of empty buildings. We could put these people in. I like Mr. Duet's idea. Let's open up a building and give them some shelter. I like the idea of moving off the trail but while they're there, let's give them some services like so they have a way of picking up their garbage. A measure of our community is how they care for the least of them. And I want to also remind you there was an article in the Bohemian about two weeks ago about rebuild that's counting with a lot of money but was allocated to Santa Rosa to rebuild and that money is just sitting there and maybe we could use it to support those that are out on the trail. How about that? And we have the TAC committee. We have the leadership committee. We have the committees that are designed to know how to do it. Let's get something done in this area. Thank you. I hope you had a good season. Thank you. Brenda Gilchrist followed by Craig Murphy. Hi everyone, Brenda from Citizens for Action Now. How many people are here from Citizens of Action Now? Raise your hands. Ooh, okay. Thank you for representing tonight because I think more of us are starting to show up because we used to just work hard and we would enjoy this beautiful city but a lot of us are now starting to come out as concerned citizens. So we appreciate you guys giving us a chance to at least advocate for ourselves. Jack Tibbetts, you replied to somebody, I think it was yesterday or today to a letter and you made some good points about the problems and the issues that are preventing us from managing the transient and vagrant population. One of them is Prop 47. We understand is tied the lawmakers or police officers and sheriffs hands. We're in a state, we feel like as citizens for the county and of the city, we feel like we're in a state of emergency. We'd like to propose to city council that as much as you can to advocate for repealing or changing the impact that Prop 47 has had, ask for some federal emergency or assistance to deal with the lawlessness and the vagrancy. There was a lady today as I was driving on Railroad Square, going to an appointment, pushing her cart on a green light, traffic, people almost hit her. So there's been various issues on a daily basis that all of us are seeing. What we're also feeling is that there is, the city is pointing at the county, the county's pointing at the city. They're saying the county needs to deal with the Joe Renauter Trail. Somebody needs to deal with it. If you guys could collaborate efforts, and I know there's some public challenges that we're not aware of as citizens or residents, but we'd like to have you guys collaborate, coordinate and deal with this as an emergency crisis because we're all concerned about our safety. As Robert Murray said, I'm also afraid to run on the trails. I won't go out without someone running with me or biking with me. And it's a sad state of affairs that a lot of us that used to enjoy our parks or enjoy the streets won't go out at night, or we won't go out and run in the parks and feel safe. So we're pleading that you guys look at emergency, federal assistance, maybe state assistance to either reverse or overturn things that are handcuffing our police officers or our sheriffs from managing the situation. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Craig Murphy, followed by Shelley Radke. Thank you for hearing me out, council members. Craig Murphy, Santa Rosa, member of Citizens for Action Now. First thing is I want to ask that the Joe Renauter Trail and the homeless issue in general makes it onto the agenda in the future. I want to address a recent string of incidents that are related to the homeless issue. And that is the dog attacks that have been occurring from off-leash, dangerous, aggressive dogs owned by homeless individuals specifically. The most recent one was Carolyn Teal. Many of you are familiar, as you spoke, at one of the most recent council meetings, off-leash pit bull and a smaller dog attack here next to Montgomery High School owned by homeless individuals.  My wife, Marcy Murphy, was nearly attacked by the same dogs who charged at her and luckily the rope that they were tied to the tree held. Christina Hall, dogs charged her, this was a different incident in Santa Rosa, by homeless owners of the dogs. Carrie Meshes, dogs charged her, Santa Rosa. Jim Drager, was charged by dogs in Santa Rosa, all owned by homeless individuals.  Evelyn Smith, her dog was attacked in Santa Rosa by a homeless-owned dog. Hans Van Bolderich, his dog was attacked in Doyle Park. Jordan Simmons, her dog was killed recently in Grayton that's been on the news, most of us have seen that. Another example of that, that owner was a homeless individual and she's trying to get that dog back, which is now in quarantine. So, these people don't always have empathy for what happened and they're self-serving and they wanna get their animals back that are clearly dangerous, aggressive animals. Charlotte Tressler, she was attacked herself in Doyle Park, Debbie Isley, dogs charged her, that was in Santa Rosa, Susan Hirschfield, aggressive off-leash dogs charged at her in Doyle Park. Carol Cranston, her dogs were attacked three times in Doyle Park and all of these examples have happened within the last year and a half. So, it's a recent escalation, it's a serious problem. My argument is that individuals who lack the ability or the physical or mental wellness to properly take care of themselves cannot properly take care of an animal. Individuals with no assets or no means of being financially liable have no business owning an animal. If my dog escapes from my gate and attacks someone, my homeowner's insurance goes up and the victim gets restitution. With homeless, they move on, they acquire another dog for protection after theirs removed or often petitioned to get their dogs back. This population should not have the same rights of dog ownership as those of us who have something to lose should our animals hurt another. Thank you. Thank you, Craig. Shelly Radke, followed by Susan Lamont. Hi, I'm Shelly Radke and I live in the condo complex that is right over the wall from the Joe or daughter trail, Casa del Sol. And it's 150 feet to the homeless people and I'm sorry, but those people are not law abiding citizens. There are fires going on, drug use, lawlessness. I don't even ride my bicycle over there anymore. I've been a working citizen for 40 years and paid taxes all my life and I support the parks and I really like to know why this is being allowed and tolerated. One night while we're returning back from work at the hospital when I get home late at night there was smoke when it was warm. And I called the fire department, actually called the police. They referred me to the fire department. Our department came out and they said there's nothing that they can do. And for me to come to a council meeting. So here I am. Thanks. Thank you. The 10th and final speaker for item 15 will be Susan Lamont. Because you've changed the order of things I would like to speak on 16.2 but I have to be at another meeting. Is there any way I can have an exception for that? Just go ahead. Okay, I appreciate that. Normally I would object to the expense of a special election for the replacement of Julie Combs. But I've seen nothing from this particular council that would give me any assurance that you would replace some Julie Combs with someone like her. As a matter of fact, Mr. Schwedholm has said that's the last thing that he intends to do. Lots of us voted for Julie Combs twice. Lots of us waited for seven years for you to appoint her to be vice mayor. Instead you've appointed people with almost no experience at all. I hear that Mr. Schwedholm has said there will not be a Julie point two. And that is because you want diversity. Julie was your diversity. She was the individual unique thinker on this council who knew about the problems that the average resident experiences. And whether she is going back and forth between Ecuador or not, she is the best representative this council has seen in many, many years. And if you are going to say you will not replace her with someone like her, it is an indication that you do not actually believe in democracy because democracy would require that you satisfy her supporters and replace her with someone like her. Now I know that's a tall order because she's fabulous. There aren't very many of her around. She and I don't agree on everything but I trusted her, she was honest, she was intelligent, she had integrity. And therefore it's sad but I'm asking you to have an election. Now if this had happened to Mr. Sawyer or Mr. Oliveris, the press democrat and the council would be offering sympathy, they'd be asking for understanding, they'd be asking for flexibility, they wouldn't be saying oh, she needs to go. There's nothing I've seen from you to indicate that you would do that. And it's only developer backed candidates that appeal to you and that appeal to the press democrat and what has happened is offensive and I advocate for an election, thank you. Mr. Glenn, item 17.1. Item 17.1, public hearing, ordinance adoption, ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa modifying chapter 18-44 in its entirety and subsection B of section 18-04.015 of the Santa Rosa city code concerning adoption of the 2019 California fire code as amended. Ordinance of the council of the city of Santa Rosa modifying chapter 18 to adopt by reference with local amendments the 2019 California building standard codes, not including the 2019 California energy code, the 2018 international property maintenance code and the national pollutant discharge elimination permit and waste discharge requirements. Jesse Oswald, chief building official in Eden and Heartage fire assistant fire marshal presenting. Good evening, thank you. Jesse Oswald, chief building official. So this is our second and final time seeing this information for the year and for the next three years, actually. So the first slide introduction of ordinance, this is actually to adopt an ordinance for our building and fire codes. We'll go over these slides. They're very familiar to you. We'll go over them again for those who may want to see the information again, but then we'll also have ability to answer some questions. So some background, California building standards are published in their entirety every three years. The building, California building and fire code are included in this series of standards. And I'll make note for this session and this vote tonight does not include the California energy code that was voted with amendments and adopted with the last public hearing that we had on codes. So the California code of regulations title 24 is published in July of the year that they intend to be adopted. It was this past July and they will go into effect January 1st of 2020. The California code of regulations title 24, parts one through 12, that's the entirety of this set of codes and regulations are statewide standards that apply to all public and private buildings being built in California. This includes the building, fire, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, energy, disabled access, green building and other standards. And again, highlighted the energy code is not part of the discussion tonight. Updated and adopted every three years for statewide application by the California Building Standards Commission with mandatory enforcement by all jurisdictions and what that's essentially saying is if we don't do perform, execute local amendments, we're going to get the state's base codes anyway. We have the opportunity and we take it when local jurisdictions to adopt and amend only more stringent requirements based on these climactic, topographical, regional or geologic conditions that we find here in our local jurisdiction and we have to justify those to the state. So as of July, or published in July again and we'll go into effect, the addition was adopted locally or by the state, excuse me, in January of 2019, we have until the first of this coming January to get this exercise completed and submitted to the state for acceptance and adoption locally. So we have collaborated city staff, fire building department plus numerous others. We've collaborated with other peer organizations throughout the region and the county. We've done significant outreach with two council study sessions and there were numerous other study sessions targeted at the reach code but these codes were also in play with other discussions throughout the community. And as Jesse mentioned, we did a fair amount of collaboration, the billion officials and the fire prevention officers in the county started meeting back in February of this year and working on the updates of these codes. And this is the fourth time we've presented this information to you once in a public hearing prior to and this is one for the adoption. This is the list of agencies that participated in the updates and we'll go to the next one. And we have some basic examples of some of the stuff that we've updated and we've discussed this before but it talks about our number of access points to new communities, vegetation management, practices with new construction, home hardening stuff on new homes that are built and significant remodels. We also have, we're also adopting by reference NFPA 38 or NFPA 1 chapter 38, manufacturing and cultivation of cannabis regulations that we've worked with some of the industry to bring in fire protection engineers to evaluate next one. And then here are some of the overarching home hardening requirements that we're bringing into the building code and residential code that we worked with the building officials to implement and also to implement a three to five foot and ignition free zone around newly constructed homes. And some additional things that are coming in with the codes. It was a pretty extreme interest expressed in the adoption of the emergency housing requirements that Housing and Community Development, the state agency made available to us nearly two and a half years ago. We had not adopted those and we're proposing to adopt them within this jurisdiction. They're an appendix in each of the building and residential codes. And what these do is they provide minimum standards that we can rely on when we do execute emergency housing in whatever fashion that means. So it gives us a baseline for us as regulators to be able to say, this is where we can go with this. It is a helpful tool. And the adoption would be, we're specifically having to adopt it because it's an appendix that isn't required by the state. So for next steps, the peer review as we've discussed, peer review and input has occurred with our fire and building agencies throughout the greater North Bay area, Sonoma County. We had our, again, dates are incorrect. Sorry for the changes. So the last hearing was the introduction. Today will be the final opportunity to discuss and actually vote to adopt the ordinances. So the recommendation by the fire department and planning and economic development department that the council adopted ordinance by reference to 2019 edition of the California fire code as adopted and amended by the state of California and further amended based on local conditions for use in chapter 18-44 of the Santa Rosa city code, repeal existing sections not applicable to new codes and modify the Santa Rosa city code to reflect the new model code. And also to adopt by reference with local amendments to 2019 California administrative code, California building code, California residential code, California green building standards code, California electrical code, California mechanical code, California plumbing code, California historical building code, California existing building code, California reference standards code and the 2018 international property maintenance code, the national pollutant discharge elimination permit