We call the meeting to order welcome to the regular city council meeting of November 13th 2018 Ms. Gallagher, would you give a report on our closed session today? Yes, the council met in closed session discussed items 2.1 and 2.2 and on each of those items I gave you gave direction to staff Thank you, and I skipped over the announcement of the roll call Ms. Gomez Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of council members Sawyer Thank you. We have no proclamations or presentations today I believe we do have a staff briefing on the fire recovery and rebuild Yes, we have One update here from the water department director Hornstein will come up to give an update And while he's doing that just a quick update on the rebuild process There are thirteen hundred and sixty nine homes in the rebuild process currently Seven hundred and seventy seven under construction as of today with fifty one that are complete So with that I'll turn it over to Ben Mayor Corsi council members As you know the water quality in the fire impacted neighborhood of found grove has been restored and effective this past October 11th Excuse me again. Would you just pull that microphone a little closer? Okay, there we go. Thank you in effective October 11th the drinking water advisory was lifted in consultation with our state and federal regulators To ensure the contamination was eliminated staff has been planning and we've been implementing continued water quality monitoring and the data is being shared with our regulators and also available online to the public at our online map srcity.org Backslash WQ advisory Specifically the monitoring and sampling Consist of testing from all 65 hydrants in the advisory area and three discreet sample stations a total of 68 Samples per event and we start rather intensively once every two weeks and that tailors down over the next year Assuming results are positive We've completed our first two rounds of sampling and we're very pleased to share that all 100% of the data has come back non-detect and that really is giving us of course great Confidence that the plan we put into place was successful and this issue is largely behind us Following your direction to ensure the information was communicated widely Staff worked with Adrienne the city's PIO and did a number of activities including door hangers on the 13 homes letters to all 352 properties in the area we issued a press release and did subsequent interviews with ABC 7 KPI X TV a number of radio Stations and articles in the press democrat and Bay City news Send out our e-letter to e-news letter to our 10,000 subscribers and posted this on social media the Cost of this effort including the investigation today and the targeted replacement We did is approximately eight million dollars And we continue to work with FEMA for reimbursement of the expenses and indications are promising that we will get reimbursement through FEMA Lastly I wanted to reflect for a moment on the efforts of your staff and seeing this issue through to this successful Resolution as you know this issue emerged on the heels of the fire which made this very complex and confounding issue that much more difficult to deal with So first with the water quality team in the department led by Mike seme and augmented by countless others throughout the department Rows to the occasion worked countless hours regular and overtime Taking samples flushing lines replacing contaminated Equipment perhaps most importantly they were the city's ambassadors out in the field Responding to the public on questions that the public would have as they were out there in a very good responsible way Also, just want to know deputy director Joe Shivoni was the operational lead And notably managed the isolation of the advisory area very early on in a manner that allowed us With confidence to communicate to the public that this issue was contained to this isolated area and Continue to deliver high quality water to the rest of the city All while doing his day job and managing temporary facilities that were damaged during the fire Deputy director Jennifer Burke was in many ways the face of the city During this issue through this last year to the public. She attended dozens of public meetings Press requests and responded to many individual questions in a way that Maintained the confidence of the public as we work through this issue And she was also the lead in coordinating with our regulators in a similar fashion that maintain their confidence allowing us to And keep control of this issue and see it through to resolution and lastly deputy director Emma Walton who behind the scenes cranked out spreadsheets graphs trends analysis on the thousands of sample results and other data that was Critical to us in understanding what occurred and how to go about restoring the water Emma was perhaps single-handedly responsible for the pivot Full replacement at the cost of 40 to 50 million dollars to the 5 million dollars We ended up spending on targeted replacement as she literally forced all of us to Focus and understand what the data was telling us and shift our mindset from the full replacement track We were on so I wanted to share that generally because it felt important, but also to let you know of course That this is just one example. I'll be a big one That with my departure from the city You can rest assure that the water department is in very good hands going forward. So thank you Thank you. Mr. Hornstein. Are there any questions? Mr. Hornstein, I can't let you go without saying a couple words. I know you are Leaving the city's employment. I would imagine that's the last 13 months have been One of the big challenges of your career And I appreciate you You sharing your pride in in the department's accomplishments over that time and the response to to the fire and in the Contamination issues afterwards We are all proud of the way that all of our employees have responded in the last 13 months But the water department has been exemplary. So thank you very much for your service moving on to city manager Any city manager report mr. Gulen have one one update the office of community engagement was awarded a grant from the United Way of the wine country and the health care foundation of northern Sonoma County For their neighbor Fests pilot program The grants going to provide funding to implement neighborhood Fest in five Santa Rosa neighborhoods between April and August of 2019 The staff is also waiting on news from another grant application that they've submitted that would provide funding for additional three three more Three more of those neighborhood Fest events. So that's it's good news and that's all I have That's great news on the community engagement front Also wanted to mention that the city manager Shawn McGlynn is not with us this evening. He's in Butte County helping out with the Municipal response to the fire in paradise Ms. Gallagher. Do you have a city attorneys report? I have nothing to report this afternoon Thank you any statements of abstention from council members this evening and Mayors and council members reports anything here anyone Start down at the end mr. Tibbet's All right. Thank you, mr. Mayor I want to just kind of go over the election results from last Tuesday and congratulate the council on passing Measure oh, I think that's kind of really Help us out in a jam going forward But I also wanted to speak to measure end and its failure to reach the two-thirds necessary to get passed You know it fell short But I the way that I saw it was we were given a vote of confidence by the voters to move forward with the concept of subsidizing affordable housing in permanent supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness I Was really thrilled to see the results of the CDBG DR money coming out I think it was about thirty eight point two million if I'm not mistaken that we can use for multi-family housing and after having a conversation today With folks in the nonprofit housing development world They felt like that could really go a long ways for supporting multi-family housing and get some real meaningful projects off the ground But despite that we still have the need I spoke with Director Gwine this morning and I asked him, you know how how that CBDG DR money would impact His his pipeline over there and he said it'll make a great advancement, but his pipeline is still about a hundred million dollars and Projects that are ready to go for affordable housing And so what I wanted to to ask the council to explore Is looking at one of the things that we passed was our commitment to use real property transfer tax funds? During the housing bond process is looking at Bonding against that to get the infusion of housing dollars that our community so desperately needs right now Just as a reminder 15,000 people on Burbank's house waiting list alone And I don't know if it's a possibility or not. Well, we know that it is possible We know that we've done it during the redevelopment years through a process called certificate of participation The question remains and this is probably Something for the gurus and the finance department to determine is what it what kind of a long-term effect It has on the budget going forward But I but I think at a minimum When you look at the experience of Alameda County, which issued about seventy nine million dollars and and local match funds And was able to bring in an additional 649 million dollars and get about a thousand units project ready in their community I think the opportunity cost would be far greater if we didn't look at Using some of our existing funding streams that exist in our general fund or elsewhere And so what I would like to ask the council is at least for somebody to second to start the conversation To just doing that deep dive because for the 59% of people who voted yes on this measure and for all the people out there Who need this housing? I think they're counting on us to continue to think about out-of-the-box solutions To try to get ahead of this housing crisis that we find ourselves in still to this day So with that I'd put it to the council to see if there are any seconds to support that conversation and that investigation All right, we have a motion and a second to discuss the real property transfer tax and its relation to Affordable affordable housing bonding And homeless dedicated housing We'll put that on a future agenda Anything else mr. Tibbets No mayor, thank you Mr. Schwedhelm Thank You mr. Air several things Going back beginning first week in November I along with I know at least two other council members Traveled down to San Rafael on November 2nd and attended the North Bay Leadership Council Awards Where our very own city's planning economic development department was recognized for their leadership in government award And it was nice because it was so appropriately titled from red tape to red carpet and again is just another demonstration David you and your department are leading the North Bay and cutting through the red tape that I'm sure the city manager and actually Neil and different ends of the state dealing with some of what we dealt with some of the lesson learns in the trailblazing effort That you guys are making really making a difference across the state. So congratulations on that award Then ten or two of the employee recognition events for the two departments where last October made its initial present in made initial presentation as a city employees and Mr. Gwynn is there a date when the members of the public would be able to view that we heard that after all city departments Saw that it would be available to other members of the public for you and that was my understanding after the last Staff showing that we'd make it public. So I'll check on the data. I don't have that handy. Okay, great Last Tuesday participate in an all-day interview process With the county along with fire chief Gosner for their director of emergency management Although those all-day interview processes can be very tiring the the nice part about it is there's some very qualified candidates I've not heard if the county has made their selection, but I know there's plenty of Talented people that are applying for that position So by along with several other council members attended on November 7th the re burial the temporary Rebarial of the time capsule. I'm not sure if they're going to pull it up again before we had some plaque issues. So But that was it was great seeing that Being very gently lowered back into its tomb and then on November 8th I participated along with Mayor Corsa press conference announcing the rebuilding of the hopper wall And that was an excellent collaboration and with again plenty economic development recreation and parks and other city staff Along with rebuild North Bay coffee strong and aspirate and many view I think at least on the council are familiar with that hopper wall And so some ball it's the entryway to coffee park And so this is a great collaboration that I'm really will be some inspiration as we as we rebuild Another great example of just people helping people just doing what needs be done to get that accomplished and Then on also on Thursday participate as part of the selection committee along with council member combs for the technical advisory Committee for the our new continuum of care It's my understanding the 25 folks that we selected today are selecting there for representatives that will be joining in council member combs and I on the leadership council and I'll let the mayor report of our earlier morning meeting about the bill rebuild at the county complex. Thanks Combs Thank You mayor I Had the good fortune to co-host with the Commission on Human Rights a successful program on housing solutions Here in the council chambers We had about 70 or 80 people who attended which I thought was pretty good for a Saturday evening We brought in Sharon Lee from the low-income housing Institute to look at options similar to the Oakland tough sheds in Seattle they use a tiny villages model We've talked about tiny homes before But this particular group is more in alignment with the housing first sort of continuum of care HM is processes that we've been Discussing They have people who are leaving living in cars to move into an RVs to move into their small home communities They've had about 300 move into permanent housing out of these eight communities and over 200 receive become fully employed out of these communities So they're having good success with this model. They are providing consistent services seems to be very cost-effective One of the things that surprised me was that the size of their communities was much larger than I expected It is not unusual for them to have more than 40 people and they recommended more than 40 Because they assign the members of the community to do Tasks within the community It is not fully self-governed, but it they have responsibilities including for example, there's a security Hut at the door so they have a person who they rotate turns on security for the for the They have an interesting Program, and I think more than the shape of the housing is the program that goes with the housing So I will be leaving some material about their tiny home villages In the in the conference conference room I thought it was very fruitful and I hope that we will be bringing back on the agenda at some time the I think we've asked for a review of the Homeless services program and the Chat program, and I think this might be an interesting way to modify that They've had a lot of public-private partnership or 3p partnership including the benevolent community That that has moved that forward. Well My screen just went down give me a second I also wanted to note that on the list of future council agenda items the pending list it lists the all-electric ready Discussion as a study session I Am very interested in having that