And by uniting, click on the interpretation icon, which now appears in the Zoom function bar, like a Terracco logo. Once you are on the Spanish channel, it is recommended that you turn off the primary audio so that you can only hear the interpretation in Spanish. Welcome, everyone, to our October 10, 2023 Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now 3 p.m., and we will be starting our meeting. Seeing a quorum, Madam City Clerk, may you please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Councilmember Stapp. Here. Councilmember Rogers. Here. Councilmember O'Crepkey. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor McDonald. Here. Mayor Rogers. Present. Let the record show all councilmembers are present. Thank you. We will now proceed to item 2.1, our closed session of the day with a conference with legal counsel about existing litigation. Madam City Clerk, can you please facilitate public comment? Thank you, Mayor. We are now taking public comment on item 2.1. If you're in the council chamber and you would like to comment but have not provided a speaker card, please make your way to the podium. If you will have two minutes, an account down timer will alert at the end of that period. Mayor, no one's approaching the podium for public comment, and we receive no written public comment. Thank you. We will now recess into closed session. Hello, and welcome to our October 10, 2023 Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now 4 p.m., and we will be starting our meeting. Seeing a quorum, Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Stapp. Here. Councilmember Rogers. Councilmember O'Crepkey. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Present. Vice Mayor McDonald. Here. Mayor Rogers. Present. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember Rogers. Thank you. We have no study sessions today, so we're going to move right into our reports on study and closed sessions. Madam City Attorney. Thank you, Mayor Rogers. Council did meet in closed session this afternoon on the matter of Constance Brown v. City of Santa Rosa. The case involves a trip and fall incident on a sidewalk near Creekside Park. By a vote of 7 to 0, council approved settlement of the Brown litigation following mediation in amount of $100,000 and also authorized the city attorney to sign the settlement agreement authored by both parties. Thank you. Thank you, Madam City Clerk. May you please facilitate public comment? Thank you. We are now taking public comment on item 5. If you are in the chamber, please make your way to the podium to provide public comment. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. Seeing no one approaching the podium, Mayor, that concludes public comment. Thank you. Moving on to a much anticipated part in our agenda, we have one proclamation for today, and I have the privilege of reading that proclamation. Whereas the City of Santa Rosa recognizes that domestic violence affects one in four families in our local community, and that nearly 75% of Americans know someone who has been abused. The crime of domestic violence violates an individual's privacy, dignity, and security based on the somatic use of emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, and economic control or abuse. And whereas established in 1975, YWCA, Sonoma County is our community's singular and vital resource for local residents experiencing violence in the place we should all fill the safest inside our homes. YWCA operates Sonoma County's only confidential safe house shelter, and Sonoma County's only 24-7 domestic violence crisis hotline. YWCA's counseling support services offer trauma-informed individual and support group therapy for victims of trauma and domestic violence, including the students at YWCA's therapeutic preschools serving one of our most vulnerable populations, children, ages, three through five years old. And whereas only an informed community effort will end the cycle of violence for local family members of our community are engaged to participate in YWCA's scheduled events and programs to raise much needed funding to support their vision for every family in Sonoma County to live healthy, productive lives and be safe in their own homes. Now, therefore, it be resolved that I, Natalie Rogers, mayor of the city of Santa Rosa, on behalf of the entire city council, do buy proclaim October 2023 in Santa Rosa as domestic violence awareness month. Sorry, that's a big one for me. So now I would like to invite the representatives that are here receiving the proclamation to make a comment after the comments are made from the representatives. Madam City Clerk, can you please facilitate public comment? Good afternoon, honorable mayor and members of the city council. My name is Madeleine Keegan O'Connell. I'm the chief executive officer of YWCA and on behalf of our board of directors, staff, volunteers and especially the local families served by YWCA Sonoma County, thank you sincerely for honoring October as domestic violence awareness month with your proclamation. I'm so pleased to be joined here today with YWCA staff and of course, Chief John Cregan and our Santa Rosa Police Department. Thanks everybody for being here. Established in 1975, YWCA's 24-7 crisis hotline, the only one in Sonoma County is still the most direct path to support local families in need. Our confidential safe house shelter is also the only one in Sonoma County for families seeking refuge from harm. Safety planning and strategies to ensure relief are at the forefront of every call we receive. On average, YWCA Sonoma County serves approximately 3,000 individuals in need each year with trauma informed community focused services. Our client population is 90% female, 47% Latino, 23% children, 7% seniors and the majority are very low income and 15% are homeless. These wonderful people sitting in this row right here are the representatives who answered those calls 24-7, 365. Data from the Center of Disease Control show that one in four women, one in four women and nearly one in 10 men have experienced sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetimes. At YWCA Sonoma County, we know that our mission is personal to our community and what we've learned is that domestic violence impacts so many that people that we know, the one in four and the one in 10. So we've created the YI Run, Fun Run Walk with that in mind Saturday, October 28th at Spring Lake right here in Santa Rosa. And our supporters will pay tribute to victims by answering the question of why I run. Individual runners, bibs and participants will be encouraged to write for my sister, for my brother, my mom, my dad, my friend, my roommate, my coworker or myself. But you don't have to wait until October 28th to support YWCA Tomatina over in Montgomery Village is doing a Dine and Donate for us today. Great dinner plans have in mind. Next Tuesday, Mary's on Summerfield will be doing a Dine and Donate. And I'm truly here thanking the city of Santa Rosa. It is the home of YWCA Sonoma County and my home for many generations. We care deeply for this community. And I'm here to remind you that we've been around since 1975 and we will be here for Sonoma County families in need for as long as you need us. Thank you for your kind attention to my comments. Thank you. We are now taking public comment on item 6.1. If you are in the chamber, I would like to comment. Please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. As you approach the podium and get situated in front of the microphone, please identify yourself for public record if you choose to do so. Please go ahead with your comment. And I don't want to in any manner take away from the efforts of the YWCA. My wife and her friends had a lot to do with its origin and still support it. But I think it's time to recognize that there's another agency in this county that supports women fleeing violence and vulnerable and homeless. And it doesn't get much support publicly, but we had a little party at the Polo Club on Sunday and it raised an awful lot of money for it. I'm talking about the living room. The living room is a viable, powerful, effective organization and it provides a lot of the second stage, getting housing, getting support services that is necessary for women fleeing violence. And I think they deserve our support. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mayor. I see no additional speakers at the podium for public comment on this item. All right, then I would like to invite those that are here to receive the proclamation down to take a picture with the council. Thank you much for your patience. We will now continue to item seven, which is our staff briefings. Madam City Manager. Thank you, Mayor and members of council. Item 7.1 is our down payment assistance loan program. If staff, please introduce yourself for the record. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Rogers and members of council. I'm Megan Bassinger, Director of Housing and Community Services and joining me to give the staff briefing is Nicole Del Fiorentino, Housing and Community Services Manager. Good afternoon, council. So tonight we have an update for you on the city's down payment assistance loan program, which is we also called DPAL. The program was created at the direction of council using $2 million from the PG&E settlement funds. To assist Santa Rosa residents who are up to moderate level incomes. So moderate level income is up to 120% of area median income or less. So for a family of four, that's about $153,000 a year as a ceiling. The program kicked off with lender meetings in late August, outreach over the city connections newsletter, the press democrat in English and Spanish, on the city's website. We also held a potential buyer webinar with online and in-person viewing options on September 27th. We had over 250 participants to that webinar. The program is also being rolled out simultaneously with Burbank Housing's Cal Home funded down payment assistance program. So applicants may be able to access funds from both programs. We started accepting applications on October 2nd and have received about 46 applications so far. And we're currently reviewing for completeness and eligibility. We continue to accept applications which can be emailed, dropped off in person at our front counter or mailed in at 90 Santa Rosa Avenue. And we will continue to accept applications until all of the funds are reserved and we have established a waiting list. Lastly, I would just like to say we have a