash pad, which is exciting. It will replace the pool deck. There was some leveling problems there, and that's why we're using those funds to combine to not only fix the issues with the pool deck with leveling, we're going to replace the spray pad and the general funded portion of that will pay for the pool resurfacing on the inside. So it's going to really, really excited project. We're very happy about, we're very happy to push forward. This is actually going to is estimated to start construction on Monday. And so we have closed the pool and those folks with seeking recreational activities in the Aquatic Center, we have availability at Ridgeway Swim Center, but we're really excited to get started on this. It's going to be an amazing project. I really can't wait to see that big grand opening next May slash June, right as we get out for our new summer swim programs. Really exciting project. Our next project is Dutch floor project. This is a neighborhood park in zone one. And we've been working on this with the neighborhood for the last year, collecting feedback and developing the design. And we are just about ready to go out to construction bid. So really excited about this project as well. There's a little surplus you'll see on there. So as we move forward, we'll reallocate those funds to possibly the project below a place to play if it could use more funds. But we leave it there for now as we roll forward into this so we can once we get the construction estimate, we can be sure that we have enough funds for that, for that project. The third project on here is the place to play sports field development project. Another long awaited, very exciting project where we're going to have additional multi-purpose sports fields at a place to play. We really struggle with providing enough sports fields for our soccer and baseball softball teams. So this is really long awaited and looking for it. The sports teams are definitely looking forward to this as well as we are. We are in negotiations with the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District. I'll just say district for short for that $1.1 million. So it's going to be a nice project for our youth sports and adult sports leagues to have that extra fields out there. So that's the gist of all of these. We'll kind of quickly roll through the rest. But before that, I just want to give you some pictures of what's coming. This is a really exciting Finlay Aquatic Center Sprayground project. And you can see the aerial view up on top of the new spray ground. That's all concrete there just to color different colors. And you can see some of the images of what it may look like when it comes open next year. And then the Dutch floor project. This is another aerial view on the right of the future project. This project is like a lot of our projects in the city where, like Coffee Park, we had a taut lot and a school-age playground lot completely separated from each other. So a simple project like replacing a playground becomes a larger project when you have to. You do want to reconnect those because if you're supervising children on the playground, you definitely want to be able to see both children or a variety of children at the same time. So we bring those back together. We also need to then update the pathways to those. There's some associated picnicking. So it becomes a little bit larger project, but also to the benefit, of course, for the community. There's also, you can see in the top left photo, a picture of the existing fitness equipment that is full of sand and grass. So that'll be really nice to get that fitness equipment along the top edge of the new pathway. So it's more of a walking loop for this neighborhood. And then we have two other sheets. So this is the two to five-year outlook. There's a lot going on here, and this is where we're trying to strategize on being ready for potential future funding, future grants. What can we do out there? You'll see you've got a couple of funded projects here at the Jacobs Park. We're going to be replacing the play equipment there. We're really excited about that project to bring a new playground and some sports fields over to Jacobs Park. That's funded through Measure M. You can see the column there highlighting the funding source. And Live Oak Park, another really great neighborhood playground project for 1.2 million. And then our Jack London Playfield Park is a actual school park, and we had been working with a developer to, the developer was planning on putting in the play, the sports fields. And this was our contribution towards that. And we are working to instead do the sports fields ourselves and take the park development impact fees rather than having the developer do it so that we can get it done sooner. So we're anticipating some funding coming in, so we want to be ready for that when it gets there. That's why you see that. And then the five to 10 year, again, this is a very wide outlook of what is possible and what we anticipate moving forward with if funding's come forward for the five to 10 year outlook. And so we'll roll into the southwest part of the city. And we've got three projects that are funded. South Davis Park is actively being worked on. We've had a lot of community meetings. And we've got a design ready, and we'll be going out to bid soon for that. And there was an accounting area there. We do have full, we are fully funded there. We misplaced some funds there. So I just wanted to let you know in South Davis, we are good to go. And Lower Colgan Creek Park, we are really excited and applied for a grant application to construct that park. And we're denied as part of the Ag and Open Space District's grant funding cycle, but we're going to apply again this coming year. It's a really good project. And that way we can get more bank for our bucks, so to speak, to by having use of the Ag and Open Space, we hope grant funds as well as the funds we have. And then Roslin Creek Community Park is still hanging on there with about 1.9 million to finish that pathway connecting McMinn and Burbank Avenues when we are ready to move forward with construction. There's a little bit of unfunded, unfunded nest there, but we, again, this is an estimate. So as we get closer to that, we'll know more about how much the cost is really going to be to install that pathway and crosswalk over to Roslin Creek Elementary School. And so just to give you a little bit of images of what's coming, here is the master plan that Council approved for us to move forward with implementing a new playground at South Davis Neighborhood Park. It's a very long sliver of a park in between 101 and the Highway 12 southbound on ramp onto 101. But we're really excited about this. This is a really great neighborhood. We got to meet some really interesting neighbors. The folks that live across the freeway are very interested in this park. They're very engaged in their community. They do a lot of community service here. So we're really excited to look to the future of what is possible in this neighborhood. But we'll be putting forth a playground soon. The other one I spoke about was Lower Colgan Creek. So this is a very diagrammatic image, but it really shows that we're working with the Water Department to update and restore the natural flow of the creek through the Lower Colgan Creek Park and also brings some park amenities here. So we're hoping to apply for that grant and be able to move forward with this project soon. And then the two to five out year, again, if you look down the column, it's really all being funded by Measure M. And so we've got some playgrounds, updates at Cook School Park and Southwest Park. We really need some field renovations there, possible lighting. We'll work with the community to see what those interests are there. But those are the interests we've heard first. We also have some issues with the fields out there. So it'd be great to renovate those fields. Then if you've been to Bear Park, there's a natural play area with logs. That area could also use a little bit of renovation. It's very well loved, and we would like to keep that safe and update that little area there. And then of course, the future South Davis Park basketball court would be great to move forward with that, with those funds. And then the big five to 10 year outlook, we have Village Green Park, Rose and Creek Community Park, the full build out Bellevue Park and Southwest Park. Again, they're not funded, but those are things that we look to. So as we have funds available, we can fill in those blanks there and move forward with these projects. In zone three, so now we've moved up to the northeast part of Santa Rosa. We have two projects up there that are active right now. We're working on Fremont Park, a neighborhood park located in the downtown area. We've been working with that community there on a master plan. And we're also, we had a historical evaluation completed on this project, and we are connecting our designer and our historical architects so that they can communicate and let us know how can we move forward and report that back out to the community and move forward with construction on updating that park. We also have our Luther Bank, Burbank Roof Replacement Project, which we'd very much like to move forward with right now, but we are waiting for clear skies. So as soon as we see some clearing in the weather, we will move forward with replacing that roof. And so here's just an image of Fremont Park. So you can kind of get an aerial overview. It's a more artistic view of Fremont Park. Fremont Park was designed in 1920 by Howard Gilkey. It's a historic park and really interesting passive park. So it's a really nice place. We want to keep it, we keep the character, but also update it to bring it to a little bit of modern standards as well as having good lines of sight through the park. And so we're working with those historical architects on that. Now looking at the two to five year. So this is upcoming in the next two to five years. We've got some funds in the Measure M column for Winkon Valley Park. If you haven't been to Winkon Valley Park yet, one of the playgrounds had to be removed because of safety issues. So we're really in need of replacing the full playground at Winkon Valley Park. And we're looking forward to moving forward with that project soon. We also have the desire to update the ball field at Doyle Park. And so we have about $345,000 there. And a full renovation is more like 2.5, but we are looking at some intermediate steps. We can use the $345,000 for it to get us closer to having a renovated ball field. And Tanglewood Park is another area where we want to engage with the community, talk about the basketball court and the playgrounds about updating those. They're very outdated. So we're really looking to meeting the community and looking what we can do to update those. And then Franklin Park is one of those parks where we really should be looking at the five to 10 year, but we are very excited to, and it made it to the two to five year project. Although there isn't any funding yet, we do have a need for updating that play area. So again, Northeast Zone, big picture, five to 10 years. That should be Oak Lake Green Park, which is near Tanglewood. We're looking at updating the playground and picnic areas there for 1.2 and the Franklin Park ball field renovations. Another really would just love to be able to get to that project.  Now that is a very big number. There are many different projects we can do that are smaller there, but that is taking the full look at the full master plan there. So as funding becomes available, there are smaller projects we can do at Juilliard to move forward with that. And so we'll look now to the Southeast Zone and some of the current projects we're working on right now is the Kiwana Springs Community Park. So that park has been sitting there since about 2006 slash eight without any development. So we're really, really excited to have a grant from the state and move forward and completely build out that park. So those neighbors will finally have their fully developed park. And then there is another portion of that, Kiwana Springs Park Garden Development, which we are started on. We've started the design. We started engaging with our future gardeners. And we have a little bit of funds for that now. And with our next fiscal year allocation of funding from PDI, there could be enough to complete that project. If not, we will do those portions of the project, which we have funding for right now. And then very exciting on consent tonight is also MLK Junior Park, $7 million. It was super exciting to be able to move forward with this project. It's a full renovation of the park, as well as the adjacent New Hall bike trail. So it's a really, really exciting project for that community we are looking forward to engaging and that is moving forward very soon. We have our consultant on board soon and we'll be engaging with the community. And we've also recently had our pickleball tennis meeting that went very well. We are looking at renovating courts at both Howard Park and Galvan Park. We have about $1.65 million from Measure M there to renovate those courts. And just to give you a little image of what that might look like, you could see Howard Park in the upper left corner of this sheet and you could see kind of zoomed in. Some of the issues we're dealing with, those are just the surface issues that you can see. We do have sub-surface issues there, so it's beyond maintenance. It needs a capital project to come in and renovate the courts. Very similarly at Galvan Park, some of our courts there are in need of serious structural repair. So we're hoping to repair those and resurface and look at the combination of tennis and pickleball, both of those sites. And this is just a little reminder of our fantastic new community park that's going to go in. Coen Springs Community Park, next to Taylor Mountain. There's some images there and the master plan on the bottom of the sheet. So in the Southwest, the two to five outlook, again we're really looking at Measure M funds Peter Springs Park, another very exciting moment. This has been a project that is a long time coming. The playground currently is very small and exists right behind somebody's home. So it'd be really great to engage with this community and get