move be able to move forward rather than just study it and I'm hoping that we could reconsider that as a report item and I've spoken with The assistant city manager about that. I don't think we have a problem there, but I I wanted to confirm that that would be Yeah, the intention is to bring forward to the council something that council can act on so we'll address that I appreciate that because I think we we expressed an interest in acting Casa the committee to house the Bay Area is very active right now negotiations are moving forward Things are getting removed from the original list of 17 Reconfigured re-added it is very likely that on Thursday a bag as the executive board will be signing the compact to move forward in all our names Based on that I have drafted a letter as the RPC housing committee chair. I actually have run Request by staff We will be asking for a Sort of more fine Description or filtering of the economic overlay for the geography piece One size doesn't fit all for housing construction If they cap all cities fees throughout the Bay Area That's going to have different implications in different cities some cities receive 7 cents on the dollar and some cities receive 25 cents on the dollar and the Capping across the board isn't going to work for all the cities. We need a finer resolution on that Just like we need a finer resolution Some cities can ask for 25 percent affordable housing construction And it does not impact the ability to produce housing other cities use that number in order to block the Production of housing and other cities really need the number to be On a matrix depending upon the level of affordability and under closer to 15% So setting an established line across the board for the whole nine County Bay Area And not letting people go above or below it doesn't really serve as well as individual cities so again that that Overlay of what are the economic conditions within the region? I think it's very much needed and I'm hearing positive response to my concerns or my subcommittees concerns on that I'll be sharing the letter with you But I wanted to let you know that it was it was going out as I was directed by my committee on RPC Thank you. Thank you Mr. Rogers Thank You. Mr. Mayor We had our second open government task force meeting last week We are really reviewing a sunshine ordinance that this council has Previous council has seen and rejected for a number of reasons We are working to redline that and bring forward to this body or the next body a comprehensive Policy for this city that will outline all of the different Recommendations that are feasible within the open government task force report from a couple of years ago So this council should expect that product probably first couple of months next year as long or as well as a few recommendations based on our shift into district elections and Really a realignment with how that is going to impact open government throughout our city We had our long-term finance Financial policy and audit committee last week the council should be aware that we are bringing forward a recommendation That council cut our pay by a proportionate amount to what we've asked Departments to take and that will be a recommendation coming for discussion early next year as well finally This Friday is our monthly mayors and council members legislative meeting And as I previously mentioned to council, there's a discussion about the processes for taking a position on sacramental legislation currently it takes from that entity a unanimous support for a position or a unanimous opposition for us to weigh in We are reviewing whether or not it is appropriate to allow for one dissenting vote to still move forward Because in the past there have been issues where one city dissented on The overall position and he used it as an opportunity to kick the can down the road Three four months to the full mayors and council members and at that point It was too late for us to have any type of meaningful impact on the legislation So if any council members have a strong opinion of that please have a conversation with me Otherwise, we will move forward a recommendation that then the whole mayors and council members body will be voting on early next year for the process Final thing I'm going to appoint Michelle Edwards to the arts and public places committee effective at their next meeting Thank you, I just want to Say that our hearts go out to the residents of paradise and other communities in butte county that are going through this horrific Fire event that reminds us all so much of what happened here last year This is a Has a much broader effect on on that community than ours, but it just seems so similar in so many ways the the from the smoke in the air to the to the pictures in the paper to the Language that that happens around it We know What they're going through I reached out to the mayor of paradise today And as I said earlier City manager Sean McGlynn is in butte County helping out as well as our emergency services manager Neil Bregman With that we'll move on to Item 11 we have two sets of minutes to approve I'll be abstaining from 11.1 the september 25th minutes Any other questions? Corrections additions We'll show those accepted as submitted And move on to the consent calendar mr. Gowen Thank you. We have five items on the consent item tonight. There's item 12.1 is a motion That's a contract award in a tubs fire damage and metal beam guard rail repair in that city wide I'm 12.2 is a motion. It's a contract award tubs fire damage coffee park park debris removal and soil remediation At 12.3 is a resolution speed limits on Corby Avenue Dutton Avenue Sebastopol Road West Avenue 3rd Street West 3rd Street North White Road and South right Road Item 12.4 is a resolution approval of purchase order for seven 2018 cabin chassis with utility sidepacks and dump inserts And item 12.5 is a resolution approval and adoption of the city's salary plan and schedule Thank you. Council any questions on consent? I Do have one card Peter Chernef good afternoon, so Regarding the metal beam guard rail repair It seems these curiously powerful fires Seemed to have an interesting respect for certain plant life trees and especially cactus Cactus fences would be far better than a metal beam guard rail Such fences would be water guards and they would be like a sponging effect upon any impact It would protect the driver a lot better than being run into a metal guard rail it's a wall of water and Talking about water Oh, and also they said that they want to do this metal contract thing for $218,000 Okay, I'll do the whole thing with cactus fences for no fee whatsoever Just my expenses and to pay eight workers to put the cactus in so I think 40,000 top level no problem So I just saved you a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more glad to do it very pleased to do it Luther Burbank would be pleased also And anybody that persists with common sense would be pleased regarding water quality Since I didn't sign up for a lot of other things I wanted to share that the water quality may require new monitoring since up in The medical doctors Have publicly decreed great concern because of what happened in the Woolsey fire I'm sure you all heard that a former nuclear test site filled with contaminated chemicals And what have you was incinerated and so many doctors put out a call That they have great concern for the water and air quality because of the dangerousness of these chemicals They're concerned that it could almost be considered like nuclear fallout now state officials have said everything is just fine and dandy But then they said the same thing in my hometown in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania a three-mile island and two years later as a driving down the freeways You would see military trucks every 15 miles with Geiger counters, so I don't think they're telling the truth now rebuilding California in conjunction with the 40-day freeze frame of the economy which people are now ready to do and have already begun The workers will construct 10,000 football field-sized greenhouses and after that they'll do 10,000 more and Regarding things for the homeless instead of cars and little homes, you know TPs work just great. So for every one of these Greenhouses, it's a football field-sized greenhouses will have 40 teepees for workers and family members So all we got to do is have a nice little shower place. That's it works great works wonderful and the thousand miles of cactus fences will provide work and The tens of thousands of new gardens based on the 14-acre blueprint of the south Los Angeles urban gardens will work great And the ransom mortgages will be 25% of what they were before so it works great. Thank you Mr. Rogers Thank You mr. Mara move items 12.1 through 12.5 and way for the reading of the text second counsel your votes My apology if you can please redo it again one more time counsel and those items pass unanimously Still too early for the public comment Session will go to item 14.1 Thank you item 14.1 is a report. It's a holiday shopping garage user fee reduction and presenting is Kim Nadoo parking manager Along with right Cedilla Rosa economic development manager Good afternoon mayor and council members This item is to consider free parking from 6 p.m. To 8 p.m. In the five public garages From November 23rd through December 31st of 2018 during the holiday shopping season in response to a request from the downtown action organization This proposal will provide Additional off-street free parking alternatives Garage one which is on 7th Street and garage 12 which is behind the Roxy theater currently offer the first hour of parking free and The first hour free is available Excuse me was made available. We implemented that last year on Black Friday to Offer some encouragement for the holiday shopping season and we've continued it since Garage one has seen a 40% increase in transactions since we implemented that first hour free Free parking is also available at the value zone metered spaces after 6 p.m. As you know on January 1st We implemented two zones for meters the value zone in the premium zone The premium zone is in the center core of downtown all of the value zone has free parking after 6 p.m The revenue reduction to the parking fund for free garage parking between 6 p.m. And 8 p.m. Is estimated to be about $25,000 Occupancy in the garages is typically highest during the day Offering free parking in the garages from 6 p.m. To 8 p.m. Supports the progressive parking policies that you've established by encouraging parkers to utilize the garages when they are usually less busy Freeing up high-demand on-street metered parking spaces and providing greater turnover and easier access for visitors to downtown Before we go to the recommendation I did want to state that we did receive a new request from the downtown action organization to consider free parking in all garages all day on Saturday and Sunday or alternatively at the very least On Sunday only to have free parking all day in all garages Unfortunately, this recap quest came to us a little too late for us to have a meaningful conversation about it and to Included in this report but that said we We have expressed our desire and interest in working with the downtown action organization to have More discussions about this and other parking opportunities as it relates to their management plan and their own Parking element in their district plan. So we will continue to have that conversation with with the group and with that Yeah, okay It is recommended by the Planning and Economic Development Department and Finance Department that the council by resolution Approved free parking in the five public garages from 6 p.m. To 8 p.m. Between November 23rd 2018 and December 31st 2018 and we'll take questions So question for the city attorney miss Gallagher Do I understand correctly that we cannot Discuss the request for free weekend parking As part of this item tonight that's correct as I Read the agenda item. It did include the time that the 6 to 8 p.m. So We'll have to if you'd like to discuss it. We'll have to put it on a future agenda. Thank you Questions. Yes, mr. Vice mayor Thank You mr. Mayor Could you please walk us through a little bit what the rationale is for us charging parking not just During the holiday season, but year-round in the lots at times where on the street. It's actually free So during Sundays or after 8 p.m. Why is that? so The paid parking is 24 hours a day in the garages not in the just as a distinction a lot A lot of people I just want to be clear So the the metered parking is free in the evenings and on Sundays the garages have historically operated 24 hours a day seven days a week all the time and my understanding of the main the main basis for that has been for security purposes that by having the Garages operating with gates down it serves as a deterrent to keep people out of the garages who may be there for purposes other than legitimate parking purposes So that has been what I've heard. I mean this has been established long before I was here But that's my understanding of why the practice was established the other part of Running the program is that we're we're striving for a balance we're tasked with Operating a self-sustaining program. We have to generate enough revenues to support the program And we also want to do our best to balance the use of the available parking spaces that we have to distribute that use So we're moving in that direction with the implementation of the of the initial progressive parking policies That's what we're starting to go for I do see that we have room to expand upon that And that's kind of the stage that I'm at now is evaluating all the data that we've been collecting and looking at ways that we can Provide more incentives for people to park in the garages through price and And balance out that discrepancy where you see why is it free on the street? Which is where the high demand is and why is it cost in the garages? So those are things that we're working on proposals to bring you in the beginning of the year Okay, thank you and without Hopefully opening a giant can of worms. Can you talk a little bit about how the parking at the At the mall plays into this as well I think it was before I came on council that they made the determination that they also were going to start to charge for parking If we have free parking and then they do not there's obviously going to be a greater impact on us Can you talk a little bit about the history behind? The promise of not charging for parking versus now charging parking and if there is any potential for us to include that in our conversation as well So in the garages, yes, absolutely the mall implemented paid parking I want to say two years ago, and they realized that they became acutely aware of the fact that People were parking for free in their garages because they had free parking and that parking wasn't available for their customers So they implemented paid parking in order to ensure that that parking was available for their customers and we saw a pretty dramatic uptick in permit sales when that happened because people Were parking there all day and going to work and they didn't have that option anymore. So Yeah, I definitely if we were to Flip that table around and the city was offering more free parking in the garages then you could expect to see A spillover from the mall where people might choose to park in city facilities as opposed to pay to park at the mall Yeah, hey, can you talk a little bit? I apologize. I wasn't on council at the time Was there always on that side of the conversation and understanding that there would be free parking at the mall? I'm not sure. I understand for the garages at the mall the implementation of paid parking Before that when it was free when you started to see whether