deputy city clerk if you'd like to make your statement yes I will oh we don't have our interpreters yet so we can go ahead and proceed vice mayor say that one more time city clerk we don't have our interpreters on yet but we can go ahead and proceed if you yes please in that case we'll go ahead and skip the interpreter statement and we'll go ahead and see the time is now 1 o'clock 1 30 even let's go ahead and open up public comment for public for a close study session a vice mayor we need to call them a meeting to order and do a roll call okay let's go ahead and do that part first thing okay councilmember schwedhelm here councilmember Sawyer councilmember Rogers present council member McDonald here councilmember Fleming here vice mayor Alvarez present mayor Rogers okay let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of mayor Rogers and councilmember Sawyer all right thank you with that being said let's go ahead and open up the public comment for close study session okay we're now taking public comments on item two closed session items if you wish to make a comment in person please put your name in with the administrator at the top of the well or via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand you'll have three minutes for your comment and a countdown count down timer alert at the conclusion of that period seeing that no one is here with us today are there any recorded there are no voicemail recorded messages and I don't see any raised hands very well that concludes the pre-recorded or actually the opportunity for public comment let's go ahead and close that and with that said we will recess and we will be back be back shortly hello Charles and Pablo thank you for joining us I am going to put Charles into the Spanish Channel and then Pablo if you will if you will translate when the council resumes please Charles understood I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish Channel to commence translation of the meeting for those just joining the meeting live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish Channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the zoom toolbar it looks like a globe once you join the Spanish Channel we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation Pablo can you please restate this in Spanish good afternoon for those of you in regards to this meeting interpretation in vivo will be available and the members who wish to listen to the interpretation in Spanish can join the channel to join click on the interpretation icon in the zoom toolbar that now looks like a globe terrarium once you join the Spanish Channel we recommend you turn off the audio primarily to listen to the interpretation in Spanish thank you I'll go ahead and place you in the Spanish Channel as well good afternoon everyone the time is now 2 30 city clerk would you like to call roll call thank you my smear councilmember Schwedhelm here councilmember Sawyer councilmember Rogers president councilmember McDonald here councilmember Fleming here vice mayor Alvarez present mayor Rogers let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of mayor Rogers and councilmember Sawyer thank you we'll move ahead into a study session item 3.1 city manager presenting staff thank you vice mayor Alvarez and members of council item 3.1 is the short-range transit plan SRTP 2022 update I'd like to introduce deputy director E. Thank you thanks very much and good afternoon vice mayor Alvarez and members of council we're pleased to be with you here today for this study session on the city bus short-range transit plan update transit planner Matt Wilcox is the project manager for this SRTP update and we'll be providing today's presentation with myself and planner Yuri Coslin also in attendance to help answer questions or provide any additional information that's needed before handing the presentation off to Matt I wanted to provide some brief context for this effort going back to 2020 in the spring of 2020 we had just begun our regular short-range transit plan update which is a process we go through every 3 to 4 years following guidelines provided by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission MTC the pandemic hit right as we were getting started and we have placed the effort on hold for the past 2 years but it's time to get us started again both with new guidelines from MTC which Matt will discuss as well as needing to get back to regular planning work for the future of city bus so we will be moving let me back up and say you know this effort has been on hold in part because we're still working to restore service that we cut during the pandemic as you all know and staffing continues to be the limiting factor in that service restoration but as staffing grows and as we have the staff available to further restore service we are planning to do that aggressively so even more reason to get into this planning effort to shape any changes to the city bus system that needs to be made at this point in time combined with that we're also needing to begin planning for the go Sonoma sales tax measure which kicks in in 2025 that measure will be bringing new operating revenues for local bus transit in Sonoma County so it's a good time now to start thinking about what what would be the best use of those new operating funds for transit in Santa Rosa to help support the needs of the public in our ridership so despite the fact that we're very much still in pandemic recovery mode here at city bus the time is right to do this focus planning work on the future of the city bus system and the Santa Rosa paratransit system so as you know we implemented a full system restructuring of the city bus system back in 2017 and leading up to the pandemic that system was performing really well so at this point in time we aren't looking to start from square one what we'd really like to do is focus on the pre pandemic system as the framework but look to identify both the shorter term changes that need to be made to better meet riders needs as well as start to think about priorities for future service changes or expansion of the system Matt will be talking more about the planning framework that underpins the current city bus system to give you some additional background and context and answer any questions you may have I also want to highlight that this SRTP update is taking place in the context of unprecedented local and regional regional efforts to integrate transit service provision among multiple operators so you know the goal is to develop as we've discussed in the past a seamless transit network here in Sonoma County that operates as one unified system from the standpoint of the rider so you know while we're looking within for this process really focusing on the city bus part of that that countywide and regional transit network what we learn and the recommendations that come out of this process will be brought forward into both the Sonoma County as well as the Bay Area regional integrated service transit planning process so they're not exclusive you know this this inner look at city bus doesn't include us then being being able to participate in those larger integration efforts I'll conclude by noting that we have provided Prince's printed system apps for council as well as any any members of the public in the chamber there's also a link in the agenda that that would take people to the online version of this if people are watching on zoom and want to have a point of reference for the current city bus system and we look forward to your feedback both on the SRTP process coming up as well as your priorities for the city bus system any concerns or questions you may have that we need to take into consideration and look at throughout this process and with that I'm going to hand it over to Matt but I did want to note that this is not the first slide of our presentation so if we could kind of scroll back that would be great one moment I'm having issues with the PDF okay thank you oh while we're waiting for the presentation I also wanted to know advice mayor we're happy to answer questions during the presentation or wait till the end however you would like the the study session to run we're very flexible so either way if you don't mind council if you wish to ask questions as the presentation goes please feel free all right now take it away we'll do thank you racial good everyone as Rachel mentioned this is a the city session for short range transit plan it is something that we do update every three years and it was postponed and with that postponement NTC actually changed the structure of the short range transit plan so for some of you this will be all new some view may have experienced the short range transit plan before but either way we'll kind of give a background of what we did previous on previous short range transit plans and then move into what NTC is asking transit operators this time around and go to the next slide please so just to give you an overview of this presentation we'll jump into a overview of our service trends over the last four years including the current fiscal year give you kind of a basic see basis to go off of where we are from a service standpoint and then just move into the actual process go over the old process and go into the new process and what that entails specifically this planning scenarios that NTC has provided us this go around and you'll see that's not normally how these things progress then we'll jump into service planning which as you see isn't necessarily a requirement of this new SRTB but it is a past and as Rachel mentioned we're kind of at a point in our service delivery that we need to see what what is changed as we come out of the pandemic what needs for our writers have changed the demographics our writers have changed so we need to tweak our service to to meet those new needs and then obviously part of that will be a rather robust public engagement campaign to make sure that not only are we just looking at the data and what that tells us we're actually engaging the public to help understand what people need and we find that sometimes those stories are often what push us in the right direction on delivering an effective service for the community and then finally we'll wrap up with just a timeline to give you a sense of how long this process will take and what to expect from us in the future we can go to the next slide thank you so just a kind of a state of service overview comparing fiscal year 1819 which was our last whole year of non pandemic number is comparing to our current fiscal year so our average monthly ridership was in the mid seven thousands and now we're close to six thousand that's about a 40 sorry it's a not a precipitous drop but it is you know about 80 percent of our service hours versus what we were before on average going down to fair media demographics have changed and I will note from the get go for all you people doing your mental math that those do not add 200 percent and that is because within our fair structure we have a lot of additional categories that aren't really rolled into adult and youth things like our transfers which are free the s rjc free program the veteran free program those programs have a different categories of fairs but looking at just cash adult passes looking at our 318 passes my apologies are in tickets we can actually categorize those and our new youth free fair program so as you can see the youth free fair program has a dramatic effect on how our wider demographics break out age wise so that is something we also need to look at because how we deliver service and if it's more answer it being that getting kids to and from school which has always been the case but there's more we can do to kind of rebound off of this growth and youth ridership and all the better and just looking at general trips taken on your average weekday we're down 44 percent versus what we were pre-pandemic on weekdays roughly the same for saturday and sunday we're doing a little better at 35 percent sundays have had relatively the same service level before the pandemic during the pandemic and now just because it is our lowest span of service that we offer and I'll go to the next slide please so just looking at ridership trends or the past four years it's very obvious where the pandemic happened you can see a very precipitous drop in ridership and we had our lowest ridership in may of that year our highest ridership was in recent years was in october of 1819 was almost 170 thousand dollars riders a month and then as we move forward you can see as we we can't have the pandemic and we're still going through it we're growing ridership back and our highest ridership to date was last month sorry april we're not in may anymore at 93,326 and may and june are projected out right now we haven't finished doing the ridership for may and june is not but as you can kind of see the trend for most junes is that we do see a drop and with youth riders being such a large portion of our ridership now we believe that ridership will probably drop significantly but we we may see a new trend where it doesn't drop that much with school being out as children are still able to in school children are still able to ride free so we may not see that big of a dip you go to the next slide thank you this is a review of our revenue hours over the same period each of the blue dots represents a service change so for context during non-pandemic times we only change our schedule on average two times a year and as you can see that changed greatly with the pandemic and when you've done 13 service changes and once again if you're doing mental math and counting the dots since that's the pandemic we actually ended up doing two service changes in the month of january as you can see there's a pretty large drop in this current fiscal year and that was mostly due to the el macron surge where we had staffing issues people being out sick and not able to drive so we had to reduce service that way we could provide at least a consistent level albeit a lower one than we would have desired at that point we can go to the next slide so the old srtp process which also might be the new fold for some of you is broken out to six key parts and we when we presented this to mtc each of those three years the update we provide an organized organizational structure so we would give them a breakdown of how we operate santa rosa is one of the unique transit operators in the bay area as what we're called directly operated where our bus drivers are city employees it's the exception being peritransit but at least for the six fix about fixed route bus service our drivers are employees whereas most agencies contract out their services then we would provide goals objectives and standards so i'm sure you've heard a lot about the general plan and it's kind of the same idea where we have things we want to achieve and then how do we measure the success in those those goals whether we use certain metrics usually key performance indicators like the number of pastures we have how many riders we have for our things of that nature and then we do a service and system evaluation so comparing our key performance indicators to make sure that we know which routes are performing if they're performing poorly or if they're performing better than expected you know what service do we need to add or remove and based off of that evaluation then all that kind of culminates into an operations plan which allows us to determine what we want to do over the next 10 years which is the planning horizon for most short range transit plans and then we update those every three years obviously we want to create a budget that's sustainable and sustains that service that we plan for and then capital improvements are always important making sure that we have a state of good repair on our fleet and facilities and