a sense of what playground would they like to see and get a little more centrally located at this park. And then Colgan Creek Park, you may recall we recently redid the, or renovated the school age playground at this park. We had an accident, a car accident and it destroyed the play area, so we replaced it. And this would be the project to replace the tot lot, the two to five year old playground along with, so it'd be a complete playground replacement. And then the Southeast Greenway, again it spans most of the, it spans all of the zone four in the old Highway 12 corridor. We should be the owners of that very soon and we are contemplating what sort of funds we can put towards that, but we estimate around $3 million to get started with a community engagement design team for our master plan and the required environmental documents to correspond with that. And then the big, again the big picture for zone four of the Southeast zone is a Kauana Toke Park. It's on Toke Street, so that's what we call it. That is a smaller neighborhood park. Again, we were working with a developer to develop this park, so we were anticipating funds coming in that hasn't come in yet, but we still have that up there as we're really excited to have a new neighborhood park in this area. The Vietnam's Veteran Trail is, again, one of those trails that is well-loved. We could use some assistance from the capital projects on the maintenance side. We are also working on this trail. And then Matanzas Park, again, it's adjacent to a school and it would be, again, it's very well-loved, so we'd love to have the funding for that to move forward with. And at Galvin Park, we have some athletic fields that are due for more of a larger update, so that's where you see the large amount there. And then it looks like we've shown this healthy screenway, again, just for extra effect, but again, we are looking for design and development funds there and anticipating the need there about $3 million. So that's the big overview of each of those zones. I know it's a lot of information, but just to quickly read, so this is kind of a summary, another way of looking at the same information. So zone one, we're funding Finlay Aquatic, Dutch Flora Place to Play. There's a little bit of gap in funding, which we should be able to close. And the zone two, the southwest, we've got South Davis Park, Laura Colgan, and Roseland funding. And we've got a small gap there, or a $2 million gap that we should be able to, we're hoping to close with future funding in future fiscal years. And then the northeast, we've got a couple projects, around 3.5 and we're fully funded there. And the southeast, we're looking at community, Kiwanis Springs Community Park and Garden, Martin Luther King Park, and the Howarth, Galvin, Tennyson Pickleball Courts. This isn't showing all the two to five year funding that's coming through Measure M, except this is just a snapshot of what's happening right now. There's always a lot of movement in parks and what we have going on. And we also do smaller projects when there's remainder of funding, such as replacing picnic tables at Bayer, a whole new picnic site at Detour Around Barn, just little things like that when there's additional funds left over certain projects, we try to tackle those smaller projects. So there's always something going on besides the big projects that you're seeing here today. So with that, I wanted to remind everybody that we also have our website. It's a wealth of information and provides kind of a snapshot of what's happening with each of the projects. Once we have our community outreach started, those projects go on that webpage and they're updated on a monthly basis and we have all of our contact information for our project managers as well. And so with that, I'm here if there's any questions. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for your excitement. And I wanted to take the opportunity to thank not only you, but your team for all the hard work that everyone has been doing, the community outreach is great. And also to let you know that thank you to Council Member Okrepke. We had a group of children that were able to come in and share with us about all-inclusive parks and having accessible parks for all that can be enjoyed by all, no matter if they're physical and or mental abilities. So just to keep that in mind would be great. Looking at council members to see if there are any comments, questions, sorry, any questions. Council Member Statte. Thank you Deputy Director Santos. An exciting list of projects. I met recently with the group Community Matters, which you're probably aware it's a group of parents who are very interested in having parks in the area that have more accessibility for kids with disabilities. And so do you know off the top of your head if any of these new parks or renovations are going to be specifically geared towards kids who have mobility issues, towards accessibility, play equipment, that kind of thing? Yes, actually we are specifically gearing our Kiwana Springs Park. It's our newest community park. So we'll have parking there and access. It's going to be a fully inclusive playground. So we're really excited about that. We also include inclusive features in our smaller neighborhood parks, but we really want to pack the punch in our larger parks such as Dutch Floor Park, Kiwana Springs Park, those larger parks where we can have new features and really make them completely inclusive. Wonderful, thank you. Are there any other questions, Council Member Ocrubke? To kind of dovetail off the mayor's comment and Council Member Staff's question, when we talk about accessibility, at those, what does that mean? Because there's varying degrees of accessibility. When you talk about Kiwana Springs, what does that mean? So Kiwana Springs will be designed in a way that every feature is accessible in one way or another. Whereas at some of our smaller parks we might have features that are more accessible like panels, especially updates to some of our older parks include features that can be used by all. Whereas Kiwana Springs, you'll be able to get on every activity no matter what. So Kiwana Springs will be completely inclusive for all the playground features and other features in the park. It's really exciting for the city to move forward with that. Would that be comparable to something like a magical bridge playground? That is the intent, yes. We really want to make this amazing for our community. So we're moving forward with it. Vice Mayor McDonald? Thank you for the presentation. I have some technical budget questions that I don't understand better. But it looks like the PDI budget is broken down into four different quadrants. Is that because when the income comes in it has to be specific to those four areas as we either refurbish or redo? Right, and so yeah, I kind of glazed over that a little bit, but going back it is the park development impact fees have been long broken into these quadrants because they represent major physical barriers for access, and so those make geographic sense to make sure that we're providing equity in those spaces and that we, the funds that the city is collecting are staying within those quadrants in which they were collected. There's also enough space for some flexibility to make sure the city has the ability to be nimble and put place parks where there's really good opportunities for the city to have a section where we can. So it's collected there and spent at the same quadrant through the State Quimby Act. Thank you for that response. Just so I'm clear, how many different budgets do we have in parks and could you give me just how many different ones we have and how there may be allocated? Sure. So we have the park development impact that are collected in planning and economic development. They're forwarded to finance. Finance gives us a number each year to budget with for each quadrant. And so you'll see that some of those projects had gaps in funding and that's where we look to next year of what's upcoming, where should those funds go and then we allocate those and those come as part of the budget process to council for approval. And so we do have a year for feedback and direction from them before it comes to council. That's for park development impact fees. We also right now are lucky to have the measure M tax measure out there. It's due to sunset in 2029. We really want to target renewal of that tax and you're seeing here tonight where they're being allocated and they're being put forth to council for approval as part of the budgetary process. There are a few smaller, they're not necessarily capital funds like the adopt a green space program that has some funding. That's for all of our volunteer efforts out there. Sometimes there's a smaller capital bench or something associated with that. There's a lot of trees out there so when people mitigate for trees, we collect that. I know it's not really capital but it's kind of some of the funds that we are using out there. Those are the main ones. I feel like, yes. And then of course always grants. We are constantly applying for and trying to double our money and making sure that we can use what funding we do have to the best of our ability. So when we have that, those are the main funding sources that we have. So if I'm counting correctly you have about five different sources of funds that come in for different park projects and we can either do refurbishment, a whole new build on a park or whatever we need to do to maintain our parks. Is that am I about right besides the grant funding? Correct. All of those can be used for projects, new items. It cannot be used for maintenance or things that aren't parks. But yes. And then could you give me maybe a total of how much all of those budgets equal out to be in your budget? Just looking at the projects that aren't funded or partially funded, I'm trying to get at what do we still have left over and could we potentially be able to do more now because I think the budget is not five to ten years when maybe their children are grown? Right. I do hear you and we do try to really reduce those projects so we can deliver more. We have a ton of projects coming out recently. Sometimes there's a wave of projects and right now we do as you heard have quite a few projects coming out. I don't have a complete total actually here for you today but we can get around $25 million for park development impact fees but as you heard they're spent. Right now that's what we have. If there's any remainder we do move forward with some of those smaller projects. And on the maintenance side of things we have a different set of funding, not necessarily a capital thing but we do have that funding for more of a maintenance like repair kind of perspective as well. We have a lot of funding that's been done over the ten years of measure M funding is estimated around $19 million so we're a little over halfway through with that right now and depending on how the tax does every year we have a little bit more if it does well and a little less if it doesn't do well. But that's the rough estimate right now about $25 million for the park development impact fees and that's what we're expected for measure M fees but that also includes the fees that will be going for recreation as well as the maintenance so when I take it back it's more around 13 million for capital projects for measure M total. I want to back up council. Let me respond real quick. My math is correct we have about $48 million in projects and $21 million is we can bring a breakdown back to you. I can send you out a spreadsheet of how that's broken out. I think that would be really helpful for us to be able to see how things are funded and what's still unfunded and some of it is when I look at some of our 2 to 5 year projects it looks like some of those are funded currently so is it due to capacity of not having enough staff members to be able to implement those now my concern is as the increase of cost of those up when we reach 2 to 5 years it will then be unfunded so some of those were currently funded so I'd like to see us move quicker on those projects as they look like there's current funding for them so is there anything that you could share with us about that? So I will say we've been using some of the measure M fund and we now have two parks planners prior to that we did not have we only I believe a parks park planner so now that we have two individuals on staff we're able to move some of these projects forward and it is now it's a priority for us to complete and activate these projects. That's very helpful and then as those projects move forward I think it would be great to be able to bring that back to council to give us an update even potentially you know quarterly or every six months so we actually know the projects that are happening around the city we could communicate to the community what they can look forward to for their tax dollars specifically around parks yeah and thank you for that we spoke to assistant city manager and we talked about providing quarterly updates or some type of cadence so you understand one what projects are coming online and two what projects are coming on in your district. All the CIP projects it's nice to know what's happening around the city but I think there's particular excitement when we look at parks and things that we do for community members especially our littlest ones thank you so much. Any other comments from council members? I would like to introduce our new recreation and parks manager who is actually in the audience if he wants to step down and maybe introduce himself. Greetings can you all hear me? All right there we go. Greetings all it's a pleasure to sit before you and a pleasure to be with you in the city of Santa Rosa and looking forward to producing some of these projects that Jen referred to. Thank you very much. Thank you and welcome. Thank you. Vice mayor McDonald. Thank you I'm sorry I just have one more question around the quadrants so how were those quadrants established in the city of Santa Rosa and who decides where those projects are in the quadrants or is it state run how we break it up or how was that done because I'm looking at developer fees that type of thing are we hindering progress throughout the city based on our own system. I'm going to do my best and I'm going