there's employees parking there was that a Decision that they made or was that an agreement with the city that they would have free parking? The I'm not sure. I'm sorry. I'm not sure I'm understanding your question Where I'm getting at is do we have any remedy to work with the mall to try to make sure that there's some congruency in what we're trying to accomplish? Sorry, I'm sorry about that Yes, I am in conversation with the mall. I tried to establish an open line of communication. We don't have any authority to Control how they're managing their parking nor do they have control over how we manage our parking But I've been working to establish better lines of communication with them all so that we can coordinate More closely together because they do both impact each other as you as you're noting Right, and I'm asking the question because there is at least a feeling amongst many in the community that there was a Promise even if it was an implied promise that the parking would remain free in the garages at the mall and then Feel like the shift a couple of years ago That we were somehow involved in that shift as well So there is no agreement in place between the city and Simon properties and Simon properties including the parking garages are wholly Private privately owned Great. Thank you. Mr. Olivares Thank you, Mary. I think I have two questions first question is with the recent Additional requests you received How long before that would come back to us for consideration Well, our lead time for council items is usually about a month So I would say that would be the soonest that that would be considered To be available to go to council and I think we have quite a few gaps in council meetings coming up So the intent is not for a holiday, but something to consider later on as something different than what we have now Yes, my my plan is to come back to you early next year with a Summary of what's happened. Where have we seen successes with implementing progressive parking and where can we make changes? Because it was never intended to be a where set in stone this We set these rates and we never change anything again the whole goal is to try to get us to this Magical 85% occupancy on the street and that means Encouraging more people to park in the garages and off-street to free up those those metered spaces So yes, my plan is to come back to you with An overall review of the program and some recommended changes Thank you so much my next question then with with if we decided to do this tonight There will be some level of analysis of what the impacts actually are I know we have some objective figures as far as the loss revenue, etc But there are other impacts good and bad potentially that would be reported back to us over time and with that coming back at the first of the year to Maybe we can take advantage of that during this process is is to continue to promote our validation program So to see what that what changes that we have we had I know we talked about this during past year But what will that look like after the first of the year as well. Yes. Thank you Mr. Sawyer, thank you mayor and a quick question for the city attorney I See on there our first slide that speaks to the title of the item being garage or user fee reduction With a secondary Suggested and be 6 p.m. To 8 p.m. With it with the dates our agenda on this item Is does not specifically As far as I can tell it does Speak to the times But not the dates until we get to the recommendations so my question is what it Would indeed there be an opportunity to broaden our discussion this evening Given the the broader title in that it says free holiday garage parking Rod user fee reduction It sounds fairly broad to me And I'm just wondering where the limitation lies as far as broadening our conversation and the scope of that conversation this evening Given the title of the item. Yes, and I appreciate that and Actually, I apologize to councilmember combs as well You are correct. I had read And looking at it on screen I Had read it that the description the initial description had the 6 p.m. To 8 p.m. Time frame in it, but when I look back at it, you're correct that the Only mention of the time frame is in the actual recommendation. So you are correct that by the Agenda title and the brief description of the agenda It's open-ended so it is not limited to the 6 to 8 p.m. And I appreciate you questioning that and I apologize for the error not a problem and I appreciate the flexibility. Thank you And I'll wait for public comment, etc Mr. Tibbetts Thank You mayor, so I have four questions. I'll try to be quick What what's the budget impact when you look at the annual budget if we were to explore making weekends? Free what would that figure look like for your department? If we were to do free weekends for this period of time November 23rd through December 31st I'm estimating it's going to be around $50,000 Okay, thank you And the other question I have just generally when you look at your budget, and I apologize that I haven't But when you look at your budget over the last Five years, how many years did you end with a surplus? And do you have any kind of an idea of what a running average it was or conversely a deficit? I Don't have that off the top of my head although I can say Out of the past five years more often than not we would Not run a deficit the last two years. We've had some significant capital improvement projects So we are pulling into our reserves and that really is Where I look at the program is the big picture in the long range We have about eight million dollars in reserves and we have twenty four million dollars in identified CIP projects To extend the life of the garages to maintain the surface slots to replace the equipment in the the meters Elevator repairs. I mean there's ADA upgrades. So that's my concern is Looking down the road making sure that we're replenishing our reserves So we have enough money to do all these projects to extend the life of the facilities Okay, if this if the council decides that it does want this to come back at a future date That would be really obviously helpful to know and understand so we can really understand Where the boundaries lie as far as what leeway we have here and nobody wants to certainly not me hamstring you in your ability Nothing bothers me more than when my board comes to me and loads an unfunded project on and tells me to be successful And it's kind of like well, thanks, but as far as I had the other two questions are concerned Can you refresh my memory about what we're doing for employees of a lot of the businesses downtown? If I seem to recall we did have a special rate for employees or parking passes We have a discounted permit available to low-wage employees. It's a half price So it's $31 a month and that's available to employees the the low wage Rate just went up. So it's I want to say it's $19.80 a month some it's something very close to that is what you'd earn that or less to qualify Okay, thank you and another question that I had is a friend of mine told me recently and I haven't tested this out, but He was out downtown having a good time left his car in the parking garage and receives I think it was a ticket or a pretty large bill the next morning for leaving the car overnight Are there enforcement proceedings against folks who leave them overnight or is this just off base that? Sounds unusual to me. You can park in the garages for up to 72 hours and there's no restriction for parking overnight We encourage people to park in the garages so that they won't get tickets So if it was a surface lot, they might have Gotten a ticket, but it doesn't make sense in a garage Maybe that was X. He didn't specify between a surface lot or a garage I just you hit at the crux of what I was asking which is is there any way shape or form that we could be Interpreted as penalizing somebody who doesn't drink and drive and that would be my Real concern because if somebody does go enjoy themselves downtown I just want to make sure they don't have a thirty five dollar ticket on their car the next morning So if there's any situation where that could be happening. It sounds like there's not I hope that we can address that and as you said really kind of honor the fact that people aren't getting on the road, right? That's all my questions. Thank you Mr. Schwedem Thank you, Mr. Mary. You kind of answered this a little bit Kim, but what what are the? Operational impacts of the loss of twenty five thousand in revenue. I Know you'd mentioned capital improvement projects, you know, obviously when you have eight million in reserves 25k is not that much brother Are there any operational impacts? No, I mean In the big picture or for this particular budget year that no we're gonna operate with business as usual with that twenty five thousand dollar Can you just clarify mainly for people in the audience and listening one of the benefits we've talked about supporting the downtown business Community, so if we do have increased sales revenue, can you just confirm that that increased sales revenue? Which would lead to additional taxes that does not come and replenish the parking fund correct It's a total separate account that that's right The any increase in sales tax revenue would be a benefit to the city and to the general fund But that money doesn't go to the to the parking fund Thank you Miss Coles Thank You mayor If we have eight million in reserves and excuse me for not having asked this question in advance What kind of interest do we get on reserves? Do we do we get? 2% My boss is telling me 2% about 2% okay. I'm just wondering it And if we extend the if I'm understanding the city attorney correctly We can be discussing At least Sunday Saturdays and Sundays as an option here that would move us from talking 25,000 to talking 50,000 is that right? Well, it would be probably more than that So 50,000 is my estimate for the weekends and then if we're still doing the 6 to 8 p.m Then we've got another 20,000 or so for for that as well, so we're talking about $70,000 for He said 11 days of Reduced parking I'm maybe I'm not added it right because some of them are just a couple of hours in the time So we're talking about every day from November 23rd to December 31st the 6 to 8 p.m. Free You write plus plus the weekends which I believe there are Six weekends or 12 12 days 11 or 12 days. Okay, then I my count wasn't too far off So that would be a total of about 70,000. That's my best estimate. It's an estimate. Okay, and I'm just trying to sort out what kind of interest we get on the reserves If we delayed a project could we I don't I'm worried that I'm straying out of where we can talk But is it possible to look at if not tonight in the future? The way to to delay a project so that we get the interest in advance So that we can do this in the future and councilmember bright. That's not on the agenda You can't ask that I can plant the idea though. Yes. Okay. Thank you Okay On the on Sunday the parking is free anyways and now even on on the on the street Meadered parking is free on Sundays Sunday, but not on Saturday not on Saturday. No, okay So we would we would not be affecting our philosophy of progressive parking by having free lots on Sunday It would simply be that Because we're just well, I don't know that I wouldn't I wouldn't necessarily agree with that Assessment not all of the garages are some of the garages are quite active on Sunday in particular The the garage behind the Roxy. That's the busiest day of the week for for that garage so My preference would be if we're looking at Sundays is to take a more strategic approach to it and my My recommendations would be looking at offering if we're going down that road Right. We say we offer two or three hours of free parking at those garages that are the least busy on Sundays Which surprise maybe it might be surprising to some people, but it is our Garage three which is on Fifth Street and garage nine, which is the one across the street from the state building Those garages are very busy Monday through Friday with employees and permit parking But they are the least busy on the weekends and so those garages would be a garage that I Would support and would be consistent with our progressive parking Philosophy to look at offering some free parking in those garages on Sunday And and if I were to be looking at it as a recommendation I would be looking at offering two or three hours of free parking to people who park there So you're looking on our map. It would be g5 and g9 G3 and g9 3 and g9 But not g12 Garage 12 is the one that serves the Roxy theater, which is quite busy on the weekends. Okay. Is g1 also busy on weekends It's not as busy. That's one that we could include the busiest garage is the one on 3rd Street g5 So g5 Excluding g5 and g12 we could do it for g9 g3 and g1 and it wouldn't be harmful at all to our or Not affect our parking Philosophy of progressive parking. Yes Okay, I Need to think about that. Thank you. I think you've just mostly answered my question I think you've mostly answered my question. I'll ask it anyway. We have a recommendation in front of us regarding the six to eight p.m Question And all I need is a yes or no at this point, but should we decide to? Entertain the notion of free weekend hours at the garages. Would you will you have a recommendation for us tonight on that issue? Will I have a recommendation regarding free parking on Saturday all day Saturday? And all day Sunday yes, my recommendation would be what I just said Which would be to do two or three hours of free parking in the garages that? The numbers substantiate where where they have the most availability Okay, thank you If there aren't any more questions, I'll go to audience or public comments Peter rumble followed by Tom Robertson Good evening First I just want to thank staff for all the work till till now I really appreciate it We do have a really positive Relationship and dialogue going so I really want to express our appreciation for that I do want to make a couple points one that we're looking at Sort of a short term in a in a longer term perspective here the short term Being what can we do right now to? Support our downtown businesses and it is as much I would say a point of Providing ease of parking as it is a messaging campaign to make sure that our city is familiar and is aware of All that we have to offer downtown And so in that regard I really want to urge your counsel to Move forward with action not just on the week Evening or the weekday evening parking, but also on the on the weekend parking And to re-emphasize the point about messaging if we start talking about a messaging campaign about shopping downtown And it is come shop downtown G5 and G12 are a certain hours of the day and G1 2 and 3 are different hours of the day I think it's you know kind of defeats the purpose and so just as important as it is to act today if we want to Move forward on a holiday parking program It's I think important to move forward with an easily understood parking program and that will hopefully build this awareness Right of all that we have to offer downtown all of our great restaurants that are absolutely experiencing a dip in activity right now on the longer term Let's sit down and there I don't think that anybody has the right answer right and so we need to look at data We need to look at long-term economics. We need to look at economic trends for downtown and how to strategically work through some of these issues so I Really want to again express my appreciation for our collaborative work looking forward to Continuing that dialogue as well in a very positive way And again just urging you to move forward tonight with the weekdays and the weekends. Thanks Thank You Tom Robertson followed by a son who's shandy I'm Tom Robertson. I own a building in the downtown. I want to second Peter Rumbles