also that we are keeping on top of purchasing our buses in the proper intervals as dictated by the federal government we can go to the next slide so the new process takes some from the old process but it's much more specialized this time around than the what NTC is asking of us one of the major shifts is actually that all transit operators in the Bay Area will be submitting their touring transit plans at the same time and this is unique usually they're staggered and the reason NTC wants to do this is so they can get a very holistic view of what is happening to the transit operators in the Bay Area are there certain trends is everyone feeling the same effects are the effects different by county so they're trying to get an apples apples comparison and the way they set this up is to provide us with the template for service data so we can provide them the hours of service for providing our riders how much bears we've collected and what we anticipate to collect and then within that we need to tell NTC their narrative you know why we've come to these conclusions you know what have we seen in our service area that leads us to believe that the ridership will go up or down why we say we haven't done that yet so we're not really sure but that's what this whole process is for and then all that is within three different scenarios that NTC has provided the transit operators they want us to look at what a robust recovery looks for us a recovery of our revenue by having cured riders on our system and then some recovery and if we go to the next slide I'm going to give you a better idea of what each of those recovery or those scenarios entails so our bus recovery is 100 percent recovery of revenue to pre-pandemic levels and to the various funding sources that we have local state federal with escalation you know we're bringing in more funds and ridership is recovering and then revenue recovery but fewer riders in this scenario we've exhausted our relief funds but our other funding sources are recovered so that would be our local funds and state funds and then barebox revenue is 20 to 15 percent below pre-pandemic levels and then finally they're defining some recovery as federal relief money also exhausted like the previous scenario and then totals of all funding sources are 15 percent below pre-pandemic levels so that's state and local for the purposes of city bus we we're really looking at kind of the last two or the first and the last scenarios and then the middle scenario the revenue recovery for your riders is kind of for us combined with the summer recovery mostly due to the fact that albeit that barebox revenue is a portion of operating budget we're not as reliant on it as some of the other operators an example would be that art is highly reliant on its barebox revenue as a source of operating funds so that's kind of one of the things we're looking at this regionally MTC is covering all its basis is to ensure that they can kind of see moving based off of that how is one agency bearing versus another in these very varying scenarios and then their intent is to decide how they want to allocate funds in the future or where more strategic planning on their part can take place in the future we go to the next slide please so financial considerations for us we have a five-year operating plan and a five-year capital plan the five-year operating plan is you know we're we're basing it off off of anticipated changes in revenues so we as an agency still have about 2.9 million dollars of our COVID emergency relief funds which we can use the backfill barebox as we go forward so we're relatively well off in that regard and you know the things go swimmingly you know that will easily carry us towards when goes to know my revenues kick in in fiscal year 2025 or 2024-25 and then five-year capital plan we are looking at our fleet electrification you know it's a requirement but also something that you know we imagine we would go forward with anyways as you know we move to be a more environmentally friendly transportation choice than we already are and we also want to make sure that we're maintaining the fleet that we have as you know we progress towards an all-electric fleet we still have I think diesel fleet that we need to maintain and then start to maintain those electric vehicles as they come in and then kind of the overall financial plan is a culmination of the capital plan and the operating plan and that we need to make sure that we're sustainable in those parts of it where we're not overextending ourselves on an operational basis therefore you know we have to shift funds over to capital because we need to purchase new buses and the other way around where we want to make sure that we strike that balance and we can make sure that we're providing the service that the community needs you know we need buses to provide it but we also need to make sure that the hours need the needs of the community we can go to the next slide please so to go into the service planning portion of this as I mentioned before there is in a specific request from NTC to do a service plan or create an operations plan part of that falls into what they're asking in the narrative portion of the new process but we felt that we need to provide a more robust service plan so as an agency we have an idea of where we want to go over the next few years and how we want to deliver service and all that service planning is kind of couched within the council adopted service design guidelines so and when reimagining happened in 2017 council adopted service design guidelines that act as kind of a well guidelines for us and how we deliver do our planning across the system and those key components of the service design principles are best practices and transit service signs so these aren't necessarily unique to Santa Rosa but more of industry standards and transit planning and you would see these with many other transit agencies and how they plan their service how we allocate service you know where where does a bus go in the city and you know and how many times does it come per hour so we have a methodology for that and then we also have a definition for route and service typology so when we're saying we're allocating service here we're saying we're allocating this type of typo or this route typology or service typology because it meets the criteria where we know that having 15-minute service on a highly dense corridor is optimal whereas that may not be appropriate for a neighborhood suburban type development and we can go to the next slide so we'll get into the details of each of those right now so the principles of service design are frequent service, direct alignments, bi-directional service, strong anchors, spacing and connectivity and all of these play off of each other and you will actually be able to see these in play with the system as it is currently seen today so frequent service for us is 15-minute service or someone like uni in San Francisco some of the routes don't even operate with the schedule because there's a bus every five minutes but for us 15-minute service is is pretty frequent especially for a density that like Santa Rosa. Direct alignments are very important if you want people to get a trip that is not necessarily exactly if they would drive in a car that very close which makes transit service more enticing so a direct alignment is in your head I mean most of our routes we attempt to make direct alignments but routes like the route one that goes up Mendocino Avenue to Clottingtown is probably one of our most direct routes and the bi-directional is also really important to ensure that someone's trip from say their house to their place of work takes the same amount of time as the trip back home once again trying to make it equitable with a car trip as possible to entice people on the transit and just make it a better experience for riders where they're they're not one part of the trip is 10 minutes and then the other part is 20 minutes because they have to go the opposite direction of where they want to go. It's very important to have strong anchors so housing density is a strong anchor the higher the density the stronger the anchor is for transit. Job centers where jobs are clustered in a single area provide a strong anchor and then also health and human services when those things are clustered in single areas it's easier to provide transit service to them and it's also indicative of a stronger ridership for the routes serving them and then spacing is equally important closeness and how far away things are. We don't want routes that go down the same roads but we don't want also don't want routes so far apart that we kind of create a transit desert in areas where there's not service and it's not walkable but spacing is very relative that if you have very frequent service that's bi-directional and it's direct you can get away with spacing service more because study after study shows that people are willing to walk further to higher quality transit services higher quality can break frequent direct and bi-directional and then finally connectivity also related to spacing routes that go north south and east west can intersect each other allows people to make efficient transfers between routes having the connectivity at major transit hubs is equally important not just for riders going across the city but going regionally so we want to make sure that as we work with our transit partners like Sonoma County Transit that we can make efficient connections that they provide a more regional trip for somebody but once that person arrives in Santa Rosa or some new leaving Santa Rosa they have a very quick trip to their connection from say their home to go the next cycle so these are some diagrams kind of giving the visual of what I mean by service allocation methodologies the two not necessarily competing but just different ideas our coverage versus productivity coverage is dispersed everywhere just to the diagram there's lots of buses there's lots of coverage but there's just one bus on each route so you will have a bus that probably comes very close to you and once they're important to the people that use it because that is their lifeline if they're using that bus but it's hard to get places quickly and it's hard to attract more riders if you're applying this methodology everywhere in a system if we did this on like a highly dense corridor it would probably not attract people to use the system or make the system very useful to people that are using it however if we're trying to make sure that people do get service we can apply that to neighborhoods versus productivity service where it stays on major corridors buses are coming very frequently but it is very limited in where it goes in the sense that it has a very specific start and end location it doesn't meander it's not going closer to people's homes necessarily unless they're directly on those major arterials that these routes are generally on but the end goal is generally higher ridership on these routes as they provide more frequency there's more opportunity for trips let me go to the next slide so to tie in with the allocation methodology are our route technologies and if you look at the system map that that was provided you can kind of see a little bit of the different service allocation methodologies and also the technologies the one exception being rapid bus we don't even though it says 15 minute frequency which is what the route one traditionally operates on we don't consider rapid bus because for us rapid bus means there are some other factors as part of the route that allow it to run more quickly than say a vehicle in some cases or a personal automobile whether it be tracking the transit signal priority not to be confused with preemption we're not an ambulance we're not changing the lights as we're going up to the intersection but as more of it changes the timing based on what the bus is doing so if it is late the system recognizes it may hold the light at the intersection to allow the bus get through before cycling or the other thing that is part of this typology is our Q-jump lane so it's a lane that is at the intersection that allows the bus to leave before the light turns for the rest of the vehicles in the queue so the bus can get ahead of traffic that's backed up at the light and then therefore making it a faster service and also more desirable service for riders what we see on our system is the three other typologies so trunk routes you would be thinking of the route one the route two to be where frequency is every 15 to 30 minutes there are long major corridors in areas where we know they're high demand local routes are 30 to 60 minutes examples of those would be the route eight and the route four for the where they're they're not as direct but large portions of them are kind of that inbound outbound bi-directional service whereas they have loops at the end to serve neighborhoods but do you eventually connect to a major arterial and major hubs and then finally circulators are flex service these are more of what you would expect in that coverage based model where they're covering a lot of geographic area but they're not as frequent so they are providing the trips but they're not coming every 15 minutes and something like that in our service right now if you like the route 18 where it covers a lot of distance goes lots of places it gets you where you want to go but the buses are not coming as frequently as some of our other service we can go to the next slide so now that we have a basis of how we want to plan the service where we have an intent to move into the public engagement and kind of bring these ideas back to the public and they may be familiar with it from reimagining it for a long time writers but we have a couple of different processes that we use when engaging the public and to reference back to reimagining it was that the chancellor was really home our engagement skills and since then there has been an increase in collaboration across departments in the city and us and kind of the best practices of how to get out to the public and get the feedback that would need so one of the things that we do plan to engage the public is a writer survey and a component of that will probably also be aimed at non-writing residents to get a sense of you know why don't they ride will they ride if you know things change but predominantly it's going to be aimed at our current writers so better understand their needs as we move out of the pandemic and have those changed and then other part of it is providing trade-offs for them we've heard from feedback over the years that different desires from different writers there you want to kind of get a bigger a better sense of is there a bigger idea that most writers would agree on is the next step for us to change our service and some of those are you know sunday service that's equal to saturday service later evening service on the weekdays are increasing frequency on the the major portals and in the in-person outreach the one thing that we stand by is a direct outreach to the writers that where they are so that's on the bus major transit hub that stops we want to make sure that we get that anecdotal evidence we can get the responses from the survey we can look at our data but we often find that the just speaking with the writers gets us pointed in the right direction and more often than not and kind of leads us down past that we may have not considered before or at the very least it reaffirms our suspicions based on what we found in the data and then in cases where we want to be we want to change service we will do a more specific outreach to the on those routes so not just the major hubs to kind of get the overall picture but really getting to a lot of the stops on a route if we do have a targeted route and you'll see later in