I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish Channel to commence translation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish Channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a globe. Once you join the Spanish Channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Pablo, can you please translate that into Spanish for me? Bueno, para los que recién se unen a la reunión, interpretación en vivo, español está disponible y los miembros o personal que deseen escuchar en español pueden unirse al canal. Para unirse, haga clic en el icono de interpretación de la barra de herramientas de Zoom que ahora parece como un globo terráqueo, una vez en un al canal de español se recomienda que apague el audio primario para que solo escuchen la interpretación en el español. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon and welcome to today's City Council meeting. Madam City Clerk, if you could please call the roll. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Schwedhelm. Here. Councilmember Sawyer. Here. Councilmember Rogers. Councilmember McDonald. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show that all councilmembers are present with the exception of councilmember Rogers. Excellent. Thank you so much. We had no closed session today. We have no study sessions. Let's go ahead and move into our staff briefings. Madam City Manager. Good evening, Mayor Rogers and members of council. So our COVID-19 report, so earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced emergency use authorization for Novavax COVID-19. In eight weeks, the sub variant known as BA5 has become the dominant version of the virus in the country. It now makes up more than 75 percent of new cases, pushing up positive tests, hospitalizations and intensive care emissions across the country. Public health officials continue to encourage people to get vaccinated, mask up when possible, monitor their health for signs of COVID infection and continue to be vigilant in prevention of this disease. For more information about the status of COVID in our community, testing locations and obtaining home tests and vaccine information for all ages, go to socoemergency.org. Thank you. Councilor, do we have any questions for the City Manager? Let's see if there's any public comment on the City Manager's COVID-19 response update. Hello, my name is Duane DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. I've spent over 40 years as a respiratory care practitioner in the state of California and also how I'll hold a national license. I'm well aware of the concerns involving deadly respiratory illnesses. One of the things that is a concern, though, is if you overreact to something and then an immunity is built up by the virus rather than the people. In this case, 500 people of Sonoma County have passed away to this virus according to Sonoma County and state data that's been released out of a population of 500,000 people in our county. That's less than a tenth of a percent. So, folks, I'm asking you to lift the lockdown. For two and a half years, people have been locked out of our government, basically, because of our fear about this virus and how it goes. You've got this approach. Well, we'll zoom it. You can get it on the internet. There's a lot of people that are getting shut out of our government right now because of the way all this is being handled. I think it's time to say, like you are today, having these hybrid meetings but allowing every single board and commission at the city to reopen using this same pattern. This is the only way we're going to get our government back so that people can participate. For two and a half years, we've been locked out. It's time to open it back up. Let us be a part of the government that we, the taxpayers, pay for. It's really important, and you folks are kind of missing it because you're so geared into how you work within your silo and you don't see out there on the street the regular people being frustrated that they're not getting the chance to participate, say, if you wanted to go to the board of community services or if you wanted to go to the design review board or if you wanted to deal with anything at the city right now, you're shut out. You don't really get to participate unless you're online somehow and you know how to zoom with these people. So once again, as a concerned respiratory care practitioner with decades and decades of intensive care experience, I'm asking you to unlock our government and allow us to have hybrid meetings every single board and commission allowing the public to participate in person wearing a mask if you feel that's necessary. But if we're vaccinated and we are testing negative, we should be positive in the way we get to participate with our government that has been shutting us out. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. DeWitt. Do we have any other pre-recorded voicemails? We have no pre-recorded voicemail on this item. Okay, let's go on to our city manager and city attorney reports. Who wants to start? Looks like Assistant City Manager Jason Nutt is going to start tonight. Good evening. Thank you very much, Mayor and members of the council. Very excited to report that the city has received the award of excellence for a hard-won victories category for the downtown station area specific plan. The award was provided by the California Chapter of the American Planning Association. We also received an award at the regional level. The downtown station area plan was a grant-funded effort that was adopted in October 2020. The major moves included eliminating parking requirements for the entire planning area, eliminating residential density, and moving to floor area ratio, and expressing maximum flexibility on land use while establishing design guidelines. It has catalyzed new development with over 750 housing units approved or in the pipeline in the 18 months since its adoption. As all of you know who are here, we're helping and watching planning work on this. They did a phenomenal and outstanding job working with the community and council to try to deliver this project and really want to express a very hearty thank you, and job well done to the planning team. Thank you, Mr. Assistant City Manager. Is there more to the City Manager report? How about our city attorney? Good afternoon, Mr. Mayor and council members. I do not have anything to report this afternoon, so thank you. All right, thank you. Well, a huge congratulations to the team. I know how many people worked on the plan, including the public who gave substantial public input on it as well. So it's a well-deserved recognition, and I hope you'll pass that on to the rest of the team as well. Council, any other questions? Dwayne, after council members ask questions, we'll of course have public comment like on every item. Anyone? All right, now you can go, Dwayne. Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt. I'm from Roseland. A portion of Roseland is now considered part of downtown. If you go to Boyd Street, you'll see a street sign that actually says where luxury meets downtown. Right on the corner of Sebastopol Road and Boyd Street. The reason I bring this up is because I tried to participate in the downtown specific plan approach. It was a bit difficult for folks from Roseland because we were looked at kind of a scant. But if you look at a map, you'll see that Roseland from Sebastopol Road in the corner of Dutton Avenue running eastward over in to downtown Santa Rosa is part of your downtown now. I bring this up because in the housing element 2023 to 2031 on page 445, it points out something that's really important that city staff are not really, I guess you'd say, emphasizing but needs to be looked at. Santa Rosa contains one census tract that is within the 75th percentile meeting the criteria to be considered a disadvantaged community by the state of California environmental health hazardous assessment group. That's called Cal and virus screen. You need to keep that in mind. This census tract comprises the area along Sebastopol Road from where it meets the Highway 12 101 interchange at Olive Street continuing westward until Stoning Point Road. And that census tract is called Roseland. And that is the one most disadvantaged area in the entire county of Sonoma, according to the state of California. So I didn't bring that up. I found that and I didn't find it because the city or the staff were pointing out that this is an area that really needs to be dealt with. As a matter of fact, it's kind of afterthought. And so I'm glad that you got the award from the American Planning Association. I've studied a bit of planning myself. One of the things that's really important is you have to actually make sure that your aspirations on your document deal with the realities of what we're facing. So please don't neglect that portion of downtown now, that Roseland census tract, the most disadvantaged one in the entire county of Sonoma in which you are responsible for. And as far as I can