nd public safety and 20% to violence prevention, mental health counseling and programs for at risk youth and families. So several of the permissible uses under the original measure O have now been expanded. And with respect to your question, in terms of in response. Yes. In response at any similar mental health response teams, services or resources, now could be taken out of either the police, the law enforcement police and public safety or out of fire, out of firefighting paramedics, wildfire risk reduction and public safety. In fact, the staffing on the units that are out on the street do significantly come from fire, the paramedics that are on there. So we've set it up to give flexibility to be able to come from either source. It would not be drawn from, would not be drawn from the 20% for violence prevention and youth programs. And that's a great point to make, especially when we're looking at 20 years as we were proposing to the voter, that we now have a little bit of flexibility in the way that we fund certain issues or community issues. Yes, a little more flexibly. And I'll also note that under violence prevention, we have expanded those permissible uses to include providing mental health counseling, wraparound services and programs for at risk youth, sorry, and their families. So that gives some additional flexibility as well. Thank you. And finally, Mr. Alonso, during the meetings that were held throughout the city of Santa Rosa, did you hear a lot of conversation about the percentages? And if so, were there any that really stuck out or were repeated throughout the community? Or were people content with the way that they stand now? Thank you, Vice Mayor Alvarez. We did hear a mix from various groups. It really sort of depended on the audience and where we were speaking within the city. So I would say in some of the council town halls in Southwest Santa Rosa, we certainly heard some conversation around changing the allocation or increasing funding for violence prevention programs. When we spoke in Oakmont, they certainly were in favor of the current allocations. And so there really wasn't a consistency. We heard really both across the board. So I think that the good news was folks were supportive overall of what measure O currently was doing, but we're open to trying to see if the council would be open to changing the permissible uses as the city attorney just mentioned and or what the allocations looked like. But I do want to just turn it over briefly to Captain Corcoran if he has anything to add as well in regard to the crime data or trends that SRPD is seeing. Sure, thank you for having me. I think I could just give some high level of data that I have. I think the most important violent crime statistics would be our homicide rate. Right now in 2022, we have seven homicides. And for frame of reference, our highest every year was 11 homicides and that was in the 1980s. And so we're definitely having violent crime impact our community currently. When it comes to ghost guns, we're on track to seize more illegal firearms this year than we ever have in the past. And so there's definitely in 2022, violent crime has increased. I'll leave it at that high level data for now. Ghost guns has definitely increased the violence in our community is definitely obvious. I do want to thank you all for what you do. And I also want to thank you for capturing the voice of the community and being able to really translate that into a random form where we could all see where our community's thinking and wanting as well. Thank you all. Thank you, Vice Mayor for those questions and comments. I do also want to give a big shout out to the Measure Oversight Committee. All the members were very engaged through this process. We heard from I think almost all of them individually. We also, they were our first community presentation back in April. And so they were very engaged and Chair Bailey, who I believe is in attendance tonight, has been a great resource for us and just knowledge based given her experience within the city of Santa Rosa. So just want to give another shout out to all the community input and engagement we had from a lot of stakeholders and leaders as well. So thank you. Thank you so much. Council Member Sawyer, I'm going to have you put a motion on the table for discussion. Mary, would you prefer, I have an ordinance and I also have the resolution, but I think the ordinance will suffice for conversation. Let's ask the city attorney and just verify. You'll end up wanting to name both, but you could start with just the ordinance to allow for the discussion and then we can address the resolution. As long as I have the microphone, I will also mention when we get to the resolution, I will have an additional question for you, which is if the council decides to place the renewal measure onto the ballot, one thing that we did not address in the resolution in the draft resolution, state law allows for submission of arguments foreign against, we don't need to address that specifically in the resolution unless the council wants to authorize either the mayor or council members to be an author of presumably the argument in favor of measure O. If you want to do that, when you get to the resolution, I would ask you to weigh in on that. We can add that if that's something that the council's interested in. That makes sense. The resolution does have some language that is not included in the ordinance, but let's go ahead and start with the ordinance and see where we go. So I'll introduce an ordinance of the city of Santa Rosa amending chapter 3.26 of the Santa Rosa city code to extend existing quarter since sales tax adopted by city voters as measure O at the November 2004 election for an additional 20 years and expanding allowable uses of funding and way further reading. Second. We have a motion from council member Sawyer and a second from council member Rogers. Do we have any additional discussion? Yes.  So I wanted to discuss the possibility of changing the allocations. So they are not as they were previously, which was, which were 40, 40, 20. In addition, I would also like to see or put up for discussion how the council would feel about the committee that is a pointed, I guess, by council with a two thirds boat to make changes along the way. If we have a very long, if the sales tax measures to be for an extended period of time. And I think we should focus more on prevention because I think that that is very important. I won't say focus more on prevention. I will say I think prevention should be also a very high priority, not focus more on. Thank you. Do you have a specific proposal that you'd like council to consider? Sure, 34, 34, 32. Okay. Let's go ahead and see if there's any additional discussion on the original motion and also on the suggestion from council member Rogers. Council member McDonald. Yes, thank you. I just would like to say that I'm in favor with the measure O, the way that it reads now. I think that us putting it on the ballot now makes perfect sense to make sure that it has the opportunity to go through. I'm not interested in cutting $10 million out of our budget and primarily for public safety, but I'm fine with the percentages as they are. So I would not be interested in changing it due to the amount of staff that is provided for public safety. Okay. Any additional input? Council member Svettel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also, I'm a believer of the 40, 40, 20. I think the voters got it right in 2004 and I think they'll get it right again in 2022. And one of the things here, I really appreciate the vice mayor's questions about the data, because I've asked that question over the years since it's an inception. And one of the big challenges, especially from the intervention aspect of it, how do you measure someone? And I'll just use a gang related incident where you have a gang related shooting. They end up in the ER room and we have intervention workers paid for by measure O. Go to the ER, talk to the family members. Retaliation, there's better ways of doing it. You know, I've personally talked to intervention workers that how do you measure that? And how many times, because we don't keep track of the family members who would call up our intervention workers saying, you know, I know who did it. Can you handle him or her being arrested versus just coldly getting them? And it's very difficult to, how do you quantify that? And I really think they are the subject matter experts, our police, our fire, our violence prevention, they will be able to use their best judgment to most actively and appropriately use these dollars. Additionally, with the violence prevention, there's only five, there is five employees. Can we use more? Absolutely. But if you look at the skill set in the cost of our public safety officials, it's more expensive. There's more employees there. And so that's where I think that 40, 40, 20 is the appropriate breakdown. And every year that we've done the choice awards, there's always more requests for the funding that's available. If we can make it, you know, let's do a penny, yes, a penny cent versus a quarter cent, that would be great. But it's like we have to make these difficult decisions. And so for me, it's just keep it at 40, 40 and 20. We've expanded what the implementation plan can be. And that's the way that I think the most voters in Santa Rosa would continue to be able to support this measure. Mr. Vice Mayor, and then I'll come back to Council Member Rogers. Definitely, I'll have you know, I'll have you know, Council Member, I was definitely using the word metric because of what I've learned on this Council. And that's why I kept getting at, you know, our other figures that we can compare. But the reality is, how do you compare? You're absolutely right. How do you compare the person who was just shot with 10 family members at the house trying to get retaliation revenge for that individual? Is it one out of 10? Because there's still 10 family members, right?  If you give 10% to the 20, you just increase that by 50%. But the metrics, you know, we could sell. I think there's a term that says layers of failure, failures of life. And I'm trying to figure out how to sell an increase in violence prevention. And the reason that I would actually attempt to do such a thing, I would ask my galley. The programs that no longer exist in Apple Valley, the programs that no longer exist in South Park, when do those stop? And did we see an increase or a drop in violence with when those programs cease to exist? Because there has to be a metrics. I just don't know what it is. I just wish that there was a rule such as you show up at eight o'clock to work and you know you showed up at eight o'clock to work. But I know that's not possible in this regards. So the question is, when did the programs stop in Napa Valley? When did they stop in South Park? And was there an increase that we know of when that happened? Thank you for that question. And I'm actually going to ask Deputy Director Jeff Tibbets who I believe has more information on those, may have more information on those specific programs. Yeah, thank you. So yes, we are still running programs out at Apple Valley. We do run, we have the Apple Valley trailer that's still out there. We run after school programs and serve youth there Monday through Thursday during the school year. And then certainly still promote a number of our programs there and pull from families and youth for the different programs that we offer basketball programs, soccer programs, summer camps, all those things. So, and I'm sorry, what was the second? South Park, the building right there at the basketball court, I believe it's now operated by CAP, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, so that one has received funding through Measure O but yeah, internally, recreation has not run the program out there but I know that we've had some different collaborations over the years. So I'm not sure the history, the exact history, I don't know if you have any of the information of the different funding that we provided through Measure O but being organized from another agency, I don't have all the specific data that's level of service that has shifted out there. And the reason I bring up the South Park site is because I do get the emails from constituents that say that the children from the neighborhood can't play on these basketball courts because they are being rented out to other sports organizations that are using the courts for their purposes. So I'm seeing the lack of services provided to the residents of those amenities. Yeah, so to that point, that was a COVID related thing that we were dealing with, with trying to use our park permits to give agencies that usually ran things in gyms or karate studios or those types of things that couldn't take place admittedly and we heard from the community as well and I think we did our best to fix it. Admittedly, it wasn't something that we were prepared for and we did make some mistakes of overbooking, for example, MLK Park out there overbooking that with a long permit. So as we got into COVID, we started shifting how some of those permits worked so that we weren't consistently impacting the same basketball court in the same neighborhood and trying to disperse that around. We still have some tournaments and stuff that take place but I don't believe we're issuing any more for every day as most of those programs have moved back but if they are, again, we kind of have a process of how long we'll issue the permit and moving that around from Finley Park to MLK Park to the different Southwest Park or the different parks that have basketball hoops that were not over impacting one neighborhood over the rest of the city. I do appreciate that and going back to the percentages, the reality is I don't know what would work. I just know that we've seen our ups and downs in our communities when it comes to violence and sometimes being blamed for violence that comes from outside of the area. So again, going back to the word metric, it's a hard one, I do recognize that. Thank you. So, Council Member Alvarez, let me. Yes, ma'am. Let me see if I can answer that question for you. So when you talk about metrics and we talk about interrupting violence, I think Council Member Schwethelm said it perfectly, we have to learn where the retaliation is gonna come in. Yes. So when we show up to the hospitals, one of the things that we're looking for are people who are in that retaliatory mode. You can either find that from your family, from their family members, the actual victim, or you kinda case the hospitals to see who has showed up. Because honestly, a lot of times people show up to see the status of the victim. At that point, then you target that particular individual and then you try to bring them on to what we call a caseload, right? And it's something that we're trying to look at expanding here. So, and that comes with a partnership from probation, from parole, from our local DA office and the U.S. Attorney's office, right?  