Statements about the staff and their cooperative attitude You have a really terrific staff and they really are focused in a positive and sensible way on the downtown And we thank them for that. We did have a very good meeting With David Goh and several weeks ago and we went over all these various things and he did advocate For the six to eight time period. I believe we did also discuss Free parking in the garages on the weekend, but we may not have registered our desire for that in a strong enough way But anyway, we look forward to a positive Relationship with the city staff the downtown action organization is new we get our first funding in December Peter, of course is The head of the Chamber of Commerce and speaks for us at this point. We had a spirited discussion on all of this at the last board meeting I can tell you that when you mention the word parking it's sort of like saying the word water in the old west It doesn't take very long for people to get exercised This is a really tough time in the downtown any number of the shops which have been here For many decades in one case for well over a hundred years or off something like 20 percent this year And so this is something of an emergency situation the breakpoint obviously was the fires last Christmas was simply a disaster They're trying to recover now We really need a clear Free parking program during this holiday season. We're talking about maybe a dozen days. I understand it's $75,000, but I also think that the Reserve funds are there for emergencies and if $75 $75,000 throws a monkey wrench into your capital improvement program Clearly there's gonna be a bond issue or something, but in any case I do urge you to Grant this request. I think it's very important this particular year We'll show the support for the downtown in a very positive practical way and We're not sure what it will cost. We're hopeful that it won't cost that much. Thank you very much So new shandy followed by Elizabeth Webly Thank you. I do want to echo as well the efforts of the staff has been Great, you know getting us information that we needed working with the Chamber and the DAO We we did change the request and it's because we're learning ourself And we don't know the answer and that's why we went back to the staff if we do something It is it has to be significant enough for the public to start thinking about and this is we always talk about that We want to make downtown Santa Rosa and urban You know urban center But we do not have the public embracing we have 170,000 people live here in Santa Rosa and on a on many nights We don't even see you know thousand people in our downtown and the you know the restaurants And many other businesses. There's businesses that happen were severely impacted in the last fires We happen. I think we're the fires that are happening now are not gonna help us either There's many other challenges that we deal with but this one thing I do encourage the Council to see if there's a way to include Saturday and Sunday and it's I think it's a very important to remember that it would be a more of a Investing in the marketing our downtown Santa Rosa So that's $70,000 would be really spent to encourage people to come down here and not worry about a ticket When those local families they spend $30 at a restaurant. They have a $35 ticket They it impacts them it makes them think about 10 times before they want to say I'll go back there So, you know, I think we're we want to work with this staff to figure out a way What does our parking look like for long-term? But this is a short-term solution that can at least encourage the public in the holidays and learn that we're as a At the city are taking steps for them to come come and Enjoy this space with the new businesses that are coming in and you know, we've been investing in downtown For last five and a half years Sometime me and my brothers as a company we talk about when we're gonna stop But we're in it and we're in it for a long term And we really hope I think this is this respects like I said the staff has done a great job And we would like counseled if you can find a way to include the weekends. Otherwise definitely act on Something today because otherwise we don't have time to do anything if we try to come back in two weeks for the holidays. Thank you Elizabeth Webley followed by Thomas else. Hi. Good evening I'm here on behalf of All the local businesses that are going to stay in business in downtown My mother and I co-own two businesses here one being Portobello hats located in downtown In the last year since the parking Enforcement has changed and now you have to pay a fee until about 8 p.m. we have seen a steady decline in sales in our store and While I recognize the fires have had also had a large impact on those sales And correlations certainly isn't Causation we have had so many customers in the past year come into our store and say, you know We simply don't enjoy shopping here anymore because we are so afraid of getting tickets and It was a very difficult decision But we've just since decided that we are actually going to consolidate our businesses and move everything over to Petaluma Hill Road And I think it's a real shame and I think it's something that I that I really hope the city takes seriously Because small businesses like the one my mother started eight years ago Make make our community interesting they also make a community and so I'm here tonight basically in support of all of the restaurants who I think are really affected by What has now been implemented and I I sincerely hope that You know the more is done not just during the holidays, but year-round so that our downtown can thrive and people want to go down there and as a community we continue to grow and And things Improve so thank you very much. Thank you. Thomas L is followed by a Gerard Nabiski Hello, I am and we have just recently opened our business in downtown the paella restaurant And we've had the good fortune of having an absolute ton of press They've been very kind to us. We've been in many magazines Newspapers all kinds of stuff and we are noticing that the the downtown traffic is waning a lot Especially during dinner hours because of the parking situation The parking tickets the anxiety that people have while they're sitting in the restaurant About getting a ticket a lot of people don't know that the parking goes after 6 p.m We often get reviews back from people that said the great restaurant great design great food We hated the ticket when we left and I think it's something just has to be addressed because 10 minutes from here can be in Sebastopol Runner Park Heelsburg and you can be dining there for free Parking wise and I think it's I think it's just killing downtown. We're dying on the vine I think all the businesses are dying on the vine downtown and it's It's shocking. I can't believe it. We've got four different restaurants that have food network Stars there. We have an internationally known brewery and we should be like Santana road down in San Jose This is we should be jam-packed in downtown Santa Rosa and Sebastopol Petaluma Heelsburg, they're all thriving like crazy and we're struggling for some reason And we've got the same type of talent as those cities have so I think it really needs to be addressed. I think the The the in the parking passes for staff for low-income staff is a great idea But it's the two parking garages that are three and four blocks away from downtown and my stuff gets off late at night and I don't want those kids walking at 11 30 to the other parking garages getting costed by people and The passes only include I think correct me if I'm wrong, but two different levels He one level of each garage and if those are full they're not allowed to park in the garage is even with the pass Is that is that right? That's not right. Okay. I'm wrong there. I thought that's what I read So I just think for for Santa Rosa to survive economically right now with the shops and businesses Restaurants downtown. We've got to address the parking situation because it's it's really driving people away. It's I see it all the time So thank you Thomas L's followed by Peter Trinev Thank you at the mall and I parked at surface lot right over here at first and a essentially first day at Sears and Somebody was standing there. They were worker from Sears and they came over and told me oh don't park here The city will come and ticket you the city apparently maintains or monitors those Wow, that's what they said and so there she said that she definitely saw and That was an ongoing monitoring or management of the surface parking by city Parking that would give a ticket because the mall doesn't give a ticket You know the mall doesn't give a ticket or tow you So anyway, I did move my car judiciously to a place that I didn't have to pay And so you really have to think about this as far as the fees of parking and and if you it's it may not seem like very much But if you make a mistake If you go over time if you didn't put the 10 cents in or 25 cents in at some point It's $35 right away and then somehow the ticket gets lost and by golly It's $200 when you go to re-register your car So it's not just $35 or 25 cents. It turns out that when you average those out It ends up being pretty expensive to come and park and shop in Santa Rosa Peter Trinev Several I've listened to stated that they do not possess the answer The 40-day freedom strike of the economy is the answer to this social spiritual cancer Besides which you all make Healdsburg look really really good all the time with all their free parking without these big stores They're selling all this stuff from China And knowing that the unlawful treasonous fed in the IRS of all their national thievery routinely steal 74% of their entire take from California So to those listening will you continue serving two masters? For we have been funding our own demise Think for a second if you were scheduled to be executed by a firing squad But first you must volunteer your bullets for the ex executors. Would you hand over the bullets voluntarily?  Of course not. So why would you financially support your executioners? 84% of taxes 40% of tuitions go to the US and Israeli militaries which are controlled by National Zionists and the bankers. Do you have anything to say about the parking? Yes, I do I'm working on it. Don't interrupt me. Please. Please get to the park And so that is the national Zionists are Nazis. So you got free parking up in Healdsburg And you're charging people for less quality merchandise down here So I don't think it's very nice for anybody to interrupt someone when someone's speaking. It's my three minutes So regarding the holiday parking I submit that we should all have a penis Thanksgiving, which is a vegan dinner Or you could remain on your knees spiritually to the blood cult that's ruled since Babylon in ancient Egypt And regarding parking during the holiday season I say boycott commercialism and shopping for Christmas spelled backwards or inverted means the massacre of Christ Just like safe Santa inverted refers to Satan which really isn't the bad guy But he's the guy who gives us choices as we be on our knees serving Mammon the God agreed all this time all these years But the beautiful thing is here in Santa Rosa We're in the very heart of the true promised land And so I call out to the warriors and protectors of the true Israel promised land to stand up Be counted support the vets and law enforcement and shut down this corruption by a royal interruption This is one of the most this is the most beautiful place in the world And we're here talking about paying for parking to go by crap from across the seas by people that are Slave laborers and we're gonna call that a holiday. Come on It's all the cards I have bring it back to the council. Do I there any further there any further questions from the council to staff Mr. Tibbets Thank You mayor, so this question is for you Sue and Is it possible to financially collaborate with the downtown action organization? I mean, is there any legal restrictions to commingling funds to achieve this goal There's that's not on the agenda tonight, so and I don't see a way to discuss that I can look into it and get back to you Okay, I'll take that for now, but I'm struggling to see how that's not related to achieving the weekend parking objective That's stated in the presentation Okay, all right, I'll look forward to hearing from you shortly But Okay, I'm gonna Can I make a comment mayor at this point or you want to do more questions? I'm gonna suggest that Mr.. Sawyer who has this item put a motion on the table that we can then we can discuss it and comment Thank You mayor, and I'm going to Make a comment before I Make a motion Over the years both be a merchant downtown and sitting in this seat Many many times we've had these the conversations about parking, and I totally understand the Severity of the maintenance and operation of our garages People ask me on a regular basis why Santa Rosa has meters and my answer is usually Because we have five garages that need to be maintained operated secured. We have elevators We have lighting we have all sorts of expenses that most cities a petaluma does have a garage I'm not exactly sure how it is Funded but I they don't have meters and so it's it has been a frustration over the years not being able to find a Workable solution to our parking challenges downtown The parking district was put into place so that people did not have to supply their own parking when they would build put a building downtown unlike other cities in The state and across the country that have to provide the parking as well So the parking district does serve a an important function It is also Provided for a great deal of frustration by not only the the merchants and the and the visitors it is it is an impediment to have to pay To park and I understand that but there is no free parking regardless of a parking district or not We are paying one way or another To park our vehicles in a downtown environment What I am what I'm considering moving this evening Or the motion that I'm that I'm looking to suggest and to infer for council consideration is actually it is fairly bold And I do I'm very sensitive to the the condition of our our merchants downtown not only last year But this year as well and I have Rarely decided to move in a direction which which reduced to some fairly high level the estimates of Loss in our parking district and and because we've never gone here before It they are estimates but I am willing to To act boldly in this in our parking environment and actually go beyond what this rather what this recommendation is and move that we take the The resolution as it stands and add the Free parking on On weekends in our garages without limitation to the garage numbers and actually Risk of that loss to our parking district And see if we can move not only move the needle of our for our merchants and be able to give them and a Short-term and easy to understand program and an ability to market that program to the to the to the Santa Rosa for a unique experiment to see exactly how much we do Lose in our district and I'll be very curious to see what the reality is of that Making free parking in our garages Not only from six to eight in the evenings throughout the week but for all day on weekends throughout the holiday season, which is November 23rd through December 21st and That is my That is my motion. I will second that for the purposes of discussion and I think if I could get a little bit of a clarification so it is the reduction or the free parking Six to eight as well as all day Saturday all day Sunday. Is that correct? That's my current emotion, okay? I do I am supportive of trying Something new here and in particular what I'm interested in as you mentioned there is obviously the cost of Maintaining the parking that