dedicated website at srcity.org forward slash D-POW which is updated regularly and has next steps and information for applicants. So with that, I'm happy to answer any other questions about the program so far. Rogers. Thank you so much. Could you repeat the website, srcity.org slash? D-POW, D-P-A-L. Thank you. Any additional questions from Council? Thank you. We are now taking public comment on item 7.1. If you'd like to make a comment, please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. As you approach the podium, please maintain a uniform line and provide your name for public record if you choose to do so. Please go ahead. Hello, my name is DeWayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. This seems to be a very helpful program but at the same time, it could be ripe for abuse. One would hope that you'll make sure that these are reserved for citizens of Santa Rosa specifically. People already living in the Santa Rosa city limits. People who've been here and have invested in the city for a long time rather than just coming in and seeing an opportunity to perhaps get ahead of others who've waited a long time to try to get themselves a home. I was also hoping that you might be able to utilize these for duplexes and triplexes and situations in which a family working together perhaps with two members of the family could get into a living situation. Cooperative housing works in many other countries. It could be something that starts here with this type of an approach. Just all in all, you're gonna have to have a really tight ship. Someone really watching over this so that it's not abused in any way, shape, or form. Good luck on the effort. Thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is Gregory Farron and I wanna thank the Housing Authority and the Housing Authority staff in particular. Megan and her staff proposed some really exciting, an exciting new program which I know you on the council authorized with PG&E funds. It isn't often that you get a chance to directly address something that for years I've heard people say, why can't we? Why can't we? The funding was never there and I always had to tell them sorry about that. I wish I could help, but now I can say there's something. It may be small, it may be still in need as Dwayne points out of some additional thinking but it's there and it's there because you took the chance. You found the need and you solved it. So hooray and thank you very much. Thank you. I see no additional people approaching the podiums for public comment, Mayor. With no additional comments, thank you very much for the presentation. Item 7.2, Violence Prevention Partnership Update. Still not showing. One moment while I get ITF to get the presentation up. Thank you. Thank you. All right. All right, good evening, Madam Mayor, Madam Vice Mayor, members of the council. My name is Danielle Gargiunio. I am the Violence Prevention Program Manager and I'm here today to give you an overview of the Violence Prevention Partnerships 2023 through 2028 Strategic Plan. And while this is a high level overview of our Strategic Plan, we will be back at a later date to go over updates of our implementation as we move along. Just a little bit of background for you. The plan was last updated in 2017, which covered the years of 2017 through 2022. This is our fourth Strategic Plan since the partnership was created, formerly known as the Mayor's Gang Prevention Task Force in 2003. And our Strategic Planning process occurred from January through June of this year. Our process included hiring a consultant to help us facilitate workshops and meetings with our community. This consultant was Ernesto Olivares, who is the current executive director of the California Violence Prevention Network, also former city council member and former program manager of the partnership. We conducted an analysis of previous plans and engagement efforts and also looked at similar violence prevention plans in other cities throughout California. We held one-on-one interviews with former program managers and staff and members of our California Cities Violence Prevention Network. We conducted focus groups with youth and held and also attended several community listing sessions on school safety. We also held six workshops with our community partners that are part of our policy and operational teams. In addition, this culminated into one large community meeting that we held on June 27th, where we presented the draft of the strategic plan to those in attendance. We also utilized the city's Let's Connect digital, Let's Connect SR digital engagement platform, posted the draft of the strategic plan there and collected feedback from those who couldn't attend the meeting. In addition to that, we also ensured that our plan aligned with the violence prevention language outlined in the measure H ordinance. Through this process, we updated our mission vision and guiding principles. So the violence prevention partnerships updated mission is that we lead, mobilize and align community resources or resources in our communities to create a safe and healthy environment where all youth are empowered to reach their full potential and all community members thrive. Our vision is that Santa Rosa emerges as a strong, resilient and interconnected community where all residents are safe, healthy and thrive. And our guiding principles are that we build safe communities, we make a commitment to equity, we utilize a community response model, we utilize shared responsibility, both among our community members and also internally with our community partners, we build trusting relationships with all involved in the partnership and we also value our youth and their voices are a part of this process. Our first strategic focus area that we developed during this process is intervention. Intervention services are vital to our comprehensive violence prevention strategy and are credited with reducing recidivism and saving lives. Properly designed, these services can help divert youth from arrest in the criminal justice system. Intervention services must also focus on those coming home from incarceration. These include street outreach, which includes a crisis response team, violence interrupters, a tattoo removal program and hospital-based intervention services as well as a program or model that works on campus safety with our schools. In addition to that, we also include mental health and substance abuse support for youth and their families, workforce development and diversion enforcement and reentry services. Focus area number two is prevention. Prevention remains the foundation of our community-wide strategy and is one of the areas where all members of our community can participate. Through a collaborative community relationship, we will improve youth and community safety by raising awareness, educating and engaging youth with positive recreational, social and mental health services to increase protective factors at the individual, family, peer and community levels. Coordinated community policy and system changes can yield substantial benefits. So these strategies include pro-social opportunities and save spaces for our youth, youth engagement, preventative services for all residents of our community, school readiness and student engagement and gun violence prevention strategies. Third area is communication, outreach and education, which includes a communications and outreach plan and education and training opportunities, one of which I'm very excited to announce is coming back this year is our annual seminar, which we held pre-pandemic, so the last one was held in 2019. This year it will be held on Thursday, November 2nd from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will feature keynote speaker, Luis Rodriguez, who wrote the book called Always Running and he will be speaking to all of our community partners and participants on his experience in the gang lifestyle and how he got out. The seminar will also feature breakout sessions around mental health first aid, restorative practices, self-care, youth empowerment and other topics that are relevant to violence prevention. Registration is now available on our website. We're also working on developing opportunities for parents, including trainings and workshops that will help them support our youth. Focus area number four is investment, so while we are funded by Measure H currently, we know that we can't do this work without other funding sources, so we're looking at leveraging other types of funding, including national, state and other local grant opportunities. We're also looking at identifying and compiling community outcome indicators that we can share with our partners, which will help us fund strategic decisions and placement of resources. And finally, through our choice grant program and any other funds that we put out to the community, we will continue to be a responsible steward of public funds by evaluating our work and monitoring our programs. And then finally, our fifth strategic focus area is collaboration, working on building and maintaining a sustainable organizational structure. So we will be developing, or we have actually developed an annual work plan or one year and we will continue to do so each year of implementation and align our policy team meetings to this work plan. In addition to that, we will be looking at our staffing structure and how we can be more efficient in the work that we do and ensuring that we have enough staff for the work that we do and also bilingual cultural individuals and those with lived experience and also ensuring that we have community member voices as part of this partnership. In addition to that, building regional collaboration is very key to this work because as we all know, violence does not stop at the city limits of Santa Rosa. And so we need to make sure that we're working with the county and other cities as we move this work forward. And again, shared measurement and ensuring that we have the necessary data and that we're utilizing similar data across our partnership so that we can build out our programming and resources. So what's next? I mentioned grants. We did apply to the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the California Department of Social Services to help us fund our school outreach and crisis response programming. We did however, find out last week that we did not get funded for either. So we're going back to the drawing board to figure out how to move forward with those components. We're also