and waste discharge requirements. Any questions? Well done, it gets better every time I hear it. Council, any questions for staff? All right, I will, this is a public hearing. I'll open the public hearing. Do we have any cards? No cards, you don't have to fill out a card, but if you'd like to address the council on this item, feel free to go up to one of the podiums. Seeing no movement in the audience, we'll close the public hearing. And as a follow-up, we're gonna allow Mr. Sawyer to try to repeat what you just said. Mr. Sawyer, do you have this item? I spent a lot of time trying to memorize this and I gave up a long time ago. I'd like to introduce an ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa repealing chapter 18-44 of the existing Santa Rosa city code and adding a new chapter 18-44 adopting by reference with local amendments, the 2019 edition of the California Fire Code and wait for the reading. I have a motion and a second to any comment. Seeing none, your votes please. And that passes with four ayes. Secondly, I'd like to introduce an ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa adopting by reference with local amendments the 2019 California Administrative Code, 2019 California Building Code, 2019 California Residential Code, 2019 California Electrical Code, 2019 California Mechanical Code, 2019 California Plumbing Code, 2019 California Historical Building Code, 2019 California Existing Building Code, 2019 California Green Building Standards Code, 2019 California Reference Standards Code, the 2018 International Property Maintenance Code and the National Polluting Discharge Elimination Permit and Waste Discharge Requirements and wait for the reading. Second, I'm just gonna repeat that again. Thank you. Any additional comments on that? Here we have a motion and a second, your votes please. And that passes with four ayes. I just want to thank staff for the presentation. I know that we've heard it twice but I know all the work that went into producing this document, so thank you very much for all the benefit from this, so thank you. If I may, I'd like to thank the Council. This is a milestone for me in my career as a Chief Building Official, my first official code adoption being your building official now for a little over a year, so thank you. Great. I can hardly wait to see in three years. Mr. Merlin, item 17.2. Item 17.2, public hearing. Continued hearing on appeal of Planning Commission decision to approve a conditional use permit for Fox Den Incorporated, a cannabis retail and delivery business in an existing building located at 4036 Montgomery Avenue, Unit B, Santa Rosa, California, assessors parcel 013-284-012 file number, CUP-18-076. Bill Rose, supervising planner amongst others. Presenting. I should really say Claire, right? Introduce your assistance. Thank you, Mayor, members of the City Council. My name's Emmanuel Ursu, I'm the project planner. The item before you is an appeal of approval by the Planning Commission of a dispensary located at 4036 Montgomery Road, Unit B. In my presentation, I'll give a very brief overview of the cannabis ordinance, describe the project, comment that was provided by the public and followed by a brief review of the environmental review of the project and recommendation. As the council's aware, the cannabis ordinance allows both personal use or has provisions for personal use in commercial cannabis businesses. What is proposed is a retail dispensary with delivery. The ordinance went into effect almost two years ago, January will be two years since this ordinance has been in effect. The ordinance allows cannabis businesses and retail businesses in certain districts, including the neighborhood commercial district in which the proposed businesses are located. There are setbacks required 600 feet to schools, and those are K through 12 schools. There cannot be an over-concentration of retail dispensaries, so only one within a 600 foot radius in their subject to a conditional use permit which entails a neighborhood meeting decision by the Planning Commission. And then the city council is the appeal body in the case of an appeal such as this project. The ordinance allows delivery of cannabis products but only from retail storefronts, drive-throughs are not permitted, hours of operation are specified in the municipal code as are very detailed security provisions. On-site consumption is allowed but is not being proposed in this particular application. State law, among other things, requires a 600 foot separation between dispensaries, cannabis businesses, and schools unless the local jurisdiction specifies a different radius. The city of Santa Rosa municipal code requires a 600 foot setback from K through 12 schools, and it does not require a setback from preschools under the city's municipal code. In addition, dispensaries are subject to a conditional use permit. There are specific findings that are required to be made and we'll get to those next. There are six findings, as I said. The first three are listed here. Generally, they require the ideas that the project is consistent with the applicable land use policies of the community compatible with its surroundings would not be detrimental to the surroundings and it's physically suitable for the property on which it's located. The planning commission's findings, as it pertains to all six of these required criteria, findings are contained in the resolution that's before you this evening. This project began with an application that was submitted about a year and a half ago, a little more than a year and a half ago in April of 2018. A neighborhood meeting was held after the application was deemed complete. The planning commission held a public meeting at that public hearing held at the beginning of this year. The application was approved. An appeal was subsequently filed by the Kiwi preschool, which is located behind the project. And the city council heard the appeal on April 9th, continued the appeal hearing with direction to the applicant to provide responses on a few specific issues. A revised submittal was provided in August of this year and after much back and forth between the staff and applicants and a propellant team, we're finally able to land on tonight's hearing date as a date everyone was available. The project, as I mentioned, is located on Montgomery Road in the northeast quadrant of the city just before Summerfield Road. It is designated for retail and business services in the general plan, as are all the parcels surrounding it. It's in the neighborhood commercial zoning district. It is more than 600 feet to the nearest school. And here's an aerial photograph that shows the site. The trail house building is in front of the proposed dispensary. That rectangular building behind it is approximately the right half, if you will, of that building is proposed for the dispensary. Let me go back. The Kiwi preschool is in the building that is above behind the proposed dispensary. This is a view from the street. The dispensary would be in the gray building at the back of the property. That's the trail house building in the front. The preschool is beyond the trees at the back of the property. So when the council considered the application in April, it had just over 1,700 square feet. The revised proposal reduced the retail component by increasing, basically taking away from the retail to make more space in the garage. So the retail area is now 789 square feet compared to the 918 square feet of retail floor area. But the overall space is 1,500 square feet compared to the 1773. This is the site plan that was considered back in April. There's no change to the building footprints. The primary changes, and this is what is proposed now. The circulation is for vehicular circulation on site goes from a counterclockwise one-way direction into a clockwise one-way direction. So the entrance is now to the east, which is on the upper portion of this slide and the exits on the bottom portion on the west. In contrast, the existing circulation is counterclockwise. There are other changes that were made. So this is the floor plan that was considered back in April. If you look at the bottom of that plan where the office, prep, and vault area in the hallway, that is where the primary changes in the proposed to that hallway, all those spaces at the back of the garage are now garage space rather than floor area and the dispensary space is slightly smaller. The hours of operation remain the same, consistent with the maximum hours allowed by the municipal code. So public comments that were made at the neighborhood meeting, at the planning commission meeting, at the first council appeal hearing, kind of focused on, I'd say, three areas as shown in this slide. And those, I believe, are still concerns that we will probably hear this evening from the neighbors and from the appellants. The basis of the appeal is included in the staff report and the appellants, I believe, are here this evening, so I'll let them get into detail on the basis of their appeal. At the April 9th meeting, the council, after hearing public input from 40-some speakers, held extensive discussion on the merits of the project and directed the applicant to go back to the drawing board to take a look at a few kind of very discreet issues, as shown on this slide. Really seem that the onsite circulation and parking were kind of top of the list of concerns. There were concerns also that the delivery vehicle would actually use up parking that would otherwise be available for clients of the dispensary. And there was also concern raised by neighbors regarding the ADA compliance with access from the street to the front of the building. So in response to the direction that the council provided, the applicant retained or had their traffic consultant take a look at the site again and re-evaluate it. They had their traffic consultant also had a peer evaluation of their review done. And they came up with several recommendations, several changes. The first was to change the circulation from the counterclockwise to clockwise direction. The effect of doing that is when exiting the site, the line of sight for vehicles was increased from 70 feet to 250 feet. And that is when looking to the left as you exit to the property. The red in this diagram shows the line of sight from in the existing condition. The black shows it in the proposed condition. The other change that they made was to install recommend installation of mirrors at the back to improve circulation around the back of the building. Since this was prepared, the mirrors at the back, the trail house building would actually not go in that location that go on the outside of the corners, not the inside of the corners where because they would be effective in that location. So there'd be a, I think a concave versus a convex mirror on the, so they'd go actually on the building, on unit B, the back building. And then a mirror was also proposed at the garage entrance. In response to the concern with parking, the applicant is proposing to lease four offsite spaces for employees. They've reduced the size of the dispensary thereby reducing the parking requirement by one space. They've also widened the parking in the, both in the garage and the open parking in the existing parking lot. Traffic engineer recommends that there be a signed parking with signs for clients of the dispensary and clients of the trail house. And then also the traffic consultant noticed that there were several clients that would come to the trail house, unload their bicycles and then leave the site and not return for a long time, at least for the period of time that they were there on site, which I believe was over an hour or so is what the report stated. And so they recommended that parking be restricted to use by patrons while they're on the property. To, the way they widen some of the spaces is on the east side of the parking lot. There was a space to the far right where it says no parking. That space doesn't meet the required dimensions. There's a doorway that opens into it. So they striped that no parking and then widened the remaining spaces so they're now compliant with the minimum parking stall width. On the west side, the entire overall width of the area devoted to parking is increased by shifting the curb at the far left parking stall, about a foot or so. And then making the remaining spaces a little wider to be able to accommodate the required parking width. In terms of the assertion that the delivery vehicle would take up required parking, the response from the traffic consultant is that it would actually reduce parking demand in that one delivery vehicle would be able to provide service to multiple customers that would otherwise come visit the property. And in terms of compliance with the ADA, the city's building official reviewed the proposal and found it to be in compliance. A ADA path from the street to the front of the building is only required if a pedestrian pathway is provided. There is no pedestrian pathway provided. That's a condition that has been approved in other new facilities that have been approved in the city. And there is a ADA pathway from the handicap parking stall to the entrance to the business. So the building official found that it is in compliance with the building codes and handicap access codes. The projects also found to be in compliance with CEQA and qualifies for several exemptions as indicated in this slide. And so we recommend that the council approve the resolution to allow Fox Den to operate a dispensary with a delivery at the project address on Montgomery Avenue, Montgomery Road. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Great, thank you for that presentation. Let's start first with any ex parte communication by council members. Let's start over here, Mr. Oliver. So did you have any? All right, none. Mr. Slaven. Vice Mayor. I received an email from Glenn Vaughn and spoke with Newcastle. Mr. Rogers. Yeah, over the course of the last six months I think we've all had extensive conversations. I've talked with the applicants, talked to the appellants. No information was learned that isn't available in the publicly available documents. Mr. Dibbitts. Yeah, I spoke with the appellants, I think shortly after the last hearing, it's been some time, and then I received a voice message from Mr. Caston. And I've met with both the operators of Trailhouse and the owners of the property. Again, learned nothing that's not contained in all the public documents or was discussed at our last hearing. So with that council, any questions on that presentation? And do we wanna afford someone to make a presentation? I didn't get a script from you guys on this one. Because this is a continuation. Do you have a question for Mr. Dibbitts? Go ahead. So I'll probably have more questions as the applicants and appellants make their presentations, but one thing right off the bat, I think my biggest concern that I have is somebody who frequents the Trailhouse a lot is that, and I can't believe I'm saying this because I can't stand it when people cite parking as a reason to not do something creative. But it really is kind of a problem there already. And I noticed that the applicant has gotten a lease with, I think it's a smog shop down the road, but some information that was given to me by Matt with the appellants made me wanna ask some questions. I guess, I'll just leave it there for now. So Nick, when you make your presentation, hopefully you can address that. Thanks. So now that I have my script here, do you wanna, do you have a question? I'll have questions, but I wanna listen, I think, to the appellant and the applicant first. Okay, so first we'll give you 10 minutes for the applicant presentation. So if you please identify yourself and we'll go from there. Don't worry, time's not starting yet, Nick. Go ahead, Mr. Roger, do you have a question? It's actually adding on to the ex parte disclosures because I wanna make sure if it needs to be addressed, it gets addressed. Somebody made a reference to me about a Facebook post from an employee. It in no way, I haven't seen the post, I don't actually know what it says and I in no way am basing a decision on it, but if that needs to be addressed in the conversation, please make sure you do so. Thank you. Are we ready? Alrighty, thank you, Mr. Mayor. We greatly appreciate everyone's time on this project. It has been a little over 18 months and I wanna thank staff, the council, the planning commission and everyone's been involved in the project for a very thorough review. Since the last meeting, we took the comments from the council very seriously, made substantive changes and hope that we will have provided you with the confidence to know that this is a project that will improve the existing conditions, both as far as safety goes and as far as the economic diversity of the area. One of the first steps that we took after the last council meeting was to expand and change the professional team. Many of the questions and concerns from council revolved building permit related items and we had not engaged a civil engineer at the time as we normally do that after the entitlement process. In order to answer your questions, we engaged with William Borrello, who I just mispronounced his name, so my apologies, William, with Anadel Engineering in order to make sure that all the site modifications we were proposing would be feasible once we reach the building permit stage. We also engaged with Musa Abasi, with Tramspedia, which is a traffic engineering consulting firm located here on 4th Street in Santa Rosa in order to do a peer review of all of the work that we had and engaged a new architect with DGA, who has done extensive work in the city. As a part of this new team, we took your concerns and modified the project a little later in the presentation. Steve Weinberg, senior principal engineer with WTrans will go through those specific modifications and Emmanuel has just reviewed many of them for you. These were substantive changes reducing the retail floor space in order to accommodate increased and above code standards, parking and traffic circulation for the property and to fix existing safety issues on the property. In addition to that, we engaged Joanna Cedar to be the community liaison manager for the project so that we could provide a contact and a face for the neighbors who wanted to be able to communicate with us both through this approval process and through what will hopefully be the development and opening of the project. As a part of her roles, she canvassed every business within a mile radius of the project with the exclusion of the applicants who had requested communication through their legal counsel and introduced herself. This was not a persuasive outreach but instead to make sure that people had a face and a contact number in order to be able to find out more about the project if they wished to. As a part of her outreach, she also met with many folks in the Oakmont community and I believe you received a petition of support for the project from well over 40 folks from Oakmont including a number of letters of support today from folks there that are looking forward to not having to drive to the west side of town in order to be able to access cannabis within Santa Rosa. There were a number of additional developments and on this side, I just want to kind of communicate to you a part of this process with this new team of licensed professionals. We wanted to make sure that we could test this project concept with the city staff professionals and so the civil engineer, our two traffic engineers and our project team sat down and met with the chief building official as well as the engineer and multiple other staff within the city to go through in detail the project and make sure that it was fully viable, not just for an entitlement and concept level review but for when we reach the building permit process and submit our plans. As you can see, there were a number of changes made to the project. I'm not going to go through them in detail because Emmanuel did an excellent job in his staff report in reviewing those changes. I will say that the reduction in the square footage did free up an additional parking spot for the project so the project will now have one spot on site more than it's required to under the code and while not covered in the staff report, it's our intention to make that space available for trail house visitors. No trail house was approved with the 10s parking spot reduction. We hope that this can help alleviate some of the issues associated with that reduction for their operation. Additionally, one small correction, the mere locations will be both where they are currently shown on the plan and then we will also put additional ones on the Foxden building itself. That's to accommodate people coming in and out of the two parking garages, both trail houses, current interior parking garage and then the future Foxden interior parking space and that shouldn't help improve line of sight for vehicles traversing in all directions. With that, I'm going to ask Steve Weinberg to come up and review the specific improvements in how they impact the traffic safety of the project. Thanks. Good evening, members of the council. Steve Weinberger with WTrans of Santa Rosa. WTrans completed the traffic analysis for the project just to highlight and it was already covered in the staff report, the circulation, the change in the access, the reverse of the directions. I just wanted to point out on the image on the lower right, currently with the red images, the existing exit is limited by the, when there's ever a parked vehicle. They're minimum required sight distance for a street of 35 miles an hour like Montgomery Drive is a minimum of 250 feet. So that is not currently the driveway with a parked vehicle does not meet current design standards because it does not allow adequate sight distance. So the change in reversing the direction and exiting on the west side will allow even with a parked vehicle clear 250 feet to a vehicle approaching from the east and then in excess of that to the west and to the west, you just have red curb and a driveway. And with the curvature of Montgomery, it's a much more advantageous situation for all vehicles exiting the site. So right now it does not meet standards. The proposal would meet and exceed standards. Nick already mentioned about the installation of the mirrors to deal with the corners of the back lot for both pedestrians and vehicles. So I want to mention, we did do a vehicle trip generation analysis, although there was no operational analysis needed because the level of traffic is below city standards. We use both IT rates and we did do surveys of two dispensaries in Santa Rosa, one that has a delivery option and the one that does not. Both Santa Rosa, the race we developed for those two Santa Rosa sites were actually lower than ITE, but we use an average of all three to estimate the amount of traffic. So we did not make any deductions for deliveries. So it's our opinion that with the delivery option at the site, the amount of traffic will be less than stated in the report. In terms of parking, simply as Nick mentioned, the city standards are met for parking. Again, it's our opinion that the delivery option as we look at rates for with and without delivery will slightly decrease the parking needed on site. And Nick also mentioned that the additional space that was developed will be assigned to Trailhouse. That's all I have. I'm going to pass it to Musa Vasi from Transpedia who did a review of our work. Thank you, Steve. This is Musa Vasi with Transpedia Consulting, a licensed traffic engineer and a licensed civil engineer in the state of California. In fact, I worked in the past six months closely with the project team and WTrans and I have reviewed 11 iterations or versions of the traffic study and the project plans and I feel comfortable with the proposed plan and it enhances the safety and the operations of the existing project and just short note. Thank you. Thank you, Musa. Since I have 50 seconds left, Council Member Tibbets, I'll just respond to your question or suggestion to speak on the lease parking. Because we're not asking for a parking reduction, we're committed to having our employees not park on site. The most immediate plan that we will be using to implement that is the lease parking that you referenced. So we have, we actually have six spots, four confirmed spots in the lease that you were referencing. We've identified offsite to operationally ensure that our employees have parking available and so they will be available and our employees won't be parking on site. Should those leases not be available in the future, we will find other avenues in order to make sure that our employees do not park on site. And with that, I respectfully request you to support the project and deny the appeal that's before you. Thank you. Thank you. Council, questions on that presentation? Mr. Rogers. Thank you so much for all the work that's been done on this already. Can you talk a little bit about the distance of the parking spots that you've obtained for employees. How far away is that from the actual site? So they're all on Montgomery and within adjacent parcels or one parcel down. So it's all located within the commercial so less than a half mile within walking, a rated walking distance of the property. And is there a level of enforceability that the project commit to, to make sure that the spots are utilized by employees and that employees aren't taking up the additional parking at the actual site? Yeah, we are committing to not having employees park on site while we may utilize different methods in the future to make that happen, such as if, I would say, we improve some bus service in that area and we're able to offer transit passes, encouraging biking to work or making sure that we have offsite parking. All of those options will be used to fulfill that commitment but the commitment is firm and solid that there will not be on-site parking for employees other than the delivery vehicle being used for operation, which is addressed as being actually a path to reducing the parking demand for our operation. How long do you expect the average person who comes in to the facility to stay? So the times differ between different store models. An initial visit by someone signing up for a delivery service that they're looking through could take longer but a typical visit is between 12 and 15 minutes. There's no on-site consumption, there is no availability area for lounging, so it is for a retail facility of this size, you're not gonna find anyone hanging out. It is come, get what you want and leave. Someone on their first visit may take longer than that and then folks that are going for their second or third visit may utilize the delivery service and take no time at all. So one thing to contemplate and I'll let you think it over before we wrap up is whether or not the outdoor parking spots might be appropriate for a 30-minute time limit or a 45-minute time limit as opposed to keep folks from parking there all day but to continue to have some of that flow accessible. So hopefully you'll think about that a little bit. I know one of the quirks of Santa Rosa's ordinance from when it was adopted to where we actually see the cannabis industry in California now was not allowing delivery-only space and requiring that storefront and I think that's part of why we're in this jam that we've been in. If the council were to make a future policy change, do you think it's possible you'd be coming back before us for a change of this project or is the intention to keep it as a retail dispensary with that accessibility? The current intention is to keep it as a retail with the accessibility. It is a commercial general plan designation in a commercial zone area and having a space where folks are able to come and interact with the product is important. With that said, the intent is to encourage people to sign up for the delivery option. The many of the communities and the folks that have already been reached out to, especially in the Oakmont area, very excited about that option but giving them that physical space where they can interact with the products, especially for their first visit, is seen as an important model. With that said, there are no dispensaries on the east side of town. We may learn things through operations that warrant a change should arise but at this point we see it as a benefit and will provide access to currently unserved part of the city. One of the concerns that council had last time was about cars backing out from the inside parking. I understand that there's been a change in sort of that flow so that now individuals will come out face first, correct? Correct. Great, thank you. Mr. Chivitz. Thank you, Mayor. These are some questions for you, Nick. So when you say that you do have the parking spaces, you guys currently have a lease in hand for those parking spaces? Correct. How long is that lease for? Is it month to month a year? For spaces, I believe the initial term is one year and then it converts to month to month. Okay. So we also have two other spaces that are under lease for the life of the lease that we have on the facility at Trailhouse. So the six spaces, then these two came along after we submitted our submission, we have four that are available for a year and two that are available additional. And I'm sorry, the two additional, that's news to me and that's good news but where are those located? Immediately adjacent to the other ones. Okay. One of the concerns, and I actually failed to mention during my next part today, communications, I did have a conversation with Gary Weisacki over the phone over the Thanksgiving holiday who's representing the applicants. And one thing he brought up, I thought was a good point if you're gonna have employees walking to new parking spaces, essentially. We've got the keys to a facility that has a high value product that is also a cash business or probably cash heavy business. What safety measures do you guys have in place to protect that person's safety when they're in transit? Well, the first thing I'll say about a safety measure and a security measure is that the best ones are the ones that aren't known in public. But with that said, the procedures include life security guards, cameras, alarm systems. We've worked very closely with Chief Navarro and previously Captain Navarro on ensuring that these facilities are able to meet these standards and will continue our close relationship with the San Rosa Police Department. Okay. Those are my questions for now, thank you. Ms. Weisacki. I wasn't aware that Gary Weisacki was representing the trail house, but I did speak with him as well. I just thought he was a fan. And a very, like, you know, avid fan. All right, well, I'm curious to know from your traffic engineer what the delta was between the two dispensaries in town, the one that had just delivery and the one that did not in terms of vehicle visits? Just getting that information, because I was wondering that myself. So the, okay, in terms of a peak hour trip rate, the two-size one without the delivery service was, on average, similar to the I.T. rate of 21 trips per 1,000 square feet. The one with the delivery service was about 14, so roughly a third less than the one without delivery. So roughly a third less than the one without delivery service. Thank you. Any other questions, Mr. Sawyer? I just had a question, because I had some questions too about the parking. So we've heard there's a lease from the conditional use permit. What if the lease expires? Does the city have the ability to shut it down? In other words, is