see in my lifetime, you folks haven't been helping very much yet. But I believe with Mr. Alvarez now on the city council and some sort of representation, it may begin to occur. Please make sure that you folks do not for his efforts and actually get those city planning aspirations that have come forward to occur, not just be talked about but happen within our lifetime. Thank you for your help. Thank you, Dwayne. Do we have any voicemails? We have no voicemail public comment on this item. All right, let's go on to statements of abstention from council members. Does anybody have to abstain on any items tonight? All right, seeing none, we'll go to mayors and council member reports. Who wants to start? Council member Fleming. Hello, I've got a good news report about Rankin Valley Little League. As far as we know, Rankin Valley Little League has gotten farther than any other team in Santa Rosa history. Currently, they won the first two games, and if they win tonight and Thursday, they'll be on to the championships for the Western Regionals. The last time a team got this far, it was Petaluma. And as far as we know, this is really big news for our 12-year-old baseball players in the North Bay. So I hope we're cheering them all along. Hopefully next week or in two weeks, I'll have news of a championship to report back. Thank you, council member. Council member Sveto. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Just a couple things to report on. On July 14th, I attended our Groundwater Sustainability Agency meeting and of interest for this body is that the other basins are interested in maybe combining some resources. It's interesting that this request is coming out after the fees have been adopted and the other two basins are a little bit more expensive or do a number of parcels there than the Santa Rosa Basin. So our board's emphasis is, yes, we want to participate in this and I just want you to be aware that there is some of those other discussions going on throughout the other two basins to try to join us in some format. So I will keep you apprised of that. And then I was able to attend the Roseland Community Complex visit with Senator McGuire on the 19th, which was a fabulous event. And then on the 21st of July, we had a Continuum of Care membership meeting. This is the general membership meeting that anyone could attend. In of note, we had two presentations done by the YWCA and their services to our community and an update on the Portrait of Sonoma County. So we have these quarterly meetings and I just would extend an invitation to everyone here if you'd like to be updated as to what's going on in the Continuum of Care throughout the Sonoma County. Those are wonderful meetings to attend. And then yesterday I attended along with a couple of my colleagues, Chief Griggin, swearing in ceremony and I really appreciate the city manager for heading that effort because I think it was a wonderful event for the entire community. Thanks. Council Member McDonald. Thank you, Mayor.  We also went over the Cool Cities Block Grant during that meeting and let's see, I was a speaker at the Oakmont Progressive Meeting a couple of weeks ago and I met with the community on an opportunity to work with AG and OpenSpace over in my neck of the woods. And then I also had the opportunity to tour with Chief Westrop, our new fire trucks and some of our fire departments and to see maybe what they need for their facilities as well as meet some of our incredible men and women that are serving in that industry. And then yesterday, along with our colleagues, I went to the swearing in for Chief Griggin and then the promotion of some of our officers as well, which was a really great event and thank you to city manager for her amazing words at the beginning of that I also went to the Roseland ceremony to kick off the library and that great community event was fantastic. I really enjoyed the tacos most of all. So thanks for having that truck out there, Senator McGuire. And last but not least, I went to the Finley Center this morning and was able to see Fleet Feet give a $10,000 check to our scholarship program so that children will have the opportunity to take swimming lessons and that's where my children learn how to swim as well. So just want to do a shout out to them for their contribution to our community. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. I just wanted to also add not only my thanks to our city manager who did an outstanding job. It's not easy to pull off one of these swearing ends. Swearing ends. These events are problematic in getting everything necessary together to make it successful and you did a wonderful job, Marquesia. Especially the first one of this kind, not only the police chief himself but a number of other officers that were advanced to new positions. And I also want to thank Council Member Schwedhelm who not only gave us a great history of Chief Cregan and how he rose to the level of Chief but also some great words of wisdom. So thank you, Tom, for your presentation as well. I think it was well received by everyone and it was a good job, everyone that was involved in this great swearing end. So congratulations. Thank you, Council Member. And I wanted to say the same thing. We're all extremely excited about Chief Cregan. We were very proud to see folks promote yesterday and I did want to give my congratulations to Council Member Schwedhelm as well. I thought that his words for the Chief were particularly heartfelt and I thought did a really good job in that ceremony. Someone to thank you for that. I did want to provide a little bit of context for the Roseland event that you've heard a couple of Council Members report out on in this year's budget. Our legislative delegation really went to bat for a number of our projects. And so the kickoff was a celebration of receiving some of those dollars ultimately in this year's budget. Between our legislators and led by Senator McGuire, we received $6 million for the new fire station in Roseland. We received $5 million for the library in Roseland. We received an additional $5 million for the Caritas Village project in our community. And then we also received about $1.5 million in water conservation projects to help Santa Rosa water with drought programs that we have moving. So really just a thank you to our team, to our delegation for going to the mat for it. And it certainly helps to have the majority leader as your representative. He was certainly able to deliver for us this year on the budget. And those are much needed projects moving forward. I also wanted to report out just a huge congratulations for Mitote being able to finally open. And if you haven't had a chance to go by, it is a community space in Roseland that is just thriving every time I've gone by. Folks are just so excited to be there. And I think it is the type of project that helps to change a community. We welcomed back this year the Snoopy Senior World Ice Hockey Tournament. And I want to say thanks to the Schultz family for continuing to bring that here to Santa Rosa. We have folks traveled through all of North America. As far away as Victoria in Canada, all the way down to Mexico, who are here who are able to participate in that it was an entire, I think 10 days long of hockey from sun up to sun down. And I know the assistant city manager was checking that one out as well. This year's tournament was in honor of a player that they had back in 2018. So the last year they were able to do it. He was 94 years old and played in the tournament and broke the world record for the oldest hockey player. He unfortunately passed away over the last couple of years when they didn't have the tournament. So you might have seen Snoopy with a mustache, a handlebar mustache running around. That was in honor of that player. So I thought that was pretty cool. And then the last one that I'll report out for council is we did do the kickoff for the guaranteed basic income project in collaboration with first five Sonoma County and other city partners. That project is now up and running and they are working on applications and outreach and will continue to keep the council apprised on that one. But that is funding from the American Rescue Plan Act that was allocated specifically for that partnership. And it is moving. Let's go ahead and see if we have any public comment on council member. Excuse me, mayor. Council member Rogers has her hand raised. Thank you. Council member, go ahead. Sorry. I just wanted to congratulate Chief Cregan again. And also I wanted to say that on Saturday I had the pleasure of going to a fundraiser for Athena House which will be closing its doors if they're not able to get funding to keep them open and finding a new location for them. So it was very powerful to hear how Athena House has helped all of the women that were there to speak. And many of us did not have dry eyes but there were definitely stories, life stories that needed to be told. And I wish it could have been told to a broader audience but I wanted to report on that. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much council member. Let's go to public comment on item 10.1 that's council member report outs. Is there anybody who'd like to provide comment? Seeing none, we'll keep moving. We have item 10.2. This is designating the voting delegate and alternate for the league of cities annual conference that will be September 7th through September 9th down in Long Beach. So first let's see council members which council which council members are planning on being at the conference? Council member McDonald, council member Schwedhelm, council member Sawyer. Okay. I myself don't know yet if I'll be able to travel. Some things are still up in the air. So my suggestion would be if council is amenable that council member Schwedhelm being the previous past mayor would be the voting delegate and council member McDonald as the alternate being a newest council member who will be participating in a lot of the welcoming things. I'll throw that out as a motion and see if I have a second from council. A second. Council member? If I could comment. If the typically the vote is on the last day the ninth and I'm flying home it's the grand opening at Caritas and I've got some other personal things so I will not be there on Friday. I'll just be there the first two days. So if the delegation delegate is needed for that Friday I would suggest council member McDonald be the prior. I'll withdraw my motion and turn it around and suggest council member McDonald as the voting delegate and council member Schwedhelm as our alternate. I will still second. Any other you're not going to disappear on us? Well I come home on the ninth as well but I think later in the day do you I don't know exactly what your travel plans are so I should be there for some of the meeting on the ninth if that's agreeable to the rest of council but just to have full disclosure that if there's a really heavy vote we might want to kick it over to council member Sawyer if he's planning on being there the full day. I believe council member Sawyer is also coming back for the event. So let's I'll go ahead and accept the nomination as a delegate if that's okay and then do my best to stick it out till I have to get to the airport that day. Okay. I shouldn't say stick it out. I'm sorry about that. I know what you meant. Let's go ahead and see if there's any public comment on item 10.2. All right seeing none we have a motion we have a second. Madam City Clerk can you please call the vote. Thank you. Council member Schwedhelm. Aye. Council member Sawyer. Aye. Council member Rogers. Aye. Council member McDonald. Aye. Council member Fleming. Aye. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Aye. Mayor Rogers. Aye. That motion passes with seven ayes. Okay council we have two sets of minutes today May 10th and May 11th for our regular and special meetings. Were there any amendments to those minutes? Check with the public to see if anybody had a correction they wanted to offer for the minutes. Seeing none I'll bring it back and we'll show those as adopted as presented if there's no objection. All right. Madam City Manager can you please read the consent calendar? If I may Mr. Mayor before we read the consent calendar I do have some corrections for three of the items on consent calendar and if I may I'll go ahead and read those or identify those revisions. First is there are revisions to item 12.10 which is the ordinance for extension of measure O. There are some revisions to the resolution. These are posted all but one correction. All are posted online they were posted this morning published this morning. So on the resolution on the measure O extension there are some revisions simply to add reference to the method of collection of the tax. By law we do need to identify that we are continuing to the same methods of collection as in the past there's no change to that. And then the other correction that's the only correction in the resolution. And then in the ordinance again on item 12.10 there are some minor corrections to the ordinance but the significant change is in section 2 which concerns the termination date. This is on page 3 of the of the ordinance. Two corrections first is that it's written to extend through March 31st 2020-2043 that should be through 2045. This is an extension the current tax expires in 2025. So this will add 20 years to that date rather than from today's date. Also that section has been revised to eliminate the second phrase that had been in there which had to do with tying it to the operational date operative date of the tax since this is an extension the operative date of the tax was back when it was first adopted in 2004. So those are the two changes on item 12.10. And I will note that the change in the date from 2023 to 2025 that was unfortunately not included in what got posted this morning. So then on item 12.11 this concerns the ballot measure to amend the city charter to reflect the city's district-based election of council members. There are some minor changes to the resolution but the primary change is to the language the ballot language the ballot question that is set forth in section two of the resolution. The changes to more clearly state that the what the measure will do and it will affirm the city's transition from election of our council members by city-wide vote by at large elections to the election of council members by district. The earlier language didn't specifically reference what we were transitioning from so this is to make sure that the voters understand what that what that ballot measure will do. And then finally and I apologize for all of these changes last minute item 12.12 in the resolution there are a couple of just minor changes but two significant changes one is in again the ballot language the ballot question for some reason it once again suggests that this measure will ensure gender and citizenship equality if we could only do that by amendment to our charter that would be wonderful but obviously we can't ensure equality although we would like to and instead what this ballot measure will do is to ensure gender and citizenship neutrality in the language of the charter and then second on page two of the resolution paragraphs eight and nine that concern who can write the arguments for or against the measure presumably for the measure or also writing rebuttal arguments for some reason it didn't get incorporated in this resolution if the council is authorizing the mayor and then the mayor may authorize other council members if he so desires the way it had been written was that the council would authorize by motion but we don't have time between now and the time those need to be written to come back to council for for motions so those are the changes otherwise the other documents that are in items 12 10 12 11 and 12 12 are as they were submitted originally great I'll start and see if there's any questions on those changes from council members and then I'll have the city manager introduce the full consent calendar okay seeing them go ahead great thank you um item 12.1 is a motion authority to issue design build requests for proposals for the hopper avenue corridor fire recovery improvements project 12.2 is a motion contract award public safety building hydronic pipeline replacement 965 and 955 Sonoma Avenue 12.3 resolution professional services agreement calendar associates landscaping architect Inc public outreach and preliminary engineering design services 12.5 is a resolution amendment to the city classification and salary plan modifying the salary range of multiple positions 12.6 a resolution correcting a clerical era in the memorandum of understanding for the city of Santa Rosa's unit 9 police safety management represented by the Santa Rosa police management association 12.7 a resolution adoption of memorandum of understanding unit 17 professional attorneys represented by the Santa Rosa city attorneys association effective july 1 2022 through july excuse me june 30th 2024 an amendment to the fiscal year 2022 2023 adopted budget within general fund 12.8 a resolution approval and adoption of the city salary plan and schedule 12.9 a resolution approval of agreement with axon enterprising to purchase fleet cameras and renewal of contracts for body worn cameras interview room cameras and tasers 12.10 is an ordinance second reading and resolution ballot measures seeking voter approval to amend chapter three dash 26 of the Santa Rosa city code to extend existing quarter sent sale tax adopted by the city voters as measure O at the November 2004 election for an additional 20 years and expanding allowable uses of funding 12.11 resolution placing measure on the November 2022 balance to amend the city charter to reflect the city's district based election of council members 12.12 a resolution placing measure on the November 2022 ballot to amend the city charter to update and modernize the language of the charter and 12.13 is a resolution placing measure placing