the the slides that that is something that we are planning to do and then stakeholder outreach is equally important it's a great way for us to get a lot of comments from a single source whether it be helping service agencies or other community partners often their clients speak to them about their issues and sometimes city bus is their issue and we can get that feedback and from a single source and it's good to know what these community partners are hearing from the writers and what we can do to better their services and then public workshops and community meetings are always key to us especially we imagine later in the project when we can come back to the public and say you know we encourage your feedback and here's the changes that we think are you know meet that feedback and once again it's another great opportunity for more feedback to us and then finally we want to make sure that if we can tie into other engagement other of these stuff with the general plan or other departments where there can you can get that synergy you know transit and land use are intertwined it was feed into me by my transportation professor we had to say it as an affirmation before every class so you know as we improve our densities to make that you have higher density developments different jobs coming into the area having a good transit to those locations is key to community well-being. So as I mentioned before some of the things that we're looking at are news fans and destinations that's part of the trade-off questions we want to ask the public so service extending further into the evening equaling spans of service for the weekends Saturday and Sunday go start at the same time and at the same time so there's less confusion there for our riders and then also expanding service areas part of reimagining which had two phases phase one was already implemented is what's on the street now but phase two included some expansion of service and that's been reaffirmed from the public feedback we have as you can note on the map to the right the areas highlighted in orange are areas that we've heard from multiple constituents that they would like service in those areas and that's the thing we want to look at to you know how best to serve those areas is it extending routes that we already operate is it putting different service typologies in there and then an area not necessarily highlighted on here not necessarily a new area but would be the fountain grove area where the route 19 served prior to the pandemic there are obviously things changing up there there are places that need service so we can take a look at what is the appropriate service for that area because it is something that people have mentioned that they were sad that it did go away and it's one of those things that unfortunately we it was a trade-off and we had to prioritize more impactful areas of our service area that generated and more riders and had more riders using them we go next slide so as I mentioned before route realignment is one of those things that we are looking at in one of those instances where we would do very route specific outreach so not just the major hubs but all all the stops in between if possible so one of the routes that we are looking at is the route nine as you can see the Katrina left is the route nine as it currently is which is a loop with kind of an inbound outbound tail that starts at the transit mall and ends at the transit mall and one of the things we want to bring to the public is a concept of a bidirectional service that ends at Coddingtown and the transit mall and it begins there as well and this kind of ties into those service principles you know bidirectional service it's direct and if we can make it frequent all the better and one of the you know reasons to do this is to once again fill a gap that the route 19 left along North Dutton and it provides better transfer opportunities and connectivity for the riders of the system if you live along West ninth or West West college and you wanted to go to say Kaiser one of your options is to go south to go north essentially you're coming back on the nine to go to the transit mall to get on the one to go north and that's just not intuitive and it's not fair to riders but with this configuration you have more opportunity to to transfer the one you can get to the one at Coddingtown and it's a little more intuitive to go north and continue to go north to your ultimate destination the one downside of this is that there is that section of Dutton Avenue between college and ninth that would not have the service directly on it but if we can get that bidirectionality and that frequency it could still be enticing to riders as it's a it would be a stronger route in the end but this is for us to find out from the riders and ultimately they will provide kind of the the cherry on top of you know which way we go we go to the next slide and then finally is something that we it wasn't it hasn't really discussed in other plans in great depth but it's kind of you know talked about between staff and new service typologies and as technology has progressed these become more viable and one of those things is using a deviated fixed route or on-demand services and you may have heard the term micro transit that kind of that kind of there's a catch all for those two essentially we can use ride sharing companies or provide our own vehicles provide on on-demand service where people can request rides through their smartphone where this wasn't covered the whole city that's not feasible but it could be used in areas where we see less ridership but there is still a demand there and there's still need city transit service we're in access as a program that we're in transit is using their services aligned around major transfer hubs and those being the smart stations and their transit centers essentially there's a 200 or 2.5 mile radius around each of those hubs so if you do arrive at a smart station there you can request to ride and essentially get door-to-door service within that service area or if you're going beyond that they'll at least connect to you to another or to a transit hub that would allow you to complete the rest of your trip so if you say you were in Santa Rosa and you want to travel to Marin and you needed to go out to Fairfax they could get rescheduled to the transfer hub from the smart station and then have a ring transit bus take you the rest of the way next slide please so as this all kind of wraps up and we go through this service planning the SRTP in this process we're going to be looking internally a lot and we're going to be looking at our own service as that's what MTC is asked and that's kind of what we need to do to get a sense of where we stand as a transit provider but ultimately whether it's regionally or within the county regionally or the area regionally a lot of what we're going to do the information we provide the answers the questions we're going to ask are going to inform that regional effort specifically for our planning service planning integration with snow accounting and public transit what they find from their SRTP process will help us kind of figure out where are their overlaps in demand where are their overlaps whether it be where service is allocated all affairs these are all things that we need to also look at on a regional level and this process will allow that to be easier as we move into it but probably through the actual SRTP process as I mentioned will be more of a look internally than externally maybe over the next slide please so to give you a sense of how this project will play out we are here in June 2022 at the council study session and as we move into the rest of June we'll start getting our public outreach campaign into July and with that information come August, September we will kind of take that information in once we receive it look at the data that we have on how many riders per hour our general ridership trends by new stops things of that nature kind of what we call a line by line analysis and also the data that NTC is requesting to compile that a lot of overlap in there as well and then in September NTC is asking for a draft plan to be submitted so that won't probably not include our service plan but it will include all the components that NTC is asking for that we spoke about in the previous slides and then once we have comments from them we will kind of re-engage with the service planning part of our process and any changes that they provide or changes from comments that they provide and the public engagement will be us requiring a service plan so this is bringing we've taken in what the public has said we've looked at the data and kind of cited this is the this is the direction we went ahead take it back out to the public and let them tell us you know yes you're headed in the right direction I totally agree with that that's great or no it's all wrong hopefully that doesn't happen but we want to make sure that there's multiple opportunities for people to comment and kind of push us in the right direction and that will hopefully better serve them and then November we will bring it back to council to review and approve the plan this will probably at that point be the whole plan including what NTC is requesting and our service plan and then we will submit to NTC in December for their adoption and the rest with the rest of the transit operators in the Bay Area next slide please so being that this is study session we want to create a dialogue we've set up some questions here that if council is happy to ask would be greatly appreciated and it would certainly help our process so one of the first question is what transit related concerns or opportunities have you observed in your district across the city are there changes in the travel needs of your constituents from before the pandemic what service changes as what service changes do you see as a priority for improving city of us in Santa Rosa Paratransit service and access for all residents and what else should we be exploring the short-range transit plan update and by all means you know we don't need to answer these questions today you can ruminate on them and you know get back to us but we'd have to open the floor up to comments and questions thank you very much with that council do we have any questions today yes please so thank you so much for the presentation I just have a couple questions for you as we are looking at more electrical vehicles and buses do you have an estimate of the cost of the fuel of one of our buses to fill that up I do not that might be a question she may have the answer but I'm not sure what our current fuel costs are and and council member are you specifically asking about the fueling costs for our electric vehicles versus diesel I'm sorry I'm reading the prompter in front of me so I'm sure that I heard you correctly yeah I'm looking at if we were to move our buses to electric how much would we be saving in fuel costs like over the years so we're meeting all of our climate goals but in addition to that as far as budget goes are you able to reduce cost of fuel and then actually have more routes more buses more employees to drive on those because we're not paying it for something else yeah that's a great question and how I would you know without having you know a dollar figure to give you how we've been thinking about this transition in terms to electric vehicles in terms of the fuel costs is that you know we may just sort of break even electricity you know with the the rate that we should qualify for as a transit agency it should be less than diesel fuel especially right now with the current costs we are paying a higher rate because we are paying for the evergreen plan which we think is a great thing because you know we will be fueling these buses with a local renewable electric fuel source which is fantastic but you know until we really get there and understand the variable rates for different times of day when we're charging and how that plays out we're not anticipating a big savings in the fuel arena right out of the gate where we may eventually see it more as in maintenance costs the the feedback from early adopters of battery electric buses is that maintenance costs do tend to run a good deal less because there are just aren't as many moving pieces as a different propulsion technology so I think it's a little too early to speculate on exactly how much savings that might be but I think we are assuming that there will be an operating cost savings overall with operating the electric vehicle fleet which you're right could then go into a potentially higher levels of service out on the street so I think we're optimistic that that will be the case but at this point in time I'd be wildly speculating exactly to what that might be but we'll certainly as we get those buses here in august and have some some experience fueling and operating them you know we'll be able to provide some feedback within you know the coming year thank you that's so helpful do we need to invest any more money in infrastructure if we are moving to electric vehicles and have we anticipated where that might be I know we have a yard maybe but do we have to have more infrastructure around the city if we're looking at recharging stations for a vehicle that size and and has that been considered as part of our goals and yeah I have you on the line I'm going to ask these questions so it's helpful to know thank you it's absolutely it's and they're great questions they're all very relevant to the capital plan that's a key component of this entire exercise because we need to make sure we're adequately funding that capital program and and then maintaining that sustainable service level as well so in terms of infrastructure you know we've we've been very fortunate with the competitive grants we've applied for and so we do have about 20 buses worth of infrastructure funded through federal and state grants the first phase is breaking ground this week that will fuel up to our first nine buses and then this year we received an additional federal competitive grant that's going to pay for phase two of that charging infrastructure at the yard so that's the overnight charging where the buses will come in in a day and we'll plug them in and charge them up overnight so so we do have those plans in motion and already a pretty good funding program for the the first two phases of of the yard infrastructure we need to do some some further work to think about and recharging out in the system and and that's something we're talking about with Sonoma County Transit ultimately we might be talking with Golden Gate Transit you know the other operators in Santa Rosa that are also going to be transitioning to zero emissions fleet to see if there's an opportunity or a need to create you know for example the transit mall and enroute charging station or at Codding Town um we're kind of early days on that analysis right now with the way our system is structured it makes more sense to do the overnight charging and it's certainly much more economical especially as we get our feet wet with this new technology but I think we'll evolve into that conversation and frankly I think that also plays into the integrated service planning conversation like as we build this integrated service network in Sonoma County we're going to be need to be thinking about the charging facilities out throughout our service area to accommodate the kind of service we need to provide so again these are great questions I don't I don't have a a perfect answer for you at this point but there are definitely items on the list for for us to further investigate and evaluate thank you and then I just have one last comment to the youth in our community whose ridership is up a pretty good percentage I just want to thank those that are willing to go and catch