is important to try to figure out how we're going to fund that but the other reason that you have paid parking in your downtown is because The ease of parking and that's what we're trying to accomplish with our Progressive parking is you can go downtown and at any time you'll have about 80 percent occupancy So people can find a parking spot and they can try it and they can leave I'm fine with trying this for the holiday season but if we couple it with Gathering data and impacts on what that actually does for occupancy in our downtown and More broadly with our businesses to see whether Our restaurants are seeing an impact from people Driving downtown not being able to find a place to park and leaving entirely as opposed to having to pay a couple bucks to park But always being able to find a spot So I don't want to lose sight of that other component of why paid parking is important I think Supportive of that but then in the new year as we have this review I'd also like us to have a conversation about aligning the hours between our flat lots with our garages. It makes very little policy sense to me why we have Paid parking in the garages past when it's free to park on the street And I understand that there's potential safety impacts Let's talk with our police department and see if there's a way for us to mitigate that but overall I think when we talk about ease of parking when we talk about consistency To mr. Rumble's point about picking and choosing which garage is going to have which if we can make it simple for people to park I think they're more likely to do it and finally I also want to make sure that we are pushing on Simon malls Simon mall about this as well because I do think that the broader community feels as though They were bamboozled That there was supposed to be free parking there and if we have free parking in the downtown But not in the Simon malls lots I am concerned that people will park in the downtown core Where typically the traffic would go to restaurants will walk into the mall spend their dollars there as opposed to at the restaurants Well, nobody can can park anywhere near the restaurants that we'll see a drop on that as well so for me it's sort of a Yes, and to your motion Miss Combs thank you I really want to appreciate the vice mayor's comment regarding collecting data on this while we're doing it so that we Sort of think of it as a pilot program and look at how it impacts us And if there are unintended consequences For our downtown businesses, I'm wondering it doesn't seem to me Council member Sawyer, it doesn't seem to me that G12 is particularly used by folks Who are doing things much other than going to the movies? And I'm wondering I appreciate that There may be some difficulty in separating anything out But it would seem to me appropriate to leave G12 out of the conversation It is so heavily used as the Roxy lot And it is the lot. I think most likely to be misused as a mall lot interfering with the Roxy's business So I'm wondering if you would accept as a friendly amendment Taking all the rest of your motion, but removing lot G12 from the motion Well, let me let me respond to that with it with an Answer and an explanation. I'm I would be very concerned with our marketing issue and being inconsistent I totally understand where you're coming from that Actually, and I also understand the that it would be the given the connection to the to the theater on perhaps the Possibility for the most loss in that garage But I am concerned with our ability to market it and be consistent and I'm afraid there might be confusion So at this point I would say no this drill of yours Thank you, ma'er So what I'm I'm sorry with somebody else going before me Look they're giving me this think I over there Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, ma'er I'm making an assumption here, and I don't I shouldn't but that we're gonna try something out There's gonna be some way of analyzing this. It's not just here you go We're gonna after you parking there has to be some kind of analysis to see how this works for us And this is not just a matter of the city of saying here we go come here We have free parking this truly has to be a strong partnership to make this work. I think they're going to be a very Strong interest in the city to make this successful There has to be a very strong interest in the business community Restaurants and shops to make this successful as well But we also need to recognize staff limitations that we have currently ongoing and we'll have ongoing for a while So some of the work has to be done by all of us to make it happen And I know that as business owners and shops downtown we want this to work But there's another there's others out there that can help make this work and those are employees Our employees can be ambassadors to help educate patrons about parking free parking processes It's not just well good luck. You're gonna get a ticket How can we be more proactive and encourage people to come downtown because it is in all our Interest to make it work. I see this as an investment. Yeah, we're gonna lose some Potentially lose some revenue related to parking But what are we gonna gain as far as revenue in the tax dollars coming in from more people? Hopefully coming to shop downtown coming in to eat downtown and there's also the the investment and return We get in goodwill from doing something good for the community too I mean, you know, we've been dealing with with tough times recently But it's also doing something nice where people do feel good and feel comfortable about coming into their community so we do need to work at How we evaluate what we evaluate and what roles we play together in making this evaluation What information are you gonna be willing to put out in your shops and restaurants to educate the community? Help us do that So there's still a lot of work to do and I think we need to come to some kind of agreement What is the time frame that we want to use as this? Evaluative period to see whether this is working for us or not what changes need to be made Do we focus on a specific garage or not? But there's still a lot of data. I think that we need to make those determinations Mr. Schwedhelm Thank You mr. Mayor These discussions are always fascinating because I find when people here is one story and no disrespect mr. Tibbetts, but you know, hey, I got a buddy that has car impounded from the city garage It didn't occur, but so many people are only gonna hear that and it just continues to spread So that's the challenge. I really appreciate all the effort Kim that you put in this and try to be strategic about it And that that I am supportive of this because if we don't change some things we've heard enough and I've heard enough Conversation about how do we really support that downtown? I mean and some of our speakers said there is no magic bullet that this is the answer to it all of it But to continue to have the conversation. So I am very supportive of actually doing what Councilmember Soria proposed and you know when we start talking about the garage numbers I still haven't figured those out with you know between the G's and the L's I don't know what the methodology was to name those things and I think it would be a marketing nightmare They said oh, I got a ticket in G 12 No one told me So anyway, it's one of those things that I would hope to we continue work on with the DAO about identify some metrics So here we have this period of time. How are we going to measure our success? Because obviously we do need revenue to support the infrastructure needs there So I would hope those Conversations can continue and sure I You have a question or I I'm not sure the protocol, but I you're speaking of data and so I wanted to share with you or get some clarification If the expectation is that the gates are going to be up in the garages all day Saturday and Sunday There will be zero data and we'll learn nothing from this So my recommendation would be not to be raising the gates But to say that we're offering a certain number of free hours of parking per person or per vehicle And typically what we see is that the average stay is two and a half hours So if you were to offer three hours of free parking at any garage at any time on Saturday or Sunday I think that would achieve the goals that are being requested here or go a long way to do that But one way or the other if the if the ask is to raise the gates, there will be no data for us to evaluate Well, I think I'm hearing though that the gates can't be down. It can still be free. Let's take a ticket and I We take it and get out right we could do that. Yes, yes, we could do that Thank you I mean that's there's other ways working around because I am very smart You're the subject matter expert you and other staff for the subject matter experts I think you understand the intent of the council We're trying to do the right thing that's going to generate more people visiting our downtown without having the big negative Consequences of lack of revenue. So I am going to be supportive of this. Thanks Mr. Tibbets, thank you mayor John you're boldly going where no man has gone before and I like it I Think I'm supportive of this as well and let me just break it down really fundamentally why we can spend $75,000 on a consultant from out of the area to tell us how it's going to boost economic activity in the downtown Or we can just spend $75,000 that we know will bring some benefit to the downtown and to the consumers who are visiting that locale Now I think we have a fiduciary responsibility as a council to make sure that we don't dig You and this parking department into a hole and I'm going to be really cognizant of that going forward So I'm supportive of this as well, but you know the data is critical I think that we need to have that gate down. We need to count Did we see a significant spike in usage in that garage? The other two data points that I'm going to be really interested in and I don't know if we have a baseline my understanding vaguely is that we do but Understanding if there was a difference in gross receipts taxes or gross for total gross receipts sales and sales taxes Compared to previous years race. I don't know if you have any insights on that But I think that would be the way to truly measure impact Right, so we only do it in a quarterly basis We can work with the finance department to see if we can narrow down a little bit More closely on that you area within a certain period of time, but typically it's done by quarter But I'll look into that. Thank you And if I could councilmember Including the data from other areas as well so that we can try to see whether there was an increase in sales tax dollars Or just if it shifted from just other parts of the community as well With Santa Rosa you're talking about yeah The other thing would be is and again I do think this is important to get the data because we may find this isn't worth it And all we're doing is digging a hole in the parking department We may find that it was worthwhile. It was a good economic boost for the downtown And but then we're obviously gonna have to look more long-term at how do we fund it without chipping into our reserves every year I'm not interested in doing that I think that we need to talk to our partners of the downtown action Organization and look if there's a cost sharing that can be done there. Can they even be hiring? Helping supplement attendance parking attendance, which could come to the benefit of the city and help us become that 21st century city The other thing I would be curious to know is low-income passes Director Nadeau is that true that there's kind of a restriction on levels or garages that they can use The the only restriction doesn't apply just to them it applies to all permit holders So the bottom level of every garage is is not available for permit holders It's it's intended to be for the people who are running errands But all permit holders are allowed to use the upper decks. It's not just one deck. They're allowed to use the upper Yes, and all the garages are posted No permits below or permits only above this So they're all clearly posted, but there's plenty of permit space available. Well, I think you designed that well I think the the bottom floor should be reserved for the customer the consumer But up but up above, you know, we just making sure that to Gerard's point You know, you don't have young employees or elderly employees who feel unsafe going far off at night. That was a concern that I had The other thing too is Also, if you could look into the idea of the lot and I know I'm kind of getting away from the intent of the motion here I'm going to support the motion but making sure that people who park park at our surface lots Overnight have at least 24 hours to get their car out of there I just want to make sure that they don't get that $35 ticket, you know, nine in the morning 10 in the morning 10 in our case the next morning Consistency for me is key too. I think that we have to be consistent across all garages I think a marketing campaign saying we have free parking downtown We're going to get so many emails from somebody who says, hey, I went to garage 12 and oh, by the way, it was It cost money. What are you guys talking about? And again, finally, I think when we get this data together, let's have a really meaningful conversation with the dao to talk about shared funding Going forward because I think it is a good thing to provide free parking, especially during the holidays peak business But we have an organization down there now that's very capable And I think that we would both benefit from engaging in a discussion with them. So I look forward to supporting the motion. Thanks Vice mayor Yeah Yes, mr. Sawyer. Thank you, mayor In addition, I'm and I I'm hearing a lot of support from the council. I really do appreciate that because we are um treading on Very new territory with with this parking discussion And I would hope and I and expect that i'm sure that that the marketing campaign that I would Hope would come from the dao because the the city is this is a um, this will be a fairly sizable expense to the city and we'll find out how much it is After we take our vote and we move forward But I personally I am I'm trusting the dao to run with this ball during the holiday season and take advantage of the of the willingness Of the council and and the city to participate in your success Yes, miss combs Thank you. Do we Just thinking about the data piece. Do we currently have any kind of program where there's validation parking parking validation? Yes, so there's Validation Vouchers that any merchant can purchase they can purchase them from the city Directly for a 15 percent discount or they can purchase them through the chamber for a 40 percent discount slight a slight variation on this Excuse me A slight variation on this Which would help us gather the data would be to make the the the um Validation free for this period of time And then we would have the data and we would know where people had gone Do we get that kind of information from the validation process? When we sell a validation voucher We have a record of who purchased it But for example, if they are purchased by the chamber and then the chamber turns around and sells them We have no Okay full circle loop on that just trying to sort out where people are going and using thank you Just just wanted to think about some other options for getting the good data. Thanks Is nato How long have we has it been since we implemented the progressive parking program? It's been 10 months it was it went into effect the first of the year I couldn't remember if it was 10 months or a year in 10 months um I'm I'm sympathetic to the downtown business community on this and and and I'll support it but I do have Some concerns about this and and I think that we need to to think