measure on the November 2022 ballot to amend the city charter to increase council compensation thank you thank you madam city manager all right council before we get into it i'm gonna pull item 12.13 uh sorry go ahead i believe i skipped one 12 for um is a resolution amendment to the city classification and salary plan to reinstate division chief classifications and reclassify three fte battalion chief positions to division chief and the fire department thank you all good yeah council as i was saying i'm gonna pull item 12.13 for a moment let's deal with items 12.1 through 12.12 first so let's see if there's any questions on 12.1 through 12.12 seeing none let's see if there's public comment on 12.1 through 12.12 we'll come back for 12.13 after and do additional public comment hello my name is duane duwit i'm from roseland having so many items under the consent is really difficult for the public to adequately participate and especially just now with the city attorney adding some more language into this whole situation i would like to point out on 12.4 it doesn't tell us if it's going to cost the taxpayers more nowhere as it mentioned in the agenda about what's going to cost 12.10 i'd ask for you to hold it you can bring that back to the 2024 election it doesn't need to be done right now and by hurrying it you might lose not such a good thing 12.11 it's nice that this is going to be coming forward but again i ask you to hold this because the districts have not necessarily been set up fairly district one as an example having to straddle highway 101 and having one person take on the two more disadvantaged areas of the city while the other districts don't have to deal with those heavy burdens then 12.12 this idea about modernizing the language that should have been available to the public to see a couple of weeks ago remember there was a setup where you were going to have the preliminary agendas available for the public and that was based on the settlement of a lawsuit in the past so that the public would be able to see what the discussions are going to be about in plenty of time coming here on the day of a hearing and saying well we're going to do this and this is not in the spirit of the settlement of that lawsuit it actually undercuts it and makes us think you aren't trying to work with the public in the sense of full transparency community involvement public participation all those things you say you adhere to and then last but not least you're saying you're taking 12.13 off does that mean i get to speak on that or do i have to say it now yep i'll give you another opportunity on 12.13 that's very unusual thank you kindly for your time sir ma'am city clerk do you need us to take a short recess yes please thank you yeah for for technical reasons we're going to take a quick recess but then we'll come back and deal with the consent calendar at that point all right let's go and bring ourselves back madam city clerk if you could call the roll thank you mayor councilmember schwedhelm here councilmember soyer here councilmember rogers president councilmember mcdonald here councilmember fleming here vice mayor alvarez president mayor rogers here let the record show that all council members are present all right thanks folks for bearing with us on this one so we left off we just finished public comment for items 12.1 through 12.12 mr vice mayor i'll come to you for a motion thank you mayor i move items 12.1 through 12.9 uh actually through 12.12 and 12.10 11 and 12 with expected amendments by madam city attorney and 12.13 excluded by mayor rogers and way further reading of the text second can i can i confirm the second please there's councilmember mcdonald i do see that uh we have a hand that popped up and i think we have a voicemail on 12.1 through 12.12 so let's go ahead and do those and then come back for the motion hi yeah thank you um it was a little unclear when um you were done with public comment there um my name is kelsey i'm a resident of san rosa and i wanted to make comment on 12.1 or 12.10 i'm i'm not sure how you say it on um adding uh the extension of measure o to the ballot um i think this measure has been really fraught since it was put in place i think there's a lot of confusion about what it is and what it does and i think that the 40 percent 40 percent 20 percent um limitations on where the funding can go allocating to uh fire police and you know quote other violence prevention programs is uh very arbitrary and that in general it has limited our ability to use the funding that is sort of extra with the tax like this um towards programs that are not just an increase in our sort of status quo policing that you know criminalizes poverty and homelessness and substance abuse and the um you know story for years since then has been that there's no money and that there's no way to change this to sort of just put it back on the ballot at this point without any update to you know what the funding um has to go to in terms of like the allocation to fire versus police and and other programs um i think is really harmful and misses an opportunity um i think in general people will vote to spend on fire because they're scared and when you lump things like police in on that um it it just sort of capitalizes on that fear in the wildfire situation that we're in um to perpetuate a sort of of unlimited funding towards punitive programs that um well where we know that there are our better options available to us if we only had the ability to to fund them with something like this so i ask you to reconsider rubber stamping it and putting it on the ballot in this way i someone else noted it doesn't expire yet and it could be reworked um in order to better support uh community-based and evidence-based approaches um thank you thank you we'll go to Allegra followed by michael hi uh this is Allegra thank you for taking my comment i wanted to just say um agree completely with what Kelsey said i think that um measure oh should be changed and it it the way it's written it denies flexibility to the council it just denies flexibility to the public i feel like we've heard many times throughout the course of the past couple years when people have been asking for decreases to funding of straightforward policing and over policing that measure oh is what's tying the hands of the city council so i would like to see you change that that thing that's binding you from um allocating funding in a more reasonable thoughtful upstream way um and and rework this ordinance so that people can really choose but make better choices um with how we spend our money so that we can have more influence when it comes time to have flexible funding and um it just doesn't it's been something that you all have admitted isn't working well so i don't understand why we would just go let's put it on again um i would like to see it changed i would like to see it um separated out frankly between police and fire when we say police and fire all in the same breath those are really two very separate issues in many of our minds and um we should be able to make our funding decisions accordingly so thank you for your time thank you Allegra we'll go to michael did we lose michael can you hear me oh there you are go ahead hi there um i'd like to agree with everything that kelsey and allegra said i would love to see some changes to measure oh in terms of the allocated money that's guaranteed to the police department um i believe that we need we have a lot of you know we have a lot of issues in this community one of those issues is that we have people living on the street and i think that we need to find solutions and i don't even like the word solutions i think we need to find some you know housing we need to find some we need to have some transitional villages and all of those things take money and resources that are currently being used to push the homeless around from place to place i think this is this is a big part of unfortunately what our police do and i don't even know if our police like doing it but what we have is we have basically a situation where people are getting kicked around they get placed into a shelter for maybe like 30 days um and that money unfortunately disappears the person ends up back on the street and we repeat the same cycle over and over again i think that we need to have some long-term solutions to homelessness and that takes like a lot of funding it takes focused funding on permanent supportive housing and other long-term solutions and what we currently do with guaranteeing police money that could be used in other places just doesn't work anymore and we have to acknowledge that um it's been it's you know common knowledge i you know i witnessed a video that was taken by a bystander at um a sweep that was recently done by santa rosa police department behind the living room on a trail behind the living room and you know it it raised a lot of questions in terms of using bulldozers and cranes that smash people's tents there were people who were trying to get