the bus that's something that I did um you know as a child here in Sonoma County in Santa Rosa specific and then just to see if we had done any outreach to the schools so that they know how to use our apps or have um our maps available to students so that they actually are really aware of times and routes and I know we were like received a little card that showed the times that the buses would be at specific routes when I was young and I know it's probably on a phone now because I'm not old but uh just to see if that's been done and since we're going to be in the summertime but going into school session if we could maybe do um that and you probably already are but just thought that would be good to note as well yeah um great comment and and yeah the the schools and school districts have been wonderful and um Yuri Kozlin who's on the line as well who's the project manager for the ur-free program has been doing a ton of outreach and working with school sites and with districts to push out information and you know some particular schools have been more active than others but overall I would say the response has been really positive in terms of us being able to provide information that then can be shared with the students and families I think there's an opportunity to take it to the next level in terms of providing um you know additional training resources you know we've been talking for a while about doing a short video that shows you how to use our app you know that you know you could watch in a couple minutes and you can understand how to use the real-time information a lot of the youth pick it up like super easily right it's it's some of us older folks who maybe need a little bit more hand-holding um but uh you know I think I think we're we're already in that conversation with the school sites to talk about what we could uh roll out in the fall to further support that program and make it even easier to use city bus for the um the youth thank you so much thank you are there any additional questions before we take public comment seeing none let's go ahead and open up public comment if there's anybody in the public here who would like to make a a comment please move forward to the dice if you're visiting us from zoom go ahead and raise your hand if you're dialing please hit star nine do we have any pre-recorded messages um we have no pre-recorded messages they see nobody coming forward in the council chamber and no raised hands very well let's go ahead and close public comment and bring it back to the council council uh before we go into recess are there any questions seeing shaking heads uh it looks like it's time for us to take a recess uh it is now three twenty five we will be back at four o'clock thank you hi john this is stephanie um can you do a quick mic check and um oh i see you i don't see you okay hey i see you and hear you that's all that matters oh hold on hold on stephanie what was that brand um i'm swiping to the left and nothing's happening you know i'm not oh here we go um let's see you do you still want me to keep my video active john you can just nod your head so you can run through this or are we good i think just definitely you can you can take me i think you can brian is okay if she takes enough video yeah you can take me off video status okay well you're coming in claire your video is coming in claire and we can hear you hear you yes good and i'm not getting any and i'm not getting any feedback so that's that's a good thing that's a good thing yes i just can't see that's i can't see any so it says though i'm not in the meeting visually but i am coming across um locally oh okay on r and you are coming and i can't also okay well you are coming in and i can't change and i can't change the view i can't change my view okay well we we can see the way it would normally we can see you and hear you so that's what's important so that you can make any motions or um introductions or comments so and we can see you just fine okay we are on a recess right now so um just so you know that that may be why you're not seeing the chamber um but yeah brian was brian is concerned that that it's that i'm not really as far as my ipad is concerned i'm kind of not all together there but um that may be as close as as as we're going to get okay well as long as we have you for audio then i think we're fine as far as on our end and your ipad i know you use to access any documents but we can certainly we can get and assign anything that you need to end somebody else okay thank you okay thanks we have 10 minutes i would keep that this may be as good as we're going to get but well i'll i'll talk to brian about it okay thanks okay thanks stefanie do you think we should just let it let's keep sleeping dogs live brian you're still you might want to mute your yourself john thanks good evening council members how's everybody doing welcome to tonight's city council meeting this is as hybrid as they come as you'll notice we have five council members in the chamber we have myself and council member soyer who are zooming in let's go ahead and begin today's meeting with a roll call vote please thank you mayor council member schwedhelm here council member soyer here council member rogers president council member mcdonald here council member fleming here vice mayor alvarez president mayor rogers here let the record show that all council members are present all right thank you so much and before we get into our items for the day a quick psa for folks who are watching today is election day if you have not returned your ballot yet you still can remember that all ballots in california now can be postmarked on election day and still count and you don't even have to put a stamp on it so if you haven't voted yet uh go vote uh with that we'll get into our regular agenda for today and we're going to start with a proclamation uh we have some folks who are in the chambers here to accept it including my good friend kirsten but i'll turn it over to council member rogers write them 6.1 thank you mayor whereas the emancipation proclamation was signed on september 22nd 1862 with an effective date of january 1st 1863 and whereas june 10th is the oldest known public celebration of the end of slavery in the united states commemorating the day when those enslaved in galveston texas finally received word of their freedom on june 19th 1865 and whereas last year president joe biden signed a bill to establish june 19th as june 10th national independence day officially making june 10th a us federal holiday and whereas the santa rosa juneteenth celebration was founded in 1954 by miss martrell mother perry and whereas the local martin luther king juneteenth community festival celebration was merged in 1970 to keep the dream of dr king and the spirit of juneteenth alive this year marking the 52nd anniversary of the celebration in santa rosa and whereas the 52nd annual martin luther king juneteenth community festival celebration our history is our strength sponsored by over 14 community organizations through sonoma county will take place on saturday june 18 2022 at martin luther king jr park in south park neighborhood and is free and open to community members of all ages now therefore be at resolve that i christ rogers mayor of the city of santa rosa on behalf of the entire city council recognize and acknowledge the historical significance of this celebration in due hereby proclaim june 19 2022 as juneteenth thank you so much council member and do we have some folks who are at the podium ready to speak we do mayor all right i'm going to turn it over to sandi to go ahead and run public comment on this item on behalf of the juneteenth committee i'm proud to be here to accept this proclamation along with christin who is also part of that committee we have to give a shout out to nancy rogers who has worked diligently for this year and previous years to bring this community event to santa rosa we're really excited about this year being a 52nd year of juneteenth we have a fabulous a fabulous lineup of musicians and community organizations and and we even have just a number of activities for children as well as adults and so i'm really proud to be part of this committee we've been working for over four plus you know to really bring it this year so we are bringing it to santa rosa and we appreciate the proclamation in honor of this very important federal liberation holiday thank you all and i'll just add we will be doing a march in honor of vince harper who i know holds a dear place in all of our hearts so if you all would love to join us in that effort marching from juliard park to mlk park we welcome you at about 11 a.m thank you thank you so much folks do you have anybody else uh looking to provide comments in the chambers um i don't see anybody walking towards the podium and i see no raised hands okay we'll bring it back council members does anybody want to make any comment perfect we'll go ahead and take a two minute break here so that a picture can be taken uh all council members who were there who want to jump in feel free i don't know if there's a way that you can get john in my head in the background so we can participate but uh i guess we'll just have to miss the photo off mayor we will be sure to capture you and john thank you all right thank you everybody i'm actually gonna jump back for a quick second here i inadvertently glossed over our acting city attorney's report from closed session let me double check and make sure and see if there's a report out from that uh there is thank you mayor vice mayor council members item 2.1 conference with labor negotiators council met with the team in closed session and gave direction short and sweet let's see if we have any public comment on the report out um i see nobody walking towards the podium and no raised hands in zoom okay uh madame city manager if you can go ahead and jump to item number seven that's our staff briefings for tonight thank you mayor members of council item 7.1 covid 19 response update as of today sonoma county has reported an average daily case rate of 34.3 per 100,000 residents as case rates continue its downward trend the county of sonoma does not foresee a need to reinstate a mask mandate however is it it is important to remember that vaccinations remain the most effective means to protect yourself from getting serious seriously ill and being hospitalized to due to covid 19 for more information about the status of covid 19 in our community testing locations and vaccine information information for all ages please go to socoemergency.org thank you item 7.2 is our community empowerment plan update uh deputy director tell us we'll present the report thank you good afternoon mayor rogers vice mayor alvarez mejana day is here uh members of the council um here with the community empowerment plan report we are very grateful to report that um we are back in community um so between the we've also been taking some um information on how many community members we we've reached out to since march so from march to may of 2022 we've engaged with over 2,800 community members via events tabling opportunities and presentations in the community uh we've led or provided thought partnership or development for 12 different community events including the mary lou lowrider reveal event earth day latino family educational summit south park ice cream social wildfire ready and more um we were invited by community to six community partner events including cultural heritage day at rosen university prep the wellness fair lc l in high school uh four c's preschool enrollment drive-thru lc l in high school elac meeting and two differences of chavis language academy outreach uh youth outreach events we've also worked on activating the crisis response team to address community needs after violent occurrences and specific neighborhoods have taken place um or where violence prevention partnership was requested by community partners and these calls were due to gang incidents uh de-escalation and mediation needs or community outreach and follow-up in in the neighborhood uh so we've also held four town hall meetings uh three of them in person um being measure o educational meetings and also an introductory town hall with our city manager um arkisha smith and we've launched and culminated the school outreach pilot program which we will have more information on um soon uh in terms of the results we had a pre and post assessment this was a direct result um for the need for social emotional training and participation for youth that are getting interested or getting involved and our team's been invited to participate in um this year's juneteenth event at MLK park uh on june 18th so we are excited to be uh participating there with the mary lou low writer engagement the mary lou has been out and about town so many of you may have seen the mary lou at the pride parade um she was a hit and so um also she was out at the south park ice cream social and public safety day wildfire ready and um many other uh programs and events and you can see her again at the peggy soup car show and cruise uh this saturday um again at juneteenth at the father's day show and shine at julia park on june 19th on national night out in roseland on august 2nd and the fiesta de independencia at the el vc in september um so with the multicultural roots project um this month the project will share stories in honor of both pride and juneteenth we've also been invited by the arts in public places program to display um a multicultural roots project exhibit at the finley community center during the month of august the exhibit is set to start at um on august 1st with a reception tentatively scheduled on august 11th and we'll have more info on that as well uh for the month of july due to staffing shortages we will be pausing new feature stories during um that month because we're going to be using this time to recruit and train a new intern to assist us with the project um as well as to prepare for the exhibit at finley um we also were at the lucian event uh which we were really grateful to be able to participate and um be back at community four the herne community hub project um there's in a lot of community questions um and excitement around this we're very excited um on june 21st we'll be bringing this item um as a consent item to council to help us finalize the process of hiring a final candidate consultant who will be working with our team on a community needs assessment for what will ultimately be a multicultural center space or whatever the community needs to be the need and in sort of that area so uh once approved the consultant will begin working with our team on community meetings getting um getting folks to the table and um there was sorry one other item regarding that that just absolutely has slipped my mind but um there is a let's connect page sorry i forgot to mention that there was a let's connect page if you want to sign up your community member you want to sign up and you want to make sure that you're able to um participate in the community listening sessions and the community input we will make sure to um to notify community so that is available and that is the end of my report thank you council do we have any questions for the deputy director all right i'm not seeing any let's go to public comment on our staff briefings for tonight one moment please may i make a comment please yes please just give us one minute dwayne hello my name is dwayne d witt i'm from roseland and i'd like to thank the director of the community engagement effort for the report that was just given at the same time i'd like to thank uh council member natalie rogers and council member alvarez for coming into roseland on the first of june and talking to folks in person it's become a relatively rare situation to have that occur during this covet