about them Progressive parking is less than a year old We're talking about and when we implemented the progressive parking program. We talked about making adjustments based on data um I understand that This is a an adjustment that we're going to make tonight, but it's not it's not based on data It's based on as I said sympathy for the downtown business community and I'm I'm okay with that But we need to be really clear That this is for a limited time It's going to be hard to unring this bell On on january 1st, especially if it's marketed well Because the the undoing of it is not going to be marketed. Well, I can guarantee you that um And I would also feel better if we were accompanying this motion with a with a A statement of support for our progressive parking program I will offer that support. I believe we're doing the right thing there Including adjusting it as we go along Uh But uh with that we have a a motion and a second And without further Questions or comment your votes, please And if we may make clear that the uh resolution is revised To Provide it's the resolution of council of the city of santa rosa approving holiday free parking at the public parking garages On monday through friday between the hours of 6 p.m. And 8 p.m. And all day on saturday and sunday From november 23rd 2018 through december 31st 2018 Correct Thank you And that passes unanimously mayor can I make one quick request Please um, just when this comes back with the data too that we see uh the complete budget outlook for the parking department Thanks Thank you Ms. Gomez jf cards for Coming on non-agenda matters Thank you Peter turnoff followed by gale simons okay, so On several city councils petaluma rona park santa rosa the supervisors it's interesting to know how many people privately spoke to me In the last six months Saying get that 40 day strike going especially the supervisors And it is all this talk about uh the uh The the the movie house and so i'd like to recommend two movies that are both timely and appropriate One of them for the public one of them is called under siege With that one actor that's almost as good-looking as me. What's his name? Uh, oh, yeah denzel washington Denzel washington under siege definitely watch that one And also the one called thunder heart for it then for near the end of thunder heart Which is based on robber redford's documentary on letter peltier called incident at oglala the elder medicine man warns The fbi agent with the native blood thunder heart. He says Thunder heart the soldiers are coming And so it is the soldiers are coming the troops on the borders have been given you orders And truly truly i have more than warned you to disarm our veterans in california And law enforcement will deny any order opposing veterans and or the u.s. Constitution Law enforcement will abide this command from the ranks up Relieving any superiors of pressure by corrupted politicians or what have you Veterans the homeless the migrantes to be scooped up and delivered to the trains In richman there's over 500 female human transport train cars which are designed to hold 300 people chained and shackled This be the reason for the simultaneous fires and the mk man sharing veteran that killed 12 at the thousand oaks We be under siege not fake news not any jokes Employ the 40-day Economic shutdown now in support of our vets our children in our very lives Freeze frame the system completely 1500 fema camps concentration camps already harbor 4 million you can't find this on the net i wonder why No labor no school schools out workers boycott And you are to offer lodging to veterans that are burned out These vets are the protectors with law enforcement of the true israel's promised land beneath our feet Every problem homelessness jobs Uh Parents and grandparents abused by their courts with having children taken away Come down talk to me 11 o'clock tomorrow on the 14th at the san rosa courthouse square It's time for us to withdraw our consent and use our power. It's very easy I am peter. I am the brother with the keys As we be the children and protectors of the true promised land israel under siege And as surely as the fires were commanded The 40-day strike will put everybody's knees to the earth remanded. I commanded you hear it Thank you very much gale simons followed by fred kruger Gale simons Is simons, please go ahead My name is gale simons I've been your neighbor for 44 years here in san rosa I Went to college at uc san franciscoe and got a bachelor's science in nursing and a certificate in public health I have worked as a nurse for 47 years 20 years of those were in an icu here in town I've helped many people live and i've helped many people die I know How fragile life is and how brief it can be So for a moment, I would like you to segue or to think about paradise california I know you've probably seen the news Imagine you are driving down skyway drive trying to get to safety between flames on either side of the road Imagine you see a man and a woman running down the road having abandoned their burning car Would you roll down your window and ask them or him or her if he had a job If he was an alcoholic If he had any recent citations Or if he had any chronic illnesses before you let him in the car Life is very short All of us could walk out and get hit by a car But we have an opportunity to save some lives As a public health nurse I learned that research has always shown us that community is healthful It is essential for survival for most of us Blocks away a block one block away as I drove into park In my paid parking place People were on the sidewalk cold already Getting ready to scatter Because that is what we have allowed to happen in this community Behind you, there's an artistic display up above and I find it Fascinating that three of the four words that we can read up there are kind Home And nest I encourage you to think about the possibilities and to be creative For tent cities tiny hound tiny house towns And any creative population that will allow our people community This is our chance to save some lives. Thank you Thank you. Fred Krueger followed by Andy Ferguson Good afternoon. Mayor cursey members of the console I'd like to address the problem Of traffic congestion in rose lennon and that problem is highlighted by the fact that two weeks ago We had a fatality Sydney falbo 20 year old going to school on her bicycle And in fact, we've had three fatalities in the last six weeks So we can do better than this But if we do an analysis of the problem, we've had a long history of problems At the intersection of sabastopol road and stony point in fact 10 years ago When there was the the draft eir for the walmart it received an f level of service now in the interim period We've had a lot of growth, but what we have not had Is a proportional growth in infrastructure Now when that draft eir was made during rush hour We had An average traffic speed of 3.5 miles per hour That's as congested as any area in santa rosa except perhaps Santa Rosa avenue around the cosco plaza at midday And so we have had For at least a decade this congestion, but it has never been addressed And so this is a responsibility of infrastructure that still lays upon the console Now one thing that stands out in this area is a lack of police vigilance and particularly citations There has become because there's so much traffic and congestion a habit Of people running the red light when it turns from green to red You'll still see people rushing to make it through on that traffic cycle That should be unacceptable But it continues and becomes a pattern Because the police are not enforcing traffic regulations and that is a beginning solution To this issue because we've already had three fatalities in six weeks And so there has to be a way to address that One of the additional problems that's a complicit in this problem Is that we've had housing growth without proportionate growth in infrastructure We can't have housing growth without infrastructure because that's a formula For a declining quality of life for citizens in santa rosa You can't do one without the other it's common sense So please even though we have a housing shortage We have an equally serious lack of the infrastructure to support it We see that particularly in roseland with the lack of parks for instance Well, there are solutions. We need the police to do their job and enforce it Thank you, mr. Krueger Andy Ferguson followed by thomas ells Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to clarify to the council concerning some confusion around the cost of Electric ready ordinance that we've discussed and that you'll be talking about and deliberating in the future We've used the figure of 250 dollars for this And I want to clarify that that number that number came from We consulted with a lot of professionals building supply electricians builders and so on And we're given confusingly. We were given numbers between zero and several hundred dollars typically about 500 We didn't know what to make of that. So we came up with the figure of 250 dollars in fact All of these answers might be correct because from the standpoint of the consumer the purchaser of a house The the true number will probably be zero A developer will sell the house based on market conditions at the time of the sale And what's happening with the cost The buried costs of the electric Excuse me the electric circuits and so on at that time won't be relevant On the other hand if you look at it from the point of view of the cost of the builder If you want to go into the weeds on that Then there again, there's a problem because the cost will depend on the size of the house The configuration of the house the location of the panel The selection of the appliances to be used and so on It becomes almost impossible to come up with a with a solid number on this certainly not a single number So I suggest that in the future when you deliberate this, please consider That these costs will probably Should be looked at as a percentage of the cost of building the house in other words about Zero point one percent somewhere on that range Of the cost of building To to try to assign a particular number to this is I think fools folly So I apologize for any confusion around this issue and I think In light of the clear benefits of having these circuits pre-installed for the consumers And the pressing need for us to utilize more renewable energy We think the argument for this Um All electric ready ordinance is compelling. Thank you Thomas ells followed by scott weibner well, thank you again we were just presented with something on stony point and um That's a very tragic incident and a couple of them. I try to follow that fairly carefully and um First person I believe was was down at Um crossing about Roundtable pizza This this young woman there were there were there were three. I think there was one on the East side Going because I walk there sometimes going on the east side going north and then this was on the west side Uh, the south side of the freeway On the west side of stony point going northbound on the bicycle So that's against traffic with the bicycle. It's right for walking. It's inappropriate for bicyclists And and it's obviously extremely hazardous And unfortunate That really needs to be addressed Citywide is riding on the wrong side of the street Very very very dangerous. We've talked about that at the situation at gernville road underneath 101 and and dealing with the the over crossing at elliott Those are the kind of things that you can do and and the construction is episodic so so I'm sorry to say fred has I love fred, but um He didn't watch smart train be constructed and the billions of dollars on that So that was infrastructure and he didn't watch stony point even though he lives right around the corner He didn't watch stony point being built for two or three excruciating years for the relocation of those uh that pgne power And now it's complete and it's it's really good, but it's episodic And so we don't really know when it's happening when I'll see it happening And it's right there for him to see but so that was built and that was important and that is infrastructure And that did add capacity to stony point right there And even smart does that so to say that it wasn't being done. We don't need Gigantic infrastructure out there. We need to deal with our housing and everything as we're looking at. I think that's appropriate I did want to mention that I'm reminded of with regard to paradise miltons paradise lost It's a story of adam and eve and satan Mr. McGlynn and the administrators here had something to offer to paradise The paradise has a great deal to offer santa rosa in the way of an alternative scenario for our fires We were lucky. We did not suffer what they suffered. We could have That's that fire could have could have encircled us and been very tragic for us. Thank you, mr. Ells This it needs more research. Thank you Scott Wagner followed by brad morrison Good evening council persons Mostly a report. We just came from a meeting where the technical advisory committee of The leadership council that's Going to be taking over the cdc Efforts around homelessness. It was our first meeting. Um, they brought together a bunch of people who were Um very educated Good hard working very idealistic people. I have a lot of hopes about that group Two people will be on the leadership council who have been homeless within the last five years That was a surprise for I think all of us and I think they're all they're both good people And I look forward to the kinds of things that you all do in the leadership council I wanted to give you a little bit of news Last thursday, we received the county's recommendations on how the heap funding should go Now this meeting of theirs on thursday occurred after about I believe 11 or 12 public meetings and in the four that I attended There was an overwhelming desire for various forms of village solutions that were articulated And In the report that the county did not only did they not recommend a dollar to any of those things They also did not bother to even address the issue. They did not bother to discuss The public input at all And I think that part that latter part was the part that just astounded me that they felt so justified And so Assumptively powerful that they could go ahead and ignore every single major recommendation that was done by the over 250 people that attended those meetings In order to grind away with Whatever it is that whoever it is that manages their thinking Delivered to us on thursday Please listen to the public the public that speaks about homelessness There are many many people that no doubt have great opinions about homelessness. They're not here They didn't attend the meetings that were designed exactly to figure out what we should do The people that did were summarily ignored the same way that we're ignored week after week here I'm sorry to be blunt about the point, but I just wanted to get that across. We're very frustrated We've been scrambling ever since thursday trying to address this Strange anomaly that they consider a normal course of events here in the county. Thank you Brad Morrison Sorry, forgive me. I Wasn't actually expecting the speaker right now. So I'm still trying to write out the notes Regarding the parking meters downtown I was told When I spoke with kevin bucanec when I got a few parking tickets that there is something the city does called a grace period I'm not sure how many other people know about this So I'll explain it the grace period is five minutes long On the meters. There's a flashing green light The words grace period and then underneath the timer with like going from five minutes counting down, I guess Quick aside the whole idea of a grace period seems really Odd to me because it's confusing. I had two incidents where I got parking