to turn to our to help here. This was set up many many years ago by the city on how those quadrants are funded and they're again based on highway 101 and 12 and they're pretty wide open in the northeast so it's not really necessarily hindering in those areas where those fees are collected. It is used for the residential fees that are used from that area are used again in the same quadrant so it's a nice way of ensuring that those new houses that are happening also have an equal amount of parks as the rest of the city. How far back I'm not sure and the state is the one that provides guidance when the city council collects or when the city collects fees from residential units and so it's we'd have to go back and get a little bit more information on how far back it goes and why that was set but that's what we've been working with for a long time and I don't know if there's anything else but I would have an interest in that simply because I want to make sure that it's a continued equitable approach and I want to make sure that there's a lot of money around the city and then also that we're looking at if we have funding in one part of the city but they don't need parks there as much when I look at all your trees is there a way that we can actually be decision makers and make sure that parks are getting accomplished in other parts of the city that really need them so I would like to have that maybe brought back and take a look at that. Thank you so much. I see assistant city attorney nod in her head would you like to add any additional information. Thank you city manager Smith just briefly I think the framework that Jen was alluding to is kind of the mitigation fee act and also the state quimby act and I think we certainly could bring you a more detailed description of kind of the history of that how we established these quadrants and what we're thinking about. I also had a question if we're looking at development of parks is it am I recalling correctly for the park development impact fees that one of the quadrants borrowed from another quadrant or am I thinking about something totally different and because it's been a while can you refresh my memory. Sure yeah that that's correct in years past the park development impact fees were borrowed from certain funds especially been at valley golf course had borrowed park development impact fees and those are being repaid into those quadrants every year that we pay down those funds so that's still out there everything else has been returned and equaled out after 10 years we're finally back to only those funds that are collected in those quadrants are within it so we're whole we just don't know if we're going to be able to do that. Okay and that would be four from two to four. On the quadrants gosh I'd have to verify but yes I think it's from quadrant four and quadrant two where the funds were originally borrowed from park development impact fees. Okay and do we know when that will be completed the repayment will be repaid by 2030. I'm not exactly sure on the detail of that I should have brought my banded valley golf course stuff but it is a number that I can find for council and follow up with council on that exact number that's due. Thank you so much. Are there any additional questions from council? See council member step. Jen I neglected to add earlier after you very tactfully mentioned the pickle wall versus tennis issue that you and Jeff showed great bravery and diplomacy as you called the community together at family park it was fun to be part of one of the more vibrant community meetings than I can remember. Thank you specifically for your work on that issue. Thank you I appreciate it it's definitely a good lively meeting and I appreciate it. Any other questions? Madam city clerk may please facilitate public comment. Thank you we are now taking public comment on item 4.1 please make your way to the podium if you wish to provide comment you will have 3 minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period and as you approach the podium please provide your name for public record if you choose to respond to that. Thank you. I'm from Roseland I didn't hear the name of that new parks director but welcome sir I hope you'll have a good time here one of the things about this presentation today is that map that was first shown with those red trees 30 years ago southwest redevelopment project areas and the southwest area plan had put aside a southwest development impact fee and those fees needed to be used for more parks in the southwest where much of the housing is going in right now but it was redirected just a year or two ago when that fee was ended much more housing is being built in the southwest than anywhere else and we're always under parked one of the things that could be helpful to the community would be to involve the community more in the planning for the parks and in the actual implementation of what's going to occur one of the dilemmas that just happened was with this south Davis park myself and others were at some of those meetings and were hoping to have more of an impact in the policy decision but it didn't occur one of the things that people out in the southwest area is to name some of the parks it's south Davis they had local veterans who lived there the parks across the street from one of the men killed on the USS Arizona at the Pearl Harbor attack and they wanted to see if they could name the park after Mr. Maybe nothing came of it so far and then there's been people out in Roseland where there are a lot of people out in the southwest the pomos have been helpful in our efforts to get larger parks and nature parks and then also smaller pocket parks and neighborhood parks those pomos would like to have a park named for pomo there's a me walk park down in a vado I don't know if you've been there but you should go it shows how Native Americans have been the Latinos that enslaved them first but the point of it all is we should be able to have the community be involved in the naming of our parks and in the sizing of them things of that nature back in the old general plans it said we could have nature parks and that neighborhood parks could be less than 10 acres and you could have smaller pocket parks less than an acre and we haven't had any real impact in our efforts to get a better view of the community. I think the director will convene some of us community folks out there and Roseland especially to talk with you in person sir I'll be buying you the first whatever you like. Thank you may I see no one else approaching the podium for public comment. Thank you so much and thank you again for the presentation thank you. Great thank you item 4.2 is the tobacco retail license ordinance. Good afternoon Mayor Rogers Vice Mayor McDonald and council members I'm Cindy Benziarra administrative support supervisor with the city manager's office and joining me at this table is Jason Nutt the assistant city manager also in the city manager's office as well as Alyssa Hamilton and Theresa Vogue with the City of Petaluma and the city manager's office in the county of Sonoma's department of public health. So last spring during goal setting the city manager's office was asked to look at a tobacco retail license similar to that of the city of Petaluma. In doing so we learned about impact Sonoma and the aid that they give all of the cities within the county in retail license they were able to help us learn what other cities are doing and what possibilities they're available to us. So this time of our program the presentation I would like to turn it over to impact Sonoma. Thank you and good afternoon Mayor Rogers and council members. We're happy to be here to support this presentation and just wanted to start off by talking about Sonoma. We're funded by Prop 56 and old Prop 99 cigarette or tobacco product taxes and we're considered a local lead agency and so local lead agencies are funded and situated throughout the state of California so and then the state itself provides quite a bit of training and oversight and collaboration between the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco. So our tasks are to support policymaking and you know tobacco prevention efforts at a systematic level you know prevention and systematic level within our county and that means supporting cities as they look to pass strong public health related policies we've been here before with you not you folks but a community to be here today to supporting a tobacco retail license we have a lot of experience with this we're policy experts so we can answer questions about how different aspects of a policy work and yeah we have a team here and Alice is going to go into some prevalence data to kind of back up and tell you a little bit about the problem of tobacco use in the county and I'll pass it on to her. Thank you Tracy and thank you all for having us so first we're going to start off by looking at Sonoma County youth prevalence rates so what we can see here is that among the high school grades 11th graders are reporting the highest use of electronic cigarettes and at 13% and then at the bottom you see that they're reporting the highest use of cigarettes and in chew and then alternative high school students we can see have the highest rates of reported use for both of those tobacco product types and then when we move from county youth and we're looking specifically at Sonoma or Santa Rosa City youth again by product type we similarly see that 11th graders are reporting 11% use for electronic smoking devices and then 5% for cigarettes and chew which is similar to that of the county and again similarly you see that the alternative high school students have the highest rates of youth among both product types as well and then if we look at what are these youth perception or belief about getting their hands on these types of products so what we've got 11th graders who have the highest rate in belief that they can get these products and that they believe they can get them very easily and that's at 75% and 56% of the same group of students believe that it's also easy to get your hands on cigarettes and then what we have right here is a map of Sonoma County and we've got three of those. So green is representing those jurisdictions that have what we would consider the strongest and most comprehensive tobacco retail license being that those policies are going to have the greatest public health impact among the youth within our county and then the yellow is also a strong approach for policies just not going to have the greatest amount of public health impact among the youth within our county and then the green and red are going to be the cities, the jurisdictions that currently do not have any type of tobacco retail policy. And we also wanted to discuss decoy operations and we have some data here as you can see this is what we call YATPS young adult tobacco purchase surveys. We have done as public health and so that means that we're not able to enforce because we're not peace officers so these are all operations that did not result in citations but they were legitimate purchase attempts so in 2021 we did a random sample so this is a representative sample and the buy rate was actually quite shocking to us even the buy rate was 48% so essentially half the retailers sold and the end on this was 156 retailers which may not sound like a lot but for Sonoma County that was a pretty good sample size so that was a little shocking we went out and hit the ground and really reminded retailers about the age and how to check an ID etc etc so in 2023 we were able to follow up with another survey this was not a random representative sample what we decided to do instead was to target those retailers that had sold the first time and in that purchase attempt we were the decoy was sold to 17 times so it's still a problem here I know that we hear a lot that youth are getting their tobacco products online but this is a problem that they are still getting them in our local stores and let's see we'll go to the next slide yeah so there's been a lot of talk about these kind of ideal policies and I will just say from a public health stance these are the policies that have been vetted and believed to be because there's research to back up each of these provisions that go within the TRL policy as a bucket in which you have these different provisions that you can add to your TRL or some cities as indicated in that map that we just saw have a very basic TRL with just a few provisions so those are things that are of course up to council to decide if they want to give direction on that and in what types of provisions they want to go into the TRL policy but the basic policy is that a fee is charged and it allows your code enforcement or we can talk about a contract with public health to go out and do your compliance visits for you which we're open to doing that we do that for Windsor and Petaluma so that allows that compliance piece to provide that code enforcement on problem areas and so that's our relationship with Petaluma and they happen to want to adopt a very strong policy so theirs is probably the most comprehensive in the county and as you can see here there's many provisions around density around the types of products that can be sold and then they also chose to go a little bit stronger than the ones that have that flavor ban local in addition to the state because it makes a big difference and I think Cindy's going to go into that a big difference in terms of being able to actually enforce the law locally so I will pass it back to Cindy yeah thank you great thank you so this is a map of your seven districts and the number the bold state license to sell tobacco and the types of tobacco that we currently have the majority of them are sold at convenience stores either with or without gas stations next being a significant retailer which would refer to a tobacco shop that specifically sells tobacco and then we go down to our grocery stores and stores with pharmacies totally when we did this report we currently have now 123 and of course the number will grow until and if you do have a license in place okay so there are three elements that we looked at to bring to you today for possible a proposed or retail license and that is the annual fee the youth deterrence and the retail cap under the annual fee this license