activity so i wanted to mention the covet response and say that it's time to open up our government again to the people it's great having folks being able to zoom in but i'm from a community where many people are not on the internet and if they use the library to get on the internet there are restrictions that might keep them from being able to participate in many of those meetings that community director just spoke about one of the dilemmas that we face over in roseland is we need to have more action on a lot of activities a little bit less talk we got some really bad graffiti problems the city used to have a graffiti removal team that would come over and take that out we've had gang killings recently and that has meant even more gang graffiti that's a form of community engagement for those people and their community we need to overcome them we need to wipe that graffiti off of our neighborhood it's a stain upon the regular community who would like to be engaged with our city my hope is that the city's approach will broaden have more in-person meetings out in our community and advertise them at our local library i never saw anything about any of these meetings that this director just spoke about they happen at schools so parents are getting involved and that's good but there's a whole bunch of other taxpayers who support the bonds for the schools they should be involved in this community engagement activity also so i'm hoping and i know it's a long shot but let's get the people more involved now that we're coming out from under the cover of covet if you will let's look at it like the opportunity is here for community engagement to actually occur with community activities such as neighborhood cleanups over in my area we citizens have been cleaning up debris in a park that's been left to kind of fall by the wayside under covet the city can do maintenance doesn't need reports to do maintenance so with all that said thanks for even trying to have some community engagement um mayor i see nobody else walking towards the podium and no raised hands all right thank you so much we'll move on to item number eight good afternoon again mayor the city attorney's litigation report is included in your materials there are no settlements to report i'll just briefly mention that our office has 30 pending litigation matters many of those are inactive phases of discovery about five are proceeding to trial we do have one new claim alleging that a car was hit by san rosa police department uh police officer when exiting the parking lot and that is the end of my report thank you okay council any questions council member fleming yes right mayor oh i apologize i thought you had a question no sir thank you okay we'll see if there's any public comment on our quarterly reports from our city attorney's office um excuse me mayor i see nobody walking towards the podium and no hands raised all right we'll keep moving through our agenda then thank you let's go to item number nine are there any statements of abstention by council members on tonight's agenda okay saying none we'll go on to our mayors and council members reports oh i apologize before we do that i skipped over the city manager report as well let's go back to our esteemed city manager thank you mayor and council members on behalf of the city manager jason dot assistant city manager um i mean we're excited to talk about and give an update on a new mural by rough edge collective that is being placed on the fifth street parking garage uh the site specific mural titled help each other grow by rough edge collective uh with artists mj lindo lawyer and joshua lawyer broke ground on may 25th and is scheduled to be completed by june 8th 2022 a dedication ceremony will be announced soon the primary goal of the project has been to increase the visibility of often overlooked fifth street garage while enhancing the pedestrian experience the art will not only improve the aesthetics of the garage it will distinguish it from neighborhoods neighboring structures serving as a creative wayfinding and identification element the public art program released a call for artists in february of 2021 seeking qualified northern california based artists and artists teams after a public survey and initial selection process three finalists were identified and invited to submit design proposals the selection panel ultimately chose santa rosa based rough edge collective for the project the selection panel was comprised of six people representing downtown residents downtown businesses the art and public places committee art professionals and the city's parking division if you're interested in more information please visit www.srcity.org forward slash fifth street garage art all one word thank you very much for the opportunity to present that mayor thank you mr assistant city manager uh and mr assistant city attorney did you have anything to add in addition to your report i do not thank you okay all right council any questions for the assistant city manager all right let's check on public comment mayor i see nobody walking towards the podium i see no raised hands all right we'll come back to our city council members reports is there anybody who'd like to provide a report tonight don't all raise your hands at once all right mr vice mayor kick us off appreciate that mayor first of all i want to thank council members well i am for being the provider of candy at the pride uh parade uh at first i thought everyone was cheering me on us as i was handing candy out little did i know that they were actually cheering on the marilu vehicle it was the hate of the day and what a great investment by our community to really get people involved in in city government so i have to applaud the different departments and the different community organizations that were involved in the creation of the marilu also on on i think uh magali touched on it we had a town hall meeting and really the first town hall meeting in in district one with an actual elected representative that that specifically uh is responsible for the people of district one and i'm not ashamed that the turnout was low i wish that it had been greater but it's definitely starting point and i i look forward to to creating more involvement and and more engagement but the seat has been planted and i'm very proud of of what we've been able to accomplish thus far and i definitely look forward to even more involvement in the near future thank you mayor thank you council member we'll go to council member sweater thank you mr. mayor we'd like to echo our vice mayor's comments it was pretty funny as we're walking there and everyone starts applauding oh it's got to be us oh marilu we had gustava behind the wheel of the marilu and did an awesome job along with lieutenant kuker going through the route but a wonderful event i really appreciate all the staff and assistant city manager jason nut who was also there and sequora will help organize and it was really a wonderful event also just wanted to do a shout out i was able to attend the sandals of scuba divers opening night at doile park on may 26 really encourage others to be out there had a little hiccups as would be expected first time but some good balls being played there's a great community event it was nice to see so many folks show up there thanks council member phleming as it turns out everybody wants to talk about the pride parade so i'm going to talk about it as well first of all i was offered a seat as an honoree which was quite hilarious because it had my name on it but it didn't have my title and many people came up to me and said we're so glad you're here but who are you so it was both hilarious and humbling it was it was pretty great um but the thing that i wanted to highlight about it that just filled me up with so much joy and happiness was that our streets were full with so many people and you know it seemed like at least half of the folks who were there were children and there was a lot of so many pets and it was just a beautiful example of what i know everybody imagined our square to be and how much effort people have put into getting us to this point where we can have a vibrant downtown and how heart-wrenching it has been the last few years to see it so quiet and it just filled me up with hope and made me so excited for for the rest of the summer and to see what comes next so thank you mayor for that opportunity and i want to thank sonoma county pride for all the work it took to pull off an incredible event as well as our office of community engagement and socorro shields as well as the rest of the council was a not to be missed even if you were in rino event did i see a hand from councilmember mcdonnell i sure do um so i have a few different things to report on um yesterday i was able to attend the santa rosa jc college um foundation the president's address to the community an award ceremony and i just want to do a shout out to our incredible santa rosa jc for not only the education that they provide to our kids and and those who want to take classes not even kids but the expansion that they're doing specifically in construction and career technical education in the stem building and the housing that's going to be built there and so that you know those students that are attending there that want to have an on-campus experience of living in housing or those who need housing so that they can continue their education they'll have that opportunity and so it was so wonderful to see um pam uh uh chanter uh received the president's medallion a very well-deserved award to her who has done so much not only for our community but actually around our nation and in the world so uh a congratulatory um and thank you to those who have um done so much for our community uh next i want to say thanks to the parks department for the tour last week i was able to go out and tour two different um parks to see how much they're doing with the very small staff that they have um we are not back up to where we were when cuts were made to departments and i just want to thank them i was able to meet somebody who has worked for the city of santa rosa for 48 years um and so it's incredible to see that much dedication and and thank you to uh mr casher for taking me out to meet with our employees and and really thank them for their dedication to the city of santa rosa and and what they do to make sure that we are living in such a beautiful community um so thank you so much to them and last but not least i would like to thank um the fire department um i apologize for not being at the pride parade last week i had to be taken out of the community for a family emergency from one of my grandsons and uh i just want to say thank you to the fire department for a few different things one for their dedication when we are in crisis or an emergency situations and how they work with community members and reassure them that they are there to help and support them and the response time to community emergencies is incredible and also thank you for the training i have never been in more pain after i attended that training for a full day it was exhausting i had to go home and lay on the couch for several hours after that um but it was very intense to see the work that they do um the equipment that they use and how strong they physically have to be and how quick witted they have to be to be able to think on their feet in emergency situations and so i just want to give my heartfelt thanks to them and appreciate all they do and um and and the helmet is heavier than you think and they had to literally carry me out of the burning building because i could not live the pack so i was quite annoyed with my um weakness physically and so i um i just want to thank them for all their assistance that day it was it was quite an event so i appreciate it all right thank you councilmember councilmember rogers thank you mayor um on june first i was able to meet with spiritual leaders in district seven um and happy that city manager was able to attend and i would like to thank her for that um we looked at ways to cultivate relationships and uh transmit information between the city um and also the congregations that we have in our community collaborate and opportunities um to collaborate um within the city um so that was actually very nice and we are going to uh attempt to meet regularly so um and on may 24th um we had a study session here um and in that study session it looks like we went over uh police oversight independent police auditor and civilian review models i was unable to attend and i apologized due to being out of town at my son's graduation one i would like to apologize to community members and to anyone that assumed my absence showed a lack of support for uh wanting transparency accountability um in the possibility of explore the possibility of exploration uh to improve practices within the city um around public safety that was not my intent um when i was informed of the outcome um of the vote i was disappointed to say the least um i know many will not understand but account accountability does not um right wrongs but it helps people to feel that no one is above the law and that everyone will be held accountable um mayor i apologize to you the city manager um and my peers on council um and the staff for all the hard work that they put in um to the study session and for me um not being here i know that as a council member it is really hard for us to juggle both family um and trying to be here um to to run the city um and this is one where i feel like i dropped the ball and um but i love my babies and i i wouldn't take it back so i i do apologize um but i am respectfully requesting um if there is a way um and i'm not sure that there is i would like to make a motion to bring back for further discussion the police oversight independent police auditor and civilian review models because i do believe that if all council members were present um during the study session that the outcome would not have been the same as it was so i'm not if there is a motion on the on the floor i would i would be honored to to second that motion okay uh and council members what happens now is uh because it's not an agendized item we don't talk uh about the specifics about it what we do is as you'll see later in tonight's agenda we'll agendize the question uh for our next available council meeting where we can weigh in on whether or not folks would like to reconsider uh or or bring that topic back for discussion um so if that works there's a motion in a second you don't need any other information but we will bring that on the item or that item for discussion uh about whether to reconsider thank you mayor for hearing my report out thank you council member soyer nothing to report mayor thank you all right thank you uh first i wanted to start uh by uh talking about the pride parade i was not able to attend on friday and i'll around excuse me on saturday and i'll get into that in the moment but i did want to start with a big thank you to all of the staff who worked hard uh both at the city and and externally from the city from the planning committee who worked very hard to plan uh the entire weekend worth of event uh and then also the folks who plugged in when inevitably something went wrong and uh as i was uh heading out of town on thursday i was on emails and text messages uh as things inevitably were going wrong and seeing just a huge wave of support from our interim chief from the chamber of commerce from our staff to make sure that the events that had been planned were able to go off without a hitch and so i just wanted to say kudos to the team uh it from the from the pictures and every report back that i've gotten from folks looked like just such an incredible community event and it wouldn't have happened without people going above and beyond uh to