actively responding to critical incidents of violence in our community when they happen and working closely with our partners to ensure that our neighborhoods and our community members have the support and resources that they need when there is an act of violence that occurs. This includes our community pop-ups that we've held over the last couple of months. We've held three, two in responses to the June shootings that happened this year and then one in partnership with the Santa Rosa Police Department at their Tacos with a copy event a few weeks ago. We're also looking at revising our choice grant program to align with the new strategic plan and looking at additional ways that we can get community members, including youth to the table, including looking at possibly bringing back the Santa Rosa team council and restructuring our policy and operational teams. And before I finish, I just want to thank all of our community partners who are part of this process and who are with me here today in support of our new strategic plan. We could not have done it without them and the community members who provided input into this process. And with that, I will take any questions that you may have. Thank you. Any questions from council? Council member Scott. Thank you, Danielle. It's been a pleasure to serve on the policy committee with you and with my colleague. You just mentioned the number of community partners that you're serving with. Could you mention again the number of community partners and school districts that are involved with the work of the violence prevention partnership? We have over 70 organizations that are currently involved with the partnership from law enforcement and criminal justice agencies, nonprofits, schools and school districts, faith-based community, our health care and community health centers and building out again that community member participation, including youth. It's fantastic work and Mayor Rogers and I are gonna be highlighting this at our town hall meeting tomorrow night with the community. And speaking of community, a special thanks to Ellen and Ernesto who have been part of this work from the beginning. Thank you for staying involved and to the entire violence prevention partnership team here in the city. Thank you very much for all the work that you've done. Council member Rogers. Thank you, Mayor. And I also wanted to say thank you to all the folks who've been involved since the outset. There's been a lot of support for the program and for the work that you do. I had two specific questions. One was just asking if you could expand a little bit on how this plan and the work of the violence prevention partnership is going to be integrated with the ad hoc committee that we have joint city and school board on a number of different issues. We haven't quite determined that yet. However, I just received the invite for the first meeting so I will be participating in that. Right. And then the second one, we heard a number of really great programs, well intention programs in budget. Some of them were programs that we've had in the past like the tattoo removal program. How will council members and the community be able to give some feedback on not just what the plan says but what actually gets funded within the plan? So one of the things that we did do at our June 27th meeting this year is we provided a wide variety of programs and strategies to participants of that meeting to prioritize. So looking at things like tattoo removal, street outreach, so on and so forth. And from there through a dot voting process, quite a few rows to the top is priorities for the community. We will continue to do that with our community and continue to evaluate on an annual basis the work that we do to ensure that we're meeting the needs of the community and the priorities that they have. Excellent, thank you so much. Excuse me through the chair, Councilor Rogers. When once we bring back the implementation plan, we will allow council the opportunity to go through the implementation plan, let us know if you would like to see changes and funding will be a part of that as well. And I do know in the public safety subcommittee, at some point we will be talking about funding as well. So a part of that conversation will come back to the violence prevention team. So we'll get your input on that. Vice Mayor McDonald. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanna say thank you so much to Danielle and the entire VPP team as well as director Jeff Tibbets for the work that they do on this program for intervention and prevention. And I think that that's really the key as we're looking at budgets is how many of the things that we need to do for prevention and the money that it actually saves us in the long run when we have the opportunity to do outreach to our youth in the community. So it's such a critical part of the work that we do on city council and sometimes it gets forgotten that this is part of our role as well. And it can be the most rewarding part of it if we're able to be successful in all of the things that you have planned. One of the things that I'm just gonna do your horn for you for a minute, but the strategic plan was done brilliantly and I wanna say thank you to Ernesto for his work on that. The outreach that we did within the community was I think really significant and well done. But I think that what we're doing now, breaking down the strategic plan to look at what we're going to achieve in year one, going back to those 70 different partners and being able to ask them where do they see themselves with integrating in our own plan I think is such a critical component so that there is this two way in the work with all these incredible partners that we have to be able to achieve the goals of the strategic plan. And so I really look forward to seeing year one. I know that it's been a significant amount of work for all of you and it is a joy for me to be able to use some of my background and do this work. So I wanna just really appreciate everything that you're doing. Could you tell us a little bit about the November 2nd meeting? I'm not sure if that was mentioned and I apologize if I didn't hear it. And then I also wanna just talk a little bit about some of the work that we just, we've been getting presentations at our every other month meeting and the last one was from SRPD and I wanna thank them for their presentation and really let people know that we're gonna have an opportunity for all the different groups to give us presentations on what they're doing so we have a better understanding with each other of what we can provide for the youth in the community. So if you don't mind talking about November 2nd. Sure. So again, the seminar is an annual seminar that we've done since the inception of the partnership. It's a professional development opportunity for all of our partners. It's also an educational opportunity for our community members and we invite community members to attend. It's being held on Thursday, November 2nd from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Finley Community Center. You do have to register for the event. The cost is $25 to attend and it includes breakfast and lunch. We do not turn anyone away for lack of being able to pay though. We do offer scholarships. We have a keynote speaker, Luis J. Rodriguez who is the author of Always Running and former poet laureate of Los Angeles. He has a relationship already with Santa Rosa in that his book Always Running was banned back in the 90s by several of our local school districts. So he's been here before to talk to our community about the work that he does and his lived experience. In addition to that, there is an opportunity. Santa Rosa Police Department will provide an overview of gang trends in Santa Rosa while partners from San Jose come up and present on their programming and what has worked and what challenges that they've had so that we can see what they're doing because what I have talked about, a lot of this is modeled from San Jose and Oakland. So we'll have an opportunity to see that in action and then breakout sessions in the afternoon on a wide variety of topics related to violence prevention. Thank you for sharing that and just thank you again for all the work that you do and for the presentation today. Thanks. All right, seeing no additional comments, I will not repeat anything that was already said except for thank you to everyone that participated to make this happen and to remind all of us that it takes a village and we need to continue to build up our community. So thank you very much. And with that, Madam City Clerk, may you please facilitate public comment. Thank you, we are now taking public comment on item 7.2. If you'd like to make a comment, please make your way to the podium and line up in an orderly fashion. And please note, we do have two podiums on the west side of the chamber and on the east side. As you approach the podium, please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so. You will have a two minute timer and it will alert at the end of your public comment period. Please go ahead with your comment. Duane Dewitt, I'm from Roseland where we've had a number of killings. One of the dilemmas that we face is discussions that occur with you folks often are more exclusive than inclusive even though you feel you're including all kinds of people and the neighborhoods where I live, people are like, hey, we don't see them. So I asked about this. One of the things that's of importance to people at least in Roseland and over on West 9th Street is graffiti removal. Graffiti removal is something that actually has been proven to be helpful at least to a community to think that their governments pay attention. Over on West 9th and Link Lane, there's been a fence that gets tagged regularly and it gets left up there for weeks, sometimes months on end. Sometimes myself and others go and we paint over the graffiti. We think that this program should actually try to get young people to paint over graffiti. We also feel that they could do it on Make a Difference Day which is Saturday, the 28th of October from 10 to 12 in the morning. It's a day that's held nationwide and many communities, many cities embrace it and say, okay, let's get people involved in these things. Also, workforce development, you could be using United States Environmental Protection Agency funds. We've talked about that for years here but we can't seem to interest the staff in going after that money from the US EPA. Last