would be managed and paid to the county and then they would administer the annual compliance checks and if there were violations did occur it would then go to the city's code enforcement to manage those violations and we'll go further into that youth deterrence this would be a 600 foot radiance around any youth oriented area and this is similar to what we have in this ordinance today and the retail license cap would cap at the time of the license however many retailers we have and again this is similar to the short term rental ordinance okay other considerations you could have in the policy would be the ban on the flavor tobacco and as they refer to it we would strongly encourage a definition of what we would state a flavor tobacco is the definition in the state ordinance is very vague and harder to enforce so we would want to lay that out so that it would give a little more teeth to law enforcement or to whoever code enforcement excuse me who would be setting out the violations we could also set a minimum pack size and pack price we could also have a ban on any promotions coupons discounts and then lastly the onsite sales excuse me when we state no online sales that would mean you could not order online and then go to the store and pick it up you actually have to go into the store and purchase what they have on site where we are able to see that they are in for the proposed enforcement the first violation again that would do the county now all of these enforcements would be over a five year period so during that five year period when the county goes and does their annual inspections of compliance if they saw a violation then it would be reported to the city our code enforcement would go out if they are still in violated there would be a fine and I should state that during notice of the violation we could have a 30 to 60 day suspension which a notice would be posted at the retail location stating that they cannot sell during that time then the second time code enforcement goes out if they have they would issue the fine that we can set and then the third time if they are still violating three times within the five year period their license would be permanently revoked the economic impact of this the county would collect the annual fee but any violations that our city code department is issuing would come back to the city as well as far as a loss of sales tax due to potential businesses no longer longer selling at this time we cannot measure what that would be okay so today we are asking staff if you want us to continue developing this license and if you do do you want a cap on the number of retailers such as the density cap in Petaluma do you like the 600 foot boundary of the youth oriented area again keeping with our cannabis ordinance similar the enforcement framework how strong would you like us to go with the fees and the amount of times until they are actually revoking we are revoking their license and then should there be a policy including the packaging size the minimum costs and the loose leaf products that's all thank you alright thank you for that presentation we will I'm assuming you want to hear from everyone so can we Vice Mayor McDonnell the benefit of not being able to hear as you just get to talk over everybody when you want to so sorry folks if I did that I apologize so a couple things I really appreciate you bringing the ordinance forward I know this has been a goal of mine and I know council is interested in hearing about it so I appreciate all the work that's gone into this as well as all the advocates that are in the audience today that help bring the data forward so that we had to work with as far as an ordinance goes I have a couple questions based on the ordinance that you're proposing what color would that make us yellow or green as far as very progressive and stringent or what would it make us well like I was saying there's a bucket of the TRL so it really depends on the provisions that you decide to carry in your bucket so the strongest TRLs have the full cadre of provisions including no discounts no online sales they limit the number of retailers either by just a sheer number or by ratio of retailers to population is another formula that's been used elsewhere so that's a density provision there's youth sensitive areas so keeping new retailers within a proximity of youth sensitive areas and then the big ones are no mirroring or going beyond what the state has as a flavor ban because they did exempt a few products so the other jurisdictions, three other jurisdictions in the county and many other up and down the state frankly have scooped up those exempted products into their full flavor ban so that would tighten that up and then we have three other jurisdictions that have banned the sale of electronic cigarettes all together and a lot of that is based on the fact that the FDA really kind of they let these products be on the market before getting something called pre-market approval so you can see the disconnect there so they've circled back and they've started looking at and asking for everybody to submit their paperwork on their electronic cigarettes to date they have only approved three different e-cigarettes in a couple different configurations for those e-cigarettes so really almost every e-cigarette that you would see in the marketplace now is not FDA approved and is not really legally allowed to be there so moving towards an e-cig ban is not a huge step as some might think so yeah flavor ban, e-cig ban, discounts I think they're kind of all listed there but and I'm sure somebody will correct me up there if I missed one so if I was to go through some of them that I would be maybe in favor of as we move forward for consideration of doing the TRL I am in favor of having this put in place for the city of Santa Rosa so I could just give you some feedback the number of retailers we have 118 so far I would not be interested in expanding that and in fact I'd look at a model of attrition if they lose their license or it becomes revoked they don't get it back if they sell the business I would not be interested in transferring that to a new business I would say as we get rid of them we get rid of them and so I think that the distressing numbers of youth that are impacted by cigarettes and by smoking is concerning when you see these numbers right now and their current numbers as for the 600 foot move I would be interested in a thousand feet within any radius of the K-12 daycares all the items that are listed I'd have a full ban of any flavored tobacco products including those used in electronic devices as you suggested I think that it's proven specifically amongst youth and children that that becomes more addictive and I know you have the statistics I don't need to give them to you the establishing minimum package size I'd be in favor of that I don't know that I'm in favor of grandfathering anyone in on something like this but if that's something that's already in place and some of them are within that I would probably go ahead and leave that in place and use our model of the attrition or making sure that we're putting in fines that are high enough to deter any sales specifically to youth let's see the package size and pricing whatever you'd need to come back to us with I'm not really clear on how that works so probably be helpful to have that information developing a memo of understanding with the department and then as far as the violations go I understand we send a letter but I would be more interested in sending a letter and a fine and letting them know that say at the first of the year or whenever it is this is what's going to be in place if you sell to anyone a minor that's not allowed to buy your products second violation would be a heftier fine if I was choosing and the third would be revoking you never get it back I don't think that's necessary if council decides to have the 118 cap but if we didn't or they didn't want to have that 118 cap I would be interested in the density language to be added as well but as far as I'm concerned we should be capping and not adding any more in and with all of those recommendations would we make it to the green color okay thank you that's what I wanted to know thanks council members that thank you very much for a very comprehensive presentation research specialist Benzara my question actually I need a reminder remind me how these proposed restrictions would line up with the cannabis policies that we have in the community in terms of number retailers in terms of product restrictions that kind of thing thank you council members staff I am not certain I know we were looking at that more for the radius as far as the fees it would actually go in I don't know that the violation fees would be exactly in would be concise with the cannabis is that something that you would like it to be parallel to I'm just interested if we're pursuing incompatible processes for the two and in terms of we have cannabis policies and now we're thinking about putting in place these kinds of tobacco policies is there consistency in what we're applying I think as we look to further develop this ordinance should council direct us to do so we can look at the alignment of those things I believe there's slightly there's a difference between the two cannabis is a locally grown industry is what I'm understanding and so that there's some local production the other is not likely to be and so there may be a way for us to differentiate between some of those activities but to miss Benzara's point where we're happy to take that into consideration the council asked us to proceed further and come back to you with some specific side-by-side comparisons that that we can we can demonstrate how they work together that might be helpful thank you councilmember cloney thank you councilmember or vice mayor mcdonald I thought her feedback was stellar and the reason why I think that is that we are the largest market between San Francisco and Portland and we have this opportunity to protect the largest portion of children outside of any like county government in this region and that if we are able to institute this in a way that's effective I wouldn't say that's the only way that we can do this is to make sure that the cannabis due to the addiction potential for young people and really look at this as a specific threat to young people that we can nip in the bud that is more risky for children who are struggling more and so taking an aggressive approach isn't going to stop any adult who wants to get their product from getting it probably in the future. I think this approach will lead us to better futures for some of our children so thank you councilmember rogers thank you so much I'm going to be in agreement with my colleagues I think that this is a really good one and one of the things that I really love is that it's being pushed by youth and I've met with a number of youth members who are all on board and not only do I think it's an issue that's really important to them in the community that we listen and that we do things. I was particularly happy to see the inclusion of the online retail I do pretty frequent community office hours and once a year I do one that's specifically for students and youth in our community and that's one of the questions I've consistently asked over the last couple of years which is where do you get access to tobacco services? I think that's one of the things that's really important to me and one answer is online they usually say it's ebay but online sales as well so I was really happy to see that work its way into the ordinance thank you so much for all the work on it. I'm in agreement with all of my colleagues my one question though is how many clubs like that where membership is required other than the city of Santa Rosa? I believe they would still need to have a license from the state so they'd still be included in our numbers and it would fall under the ordinance if I'm not correct I'm not. I don't know of any private clubs in Santa Rosa I know for example the bohemian club offers out there in Gernville and they're open a couple weeks here and there and so they're unincorporated so that's ours and we're not able to inspect them or anything it's not a place where youth has access so we decided that we're not licensing them so I think it's a case by case. I'm more pointed towards it's my understanding that there's clubs that because they're private clubs they are allowed to have smoking on site where people go in bycigars or pipe tobacco when they're able to enjoy it on site because it's a private club it's not open to the public. Yeah that then brings in the second-hand smoke policies that you guys have and I think if it's private then they can do that but they can't sell tobacco or even give it away unless they have a tobacco license Right I'm just trying to see how this applies to those situations but I think it's open retailer Yeah it's not open to the public so yeah we'd have to give that some more thought for you I'd like to see that So that was going to be my question councilmembers is that a specific area you would like us to bring back with more detail and is there a particular angle that you would like us to incorporate for shops like those private clubs the detail on you know a public retailer like any sort of convenience or retailer that you can go in and the public can buy versus in order for me to purchase tobacco and enjoy it on that site I have to be a member does that fall into the same category do we need to address it the same or differently or how does that So for example if if there was a section of the ordinance that called out specific retail shops that were in essence smoke shops you are not to carry out you are consuming in essence on site that would be something you would be interested in seeing us bring back what might be slightly different than a retail sales take away product is that I don't have an angle I don't have an opinion I just want to see how it would be treated or if there are legal challenges to that because it is private versus public that's that's just where I have some questions that's helpful and I know that we have through the planning and economic development department they've received some permit requests for smoke shops where it's not a sale but it's more of a it's a location it's a destination and this