make sure that they got past some last-minute barriers so a big thank you on that and then my report out and i can definitely do more of this when i'm back in santa rosa in person uh but i've been spending the last couple of days at the u.s. conference of mayors uh meeting with mayors from around the country to talk about the issues that they're facing and talk about what resources are available uh the conference opened with a quote that good mayors borrow ideas and great mayors steal them uh and so in that vein i'm coming back with a whole bunch of great ideas that i've heard from other mayors around the country who are dealing with some of the same same issues that we are uh and how they're addressing them uh staff also was kind enough to load me up with uh the alphabet soup of meetings uh while i've been gone uh department transportation department of justice epa every single one going in looking for funding for the city's priorities such as the turnover crossing in response for those other things that we hold hold dear so i'm coming back armed with quite a bit of funding opportunities for us that that staff's going to pursue uh and then today i made my way to new york and i'm at the u.s. conference of may or excuse me the uh yale mayors and ceo's college talking with ceos from around the country about economic development done control other issues that are pressing on the national level and and bringing really the experience from santa rosa and talking about our uh disaster responses um so wanted to let folks know that's why i'm not there in the chambers but that doesn't mean that we're not all working hard and i'll be bringing more of that information back here in the coming uh weeks and we'll be back tomorrow with you all uh with that we'll go and see if there's public comment on the report out from our council members tonight um mayor i see nobody moving towards the podium we have no raised hands and no voicemail public comment okay and then as i mentioned uh last week uh our last council meeting we did have a motion for reconsideration of an item it was item 15.1 on the may 24th agenda uh that motion was made by council member soyer and i seconded the motion so tonight what council is considering is not the merits of that item it's not the merits of item 15.1 tonight the council has to weigh in on whether or not we would like to reconsider that and so we'll take public comment on it first it does already have a motion in a second so we won't need that uh but then if four council members agree that this item should be re heard it will go on a future council agenda for reconsideration uh and with that i'll go and turn it over to public comment to see if anybody has an opinion that they'd like to share about whether the council should reconsider item 15.1 uh from our may 24th council meeting um mayor nobody's moving towards the podium and i see no raised hands and we have no voicemail public comment on this item all right thank you so there is a motion in a second that's on the floor uh let's go ahead and call the vote if you would one moment council member schwaitham aye council member soyer 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 all right thank you council we'll go ahead and bring that back on a future council uh agenda and for the public uh it'll likely be uh at the next one although i believe that the to the attorney's office is going to have to weigh in to make sure that the timing of everything works uh correctly so keep an eye on the future agenda items as they pop up we have no minutes for tonight so madame city manager if you can go to the consent calendar please item 12.1 is a motion received 2021 general plan inclusionary housing and growth management annual review report and wave council policy 200-01 requirement for a joint study session on the general plan annual review item 12.2 is a resolution ninth amendment to general services agreement number f 000 308 with granicus llc item 12.3 is a resolution first amendment to agreement f 000 2155 with a cella incorporated for the cella crm mycena rosa tool item 12.4 resolution approval of one tow vendor to the tow vendor franchisee list for police generated operations item 12.5 is a resolution approval waiver of competitive bid and issuance of blanket purchase orders for asphalt concrete supplies to boating company ink and sire industries incorporated item 12.6 is a resolution authorizing submittal of a grant application for improvements to koana springs community park item 12.7 is a resolution state of good repair program authorization to apply for the annual annual annual formula allocation and project approval for fiscal year 2022 2023 item 12.8 is a resolution transportation development act article four and state transit assistance annual formula allocation claim submittal item 12.9 is a resolution acceptance and appropriation of the state of california department of housing and community developments infill infrastructure grant program for the downtown santa rosa qualified infill area item 12 10 is a resolution first amendment to professional services agreement f 002 for 2049 with cooperative personnel services doing business as cps hr consulting thank you thank you madam city manager council are there any questions on the consent calendar yes may rogers may i pull item 12.9 please sure we'll pull that one for now and we'll discuss that one separately mayor all right you go ahead um having no questions um i suppose i'll wait till later i just wanted to say that there was a couple of great things on the the consent calendar but i'll wait until after public comment okay i'll have uh i'll come back for comments at that point anything else council uh mr assistant city manager just as a point of clarification for the public uh previous direction and this is for item 12.5 previous direction from the council has been uh that we would not patronize uh the bow dean asphalt plant so long as they were not in compliance with city rules and regulations uh can you give us an update on where that sits uh as the contract comes before us uh thank you mayor and i do have assistance by the city attorney's office if needed um at this point in time complaints have been filed in certain areas but at the but there's not necessarily an open code enforcement case or violation at at this point uh should one come and be um put into effect uh then the maintenance team would not procure asphalt from that particular plant or facility until that violation is cleared and identified as cleared from our building department perfect thank you so much go to and as uh as was mentioned we'll take uh items uh except for 12.9 uh correct council member well just a point of clarification on that would i be able to just ask a clarifying question and then we could do them in gross yeah go ahead if it's uh if it's clarifying question feel free if you need to pull it for further discussion uh that we can do so as well but go ahead and ask your clarifying questions my clarifying question is um just so i was aware as reading the item is does this specify a specific area in um the grant where we would have to put housing and is it drawn on a map somewhere so we know if we're receiving grant money specifically the area where we would need to then move for approval or um look at the land and i apologize if it wasn't clear before thanks good evening mayor rogers and members of council and beggin passenger director of housing and community services and this specific grant is for um an area that we developed with the renewal enterprise district known as the downtown Santa Rosa qualified info area it identifies four specific housing projects which are listed in the stacker board and they are the caritas homes phase one which is currently under construction the cannery at railroad square which is adjacent to the smart site and then two market rate um primarily market rate developments one santa rosa avenue and then 425 humble so those would be the housing sites that would benefit from this grant funding and there also will be an infrastructure project for the city which is the southbound turnpocket at third and these streets and i'd be happy to answer any other questions and megan can you clarify these are specific to the developments between third and b streets correct so the the turnpocket is a separate project that the city identified within the general area that was defined and then the four housing projects are located within the boundaries of the area which are so all the funds will go towards those five projects four housing projects and then the infrastructure that's very helpful thank you so much i'd be comfortable moving engrossed then with that um response thank you okay so we will not pull item 12.9 at this time uh let's go to public comment if you have a comment on item 12.1 through 12.10 now is the time for your comment um and uh dwayne dwayne is heading towards the podium go ahead please okay hello my name is dwayne dwayne and i do believe because item 12.9 is important i should be allowed to speak separately on that for the full three minutes item 12.1 the general plan process i believe you got your three minutes for the whole concept calendar i just want to make sure we're clear well once again keeping the public at a disadvantage i do believe that the entire general plan opportunities have been and disadvantages the low income and unconnected members of the community you who are well off might laugh and say oh well that's no big deal but this whole general plan process under cover of covid has essentially locked out most of the community i would be willing to say that less than one percent of our community residents have been able to actually participate in this general plan process i do believe that once again it disadvantages the community if you take away the joint planning commission and housing authority meeting in public that's coming up this week and they're doing it only by zoom and they said well we can't have the public there we don't have the staff i think this is just a canard that they are just keeping us from being involved especially at the housing authority which funds a lot of projects but doesn't really get a lot of housing that is for the extremely low income population of our city built and that'll come out later in this report because you're not really presenting it to the community the community is not seeing how we're getting cheated on the amount of money that's going forward and how you want to raise the population of santa rosa by 2035 to another 60 000 people according to what this report says now those are big changes and if that were to come forward that would require the people in this community to take on perhaps added tax burdens and increased infrastructure provision which hasn't been happening just with the basic building going on over in roseland thousands of housing units are coming forward and we're neglecting the infrastructure that's necessary for the people that live here that's what should be in this general plan how to deal with what we have going on right now but it's not and you've essentially cheated the people out of the opportunity to actually participate in the discussions and now you're saying well it's all good because we're together on it we're working on it behind the scenes nothing should be behind the scenes on a general plan especially when it comes to involving the planning commission and the housing authority those joint meetings were put there on purpose in the past to make sure that the public could participate if you take them out it shows how you don't care so actions speak louder than words thank you mayor i see nobody walking towards the podium but we do have two raised hands um uh gray grie ferron are you able to speak and see the screen yes i can and i can see the timer go ahead thank you thank you um good evening uh mayor rogers and members of the council i too am concerned about um item 12.1 um but i'm i'm wanting to tell the council that usually the consent calendar is full of things that are not as really exciting and this one seems to have quite a few that in my opinion are you're getting lots of money for things you're doing right and you're and several of the items independently of the whole collection um are warranted you know comments saying good job council the one that i want to comment on actually there's two 12.1 and 12.9 because they're kind of connected dwing is right you have not provided housing for the extremely low the report on 12.1 says gives you the documentation of what the last six years of your housing development has been two percent of the extremely low need housing has been built two percent the above moderate which is the other end of the scale has had 113 percent every bit of their need has been met uh that's sad it shows how the market and your subsidy of low income housing has not kept up you the markets providing plenty of housing the upper income has gotten what they needed uh i i really don't understand their complaints about not being able to find housing uh i compared to the low income and the extremely low income and the very low income all at the other end of the scale oh come on there's no housing being built now having said that the report also identifies four projects caritas cannery the other two that make and talked about which you are building and have a tremendous amount of extremely low there at 37 percent of the need of the housing being aimed at extremely low so i'm on one hand saying the past has been miserable on the other end i'm also saying you're doing a much better job kudos and i hope those projects get built and i hope they get occupied by people who are extremely low i'm going to do everything i can to help that so keep it up uh the only other comment on any other item is i really think we ought to take a new look at um the towing contract you know you really can do a better job of allowing those people who have their vehicles towed to retrieve their possessions to get them vehicle back and we've got to take a wholly different look at how we help those people keep their homes if my home needed something from the city i'd get it and you'd be supportive i can understand why not helping those vehicles and then hold on just a moment please adina floris please hi can you hear me we can thank you okay good afternoon council i had requested earlier today to pull consent items 12.10 for discussion once again this was not pulled um this is funny because the county of Sonoma does the same thing when i request for consent items to be pulled um so this is pertaining to the approval of the first amendment to professional services agreement number f 002049 with cooperative personnel services dba cps hr consulting to increase time of performance and increase compensation then the amount of $80,000 for a total contract amount not to exceed $185,000 300 sorry $185,360 to provide professional humans resources services to temporarily support the department with current vacancies and to appropriate $80,000 from unassigned general fund balance i cannot find a business by this name that is legally registered with the county sorry there was a plane flying over me um i could not find a business by this name that is legally registered with the california secretary of state according to the public records database for sacramento county where this business is based the fictitious business name expired in 2016 i'm unsure as to why competitive bids were waived for this contract upon the initial approval of the agreement in january 2022 since the tax ID must be verified via a w9 one initially establishing business with a contractor that's standard practice with any corporation or government entity why was this completely bypassed i'm looking for clarification on this just for reference the lcl and high school foundation also