So you can take one or two things, the carrot or the stick, right? So either you help us resolve or you help us solve the crime. But even before we get to that, we have what's called a safety plan. So a safety plan in essence lets us know whether the individual or they're in danger. Do they have a job? Do they have a history, a generation of crime in their family? So you have to assess all of those areas, right?  Because let's be honest, I can't do it, you can't do it. Assistant city manager can't do it because they say we don't have what's called street cred. But we have to let the individuals know that you're not gonna continue to wreak havoc in this city. So that's kind of how you start to have metrics. And as you start to accumulate that data, you know if you have the right people on your caseload because you will start to see those numbers go down from that particular group, if that answers your question. It does and I would even add to it. With the pandemic going on, we definitely saw the lack of ability from our violence prevention folks to get out to those crime scenes and offer the services. I just hope that they do have enough resources to be able to do what I know they're good at. Thank you. Could I just, sorry, answer your question a little bit more and add more information in terms of metrics. I can't tell you that we performed over collectively over 400,000 hours to youth and families that have needed services that have needed to get connected to services. We've also supplied, you know, Uber cards or lift cards to committee members that have been impacted by violence and need to get to a therapist or counselor. So I just wanted to give a little bit more in terms of I'm happy to provide more metrics but I just wanted to make sure you understood that we do have a lot of information in terms of being place-based and being out in the spaces where community members are and also as city manager Smith mentioned, we do have to committee outreach specialists who have a lot of, you know, community buy-in and have access to communities in ways that other folks at the city may not have. So I just wanted to add that. Thank you. I appreciate that, Magali. I think what I'll say too, when we talk about metrics there's a really important one that we talk about frequently and that's our response times. That's a metric that is very real for us that we can track and I won't be supportive of changing the allocation in large part because we do see our response times ticking up to an unacceptable level. And that means that the amount of calls that we have for service aren't matching the staffing ratios that we have. We do have community programs that do play an important role particularly long-term in reducing the amount of calls. That's oftentimes eligible for grant funding from DOJ and other sources but staffing is really hard to find dollars for. And so that's part of why I'll be doing that. Council Member Rogers. So in addition to, I hear that that is not a favorite but I wanted to add, in addition to, I think that changing the allocation also changes a mindset. There are people that are currently our staff that are currently employed in response that don't have to necessarily be under the umbrella as far as budget is concerned under the fire department and they can still be paid under the category of the violence prevention. So it would just create more flexibility in how the monies are spent in less limitation to me or if you're looking at mental health. I think that it would create more flexibility especially if you're looking at a long term. Who knows in five years if the ghost gun is gonna be an issue for us we might move to something else. So I'm just looking at having more flexibility. People are looking at different ways to have maybe not SROs but maybe some sort of a figure or a mentor figure somehow some sort of support in the schools are going back to that. Well, how do you do that? So just thinking out of the box and ways in which we can be proactive within our community. And if we only have the funds allocated under fire and police I just feel like it is gonna go strictly to that fire and police the allocation of those salaries and we're not gonna be able to move that because that's what we're gonna get stuck in and historically I feel like that's what we have gotten stuck in is those salaries. So just wanting to have the flexibility being able to use the funds for different things and not having to be under the umbrella of just fire and police. Thank you. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. And I understand the spirit of the council member regarding flexibility but part of the success I think of measure O has been an ability of the community to trust that the money was going to be spent the way the measure stated that it would be and that it had an oversight committee that was making sure that it was spent in the way that it was sold to the voters and it's really what we're doing. We're selling it to the voters and they are supportive of it. If we create too much flexibility I think we start to lose the trust that the money's will be spent the way they that this is what they expected when they voted for it. If we make it too loose I think that they will, they could take us to task over that and we might not be as successful. I think they do get creative though and I think the police department and the fire department both have become fairly creative without breaking the spirit of the measure. So I think, I would keep the 40, 40, 20 as well and but it doesn't mean that the two departments can't look at where they can be more creative and still stay within the letter of the measure. I think and I think we do encourage that. I know, oh my God, I think pushes for exactly that and is always willing and open to looking at new ways to be effective and I think the police department and the fire department do the same thing. This would not, especially with fire the way it is these days and with our response times going up I think this would be an unfortunate time to make too many changes to the measure and I think that's why it's staying at 40, 40, 20 because of the success rate. Council Member Fleming. Thank you and Council Member Rogers I do appreciate where you're coming from. What I think we ought to do and I think where this council has been moving for quite a while is towards looking at our economic development, especially around our downtown development as making the pot bigger so that as a council we can pass balanced budgets like we just did a few weeks ago and budgets that have more money for things that we can say, don't just come from additional sales taxes but come from revenues that are structurally built in to go to programs like child care programs and programming in parks and recreation. And so the thing that I would say to the, while I won't be able to support your recommendation today I do understand and I align with the spirit of it but I think that we ought to really do is be very focused in other discussions around making sure that it is easy and predictable to develop housing in our community and it is easy and predictable to figure out how people are gonna get around and that we attract the high quality jobs and effectively retain families in our areas. And I have a number of ideas and this is not the time or the place for them because it's not agendized but I really do believe that economic development will lead us to the stability in order to fund where our hearts and our values are and that today is not the day to mess with this formula given our fire risk and the increase in violence in our communities. But I'd be interested in working with you to develop structures that allow us to do so going forward. Go forward. Sorry, one more thing. So I'm not sure city attorney if it is appropriate or not but I did want to mention and it is something that is very important to me that we look at possibly having a line or something within measure O that addresses the mental health of our public safety officers in hoping that because we know that sometimes we don't have the funds and with fire season coming up and things that have occurred in our community just being able to address or having people come out and address the needs, their needs, I think it's just very important that we have something to address that. To me, it's just as important as doing weed abatement as it is to address their mental health needs so that they can physically go and mentally go fight a fire as it is to have them physically go fight a fire. So this is the time that if you or any council member wants to propose changes to the language of the expenditure plan which is set forth in the proposed ordinance now is the time to consider those changes. Is that already captured in the language as opposed to my question? I was just reviewing it as council member Rogers was speaking. I'm not seeing it specifically in here. I considered whether under police or as police support services but that really specifies in facilities and equipment and financing for facilities and equipment. So I'm not seeing it encompassed within the language and I might ask Scott or Magali if they see the language differently that if you see anywhere in this language that would encompass mental health services for public safety officers. While they take a look, I'll come over here to my left to council member Sawyer. Thank you, mayor. Doesn't, aren't there programs currently in place that help with that very issue of mental health and support for our public safety officials? Isn't there a program already in place? Yes, both departments have specific services for mental health. Well, I'll tell you, is it enough? No, is measure O gonna be enough to solve it? No, do we need to put a laser focus on it? Yes, eventually. Thank you. Council member McDonald? So my understanding is that there's probably not explicit language in the initiative and perhaps by adding where we have equipment, the option for mental health services but what I'm concerned about is adding a prescriptive amount or something that in ballot language, that is where you actually have problems with oversight in my opinion. So because we have other problems or other programs, pardon me, not problems, but other programs that actually address this issue, I would feel more comfortable leaving the language as it is potentially, you know, you could add something but in my opinion, I think just leaving the language as clean as it is for voters is probably the safest way to go. We do have other programs. When you have money that comes in from this, we could potentially look at another funding stream to focus on those things that our city manager mentioned but I would not be interested in adding more and more language, although sometimes in an initiative, you've seen where they add several different options that you can use the funding for if that's what our public safety desired. So I'm not sure where it would be appropriate to insert that language within the ballot measure because I wasn't looking at it through that lens but because of where we're at on the timeframe, I would feel more comfortable just letting it be the way that it is right now and looking at another funding stream to address the concerns that were brought up by council member Rogers, very real concerns that we know staff are dealing with. I don't have a problem with including language because to me, the mental health aspect of this is part of the staffing aspect of this. It's just the same thing as having these positions that measure O funds take care of somebody's physical health as well. I agree we won't have to prescribe a specific percentage but if it was made clear that when we talk about employees we're also talking about their mental and physical well-being that as an eligible expense, I think that that is what council member Rogers is going for. Yes, mayor, I'm not asking for a specific percentage at all. I just want it to be able to like funds could be spent on that. Yeah, and I think that's why I was asking the city attorney if it's already an eligible expense because I do see that as part of having an employee is the mental and physical well-being of that employee as well. Madam city manager. From the red line version that I have that language is not specified in the current document. And I do understand, Mr. Mayor, that there is a provision under the fire section of hiring additional firefighters and paramedics to staff fire stations. That would include their salaries, their benefits and the benefits that we do include of the mental health services. But in terms of specifically calling out health, either physical or mental health of the public safety officers, this ballot measure or this ordinance is really more looking towards the services for the community. And again, under police I'm not seeing where it would fit in and arguably when you authorize hiring additional firefighters and paramedics, again, that's going to include all the services that are provided to them. But again, the thrust of the measure is looking towards community services, not internal services. That doesn't mean it can't be, it could certainly be added if that's a council's desire. Council Member Fleming. Yeah, I definitely struggle with this because I think that one of the most expensive things that we deal with is untreated mental health and frankly physical health problems for our employees. And at the same time, I hear what you're saying, City Attorney, that the thrust of this measure is really towards providing services. And I think that because we're asking people to pay for services to return to them, that this does muddy the water. I'd be interested to hear going forward from the city manager. First of all, if it's the majority of the will of this council to change the language to maybe use that the discretion of the chief to improve the health of their employees, physical or mental health, I would be supportive of it. However, I think that going forward, what I'd like to hear from you is your ideas about how to put that spotlight on this so that we can have an effective and healthy workforce across all of our departments. So I think in this particular measure, we're only specifying police and fire. So if we're gonna talk about the well-being, then we need to talk about it for the entire city, right? So I think we need to bring something back to the council to talk about how do we address the well-being of the entire city. I don't want to specifically call out public safety because it's not only public safety that has to respond during emergencies. It's not only public safety that's tasked with dealing with emergencies. If we're gonna make it a focus, we need to make it a focus for all 1,200 employees. Let me offer a suggestion and see if this works for council member Rogers and everyone else as well. What if we brought back a study session to specifically hear about what the city is doing to support the mental health of our employees across the board? And if at that point there's need for supplement, we can give direction to staff to start to prepare that. It'd be outside of the measure, but it would give us a chance to talk about this and provide some certainty. Even