their belongings out of the fray and were you know basically denied because you know police were saying we don't even know if you're the person that you say you are this is really yours um i just think that this solution of pushing people around is and not only is it inhumane and it's totally immoral but it also raises you know it could raise liability concerns so um that would be my suggestion is let's take some of the funding that we currently use on srpd and reallocate that toward long-term solutions for homelessness all right thank you michael let's go to melissa yes we can excellent um regarding item 12.10 i really also uh believe that we should rework the language around it i think having a quarter cent sales tax is an excellent way of generating funding for these programs but i really think we need to have a real conversation about what we value as public safety um you know it's not just law enforcement it's homelessness services it's um you know substance abuse programs mental health services um you know violence prevention i'm looking at the ordinance and violence prevention is really like it has a lot of language around gang prevention and and you know gang issues and i just feel like well you know yes that is something that we face is definitely not the most important thing that's happening right now so if we are going to be thoughtful about raising this money and using this money and having it be in effect for the next 20 years we definitely need to kind of rethink our community and what's important and and what we want in terms of public safety and violence prevention so i really suggest that we reword this ordinance um before we put it on the ballot thank you you know you yield the rest of my time thank you melissa sandy did you say we had a voicemail we do thank you i apologize one moment please hi my name is tony garen and this comment is for item 12.5 like i said my name is tony garen i'm the supervising traffic signal tech for the city of santa rosa i was hired in july of 2005 as an electrician a year later i was promoted to traffic signal technicians in march of 2021 i was promoted to supervising traffic signal technician and i oversee the five signal techs all of whom were city electricians prior to promoting to traffic signal tech i share an office with the supervising electrical tech and as mentioned above i am supervising traffic signal technician these two positions of supervising traffic signal technician and the supervising electrical technician are equal in pay and in supervisory level when i am absent he is the supervisor for the traffic signal techs in his absence i am the supervisor of the electricians as you can see the hierarchy is that to start as an electrician and be promoted to traffic signal tech then senior traffic signal tech or senior electrical tech and then supervisor the council item i have been made aware of would give two out of 12 people in our shop a five percent raise and not include the rest of us it also give my colleague that i share an office with a five percent raise which is a clear case of inequity i'm not sure why we as an entire unit were not included we think this is unfair to us as a whole and do not agree with only some of the employees in the electrical shop receiving a raise due to this unfairness if this resolution is to pass we will be filing a grievance on all our rehabs thank you for your time hi my name is jordan bird and i live in district five this is for the agenda item 12.10 referring to the measure oh um so i stand in solidarity with my neighbors who urge the city council to deeply reconsider further militarizing our local law enforcement and carefully consider how we planned to allocate measure oh funding in a way that is creative and humane and invest in our communities the 4040-20 allocation formula was created before we had these massive consistent wildfires and before the murder of andy lopez at the hands of santa rosa police our communities have changed since then and we need we demand that we are invested in not punished for that lack of investment in our community um we we see that preventing violence in our communities is done by providing for our basic needs and keeping families together and building our community up so a little bit of my backstory i have several family members who have experienced deep trauma which has led to addiction and severe mental health issues and these issues have been generational criminalization hurts not only the people that are victims of trauma and the for the different manifestations of that trauma which is again drug use um and it hurts our families so when i have a family member who is being criminalized for those reasons it hurts us because we have to carry the brunt of um the consequences of that we need stable safe housing for our community and consistent access to quality mental health resources um and i just want to let you know that for my community my friends my family when we talk about this stuff and we vote this is the most important issue that will inform who we vote for for city council and for mayor thank you very much that concludes voicemail public comment great thank you so much so madam city manager i'm going to ask about the first public comment that we received with questions about the mo you um mayor rogers what i will tell you is this is actually a union issue that needs to be solved at that level um there was an agreement i believe that was made after negotiations that the there will be a class study for the engineering series that was completed and i want to bring up our hr director as well to make sure i get this right they completed that series identified the individuals who needed the pay whatever the percent was i believe it was five percent the union had an opportunity to actually review that information so if individuals were left out um we would have been notified at the time but there was a meeting confer that was completed so it this actually should be handled uh from a union perspective and the union should have been been contacting us if there was someone that was left out but from my understanding it was reviewed by by both parties i see amy joined us do you have anything to add amy yes thank you mayor rogers members of the city council i'm amy reeve the director of human resources i wanted to point out that we did um the union requested and the city agreed during bargaining to look at the market and survey for specific classifications uh those were listed in the mo you and it became clear that it was necessary to um further study those positions above and below those classifications those in a series that being said there are historical linkages between positions where we have positions that are not in the same series but have made historically the same salary range um we did decide to expand from studying four positions to 19 classifications but we did have to stop somewhere because we are going to embark on a citywide classification and compensation survey and this was to be a very limited kind of isolated look at these positions that were identified uh we have communicated with the union and we do intend to look at all classifications during the upcoming class and comp study that will be happening citywide thank you okay thank you so much council any additional questions council member soyer thank you mayor and this is another question uh but i think although we don't usually make corrections to information that is gathered in either recorded or um on in person but um the allegation that um the andy lope has tragedy was at the hands of the center of the police department is inaccurate um that was actually a sheriff's deputy um and i think that when when that kind of information is left unchallenged uh it could suggest an accuracy so i just want to make sure that it's known um that it was not at the hands of the center was a police department great thank you so much council member all right mr vice mayor let's do a motion thank you mayor i move items 12.1 through 12.12 uh with items 12.10 12.11 and 12.12 additional corrections by attorney um item city attorney and item 12.13 uh pulled at the request of our mayor chris rogers and we further reading of the text second we do have a motion from the vice mayor and a second from council member mcdonald is there any additional conversation all right madame city clerk if you could please call the vote council member schwedhelm hi council member soyer hi council member rogers hi council member mcdonald hi council member phleming yes vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with seven eyes okay council so we have item 12.3 that i pulled off the consent calendar for a couple of reasons uh first and foremost the discussion when we agreed to put this on was obviously sausage making at its finest 12.13 what did i say so 12.13 my apologies um at the end of the council meeting at the end of a long council meeting when we were approving this we did make the shift of moving the implementation date to january 1st 2025 what