tickets Actually, I know the second one. I did not get a parking ticket the first one I did Um where I showed up at a green at a parking meter on fifth street There was flashing green light. There was no timer underneath and it said grace period And I go What's that? How long does it last why there was no car there when I pulled into the spot? So it was confusing I didn't know how long it lasted and put money in the meter and got a ticket Peeled the ticket lost my appeal, but you know You'll have to learn So when I spoke with Kevin Buchan of the city of santa rosa He said that the contractor for the parking meters is isp or vsp Something like that out of san diego And that I was the only one that had reported any anomalies with the parking meters so partially I want to say this in hopes of If anyone else have had problems with the parking mirrors to please let the city parking department know because uh Mine were confusing. The second incident was when I parked in railroad square Flashing green light said grace period and it said it counted down for my belief about an hour I think it was like 59 minutes. I go what? But I left it there. I was having dinner and had dinner and And didn't get a parking ticket. I was there for like, I don't know 45 minutes or something like that um So when I spoke with Kevin he Said he looked at the list of people in the parking department that had access to those meters I've been dealing with a ton of hacking issues, which is an enormous separate problem. I've been dealing with But it makes me It has made me learn a lot about cyber security and and issues like that Not that this is necessarily that it could just be a programming thing or something that somebody doesn't know how to address But he said no that there's no one else who's even reported those problems. So I don't know um But it was Weird enough that I noticed and weird enough that I'd like to say something about it. So Thanks for letting me speak Hopefully, thank you Mr. Guy and We're moving on to 14.2 Is that in 14.2 as a report item is the annual police auditors report And presenting will be Robert erenson The independent police auditor and also chief shreeter will be at the dais to answer questions as well Good evening, mayor coursey. Good evening members of the council. Good evening community members watching live and down the road My name is bob erenson. I am the excuse me. Mr. Erenson Interrupt you just for a sec. Would you move that microphone over closer to the center there and speak right into it? Thank you. I'm sure I'm used to my voice carrying so Um, I'm here to present my second annual report, which is a little bit delayed. This is for calendar year 2017 For the record. I'm currently toward the end of my third year as auditor This is the overview of what I'll be going through tonight And I'll just dive right into it Um My goals have not changed my number one goal is to help the department improve its service to the community My number two goal is to help complainants Both with the complaint process, but also understanding police practices My third uh goal is to oversee And audit the internal investigations of the department And my fourth goal is to establish communication and credibility with the stakeholders And the activities have not changed from last year when I last reported to you So as in 2017 I audited 76 personnel complaints and 39 use of force reviews I audited 688 body cam videos and I also wrote along with santa rosa pd For 60 hours and as well I've attended various Inter-departmental meetings. I've also met with dozens of complainants in the community And attended a number of community meetings. I've also participated in training in high schools Locally regarding police services and had to respond to police and met with other community stakeholders One footnote to all of this It's been my observation not just working here But in the 20 years that I've worked as independent police auditor and a number of different communities that in between Catastrophic incidents the vast majority of the community begins to lose interest In the issues that made everyone so angry So the further away we get from some of the notorious incidents The harder it is to get community members to come to the table to discuss those things But by contrast community members that are concerned about homelessness Have been a major theme for me. I have received calls regularly and have sat in meetings And this is apart from I've made a point of visiting some of the encampments both with some of the activists and also with uniformed officers So my method of operation is fairly straightforward. It's the same. I try to be very thorough In reviewing all materials and understanding the nature of the problem I try to identify what concerns I may have And questions and then figure out who is the appropriate person to start with and as my report mentions It depends on the gravity of it and the circumstances Uh, and then having discussions with the appropriate Santa Rosa staff Depending on the gravity of it I will make sure that the entire chain of command knows if it's a smaller thing Then I may stop with whoever the lieutenant is In order to work towards some sort of a resolution it doesn't have to be an absolute resolution It can be a resolution that I think is satisfactory Although if it had been my call I might have done it a little differently One thing I wanted to talk about which uh has changed since last year I feel like this model has been very successful At Santa Rosa PD as you all know, um, I tend to parse the notion of police auditing into two categories Confrontational and collaborative oversight Most of the oversight in this country is confrontational And it relies on statistics and it relies on newspapers and it relies on embarrassing departments into making change And the problem is that's very polarizing and people who do confrontational oversight Typically do not make much progress past the first couple of incidents because people stop listening to them As well Confrontational oversight means you have less access to information After 20 years of working in this field, I've discovered that collaborative oversight Is much more functional So one of the things that it means is that on some level I am in partnership with the chief The chief trusts me which is the reason why I have complete access to everything in the building I've never been refused anything and that's because the chief trusts me and by similar token I trust the chief we've developed this working relationship But as well I've developed a relationship of trust and credibility With the vast majority of the members of the department all the way from Rankin file up through command staff to me. That's absolutely essential to be to being successful I suppose when we take questions, I can I can address that There's there's a hard balance Obviously, I'm still independent because to one degree or another I regularly make the chief unhappy. I regularly make command staff unhappy And I know I've made some of you unhappy tonight Which is not my intention, but that is part of what the word independent means as long as I was asked So some of the things that I've done that demonstrate a success of the model Apart from establishing credibility is there's been a variety of ways that I've identified And encouraged improvement of various accountability processes in the department whereby employees are held accountable by their own superiors I Find myself being sought out by members of the department for advice about all sorts of things including promotional processes Including personnel conflicts including career choices and the like this to me is another sign of my being influential in the organization So some general observations about santa rosa pd 2017 apart from being a very hard year for the entire community was a hard year for santa rosa pd I Had assumed naively. I'm sure that going through the fire together Would have been something that raised the morale of the organization and I was surprised to discover that it's to the contrary Because part of what happens when the fire occurs is everyone in the department gets to see who's squared away and who's not And that's hard to pretend So That's something that the organization is still working through individually and at different levels The second part of it is that the department is facing big transitions coming up most of command staff will be retiring In the next approximately 18 months. There are a lot of promotions coming up As a footnote to this discussion. I have to tell you one of the positives about morale They're currently starting The promotional process for sergeant and for lieutenant and an enormous number of people have put in for it In my experience that says something very positive about the morale of the organization despite everything else In terms of patrol, I continue to see patrol as In this community as being far above average what i'm used to As a footnote to remind us i've worked with 160 law enforcement agencies in the state of california So that's sort of the base of of my view of things I've been fascinated to see and I want to thank you all for The coincidence of this opportunity where i'm doing this job at the time that body worn cameras are coming online After 35 years of working in law enforcement We finally have the answer of how we're going to be able to effectively immediately improve customer service Because there's no longer a question about what occurred in an incident number one and number two the videos are very instructional For the officers one of the quiet little ironies, you know, there's been a big fight with Around the aclu on the issue of should officers be allowed to view their videos before authoring reports And last year I discussed what my own view of that was that Most people will not remember everything and that an officer who is not reviewed his video prior to going to court Is likely to be impeached by his video On small details, so it's good practice in my mind if you are going to arrest someone that you watch the video before You write your report, but a profound added benefit is that the officers now are having to watch their own videos Because I promise you if we ordered them to watch their own videos they wouldn't But they're watching their own videos and they are correcting themselves because they they can see Watching the video. Oh my goodness. I had no idea. I looked that way And and they automatically begin working on it So the things that I am seeing on the body-worn camera videos number one across the board improve communication And more patience with people I it's it's become a little bit of a joke for me, but What has happened now is in most cases It is the equivalent or sir if I have to use force on you. I promise you I'm first going to cut 15 minutes of video Of me being really nice to you And you'd be surprised how often that works Of course, that means calls for service take longer We also wind up with a verifiable objective record Which means there are fewer factual disagreements about what occurred either externally or with citizens Ironically and it hasn't come to fruition in 2017, but i'm seeing it in 2018 Citizen complaints are dramatically down from 2017 to 2018 if you keep me around for the next year In my annual report for 2018 you'll hear about that in greater detail And it's also the case anecdotally that it appears that uses of force Are at lower levels So the higher uses of force are occurring less frequently and instead officers are using lower levels of force Next thing the professional standards unit consistently a better work product than in the past the system Thank you Oh, yeah shame on me um The systems Are much more effective, but there's still room for improvement. In fact just today I was having a discussion with the professional standard sergeant About things that we're not adequately capturing in the ia pro system and ways that we need to reorient things Uh, probably the single biggest thing and this was in an initial recommendation I made The professional standard unit needs to be the gatekeeper Someone needs to be making sure that all the entries are consistent All the information is there and it's following the common practice That's not happening consistently and then the other thing that I'd like to see Is systematic training for all the sergeants and personnel matters and how to deal with that It's been done on a catches catch can basis, but it hasn't been done consistently The next thing I want to discuss and this is fairly briefly Is the fire and santa rosa pd I had occasion at the request of the department to view all the available body cam video from 11 30 that night till 9 30 the next morning Um, you know, I consider myself a fairly experienced person vis-a-vis law enforcement and even I was blown away I I can't tell you how many heroic acts I witnessed How many amazing off-scale Things I named one particular officer Dave petterson who's a very humble man I had to ask his permission to name him. I actually rode along And waited till the very end of the ride along Dave petterson by the way, although he's relatively new to our department retired out of the Sonoma county sheriff's department and their losses are gained There are lessons to be learned in the fire and it's not so much that god forbid we should have another fire But we're living in an area that's prone to natural disasters And there's just a lot of opportunity wrapped in that So the last thing on this is the body worn cameras. I've discussed in the report Changing the vendors because I was discovering that there were videos that we could not locate Although they had been downloaded This was the first time that in my parlance I had occasion to pull the red handle on the wall Which is to go over the chief's head and go to the city manager Because I was not comfortable with the speed with which the transition was occurring And that that thereafter occurred very rapidly I have discussed in my report the issue of policing the homeless And I go through the reasons why I've discussed that It is the source of many complaints both formal and informal on a regular basis It has become the focus of activists in the community It is a workload for patrol It has a morale impact on officers that i'm very conscious of when I ride along It's a fairly common thing officers do not like having to police the homeless Because they know that they're the front end of a system that's not Solving the problem So part of the reason that certain officers know the names of almost everyone in the homeless community is because they've repeatedly Either issued them tickets or taken them to county jail or the like So they know that the system isn't working and it's very frustrating for them And my experience the vast majority of successful police officers Are very much problem solvers and if you give them a problem that they can't solve you're going to drive them crazy Um issues identified As I discussed in my report, um, I would like to see Apologize i'm used to having a clicker in my hand when I do presentations Um I would like to see the body cam the body cams be unmuted and run from the moment an officer gets out of a patrol car Till the moment he's dropped off someone at county jail And that's because there are instances that there are spontaneous declarations, etc, etc And I indicated at least one example in my report where the appearance of a muted camera Creates An impression that's a very negative one and we also saw just by way of footnote the recent recent within the past year Shooting by the Sacramento police department where the officers muted their cameras immediately after shooting and killing the suspect And that was really problematic For me one of the benefits of the cameras and I've particularly witnessed this some of the sergeants have left them on It provides