is definitely a question I think they're asking us how this would coordinate as well so I'm happy to sit down with the teams to figure out how we might want to respond to that and we'll incorporate that specifically into our next discussion thank you are there any additional questions or comments from council members so I'll just say that I think compliant checks and violation enforcement is great I would like it at one but I know that that's not reality based so three is fine I know that there are different employees that work at different establishments and so I don't want to punish the business owner just because the employees have done something wrong that they can be educated about and we can fix it although the mother in me wants to say you are done after you do one but I did want to know about how much that the license would be currently I believe it's between 250 is that right yeah so the fee in Petaluma and they're paying for basically one visit a year is 525 the county is and they just the more recently updated their fees so the county is at 520 Windsor is still stuck at 350 but they're going to raise theirs next year so you know if you're interested in the county doing those compliance visits we'll put together it's prop 26 so we'll look at we don't make money off of this by for sure so we would put together costs for you and assuming you would want one visit a year but like Petaluma started out and they wanted to a year we also have a grant right now from the DOJ and that allows us to do check back visits so that would be something that would come as a freebie for you and yeah so we'd put together those costs for you I my best guess would be they'd be in the range of 550 a year okay thank you and another question I had is what happens if there's already an establishment that may be within a thousand or 600 feet from a youth oriented area how does that work well that would be the current grandfather clause similar to the gas station ordinance that you have if you chose to go that route and then at the time of the sale that's where you'd have to determine do you want they would have to apply the new owner and then the radius would determine that tobacco could not be sold because it would be within the 600 or a thousand feet okay with the grandfather clause I am fine with a thousand feet I just don't want to penalize current business owners that have already had their establishment and didn't know that we were going to do this and then I am in favor of the online banning the online retail because I think that that is probably one of the easiest ways that our youth get a hold of so many different things that we don't want them to have and that's how they come into our community so I am definitely in favor of that when we look at the retail license cap I think that that is fine I am fine with the retail license cap but I would also like to make it clear for myself and I'm just speaking for myself that I'm in favor of doing what we can do to help our youth to not start what I think is a very yucky, disgusting habit that's just my personal personal view but there are adults that do smoke so I'm not it would be great if they would stop smoking but I'm not trying to target them I'm trying to target I'm trying to keep our children safe and so I did want to make that clear I think that there are a lot of vices that people have that we provide licenses and everything else too so if we were going to go with tobacco I think we need to go with a lot more than just tobacco if we're going to look at the vices that people have so no additional alright Madam City Clerk may you please facilitate public comment thank you we are now taking public comment on item 4.2 please make your way to the podium we do have two podiums the western lectern and the eastern lectern so you can split yourselves among each and as you approach the podium we'll move our way from we'll start on the western side we'll go back and forth until we've made our way through public comment and as you approach the podium please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so we will go ahead with the western lectern is that me that is you hi my name is Courtney Scott and I am from Zero Waste Sonoma I am the household hazardous waste program manager while this is rightfully been addressed as a public health concern I would like to also provide some extra information about the complicated world of the vape pen disposal when I talk about vape pens I want to be clear that I am talking about nicotine and cannabis but in general the disposal of vape pens is extremely complicated I've been working on it for about five years now and I just recently found a solution for the proper disposal of vape pens vape pens are a tiny device that can contain several different hazard classes in one tiny instrument they can have batteries e-waste and nicotine or cannabis nicotine is an acutely hazardous waste and therefore comes with lots of storage and transportation and disposal laws that must be complied this is particularly an issue for schools as you've noticed youth vaping is an epidemic honestly and the schools are getting stuck with that waste and trying to figure out what to do with them and unfortunately their solutions they don't have many solutions at all Zero Waste Sonoma last year did a waste characterization study of our landfill and we estimated that 70 tons of vape pens are making their way into the landfill every year this is just our Sonoma County landfill 70 tons if I take an average of vape pens can vary in weight but that would be about 700,000 vape pens being disposed of in the landfill incorrectly every year they should be managed as a hazardous waste to make the issue worse the hazardous waste contractors and professionals do not know what to do with these last year I went to a conference and went around to every single hazardous waste disposal vendor there and asked them if they could accept vape pens and they could not, not a single one told me they could take it the DTSC the Department of Transportation and Toxic Substances Control is telling schools to hand the vape pens back to the parents so that the parents can dispose of them from the old hazardous waste programs that's not going to happen so if you need any more information about the disposal of vape pens please keep me and Zero with Sonoma in mind thank you thank you next speaker from the east lecturing thank you mayor and council members for bringing this topic to a consideration my name is Gary Damron I've been a citizen Santa Rosa for over 50 years and I was a teacher at Santa Rosa High School from 1969 to 2003 my father started smoking as a young man in the U.S. Navy he was a change smoker back in the 50's I was a kid that was sent to buy his cigarettes at the corner store my father became seriously at 63 emphysema excuse me he wrote of the lining of his esophagus so severely that in the final months of his life he was bedridden the final months were torture he hiccuped uncontrollably and continuously non-stop night and day for months until his heart gave out my father missed out on decades of life and me and many grandchildren it's only by the grace of God that I didn't smoke however I was expelled second hand smoked during my childhood years and it infected my health during my years at Santa Rosa High School I witnessed students smoking rate that started out high in the 60's and went lower and lower by the time I retired in the 2003 it was no longer allowed on campus though my son and grandson through that understanding and involvement in the tobacco prevention I have learned how vapes have reversed this trend I'm shocked we were close we were now close to defend teen smoking but now so many kids are addicted to nicotine so many of the students across our cities use vape like at mario cry school where my other grandson recently attended the tobacco industry helped in my father's life prematurely please adopt the tobacco retail license in Santa Rosa that bans e-cigarettes like Paloma, Sebastopol and Windsor, thank you next speaker please hi my name is Samuel Dameron I'm 20 years old an S.R.J.C. student and resident of Santa Rosa district 4 around the beginning of last year I participated in undercover purchase surveys for the county department of health services these surveys had our valid ID available to resent to store clerks I have never smoked or vape but I have learned how easy it is for teens in Santa Rosa to buy cigarettes and e-cigarettes over a couple weeks I was sold to 60 times a big portion of these were in Santa Rosa I won vape and smoke shop a couple of blocks away from here the clerk and owner did not check my ID on entry I was able to buy over $100 high dose vapes and a medium size hookah pipe they didn't ask my age or check my ID I found out that the same store regularly sold to my childhood friend and her friends when she was at Santa Rosa High she has had an addiction since age 15 to nicotine many stores across Santa Rosa that sold to me actually did check my ID but still knowingly sold to me illegally it's like the state law so we can barely enforce it's a joke to them they don't even care I've been a member of Tobacco Free Sonoma County Coalition since 2019 I participated in Santa Rosa Ford community sessions tabled at the night at the day and night festival and campaign for TRLs here in Sonoma County please protect Santa Rosa teens please adopt the TRL ordinance that bans vapes please help me stop vaping epidemic in our neighborhoods thank you thank you next speaker please hello thank you so much my name is Jenny Bard I live here in Santa Rosa and I am so happy to see this item come before you today and hearing all of you talking about the importance of protecting our youth this issue is very personal to me and I really appreciate the previous speakers who have spoken on this I worked for the American Lung Association for 24 years and I have seen a close the devastation on families of nicotine and tobacco addiction what you are doing today is so important and I think probably it's a surprise to you all that you have not stepped up to do a TRL until now as a new city council but as a resident and someone concerned about public health myself as a grandmother of young children I want to see our city provide the boldest and most protective protections as Petaluma and anything more that you can do as was noted we want to be progressive and bold so yes ban e-cigarettes put a cap on retailers a thousand feet minimum from schools to have these products available minimum package size close the loopholes raise the prices all of this will protect our youth the tobacco industry is very clever and creative in creating new nicotine products to bypass any law you've heard about the non menthol menthol so having a strong definition of the products as was mentioned so I'm just here today to say thank you the bottom line is our kids and Santa Rosa can really be a leader in protecting our kids and our communities thank you so much thank you next speaker please thank you Mayor Rogers and city council I had a three minute thing to read but I'm not going to because of all the support tonight I want to thank all of you I do want to tell a quick story I might be one of the can you hear me I do want to tell a quick story ten years ago I was working on a grant with city of Santa Rosa SRPD and community action partnership and we were doing DUI prevention and my brain was all caught up and binge drinking stats and DUI stats and my boss at the time Vince Hartbur and mentor and community engagement asked me to work with the Friday night live group and the dig youth and do a tobacco survey and I did it and I went along and you know we did some store surveys and inventory and at the time I was a little bit skeptical about the effort because I'm like how many teams really smoke but Vince he impressed on me he said you know pay attention to what neighborhoods you're in and the number of retailers you're surveying with the youth in those neighborhoods in Santa Rosa and what they're selling and my eyes open up and that was my sort of first introduction to the retail environment with tobacco and health inequities and disparities years later I worked for county health on the tobacco team and my other friend a late colleague Carlos Del Pozo asked me to do some Spanish language anti vape trainings for and our team was doing presentations across Santa Rosa at different middle schools and high schools because there was a huge demand to address the teen vaping epidemic and after that the rage and shock that I was expressed by the parents that I was teaching and that our teams were teaching and hearing from youth and we were devastating stories of chronic addiction to especially e-cigarettes Carlos said when are we going to get a TRL in Santa Rosa and I just did the public management thing I said we're working in other jurisdictions and the parents looked at me and they said you need to get this here now and we got that feedback and then I left the county and worked with the coalition and then Santa Rosa I anticipated a lot of opposition but because of all that feedback in 2019 and then 2020 we redirected we listened to the community and I just want to thank you because councils come and go staff come and go but it's people like Vince Harper they're the ripple effect of their impact goes for years and years to oppose of thanks to your support it's exciting to be here exciting to be with my Dad and my son Thank youynxpeaker please and also may I ask that if you are going to speak and you're after someone else if you can just make your way to the other podium so we can keep going with the speakers thank you Thank you. Please go ahead. Good evening. I'm Pam Granger. I wear a lot of hats tonight. I guess I'm officially the chair of Tobacco Free Sonoma County Community Coalition. I'm also a grandmother and that probably is my best hat and the biggest reason why I care so much about tobacco prevention and education. As we've said, there's no one strategy to keep kids from starting and to support people from quitting nicotine addiction. Michelle McGarry would have spoken, but she left just a few minutes ago to do vaping cessation at a local high school. So there are ways that we're trying to support those who we haven't stopped in the front end. I just wanted to clarify a few