the lease contingent upon operation of the business? And just to be clear, you're talking about the off-site space. The off-site space that we're just talking about. Yeah, since those aren't required, they're not attached to the use permit. So it's just a surplus parking that's being provided by the applicant. Does council have the ability to put that as a condition of the use permit? I think the council could consider adding a condition, but we'll have to be careful with the language of that condition. We can work on a proposed language that references acknowledgement and acceptance of the applicant's offer to provide that programmatically. But they're not here tonight for asking for additional parking or off-site covenant for some separate parcel. So, but they're offering this as additional parking that's not required through a lease or a programmatic. And also it was acknowledged through his comments that it would be, that is one opportunity, but these aren't necessarily site-specific. It could be through programmatic measures as well. So we'd wanna recognize that flexibility. So I guess for me to put it into context, I think the interest of the council last time was, landlord tenants, same folks, you guys worked this out. And so we're here today so that wasn't able to be worked out. Having something just said that we have this offering, I don't know how to consider that. If it's, I totally respect Mr. Kaston's and that's what their intent is, but unless there's some assurance for the folks at Trailhouse, that parking just goes away and that's something we consider in going one way or the other. With the applicant's consent, that can be made a condition of the approval. And as Ms. Hartman mentioned, an acknowledgement that the applicant has offered that and that then becomes incorporated into the project description and into the conditions of approval. Great, thank you, that was helpful. And then I did have one question about changing the route. Having talked to some folks and having been in a location, I don't see many places where you first, if you're going eastbound on Montgomery, you're now gonna pass the exit to enter the entrance. Typically it's your first right is gonna be entered to leave and you wouldn't pass the exit. From a traffic perspective, our other locations have other locations done that because that seems somewhat confusing for customers and... Yeah, I think anytime you have an arterial with lots of commercial driveways, you get the gamut of different orientations from one business to the next. In this case, I think the site distance issue sort of dictates the advantage of leaving on the west side. Secondly, if you think about left turns into the site, are not impacting or overlapping with left turns out of the site that making a left into the two-electron lane to go westbound and turning left into the site don't interfere with another whereas now they do. And but again, with an arterial like this, you get all different variations. So I get the intent is for the site, but are there other locations in Santa Rosa that have come to the same solution? I would probably look to city staff if they wanna point out a specific, I can't off the top of my head, I'll give you one. In your studies, has this solution been proposed elsewhere? I'm trying to figure out are there gonna be unintended consequences? Because yes, we've done the site line, but the situation is brought up so you're passing the exit to go on the entrance and is that gonna create some other unanticipated consequences? Well, this is a mitigation we've used before where you could better site distance on the exit on one driveway versus another. So we have used before. Specifically, can I mention one in Santa Rosa? I can't. Okay, fair enough. Any other questions? Go ahead, Mr. Casson. My apologies, one point of clarification. The least term on the four spots is five years, not one year. And also just to raise the question on your last question that we would hope that staff would also respond to that because our understanding is that the current condition in site lines don't meet safety standards and that the other alternative would be to red stripe existing parking on Montgomery and reduce the existing parking supply. Does staff care to respond to that? My interest is just understanding are there gonna be some unintended consequences of coming up with this solution? Good evening, Rob Sprinkle, City Centre of Public Works. Yeah, what we would have to do at this location is remove some of the on-street parking to provide for the adequate site lines if the circulation would remain and we were holding off on doing until this was resolved because we know parking is a big issue at this location. We wanna keep as much parking as possible. As far as the circulation being passed the trail house versus in front of, it depends what direction you're going. If you're turning left into it from the westbound direction, you're gonna be going past the trail house. So to me, I don't know that there is a specific reason why you would need to have an entrance at one side versus the other to have a clockwise over his counterclockwise rotation other than addressing the site distance issue which is a perfect example of why you'd do that. I guess my question isn't what they were asking. Do you know of other Santa Rosa locations where they've come up with a solution for this same site line issue? After the time I had, I don't. So most of the locations that are commercial locations have bi-directional driveways, so it's not an issue. So this is a unique location. Okay, thank you. Mr. Tibbetts, one more question. Thank you, Mayor. This is a question for the traffic planners and I wouldn't expect you to have recorded high traffic volumes of the trail house wondering if in your studies, if you made determinations or observations about when trail houses peak hours were or are, and I'll ask the same of trail house when they speak, but I wanna try to get an idea of the peak flows for different businesses, if possible. From our traffic city, we did not do a 24-hour survey of traffic in and out to determine what the peak of that use is, so. Okay, thanks. Any additional questions? Seeing none, thank you for that. We now have 10 minutes for the appellant presentation. Hello, good evening. My name is Pamela Stevens and I'm the attorney for appellant Kiwi preschool and daycare and other interested party trail house. On both Kiwi and trail houses behalf, I would like to thank you all for the time that you have spent to understand the very many issues that have gone into Kiwi's appeal. The basis for the appeal is that the project proposed by the applicant fails to meet the required findings C, D and E under the zoning code. These findings are C, the design, location, size and operating characteristics of the proposed activity must be compatible with the existing and future land uses in the vicinity. D, the site is physically suitable for the type, density and intensity of the use being proposed. And E, that granting the permit would not cause a nuisance or be injurious to the existing neighboring businesses. Today, you will hear from the owners of Kiwi and trail house as well as from an architect and traffic consultant who have evaluated the applicant's resubmission and will explain how it falls short of addressing the specific concerns previously raised by you when you indicated the applicant needed to present actual solutions to the many problems that you saw with this proposed project back in April. You will hear first from Glenn Fant from trail house. Thank you. Hey guys, my name is Glenn Fant. I'm the owner of the trail house. The business that would share the parcel with the proposed dispensary. So here we are eight months after the last meeting and this project has the same issues. I have many concerns with how the applicant's project will impact my business and based on the new submissions, my concerns have not been addressed. Before I get into the specific issues, I'd like to address the last minute submissions by the applicant. Prior to the April city council meeting and again before today's, the applicant held their completed traffic study and architectural drawings and other changes to the project until 4.30 p.m. yesterday. How am I a concerned business owner who is familiar with the project, let alone the general public supposed to read these submissions and formulate an opinion in less than 24 hours. This is an obvious attempt to prevent the applicant and the public from taking the time to comprehend the appellant and the public from taking the time to comprehend and formulate a reasonable response. I would hope this council does not believe this is the appropriate manner in which responsible business would conduct itself. Traffic, parking, and safety continue to be our main concerns. Nothing in this resubmission provides real solutions to the problems council identified in April. The offsite parking plan is absurd. Reversing the traffic circulation creates as many problems as it fixes. Regrating the parking lot disrupts my business operations and the proposed use will double the number of trips on site. These issues combined with the underdressed environmental concerns in the west side of the parking lot are cause for great concern. I'm a Santa Rosa resident with three businesses that are providing over 50 jobs for the community. I've worked 24 years at these bike shops, which has culminated in the creation of the Trail House an internationally recognized business that's having a positive impact on our community. Why am I standing in this room for the third time defending what we've created from a project that is incomplete and poorly defined? To be clear, this is not about cannabis. This is about safety and incompatibility. This is not a situation I would ever choose to be in and I look forward to today's resolution. In addition, really quick, Gary Waesaki in no way represents us. He's a fan of Trail House and he's definitely helped me out, but he doesn't represent us. Something else, we've had no issues with sight lines. Everybody's talking about sight lines, but we've had no accidents and no incidents at the Trail House. That's not a problem for us. And the reason we did the flow and the direction we did is because the left-hand turn off Montgomery sends cars, if we reverse it, it sends cars directly at our outdoor seating. And that was the reason we all came up with the flow that it has now. Thank you. Hi, I'm Colin Brigette with TJKM Transportation Consultants. We're a well-known transportation engineering firm, worked throughout California and other states. So I was here at the April hearing and the key topic that was relevant to the appeal criteria was that the site is not physically suited to accommodate typical daily parking demand and that the level of parking demand could be incompatible with the adjacent land use. The applicants traffic study in discussing parking focuses on conformance with the city's zoning ordinance requirement. There's no finding in the applicant's study that the supply of parking will be adequate to accommodate typical peak parking demand generated by the dispensary. Based on data collected by I.T.E., the parking demand, typical peak operations at this site, there should be somewhere between 11 and maybe as high as 20 cars parked based on I.T.E. data for similar dispensaries.  So all of these numbers are much higher than the supply of six that we're talking about here. Hi, good evening council members. My name is Mike Schwartz and I'm the architect who designed the trail house with Glen Fant, NorCal Cycling and specialized bicycles. The revised CUP application does not adequately address finding CD and E from the April 9th city council meeting. I have several points that fall into four main categories. I'll go over them now. Accessible path of travel. A code required accessible route has not been provided from the public way to the project area for this application. This was a major concern at the previous city council hearing is still not addressed and is identified by finding C and D. Foxton suggests that a building code exception would remove this requirement and propose that their project does not need pedestrian access. I think this is a misunderstanding. The exception only applies when there is no pedestrian access to the project area. And through review of Foxton CUP application and previous discussions during planning commission and city council hearings, we know that pedestrian traffic is a key component of their business model. It's also important to note that the CUP application is a preliminary process and it's often not feasible to obtain a final code interpretation at this stage of project development. Environmental mitigation. We've identified a possible environmental issue that has not been addressed and is relevant to findings D and E. There are at least two abandoned 2000 gallon underground fuel storage tanks that may be affected by proposed site work. Additionally, there are at least three underground monitoring wells that measure migration of contamination from an adjacent dry cleaning business. Trenching to extend water lines for fire sprinklers to the project area and proposed regrading work could lead to a requirement to remove the underground tanks. I spoke with a hazardous mitigation contractor, an excavation contractor who specializes in underground tank removal and a city fire official about this issue to clarify the requirements. Their unanimous response was that proposed site work would likely necessitate removal of the tanks to comply with state regulations. Mitigation of contaminated soil often requires an extended period of time and may involve many layers of testing and regulatory review to achieve compliance with state and local requirements. Parking. There are unmitigated traffic concerns that are identified by findings C and E. The site has 18 existing parking spaces, 14 belong to trail house, four spaces belong to the project area that now serve 41 daily trips. Fox 10 proposes changes to provide 21 parking spaces, trail house would have 15, Fox 10 would have six. That will serve 338 daily trips and include one accessible space at the garage, which is frequently under parked, one delivery driver space, one security staff space, which leaves three standard parking spaces. They now apparently also have six offsite spaces for staff, which does help. Then there are also inconsistencies in the application. The CUP application was originally made in April of 2018 and has involved multiple operators, architects, and engineers. These changes have contributed to a disorganized set of documents that no longer cohesively describe the project objectives and has become difficult to understand what the applicant's intent really is as it pertains to the project resolution. In short, I can no longer discern what information is relevant, which makes it very difficult to concretely define the applicant's design intent and how they satisfy regulatory requirements. If the application were to be approved, it would be challenging to understand exactly what was approved. I still do not think a clear roadmap has been provided to move this project forward and I'm available for any questions you may have. Thank you. Was that the end of your presentation? I don't know, the time just came up. All right, council, any questions for the appellant? Seeing none, we'll then go to the public hearing. I'll open the public hearing. Do we have some cards for this? Although you don't have to fill out a card for this, I'd appreciate if you would. Makes it a little bit easier to go through these. Okay, first up is Priscilla Bale, followed by Don Winkle. Council members, I'm Priscilla Bale. I live on Santa Enida Court and I'm a neighbor of the proposed facility. For many years, excuse me, I've shopped at the little