just accepted millions of dollars of donations but there uh they were actually legally suspended with a franchise tax board and uh healdsburg forever who's distributing millions of dollars worth of grant funds they're also not legally registered to operate within the state of california so i just really like to know where our taxpayer dollars are going because right now i'm extremely confused thank you i see no more hands raised and um there's no voicemail public comment on this item all right thank you uh mr assistant city manager do you want to answer that last question or weigh in on that or or madam city manager um mayor are you referencing cps amy yeah correct so cps consultant has been in business for as long as i know since about 1985 so we've been using cps consulting um here since i arrived for covid um for to augment our personnel because of staff shortages um the reason why is not bid because it was just um an amendment to our current contract um i have amy reeves um that can pop up on the line if you have any additional questions amy did you have anything to add i did thank you may rogers and good evening members of the city council i'm amy rave director of human resources i did want to respond to the caller's concern and clarify that cps is actually a joint powers authority a jpa and therefore they actually have fought with the secretary of state instead of as a regular corporation so that might provide some clarity to the question if there's any additional questions i'm happy to answer them great thank you so much the council do we does anybody have any additional questions on the content calendar okay uh councilmember fleming you had some comments you'd like to make yes i wanted to thank the um public works department for their follow-through on item 12.6 um in terms of getting the grant submittal for koana springs park i know that a lot of folks are really looking forward to the day and sometimes we joke about whether or not you know our children or grandchildren or great grandchildren will ever get to use that park and so when i saw it pop up on the consent calendar i thought oh you know it's a shame that it won't get any airtime and i wanted to make sure that staff knew that this is a big deal to our community and we're really really grateful and i wanted to note on um item 12.9 that the the getting this funding for the infill infrastructure is going to be one of the pieces that's going to it's going to be a piece on which the capstone sort of ties together with what i was talking about seeing downtown lit up with the pride parade we're going to have so much affordable housing and more density downtown and it's going to make our downtown business community more vibrant and it's going to be a virtuous cycle so while the consent calendar doesn't usually get a lot of attention i felt that today was a day to to thank staff um both in housing and community services thank you to megan and your staff and jason and your staff well done all right thank you council member are there any other comments from council mr bisoner yes thank you on item 12.4 we heard a statement about removal of property from vehicles that are being towed um um are there any other agencies that whose policy allows for an individual to remove their items from a vehicle that has been towed this item 12.4 do we see lieutenant on the line yes one moment please good evening everybody um so this is a franchise agreement i i don't know if we're getting into are you asking if people can remove items from a vehicle that's been towed that's not what i don't believe that's what this is this is no sir no sir my question is if there's any other agencies that were aware of that do allow people to remove their items once their car is towed or before the car is towed or if it's just general practice yeah it's general practice okay if there's personal and a vehicle it's it's very common practice for people to remove their items versus having uh any of the tow companies or the police department or whoever's joining the vehicle having to um put those items into evidence or into storage so pretty common to allow people to take their stuffs out their items out of the vehicle very well i appreciate the answer sir thank you sir you bet all right if there are no other questions mr vice mayor do you want to put a motion on the table thank you mayor i move items 12.1 through 12.10 and wave further reading of the text second so we have a motion from the vice mayor and a second from councilmember mcdonald uh any other comments or discussion all right let's call the vote councilmember schwedham hi councilmember soyer hi councilmember rogers hi councilmember mcdonald hi councilmember fleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with seven eyes okay uh it is five o'clock on the dot so we'll roll into our public our first public comment for non-agenda items period if you have a comment that is on an item that is not on tonight's council agenda go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom or make your way towards the podium and mayor we have dwayne dwitt heading to the podium okay hello my name is dwayne dwitt and i'm from roseland and i wanted to thank a number of people for helping roseland recently earlier i mentioned mayor alvarez excuse me vice mayor alvarez and natalie rogers for coming to roseland on wednesday the first of june to try to talk with community members mr alvarez also on his own time after came over to macmillan avenue to see an illegal encampment he spoke with two school board members uh patricia kruger and mary bolsorek and got to see firsthand how it's negatively affecting the community to have a dozen people living within 10 feet of a residence in an area where they're burning fires in an oak woodland with dry grass just by chance perhaps on friday a work crew came out i'm hoping it's because mr alvarez made a drop to dime thing is we want to thank officer more from the santa rosa police department for friday officer richman for coming out on saturday for our roseland creek cleanup effort where community members gathered and did work along with supervised adult crews from the probation department we also got to meet members of the debris removal team today that was derrick and darin and they had come out to help out so one of the things we'd like to see now that we're coming out from under the restrictions of coveted is an effort to re-establish volunteerism and to have us neighborhood volunteers be able to work with the city to get things done in a quicker way specifically we got those graffiti problems i mentioned earlier you wouldn't have it on humboldt street or mc donald avenue for more than a day or two we've had it for weeks at the corner of herne avenue and whitewood just down from ketten court where a man was murdered the other day so we've got these serious problems and we're thanking the people who are helping us we want more of that to continue and i'm here to put up my effort and say i'll walk my talk i will volunteer to go paint over graffiti i will volunteer to be out there like i've been for at least 10 hours over the last four days working in that neighborhood to clean it up and keep it nice and you can't hide behind the fact that somebody asked for an environmental impact report to say well we don't do the maintenance you can do maintenance in parks you don't need a report so we need you to step up we're stepping up we're out there and we'd like you to be out there again on the weekend the debris removal team told us they'd come back next wednesday we'll have things bagged and tagged and ready for them thank you kindly for your help there we have another person heading to the podium if you'd like to state your name for the record if you choose okay my name is bernadette borough when home sharing began it was for someone who wanted to couchsurf in someone else's home for a period of time since then it has turned into an investing vehicle that destroys the fabric of our neighborhoods the rental housing market and communities what is the true concept of home sharing home sharing is what people do in councilman alvarez's district by many people sharing a single residence that are entry-level workers in retail hospitality vineyard and agriculture they share a home so they are able to afford to live here home sharing is multifamily generations sharing a property to afford to live in sonoma county home sharing is what we all did through the tubs nuns glass and dixie fires opening our homes to people that were evacuated or lost their homes opening our homes for free to help our fellow community members home sharing is neighbors behind me that are a hosted short-term rental owners that rent a room to only two guests at a time home sharing is not the house next to me that is out of town investors and corporations coming into our neighborhood for the sole purpose of turning a profit home sharing is not wall street players like avance stay buying up houses in our neighborhoods knowing the rules and how to get around them offering homes for large gatherings kidding home purchases for high net worth individuals who want to have a short-term rental investment portfolio this type of str owner is turning our neighborhoods into a boutique hotel zone this is a non-conforming use in a residential zone they have no ties to the community nor do they care about the health and well-being of the neighborhood of santa rosa or only hosted short-term rental should be allowed in the residential areas only primary home owners should be permitted to rent their homes as an str operators in good standing should not only be for taught collecting the property next to me has had 30 plus calls from code enforcement but somehow they are still permitted to operate under the current ordinance this needs to be addressed and revised santa needs rosa needs to join other communities around the county and put strict limits on short-term rentals the members of rra have tried to paint a rosy picture of why there should be no rules and regulations that hinder them to run commercial businesses in our neighborhoods they tell a tall tale of how their operations have no effect on the neighborhood around them i am here to tell you they are wrong thank you for your time excuse me i see nobody moving to the panel or the podium i have one um let's see adina floris if you want to go ahead please good evening council um so i wanted to follow up on my comment from earlier i did have time to verify um that the cps hr consulting is not listed as a joint power authority within the state of california and i've already verified that again their fbn is expired and they do not have a they they've never filed um ever with the california secretary of state so if you know something different or have access to a different database that the general public does thought i'm asking for um a screenshot of the secretary of state filing to be emailed to me um i just have a lot of issues because again time and time again i've proven that this entire pandemic and the wildfires have been orchestrated which our elected officials are profiting from and therefore supervisor gore the county chairman decided to file a restraining order against my fiance in an effort to silence us um i'm tired of being told i'm full of basement accusations i just find this interesting because supervisor gore on the same day that he told me i'm full of basement accusations received a sworn complaint from the fbpc confirming that all of my accusations were legitimate and they have opened an investigation because he failed to disclose that his wife elizabeth gore possesses a business by the name of war country which he uses for his political campaigning as well so i don't understand how this is permissible um that's been omitted for all years um initially you know he said only hello alice was omitted but um there are many other businesses which the gores have in their possession that aren't being disclosed um there is a tremendous lack of transparency in this community for example um healdsburg councilwoman rl kelly was extremely taken aback by the fact that i called her out on her statement of economic interest several months ago because she's personally invested in visor she's not vaccinating latinals because she wants equity she's vaccinating them because she knows she's harming people of color and profiting from it um she said that her visor investments apparently she inherited those from her deceased grandmother um and disposed of them last year so fast forward to april 2022 her 2021 statement of economic interest shows not only does she still have visor in possession she added biotech and also mckesson distribution who possessed the uh contracts for three billion dollars with the cdc to distribute the vaccines um which was actually initiated in 2017 before the pandemic existed so i would just really appreciate transparency thank you and mayor we have one uh one voicemail public comment okay hi this is eris weaver executive director of sonoma county bicycle coalition uh general public comment agenda item 13 or 17 items not on the agenda as i was cycling to work on thursday last week june 2nd i was the victim of hit and run right in front of the bike coalition office uh we were both traveling slowly and i managed to remain upright but even though my neither my bike nor my body were injured i was quite shook up by the experience it was frightening to see a large machine advancing toward my unprotected body and i was angry that the driver continued down the road apparently unaware that he had struck me for my involvement in our local road safety plans and vision zero project i know the importance of data about collisions i constantly tell my staff and my members that they should always report collisions so that we have documentation of the problems that cyclists face on our streets my experience of filing a police report with the city was awful and i now have a greater understanding of why so many people don't bother i first called the pd to try and file it over the phone as the online forum stated that you shouldn't do it online if there was a known suspect and in my case the person who struck me worked in another office in our building so i recognized the driver in the car after i told my story the dispatcher said no i did need to go back and file it online after which i then tried to do so but the online forum is not at all user friendly and all the drop down menus for filing a hit and run report don't allow anywhere for you to say that the victim is a cyclist or pedestrian it asks what kind of vehicle you're on and i should state that i am not uh i am someone who is very um competent with computers i've been a network administrator in a programmer and uh things like that so it's it's a really bad form so i called back and said you know i can't this forum isn't working and was told now i had to come in and file the report in person so i wrote over to the station to do so i filled out all the paper forms including contact information for witness and submitted video from my front and rear cameras that documented the incident the entire process from the first phone call took over two hours and i have yet to be contacted by an officer i was coherent uninjured motivated i knew what to do i had time to come down to the station without worrying about missing work or childcare or anything like that how much more difficult this would have been for someone who had been injured didn't know the system didn't speak english well had no computer access or limited literacy this process is unacceptable and needs to be fixed thank you mayor that concludes public comment for this item all right thank you so much and i know eris's uh comment was a voicemail uh i will follow back up with her that it is something that we'll talk about with our team and try to fix uh