things. I want you to know that ultimately our goal is to reduce access and availability of tobacco products. We'd like to do that everywhere, truth be told. And I just want to make sure when you talk about a cap, it could be semantics, but a cap of 123, I think I heard was the update, that you don't think that if you get to 120 that you can have three more. So I think that we're all in agreement that we don't want to keep it at 123. So I just wanted to kind of mention that. Another thing to mention for the retailers, sometimes the way we talk about not transferring licenses, they think they must understand and think that has to do with their business license because flavored vaping devices were and all flavored products were the state of California voters banned those 10 months ago. Their inventory should not be tremendously impacted because already the state of California did that. For 10 months ago, they should have figured out what their business plan was going to be. And so the amount of impact on the last little bit, as Theresa Vogue said, when they said that they were approved by the FDA, this was not approved as a satin device. It wasn't, you know, I just want to make sure you understand there was no medical benefit for any of the products to be on the market quite to the contrary. I also was mentioned we can't measure tax loss, which is true, but we probably can measure health gain. And so years ago, there was a study that was done that indicated every citizen was responsible or it was a cost of $480 a year based on health costs. So I think that if we can stop upstream, then we won't have to be catching them in a basket and trying to help them stop at the end. So thank you so very much. We're very excited and we're here to help all along. Thank you. Mayor MC, no one else approached the podiums for public comment on 4.2. Thank you. Any more questions or comments from Council? I did have a question. So when we talk about the ones that are grandfathered in, that don't, that can still be within proximity of our youth, just a thought, but has anyone thought about maybe visiting them more than once due to the proximity that they are near our youth? Does that make sense what I'm asking? Yes, so you're saying those that currently would be allowed to sell and they're within the 600 to have a maybe a two or three time a year compliance check versus those are with outside the thousand range they would have once a year compliance. Is that what you're asking? That is what I'm asking and I'm asking because I think that it's important for us to know that the close and we do know the closer in proximity that they are to our youth the more our youth they're going to go to those establishments. Have you seen that the retailers that are closer in proximity to our youth tend to sell to our youth or are they knowledgeable and don't sell to our youth? I can look back. I don't know that there's a trend towards them selling more. We do know that that retailers that are considered significant tobacco retailers like your Puff Puff Pass, your Sammy Smokeshop that you guys I think have a couple of those. Lucky you that they have we see more sales to decoys by those types of retailers so depending on where those are located we could you know maybe do some maps up for you to show the types of retailers that tend to sell more to youth in their proximity to schools and these youth sensitive areas. Okay and or maybe looking at people that have already violated to not wait a year if we're doing the one the you know violation tiers the one two and three to not wait a year before we go back and check because during that year the number of youth that have been impacted is I'm assuming very very high and if they sold to one I'm pretty sure that they sell to many others so maybe going back before that year to do a check to make sure that you know they received the violation that they're educated and that they're not continuing to sell and with that thank you very much for the presentation and thank you for being here because it is 341 and our meeting does not start until 4 p.m. We will take a recess until 4 p.m. Thank you hello and welcome to our November 14 2023 Santa Rosa City Council meeting it is now 407 and we will be starting our meeting I would like to take this opportunity to welcome madam city attorney Teresa stricker and seeing a quorum madam city clerk can you please call the roll thank you councilmember step your councilmember Rogers here councilmember O'Crepkey here councilmember Fleming here councilmember Alvarez vice mayor McDonald here mayor Rogers president let the record show that all council members are present moving to item six report on study in closed session madam city attorney can you please report out there was no reportable action on either of the closed session items 2.1 or 2.2 madam city manager would you like to report out on the study sessions I have to confess I am I am new and I'm not sure what we do when reporting out on the study session other than that to study sessions were had thank you next time I will be much smoother on that I promise it's alright thank you madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment we are now taking public comment on item 6 if you wish to provide public comment make your way to the podium you will have three minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period and as you approach the podium and the mic is on please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so may I'm seeing no one approach the podiums for public comment on item 6 thank you we have no proclamations this evening so we will continue on to item 8 which is our staff briefings madam city manager item 8.1 is our community empowerment plan update Pearson director communications for the city I'll be providing the community empowerment plan update last month the Santa Rosa police department hosted a coloring contest amongst third graders at the rosin unified school district one winner from each of the third grade classes at shepherd rosin and rosin creek elementary schools were chosen by srpd employee judges today chief craving kregan excuse me visited the schools and had lunch with those contest winners so be on the lookout for the coloring contest winning artwork in upcoming editions of the city connections newsletter looking ahead to December the Santa Rosa police department will host cookies with a cop at Santa Rosa mall plaza on December 2nd from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. we encourage the community to attend for some sweet treats and great conversations with Santa Rosa police department officers and staff finally we are recruiting for the community engagement manager positions super excited about that I encourage anyone interested in applying for that position to do so before closing deadline which is tomorrow evening you can find that position and many other excellent city jobs at srcity.org slash jobs and that includes my update thank you looking to council are there any questions all right seeing none madam city clerk may you please facilitate public comment thank you we are now taking public comment on item 8.1 if you'd like to make a comment please make your way to the podium you will have three minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period may I'm seeing no one approach the podium for public comment item 9 city manager in city attorney's report madam city manager thank you mayor so I would like to remind the public that we are recruiting for the following current and upcoming upcoming positions the community advisory board the design review reward bicycle and pedestrian advisory board board of public regulation appeals Santa Rosa tourism business improvement area advisory board Marin Sonoma mosquito and vector control district and waterways advisory committee you can go to srcity.org forward slash boards to apply thank you okay I want to first say thank you and I am pleased to be here at my first meeting as your city attorney and wanted to just thank all of you for that opportunity attached to the agenda was the litigation summary as of October 30th 2023 there was one settlement that occurred that is above $50,000 that's in brown versus city of Santa Rosa the parties did reach a settlement in the amount of $100,000 this matter involved a trip and fall on a sidewalk the plaintiff alleged liability against the city for dangerous condition of public property arising from an uplifted sidewalk adjacent to Creekside park the parties executed a settlement agreement and the matter has now been dismissed with prejudice in Sonoma Superior Court otherwise the city attorney's office continues to manage a caseload that remains consistent at approximately 28 cases many cases are currently in the discovery phase with trial dates assigned to most of them we continue to try to resolve smaller cases with little to no cost to the city and with that if council has any questions I'm happy to address them thank you seeing no questions madam city clerk can you please facilitate public comment thank you we are now taking public comments on item 9 please make your way to the podium if you'd like to provide a comment you will have three minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period mayor MC no one approached the podium for public comments on item 9 thank you moving on to item 10 statements of abstention by council members are there any abstentions that need to be made vice mayor McDonald thank you mayor I'll be recusing myself from item 13.3 due to a personal relationship thank you are there any additional abstentions that need to be made saying none we will move on to item 11 mayor and council member reports are there any council members staff thank you mayor a few meetings to to report out on on this on October 26th there are actually two meetings the Russian River water set so watershed association where there was a general program update as well as an extensive discussion of the eel river Potter Valley Dam project later that later that afternoon there was also an egg and open space meeting where there was review of impending acquisitions some really nice properties potentially coming into public ownership here over the next over the next year on then on November 3rd there's a really fabulous event that was coordinated by Santa Rosa's own Jennifer Burke for Santa Rosa water it was the 20th anniversary of the geysers project this being the project where we're shipping we're pumping millions of gallons of recycled water every day you know up 3,000 vertical feet and 40 miles north to provide power for most of the county and some of Mendocino just a really amazing project that was created now 20 years ago by by the elected officials and the folks at snow at Santa Rosa water at that time so a great group up there to commemorate just a like a really remarkable project at the you know the largest geothermal field in the world on let's see and then on November sorry I'm getting my notes mixed up here oh yes November 8th we met the violence prevention partnership met I will let the chair of that of that committee discuss discuss the conversation that day and on the 9th the long-term financial policy now that subcommittee also met and I'll defer to the mayor for the report on that on that subcommittee thank you very much thank you councilmember Rogers thank you so much mayor a couple of updates for council on some of the boards that I represent Sonoma County and the council on first is for smart we had two good smart events last week one was a groundbreaking in Petaluma for the second smart station it's the Corona Road North station that one's been in the works for a long time a really good event and a lot of folks from the community have been working on the project were there the second I was proud to represent smart and joined the great redwood trail board up in Healdsburg literally at the same time we had to divide and conquer the folks came to Healdsburg to hear more about once smart gets to Windsor which looks like it'll be early 2025 what does the delivery plan look like towards Healdsburg and how do they start to plan for coming across the bridge up in Healdsburg connecting to the Foss Creek Trail so it was really great conversation with folks who represent that board no definitive timeline but since 2021 smarts brought in two hundred and twenty one million dollars for capital projects to be able to deliver the train so I know Windsor's been looking for it we had our Sonoma County transportation authority and regional climate protection authority meeting yesterday it was the first meeting under the new executive director James Cameron congratulations to him he's got giant shoes to fill it was a packed agenda but I wanted to highlight for the council the development and behavioral travel update we do this periodically and there's a lot of really instructive data for our communities on their growth patterns looking at what types of housing is being proposed and how transportation projects are linking up with them I'd encourage you to take a look at it but some of the highlights for you was really around work from home data which we have not really seen up to this point and I know my colleague on MTC has probably seen some of this as well but really in terms of work from home Sonoma County is below the Bay Area average in how many folks are working from home where we were at 7% of work from home in 2013 to 2017 as an average we are higher now we're at 15% but that is still below that average 45% of the folks who work from home make more than $170,000 a year while only 14% make under $50,000 per year so it's definitely something for us to consider when we're talking about work from home and how it mirrors our equity goals who actually are we talking about in that instance for the third straight year we've had more deaths in Sonoma County than we had births so our population trend is moving that direction very proud to report that Santa Rosa showed the lowest vehicle miles traveled per capita that's expected in a denser city but it also highlights the great work our transportation team has been doing and then the final final data point for folks 90% of all trips that originate in Sonoma County now stay in Sonoma County folks really are having shorter trips and that represents roughly 54% of the total vehicle miles traveled for