shopping strip mall on Montgomery and at the Cleaners, Marys, Yogurt Time. This is a very complex intersection. You have mission coming down here into Montgomery, you have Melita Road, you have Summerfield Road, and then you have the Shadowbrook Apartments Road. Meanwhile, you have the gas station with people going in and out, kids and parents going to Yogurt Time, and then people going into Thompson Cleaners and the Trail House. So during rush hour, which starts usually about two o'clock when school gets out to about seven o'clock at night, that intersection is very clogged. And traffic backs up in those turning lanes if you've ever driven there, almost all the way back to the stoplight where McDonald's is. And the same comes true with people coming on Summerfield Road. So to increase traffic with another commercial enterprise in that tiny little lot where Trail House is, I think is creating quite a hazard. Trail House itself has enough spaces barely to accommodate people who eat there and who take their bikes there. And I've seen people parking over near Mary's and coming around. So even adding the six spaces or the four spaces doesn't really solve that problem. And it's very difficult to come out of that parking lot whether at Thompson Cleaners, for example, which is next door, and try to turn left on Montgomery. It's almost impossible when there's heavy traffic. So you end up going right, going around the intersection, going to Howard Park and coming around to make a left turn. So I think adding the extra trips and the extra customers coming to the cannabis facility would create a traffic situation that could actually cause accidents, cause people on bikes to be hit, and could cause pedestrians to be injured. Thank you. Thank you. Don Winkle followed by Mike Schwartz. Hello, council. My name is Don Winkle. First, I'd like to address a couple of what I consider troubling aspects of this entire process. When you consider the staff presentation and the applicants' presentation, the applicant in general is giving quite a bit more time to present its matter. But the most disturbing aspect of this process occurred at the prior council meeting. But it became apparent that the council is prepared to deny the use from that. Mr. Carson just simply walked down the pit, suggested to the staff that the council take it in, take its decision and then table it for a while. So the applicant, excuse me, the appellant clearly doesn't have those advantages. And I think this puts the applicant, the appellant at a disadvantage. And the dismissing Carson, as has been noted here earlier, deliberately placed the appellant, the staff, and the council at a disadvantage, but they're not releasing the WTrans report until yesterday at roughly 430 when they, if you look at the dates of the report, that appears he had it since mid-November. All of that said, the hardest matter is traffic flow in the parking. Parking problems created by additional, created by adding an additional car every three minutes through an already over-impacted parking lot. Any additional traffic-controlled problems created by such cars, competing for five barely dimensionally compliant spots located in a warehouse with a single point of entry and exit. At the prior meeting, the council directed the appellant to not return in the words of council without actual solutions. Well, they're back and the actual solutions are to add four employee parking spots, a quarter mile and two busy intersections away, and reverse the direction of traffic flow. So we've heard that there's some dispute over the leases in general, like where are they? What are the terms that the applicant doesn't appear to actually know what the terms are.  So in other words, if the property is sold, will the lease survive? We don't know. Regardless, the four spots for the employees is not really gonna affect the number of cars per day, so it really doesn't change that much. We've also heard from another engineer that reversing the flow will actually create more problems. Inbound and outbound traffic will cross paths. They're gonna increase in the number of conflicting movements on Montgomery Drive. Inbound traffic, which tends to be faster, will be adjacent to trailhouses seating, where that's a potential safety issue. Finally, the reversal will obstruct the view of the arriving of motorists instead of proposed indoor parking, further exasperating already potential or already problematic situation. So petitions and letters of support are part of this process, and I have a lot of respect for that. However, the fact of the matter is the applicant has failed to produce an actual solution that reduces traffic congestion in the parking lot. And as such, we ask the council to exercise some courage and common sense and deny new approval of the use permit. Thanks. Thank you. Mike Schwartz, followed by Hula Clifton Pope. Hi Mike Schwartz, I actually do have one comment that I wanted to make about the parking garage and how that comes into play. The traffic study indicates that there is bi-directional traffic into and out of the parking garage. When you look at their diagrams, it really doesn't work that way. Only one vehicle at a time could pass in and out of that door. So imagine when you're in a parking lot, which normally has a two-way aisle, the car in front of you is waiting for a space.  So in this case, you can't go around. So you're gonna have all these cars parking whatever 15 cars per hour, whatever it is. But the entire parking lot is shut down. There's no inbound, no outbound traffic while you're waiting for cars to park in the garage. So that's one point, thank you. Thank you. Hula Clifton Pope, followed by Jacob Hansen. Good evening. My name is Hula Clifton Pope. I've been the owner of Kiwi Preschool for the last 30 years. We've educated many thousands of youngsters in our community. At the last hearing in April, I listened intently to the comments from the five members of council about why they could not approve the applicant's application. I remember you expressed specific reservations as to why the dispensary was not a good fit for the location. After reviewing this resubmission, I remained very concerned about location of this dispensary since safety of Kiwi's children is about most of concern to me. I immediately look for a safety or security plan related to this proposed project. There is no tangible plan and the applicant only states in the paperwork that Fox 10 will take all reasonable steps to discourage and correct objectionable conditions that constitute a nuisance. This lack of specifics is especially concerning to me since I recall council member Tibbets requesting more information about security and the safety issues related to robberies at dispensaries. I did not see where any of these specific concerns were addressed in the resubmission. As the dispensary is a cash-only business, we have parents who are rightfully concerned about a lack of concrete and understandable safety and security plan. The applicant has failed to demonstrate the proposed project is compatible with the existing land use, physically suitable for the use being proposed and would not be injurious or detrimental to Kiwi's operation. I would ask on behalf of Kiwi that you grant our appeal. And I did councilman Tibbets do research with the San Rosa Police Department in the last two years, 2017, 2018. I was astonished to find there have been over several hundred calls to service at six of the dispensaries in San Rosa. How many calls to service can Kiwi parents tolerate before leaving our school? These calls to service are typical disturbance, unwanted guests, men down, traffic stop, stolen credit cards, follow-up investigation, drunk driver at the location, traffic stop, domestic disturbance, out with subject, battery just occurred, burglary, hearty theft. These are just some of the calls to service at one of the dispensaries in less than one month. Thank you. Thank you. Jacob Hansen, followed by Craig Lawson. My name is Jacob Hansen. I manage Santa Rosa Insurance Agency at 4000 Montgomery Drive. It's an adjacent building to this proposed location. So access to parking is a big concern as many people have already said. It's already a congested area with lots of parking issues already. But also one thing that I believe it was a staff planner mentioned as far as the state law is that the access to the building of a dispensary must be visible from the street. In the schematics I looked at, it looks like the doorway is behind trail house and therefore not visible from the street. So you'd have to walk around trail house and then walk in the door of Fox Den. So just wanted to point that out. Thank you. Thank you. Craig Lawson, followed by Petty Lawson. Mr. Mayor, members of the council, my name is Craig Lawson and I'm a resident of Oakmont on the east side of Santa Rosa. When I learned of this permit application, I looked through the code requirements approved by five of the six council members here tonight, knowing that the viability of this project in Santa Rosa will ultimately come down to whether or not you meet all those requirements. I would like to highlight the location requirements to an open dispensary. Over concentration, no cannabis retail within 600 feet of any other cannabis retip facility. Check. Setbacks to a K-12 school. Check. Measurement of distance. Check. Visibility of entrance from a public right away. Check. Cannabis is not federally legal, so the property must not have a federally insured bank loan. Check. These are codes that you approved and the property meets every one of those code requirements. Your appointees, the planning commission, did a fantastic job of voting based on the facts and I would urge you to do the same. Thank you. Thank you. Your next speaker is P. D. Lawson, followed by Tiffany Bagala. Mr. Mayor, this is P. D. Lawson and council members. My name is P. D. Lawson and I am a local, small business owner that has a no parking at all and my business is doing very well and I am also a resident of Oakmont. My business is on Montgomery Drive. I drive past the trail house on a minimum and I don't really see the issue with the parking there's always some place for somebody to park out there I have carpal tunnel because of the business that I do I do use the CBD on my hand and it would be amazing for me to be able to stop by there rather than to have a drive all the way to the other side of town to get my medicine or like I do for my customers you could just have it delivered so for me it's a win-win thank you Tiffany Baggala followed by Stephanie Baggala my name is Tiffany Baggala my family and I are the property owners at 40 36 Montgomery Drive I'm a third generation Santa Rosa resident born and raised here we come from a long line of small business owners and we've always been proud to call Santa Rosa our home and help support the local economy and businesses in our community in December 2017 when the City of Santa Rosa became pro-cannibus by unanimous vote of the City Council and outlined all the regulations we realized our building met all the code requirements opening a business in Santa Rosa is extremely challenging yet we believe in our community and we support and want to see the businesses thrive here we have followed all of the regulations outlined by the city we've listened to all of the feedback and all of the requests made by staff and the council after the last council meeting we hired civil engineers and architect we had a third-party traffic consultant review the original traffic study that we had done we reduce the square footage of the dispensary so it would reduce the number of parking spaces we secured off-site parking for employees we have been open and honest and we have kept our integrity throughout this entire process Santa Rosa's mission to treat cannabis like any other business seems to be falling short here if this was any other business looking for a retail conditional use permit in this space it would have been approved already there was an article in the press democrat on November 24th highlighting the 16 to 25% layoffs due to the lack of legal dispensaries to get products in front of consumers we have an opportunity here where the proposed dispensary meets every code requirement constellations have been made to help ease concerns of the council staff and public and this is an opportunity for Santa Rosa to allow a business to open and operate where so many others are being forced to close their doors and move out of the area we hope you are not looking at this as a landlord tenant dispute we are looking for you to vote on the merit of the application my office is currently in the proposed dispensary space I have the pleasure of seeing the trail house team and their customers every day we smile and we wave and when I see a mountain public we hug one another I am confident that we can work together to provide a safe and successful business for our community once the conditional use permit is approved I would like to address Mr. Rogers question about what was posted on Facebook the trail house posted the day that the original traffic study was to be done we're having a hard time making it over the hump day we can help today from 4 to 6 p.m. we're having a very special happy hour our tablets is amazing and everything will be $2 for poor half off of food and the bike shop tires and tubes will be two for the price of one 4 to 6 p.m. only a second post by someone that was on staff dispensary traffic studies today and I think thank you thank you you don't mean thank you Stephanie Baggola followed by gail dank bar hello thank you council members for letting us speak here today my name is Stephanie Baggola and I'm part of the family that owns the property of trail house and the proposed dispensary a Santa Rosa native I moved back here after college not only because our family was here but because it was a place where we wanted to start and grow our careers the last several months have been very challenging to local businesses with restaurants closing each week plan power outages becoming the norm and disrupting workflow and revenue and countless people moving out of California business owners and entrepreneurs are rethinking Santa Rosa as a viable place to do commerce our family who is rooted in the local community our business owners we're literally coaches we sit on nonprofit boards and our members of the PTA and we followed all the proper steps took on all the extra hurdles that have been thrown at us and yet we are we still believe in Santa Rosa we know this can work and hope you will follow the code that was written and deny the appeal so that Santa Rosa small business can again thrive and just one more note to address the cross-fellow traffic and if there's other businesses in the city that have that actually just right across the parking lot we all know Mary's Pizza Shack it's incredibly busy there's one way to drive in and one way to drive out so people have to drive by the exit depending on what direction they're going or drive by the entrance and then right next door that is the movie theater there's east west cafe and there's yogurt time an incredibly busy strip of business that's just right on the other side of the parking lot that is just one example three guys thank you thank you gail link bar followed by Carlos Perrell hi my name is gail dank bar I'm a retired public school teacher and I've lived in a valley for 32 years three mornings a week I walk with my retired friends around Spring Lake and afterwards we take off and go do our errands it's a time that we choose to be on the road kids are in school people are at work there's less traffic I drive by this location all of those mornings in fact I was there today and I could have easily pulled into the parking lot there were plenty of spaces but there's no dispensary yet this is a time that