we did not discuss i wanted to give council an opportunity to weigh in on is whether we would also be moving this from the 2022 ballot to the 2024 ballot uh which gives voters an opportunity to continue to discuss this it sets it for voters to weigh in it also allows us as a city to plan for it allows us to see what the economic reality is at the time that we would implement it and gives us more room for us to have that discussion with the intent of still having it on for a vote uh because this is coming out of charter review we do have to make a decision about how and when to place it so i did talk with the city attorney she did confirm that we can choose to to move it to 2024 since it is not set to kick in until 2025 should we choose to do so and that is correct mr mayor you certainly may do that um you're not able to do that tonight because what we there are several steps that are involved in placing something on the ballot it's unusual to try to place something on the ballot two years from now but we have and i've talked with the city clerk as well we see no prohibition at this point but there are we will need to have council call the election for 2024 before we then move forward with calling the special election that would be consolidated with that uh general election so there are additional steps so you would not be able to do it tonight uh but you could do it uh at a later date so i'm going to go to public comment first on item 12.13 and then i'll bring it back to council for further deliberations to see do you want to approve as presented do you want to make that adjustment or uh how would you like to proceed so mr duwit i believe you are first you're interested in providing comment are we ready and equipped to do that just give me one second perfect one second duane i feel like we should like cut a ribbon for the new overhead it works great go for it all right so my name is duwane duwit i'm from roseland and what i've put up there is a document from 25 years ago at the city council budget hearings where i asked for funding for staff specifically dedicated to city council members and providing office hours for the public to meet with these staff members and council members i've always been supportive of there being a fair rate of compensation for the council members but at this time i would ask you to hold this matter and place it on the 2024 ballot after substantial public involvement in the discussion of what the compensation levels should be i'm a firm believer that it should be across the board all council members paid the same and you should start with minimum wage we've been trying to get $15 an hour as a minimum wage here in the community for a long time i believe you folks could be the ones that start with that $15 an hour everyone getting paid the same we do not vote for the mayor the mayor is appointed by the council members and it's typically a bit of a political process in which the public is actually left out so this is a time where you folks could do a fair approach if you give the mayor more money it's going to be perhaps ripe for abuse people on the council will be jockeying to see who can get what and the person getting the most money might be a person looking into political favoritism so this is something where you've got time you don't have to be in a hurry you can definitely open up these discussions with the public and make this something where the public helps to decide the proper rate of compensation for the level of work i've never actually seen any hours and wage-based situation from any council member this is something people need to see you just heard a member of staff telling you about how they have to negotiate with the city manager and there has to be all of these memorandums of understanding and things of that nature so this is something that the public perhaps also needs to have for its council members why should we just say okay it's a blanket deal that you get to get this amount of money when we don't know how much work you're putting in this is something that really is important i have in the past basically watched council members say endlessly what does staff say and not do any work for themselves this isn't this current council times have changed over the years but it's not something that wouldn't happen again with a council member perhaps just holding a seat and taking the pay it's one of those things where you folks are representing the public let the public into this into this discussion as early as possible as long as possible don't be in a hurry put it off until it's time to go forward for the 20 24 ballot measure thank you for your time on this thank you mr do it we'll go to our hands on zoom we have allen followed by kelsey um we may have lost allen okay let's go to kelsey and if allen comes back we can go to allen next he just came back sorry perfect am i on yep go ahead ah cool thanks hi sorry about that zoom troubles um so yeah i i hope i'm not too late to call in um about the item about measure of funding and increasing that um i am uh steadfastly opposed to any further increases in the police budget and am pretty angry that this has always been tied in directly with fire and other safety services because while um you know more firefighters and more emt's and everything like that has a very direct effect on public safety um the effect of adding more resources to police is far far less clear and there's tons of studies out there showing that increasing funding for police departments um does not have any impact on uh reducing crime and there are numerous studies that show that actually has the reverse effect that as you increase police crime actually increases um and that way better ways to uh decrease crime would be funding other social services and you know things for people to actually do um and you sent out a study um or a survey rather uh to get people's opinions on this and asking how they feel about all these services um and i uh replied to this in the study and said this but i want to say this for everyone to hear i was very offended that you just lumped everything together and didn't give anyone any way to say i want more funding for firefighters i want more funding for emt's i do not want more funding for more police uh no matter what they're doing and it appears that the the scope of what will be allowed to do for all this is mainly harassing homeless people and we have enough of that going on already like they have enough uh money to harass uh people and illegally kick them out of incitements that they want right now so in the future please try and separate these things or you know you could give the public the option to say uh they want these things separate and to say what they actually want because right now the public doesn't have an opportunity to give you a voice on this and say you know what type of services they want so uh thank you thank you alan we'll go to kelsey hi um thanks for taking my comment again my name is kelsey um i'm a san rosa resident and i yeah i wanted to speak about um the compensation for the council that you're talking about um i had followed some of the meetings that this came up multiple times and i know that you know in general um government bodies and and and the individuals who are appointed or elected how much money they make is sort of a a sore topic um for people but i know that one of the issues that um this affects is who is eligible and able to pursue these kinds of careers um or these these types of you know sometimes leaving their own careers to pursue um servicing in something like a city council um if they get elected so if if there isn't enough compensation for people to live on it will affect who will be able to run for those roles and fulfill those roles and it means that we are kind of putting like a uh a wealth limit on you know if if you're independently wealthy somehow or if you're able to work another different job maintain your career all of these things will exclude lower income people um and there's really no need for that it's just budgetarily cannot possibly be a large item compared to the other things i think compensating them fairly for the area um that we're in is is perfectly reasonable and if if we can make it accessible to people of you know more walks of life that is extremely important um so i i think the sooner the better and it's been talked to i think i've heard it talked about for at least a year um or more as an issue and i say um why wait so that's my comment thank you great thank you so much kelsey do we have any other hands all right let's go ahead bring it back council so my my suggestion that i'm throwing out there is particularly when we see inflation as high as it is and it's eating into folks uh own paychecks and there's concern obviously about the ability to deliver services in the in the community if this isn't being implemented until 2025 it makes more sense to me to put it on the 2024 ballot and have an honest discussion about where we're at economically at that time