better. Sounds great. Okay. So I'll work with the city manager on scheduling that. Council member Swiddle. It sounds like we've resolved it, but for me, measure originally was and even in 22, it's an enhancement of public safety services. So my concern would be if we started adding these additional things, it's kind of supplanting, because quite frankly in the city manager at the nail head, I have an expectation we take care of our employees. That's not what the use of measure O is. That's general fund dollars for all 1,200 of the employees. So if we wanna further talk about the mental health and the wellness of our entire workforce, that'd be great, but I wouldn't wanna cloud it up into what's with measure O. Thank you. And then Madam city attorney, I'll ask the council, not sure if it's in the resolution ultimately or in the ordinance, but you did ask the question about authorizing the mayor to sign in support. I would ask the council to grant me the ability to. I don't know that I'll be the best person to sign it. I think that in a measure like this, typically you'll want firefighters and police officers and nurses and the folks who do the work, probably to be the signatories, but just in case I would ask the council to authorize, to authorize that. Yeah. Just, is that like a friendly amendment? Cause I would be. I'll offer that as a friendly amendment. So yes, I'm very supportive of that. Okay. Any other discussion? Any other amendments? Okay. Madam city clerk, can you please call the vote? And it is my understanding. And I would ask if Mr. Alonzo can confirm, it's my understanding that this evening, what the council is doing is introducing the ordinance and that we are coming back on the, on the, I don't remember the date, the 28th or 29th, for final adoption of the ordinance. Is that correct? No. Oh, I'm sorry. The 26th, it's further on the 26th, but it's my, go ahead Scott. Well, my understanding is this, this would be the first reading and the second reading would occur on July 26th on consent calendar for formal adoption. Okay. So given that, given that we won't have the final adoption until our next meeting, I would suggest that we also bring back the resolution at that time because until the resolution is authorizing the ordinance as it's attached to the resolution, if there are any changes to the resolution at your next meeting, we need that to be, we need to be, we need to have the final version of the ordinance be the version that's attached to the resolution. So I would suggest you go ahead and take the vote on the introduction of the ordinance and then we'll come back with the final reading of the ordinance and also the resolution on the 26th. And resolution would not be read tonight. Correct. Well, and remind me, Sue, when is the final date for us to send measures to the registrar or voters? It is in August and I'll turn to the city clerk for the August 12th. August 12th? Yes. Okay. So we do have time. Yes. If we don't have the resolution tonight and just do the ordinance, we do have time to still meet the requirements. We still have, we still have time. Yes, exactly. Okay. All right, let's call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Great. Madam city manager, do you want to do the consent calendar so we can release staff? Great. Let me start with item 13.1 is a resolution. It's the third amendment to professional services agreement F002029 with Jessica Rasmussen of Santa Rosa, California. Item 13.3 is a resolution. It's the first amendment to professional services agreement number F001345 with Perfect Mine, Inc. Item 13.3 is a resolution 2022 short range transit plan public involvement plan. Item 13.4 is a resolution. Fourth amendment to agreement number F000424 for the campaign and lobbyist disclosure system agreement with Netfowl, Inc. formerly known as West Coast Online Information Systems, Inc. DBA, Netfowl. 13.5 resolution, appropriation of funds for Roseland Library Project. 13.6 resolution extension of proclamation of existence of local emergency relating to the threat of community health posed by COVID-19. Item 13.7 resolution extension of proclamation of local homeless emergency. And item 13.8 resolution making required monthly findings and authorizing the continued use of teleconferencing for public meetings of the city council and all the city boards, commissions and committees pursuant to assembly bill 361. Thank you, Madam City Manager. Do we have any questions on the consent calendar? Let's go to public comment. We'll see if folks have a comment on any of the items. We'll start with Erica. Hello, thank you. Good evening, Mr. Mayor and Councilmembers, City Manager Smith and staff. I would like to introduce myself. My name is Erica Taboe and I'm the new Interim Library Director for the Sonoma County Library. I've been with the library for a little over a year. I moved into this role recently after Director Anne Hammond's retirement. It is my second day as Interim Director, but I'm happy to be here to offer my gratitude and congratulations for the step you're taking today to complete a $10 million allocation for a permanent regional library and the Roseland area of the city. Your vision and commitment to equity, parity and inclusion will make a positive difference to the future of an underserved neighborhood that's among the fastest growing in the county. I know from speaking with library staff that working with the council and city staff for the past two years on this project has been a wonderful example of how public agencies can work together to serve the community. We're excited that the community needs assessment for the Hearn campus this beginning and we'll do everything we can to support an inclusive community-led process. Your investment in this project is a demonstration of timely and effective leadership and it's already attracting more funds and support. In addition to support from the state, our Sonoma County Public Library Foundation is about to launch a campaign to raise private sector funds for our part of the project. We look forward to working together to create a 21st century community hub with the best library in Northern California. Thank you again and I'm always available to answer questions or talk about the project. Thank you so much, Erica and congratulations stepping into that role. Day two, hopefully everything's going well. So far so good, thanks. And we, of course, also want to express our appreciation for Anne Hammond and wish her a great retirement. She's been a great partner for the city. I'll bring that back. Mr. Vice Mayor, would you like to put a motion on the table? I would, Mayor, thank you. I move items 12.1 through 12.8 and we further reading of the text. Second. Second from Council Member Schwedhelm. Let's go ahead and call the vote. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Just to point a clarification on the consent items, I believe the numbers are 13.1. You beat me to it, yes, correct. I stated 12, and if I could repeat that. Yes, go ahead and we'll start the vote over. It is a little bit confusing when we're used to the 12. 12, yes, yes. A little bit of detail.  It was a test. And I failed. I move items 13.1 through 13.8 and we further reading of the text. Thank you. I'll still second it. All right, and let's call the vote. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. That motion passes with seven ayes. All right, thank you, Council. Let's jump to item 15.2. Item 15.2 is proposed City Charter Amendments for 2022. A city attorney, Sue Gallagher, will be presenting the report. Good evening, Mayor and Council Members. Turning now to our next set of potential ballot measures that are Charter Amendments. And as you all well know, we've had several council meetings in which we've discussed a range of possible Charter Amendments. And at your last meeting, you did focus in on the three ballot measures that were recommended by the Charter Review Committee for this coming election in November 2022. So for purposes of this evening, we're gonna keep that focus on those three specific measures. And of course, we'll keep in mind that there may be future amendments at a later time. But for this evening, we'll focus on those three. So next slide. And those three ballot measures, as you know, are first, a ballot measure to increase council compensation, tying the mayor and council member compensation to a percentage of area median income. Second, a ballot measure to align the Charter with the city's district-based election of council members. And third, a ballot measure to update and modernize the city Charter, including provisions to remove ambiguities, to provide additional flexibility in city operations, and to ensure gender and citizenship neutrality. Next slide. And then you can jump to the next slide. We start with council compensation. And the council, of course, you're all very familiar with this. Council members currently receive $800 a month salary. The mayor, $1,200 per month salary. That was initially set in 2005 and has not been changed since. There have been no increases. But the current Charter provision would allow the council to increase salaries in accordance with state law, with a provision of state law. The increase would be done by ordinance. And because of the length of time since the last increase, you could increase by ordinance salary to move it up to $17,760 per year. That's $1,480 a month for council members and up to $26,640 a year for the mayor. That's $2,220 a month. And then under the current Charter provisions, there could be additional 5% annual increase thereafter. Some little quirks about when those annual increases would go into effect, but basically 5% per year. Next slide. The Charter Review Committee considered that, looked at that. They also then heard of the substantial workload of the mayor and the council members. They recognized the difficulties of balancing the private employment, childcare, family, and all of the responsibilities that you each have as a member of council. So the committee really found that the current salaries are an impediment for those without financial means, an impediment to running or serving on running for council membership or service on the council. Those without substantial resources really can't afford to do that. The committee also recognized that the current Charter provision that would allow those 5% increases really are insufficient to address the committee's concerns. Next slide. So in particular, the committee highlighted three key benefits of increasing council compensation. First, would enable a greater diversity of council membership, particularly allowing those with young families, though with those in lower paying occupations, those without other sources of financial support to join in, run for the council, serve on the council. Second, that it would help to ensure continued strong commitment in professionalism was not a suggestion that there's not that commitment in professionalism now, but that it would help to make that stronger. And that's really in large part because the committee recognized that over the last couple of years, even in just Norman County alone, we've had a number of resignations or retirements from council, again, particularly among those with young families that folks found that it just didn't work to try to balance all of that for a very low, very minimal pay. And then finally, and equally important, was just to reflect the fairness and respect for the extensive important work that's performed by the council, by each of one of you. Next slide. So now we get to the committee's recommendation, and I know we've talked before about some of the discussion and some of the options that the committee looked at. They looked at quite a range of options, but at the end of the day recommended that the mayor's salary be set at Sonoma County area median income for a three-person household. That amount is currently 101,500 per year. Second, set the council member's salary at two thirds of area median income for a three-person household. That amount is currently 66,990. That proportion is equal to the difference between mayor and council members now. Currently, the mayor gets 150%, in other words, another half again. So same percentage, same percentage difference, but just different numbers. Third, the committee recommended permanently tying the mayor and council member's salaries to area median income for a three-person household. Under that each year, the salaries would both be adjusted, however the area median income was adjusted. So that could be up or it could be down. And then the committee encouraged the council to consider establishing a penalty or reduction in salary for unexcused absences or to parallel city-wide salary reduction or for any other reason that the council deemed appropriate. Next slide. So at the last council meeting, we did walk through this whole series of different options, but at the end of the day, the council really focused in on two alternatives. One was to adopt the committee's recommendation as it was recommended. The second proposal was to provide for a single salary for both mayor and the council members with that salary being set at 100% of AMI for a three-person household. That way everyone on council, mayor and council members would be receiving the currently, what the current salary would be 101,500. That was the focus of the discussion at your last meeting. Of course, any other alternatives also still remain available for you to consider tonight. There were a couple of elements that the council discussed and found important. One is the effective date. When do the salary increases apply? And that's gonna affect both fairness among the council members and also public perception of what you're about and why you're doing this. Under the current charter provisions, which again reference state law, the changes in compensation apply to all the council members upon election or reelection of any one council member. So for example, this year if you were increasing, if you voted to increase under current provisions, as of once the election was certified, those new salaries would go into effect for everyone because we'll have at least, we'll have two new council members and we'll have other council members that are reelected. So that's the current provision. Your options under case law and the constitution language, you have power as the council for a charter and voter approval is required, but as a charter city, you can set whatever effective date you would like. So you could have the new salaries effective upon certification of the vote in November, while the certification usually happens in December of this year. You could have, and I think you talked about this last time, have the new salaries apply only upon your own election or reelection. So those of you that are midterm, you would not receive an increase in salary. Those of you that are up for election, for reelection, you would be eligible for the new salaries. The third option that you discussed was to set a date certain sometime in the future, at which point it would apply to all council members. That could be January one, it