I would choose to go there and I know that other people who are older like I am and retired would also choose this time non peak hours I hope that when you're deciding that you will keep in mind your older voters and how much we would appreciate the convenience of this location thank you thank you Carlos Perrell followed by John McDonald hi my name is Carlos Perez I'm a business owner here in Santa Rosa I have a company called bike monkey our events have generated more than 75,000 transient visits in 15 years we've helped create a nonprofit called King Ridge Foundation where we've raised over three million dollars for at-risk youth and wildfire by our survivors Glenn is on our board of directors and has himself contributed very significantly to families who lost everything that they owned in recent years the success of his business serves far more people than just his own customers I say this because it's important you understand the collateral negative impact that hurting trail house business would have I share the opinion that increasing vehicle traffic a trail house will hurt this important business and we've we've been warning this committee that pretending that it will somehow still be safe enough is irresponsible and you know here we are again I go there with my kids they're age 6 and 10 as do hundreds of other families and I can assure you that my anxiety of getting them into and out of that building is warranted as high as and as high as I can already tolerate well this may sound extreme it happens every day somewhere an inattentive driver accidentally takes the life of a child who is too small to be seen and that building does not make keeping your kids safe if you have more traffic you can't double it I just I don't see how it's worth it to increase any additional risk of the probability of some kind of tragic accident happening because of traffic on the hunch that you're awkward forcefully contrived traffic plans going to work somehow Glenn's a good friend but I'll choose not to take my family to his establishment anymore if I feel it puts us in harm's way these are real not made up decisions that I have to make as a parent and I'm not the only one I want this committee to value our right to a sense of safety when we come to you and ask you not to play engineering games at our expense or experiments on us at the expense of what we have already worked hard to create in the long term Santa Rosa will not establish a welcoming identity for our entrepreneurs like myself and Glenn who see a long-term potential in our ideas act on and build their communities and then get blindsided by changes that make no sense whatsoever we've invested heavily in this community and we're being shown the door thank you for hearing me and my concerned community members I don't think that it's fair for us to be at this point when a traffic study is being cited with data that doesn't correspond to national standards and I think you need to look at that thank you thank you John McDonald followed by Amy McNair members of the council my name is John McDonald I'm a 52 year resident of Santa Rosa and I do remember when this was the city designed for living and I implore upon you to deny this conditional use permit the parcel the building is totally incompatible with the use the parking is out of control I've been to trail house a few times I live near there in Montgomery Village and there's rarely parking right now plus there's very little parking on the street the last thing that I would like to stress is that one of your conditions of your ordinance is that there be a clear site of line to the entrance that does not happen now maybe if you're a policeman driving by you got a half a second to look but this is another reason why this is not compatible and especially with the preschool right near there the last thing is that you folks designed an ordinance it was your first try but you really need to go back if a school is within 600 feet or 601 feet then it's okay that's not right that's not common sense and I would implore upon you to please deny the permit for that reason thank you Amy McNair followed by Andrea Kramer good evening mr. Mayor and members of the City Council my name is Amy McNair I have lived in Santa Rosa most of my life and spent at least the last 30 years living on the east side of Bennett Valley where I've raised all my children and I'm also a grandmother to five ages 11 to 3 I suffer from fibromyalgia a debilitating chronic pain condition I have chosen not to use opioids or other pharmaceuticals to treat my condition as I don't believe they are safe I have found great relief using cannabis and CBD to treat my nerve pain this in turn has given me a better quality of life it is frustrating that I have to drive across town to get my medicine I run my errands in the middle of the day and that's when I would be using the dispensary I would also plan once I figured out what they have to best serve me to have it delivered I drive by the proposed site often and even visit the trailhouse on occasion I've never had trouble finding the parking spot I was there today pulled right in six other spaces I hope you approve this dispensary that we need so much on the east side of Santa Rosa thank you for your consideration and your time thank you Andrea Kramer followed by Deborah Crippen so clearly my name is Andrew Kramer I'm a long time northeast Santa Rosa resident in addition to being a longtime cannabis user one of my favorite things about our side of town is you know it's really got a nice neighborhood feeling there's outdoor activities to do there's lots of you know just nice amenities and businesses I've kind of come to love and it's got a little bit of a quaint feel to it you know the one thing I don't really have anywhere near my home is dispensary and it's pretty frustrating because every single time I like to go to one it really ends up being about a 40 minute round trip all the way across town and it's just far from being convenient and far from being eco-friendly as well so you know I just kind of wonder why in one of the regions of Santa Rosa with the highest senior citizen densities there's no dispensary access we've heard from a few folks that would really like it and I think Joanna went out to Oakmont and she was talking about how there's quite a few people who signed the petition as well citizens of California voted so we could have safe access to cannabis the Santa Rosa City government voted so we could have safe access to cannabis why are there liquor stores bakeries bike shops ice cream shops then everything else in northeast Santa Rosa but not canvas dispensaries and I think really this also does kind of come down to an equality issue and the Fox Den deserves an equal opportunity to show that it can be a great neighbor just like everybody else in front thank you thank you Deborah Crippen followed by Katie Clark I'm Deborah Crippen I'm a business owner on 4331 Montgomery Drive so I go by the trail house and this a lot four times a day every day because I go home for lunch and you know I often see there's plenty of parking sometimes on the weekend I see there's no parking I also my business is in the lakeside village lakeside strip mall there where parking is an issue people figure it out over time and you know it's just a matter of everyone working together I read in the paper the other day that still two-thirds of our cannabis economy is in the black market so that leaves only a third that's being legally done we have no dispensary on this side of town we have few dispensaries of the county compared to our population it seems that this is perfect place and a perfect time for a dispensary on the east side of town I think if this were another business there wouldn't be this conversation going on at all I think a lot of it is around the cannabis issue and you know we've passed the laws the city's adopted ordinances I think it's time to step forward and get our dispensaries where they belong thank you Katie Clark Clark followed by Matt Wolfinger hello I'm Katie Clark and I live less than a half mile from this location I am not I don't smoke cannabis I also don't drink beer so everybody's entitled in my opinion to have a business to have a small business that's what the heart of Santa Rosa is we are not strip malls we have terrible traffic problems but we have them everywhere it's there's no location that I can think of in Santa Rosa that has successful businesses that doesn't have some traffic issues there seems to me no reason why this business cannot coexist with all of the businesses around it small businesses have a very difficult time they need to have the opportunity to prove their model will it work hopefully two or three years from now they will want to buy a nice big building in another location where there's tons of parking but we have to give them the opportunity to succeed or to fail just like all the businesses were given around it we are a town that needs revenue we need the tax revenue cannabis is a very taxed industry I had the joy recently of paying to have my own court repaid because the city does not have the money to do it I got tired of being frustrated so I just paid for it myself give them the opportunity to participate in the city to pay their taxes so everybody here can benefit thank you thank you Matt Wolfinger followed by Kimberly moan hello council members my name is Matt Wolfinger and I'm here to support to speak in support of the appeal I'd like to remind the council of the facts surrounding the parking situation at 40 36 Montgomery Drive the appellants original site parking plan shows a total supply of 22 parking spaces city council deemed this insufficient and asked the applicant to find off-site parking to remedy their concerns the applicant's current plan which we viewed earlier tonight shows 21 spaces this reduction of one parking space is in line with the reduction of retail square footage but it leaves the site in the exact same situation as before this is not an improvement these are the same conditions rejected by this council in April and before I move on I just want to be clear I think it was asked of where the parking is going to be and the applicant has dodged that question I'm going to address that but I would like to hear the actual address if it's the one listed in the W trans study or not to address this issue the applicant proposes for now six off-site parking spaces which W print W trans on page six of their traffic study indicates will be at 43 25 Montgomery Drive 43 25 Montgomery Drive is a small shop with five total parking spaces I've provided you should view a copy of that with an aerial image in the appellants materials this does not seem like a location that has four parking spots to give perhaps the applicant has the address wrong in their proposal if we assume the off-site parking is possibly located at 43 23 Montgomery Drive this view left based on Korea the same aerial image of the parking lot that I showed you shows that this location only has six parking spots and I'm fairly certain that they need more than two if they were to permanently lease four of them perhaps the applicant even means the strip mall that is next to these two locations well I've gone through the city's parcel look up and found that that site has 20,000 plus square footage of retail space to lease which would require 80 or 90 parking spaces it's fairly high and if somebody counted that which I tried to it's difficult because the parking is not very visible they don't appear to have parking as well now you're not allowed to remove parking is my understanding based on city code without either a replacing it with existing supply or b asking the Planning Commission to allow an exemption so I'd be curious to hear if that conversation happened if that is what we're being proposed here off-site parking was one of the major asks of the appellate applicant by city council during the previous meeting this is reasonable as using their own W trans study from November 11 they calculate trail house alone demands more parking spaces 23 and the total number of spaces the park in a parcel will provide under the current plan which is 21 without the off-site parking which I believe is highly questionable as to whether one it exists and two it exists in a place that it can't actually be this new submission changes nothing from the appellate presentation I hope the council sees this that resubmission for what it is having no meaningful solution to the on-site parking concerns after eight months of attempts this project does not meet finding c&d and I asked this council to uphold the appeal thank you Kimberly mullen followed by Shane Bresnian hi there thank you for your time and service my name is Kimberly mullen I'm a longtime Santa Rosa resident and I also remember when Santa Rosa's motto was a city designed for living I oppose this high traffic business operating at that logistically complicated location behind trail house I believe a high traffic high volume business would be detrimental to the environment it puts cyclists and pedestrians in danger and compromises a thriving business which is a popular attraction and the local to edit tourist destination I'm concerned about the traffic flow parking lot safety and how trail house business would be impacted by a high volume high traffic business the layout and functionality of this high traffic business in this location is still like placing a square peg in a round hole regressing the traffic flow will be confusing and dangerous for established trail house patrons and Montgomery Drive drivers unique traffic situation caused increased risk parking lot is barely the parking lot is barely functional for the thriving business as it is removing on street parking to accommodate reverse traffic flow reduces the total number of overall parking spaces so that will still be a concern trail house is one of the few places in Santa Rosa where I enjoy spending my time on money I'm worried that increased traffic and reduced parking will make trail house yet another great place in Santa Rosa that's too difficult to patronize please put design and please put design in our city make it a city for living again please put safety first allow trail house to continue to thrive and do not approve this business at this location please don't move forward with the square peg in a round hole situation that's detrimental to the environment deny this permit thank you shame Brezhneyan followed by Joanna cedar hello city council thanks for having us again third time I'm manager of trail house and run day-to-day operations there we can listen to the experts all night long and look at their maps with nice ruler drawing longs ruler drawn lines to show line of sight but it doesn't matter what works is in place right now and the planning department has already approved it if you have people coming in that side they're going to hit our patio eventually and that's going to be a disaster it makes it dangerous reversing the flow doing what they've done does not make that any safer or any more helpful the other thing I'd like to address is why mr. castan gets to talk to the planning department so much while the meetings are going on and revise what's going on he's had eight months to figure this out and he's still scrambling to do this right is this what's going to take place as we continue on here and if it gets approved is this what I'll have to deal with every day at a business that's thriving we'd like to continue on a trail house and be as successful as we have been and be a pillar in the community but it's becoming harder and harder if this is continued to be allowed so I ask for your vote for trail house tonight thank you thank you Joanna cedar followed by nicholas haig arach evening my name is Joanna cedar I am the community liaison for the just this dispensary project