but not least, graffiti removal with veterans helping in the past have come here and pointed out that some veterans wanted to do such a thing as veterans working for graffiti removal in neighborhoods and we'd be doing it for free. And we really feel that one of the things needs to be brought to the forefront here is spending less money but doing more with the community members. That's not happening yet, so we hope it will. Thank you next speaker, please. Hi, good evening. I'm, my name's Erica Chloe. I'm with Buckaloo Programs. I'm the regional director. And as you may know, we are very blessed to partner closely with you all and have for many years. I am very grateful for Mayor Rogers and the City Council leadership as well as Ernesto and Daniel and Chief Cregan. So I could thank a lot of you in this room. We have worked with families for 17 years and served in community for individuals that have loved ones with behavioral health challenges in our Family Service Coordination Program. And as you know, we are a lead partner on the in-response team and KT was not able to be here so you have me. And both our team, the in-response navigators as well as our Family Service Coordination are boots on the ground support for all of the families in our community. So just to give you a slice of what that looks like when a family has someone that's struggling, whether an adult and or a child, they can call our navigators and get support anywhere that they would like that support to. We go to them and we do a lot of community outreach to help support the families to get the support they need at the right time and the right level. And we have already been partnering for years with the Violence Prevention Program and I am very grateful for the strategic plan and feel that it has a lot of prevention and community partnership, which is what we really need. If you look at our community after multiple disasters, what we're seeing boots on the ground is it's an increase of poverty. And when you have an increase of poverty and people unable to feed themselves and their children, you're gonna have a rise in violence unless you have prevention and you've reached to them on the upstream and you find them before they are down the other part of the stream, which we don't want them to go to. So I'm very excited to be a part of this. Thank you, next speaker please. Good evening, my name is Madonna Feather-Cruz. I wanna thank Council Member Eddie Alvarez for attending the Indigenous People's Day Ceremony yesterday at Santa Rosa Junior College. I heard culture on here. So for the local Native Americans, culture is prevention. So Eddie could probably tell you on his next report he saw maybe 30 youth dancing. I feel that it should start before the age of 12 because they're already programming what they may become later on in life. I am in support of this project program moving forward. I heard Erica say poverty. So when I was 17, I had an aunt co-sign for me for an apartment in Kenton Court. It was about $300 a month, so me and my boyfriend at the time could afford that. I don't know if any of you guys have been into Kenton Court houses lately, but they look the same. I'm not gonna give my age, because I feel like I'm very young right now. But there's poverty, and I heard Daniel say, opportunities for parents. Well, they can't even parent because they are living in poverty and they have to work multiple jobs. And I heard you say that tickets would be $25. I hope that there are youth that are going to be involved there attending and if you wanna float me 10 tickets, I'll bring 10 at-risk youth that are living in poverty that don't see their parents because they're working too much. And when I see commitment to equity on any slide anywhere in the state of California or elsewhere, I always hope that there is a local tribal representation involved with you. And if you need any of my help, you know how to reach me, madonnafeatheratyahoo.com. And I heard you say, when Mr. Rogers asked who was involved, you said over 70 organizations. I would just be curious to know how many tribal organizations. Thank you, next speaker please. Hello friends, Kevin Anderson here, program director at CHOPPS Teen Club. Just wanted to say thank you very much to council members, violence prevention partnership team, including Ernesto, Ellen, and then of course, Danielle. CHOPPS has been coming to these things as long as the VPP group has been together and shown up day in and day out as something that helps us as staff and program staff, and then also as our team members know what's going on in the community, going on with our colleagues in city government, as well as schools and other nonprofits. It really helps us connect. Ultimately, the strategic plan to council member McDonald's Point did ask a lot of opinions. We got a chance to weigh in as staff as well as our youth, super important. And then on the back end, we know that they're gonna be consulting with us in terms of going forward. So we feel like we're definitely aligned with these efforts and really appreciate the opportunity to speak here today. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker please. Good evening Ernesto Olivares. Your consultant, city's consultant, but everything's already been said, but really I just wanted to come up again like others have to express my gratitude for the work that's been put into this plan. As a reminder, we've been at this for over 20 years now. And there's been a big change in our community like there has been in other communities. If you reflect back on how we used to do things back in the 70s, 80s, 90s, it was enforcement only. That was our answer. Law enforcement just seemed to be the default answer to addressing a lot of our community issues including youth and gang violence. But communities that have been successful in turning the tide on some of these issues have recognized that they need to have strong prevention, intervention, suppression, and reentry efforts. And it's not necessarily a balance of meaning you do an equal amount of each. It fluctuates depending on what your needs are right now. That's why the Longshore Plan is so important. And it's also why an implementation plan is also important because you do have to always be looking at what are your immediate and critical needs in the community so we can help identify what kind of sources we want to devote to that. As Danielle mentioned, resources are scarce sometimes and trying to identify some of those resources is difficult and we can't fund everything. But we also need to remember that this is only a part a part of our community's effort to build safe in communities and neighbors. I'm sorry, neighborhoods. The other piece is the work that you do on a regular basis. Earlier tonight, we talked about the new housing program for example, that is prevention, addressing homelessness, that is prevention, looking at the number of students that we have out there without a place to sleep or stay, addressing some of those issues are prevention. Poverty, there are just so many things that we have to do but we have to do it together. And as a reminder, this is the community's plan. Although we have a number of organizations coming together to do the work, it's community's plan. Thank you for your comment. Next speaker, please. Mayor, that appears to conclude public comment on this item. Thank you. And thank you very much for that presentation. Oh, Danielle, Danielle, one moment. Vice Mayor McDonald. Thank you, Mayor. Danielle, I'm sorry, I have a couple more questions. Do we have any opportunities for at-risk youth or youth that would like to attend that we could offer a scholarship to the November 2nd meeting? Do we have the opportunity to offer that? Yes, absolutely, you reached out directly to me. That would be great if we can get that out. And then in addition to what Ms. Feather said, do we have any tribal organizations as part of those 70 groups? And if not, can we look to doing some outreach to them and add them on to that so that we are making sure we are inclusive of everyone? Absolutely, we do have the Sonoma County Indian Health Project as one of our partners. We do need to re-engage them, but they did participate in some of this strategic planning effort. And we have some relationships already built to the community empowerment plan process that we did a couple years ago. So we can definitely re-engage through that as well. Great, before we come back and bring that full plan to council, I think those would be good organizations to reach out to us. So I appreciate the comments from the public today. Thanks. Thank you. Item 7.3, Community Empowerment Plan Update. Vice mayor and members of the city council, I'm Lon Peterson, director of communications in a government relations for the city. I'll be providing the community empowerment plan update for tonight, for October. First, I'm delighted to inform you the city is partnering with C collaborative again. They're currently working closely with the city's executive leadership team to implement an equity plan, which gives priority to the recommendations that came out of the previous work from seed. And this also reaffirms the city's ongoing commitment to fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. We've been busy engaging with the community last Saturday, October 8th. The Santa Rosa Police Department hosted an event called Faith in Blue. They invited local churches, religious groups, faith-based organizations to a barbecue at the Santa Rosa Bible Church. This event was a great success, had over 300 people attend. As mentioned by council member Stapp, tomorrow, October 11th, council member Stapp and the mayor are hosting a town hall in district two. This is from six to 730 at Spring Lake Middle School. Topics will include street safety, school safety, Southeast Greenway Project, and others. Members of the community advisory board will be in attendance helping out as needed. And so I encourage the community to attend and participate. Next, the city and Sonoma County Library. They're hosting multiple community engagement opportunities to share the current direction on the Kern Community Hub Multicultural Center Project, with the focus of getting additional input from residents on architecture and interior design of that new facility. So there's three ways to participate. First, on Wednesday, October 25th, starting at 530, we're hosting a virtual community meeting, a Spanish interpretation. Interpretation will be provided. And those meeting details are at srcity.org slash Kern Community Hub. Next day on Thursday, the 26th at 630, you can join us for an in-person meeting at Roseland Elementary School Multi-Purpose Room. Food will be provided, as well as the Spanish interpretation will be available. And then finally, if you can't attend either one of those meetings, we have an online survey that's currently live through October 29th. And again, visit srcity.org, Kern Community Hub for kiosk locations or to take the survey. Next up, we have a lot of engagement for Halloween. So two events that are going on. We have a trunk retreat, which is the city's host to annual trunk retreat event. This is on Wednesday, October 25th, four to 7 p.m. It's at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building. This is a fun community event that provides safe opportunities for kids of all ages to trick or treat in the drive-through format. Several city departments are participating. It's the Santa Rosa Police Department, Fire, VPP, and a lot of other people. We'll be there and other agencies, mind you, to attend and also provide candy to people that attend. Finally, we have a Neighborhood Services Division in partnership with the partnership is hosting a Halloween bash event at Finley Community Park Saturday, October 28th four to 6.30 p.m. Again, this is a family event for trick or treaters and there'll be that as well as activity booths for city residents. That concludes my update for October. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions from council members? Seeing none, Madam City Clerk, may you please facilitate a public comment? Thank you. We are now taking public comment on item 7.3. If you're in the chamber and would like to comment, please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. As you approach the podium, please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so. Please go ahead. Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. The term empowerment typically means to people in the area where I live, that they'll have an opportunity to feel like they are a part of the decision-making process. This is really good work on the part of Mr. Peterson to do the community relations for you folks. Yet, there's something that's missing in all of this. You have a neighborhood services facility. You've got all these things going on, but they're basically geared towards people who are already going along to get along. And the people who might be in the community who feel that things need to have a larger dialogue with a broader scope, they seem to feel like they're being left out. And that the whole process is more about empowering those who are already in the groups, the cliques that are a part of the system, as you will. The Kaiser Hospital about 12, 13 years ago came out to Southwest Santa Rosa, as they called it, and held some leadership courses. And they told a lot of people out there about how you could be empowered within your local governmental system. One of the dilemmas, though, is that the local governmental system actually kind of winnows out those people who might be having a different idea than what staff already has. And your whole process is basically around what staff is going to do and what staff has decided is best for the community. For an empowerment plan, how about reaching out to the community without an agenda of what topics you're already gonna talk about at your town forum tomorrow? How about reaching out to a community and let them guide you in what they feel is important? Thank you. Mayor, I see no one else approaching the podiums in chamber. That concludes public comment on 7.3. Thank you very much for that presentation. We'll now be moving to item eight, city manager and city attorney's report. Mayor, I have no items this evening. Thank you, Mayor Rogers. I did report out the settlement earlier today for October and in the city council packet, you'll have the monthly report on active litigation settlements and claims from our office for September 2023. Thank you. Moving on to statements of abstention by council members. Are there any statements of abstention? Seeing none, we'll be moving on to our council member and mayor's reports. Anyone would like to give a report? Council member staff. Thank you, Mayor Rogers. Just one item from me on September 28th, the Ag and Open Space Advisory Board met. And they're considering or the board is considering a pretty substantial overhaul to how they're doing the grant application process. And they're also considering providing significantly more support for organizations that are thinking about applying for grants. So nothing's finalized yet, but it could be a really interesting change to that organization in the months to come. Thank you, Council Member Rogers. Thank you, Mayor. I've got a number of different events. First, I want to start with the report out from our Stomach County Transportation Authority and Regional Climate Protection Authority meeting yesterday. I'll start with some really good news and a huge thank you to our staff and the SCTA team. The bids came back for the Herne Overcrossing. They came back 2% below the engineer's estimates, which means we can start planning a groundbreaking for next year. That means the project's fully funded, ready to move forward with that project. So a huge, huge thank you to everybody who's worked on it and the team. We have our bike share program that's going on across Stomach County where those bids also came back. I think they said four different companies bid on it, and so we'll be selecting somebody and hopefully moving forward. And we hope that we'll see those on the streets here when we return to non-rainy weather in the spring. On October 20th through October 22nd, Highway 12 will be closed between just east of Fault Avenue and Dutton Avenue for Caltrans work. That is zone one of a three-part project that Caltrans is working on. Zone two, which is east of 101 to Farmers Lane is tentatively set for October 27th, though I know that that date might move depending on some of their factors. So keep an eye on that. And then finally for SCTA, yesterday was the final meeting for Suzanne Smith, the executive director. Suzanne's been there for 26 years. She never missed a single meeting. It's almost 300 meetings without missing a meeting. So really, we'll miss Suzanne, but congratulations to James Cameron, who was Suzanne's deputy, who after a national search ended up being able to step into that role as the new executive director, starting basically immediately. He's already stepped into that job. We had Sonoma Clean Power last Thursday where we started to look at our long-term strategic plan as we have rates and what types of programs, particularly our DEI programs, that we want to be able to fund and get more electric bikes and other sorts of amenities into the hands of low-income customers so that they can be a part of climate solutions. Yesterday, the Assembly Select Committee on Wildfire Prevention was taking over this very dais. I want to thank assembly members Damon Connolly and Jim Wood, as well as the rest of the committee for their diligence on it. In particular, this committee is looking at the impact that California's wildfires is having on the insurance industry, with folks being dropped and looking at using risk-based modeling as well as other tools and possible incentives around proper vegetation management and self-help counties to lower insurance rates or provide other types of guarantees. Obviously, something for us to keep an eye on as we move forward, but that Select Committee hearing was recorded and is available on the Assembly website if anybody wants to check that one out. We had our Climate Action Subcommittee meeting last week. Thank you to all of the activists who've been working on the Integrated Pest Management Plan and is helping to push the city to not use synthetic pesticides and herbicides that are in our public spaces and protect children. We also had a conversation, started the conversation about what to do long-term with artificial grass, plastic grass, whether or not that's appropriate for our parks and whether or not there's a better way for us to manage those spaces. Last two things, we had two different National League of Cities, Energy, Environment and Natural Resource Committee meetings leading up to the National League of Cities Conference, wherein which we went over the Inflation Reduction Act and ways that it can help cities, in particular things that we need to advocate for to the federal government for cities like Santa Rosa to access those funds. And then the final thing, a big thank you to the West End Neighborhood Association who on Saturday had a centennial event for Lincoln School. I had a chance to meet the vice mayor's cousin and she insisted on me texting her that if she was going to go to a city event, she'd at least hoped that the vice mayor would have been there. She was playing grandma, playing Mimi, so she couldn't make the event. But it was really cool to sit there and talk with graduates from Lincoln School back from the 60s, the 70s, the 80s to talk about how Santa Rosa's changed, how the school has changed, and to just help document their stories for historians here in Santa Rosa. Thank you, Council Member Alvarez. Thank you, Madam Mayor. We just heard a little bit ago that I attended the Indigenous People's Day at the JC and it was a great event. Over 30 dancers participated in the rain, which made it that much more special. And I do wanna thank former Mayor Chris Rogers, current Council Member Chris Rogers, and a member of the CTA for the work that he did along with staff in regards to the current overpass and really just making sure that that project moves forward. I know it's something that you work on when we first were elected, we being Council Member, I'm sorry, Madam Mayor Rogers and myself. So I appreciate that very much, so thank you. Council Member Okrepke. Thank you very much. Just one thing to touch on, on September 27th, I was asked to participate in a local leaders focus group on federal assistance held by the Bipartisan Policy Center that took place at the summit held by, or organized by After the Fire. It was a good chance to talk with people nationwide and stakeholder nationwide about the hurdles and issues about getting federal assistance after disaster. I'm pleased to say that some of the issues that our city ran into and our community ran into don't exist anymore. Guess that comes with