that 90% that other 10% and I'm going to put on my smart hat and that's why we're so excited about smart that other 10% that goes out of county represents 46% of our vehicle miles traveled as a county so really good to highlight that and talk about it final thing mayor and then I'll turn it over it was brought to my attention by a community member that in the last charter review committee one of the recommendations that was made that was approved by voters was for us to change the language in our appointees to boards and commissions to change it from registered voter to resident of Santa Rosa to be more inclusive of who can participate it was brought to my attention that our council policies still don't mirror that change that voters asked is currently prohibitive of others to serve so I was going to throw that out there and see if it would be possible either the mayor working with the city manager or seeing from my colleagues if there is interest in us trying to bring something back to the council it seems like a pretty pretty easy fix for us to to sink those two thank you for that report and we took notes on that and we will follow up with that thank you councilmember Fleming thank you mayor it's been a few weeks but I did get to go to the Laurel perennial park opening which is 162 units of affordable senior housing at the former journey's end site I just wanted to take a moment to thank our dedicated housing staff for their part in making that that go you know it was a broad effort in the both the private and public sectors from contractors and financiers and political willpower and our congressional delegation in particular congressman Thompson I could go on thanking people for hours and that's what we did that day so I'm not going to repeat it and councilmember O'Crepkey was there but the point is is that a few of the people who were there that horrible night in 2017 have been able to return and you know it's really satisfying to see them come back and frankly you know it's it's a relief that there's not that scar in our community anymore and that we can really begin healing and more housing news the renewal enterprise district met a couple of weeks ago and had our first meeting under a new executive director Robin Stefani and we're really excited to continue the work of building both market rate and affordable housing and projects that are shovel ready so if you have one of those and you're interested please do reach out to us in MTC news I continue to advocate to have a fully funded bike and pedestrian overcross between which would go over approximately from Cottington to the JC and really increase connectivity and to my mind with that and one at one point in time hopefully Jennings overcross will go and we're going to start to see a lot more bike and pedestrian activity which will really better make the argument for fully implementing our bike and pedestrian masterplan and then I got to tour the smart corridor of the MTC and for with MTC and the amount of positive support for housing along the corridors just really striking and then I read this day in my report from my daughter's school because today in 1960 Ruby Bridges stepped into history books when she integrated the William Frans elementary school in New Orleans becoming a national icon for the civil rights movement today her story continues inspire the next generation of leaders then racism together one at a time and this is a quote from her my message is really that racism has no place in the hearts and minds of our children so I just thought that was really touching that a six-year-old was put in that position and my heart goes out to her and in gratitude for for being brave but no child should have to do that thank you council member O'Cropkey thank you very much mayor on October 26th I was able to invite 35 about 35 sixth graders to come to council chambers to discuss local government and it was actually really really cool their initial purpose of coming here was to discuss a magical bridge playground which as few were here or watching earlier was discussed with our parks report and it's basically an all accessibility playground and it's everything from physical issues to social and emotional issues that it's accessible to everybody and it was great to talk to them it was an impressively put together presentation they were impressive young men and women and and I say that because they it was a very well put together presentation we were lucky enough to have our mayor join us for part of it as well as Logan Pitts the chair of the Board of Community Services to hear it out and then we got to have a little Q&A about government and what it's like and what it's like being a council member and some very good questions and some unexpected questions but it was great to have them here and to see you that many youth of that age to be interested in what happens here at City Hall and then throughout our city later that day I had the pleasure to meet with Denise Andrew Shanko who is a community leader from Trukese Ukraine which is our sister city we had a long discussion about Ukraine in general as well as the recovery process and while insurance and planning all of those things don't necessarily translate to his country he was very interested in furthering the discussion on community activism accountability with the government and how we can pair our partner in doing that and he was nice enough to gift our city this this beautiful flag which is the the flag of the city of Trukese and so this will go up hopefully in our case up there if you can see it so that was really special on November 1st we had a I attended Lafko and there was a discussion about forming a new water district in the North County which is interest very interesting conversation especially with the Potter Valley project and what's going on with that and kind of highlights the need for those discussions it was also reported out that the disadvantaged unincorporated community study as well as the municipal services review that is going on is is well along and hopefully we should have one of those by the end of the year and the other by the beginning of next year on the second I was able to attend the violence prevention awareness seminar and I'll defer to the chair of VPP to discuss that further and then I along with my colleague council member Alvarez were asked to speak at the Rosin Regional Library community preview which was a great opportunity for with the Sonoma County Library partnering with OCN to discuss what exactly libraries do and seeing renderings of what could what it could look like I think all of us have maybe a most of us have a preconceived notion of what a library is supposed to look like and some of the renderings were quite remarkable and and hopefully we can incorporate some of that here and then over the weekend on Friday the 10th I was asked to speak at the nation's finest Veterans Day event where they honor Charles Schultz and representative Mike Thompson as well as four other individuals for their service to veterans in Sonoma County and further it was a great event and it was just I was honored to be able to speak on behalf of the city to to recognize these individuals would have done so much for for those that have served our country and that's it for my report thank you and council member Ocrackie I would like to thank you because I was told you represented the city very nicely and eloquently your words so thank you very much for doing that council member Alvarez thank you Madam Mayor and to the point that that council member Ocrackie just made about the rendition of the library it is quite something to see for the first time in 20 years what our library could possibly look like including the floor plan including the uses that will be providing the community so it's been a long time coming and I'm happy to see that we they were moving that that ball further when one of the weddings in Kingston yet as I would definitely present for everyone whether I know you or not I'm definitely crashing that party I do want to announce that I'm appointing Sarah Hart to our bike and pedestrian advisory board and I also want to inform the community that I've been meeting with with the Punjabi community of San Rosa and discussing their concerns as well as ideas so I hope to present a more formal report to to my colleagues and also invite my colleagues to to participate in these conversations that I'm currently have having our Punjabi community if you know is one that that makes up quite a quite a strong presence in our community but are very very silent in their way of being so I definitely am trying to bring them forward to participate of more in our in our civic process and really create the best scenarios that we possibly can and that is it for now thank you thank you vice mayor McDonald thank you mayor so I have a few things to report out last month zero waste met and I want to thank Renee Gandhi for attending in my in my absence and she'll be attending this month as well and so this is a quick update from her we had a notice to intent to acquire approximately 3.5 acres on Pruitt Avenue in Windsor and that was approved there's was also consideration of agreement with a consulting group to conduct technical assistance for compliance with SB 1383 which is the requirements for disposable foodware ordinance in Sonoma County and that was approved and under our executive directors report Sonoma County Public Infrastructure Department is working to develop a compost facility at a closed landfill airport site in partnership with permit Sonoma and zero waste and they would expand local capacity to process and compost 55,000 tons of organic materials annually so the RFP proposals received for engineering studies and interviews will be at the end of October and I'm sure that that will be coming forward in the upcoming meeting the violence prevention partnership held their yearly seminar this is our first in-person partnership seminar since COVID and it was a sold-out event and so really I want to thank staff for all their hard work on putting this event together it was extremely well attended but it was also the information that we received that day was was really really remarkable I want to thank the author Luis Rodriguez for being our keynote speaker speaker is an extremely powerful speaker with really true life experiences on gangs and gang intervention and what we can do as a community in addition we had an update from Sergeant Matt White from the Santa Rosa Police Department on where we are at on our gang and violence trends in the City of Santa Rosa and we had Mario I think it's Marcel from City of San Jose that came to share two specific problems programs that they are working on in the City of San Jose and one of them is around trauma care when someone enters into a hospital by having a violent act done to them and the intervention that we do with our youth to get them out of the current situation that they are in and then the other program was our safe schools program and so we have talked about partnering with San Jose going down and having a field trip to see how their VPP program works and what we could maybe implement here obviously on a smaller scale in the City of Santa Rosa so in addition to that I want to thank all the different groups that came and did breakout sessions for for the actual full day of classes so I wanted to thank everybody who participated encourage all of you to get information on next year's seminar and what we could do to support youth in our community and then we recently met the week after as councilmember Stapp said we had a climate update at that particular meeting law enforcement and criminal justice gave them some new statistics statistics schools gave us an update as well as nonprofits and some health care and faith-based organizations also did a few updates we we also have a year one implementation plan as you realize and I know that it's been brought to you was the five-year strategic plan but I have asked staff and been working with them and really they've done an incredible job breaking down that to a one-year what they're going to do for intervention for youth and so we had a presentation on that so I want to thank Danielle and her team for all their great work on that and that will be coming forward to council and we also had a presentation on the choice grant cycle where we're at and what we'll be doing in the future for grantees that that will be receiving funds from the City of Santa Rosa I want to do a quick thank you to Skyhawk United Group that planted with the assistance of environmental specialist Kellan Johnston from the City of Santa Rosa to replace 25 trees that had burned down after the glass fire over in the Skyhawk area so thank you to Jim Cuellar as well as the rest of the 45 volunteers that attended that that replacement of our trees I do want to thank the police department Santa Rosa PD has been gracious enough to let me attend their briefings I've gone to all their Monday through Thursday briefings some of them are very informational so I want to thank them for sharing that time with me as well as being able to answer any questions they might have on from me in the city and I also have been starting riding ride alongs with the fire department they have 30 different I don't know if you call them sessions what is it I'm trying to get the they have a B and C and then that's for all of all the different time frame so I've gone to three out of the 30 I'm feeling like I'm gonna get through all of them I attended the Dia de los Sien for their 14th birthday I want to congratulate them on all their great work that they do for the community I attended the school city ad hoc committee with mayor as well as councilmember O'Crepkey I'll let mayor report out on that I attended the mayor's luncheon and I want to say thank you to all of our past mayors and council members that were be able to attend it's great to be able to hear from them and the things that they were able to accomplish during their term long-term finance met mayor is going to report out on that I attended the nation's finest event with council member O'Crepkey and I too want to congratulate him on his great speech that he was able to deliver it was extremely well done and so he he definitely made City of Santa Rosa proud and thank mayor for hosting