I did have the opportunity to canvas the neighborhood and there were there was one point that the businesses that I spoke to talked about when speaking about the this proposed dispensary project and it wasn't parking it was the increase in business that they would see because people would be drawn to the dispensary although I do understand the concerns about parking a business that would not require a c up could potentially and would likely occupy this site and could not and would not have the conditions and and accommodations remediation accommodations placed upon it this project does meet the criteria set forth in the ordinance and I do urge you to deny the appeal but there's something else I want to say about safety and security and community there are a multitude of studies that show that a cannabis dispensary in a neighborhood because of the enhanced security that is required by the Bureau of cannabis control actually causes a decrease in crime one can look up studies that were put forth by the regional science and urban economics by police quarterly and the RAND Institute and to see that reduction in crime and to see that enhanced security is going to be a boom for the neighborhood in fact I am well aware of a of a dispensary in Sacramento that has operated in since 2009 it's called a therapeutic alternative and it's located directly across the street from a Montessori school and they have operated together for a decade without incident and I think that that really brings me to my last point and that is that I do sincerely believe that these businesses will operate beautifully together this is a community and and I have faith that this body will do the right thing and will deny the appeal and approve the business thank you thank you Nicholas hey arach good evening my name is Nicholas hey Eric I'm a third generation Santa Rosa native and a second advocate and activist while I agree with several commenters that there needs to be a candidate's dispensary on the east side of town I can't think of a worse location I know that this city council supports the idea of creating a more bike friendly city that won't happen without showing your cycling and outdoors community that you are committed to protecting us from cars there have been at least three cyclists killed by cars in Sonoma County this month I'm concerned that the traffic studies conducted for this project so far do not take into account the high amount of cycling traffic that is unique to this particular park there's a constant flow of people and bikes pedestrians dog walkers and other non-vehicular traffic taking place all day long there are unprotected bike lanes on either side of Montgomery Drive that are used by cyclists commuters sport riders families and so on all day many of the people who currently park there are cyclists themselves at trail house as you may know a cyclist drives a car much differently than a non-cyclist does trail house is a unique local business that fosters community and creates a safe successful and healthy gathering space for cyclists runners families and visitors from all over Sonoma County in the world I have deep concerns about this proposal and I asked the city council to show their support for Santa Rosa cycling community by rejecting the proposal once and for all thank you thank you those are all the cards we have you don't have to fill one out if you'd like to address the council on this item would anyone else like to address the council please say if you just state your name through this my name is Merlin Davis and I'd like to thank you guys for your time and efforts trying to understand the plans and wrap your head around the project as it's proposed and I wanted to call a little bit of attention to in the face of this much public opposition you would have expected or wanted the applicant to do a more thorough job of addressing some of the specifics problems and and the future issues with ADA compliance and the difference between ITE studies and how many cars are going to show up and how many parking spaces the ITE studies would recommend you have versus the amount of parking spaces that the zoning requirement requires more specifics about how they plan to deal with the tanks if they have to dig trenches for water lines for fire sprinklers more specifics across the board but they've specifically avoided going into great detail on many of and in fact all of the topics that we've brought up over the last year and I think that's particularly disappointing it's very important that this type of process and the planning commission did a great job of making this a major conditional use permit so that public has an opportunity to express their concerns and bring them forward and the applicant should have addressed them and should have addressed them in much greater detail I understand that it's not necessarily typical to go into great detail about how they're going to meet all of the building requirements ADA and fire and so on but those speak specifically to our issues at the trail house as a business and how they're going to impact our relationship with our customers and how those sites going to be designed it would have been really nice to have had all of those issues addressed before this meeting and the last minute submissions and the vagaries and the piecemeal submissions make it very hard for us to really understand how we're going to be impacted and I don't think that's very fair Vals thank you thank you is there anyone else who'd like to address the council on this item please hi i'm john pittarelli i'm a local business owner in santa rosa i moved here in 1999 to open up my business i now live on the east side of town my house burned down on the north side of town in 2017 so this dispensary will be a lot closer to me and that's kind of important to me because i'm a medical cannabis patient i was in an accident in a vineyard flipped an atv i have two rods and eight screws in my back so i no longer ride a bicycle although i used to love to mountain bike so i can understand the biking issue but they don't take up too many parking spaces partially being a business owner i can choose my own time to go in i choose right around nine o'clock nine thirty so i miss a lot of the traffic i stay late at work i've driven by the site seven o'clock there's parking spaces so it is a convenience to me as a business owner and taxpayer i understand other business owners to give other businesses a chance approve the permit i'd like to see the fox down there thank you thank you anyone else like to address the council please uh sorry for the last minute and get my name down there um but my name is peter the val i'm an architect in the area i'm also an adjunct professor at san rosa junior college and i teach architecture um i'm here in support of trail house because of a few reasons and i felt compelled to kind of get up and talk about it but this really is a communal area and i feel in the short term the parking situation will create a dangerous situation in the parking lot based on the density the parking there is already limited but more so there's a couple of issues that kind of alarm me by the drawings that came up first of all the accessible path to travel from the handicap parking spot proposed by the cannabis dispensary actually goes right in front of the garage door um also it's proposed that it's in and out travel through that garage door but that garage door is not wide enough but more so there's a couple a couple of standard of care issues that i kind of start with the drawings just briefly um my experience i believe that is a 211 sided building which would possibly classify it as a type five the plans classified as a type three i also noticed that the plans that came up tonight are not stamped or signed um they seem a little hasty in my opinion so it kind of makes me wonder what else you guys are going to uncover during the design process when final construction documents are submitted thank you thank you anyone else like to make comments to the council seeing no other movement i'll close the public hearing according to the agenda here the applicant has an opportunity for a three-minute rebuttal would they like to take advantage of that yes thank you mr. mayor um first i just like to share a personal story in 2012 as many of you are aware when i was riding my bike up down fountains grove at brush creek um i was hit by a car and the driver who hit me had run a red light it was a mother uh who ran the red light because her daughter was suffering from a seizure uh and she was distracted and that resulted in me having to go to the hospital there are safety issues everywhere that we are as cyclists this project doesn't increase safety issues it removes an existing one it reduces the existing issues at the property by increasing sight lines fixing an issue that's already been identified as city staff is having to be fixed and if this project doesn't move forward with its solutions that means there will be parking reduced from the public street in the public right away i wouldn't be here representing this project if i didn't believe that the safety for cyclists and pedestrians and children were taken into consideration and i thoroughly encourage you to respect the professional engineers the local team of civil engineers multiple traffic engineers who live and work and operate in this town who have reviewed this project and put their professional stamps of approval and expertise behind it i also want to 100 reject the accusation that we in any way shape or form submitted anything in a piece mail or late fashion as per standard procedures with the city we submitted the w-trans report in august in draft format that gives the staff as a reviewing it time to issue any comments and request any changes we received on november 11th an email response saying that they believe that it was adequate and the final stamped and signed version of the report was submitted with no substantial changes after that this is an accusation that i believe has been designed to just cause more clutter as many of the things i've been mentioned by the appellant have done fundamentally this is a retail project going to a commercial property that is going to serve the people in a neighborhood that have no access to this particular type of use on a side of town that has a lot of people who want it i ask you to take into consideration the petition from residents of oakmont the public comments you've heard here today and your own goal tier 2 goal of supporting this industry and the desperate need that we have for more retail outlets throughout the city if there are any technical questions about the competency of our local licensed professionals they're here to respond to those thank you very much and we request that you reject to this appeal thank you bring it back to council do you have any questions for staff the applicant or appellant miss vice mayor yes i'm during the public testimony somebody mentioned a november 11 study was that conducted by foxden or kiwi or the applicant the final traffic study was dated november 11 so we received a draft or preliminary study that was prepared by w trans and that was submitted in august i believe around the second of august we then provided copies of all the materials that were submitted to the folks at trailhouse so they had those materials at least since august perhaps mid august or so i just wanted to clarify that the study itself was not conducted on november 11 no no no it was the final document that was submitted and it's included in the attachments to the reporter dated 11 mr tibbitts thank you mayor this question is for staff particularly the staff that reviewed the traffic plan with there are 338 new daily visits to this parcel is it is that a common ratio i guess of having from my count seven parking spaces to accommodate that load the parking lot side of rock sprinkling in the city center the parking lot is actually determined through the zoning code so the traffic engineering part we're looking at the traffic engineering study to make sure it's it follows the city zoning code for the parking requirements we have a lot of businesses i could just say in in general we have a lot of businesses that have that or a higher rate for a peak hour or for a daily occurrence that have us the same zoning code requirement for parking okay and as a follow-up you know one of my concerns that's that's popped up through this process is how and i know that the council effectively asked us to reverse engineer um the traffic flow there but something that came up that was of concern to me again was in doing so we'd likely have to reduce on-street parking that currently is exists and made available to these businesses is that did i understand that correctly i think no if it remains how it is currently we would likely remove one potentially two spots along the frontage to make sure the site distance is adequate if the circulation is reversed then that would not be necessary okay all right thanks for clarifying that thank you mayor Mr. Rodgers thank you mr mayor one of my first questions was actually on that exact point about those parking spots that are on the frontage when trail house went through its approval process and ended up getting the parking reduction was the adequacy the adequacy of parking determined by counting those spots as well i can answer that since i issued the trail house zoning clearance it was uh it's a by right use and the parking reduction was also by right so that was a over the over the counter exchange of information to make sure that they could make the findings and the findings are looking at only on-site parking spaces okay so those ones that would potentially need to be eliminated were not considered at that time to count towards trail houses total required parking spaces that is correct um did you also work with trail house on the flow of the traffic coming in and out and specifically we heard from folks at trail house that they had designed the outdoor patio based on the flow of traffic coming in the opposite side for the purpose of the land use clearance if you will we did not discuss and that's not appropriate for land use determination but following land use determination that there was sufficient parking the applicant moves on to building permit plan check and if there's improvements to the site which there were us quite a bit of improvements to the landscaping and parking they work through the building permit process okay in the ordinance there's been some dispute and some of the public comment about the visibility of the the frontage of the dispensary from the public right of way can you address that issue yes so the front door would be visible from most vantage points to the right of the trail house obviously when you're directly in front of the trail house you're not going to see the the front door but it would be visible from vantage points to the west or to the right as you're facing and we have a street view that we can show if we can find the right slide here we go so this view shows so the garage just to the left of the garage door is where the entrance would be so basically from this vantage point to the west on Montgomery you'd be able to see the entrance great thank you Claire if this wasn't a cannabis facility would another retail operation be able to go in there by right or would they have to go through the same conditional use permit process most retail uses would be able to go in by right and they would have the same parking requirement of one space for every 250 square feet of floor area and would there be any level of recourse uh on a different type of retail use there would there still be an appeal process or something that the the business could go through not if it's a retail use that's allowed by right most retail uses are allowed by right in this zoning district