could be in 2024, that would be up to you. Next slide. Questions were raised also by members of the public about benefits. I think also there were some council members that also asked about that. Of course, you do receive city benefits and those benefits, I wanna emphasize for members of the public, those benefits were outlined in the last staff report and in this staff report, they've not in any way been hidden. Benefits include health, dental and vision, life insurance, long-term disability, and you see the list there. The benefits are calculated separately for each individual based partly on your salaries, the difference between council member and the mayor, but also depending on what health plan you choose, depending on how many dependents you are covering, if any, and the value of the benefit ranges from about 19,400 to 33,700. That, those numbers are from about a year and a half ago, but they're pretty comparable. Next slide. At the last council meeting, there were also questions raised by council members about potential budgetary impacts. There may have also been questions raised by the public. So focusing on the two proposals that you focused on, again, the charter review committee's proposal and the proposal to have everyone paid the same. Finance did prepare a chart of potential impacts on the city's five-year forecast, just a summary, summary, and that chart is, we'll get to on the next slide. But before we look at that chart, I do wanna point out that with looking at what percentage is council salary of the entire general fund budget. Under the charter review committee recommendation, the council compensation would constitute about one quarter of 1% of the general fund budget. The proposal for 100% of AMI for all members, that would be about a third of 1% of the budget. So very, very small percentage would be going to council salaries. So next slide. This may be hard to read. This had the top chart is the long range financial forecast currently. So currently we have in 2022, 23 balanced budget. We do show a deficit in 23, 24, no deficit in 24, 25, and then deficits in the two following years. If we moved to the committee recommendation, the mayor salary at 100,000, council member salary at about 67,000. It does create, it does add to a deficit. This is if you kept all the other budget items the same, you may know adjustments in the budget and all you did was add the additional council compensation. It would increase the deficit in the next five years and then you see the same if you move to a council member salary of 100,000 each. Again, the budget changes obviously every year, you have different programs, you have different number of employees, you have so many different factors that go into the budget. But this is just again, keeping everything else the same, what difference would it make. Next slide. So then we just talk about the next steps and that really is to finalize a proposed budget language. I had tried just leaving blanks so that you could fill in the blank and it really made it pretty useless. So what I gave here is just a sample, this'll give you a sense of what the ballot language would likely read if you adopted the charter review committee's proposal. If you go with the same salary for everyone, this just gets reworded to reflect that. If you decide to go with some other option, obviously it'll be different. And that's it on the council compensation. So next slide, and I think we can go through these next slides, I'll try to go through them pretty quickly. District based elections, we've talked before about the Voting Rights Act, we've talked about the racially polarized voting that we did find that in 2018 when we studied, we were under the threat of litigation. And at that time, the council did just determined to move forward with a transition to district based elections. Next slide, the transition began that November with a district based election of council members in two, four and six. And then that was completed in 2020 with the election of council members in districts one, three, five and seven. We've now fully transitioned to district based elections, but section four of the city's charter still contains a reference to at large election of council members. And we are asking both from the city attorney's perspective and also the charter review committee's perspective that we look at placing a ballot measure, a measure on the ballot to address that discrepancy. So next slide. So we are recommending that section four of the city charter be amended and it'll actually be a deletion from section four in addition of a new section four A, that it would confirm the district based election of council members, confirm that district boundaries will be established and updated by council ordinance in accordance with state and federal law. And then finally, that it also confirms the requirement that a candidate live and be registered to vote in the district to be eligible for office both at the time of nomination papers, the time of election and throughout their term. Next slide. So we have some proposed ballot language here and the full language of the amendment was attached to the staff report. I would make it, I think I'd suggest making a change that we just simplify this to a measure to amend the Santa Rosa City Charter to reflect the city's recent transition rather than referencing the particular section. So next slide and we're now going on to the charter update and modernization. And again, and next slide, we've gone over this before. So three purposes, remove ambiguities, provide greater flexibility in city operations and modernize the language, including ensuring gender and citizenship neutrality. Next slide, charter review. This is to make it express that you can make, you can have additional charter amendments in between the 10 year full review of the charter. I had considered earlier some revisions to the existing wording and I think it's easier just to keep that wording as it is that the charter shall be reviewed in the year 2002 and not less than every 10 years thereafter and simply add the additional provision that additional amendments, nothing precludes additional amendments by voter initiative or by council ordinance whenever deemed necessary or appropriate, I think in the ballot language, I changed it to appropriate. Next slide, responsibility for emergency management. Again, we talked about this. This would revise section 15 regarding the mayor, 18 regarding the city manager, 21, the police chief and 22, the fire chief. This is all to confirm that it is the city manager and public safety that will provide leadership during times of an emergency. Next slide, we've then moved to giving us some flexibility. The board of public utilities clarify that can also include stormwater and dry utilities, budget clarifying that the city manager may propose either a single year or a multi-year budget, keeping all other procedures and all other provisions the same. Next slide, clarification of ambiguities. These are just simple things, clarifying that the three years of California practice that's required to be city attorney does not need to be immediately preceding appointment for council member recalls in the event of a council member recall that the vacancy would be filled like any other vacancy in accordance with section 31, which allows either a special election or appointment. Section 31, deputy officials, this would just confirm that city manager and city attorney can appoint their own deputies without need for confirmation of those deputies by the council. Next slide, gender and citizenship neutrality. This is to revise the charter throughout to ensure gender neutral language. And then also to revise the charter to substitute resident for citizen throughout the charter. But I do wanna clarify that the only places where the word citizen appears is in talking about boards and commissions. So it just clarifies that you need to be a resident, but you need not be a citizen to be on a board or commission for the city. Next slide. This just is the proposed ballot language really tracks kind of those three general categories that we're looking to address in the update and modernization. I realized that in the language, somehow neutrality got changed to equality. If we could ensure gender and citizenship equality by an amendment to the charter, I'd do it in an instant, but we can ensure that it's neutral as to that. Next slide. And these are just some of the key next steps are a number of next steps that we'll be taking, but we would be submitting the approved ballot measures to the Sonoma County Register of Voters. It'll be referred to our office for impartial development of the impartial analysis. And here's the same issue that I raised with respect to measure O. State law authorizes the submission of arguments for and against. We don't need to take any action on that, but if the council would like to authorize either the mayor or council members to be an author on those arguments, that should be incorporated into the resolution. The proposed resolution I'll just note does authorize rebuttal arguments. I know when you read through it and it doesn't talk about the arguments, but it talks about the rebuttal, that's just the way the state election code's written, is that if you want to allow rebuttal, you have to specifically call that out. If you prefer not to allow rebuttal arguments, you, we can delete that provision, but I would generally recommend that you allow for rebuttal arguments because you're likely to want to provide your own rebuttal argument in favor. And then I just noted on here, and I will once we kind of move to that next step, send around to council and to all of our employees, once we've sent this over to the registrar of voters, that kicks in all the restrictions on no public resources for advocacy. And we have to be very careful. We can still give information. We can still make sure that all of our constituents and all of the voters know the facts, but we can no longer use any city resources at all for advocacy. And next slide, which is the end of the presentation. So happy to answer any questions. Thank you so much, Sue. I'm gonna see if there are any questions from council members, council member McDonald. I would just like to see if we're able to go through one item at a time as opposed to engrossed tonight. Yeah, let's do questions across the board, but when we do discussion, we'll take them one at a time. Okay, thank you. Council member, let's go Sawyer first. Thanks, mayor. I think it was just answered. I was hoping that we could separate the three items. Thank you. Council member Sweatham. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And Madam City Attorney, just to confirm, I think it's my understanding regarding the council compensation. The last bullet point on slide four was consider establishing a penalty reduction in salary for an excused absences. That's all that the Charter Review Committee said. In other words, they didn't start defining what an excused absences or what that should be. And I know the wording just says we could establish an ordinance if the council should choose to go in that direction if it passes. Correct, they gave no further details as to what would be included in that ordinance. Great, thank you. And council member Fleming. Yep, okay.  And yes, we'll take them separately. If you're interested in providing public comment on tonight's agenda, hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. Seeing none, I'll bring it back. Let's start as we did last time and go from what I consider to be the easiest to the more difficult discussions. Let's start first with the Charter clarifications. And council member Fleming, this is your item. Drew this short straw. Would you like me to put a motion on the table for the sake of conversation or would you like to do that after we go through each one of these with the surgical precision, I'm sure. Let's put a motion on the table for each of these as we go and open up for discussion. So this would be the exhibit C ballot measure number three. Exhibit C. You'll have to bear with me while my granicus is down so I'm gonna have to pull them up each one at a time. So you want three motions or one motion? I'm sorry, I was lost in the text here. We have three separate ballot measures that are proposed. We'll take them one at a time. So we'll do a motion on number three, then we'll do a motion on number two and then a motion on number one. But we'll dispense with each of them as we go. So motion, discussion, vote, move on to the next one. Would you be so kind or some of us to take a look at this and tell me which, cause I pulled up the resolution but not. Yeah, exhibit C there. Exhibit C, thank you. Apologies for the fact that it's gonna take a few minutes. And do I need to read the whole thing? Madam City Attorney, you were chiming in? Yeah, I actually have a question in terms of, as you see, I've set up the resolution to address all three. We can keep it as one resolution, listing all three or we couldn't divide it into three separate resolutions. Basically, I would put that together and probably bring back the final versions at your next meeting on consent. So either option works for me, but do you have a preference? Let's try to make this as easy as possible. So I'll have the council member make a motion, a proposal for each of the sections that we can discuss and get a vote from council on a straw vote on if council is in agreement. That should shape the final resolution, which then we can offer as one resolution. Does that work for the council? Perfect. So for example, you have exhibit C. C, so you can read just the title, which would be city Santa Rosa measure number three, city of Santa Rosa, city charter update and modernization and wave further reading. So I'll start with exhibit C, city of Santa Rosa, charter update and modernization and wave further reading for the text. Second. Okay, council member McDonald. Thank you, mayor. So I'm absolutely fine with two and three, but when it comes back to council as final, you suggested that perhaps we just have one resolution with all three items. I'd still prefer them to be three resolutions at that time so that we can take it as one at a time per council that would make me more comfortable because if there was a vote in favor of something or not in favor of something, I'd like to do them separate still if that's okay. Yeah, I understand what you're saying now. Is that acceptable, madam city attorney? Yes, it is. Okay. Thank you. It does mean that what I'll do is I'll prepare those for consent for next time, but we'll, I would ask that you take a straw vote. If that's an okay way to do it. Yes, that is a fine way to do it and we'll have the three separate resolutions. So just for clarification on that, do we need to have a motion to actually have you bring it back as three different resolutions or just direction that that's the way a council would like it? Yes, you can just provide me direction. That's fine. So as far as number three, I think it makes sense to provide for update and modernization of our language within the charter. I don't have any problems with any of the, what's being suggested. And I know one of the things that we talked about was around citizenship and we wanted to bring more information about that later. But as far as making sure that there's language that's neutral with throughout the document, I think is critical and important. And so I'm, I'm in favor of this one. Okay. Any other discussion on it? Madam city clerk, can you call a straw vote on this one for us? Sure. Hold on. Okay. Council member Schwedhelm. I guess it's just an I. I'm supportive of what's in exhibit C. That would be an I. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That has a unanimous I votes. All right. Exhibit the city of Santa Rosa city charter amendment district based elections of council members and waive for the reading of the text. Second. I have to put a seconder in there so I could just get the vote screen up. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That also received a seven I votes. All right council member council member now put a motion on the table for the first one and then we'll open it up for discussion based on the motion. So I'll move them. The city of Santa Rosa city charter amendment increasing council compensation. The way that it's listed is exhibit A. I am misunderstood. So what is my recommendation that we accept the recommendation of the charter committee as is with one amendment which is that it is for future council members meaning that after each election council members shall get the recommended amount upon swearing in. So the date of that the new council is seated would be the effective date for the first set of council members and the even members would be this year and probably in December when the new council is seated and then for future councils in 2024 when the odd number councils are elected and seated. Okay. That's the motion. Is there a second? Second. Council member Schwedhelm. I was just listening to the words given on slide nine about when it becomes effective. Did you describe option number two? I did. I just did it with a little bit more detail as to clarify the exact date upon which they would be implemented. Okay. Thanks. So in layman's terms if I understand you correctly existing council members do not receive the increased pay unless they are reelected. Correct. So the idea is that we or future council when people take on this position you take it on with a certain understanding of what you're getting into and that this would be going forward so that there was a sense with the public that we are not increasing our own compensation but rather solving a problem for future councils rather than addressing our own personal needs at this point in time. Madam city attorney. Yes. So one question is the option two that's listed on slide nine is that they apply upon the individual's own election or reelection and I understand what you're saying is it would be effective when the council when the new council is seated. This year we do have one council seat that is out of order because of the resignation. You talked about it being tied to the district number you know the district. Is that your intent or would it be that it's really upon your own election or reelection? That's a good question. I hadn't considered that piece. I think that what the intention here is and I'd be interested to hear from fellow council members I can't imagine that I won't hear from you guys really is that the public has to make the decision and so to clarify then it wouldn't be tied to the council members. It would be upon election or reelection then the compensation would be instituted. And can I ask for a point of clarification? Election reelection or appointment? So if heaven forbid one of us has a reason to leave the council and a new person is appointed would that person receive the new compensation? If that seat and I'm just thinking of this on the fly so if that seat had gone through the process of being of the voters agreeing to one the compensation then the reelection. So for example let's say you mayor were to quit halfway through next year Europe the person who was appointed or a place you would not then be compensated until their reelection. Okay. However if let's say we have somebody new who comes on next year and they leave and the voters have decided to compensate the council members their replacement would then be compensated. To be clear none of you are going anywhere other than the two that have already said that they're leaving us. Council member Swett, did you have a comment question? Council member Swett, go ahead. And again thinking about just what you said so when we have a vacancy now the way I look at it let's just take district three. The person who ran for that realized he was going to be making 800 bucks a month. He left and I'm sure the person we selected understood that and this and again I was looking at that language so this is just to continue that term and that's at 800 bucks a month so it wouldn't be for that specific district until district three would be in 2024 when they would start receiving that new compensation should this pass. That's the way I would interpret that. Yeah, that was my understanding. Council member Rogers and then I'll come to McDonald after. So based on what council member Fleming said or what I think I heard is that if I step down the person who takes over for me would not be compensated? Right, what I'm trying to get to here is that one, the public has to agree to this and then two, that the seat has to be elected go through an election. That's the clearest way to get through to explain what I'm trying to say. So I love the thought but I just wanna say whether we're appointed or elected, I don't expect anything less from council member McDonald and I don't think the public should expect anything less from her than they expect from me. Although the way she came up here is different. I think that what we bring to the community are hours, the number of events we go to, the number of meetings we show up to and our dedication to our city and our drive and our passion for serving our community should be the same. And I think it should be compensated the same to me. It seems like saying, oh, Natalie, you get health benefits but Diana, cause you came in the middle, you don't get no health benefits because you weren't elected. To me, it's kind of the same. It's the same thing. It's still a benefit of being on council. You're compensated for being on council. This is me looking like 20 years. I think if I may, through the mayor, I'm not suggesting that appointed members wouldn't be compensated the same as elected members. That's what I thought you were saying. That's what I was trying to clarify. And to be really clear, there's three people sitting at the dance that are going to be impacted by this. That's myself, council member Rogers and the vice mayor. And that just happens to be the, that just happens to be what happens for us to be able to do what's in the best interest of the city. I think what council member Fleming is going for is making sure that the voters are casting a ballot with a complete understanding of what's being offered to somebody who steps up to run. And the mayor said it a lot more articulately than myself. He proposed that I do this today. And now we have a beef because this was a little bit more complicated as it turns out. Mr. Vice Mayor, where are you going to weigh in? I was just going to ask for clarification. So if we're appointed, is it the same as being elected by the people? Is appointed by six the same as being elected by your district? And I'm sorry I was confused on the different levels of conversation. I would argue no because in fact, not a single person who had put somebody in that seat represented or was specific from that district by definition. So to be clear, us electing one of our colleagues does not deserve the same compensation as one of us being elected by our constituents. I'd be careful not to say deserving because I think that was the comment that council member Rogers was making is that council member McDonald's contributions are just as deserving of compensation, but her voters, her residents had not had a chance to weigh in on that. Correct. So that is what's on the table now. Perfect, thank you, sir. Council member McDonald. Okay, so a couple of points of clarification and this is because I can say this because it impacts me, right? So I actually was appointed to only serve until the next election. My community actually has to elect me in the next election, but it's only to finish the two-year term, but I'm still elected by my community members. And I think this is important because if it happens again to another person, we're one of us leave and we appoint them.  And for me, it ended up being about eight months. So technically, I would be then elected at the next election, even though it's a shorter term. So I understand it as saying if myself or anyone in that role, at the next election, if they were elected by their folks, they'd be compensated. What I am uncomfortable with goes back to what council member Rogers said, which is all of us being on separate timeframes. And I think it goes to exactly this point of who gets what when. And I think part of it is if the community as a whole votes on compensation, which is what they do, it's not just the districts that those of us who are being elected. It's the entire community that says, yes, we want council to have compensation. In my opinion, council should then get the same compensation when the election is certified. Because that is what community members have then said to us they are comfortable with. For me, when we go to the actual issue, it's the amount of compensation. But as far as who gets what when, in my opinion, to say those three or four of us or whomever is up for election in this next election to be on a separate pay as the mayor and vice mayor and council member Rogers, I just think causes issues amongst council. And so I am not in favor of that because of that reason, because I think your community members has then stated we are comfortable with this. They are telling you that. So what I am still really stuck on is going from the $800 a month compensation, which is what we get now plus benefits to such a large amount. And I think. Let's come back to that issue. So what I'll do if this works for folks is let's take the issue of when first. Okay. Let's do a straw poll around that. That might make more sense because I think the amount is going to be a separate conversation. So I thank you. I appreciate that. In the interest of moving the conversation forward. Probably a good idea. Those seem to be the two linchpins. Agreed. Council members have. So let's take those first. I will say I appreciate the amendment being offered by council member Fleming. This one is important to me. And I think you all heard it at the last meeting. It's not because I'm a glutton for punishment, but it is at a time where we know that our community is having to tighten their belt as inflation eats into their paycheck. I think it comes across exceptionally self-serving. And that's not what any of us are trying to do. And so I think by adding this amendment, I think it puts us in the best position to actually get paid council members long term, which I think is going to have good benefits for our community in the coming years, not just what we're dealing with today. So I do want to thank you for that compromise. Any additional, go ahead, Mr. Vice Mayor. City Attorney, does the Charter Review Committee make a recommendation of when? They did not. We did not discuss that issue specifically. It was my impression, impression only, that they were assuming that it would go into effect upon certification of the vote and would be generally applicable. But again, that was just my impression. Thank you. We did not reach, we did not discuss that particular aspect. I appreciate that. Council Member Spudel. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just on this, so what are your thoughts? Because I know the amendment that we already, the amendment that we already agreed to about two, four and six starting in 2018 and the other four, rather than saying individual here on this option, is there a way that we could use actually the district, finish out the term of that district, whether take the person out of it, because eventually we're gonna get on that cycle. If someone's going, well, let me start in 2020, these districts, it's gonna be every four years, and take the individual out because they're completing the term for that district. I think, I think we were just, I think that's what you were just discussing in terms of Council Member McDonald, who was appointed, again, to fill in until this November and then run for election for the second two years. So your suggestion, and I think there was another suggestion at some point, that because she's in a district, you would be setting it by district. So districts one, three, five and seven would all be under the existing pay and two, four and six would receive the new hire pay and there would be that difference between the two groups for two years. I think we're backsliding a little bit. I think for simplicity's sake, what I heard from Council Member Fleming that it seemed like folks were in agreement on was leave the district number out of it. The new council compensation does not start until a district elects a representative. So that takes care of, you've got two, four and six, as well as three up, if you try to delineate between evens and odds, you leave out district three, which is electing a council member. And may I speak to that point? Well, actually that clarified it and I'm good with that. Is everybody clear, Council Member Rogers? I think it's a cost savings. What? No, no, I'm waiting for you to go on. If we do evens and odds, if we do the way that the districts are really set up the elections, I think it's a cost savings, as far as implementation. It's a way to ease it. I mean, maybe that would help Councilwoman MacDonald. Okay. So my recommendation stands and there's a logic to it and we feel free. I think that maybe when we talk about how much that's a different conversation. But again, we don't have to accept this recommendation, but the logic is that there are two things happen, one's necessary and one's sufficient. Is necessary that you get elected to serve on the council, right? And then the, well frankly, they're both necessary. And then it's necessary that you're not currently sitting. So the people have to decide and then you have to get reelected. Both things have to be true. And so it doesn't really matter which council number you sit in. If you've satisfied both of those requirements, then you would get compensated. Council Member Sawyer. What I heard a voice at the last meeting that I did not attend, I omitted two other options and we can talk about that in a minute. But I understand, Mayor, your concern about the council appearing to be feathering their nests. I don't think you can get away from that conversation no matter how you address that kind of increase. So if you want to, and I think that, frankly, I think it should start on the moment that the election is certified. I would think that for equity and understanding of the public and for a number of reasons that everyone immediately gets the increase, whatever you decide, whatever is decided by the council as the increase. Any other choice I think is gonna complicate and perhaps even confuse the public? I'll hold my comments about the amount until later, but I think simplicity is really important. And I think that just on certification, you got the money. And sure, there will be, and I don't, I understand your concern about that appearance, but my guess is, depending on how much is decided on tonight, they're gonna see that anyway. So I don't think you can get around that concern about the council feathering its nest. Yeah, certainly not for everybody. I mean, we know that, right? Even we're gonna hear things that are incorrect, but I think it's important. So the proposal that's on the table is get the new pay. Let's take a straw vote and see if there are four votes to move forward in that direction. Otherwise, we can come back for a different motion. Adam City Clerk. Okay, thank you. Council Member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council Member Sawyer. No. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member McDonald. No. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. You have five eyes and two nose. Okay. Now let's move on to the question of compensation, compensation amount. I'm gonna start over here with Council Member Sawyer since he was not at the last meeting and just go ahead and throw out your thoughts, John. Okay, I did watch the meeting so I pretty much know how people feel about this. I actually agree with the dissenting opinion that came with the two people that voted or that did not, they were concerned about the level of compensation and that there would be the potential, if not almost at least some guaranteed pushback from the community. So I was kind of hoping that there would be an option either to take the state's recommendation which seemed a little bit low. I actually was hoping that there would be conversation around comparable cities because I think that there will be pushback. And so I would not, I really respect all the work of the committee. They worked for six months to come up with recommendations for this council and I am in agreement with every one of them except this one and I'm not in disagreement about the council being compensated. That's not the issue. I think they should be compensated and they think that they should be well compensated but moving this, there's been a lot of conversation about the percentage of the general fund and how much this represents of the percentage of the general fund. That's kind of an almost an intellectual conversation because what the people are going to hear is a half a million dollars plus benefits. That's what I think they're gonna hear. And so it concerns me that in our desire to fairly compensate the council whatever fairly means that they will end up with nothing that they'll stay right where it is. So I was hoping for a bit of a compromise inside where comparable cities might be used. It's not 100,000 or 1200 for that matter. That doesn't appear to be the direction of the council. I can tell by the last meeting and I can tell by tonight. So I will not be supporting this part of the recommendation of the committee and I do support the letter of the dissenting opinion of two members of the committee. What I do want to suggest is that the council consider a retroactive decision on the salary to be put in place to kind of cover the council. It would be the state law ability to move that amount that it was added to and added to and added to and I can't even think of the amount that it goes to. But if the community rejects the amount of the renumeration then the council has nothing unless they have something to fall back on. Now you could always do that. You could buy, after the vote you say, people said yes or no. If they said no, you could always go do the ordinance and increase doubling the amount. I think it about doubles it, something like that. So that's my hope is that the council does not end up with no increase. That is a concern of mine because clearly, especially the mayor and I think I am actually in favor of the mayor making more than other council members because I know the kind of time it takes and I'm not alone behind this dais. So I won't be supporting the amount. I honor the work of the committee and I'll leave it at that. Two questions council member. The first, how much do you think the public thinks we make? I think they think we make quite a bit.  If I walked up to that same person tomorrow and said that the council is considering $100,000, I think they would be equally shocked and that's what I'm concerned about, a shock factor. My second question then is, do you have a proposal? Well, my original proposal was... What do you think would be fair compensation that people would understand? Well, I'm not sure if we have those numbers. Do we have the comparable city numbers? Yes, that was part of the presentation from the June 21st, so I do have that with me. The average of the comparable cities is approximately 31,000 for the mayor and 20,000 for council members, 20,150 for council members. And I could even pop that by 10,000 at both levels, but I think the going over 50,000 would be, I think I could easily justify an amount at half of what's being considered, plus benefits. So that plus benefits is a major conversation for me. It's more important than the money. And I think for many of us in the past and in the future, but the benefits are very generous, I think, and very important, especially to families. So I can see myself cutting in half, going to the comparable cities and then bumping it up some. It's also a, it's an arguable point. You can say, well, this is what everyone else, all of our comparable cities have looked at this and this is what they feel is fair and this is the average of the comparable cities. It's something that actually can be defended. I don't know how one can really defend $100,000. I mean, I know how much time it takes to be a council member, especially with your mayor, but I'm, the formula for the, that's being used is, I just think it, I understand the spirit, but I think the end result could be disappointing. Council Member Rogers. I just wanted to say, I think that people tend to want what is important for them. And I say that because I don't need benefits because I have employment. I'm not retired. I'm not, I don't need benefits. So for me, that's not important, right? So in lieu of benefits, cash is better. I have children. Cash is better, but someone will argue for benefits if they wait to guess what? Money, it all equates to money. So I say that to say that you can't say, well, benefits on this hand, because some of us don't take benefits. So some of us don't take benefits because we don't need benefits. So that would be selfish just to sign up for benefits to cost the city additional monies for no purpose whatsoever if we don't need them just for the sake of taking them and just take the compensation that is offered. So I'm back to the reason why I feel like compensation is important. I think that it allows for the council to be diverse. I think that it allows for different people from different walks of life, whether you need benefits or you need the actual cash or whatever you need to serve your city and to not be penalized in different areas of your own life for doing it and to not have to sacrifice in different areas of your own life or not being able to serve your community because you don't have the money to do it. I don't think that's fair or because you just need the benefits. I don't think that's fair or I don't think that it's fair that you have to use all your vacation time in order to serve on council or to do certain things. I don't think that that's fair. So yes, I know from firsthand experience, but is it about me? No, it's about the future generations. It's about maintaining the diversity that we see up here. We have equal. To me, that is so important. It's about keeping that. It's about historically we didn't have that and I wanna maintain that and I wanna find an avenue to keep that. So to me, compensation means that maybe we can open the door for other people to come up here and do that. So Sue, obviously we're having the same kind of debate that the charter committee had. It might be helpful if you could remind the council what proposals the committee did evaluate or what sorts of ideas were on the table. I think the two that I remember off the top of my head, one was the area meeting income, some percentage of it. I think I also remember charter discussing hanging it to the supervisor salary, 50% of the supervisor salary, for example. Can you walk us through some of those? I'm gonna try to, actually I can pull out. I was gonna do, I'll try to do it from memory, but I'll also pull the report because that did go through everything. But they did, actually let me just work from here for right now. They did look at tying it to supervisors. Supervisors currently get paid about 161,000 a year. They are all considered full-time employees. It was, most of the discussion was to, the discussion began with tying it exactly to supervisors salary, then there was some discussion of maybe some portion of supervisors salary. Tied to the average salary of a city employee, and that was about 95,000. This is kind of an order of magnitude. There was a proposal for 104 that put the mayor at 140% of AMI for a three-person household and council members at 100% of AMI. Then the proposal for the proposal that ended up being approved was the 100% of AMI for the mayor and the two-thirds for council members. They also looked at the average of the comparable cities, and that was again about 31,000 for the mayor and 20,000 for council members. They looked at the existing authority. That's what we've talked about where the mayor, it would bring the mayor up to about 26,640 and council members to 17,760. The other proposal was to tie it to the lowest salary wage, which is $15.85 an hour. And I don't know how you then calculate that, do you calculate that as the mayor is considered at 40 hours or 50 hours, whatever, and that council members are considered at whatever other number, or do you actually have to keep time records, which would be difficult. The other thing that occurs to me, council member Sawyer, as you were discussing, kind of talking about specific numbers, in almost, in all of these instances, the committee talked about formulas. It was only after they talked about formulas that we then looked and compared at what the actual numbers were. They ended up at median income for a three-person household. A median income chart has a lot of different boxes so that you could, there are some options embedded in there. So it could be median income for a one-person household or it could be, this is also divided into categories of, from extremely low up to moderate, you could put it somewhere else on that chart. I understand that Berkeley, which settled on the three-person household from Alameda County, that at one point they were talking about setting it at low income. So there are some different options there as well. Those other options within the area, median income were not discussed at the committee, other than maybe something higher than the 100% of median income. I don't know if that's helpful. That's a lot of numbers being thrown at you and not a chart that you can look at. So I do have, we can pull up these two slides if you want, if that's helpful, but up to you. So based on the discussion, I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and throw something out and see how council responds to it. And I'm gonna start with council member Sawyer because I think I know where most folks are at. But what have the council considered the mayor at 50% of what a supervisor makes and council members at two thirds of that number? I believe that puts the mayor somewhere in the 80 range and council members somewhere between 50 and 60,000. Too rich for my blood. Any other ideas from folks? Council member McDonald. Just for clarification, does that include your benefit package or would that be separate from the benefit package? I'm just talking pay. Our benefit package is the same as it is for employees. So for me, when we talk about compensation, I'm talking about the salary. And I agree with council member Rogers, your perspective is dependent on where you are in your life. I'm your proverbial younger person who never goes to the doctor and never needs anything. So I don't use my benefits the same. I'd be in the same boat as council member Rogers where I would pick salary over healthcare. As a point of clarification on that, is there a way that you could do an in lieu so that folks that didn't choose to have the health benefits could actually take the cash benefit amount as council members? I might look to the city manager to weigh in as well, but from my perspective, that becomes a very difficult for the payroll section to have to be calculating what the value would be if you took benefits depending on which benefits you took, which health plan you chose, how many dependents you wanted to cover, that number's gonna vary, and then you'd be translating that into salary. And we don't do that with any other employees currently that counsel salaries, as I understand it, generally track the formulas that are applied to city employees, you know, absent specific contract provisions. The reason I mentioned this specifically is because I was actually on a board where there was a percentage or an amount that you were given a stipend every month, or you could have that stipend amount put towards benefits. So even actual full healthcare benefits were not part of the package of being on that school board. You only had a certain amount that was applied towards it. You could participate in it, but you weren't given the full amount of the health benefits. In fact, either like a full-time employee. So that's why I mentioned that, yes, that is a question. I am familiar that some jurisdictions do it that way, but City of St. Rose, my knowledge, does not do that to any employees. Going back to your proposal, Mayor, on the 80,000 for the Mayor, and then 52,800 roughly is what counsel would pay. I was going back to the last presentation that we had where there was a slide that actually talked about the very low and low AMI. So it would be 50% of AMI and 30% of AMI. And the very low AMI was 53,500, and for two-thirds of that would be 35,310 if I calculated correctly. So that would be about 50% of what we would be going for. And I think if you're looking at jumping from $800 a month to something that's maybe a bit more palatable even for community members to say, this is what we get, this is about how many hours we have to spend doing this particular job, plus we get benefits. To me, that makes more sense, or even looking at the low range, which is 32,100. The 31,700 came from looking at that 1585 times in that 40 hours, and then I just times about 50 hours in a year as opposed to 52, because everybody usually gets two weeks vacation. I don't get paid vacation and the line of work that my husband does, we never have. But looking at that, that is actually equal to what our lowest employees are paid. What I don't know and what's not clear on that slide is do our lowest employees still get to participate in health benefits? And if that was the case, I would even be more comfortable with that because we are asking our other full-time employees to live in Sonoma County on that wage. And we do have that chart available that we could put up if that would be helpful, if you would like that. I am seeing nods, so. So if you look at the two amounts that I was referring to would be extremely low or very low on this particular chart, but then going back to the 1585, that was something completely separate and it was even lower than the extremely low. So I'm not sure if that's a percentage of an AMI or if that's something that just is what we currently pay. And then there was another question that I had around the tying our area median income to whatever it is in that year, that there would be charter language offered for that. But I was wondering, do we actually offer our employees raises based on AMI and what's happening or how that works? Do we have anything that bumps them up into that range? No, no employees salaries are tied to AMI. The, each of the bargaining units negotiates for separately and that's how the forward. I feel like I knew that, but I wasn't sure if we ever use the AMI for that composition as well. Yeah, all right. Thank you. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. I think the work when it comes to the pay has already been done for us. And this is charter review recommendation. Honestly speaking, when I ran for office, I didn't even think we had received health benefits and I didn't even know what the pay was. My job was to serve, that's why I'm here. So me personally, whether it's 101 or 30,000, if the person doesn't want city council to receive any increase at all, you could put a million dollars on there or $10 is still gonna receive a no vote on the ballot. So for me, charter review has spoken. I suggest we listen to charter review and move forward and see if it's passed by the voter. We could be counting our chickens before they hatch. Council members, what up? I was just gonna bring up the same point because I'm not sure if we've actually checked to see, can we count to four with the committee's recommendation? Cause it's almost like deja vu all over again. We had a similar conversation last time we did this. We all had different perspectives, but we eventually ended up where we are here today. And even, you know, council members, sorry, made the point about the two, the dissenting opinion, which I'm supportive of, which we could still do after this, but even those two individuals unanimously recommended, even though the vote initially was not unanimous, the unanimously recommended this go to council. And so I'm supportive of the committee's recommendation for those reasons. All right, let's take a straw poll on the charter committee's recommendation, which is the area median income for a family of three at 100% for mayor and at two thirds of that for council members. Okay, council member Schwedhelm? Aye. Council member Sawyer? No. Council member Rogers? Aye. Council member McDonald? No. Council member Fleming? Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez? Aye. Mayor Rogers? No. Okay, well you do have four votes, four aye votes on that. Okay, we'll move forward with that. And then I believe there was a third item that folks wanted to discuss, third amendment? No, okay. Let's go ahead and see if we can get four votes then off of the new motion crafted through this process, which is the charter committee's recommendation with one change, and that was the clarification that you have to get reelected to be eligible. Do you mean reelected or elected? Elected or reelected. Thank you. Yeah. This is another straw vote. Yep. Can you clarify the motion, mayor? The motion is for council compensation, the charter committee's recommendation with one amendment, and that's the clarification that you have to get elected or reelected before you are eligible for the new pay. So there would be a difference of something. One hit the people, voted yes. A council member, one council member would be getting, what's the amount for the, mayors getting 100,000, what's the amount for the council member? 66 or so. 66,000 and the person next to them could be making 800. Yes, correct. I just wanted to clarify that that's what it was. May I also ask one question? If the mayor is selected from the group that is still getting the 800, I presume the mayor then would receive the 1200. Correct. Correct, okay. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. No. Council member Rodgers. No. Council member McDonald. No. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. No. Mayor Rodgers. Aye. Okay, you did not get four votes to move that forward. Okay. Mr. Vice Mayor. Yes, can I make a friendly amendment to the straw vote where if one of us is elected to mayor, he or she should receive the updated compensation and reason being is the mayor cannot get away from the duties at hand, such as one of us as council members could. Council member McDonald. I'd like to amend the amendment that all council members at certification of the vote receive the compensation that the voters approve this November at the same time and not to stagger it. We've already dealt with that with the straw vote with see if we can move forward and see if the council member, the vice mayor's motion carries. Otherwise, we can come back and revisit that question. The vice mayor, please state. We don't have a second on vice mayors. Let's see. Is there a second for the vice mayor's proposal? Okay, looks like no. Actually, I think, could you restate it? I move that any council member appointed to mayor receives the updated compensation. It would be if the voters go with committee's recommendation. Well, that would be without the voters. It would be as we would select our mayor, regardless if it's even or odd on the district or newly or whatever, but whether they're appointed or elected, if we elect that person as mayor, they should be compensated with the new figure of the recommendation by the charter review. Let's do a straw vote. I don't think it's been seconded. I don't think it's been seconded. Okay, council, we're a bit out of an impasse. So if you want to revisit the question of whether or not you have to get reelected or elected, we can go ahead and recall, see if there's any interest in asking that question again. You're making the motion. So I'm looking for a second. I'm going to make the motion again to, for council to consider that if the voters approve an increase to compensation in November at the certification of that election that every council member receive pay at the same time so that it's, and I can give my rationale, make sure it's second first. Second. And my rationale is, as it goes before voters, they are the ones approving if they want to increase council pay or not. And to not confuse the timeframe of when it would start or when the mayor would receive it or what district the mayor's from or any of the issues that were brought us up amongst council. To me, it is a cleaner, clearer process to voters. So it tells them, this is what we believe we should be paid. And you're going to say yes or no to it. And everyone again is back on the even playing field. I think it goes back to what council member Sawyer said around, does it look like we're feathering our nests and it won't matter how it looks. The voters will either approve it or not. And they're not saying we would also like to make this amendment that you only get it if you're in this jurisdiction or however you want it. The votes clear, yes or no. And that to me makes it very clear for council, yes or no, you get it.  I'd also like to point out, since it's up for discussion that depending on the district that you live in, some people might have the perspective that if their district representative is getting paid less that less will be expected of their district representative because they are getting paid less. And that is not the case, but that may be their perception if we're not all paid the same. Mr. Vice Mayor. I would like to make a friendly amendment and I'm sure this would probably not pass, but nonetheless, my amendment is that no council member receives the new compensation until 2024 when we're all elected again. Is there a second to that? Second. All right, let's go ahead and do a straw vote on that one. If that one fails, we'll do a straw vote on council member McDonald's. If that fails, we're gonna take a five minute recess, take a bathroom break, let people think about this, cool their jets a little bit and then come back to the dais and see where we're at. Okay, council member Schwedhelm. I just wanted to add comment. I still had a comment I wanted to make. The one piece of information that's missing from our earlier discussion about measure O is polling data. And so we're all kind of guessing what's the interpretation because I share your feelings, Mr. Mayor, about if voters learn or people who endorse or don't endorse certain measures, I think it's gonna make it that much more challenging to pass, but I'd be willing to support what the straw poll was, but I think it's gonna make it that much more difficult to pass because we're lacking that polling data to find out how does our community feel about that or our voters feel about that. So that was an eye. That was an eye to deferring council compensation to 2024, putting on the ballot that it wouldn't start until 2024. That's the motion. The motion is to all council members get to pay at the same time, but it's not until 2024. So I'm getting confused. So I heard a motion, then I heard the vice mayor offer a friendly amendment. Was the original motion by council member McDonald accepted? So what I heard from the vice mayor was a substitute motion, which did get a substitute motion. Yes, completely different. So in Robert's rules, you take the substitute motion first and then. I just assumed it was a friendly amendment. I'm glad Susan amused by this. Follow the bouncing ball. So the motion that we are considering with a straw poll right now is everybody gets paid or assuming approval from the public. Every district representative gets paid at the same time, but not until 2024. Gotcha. I'll be an eye. Thank you. Council member Sawyer. Interesting suggestion. Trying to think of why it's a bad idea. At the same time, everybody at the same time. Does it put anyone at a disadvantage? Would there be any differential? I'm trying to think of how that would work. If I'm clear on the motion and going back to everybody has to be elected, it would still do a differentiation unless that's the time certain that everyone would get it. That's the motion, that's the time certain is 2024. The discrepancy is you have council members who are two years into their term, new term versus not. Would it be helpful to take a five minute break and then come back so that council members can formulate their thoughts around this? I'm seeing mostly yeses. I'll come to council member Rogers and then I'll take a five minute break. Can I just say why this could be a good idea? One, it goes before the voters and by the time we find out the results and everything, ideally we're already pretty much in 2023 as it is already. And then it's giving the city manager time in order to implement it to see how we're going to implement it and what we're going to do. So it's just giving us time and then it rolls out and then we, so I think that it's just giving us time to implement it and it has an implementation date. It's like nothing else that you vote for that has a firm start implementation date. I mean, things have implementation dates. So I will admit that my thinking on this was probably different than other council members in that probably the friendly amendment will be January 1st, 2025. That is correct. Okay. I think it's 24. So all right, so then this goes back to our original which means we still have three council members who had not served for election who would then be getting paid. Correct and to clarify my position of that whether really it's to motivate us to move forward but the spirit behind it was some are asking for us to receive compensation immediately and some of us are saying not into our election. So this is the meeting ground in the middle to give time for the constituents to know what is coming with ample time and for us to meet somewhere in the middle as I'm seeing we're not able to go one way or another. So this is a compromise that I'm offering. All right, council. We're going to take a five minute bathroom break, collect our thoughts and we'll come back. All right, let's bring us back. Adam City Clerk, can you call the roll? Yes, thank you, mayor. Council member Schwedhelm. Hi. Council member Sawyer. Here. Council member Rogers. Present. Council member McDonald. Here. Council member Fleming. Here. Vice mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present. All right, council. So where we left it before our break was a straw poll on deferring compensation to 2024, but all council members getting it at the same time. So my suggestion, my amendment that I'm going to offer to the vice mayor's suggestion is that the pay starts January 1st, 2025 so that that way all council members will have to have gone through an election or a reelection before they get the approved compensation, but it does not create a disparity amongst council members in who's making what at what point. I think then that's also defensible to go out to the public to say, we're not looking to feather our own cap as council member Sawyer said, but rather we can talk about what's in the best interest long-term for the city of attracting more diverse candidates into these positions. So I'm going to offer that as a suggestion. Looking for a second. Mayor, I think that it addresses the issues that we foresee in the election and I will accept your friendly amendment. And the second was council member Rogers. And I still second. Okay. Any additional discussion? Great. Madam city clerk. Can you take a straw poll on that aspect? January 1st, 2025 start for council compensation. Council member Schwaitham. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion or that vote has seven eyes. So now we come back to the full resolution, which is the recommendation from the charter committee, which includes the compensation at three person area median income for the mayor and two thirds of that for council members. So that, but deferred start until January 1st, 2025. Let's take a straw vote on that and see if we have four votes. Council member Schwaitham. Aye. Council member Sawyer. I respectful no. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. No. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That received five eyes. Okay. So Madam City Attorney, you'll capture all of that and bring three separate resolutions for our next council meeting. I will. Perfect. Any additional or last minute comments from council members? Council member Sawyer. I was going to mention that depending on what the voters do, there'll probably be a lot more people running for second terms. Or third. I was going to say, council member, are you making an announcement now or? No, five is not in the, is not in the, in the, in the odds. You, you missed when they shot down term limits at the last meeting. So council member Fleming. Yes. Do the mayor, do I still need to do the, the actual resolution brought forward? No, because I'll be bringing back three separate resolutions at your next meeting. Okay. I look forward to not carrying them next time. So mercifully we'll move on now. We've already done our proclamations for the day. Let's go into our staff briefings. Madam city manager. COVID-19 response update. So the rapidly spreading Omicron sub variant PA five has become dominant among new coronavirus cases. As of last week, PA five made up at, at the, at approximately 54% of new cases in the United States according to the centers for disease control and prevention. In addition to being highly contagions, contagious, this variant can evade antibodies. And those people who are vaccinated or who were recently infected by COVID including other sub variants of Omicron. Public health officials continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, mask when possible, monitor their health for signs of COVID infection and continue to be vigilant in the fight to spread, to prevent the spread of the, excuse me, the disease. For more information about the status of COVID in our community, testing locations and obtaining at home tests and vaccination information, vaccination information for all ages, please go to socoemergency.org. Thank you. There we go. My apologies. I was not sure if, if you were going to segue into me. Hi, good to meet again. I'm not gonna say is here the office of community engagement. I do have a quick update on the community empowerment plan. So with community outreach and engagement between March and June of 2022, we engaged with 3,403 members of the community. Specifically in June, our team participated in the field day at Cesar Chavez Language Academy, specifically working with our middle school youth there, the Pride Parade, Peggy Sue Karshow and Cruz, Juneteenth Community Festival, as well as many other events where we had the opportunity to interact in person with community and speak to community about our programs and services. The Multicultural Roots Project, our team was invited by the Arts in Public Places program to display a Multicultural Roots Project exhibit at the Finley Community Center during the month of August. The exhibit is set to start on August 2nd with a reception scheduled for August 11 from five to 7 p.m. We're working with community partners to collect items to display in the exhibit, which are relevant to the Multicultural Roots Project. We will be assisting a separate topic. We're gonna be assisting with reaching out to the community regarding the upcoming Police Oversight Community Meeting Series where the community can share comments and feedbacks about policing in Santa Rosa with the Independent Police Auditor OIR Group. We invite you to join us on the following dates and times, August 4th from 6 to 7, 30 p.m. at Shepherd Elementary School, August 5th from 8 to 10 a.m. There will be a series of drop-in hours and they will be available at the Tia Maria Van Alleria and August 6th from 10 to 12 at Finley Person Senior Wing. Lastly, the Hearn Community Hub, thank you Council for approving Ross Drouless-Cousenberry's contract to assist us with the community needs assessment for the Hearn Community Hub. We held our first meeting today with the firm to provide them with additional information about the contract and timeline and next we'll be reaching out to our community members regarding our first large community input event where we'll learn from the community what the programmatic needs are. And if you've not had a chance, I would encourage you to visit Let'sConnectSR.com slash Hearn Hub Project where you can begin to ask questions and provide input. Thank you and that is the end of my presentation. Thank you, Deputy Director. Let's see if there's any questions from Council members. Okay, let's see if there's any public comment on our staff briefings for tonight. Items 8.1 and 8.2. May I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment. Okay, let's move on to city manager and city attorney reports. Madam city attorney, do you want to start? Sure, and I'll try to make this very quick given the late hour. We have our monthly report on settlements and active litigation. We had no settlements over $50,000. That's our reporting threshold in the last month. We have had some smaller settlements. We had a recent settlement for about 5,000 in a personal injury case. We have 30 cases still pending, including five receiverships. I won't give the numbers. I'll just list the categories. Receiverships, general litigation, personal injury. We have just four police actions, three rits of mandate. We are close to resolving several more of the cases. So we are very pleased about that. We have eight trials set coming in the fall and early winter. And then we have, just to let you know, in the Venuci case, which is our case concerning homeless encampments, that trial is set for fall of 2023. Discovery's gonna be starting in that action. That's gonna be a lot of work. And I will also mention that we, this week our new litigator started and we are very pleased. He is going to be a great addition to our team. And so we welcome him. His name is Nathan Putney. Goes by Nate and very friendly. And I think you'll enjoy working with him and meeting him. Thanks very much. Thank you, Madam City Attorney. And a warm welcome to Nate. And thanks for joining the team. Let's go on to our city manager report. I have no updates. Thank you. Okay. Let's see if there's public comment on item number nine, our city manager and city attorney reports. Mayor, I see no hands raised and we have no voicemail public comment. Okay. We had no abstentions from council members tonight. So let's check in on mayor's and council member reports. Mr. Vice Mayor. Thank you, Mayor. On July 14th, between four and six, I welcome our community to Amitote Food Park for the grand opening. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mr. Vice Mayor. No other reports. Council member McDonald. Yeah, I have a few different things. I wanna say thank you to council member Schwedhelm and Sawyer for doing the measure O presentation with me. And I believe you can find that presentation online on our website that was informational for the public. And climate action meets tomorrow. I also met with Jen Santos about Fremont Park and the plans potentially for Fremont Park in the downtown area. And I attended a fundraiser for, it was called Bachi for Books for the Sonoma Alliance to raise money for books for children in our community. I briefly attended the Opioid Summit at Findlay Center, which was extremely informative. And our chief was there to welcome attendees and we had attendees from actually all over the state for that summit. So I just wanna do a shout out to the department that actually put that all together because it was extremely helpful for all who went. And I met with the water department, had an opportunity to go through the entire water department. And then in the afternoon went to the treatment facility to get a tour of that area as well. And so they gave me a huge presentation that I have here and I just want the water department to know that I took it home and studied it. So I know what all the caps and colors of the water treatment underground mean now, but don't test me. We also had the water expo in downtown on the Wednesday night market and it was packed. They had like an Eagles cover band that was down there, but you could hardly walk through the water expo was so well done by the city. The entire department really needs to be thanked for how well it done. There was people lined up to get the free, the freebies that were there. They may were making buttons for kids. It was just really incredible. And then finally I went and participated in the park a month at Galvin Park. And I would like to say that I had the best job there because I was able to make snow cones and not pick weeds. So I'm claiming that as my council job, so shout out to the parks department for their great job. But all in all, I just want to thank our incredible staff. Every time I go out and do another tour or work with any department, I am always just so impressed with their commitment to our city and to our community. And so thank you to all of them. Thank you council member. I'm going to just give one quick item update that I think the council would be interested in. And that's just a huge thank you to our team who put together incredible applications for California State Transportation Funds. Sonoma County was awarded $29 million. And that's three specific projects through Sonoma County Transportation Authority. One project was the much awaited new smart station down in Petaluma. So that was good to get that off their books. But for Santa Rosa, what's most important and most exciting to me was the funding for 30 new electric buses between Santa Rosa City Bus, Sonoma County Transportation and Petaluma Transit. It's not just the buses, it's also the charging infrastructure. So with that in place, Rachel is going to kill me if this turns out to not be the case. But we now have the funding to switch over 50% of our transportation fleet to completely electric infrastructure, which is a significant savings for our climate goals. So great work, Assistant City Manager, Rachel, Nancy, Bjorn, the entire transportation team. Thank you to SCTA for their partnership. Thank you to council member Fleming for helping to shepherd this through MTC as well. And we really value those partnerships and we're looking forward to seeing those roll out. Later this year. Let's do public, now we have item 11.2. Council, we have nine hours ago, we did interviews for the library commission. We have two appointments to make. One is a specific Santa Rosa representative. It's a four year term. We also have a joint City of Santa Rosa, Sonoma County representative. What I'm going to ask folks to do is first, we'll take public comment on item 11, make sure folks have a chance to weigh in. Then I'm going to do these in opposite order. I'll start with our Santa Rosa specific representative to see if there's consensus. And then I'm going to ask council to then come up with their next two for the joint City County. They're top choice for that and their second choice for that. So then I can go into conversations with the chairman of the board of supervisors and determine who we're going to end up appointing. Let's open it up for public comment. Mayor, I see no hands raised for item 11.2, library commission appointments and there's no voicemail public comment. Okay. I'm just going to start by seeing if there's a nomination for our Santa Rosa specific representative. I'll come to council members quite at home first and then I'll see if it aligns with you, Mr. Vice Mayor. I would nominate our incumbent David Cahill for the Santa Rosa specific representative. Second. Second. And Mr. Vice Mayor, did you have a separate nomination? No, sir. Okay. Are there any other nominations for the Santa Rosa specific seat? All right, Madam Clerk, can you please call the vote? Can I clarify who seconded? That would be the vice mayor. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay. Now I'll entertain a motion for the joint seat. Council member Rogers. Sarah. Second. Okay. Were there any other nominations for our first priority for the joint seat? Seeing none, let's call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay, and I will seek a nomination for our second choice. Council member Fleming. Swami Venkates. Okay. Second. Motion and a second. Do we have any other nominations? Let's call the vote. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Thank you, Council. Move on to item 12. That's the approval of the minutes. We have April 26th, 2022 minutes. Were there any amendments from council members? Let's check public comment to see if anybody has any amendments. Mayor, I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item. All right, we'll show those as adopted without objections. We did our consent calendar. We've done our report items. We did our public hearings. Council, I did wanna flag our written communications here at the end. As a reminder, we have our team analyze state legislation all the time and I regularly send support and opposition letters based on the council's direction for our legislative priorities or in congruence with our decisions that we make from the dais. One that I wanted to flag for folks because I received a couple of phone calls about it was AB 2011. Happy to discuss that with council members. We have previously from the dais when we discussed our housing element instructed staff to not put new development in high fire areas in the wooey. AB 2011 would allow by right development in many areas. There's a lot of good that's in the bill, but it would allow by right housing in the wooey. So we've sent an opposition letter and we have indicated that if that was removed and if other amendments were taken that we would be willing to remove our opposition to the bill, but I did wanna explain that one since I did receive questions from the public on that one. Council Member Fleming. So I recall, I don't have it in front of me, but I recall seeing an opposition not a support if amended. I mean, I just heard you suggest that you'd support if amended. Would you be willing to change that? No. So the way that the legislature does support in opposition letters now is they've removed the ability to do support if amended or support if opposed, opposed if amended. Really your only leverage is to oppose outright. We have had conversations with legislators in Sacramento and expressed that concern with them. And so we're waiting to see sort of what comes out of the committee approach around the bill, but there is no ability for the city to do oppose unless amended or support if amended at this time for legislation in Sacramento. Thank you for applying it in a clear explanation. I'll go to public comment on our written communications and see if the public would like to weigh in. Mayor, I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item. Okay, let's move on then to public comment for non-agenda items. If you're interested in providing comment, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your Zoom. Mayor, I see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item. Disappointed that Chief Westrope didn't take that as his opportunity. I see you on the Zoom. We have no other items tonight. Council, we are adjourned.