for adina i will ask uh amy to go ahead and email you so that you have the accurate information that you were looking for as well mayor if i could respond we have the documents ready to forward and myself and interim chief cregan have already made contact with eris and are resolving the situation perfect thank you so much go on to item 14.1 report item 14.1 is approval of agreement with touchstone gulf llc for management of benet valley golf course uh enterprise i'd like to introduce deputy director santos thank you one moment will i promote her please all right can you everyone see me thank you uh sorry just need to be promoted there um good afternoon or good evening i guess it's evening mayor roger's vice mayor alvarez and council members i'm jen santos parks deputy director tonight we will discuss the recommendation before you to approve an agreement with touchstone gulf to manage the benet valley golf course next slide please so although you'll mostly be hearing from me tonight i really want to acknowledge contributions of this presentation and the contributions uh folks have made to moving this entire process for forward with the benet valley golf course um of course acknowledgement to jason not our assistant city manager for providing oversight and direction for getting us through this process and um a recognition to our ad hoc committee who's had over 12 meetings since forming at the mayor's request in 2021 to assist staff in the community with a path forward for the golf course also the national golf foundation has provided insight into the options for future operations capital improvements and long-range funding and operations options uh and last but not least uh i definitely want to thank our city attorney's office and the chief financial officer and uh his staff and of course uh the folks from the transportation of public works department next slide please so on so we have 150 acres of golf course are shown here in two images the one on the left is an aerial image showing the golf course and the red shapes uh show the building locations the maintenance buildings are near the top of the screen and the restaurant and pro shop buildings are near the bottom of the image just for reference if you look to the image to the right you'll see a graphic version of each of the 18 holes and the driving range the restaurant pro shop and of course you can see the tanzas creek very clearly next slide please so the just to remind you the golf course is a full 18 hole golf course r72 with a pro shop and a crop very popular unlit driving range and has a priority need for capital investments to repair the water supply irrigation and drainage issues on the golf course as presented to council in february this year by national golf foundation the restaurant um was designed in 2004 and built and finished in 2005 contains a main restaurant and a bar an outdoor patio banquet facilities for events the kitchen is designed to uh run both operations for the restaurant and the event center simultaneously and we know that there are a few capital investments needed at the restaurant in order to reopen to the community next slide please so in 2004 the city sold bonds and received a loan from the southeast and northwest park development impact fee zones for a total of approximately 10 million dollars overall these uh were used to fund the new restaurant and the banquet facilities and modernized the pro shop so in 2005 after construction was complete the city entered into an agreement with the vinnett valley golf course shop um and followed with an agreement with the sports restaurant of vinnett valley golf course to operate and manage the restaurant and banquet facilities next slide please so by 2020 the restaurant and event center were no longer profitable due to the pandemic restrictions regarding gathering inside and the city granted termination of their lease in december of 2020 and the restaurant and banquet facility have remained closed we did try some food truck providers at one point uh was working really well and then it just uh fizzled out so uh we don't have food truck providers there right now and of course we have the vinnett valley golf shops agreement expiring on june 30th of this year and the owners retiring and not seeking renewal so we have been working diligently over the last couple years to look for solutions moving forward to provide golf to the community next slide please so by february of 2021 staff presented an option in a study session for future golf operations that included real estate options to help fund the capital investments needed at the golf course and fund the existing debt services that we have following this presentation in 2021 citizens of the golfing community and the sports community formed the save the vinnett valley golf course for vinn opposition uh to the options that include real estate and they advocated and encouraged the city to look for alternatives mayor rogers established the vinnett valley golf course ad hoc committee on march 2nd 2021 which consists of council member soyer as chair vice mayor alvarez and council member tidbits mayor rogers joined the committee following the resignation of council member tidbits and as part of their first meeting in april of 2021 the ad hoc committee recommended that staff provide a comprehensive analysis regarding the future operations of the vinnett valley golf course without real estate options and so we move forward on that recommendation next slide please so on august 17 2021 council approved a request for proposals to solicit for qualified for a qualified firm to evaluate the golf course and make recommendations for how we should operate the future operations capital projects and what sort of funding mechanisms we could find to help us with that the national golf foundation was recommended by that review committee and approved on november 4th 2021 by the city and before the end of the 2021 year national golf foundation had provided a rough draft of their future recommendations for the vinnett valley golf operations capital projects and funding mechanisms the ad hoc committee received those recommendations from national golf foundation and further recommended that staff move forward to council with the option for a single operator as recommended by national golf foundation the council received this update and the ad hoc committee from of the ad hoc committee during their council meeting on february 1st during the staff briefing next slide please so on february 15 of this year 2022 knowing that time was of the essence council approved a scope of services for an RFP a request for proposal to solicit for a single operator to manage the operations and maintenance of the vinnett valley golf course and includes restaurant etc during that presentation council received a comprehensive presentation from national golf foundation detailing their analysis and recommendation for a single management operator following the solicitation the city received five proposals very high quality proposals on march 24 2022 the vinnett valley golf course proposal review committee which consisted of one council member on the rotation assignment and one member of the golfing community and staff members familiar with the operations and maintenance of the vinnett valley golf course they reviewed and interviewed the top ranked firms and recommended the highest ranked firm touchdown golf for future management of vinnett valley golf course next slide please so approval to finalize an agreement with touchdown will provide for the operations and maintenance of the vinnett valley golf course for three years with an option to extend up to two additional years some key elements of the future operations are to implement the transition plan which provide the framework for bringing on touchstone in june prior to the end of the current operators term in order to facilitate a smooth transition we really need that time in there there's a lot of details of work out in between now and july 1st approval of this agreement will also put into motion the support services necessary for this future operations such as as example internet services golf cart contracts goods and services to operate and maintain the vinnett valley golf course enterprise touchstone has a proven track record at providing professional level management service for municipalities with similar operations all over california and the united states touchstone is not only recommended by the vinnett valley golf course proposal review committee but they are also recommended by every municipality contacted for reference regarding their performance references were contacted that were provided by touchstone as well as those not specifically mentioned by touchstone in particular the city of burbank california operates develop golf course which is an 18-hole golf course and restaurant with event center facilities similar to the city of san rosa touchstone began operations and maintenance of the develop golf course in 2019 and the city of burbank is extremely pleased with touchdowns performance and they do highly recommend touchstone i had the opportunity to work with the folks from the city of burbank over the last three weeks and they've been really instrumental in helping me understand how they've been working with touchstone and how the transitions are going it's it's been a really great experience for them we spoke with a lot of folks but we also specifically i want to mention the city of chilebista california we spoke with them about their financial agreement with touchstone and they also reported very similar positive aspects of touchdown including their revenue flow there were lots of other references that we check the golf courses and one in texas and one in colorado again all very similar highly positive comments and all made recommendations that we work with touchstone that they're a great company to work with of course touchstone is a highly highly skilled golf management they operate over 21 i believe in california alone 21 facilities which do include management of restaurants and banquet services on municipal golf courses touchstone will as part of this agreement will also reopen our restaurant and event center facilities and operate a beverage and snap cart which is of course highly desired by the golfing community it's often hard when you're golfing in the middle of golfing to stop and make it make time to go to the restaurant so my other golfing community is looking forward to that touchstone will utilize their expensive marketing and outreach skills for both the restaurant and event center and the golf course they have staff dedicated just to that purposes which is really exciting one of the many comments i received from doing the due diligence with touchstone was hearing that they are quote an extension of our staff which is really a pie it's something that really resonated with with staff there's there's a lot going on with looking at a new management organization and this is really helpful their expert knowledge of golf but also being able to to meet the uniqueness of vinnett valley golf course and work with our existing staff is really exciting in negotiations with touchstone so far they have proven to be very easy to work with and they bring a wealth of experience to the table i know that touchstone themselves are very much for looking forward to meeting our community and encouraging the sport of golf for everyone in the community next slide please so as a single operator under an operations and maintenance agreement touchstone will receive a base monthly management fee of eight thousand dollars a month for ninety six thousand dollars annually and an incentive fee of approximately 20 of the net revenue goals which is estimated to be around twenty thousand dollars annually for the first year and as we increase revenue the incentive will of course correspondingly increase as well the city is expected to earn every dime every bit of revenue comes to the city and the first year is estimated at approximately three point four million dollars and by year three we're looking at four point six million the city will use these revenues to fund every expenditure including the management and incentive fees and all operating and maintenance expenses and all existing debt services next slide please so as a reminder of where we're at for our debt services the bond debt services is approximately three hundred ninety five thousand two hundred sixty one dollars per year plus the annual park development impact debt service is approximately sixty three thousand two hundred forty four dollars annually combined the existing debt service annually is around four hundred fifty eight thousand dollars that's generally where it's at there is some fluctuation in the bond debt service but very little so it's around four hundred fifty thousand dollars with just the debt service so if we were to pay off this existing debt service for all the remaining years we're looking at a little over four million dollars right now if we were to pay it off as scheduled in the previous slide we mentioned that touchstone is projecting about three point four million dollars in revenue and their estimate for the first year of expenditures is approximately two point nine million which does not include our existing debt service and are the transitional costs that we need to transition from an existing operator to a new operator so annually once these costs are added we are projecting a first year loss but I also just want to add that the projected expenditures for your for your three are looking at three point eight million as the revenue is also projected to increase and correspond so we're looking at a first year loss and years after that are projected to earn revenue a positive revenue next slide please so if we look at the budget available we have projected around five hundred thirty seven thousand dollars touchstone is projecting once you add in our debt service and the transition costs a first year loss approximately two hundred thirty four thousand six hundred eighty two so we've got that number there we also have six hundred eighty one thousand five hundred seventy four in council reserve policy requirements what that number includes is an estimated initial estimate of four hundred sixty six thousand dollars plus a twenty percent increase to uncover the increased risk inherent in the new operating agreement so we expect that by the end of the first year we will need to have all these funds for instance if the revenue projections aren't met we need to have a larger reserves to protect ourselves there is an increased risk with this type of management agreement where the city earns all the revenue but we also are on the hook for all these expenditures so there's a total reserve requirement of six hundred eighty one thousand five hundred seventy four dollars moving down we also have about three hundred seventeen thousand dollars in additional needs this first year that we need to add into this analysis and so i'll just go through that bear with me there's that three hundred seventeen thousand dollars is made up of twenty about twenty thousand dollars of city maintenance staff and salaries for maintenance of the buildings and major repairs infrastructure repairs things like that to the buildings and grounds as well as preventative maintenance there's professional banking services fees and fire and earthquake insurance etc for about the same amount around twenty thousand dollars there's overhead costs for citywide for the citywide cost plan of approximately twenty thousand dollars we also need to maintain an operating cash flow of a bank account for about seventy five thousand dollars so that we have enough money to make sure we're paying everybody and doing all the paying all the expenditures as expected we also