being one of the first to endure those issues as we become the ones that identify them and then get them taken care of. But some of them still remain, but it's a good chance to sit around a round table and talk to people from various states and various disasters, it wasn't just fire, it was fire, flood, hurricane and so forth. Thank you, ma'am, it's your turn. Vice Mayor McDonald, thank you, Mayor. So I've gotten a grandma and a ma'am tonight and I have really made it clear to council to not call me either of those. So I just want that on record. You did, you're so corrected to meet me. So I want that on record too, well done. Thank you, Deena, for making sure our minutes are correct. I just wanna say thank you to Mike McGuire. I went to an event last weekend with him and I just wanted to do a shout out and thank him for all the work that he does, representing our community and everything that he does for us and then I also had an opportunity to meet this Monday with Planned Parenthood of Northern California and just wanted to remind community members do a little public service announcement that is a local resource, whether you have healthcare or not, you're able to go there for services, for reproduction health and if you do have insurance but you don't have a doctor, they also accept insurance plans and that helps fund opportunities for those who don't. So I just wanna say thank you so much to the work that they do to support the community and that's all I have to report. Thank you. Council member Fleming. Great, thank you. I don't have a ton to report out today in addition to the climate subcommittee. I met with the Barry Housing Finance Authority two weeks ago and we'll have another meeting tomorrow around noon, starting at noon, you can watch it on Zoom. I highly encourage you to do so. I know that it's not really something that a lot of people are talking about but I'm gonna keep bringing it up because it's such a big deal about what it is. It's gonna be on the ballot in November, there's gonna be a housing bond on the ballot and this is your opportunity to weigh in about the different policy points and what you would like to see be on that ballot and how you would like the funding to come back to us. It's gonna, if passed, Santa Rosa will get a direct allocation north of $100 million to build housing and the really exciting piece of this is that the Housing Finance Authority will have the ability to generate income in a way that municipalities can't. They can go for things that are not generally funded for operations. So for an example, somebody builds permanent supportive housing for people who are trying to get out of homelessness and into housing. It's very difficult to find the dollars to pay for the people to work in those facilities and this housing fund will allow for that to be developed over time. It will allow for regional planning, it will insist upon county city communications for cities that are not direct allotment cities and it will make sure that cities that have a high percentage of our regional housing needs assessment allocations like Santa Rosa, especially around, under AMI area median income, get these direct allocations. So I highly encourage you. I know this is not the, this might be a little bit of something that's not really exciting for everyone but it is gonna be really exciting and I took it upon myself to drive down to San Francisco on Friday to listen to Mark Yarsby. He is the former, I wanna get his title right. He is the former CEO of New York Housing Development Corporation and they have billions of dollars on their asset books and save tens of thousands of dollars of units every year from falling out of the system of being legally affordable and I hope our housing department, I hope that our residents, I hope that everybody on staff and in our communities is closely paying attention to this opportunity. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity and I'd love to the chance to talk with anybody about it who is interested. Thank you. So I will report on September 27th, the COC met and the COC is taking steps to become a more data informed system through a three-phased approach. The Board approved phase one, which was identifying proper data elements and we'll be considering phase two, which is data visualization at our next meeting on October 25th, which will be followed by phase three, using data to inform COC decisions. The COC is also taking steps to improve communications with cities, providers, the public, the persons experiencing homelessness on current issues, funding, practices and programs, the Board, the communications plan, which includes a website revamp, data dashboard, regular social media postings and improve 211 resources. The work is currently underway to implement the plan by early 2024. So that is an update for COC. Just a few events that I was able to attend that I was pretty excited about. On the fourth, I was able to be the keynote speaker at Crossroads to Hope Open House, which is just down the road. And it is a new transitional housing program that will be used for, with the diversion program. So I think that it is really great that we have that. Now we have one, I know that in our community we need many more, but that was very exciting. I was able to attend Faith in Blue on Sunday and this was an opportunity to facilitate safety and stronger communities by engaging law enforcement officers and local residents through the connect of the faith-based organizations and later participate in a free barbecue, meet the chief, members of the police department and watched demonstrations by canine and the drone. I have never seen so many people that were so interested in seeing the canine, the field was filled, you could barely see, you had to like look over people. So thank you chief and the team that put this together. It was great. And I'm looking forward to having it again next year. I also attended a Rosalind Art unveiling at Colab and that was, the artist was actually a Rosalind resident and her art is beautiful and she is also looking for a place to do a mural in Rosalind. So if anyone has a space and would like to allow her to do that, please do reach out to myself. On September 30th land path had their harvest festival and I was able to judge salsa, 20 different sauces made by community members and the winning salsa was a mango salsa and it was made by third graders. So that was very impressive and I do not remember the school so I apologize. I would like to say a thank you to Denise Ward who is a local artist that has given the council chambers some art that we can use to beautify our chambers. So I just, I wanted to thank her and I am also happy to announce that in the 2023 veterans food drive operation and hunger veterans continue to serve the community. We'll take place on November 4th from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. And we will also have on November 11th which is actual Veterans Day at city hall. We will have the flag, the flag raising. So if people can mark their calendars. Madam city clerk may you please facilitate public comment. Thank you mayor we are now taking public comment on item 10. If you're in chamber would like to comment please make your way to the podium. You'll have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. As you approach the podium please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so. Please go ahead. Hello my name is Dwayne DeWitt from Roseland. I wanted to thank the mayor for mentioning the harvest fest at Bayer farm on the 30th of September. I'd also like to ask the mayor and Mr. Alvarez our elected official there. A few folks could see about getting some handicap toilets built at that Bayer farm. For all the years it's been open the toilets have been closed except they opened it that day because they had 50 volunteers coming. It was the first time I could ever see inside those nice restrooms. And I was a part of the planning committee for that Bayer farm. So for all these years they've been using porta potties out there. And it's really quite well the best word is disgusting. That's what I heard from one of the women out there. And it's not something that you want people to go and use those porta potties especially the handicapped. So you got six porta potties out there and you folks could begin the process to plan to get in two handicap accessible toilets. And the reason I say I know you can do that is because you've been putting in concrete improvements on roadways due to the ADA. And there was a lawsuit that you folks dealt with in the past Ms. Irma Ramirez and Darren Heatherly were plaintiffs on that which helped to get these new sidewalk curb cuts going in. So you should see that this is a part of that. You could actually use the funding that you're using on that ADA improvements to help us get ADA approved toilets at Bayer farm. And thank you again Mayor Rogers and Mr. Alvarez for being here on the council. Please run again, get reelected and keep on trying to help Roseland. Cause you're the ones. Next comment please. Madam Mayor and members of the council, every one of you is doing great work. Your reports are terrific. And on every one of your reports I made a note saying oh I gotta follow up on that. But the one that I wanna point out and specifically is council person Fleming's comment about the housing bond. We all have an opportunity to shape the kinds of support that we get for our housing development by going down to the city or going to the meetings we've got. And I wanna second her comment that trying to focus as much of that money on the lowest income people in our community, those at AMI is zero to 30. Is it a popular request? Most of the money I suspect is gonna be aimed at 80% or 100% of median income because God knows we need that too. But we especially need to focus a percentage of that $100 million in our community on the hardest to build housing for the most desperate. So thank you very much for the heads up. I'll go down and I mean I'll make that pitch but I hope all of you will join me, thank you. Thank you next speaker please. I've seen no one else approaching the podium mayor that concludes public comment on item 10. Thank you. Moving on to item 11, approval of minutes. We have one set of minutes, September 26, 2023. Council, are there any corrections to the minutes? Seeing none, Madam City Clerk, can you please facilitate public comment on item 11.1? Thank you, we are now taking public comment on item 11.1. Please approach the podium if you'd like to provide public comment. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. Mayor, I'm seeing no one approach the chamber podiums. All right, we will adopt the minutes as presented. Moving on to item 12, our consent calendar. Madam City Clerk, can you please read the consent items? Certainly Mayor, item 12.1 resolution, amendment to the city classification and salary plan creating this classification of community engagement manager and reclassification of the vacant deputy director, community engagement position to community engagement manager. Item 12.2 resolution, amendment to the city classification and salary plan modifying the salary range of the diversity equity inclusion and EEO officer. Item 12.3 resolution, amendment to the city classification and salary plan creating the classification of water quality system supervisor and reclassification of the vacant water quality supervisor position to water quality system supervisor. Item 12.4 resolution, approval and adoption of the city's salary plan and schedule. Item 12.5 resolution, freeze and correction of mission square opt-in plans, authorization to develop and implement replacement plans and designation of fiduciary. Item 12.6 resolution waiver of competitive bidding and approval of sole source blanket purchase order with Yarbrough's towing ink for vehicle impound services. Item 12.7 resolution, acceptance and appropriation of grant funds from board of state and community corrections for the organized retail theft prevention grant program. Thank you, bringing it back to council. Are there any questions, Council Member Rogers? Thank you, Mayor. I have a quick question on item 12.5. Hey, Allen, how's it going? Great. So I just wanted to make sure as I was reading through the staff report, I noted that it was unit 10, which is management as well as the city manager, city attorney. So this action for the retirement systems, that would not require any type of meet and confer with our bargaining units. And it doesn't impact our other labor contracts. Nope, not at all. Okay. And so for the individuals who fall within that, have they already been notified, had discussions with them? Yes, I've done that personally. We've already frozen actually, we've already frozen the contributions when it became, when we thought that there was a problem and we started doing our additional research using the outside council to help us with that, out of an abundance of caution, we shut everything down relative to that. So I think we're in great shape to be able to make this self-correction and it keeps the participants harmless from any penalties that they may have resolved and hopefully the next plans that we go into, they can just fold right into those. Right, and then the last question is, do we anticipate any penalties from the IRS or any other glow back towards the city? No, no, and this is the latest legislation, I believe it was the Secure 2.0 just gave us this ability and really a brief window to kind of move on it without having to go through the typical IRS voluntary, I'm gonna blank on the actual term, but it's the voluntary compliance program that it's a formal one, this is a little less formal self-correction by us. The resolution here shows the IRS that we've done our due diligence, we found a problem, we've corrected it and now we're moving forward into a better plan. Right, thank you so much. Are there any additional questions from Council Member Fleming? Yes, thank you. I noticed that item 12.1, I think this question is for the city manager. It's just kind of confusing to me as to why we would take this director position down to a manager position when it's been a long time that we've been trying to make this department stronger. So Council Member Fleming, this was part of the budget process when we moved this position under zero. So part of that discussion was to take the deputy director down to a community engagement manager. Yeah, I'm just, I'm still struggling with the, I mean the savings is very, very minimal, but the signal to the community, I mean, that is, that community engagement is not really worth having that level of position. And I'm just curious to know, I mean, if it was Council's direction, I must have missed that because it just seems to me to be a sad day for us that we're not really investing at the level that we should in community engagement. So I mean, the position is critical and we are committed to community engagement, but a deputy director, that individual is not really a department head, they're not, they don't have any employees. So it just, it made sense to fold it under one. Well, we wanted some alignment with zero as well, but at the end of the day, it just made sense for it to fall up under and not be a deputy director. Council Member Rogers. Yeah, and I just wanted to jump in because this isn't on staff. This was part of our discussion and budget. And I kept asking the question repeatedly, who are they directing? If they're a director, who are they directing? If they have no direct reports? So it is, I think the following of Council direction. So are you saying it's on you? Okay, thank you for the clarification. All right, seeing no more comments by Council, Madam City Clerk, may you please facilitate public comment? Thank you. We are now taking public comment on item 12, the consent calendar. If you wish to provide a public comment, please make your way to the podium. You will have a two minute countdown timer and it will alert at the end of the period. As you approach the podium, please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so. Please go ahead. Hello, my name is Duane DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. Thank you, Council Member Fleming for your comments. I actually am of the belief that this entire department should just be folded in to the community relations activities that Mr. Peterson does. You have five or six different marketing people in different departments. That's essentially what this is, is a marketing and some would say propaganda department, more than community engagement. Community engagement typically involves getting the people in a community to come to you and talk with you about your problems, the entire length that this department's been in existence. It's been about top down coming out, saying what you're gonna do to us and that's the way that is. Questions about 12.5. In the past, there were big concerns that we had so much of a liability for retirees. We've got such a bloated system here in Santa Rosa with so many management people leaving out millionaires set for life with pensions that keep them getting millions of dollars. The example I would like to use is the former director of redevelopment, Stephen Burke. The guy is set, it's just amazing how much money this person gets not doing any work and hasn't done any work for the city in a long time. There needs to be some sort of a cap on how much you're gonna be paying these employees and how much they can get in retirement. A person shouldn't be getting $100,000 a year in pension when people are out struggling just to be able to get $15 an hour jobs here in Santa Rosa. Things are so skewed because the city then uses that inflationary system and says, well, we have to hire somebody on it. Thank you, next speaker, please. Gregory Farron, I walked up here but I couldn't say it on 12.1. I couldn't say it any better than Dwayne did. When was the last time you heard about CAB and about what CAB's been up to? Director Peterson had an opportunity of the last board meeting to tell you about the wonderful work they did in giving away grants but he defined his job description before he came up here as communications, intergovernmental relations, and completely left out empowerment. He could have used the opportunity to tell you about the grants that CAB struggled and made. You still haven't heard about them. I don't think the Community Empowerment Department exists and that's sad to me because I helped build it. So maybe not as grandiose as Dwayne's offer and eliminated but if you do hire this Community Empowerment or Engagement Manager, give them direction, link them to the CAB and let the community have somebody inside the department or inside the city that they can relate to in a serious way because the only way as Dwayne pointed out that the community relates to Director Peterson or anybody else is to hear what you're doing, not to talk about what they would like to do and not to partner and that's sad. Thank you, Mayor, I see no one else approaching the podiums in chamber for public comment on consent. Thank you, Vice Mayor, would you like to make a motion? Thank you, Madam Mayor. I'd like to move items 12.1 through 12.7. Second. Motion made by Vice Mayor McDonald and seconded by Council Member Rogers. Madam City Clerk, may you please call the book. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Stapp. Aye. Council Member Rogers. Aye. Council Member O'Crepkey. Aye. Council Member Fleming. Aye. Council Member Alvarez. Aye. Vice Mayor McDonald. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. Let the record show that the consent calendar passed unanimously. We will not have a public comment on non-agenda matters on item 12. We will wait until we get to item 17. We have no report items tonight. We have no public hearings. And we have one written communication, 16.1, which is attached to the agenda. Now going to item 16, we need to do public comment. Madam City Clerk. Thank you, Mayor. Taking public comment on item 16.1. If you are in the chamber and would like to provide public comment, please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of the item. As you approach the podium, please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so. Mayor, I see no one approaching the podium for public comment on 16.1. Thank you. Moving on to item 17, which is our public comments on non-agenda matters. Madam City Clerk, may you please facilitate public comment. Thank you, Mayor. We are now taking public comments on non-agenda matters. This is the time when any person may address the council on matters not listed on this agenda, but which are within the subject matter jurisdiction of the council. If you are in the council chamber and would like to provide comment, please make your way to the podium. You will have two minutes and a countdown timer will alert at the end of that period. As you approach the podium, please provide your name for public record if you choose to do so. Please go ahead. Good evening, I'm Peter Allen, President of the Wild Oak Homeowners Association. I wanna first thank all of you on the City Council for giving up your evenings on a regular basis for these open meetings. Our Board of Directors, our homeowners, and I appreciate that the City of Santa Rosa finally recognized that an easement in our association is not owned by the city, as it claimed three years ago and is instead owned by our association. That's three years and hundreds of hours of our volunteer time, as well as significant legal costs to convince the city of our ownership. We can only assume a similar amount of time and thousands of dollars in city labor was wasted by the City of Santa Rosa to reach a decision that was obvious from the beginning. We refuted every argument that the city had to make that they owned this easement and in the end, there was no law, no code, and no case law to support the city's claim of ownership. We are now asking the City Council to make sure that the Chief Building Official, the City Engineer, and the Code Compliance Officer have all the resources needed to issue a promised notice of violation to resolve clear and obvious code violations on our easement in a much more timely and efficient and cost-effective manner. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker from the West Lectern. Good evening, Mayor Rogers and Council members. I am Michelle Escobar McGarry. I reside in District Five. I am here, though, and most importantly representing 348 letters of support from community members here in Santa Rosa. They are supporting the potential of a tobacco retail license in the very near future, hopefully. And so I have these letters of support that we've been gathering. We have community health workers that have been doing the work, and we're just a group of concerned members here in Santa Rosa that find that moving a tobacco retail license is vital to the solution of the growing numbers of school-age youth using flavored tobacco and nicotine products in our school. And so I was just over at a Project True meeting. Project True is a program of the Center for Well-Being. It's a peer-to-peer youth program. I was visiting with them yesterday, and they say it is still a problem, even in little RUP, Rosalind University program. Yep, the vaping problem is still a problem. So I'm just here to remind you that it is something we still need to look into. And remembering that there's a density control that needs to be done, because there are currently 120-plus tobacco retailers in Santa Rosa because there is no cap. Over 47% of tobacco retailers in Santa Rosa are 1,000 feet or less from K-12 schools. And so that's just a little tidbit I'm sharing tonight, just to remind you all that this is still very. Thank you, next speaker, please. On the east side. Good evening, Mayor Rogers and City Council members. My name is Jim Alston. I'm from the Wild Oak Homeowners Association. I'm from the Wild Oak Homeowners Association. First again, like Mr. Allen, I'd like to thank the city for finally recognizing that our slope easements that protect our private roadways are indeed private easements. On June 12th, 2020, the association first filed a complaint with the city about a code violation and encroachment by the owners of 805 White Oak Drive on one of these easements. The encroachment was with the legal placement of electric and gas meters in an easement that interfered and inhibited maintenance and safety of that particular area of our private road. It has now been, it has now been 1,215 days since we filed for this code violation. That's a little over, that's just about three and a half years. I think it's about time that the city can address this. What is it about the relationship of the owner of 805 White Oak Drive in the city that continues to forestall the issuance of the notice of violation? And as evidence establishes allows the owner a privilege not given to other members of our community along this road. The city has an obligation to enforce code that all residents under similar conditions are treated equitably and impartially. A notice of violation must be promptly issued and the utility meters of 805 White Oak Drive must be relocated to the house as originally permitted. Thank you. Thank you, next speaker please on the west. Good evening. First I'd like to take some time and thank all of you. I am also a glutton for punishment and masochist. I served on a school board for eight years, Park and Rec District Board for 10, Fire District Board for 10 and I was a city manager for three years. So Ms. Smith, thank you very much for your service. I feel your pain. My name is Drew Guerrero, I live at 1255 White Oak Drive in the Wild Oak neighborhood. I don't have a script, I just wanted to take this opportunity to try to explain to you all. A temporary meter gets installed on a property when someone is constructing. It's a post, it's a piece of plywood, it has electrical meters on it. Normally when your staff and most city's staff sign off on a final certificate of occupancy, those meters are to be moved to the house as required by PG&E. For some bizarre reason and I'll whisper why, these meters never got moved. They got signed off on in a final C of O and that was that. The house is owned by a very, very important architect here in Santa Rosa, that's why it happened. You gotta fix it, please fix it. I love living here, we moved here in May of 2021. My wife and I are thrilled, we're bucking the trend, came back to California. The police department, the fire department, the public works department, even the building department, all of my interactions have been wonderful. I'm thrilled with this town, we love living here. So that's it, thank you very much. Thank you, mayor, I do not see, oh, we've got one more on the west side. Go ahead, projector please. Thank you. There you go, all right. Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt, I'm from Roseland. This is an original copy of the Southwest Area plan from 30 years ago. I've brought it today to share other documents with you that are important also. We'll start with this, historic resources in Roseland, basically Burbank Avenue was seen to have some. Those are these right here. Unfortunately, the city bought them, I'll rephrase that, taxpayers from Sonoma County bought them and deeded them over to the city and then the city destroyed these historic houses, which we felt should have been saved. I brought a document here from 1997 back when we were working with Mr. Burke and the redevelopment agency and the Roseland redevelopment project at the county. The reason I brought it was to point out that at that time it was known Roseland is a substandard condition with toxic contamination and substandard public improvements and that the stigma of living and working in an area commonly referred to as unsafe, substandard and blighted was affecting us then 25 years ago. This is a letter that Roseland Action had sent to Janie Walsh, the director of community development commission at the county back then, pointing out that we wanted to be helpful on getting things better. And unfortunately, what's happened is the city is focusing its energies further to the southwest, down on Bellevue district to the south of the Herne Avenue and totally ignoring Sebastopol Road. The Motote Food Court is not making our area better. What we have up there is blight still and it's not going to get better unless you focus the energies up on Sebastopol Road and that her, well, that community hub in Herne won't help us as much. Thank you for your comment. May I see no one else approaching the podiums for public comment on non-agenda matters? Seeing no additional items on the agenda, we will now adjourn the meeting. Thank you.


How does a person experiencing anesthesia lose consciousness? Despite billions of surgeries, scientists still don't fully understand what happens in the brain when a patient goes under. New research in the journal Anesthesiology, however, provides a few more clues. Working in a group of patients with epilepsy, scientists used a new information measure to evaluate electrocorticography data, and found that with anesthesia there is a reduction in information integration and network connectivity. The team recorded electrocorticograms, or intercranial EEGs, from nine patients who were anesthetized predominantly with propofol and underwent surgical treatment for epilepsy in China. To assess information integration, the team used a measure called Genuine Permutation Cross Mutual Information, or GPCMI. In an early study, they found the measure performed better than others using scalp EEG recordings. This time they wanted to see whether GPCMI could be used to estimate information integration at the cortical level with electrocorticograms. To understand the network changes as anesthesia set in, the group assessed one patient with electrodes placed in the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes as a case study. The GPCMI values fell after loss of consciousness and were generally higher in the occipital area compared to the parietal region. In addition, the nodal clustering coefficient decreased and the nodal efficiency dropped abruptly around the same time of loss of consciousness. In the same patient, the team also compared the connectivity of electrode pairs that were far apart or close together. Interestingly, the GPCMI values for nearby electrodes increased upon loss of consciousness. In all patients, the non-zero GPCMI values fell on average as the electrode separation distance grew, leveling off at distances of 3 centimeters. The percentage of genuine connections was also higher in the wakeful state relative to the unconscious states, indicating a higher efficiency of communication. The nodal clustering coefficients and efficiency scores showed broadly suppressed cortical connectivity during anesthesia. In most patients, the coefficients decreased after loss of consciousness, although there were some spatial differences. The results are consistent with the scalp EEG studies and suggest a decrease in information integration and network complexity with anesthesia. This disruption of normal neural information may be responsible for loss of consciousness. Because the patients in the study had epilepsy, it's not clear whether the findings are representative of the rest of the population. Additional research is needed to generalize the results. Find out more by reading the full report today.