the veterans day event here at City Hall I was able to attend that and that was also it very powerful and wonderful to see all our veterans here and I just want to thank them for their service to our country and all that they've done it for us so that we remain safe and and all of the benefits of being in this great country and then last I attended the Paradise Ridge Winery event last night for the fire tax measure and oh finally one more thing I've been appointed by the president of the North Bay Division of League of California cities to a policy committee that's going to oversee community services governance transparency and labor relations revenue and taxation transportation communication and public works thank you and we're going to circle back to council member Alvarez I appreciate it you know with the thought of all the Kingston Yenison parties at the at the library at I forgot to extend an invitation to the sync of the mile committee which will be meeting on November 16th over at 637 1st Street 1st floor the large conference room 530 to 630 hopefully all those that are interested in and participate in the sync of the mile and then we'll be present thank you thank you council member Alvarez on November 11th which was Veterans Day we were able to have a flag raising event here at City Hall and I would like to thank everyone that worked to make the event a success and all those that came out to honor our veterans and those who currently serve a special thank you to Senator Mike McGuire who came out to speak and honor our veterans thank you to the council members council member Rogers and vice mayor McDonald that came out lastly I would like to thank Paul Chappelle for coming out he is a world War 2 veteran who will be turning 99 this December so it was a very special thing that he came out and if my calendar serves me correctly council member Fleming normally comes out but it was your birthday it's my birthday every year on Veterans Day but this I did not make it this year and I was sad for it I would like to wish you a happy birthday and tell you that you were missed because you normally do come out I was also able to participate in career day at Rosalind collegiate prep and also Rosalind University prep it is so great to see our our youths hunger for what is going on in the civil civil process and in our government I would also like to thank council member Alvarez and Sergeant Crosby for coming out and it was not planned but we totally rocked the the visit to Rosalind University prep when you get three of us in a room if anyone knows us you will know that it was a lot of fun the water advisory the WAC met water advisory committee met on November 6th and the water advisory committee unanimously approved a letter on behalf of the WAC supporting the ill-russian diversion facility proposal that was submitted to PG&E by the menacing O County inland water and power commission round valley indian tribes and Sonoma water it is anticipated that PG&E will release their initial draft surrender application and decommissioning plan for public review this week and the proposers are hopeful that the facility will be incorporated into the plan Sonoma water staff presented the 2022 2023 fiscal year budget year in review for the transmission facilities that serve Sonoma waters contractors as a result of the drought and other factors delivery to the contractors were about 20% below projected sales for the year impacting overall revenues for the system for the first quarter of this current fiscal year deliveries are now running just about as they were projected to do so and there was a presentation of several awards received by the Sonoma Marin saving water partnership the Sonoma Marin saving water partnership earned multiple awards from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency water sense program including the partner of the year award and the water sense sustained excellence award the partnership also received the institute for local government's 2023 leadership and innovation award for cross agency collaboration and climate adaption and I also attended the long-term financial policy and audit subcommittee which took place on November 9th we discussed CalPERS unfunded liability PIMCA section 115 trust which the decision was made to bring that back to council for additional consideration action and review and for those of you that don't know that is a trust for retirement we also received an update on future ballot measures on October 25th the coc board met and we moved to change the name from coc to Sonoma County homeless coalition so board members elected to change that name also board elections will be held on December 13th to fill three seats one at large one homeless provider and one licensed healthcare organization one tribal seat will be voted on at a later date by tribal members as part of an ongoing tribal engagement efforts communications for coc recently approved a communications plan to improve communications with cities providers the public and persons experiencing homelessness on current issues funding practices and programs staff are reviewing the plan to identify opportunities for collaboration between the coc and the city's community and intergovernmental relations office as a part of ongoing efforts to become a more data informed system the board received a report on stella m a us department of housing and development HUD system modeling tools used to calculate the inventory that is needed to meet the services and housing needs of households experiencing homelessness in the community the 2425 NOFA is scheduled to be to be released on December 11th but details are still being finalized um so please take note of that um and lastly um i would like to express my gratitude and sincere appreciation to our veterans um for their brave and selfless service to our country i want to recognize and honor all who have served and protected the united states of america our ancestors our family members loved ones neighbors and friends and with that we will have public comment thank you mayor we are now taking public comment on item 11.1 if you'd like to make a public comment please make your way to the podium you will have three minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period as you approach the podium please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so please go ahead hi yes uh thomas ells civil environmental engineer and i i just want to commend each of the members for all they're doing and uh councilmember staff uh the water uh very important that goes to the geysers i think it's about 12 million gallons a day uh it's a huge amount i i hope i would wish i i support everything regarding reusing water and and that's a reuse of water uh it's probably possible i believe for them to put some pondage up there where they could intermediately put it into the pond and then into their use and then they would have that for fire they could use the pond in case of fire so they could have that it's a large amount of water it would be really great to have something up there that they could use because they didn't have any um and in particular with the north uh city uh excuse me north county uh uh water agency would be uh water district would be a good idea as well um uh i want to i'm trying to do my best impersonation of mike mcguire who was really great when he was there at the north uh pendulum station opening it was really effusive and um so that's really great and i just wanted to point out it really support the the people on the bike in the trail and and and smart the fact that this contract for what's called the north um uh pendulum station is actually letting the multi-use path for uh something like five or six miles of it it's going to come uh from essentially the north pretty close to from the north pendulum station all the way to todd road so i'm trying to connect that to santa rosa so so it's a really huge thing that's a lot of area that's in unincorporated area that's coming into this multi-use path most of it has been in the city and none of it's been in the in the county and now we're going to have this really great link that's that's going to be there for the multi-use path uh it's a huge probably most of the part of the contract that's been let for what is called the north county north pendulum station but it's really this multi-use path it's really terrific um and and shout out for homelessness that you're you're talking about the coc and and then i'll find everything like that thank you may i see no one else approaching the podium for a public comment on a light item 11.1 thank you we will now move to 11.2 point one which is our public financing authority appointments um at this time council needs to make one um more appointment of the public member to the public financing authority for the downtown infrastructure financing district there were three lovely applicants um and the county also participated in these interviews and they rank the following participants as first choice carmen gonzalez second choice michael hogan and third choice arthur dyke so with that madame city clerk may please facilitate public comment we're now taking public comment on item 11.2 point one if you'd like to make a comment please make your way to the podium you will have three minutes and a countdown timer well alert at the end of that period as you approach the podium please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so may or no one's approaching the podium for public comment on 11.2 point one thank you um are there any questions or comments from the council members seeing none council member rogers take it away thank you so much mayor uh just really fast is a little bit of context for folks who weren't watching earlier in the day we had a really heartwarming moment uh with these three interviews the three applicants met before the meeting started and the first two to be interviewed were so impressed with the third that their interviews were them just saying pick that person uh and that person actually happened to be the same person that was recommended by the county which i think made our choice really easy as a board uh so i will forward a nomination for us to confirm the county's appointment of karmine gonzalez to the pfa uh effective immediately we have a motion made by council member rogers and a second by council member fliming madame city clerk may you please call the vote council member step hi council member rogers hi council member okrepke hi council member fliming yes council member alvarez hi vice mayor mcdonnell hi mayor rogers hi let the record show that passes unanimously thank you moving on to item 12 approval of minutes we have one set of minutes for october 24th 2023 council are there any corrections to the minutes from the minute i just need it to reflect that i'm abstaining from approval of the minutes since i was absent at the meeting thank you any more abstentions i was absent but i reviewed the watch the meeting so i will vote on it thank you any more comments from council members abstentions all right seeing none madame city clerk can you please facilitate public comment thank you we are now taking public comments on item 12.1 if you'd like to provide comment on this item please make your way to the podium you will have three minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period mayor no one's approaching the podiums for public comment okay thank you so much so um seeing none we will go ahead and adopt the minutes as presented moving on to item 13 which is our consent items madame city clerk may you please read the consent items thank you mayor item 13.1 resolution memorandum of understanding between the city of san arosa and county of sonoma for an unlimited rider rides pilot program for employees item 13.2 first amendment a resolution first amendment to professional services agreement with muni services llc avenue insights and analytics llc for revenue audit and consulting services item 13.3 resolution approval of fourth amendment to general services agreement f 002035 for one year extension increase in compensation and increase of scope of services with bright view landscape services ink dba signature coast holdings llc item 13.4 resolution infill infrastructure grant funds acceptance of a revised award amount approval of a budget revision and authorization for the housing and community services director to execute program and award documents item 13.5 resolution operating agreement for safe parking program catholic charities of the diocese of santa rosa extending term from December 31st 2023 to June 30th 2025 item 13.6 resolution extension of proclamation of local homeless emergency item 13.7 ordinance adoption second reading ordinance of the council of the city of santa rosa amending chapter 14-21 of the santa rosa city code water waste regulations to include administrative finds and clarify enforcement and appeals process thank you looking at council to see if there are any questions councilmember alvarez yes thank you madam mayor um my question is in regards to i'm sorry i had a year 13.3 i'm seeing that we're outsourcing uh about a million dollars for landscape maintenance of very millions roadways and city facilities and i'm wondering if these are services that could be provided in-house opposed to seeking outside companies so let's staff come in respond to this i will say um this is actually an extension of the contract okay one of the things that i think we are committed to is bringing you back an analysis on how much it costs for internal staff and how much it versus a contracted staff we have an amazing parks team that does a really good job with our parks and in our right of ways a public works team as well so it's an analysis that we will bring back and if i'm looking to cfo alton we plan to look at that around budget season but i'll let staff answer that as well and before the answer i'm cognizant that sometimes having a seasonal crew compared to a yearly need crew definitely does influence the numbers i am cognizant of that but thank you thank you for the question uh mayor rogers and council members gen santos deputy director for parks for recreation of parks department uh and thank you city manager smith that was really a really good synopsis of where we're headed with this this really this extension of the con