an opportunity to not just oversee line officers, but also oversee how sergeants are managing the scenes Whether they're being effective or not and whether they're being well received or not So to me this is just a a profoundly powerful tool a profoundly powerful tool Um, I know that there are people in the department that feel the way I do that the cameras should never be muted Um, I'm raising the issue. I feel fairly satisfied. We'll reach the right result I don't feel like I need to pull a red handle on the wall for that The next issue is staffing shortages and succession planning The staffing shortages to a large part Are endemic in every police department in the state of california because of 350 and peres and what those payments look like annually to local public entities The example I use is a is a santa cruz example when I started working as Is oversight for the santa cruz police department in 1998 they were authorized for 96 sworn They're currently authorized for 98 sworn that population has grown by over 20 in the meantime And bear in mind that a car that you never rest wears out faster We're wearing out our officers faster By doing this by having them work these workloads The other issue And it's a real concern for me is the planning of the retirements of command staff I've had repeated discussions about this and my concern is the following If command staff all happens to leave within a two or three month period the department will be profoundly handicapped My fantasy and bear in mind I used to represent individuals Who are members of the police department and help them with their retirements and I completely understand the notion that Bob that retirement is mine I'm going to pick the date when I leave and what works for me for once in my life I'd like to do something that is primarily what works for me The difficulty is these are all people that have dedicated their lives to an organization And I know none of them would intentionally leave in such a fashion That it handicapped the organization But my preference would be that each member of command staff pick a date that they're spaced out And that we develop a plan for the transition Because I've worked at departments where these transitions were not planned And you go from a place like Santa Rosa PD currently that for the most part is squared away To a place that's falling apart Because no one knows how to do anything because no one has been in the position long enough The last thing on this list and I you know The the fire did a lot of things and one of the things the fire did was burn a lot of the city's money But the Santa Rosa police department still very much needs a new facility I won't say any more than that but just that much of it So my goals to continue to work with the community. Yes, I'll press the button Thank you chief I will be continuing to audit one of the things that I've already changed is I am auditing a higher percentage of use of force reviews than citizen complaints In my view and I share this with line officers and and they agree in my view every time we have to use force It represents a failure. It may have been the best possible outcome But it's it still is a failure and something to be learned from so for me every one of those is an opportunity to understand Um, so I I'm tending to focus on that more I intend on working to Further improve psu and in particular to make the consistency and the record keeping second to none in the state And to help resolving the issues with the body cams The last thing that I I want to comment about Um, which is not in the report is a suggestion that I've made in the past to some of you individually It's my recommendation That in addition to my reporting to the city manager that you also arranged to have me report to a board Or a committee of the city council So that whether it's the board Or a subcommittee of the council can regularly meet with me and be informed and ask questions because one of the difficulties honestly is the last time I sat here was 18 months ago And you know I made an effort in the meantime to try to meet with each of you individually some of you I was unable to do that with You have your own jobs But also the fires intervened and there were a lot of meetings that were canceled because of that But to me, I think that's the one of the single biggest missing links. I look at all of you and in truth You don't really know what I do every day And it's hard to grasp that and I want to be able to fill that in I don't want to necessarily take up all of the public's time with it But I want to make sure all of you are satisfied because even though the contract is written that my only boss is the city manager You guys are my bosses too questions council Yeah, I was going to ask that the chief was making a presentation as well before we ask questions Or do we take them one at a time? Or just remember I'm here to answer questions regarding Impacts of the report or what have you okay? So you're here for questions as well. Okay. Thank you. So Thank you, mr. Emerson for for the for the report a quick question Yes, we're almost at the end of 18. What was the reason for the delay of this report to us? Is it just timing to get into us or what what was the An earlier draft of this report was available last June But trying to schedule the meeting Has been something of a struggle. You guys have had far more pressing priorities. So Thank you. Thank you for that You mentioned that as part of some of your outreach and made some outreach to the schools Can you tell give us more details on that outreach to the schools? How many schools number of students to topics format of those of that outreach process? I went out with the school resource officers. I've told them I'm available anytime because they go out Presentations and I like going out as part of a team So we went out to lc. Allen high school. It was a full day and presented to three or four different classes I've also attended some meetings After school hours out in roseland for example to meet community members and the like I'm hoping to do more of the school outreach Because one of the things that I think is a real concern We see it as a matter of routine most citizens do not know how to behave on a traffic stop and particularly most kids They don't know what their rights are And they don't know what's expected of them It sort of blows me away that you can get a high school degree in the state of california and not know that very basic information So i'm looking for more opportunities to get that information out. I think it's really important So what what kinds of presentations were made to the students with the school resource officers where the the types of things You're talking about now on how to interact with police or with some a curriculum that you presented. What was it? It was a number of things the officers that I were with presented both issues on how to behave with law enforcement but also about a law enforcement career And also about what it feels like to be a police officer, which I think is important as well for kids to understand And in that context, I explained what my role was As oversight and I explained to them what their alternatives were if they had a complainer would just were dissatisfied with services Thank you. I know that Probably 18 months ago has been since we've met maybe even longer. I know at that time I think I mentioned during the last report as well Was an interest of mine in looking at what your role is is primarily retrospective Meaning you're looking at things that have occurred you're responding you're evaluating you're reviewing your auditing and there was an interest of mine and also Considering you as far as providing us some feedback on how are we doing as a city as an organization of the police department In continuing to build relationships with our community again trying to do something proactive and not wait for something So has there been anything like that? Have you had a chance or opportunity to examine the types and kinds of things that the organization has been doing? Are they are they doing that well? Is are there areas that we can be improving on in as far as the outreach to the community? That hasn't been a priority for me. It's worth bearing in mind that i'm here five days a month There's a lot to do. I don't manage to audit all of the personnel complaints or all of the uses of force There are still members of the department that don't know me So there's still a lot of things to to be accomplished I am aware of things like coffee with a cop and Shop with a cop and those things The outreach is to communities where i'm in town I will go to as well along with the officers to be able to introduce myself to community members But for my part of it, we're back to the same place No one cares about an independent police auditor if they're not unhappy with the police department at the moment okay Excuse me You did spend a lot of time talking about our uh the department's response to homelessness and I wanted to Ask us some questions about that For example on page 12 of the actual staff report you talked about That you believe that law enforcement You do not believe law enforcement is the answer to homelessness and I guess that is a true statement If that was their sole responsibility or they were left with that responsibility to do that But it's inaccurate in that that is not a responsibility that's been placed on them by the city They are a partner obviously in trying to help us to end homelessness in our community So it's it's it's it's a concern of mine as far as how that is presented And because it's done several times within the report It's giving the reader the impression that Laws rules have been developed in santa rosa and we've said here police department go and enforce our homelessness laws Which is not the case so and so So my question is because you have spoken to officers about the the impacts that has had on them you have talked to Homeless population others in the community as well people who have made complaints But have you had the opportunity to speak to our director of housing and community development to find out what other things are occurring Within the city as far as addressing homelessness to address it I have attended some meetings with people who provide homeless services And I also see them in the field and have occasion to have discussions with them As my report says I have not done a systematic survey because that would be beyond my role Anecdotally it appears like the majority of the city's services and money spent Are having law enforcement push the homeless from one encampment to another If we sat down and figured out how much money the city was spending every year dealing with the homeless I think we would discover that the single biggest part of that budget Was law enforcement salaries to do that very thing which doesn't solve anything. I I think I worry that there's an intention in some circles to simply make it so unpleasant here that somehow they're going to disappear That doesn't work Santa Cruz has been dealing with the homeless problem for 30 years and has been doing the same things you're doing here And not only have they not been successful. It's made the problem worse Can you can you explain to me then the things we are doing here? Tell us give us an overview of our homeless approach here in Santa Rosa your understanding of it Generally speaking what I've observed is that the homeless if they're in small groups Are contacted on a regular basis by law enforcement to move along Wherever they are In larger encampments, uh, they're cleared all at once Uh, there is always a smattering of Advocate of people who come who are available to provide services shelters for example Uh, you I I don't want to go too far down this path because again I've said that I'm not an expert in this but I will tell you I have had a lot of people complain to me That sam jones is not the shelter for everyone There are a lot of people who are homeless who are not drug addicted Who object to the chaos at sam jones the noise and the danger of it You'll forgive me for putting it this way. I yeah as naive as this is going to sound I would not want to have a shelter A city-run shelter that I didn't feel comfortable putting my grandparents in Are you familiar with the um With the policies that the council has developed over the last year related to homelessness No, I'm not again Again, well, let me interrupt you. This is this is what concerns me is that you are making some Assumptions and some conclusions here that are contrary to what I would expect of an independent review When you go to your methods of operation you talk about a thorough review of all materials and the material that you have not Reviewed yet on this issue Obviously, there's been some identification of concerns and questions that have been done in discussions discussions have not been had So just worries me that that has been so much information and focus on this That from my perspective having sat at this day is for the last 10 years There's been a lot of work at the council and the community our homeless advocates our homeless population have all been partner Sent this including the law enforcement But this is very limited in scope as far as what you've done and that's my concern Is that the report is incomplete? Uh, and it's I mean, I understand some of the things you reported out of statistical information But then for my from my perspective, mr. It moves into more of an editorial perspective on what you've seen Anidotally around around the community. That's a big concern of mine And I don't have any other questions besides that. Thank you Ms. Combs Thank you, mayor I need to take just a second um I have a number of items to run through and I appreciate your patience and forbearance, but I would like to start By appreciating the transparency that you provided In your discussion of the effects of the fire And of the discussion of the effects of homelessness on our Frontline officers um It may be difficult for us to hear the opinions of our frontline officers But I think that we as policy makers need to be listening to what our officers are experiencing in the field And I believe that you are in fact Giving us clear information about Both the level of complaint about homelessness and about the concerns of putting frontline officers into that position So I hope that we can take a moment and and listen to what I believe our officers are saying to us Having said that I Appreciate that there are some Significant differences in how reporting is done Something appears to have happened to the Hearing trans transcription the transcription for the hearing we'll see if we can get that fixed, but we're going to continue I'll continue. I'm just letting you know that that's what I'm hearing I don't think so. I think they probably just have an error down there um, so the um I appreciate that there are differences in The way reports are done, and I appreciate you're being straightforward about talking about collaborative versus What was the other term you used? confrontational And I'm trying to figure out how to balance what I consider my need as a council member for Quantitative as well as qualitative information um, so I'm I'm hoping we can figure out a way to be collaborative And still have some quantitative information that comes to us um, it concerned me that I was not able to see The changes in data in the use of force Complaints Within the text of the report it only showed This year's and not previous years or past years Uh, it it may be that I'm missing the point But it would be nice to see what the categories of complaints are What the types of complaints are and just how they change over time Among other things it allows me to understand your effectiveness Um So I will I will take advice Trying to remain c