closer to the approval i'll open it up to see if council members have any thoughts on that otherwise we do have a motion that we can put on the table i'll go to councilmember schwedhelm and then councilmember fleming thank you mr mayor i'm definitely supportive of it but the question for staff is are there additional costs because i know we have two items on the ballot and do we get a better deal with register our voters with three and i know it may be too early anticipate what other things may be on the 2024 ballot but what would be the financial notifications of delaying it till 24 i don't have the unfortunately i don't have those numbers with me today and i don't know if the city clerk does i do know that i do understand that they're that having multiple measures on the ballot can reduce the individual cost of each individual ballot measure but i don't know what that savings is and as you say we don't know what else might be on the ballot in 2024 but i also invite the city clerk to weigh in and correct me if i'm wrong no the city clerk is correct each ballot has its own cost but the more that you put on there it does reduce the cost and i do know that the registrar voters office does at the end of the election they estimate those costs between other ballot measures in the city and then give us a final cost for those ballot measures so it is kind of tied to other measures that will be placed on the ballot too for the final cost of those okay thank you yeah my my suspicion council member is that 2024 being a presidential election that there's likely to be a bigger ballot which means the cost would actually be diffused more than in 2022 let's go to council member Fleming and then council member rogers yes so i have a question try and understand the actual mechanics for the process are you saying that we would go ahead and in the next month or two call the 2024 election and vote to place this on that ballot now or that we would kick the can down two more years and put a future council in the same hot spot that we now find ourselves in yeah the the suggestion is that we because we know we will have an election in november of 2024 which is when districts one three five and seven are already up we already know we have to call that election the idea is one we're giving really advanced notice to the registrar of voters that we're going to hold that election but also this council would approve that measure to go on that ballot and so to your point about giving future councils an opportunity to amend if there's a financial if we have a difficult time if there's unforeseen headwinds would this then put them would they have to take this up like essentially pull it or or if they don't pull it was does this automatically end up on the ballot yeah that's correct we would approve it so it would go on the ballot and it would take an action of council to pull it back as they get closer to 2024 okay thank you for the information councilmember rogers um i was just going to say that i am in uh support of waiting um i think it gives us uh since we said we're not going to implement it anyway i think it gives us uh more time and um a better chance to to plan for it to educate more and to make the decision but to let people know why and um listening to one of the public comments maybe even telling people what it is that we do and how often we do it and having um a little bit more transparency i guess around our um our what it is that we do and how often you know all the hours that we put in um and kind of work that out a little bit more thank you councilmember and then i'll i'll also say and i meant to say earlier the other aspect of this to me too is maximizing participation because the 2024 ballot will have a higher voter turnout it just will it's a presidential election which means that more folks in the community will be weighing in on that issue as opposed to doing it in 2022 which is a gubernatorial so i am gonna based on what i've heard councilmember mcdonnell just a clarification are you suggesting that we pull the item um for tonight as opposed to approving it to have it later are we trying to amend it just so i know the logistics of what we need to do on this specific item right you would not be able to change this measure that's on your agenda tonight to place it instead on the 2024 uh ballot we'll have to come back at a later time um and at that point call the election and then uh call a special election for this measure to also be on that same ballot and we will also need to just to clarify again uh we will work with the registrar of voters to ensure that uh we are meeting all the proper steps when we are calling something uh so early um but again both the clerk and i have looked and see no impediment but we have not yet heard back from the registrar of voters as to whether she might have concerns we would work with her in terms of timing as well she might ask that we get through the november election before we come back to call the 2024 but we would have time to do that with this council still seated so and my my suggestion to council is we hold the measure for tonight which then if the registrar came back and had an issue we would still have time to move it to the next available council agenda for approval prior to the deadline for the 2022 if we needed to but if we do go for 2024 it's on a completely different timeline where we wouldn't be subject to that same august august 12th is that correct is the deadline august 12th that is the deadline for for this year's election the deadline will change for 2024 right so we would i think we'll meet that deadline if we bring it in august ninth for i think we'll meet the deadline for 2024 if we bring it this august yes we certainly would and we would you're correct um we would follow up uh in the next day or two uh and if need be we would then place it on to the agenda um i mean for the for the for august for august ninth in fact one option would be for you to continue this item to august ninth we would then not run into any problems in terms of uh it not having been on the prelim agenda and for it not to have you know that would actually ease our process quite a bit to simply continue it to to august ninth to consider the steps that we'll need to do to put it on for 2024 if need be okay council member fleming if you should take uh the city attorney's suggestion that will relieve the concerns that add me raising my hand yep uh council member rogers did you have another comment or is that a legacy hand we'll go to council member soyer i think you know i agree with moving it um to a later date i mean there are a number of questions that come up by the community about does the the responsibilities change for the council members oftentimes when in my experience in the private sector uh when people get um fairly substantial raises depending on what ultimately ends up being the recommended raise um sometimes responsibilities change as well and expectations change as well and um you know what about paid sick days and holiday paid holidays we would that would give us an opportunity to to drill a little further into the into the conversation that we never really did when we when deciding to put this on the ballot so um i'm fully in favor of being able to give more time uh to clarify some of those um questions that other that future councils will have to deal with uh as as they move forward so i'm i'm in favor of the delay okay mr vice mayor you're the only one who hasn't had a chance to weigh in i appreciate that mayor um i am in support of moving the conversation further in regards to the day as well but there were a point a couple points that i want to make on both sides of the argument the first one is momentum that we picked up through charter review being that that was a secondary body that made the recommendation or supported the recommendation and i do understand the voter fatigue especially when we have measure o coming before our constituents in regards to a vote but also in accordance on alignment with measure o it's a trial run should it not pass this time we still have one time again in the future so that that would be a missed opportunity for for council compensation if we were not to present this in front of the voters and it were to fail if we could change the language and the second go around and those are simply points that that i take into account on both sides of the issue but ultimately i am in favor of moving the the issue to the 2024 opposed to the 2022 thank you all right thank you council member so i'm hearing unanimous consent from the council for us to continue this item to august 9th pending information from the registrar of voters and should it be as we think it is able for us to do so change it to 2024's election and bring that back for approval from council i'm looking for nodding heads right okay then let's move on council let's go ahead and check in on our first public comment for non-agenda items matter and we'll do that and then we'll jump into our public