the only discretionary review that there would be is if there were exterior modifications to the building design review would be required but that would address the aesthetics of the design of the building okay there was also a comment about the fuel storage tanks under the ground uh to be very candid i don't know what to do with that can staff try to walk through that with the council what that one if we have any information on that to what the implications of that actually are and three how we might proceed good evening members of the council gay bosborne deputy director of development services underground storage tanks unfortunately are part of construction it is fairly typical to run into them as part of modifications to older sites if those are uncovered if they're known the best bet is to avoid if there are installations that need to be performed to provide additional water service to the building which likely is the case in this situation that may be possible but if they are uncovered through excavation then the contractor is required to go through the normal process of disposing of any hazardous material so there is a process with our fire department and through our building permit to account for that if it's found in a field okay do we have any knowledge of whether or not tanks actually do exist there that would need remediation i personally do not um we would have to provide a perform additional research if there are monitoring wells on site those monitoring wells would be looking for something under the ground they would also be an piece of infrastructure that would need to be avoided but once again that's not that uncommon with older properties where they have a history of underground excavations okay and then i think this i think this is a question for the applicant what was brought up specifically about the parking spaces was the address that was specified in the w-trans report can you verify what address you're actually talking about for those parking spaces so that we can take a look at that so the four parking spots that are identified specifically in w-trans reporter it four three two five Montgomery Drive which is about a four-minute walk east of this property the two additional sites are parking spots are that have that we've been able to secure since then are actually closer um the our goal in in an off-site parking um uh condition would be to give us the flexibility to adjust over time um obviously Santa Rosa is moving towards being more transit and bike oriented and we don't want to uh have to always provide x number parking spots so we don't have x number of employees that are out there with that said the lease is for five years so we obviously see the you know medium term length related to that need and so staff i'm going to come back to you there was an insinuation in public comment uh that at that site the accommodation of those four parking spots would not be call it allowed because then it would drop that existing business below their parking requirement uh can you help us to walk through that a little bit so as we've indicated tonight the project meets the required number of parking spaces on site this is just surplus it's something that the applicant is offering in agreement with a private property owner in the vicinity we've not done an analysis of that site to determine and and answer that question specifically okay i'm going to listen a little bit to my colleagues that is a concern that i have is that it was a specific ask from the council to come back with it and i'd like to i need a little bit more information about the adequacy of that response on that uh that front council any additional questions you hit all the ones i was going to speak on um at this point since uh i would like for staff to explain the options that council has before it but i did hear from staff regarding this parking issue is that the applicant could offer that if i heard you correctly madam city attorney yes that's correct the applicant could offer uh that as a condition of approval and that would be then within the council's discretion to accept that and i'd like to go to the applicant are they are you willing to make that offer at this point yeah um if i could defer to bill rose to read it because he ran some draft text by us that is acceptable for us yeah so the draft text is as follows as present this would be a draft condition of approval as presented and volunteered by the applicant the applicant agrees as a condition of project approval to secure and maintain six off-site parking spaces for employees or subject to approval by the director the allowance of equivalent measures go ahead say with a live mic we agree to that condition thank you okay mr. tables did you have a question yeah i did um so one of the concerns that the trail house has is that you can put that in as a requirement for approval but once approved there's no enforcement mechanism is that correct that scenario there'd be no enforcement mechanism yeah that's correct so when it's a required parking space there's a different scenario you heard mentioned tonight it's through a conditional use permit process a covenant would be required and that has a different bearing to it these are not required spaces so that's why that process is not what what we would follow then one thing i would ask of the applicant is that you may want to not answer now talk to your team but would you be amenable to or open to it being a requirement on the conditional use permit so to clarify our understanding of this condition would be that if a complaint were filed against us so similar to any other business that may have gotten approved parking as a part of their plan that they're not utilizing for the public a complaint could be filed against us and with this condition the city can investigate confirm whether or not we were meeting it and revoke our conditional use permit if we were not meeting it so i believe that it has a little bit more force and i am hesitant to contradict mr rose but i'd seek staff to likely concur with me that it would be able to be used to enforce us uh the staff request if we could have a five minute break to discuss the specific we'll give you five minutes thank you thank you are we ready to resume yes rose yeah thank you mr mayor so what i'd like to do is just reiterate the condition i just read um it's true that can be a condition of approval of this use permit if the council pleases however it is a little bit more of a challenging condition in terms of enforcement so the enforcement would be complaint based go through the typical code enforcement process staff would receive that complaint we would evaluate it and what our threshold would be for compliance is the lease essentially because that's what that condition is effectively calling for i mentioned a few moments ago that when we see projects that propose off-site parking for required parking spaces the process is a little bit different it's through a conditional use permit which is before the council tonight so this is the right entitlement to attach this condition to but the difference is is that a covenant runs with that off-site property so a covenant is a promise it says yes these spaces will be available permanently for that intended use and i'm just going to read the section out of the zoning code for the council's reference required off-street parking shall be located on the same parcel as the use is served except with conditional use permit approval parking may be located on a parcel in the vicinity of the parcel served subject to a recorded covenant running with the land recorded by the owner of the parking facility it's the off-site site guaranteeing that the required parking will be maintained exclusively for the use or activity served for the duration of the use or activity so it locks in those spaces just for that use in this case foxed in so is our applicant so we support the condition as read by mr. Rose doing an off-site covenant for non-required parking isn't a part of the code this project is already providing more parking than the code requires we've gone through great lengths we've hired building permit level civil engineers in order to widen the space we've addressed and hopefully contributed to alleviating some of the parking restriction issues that were created by trailhouses parking reduction but there's only so much that a 1500 square foot retail facility can bear and still be a viable project an off-state covenant is a significant inexpensive process that doesn't that we are not able to pursue but we do approve of the condition as read by mr. Rose that we will maintain six off-site parking spots and or other equivalent measures in order to make sure that we don't have to have our employees park on site okay thank you mr. tibetian another question thank you mayor i just wanted to clarify what i just heard mr. rose if you will and thank you for looking that up i'm impressed that you just made that materialize yeah so if i'm understanding this correctly the the covenant or the deed restriction if you will would actually carry in this case with the parcel maintaining this the smog facility or any parcel actually so you could write it in this case that whatever parcel is providing that has to have that covenant and it's for exclusive use that's the primary reason for that so that's correct though help me understand what that would look like the applicant would go to the parcel with that holds the smog shop and say hey will you throw this on your deed yeah it runs with the property it goes on title is what it is so following up on that further you did say though it would be a possibility as part of the conditional use permit to just require foxtend to maintain a lease i mean i'm thinking they've got to always maintain a lease that is equal to or greater than the number of employees on site serving the facility and if that was ever not in compliance trailhouse for example you can see it getting abused could turn turn around call code enforcement and code enforcement could come out and basically verify that or at least investigate it and then determine if it was in violation or not that's correct and that was the first condition that i read and that condition also included language it said or equivalent measures so it could be the lease for these offsite parking spaces on the the smog shop or the other site or another site in the vicinity or some other equivalent measure but that is correct okay thank you okay are there any other questions from council seen then could someone please read what the options are because i see there's four separate options before mr tibbitz entertain a motion the options are to deny the appeal that has the effect of approving the project and the council would adopt the draft resolution that's included with the agenda packet council could amend that by adding findings to the resolution or conditions of approval to the resolution the second option is to uphold the appeal that would have the effect of denying the project we would ask council would state the findings it's relying on to to deny the application and direct staff to come back with a resolution memorializing the denial findings the third option is to continue the item with direction to the applicant or staff to return to the council or to the commission with the new information or additional changes and just as a note if there's a three to three vote either direction that's a lack of an affirmative action that would mean that the action of the planning commission stands great thank you for that with that mr tibbitz you have the for discussion purposes i'll move a resolution of the council of the city of santa rosa denying an appeal and approving a conditional use permit for fox den incorporated to operate a medicinal and adult use cannabis retail dispensary and delivery business within existing building located at 4036 montgomery drive assessors parcel numbers 013-284-012 file number c up 18-076 wait for the reading of the text second we have a motion and a second comments let's start on this side of actually mr soya you're up thank you mayor well ladies positions are always very difficult difficult and appeals are some of the more difficult situations that council members find themselves in what i do um in these situations when we have dueling consultants and dueling experts um i tend to defer to my city experts and i also have some philosophy that is important to that i have to respect as well i'll be voting tonight to deny the appeal and the reason is we have been spending a lot of time changing our our planning department to be whenever possible to be incredibly consistent and to offer fairness and dependability if you jump through the hoops and you receive you get your approvals and you receive your entitlements this applicant has gone through a redesign they've gone through the planning commission traffic engineers fire department building our chief building official the police department community meetings individually meetings with individuals and they have met the requirements of our zoning codes um i feel compelled to honor and respect the process that is in front of us this evening i do have concerns about because it's been mentioned so many times and something that i hope um is ultimately resolved one way or another either by use or that the reality concerns about the parking issue that they do not come to fruition um it is it is it could be a challenging place uh with two i'm with one very successful business and another business that hopes to be but our traffic engineer um has studied it and i know that he is not one that would suggest something that isn't possible i have a great delivery respect for all of our the employees that have touched this project and there have been many so i will again i will be voting to deny the appeal based on the recommendations from our planning commission and that of staff mr. Oliver's thank you thank you mayor um first of all i want to say that um the processes that we've developed and the guidelines rules etc ordinance related to cannabis was a very difficult process a long process uh myself councilmember soyer and councilmember rogers uh being being a part of that and it wasn't easy here from all sides to come up with something uh that would work for everyone but i remember having the discussion about how whatever we did had to as best possible uh be an ordinance that treated the industry the same as any other business there are some regulations obviously that we have to pay attention to but that was a major goal and in this case uh i see the applicant has gone from my perspective above and beyond trying to make some accommodations here uh the the issue related to the first issue related to the use it's clear from my experience that it that it meets the requirements the traffic issues i think have been clearly met uh in the same thing with the issues related to safety those have been addressed as well very clearly um and especially with the input from our own police department related to these types of uses so i will be denying the appeal mr rogers thank you mr mayor so for me the difficulty that i'm finding in deciding how to vote on this is looking at the findings that are required uh specifically finding c i'm having a hard time not saying that the design the location the size and operating characteristics of this new activity would not be compatible with the exit or would be compatible with the existing land use i think i talked about this a lot last time that uh it's not the fault of the applicant that there's an impact to parking that's on the site it is from the existing use from the success of trail house that has made the parking situation there uh and the issue for us to actually look at and my gut tells me that even with the traffic reports and the dueling traffic reports doesn't help that that we wi