hearings here does anybody have comment for non-agenda items mr. DeWitt okay i think it's still on for you that is considered by sonoma county the most disadvantaged census district in the entire county at this time that blue area census district is also an opportunity zone by decree of the city of santa rosa and here i have that page from the housing element pointing out that the california office for environmental health has pointed out that this entire census district is also disadvantaged due to pollution earlier i had pointed out that 25 years ago in budget hearings was discussing how to help roseland also and i asked you folks to have a copy of this document at that time we had asked for funding from santa rosa which had not created a county island at that time well actually it had just created it and we asked for funding to facilitate a better rosland redevelopment task force with the county collaboration between city and county and staff state agencies in balance with local neighbor groups and residents so that's 25 years ago and people have been talking about this for a long time and yet when i hear you folks invoke roseland and talk about our difficulties you don't seem to recognize that roseland's up here not down in the belview district where just last week some people were standing there and were quite proud that you were going to bring bring some funding from the state to the belview district the people of roseland have been the ones who've been disadvantaged and overburdened underserved and bearing the brunt of deliberate governmental decisions that have been going on since the southwest area plan which was put together 30 full years ago it was during that time that myself and other rosland residents began to push forward and say look can you folks work with us to get some positive things going invoking that you're going to get funding to build on green fields down in belview district does nothing to help the brown fields along the contaminated sabastopol road area 264 acres that was a previous rosland redevelopment project area because it was a state superfund site also since 1984 so folks all we're asking you to do is to pull back and work with roseland there's a national brown fields conference coming up next month and i've been told that no city employee is going i'm going to pay the way for a city employee to go i'll go to that conference and i'll pay for a city to help roseland thank you for your time sandy do we have any prerecorded voicemails for non-agenda items we have no voicemail prerecorded voicemail on this item great we'll keep moving them we'll go to item 15.1 our first public hearing of the night thank you mayor council members item 15.1 is a public hearing Santa Rosa fire department annual weed abatement program and either Scott Westrop or paul loanthol will be giving the presentation i believe good evening mayor rogers members of the council my name is paul loanthol division chief fire marshal with the fire department here for this year's annual fire department weed abatement program public hearing this will ultimately result in us allowing the city to move forward with providing unpaid fees as a result of the weed abatement program to the county as a lean next slide so quick big history the fire department the fire department's fire prevention bureau coordinates the annual weed abatement program throughout the city this is for parcels within the wildland of an interface which make up approximately 30 of our city as well as all parcels that are vacant or undeveloped and every other parcel in the city that has more than a half an acre of undeveloped land so the intention of the weed abatement program is to enforce those properties that fall in those categories to comply with our city ordinance which ultimately requires them to cut their weeds down to for instance in height this takes place upon the declaration of fire season which is declared by the fire chief locally within the city next slide so after the declaration of fire season the inspections take place across the entire city we focus on priority areas which include our wildland urban interface our burn scars and then move across the city we complete roughly 11 to 13 000 inspections annually to ensure compliance with the program next slide so if a property is inspected and is not in compliance they will receive a notice from our department that outlines the needs and they receive a second inspection from us we're referred to it as a reinspection so the reinspection occur the same way that the initial inspections with highest priority to the lowest priority across the city again moving from the wildland interface to burn scar and across the city next slide ultimately if a property is found to remain out of compliance we are authorized to conduct the abatement of the program sorry of the property through our program and the cost associated with that abatement as well as the non-compliant inspections are then charged back to the parcel owner next slide so the intention of this public hearing is to allow the community opportunity to voice any objections or concerns related to moving the leans forward but is our recommendation that the council by resolution ratify and confirm the itemized report of the fire department of the cost of the weed and rudder breed and rubbish abatement as provided by the sections identified under city code that completes the presentation happy to answer any questions before we move to public comment thank you so much Mr. Lowenthal any questions from council members all right let's see if there's any comment from the public I'll go ahead and open our public hearing anyone is able to speak on this item I see no hands so I'll close the public hearing and bring it back council member Fleming would you like me to put a motion on the floor prior to making my comments okay I'll move a resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa confirming the itemized report of the Santa Rosa fire department of the cost of removing weeds and or rubbish from upon or in front of certain lots or parcels of land within the city of Santa Rosa and the reason why I'll be supporting this enthusiastically while it might not draw a lot of comment or you know notice is that our city manager is fond of saying it's the little things and what I hear time and time again from residents is that they are fearful of unabated weeds and they're willing to help their neighbors out but there are sometimes our property owners who are less than diligent and they're frankly tired of saying rubbish and other blight in our community so I think our staff are putting this forward and I urge our neighbors and friends to get out there and help each other where they can second all right we have a motion from council member Fleming and a second from council member Sawyer any additional comments all right madam city clerk please call the vote thank you mayor council member hi council member Sawyer hi council member rogers hi council member mcdonald hi council member Fleming hi vice mayor alvarez hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with seven eyes okay thank you so much let's go to item 15.2 thank you mayor second public hearing is an ordinance introduction military equipment ordinance and policy pursuant to ab 481 uh john cregan our new chief of police and dan marinsek captain will be making the presentation thank you mayor rogers and council members i'm going to start all this presentation this is a very important issue to the santa rosa police department and we have captain dan marinsek who serves as our tactical commander for the police department has spent years working with our SWAT team and really is our subject matter expert with some of the equipment that we have how we deploy that equipment and the policies so captain marinsek is going to make the presentation and then we'll both be here for a question and answer from the community and from our council den so i'll i'll turn it over to captain dan marinsek thanks chief uh good evening mayor members of the council uh again my name is dan marinsek i'm a captain the santa rosa police department now i'm going to give just a uh start with the background of what ab or assembly bill 41 is and what some of the things that the police department has done to comply with it and sort of look at some forward future things that we can do as well so i can get the next side please okay so short background uh last year assembly bill 41 was signed into law by the governor governor nuesome and it was codified in our government codes and what this really looks at it looks at what's deemed military equipment and with that the funding the acquisition and how that equipment is used by police departments or law enforcement agencies throughout the state really the overriding goals of this it's to help with the transparency or help with transparency look at accountability oversight and also how we acquire this and use this equipment in the future and it was really put in place to provide the safeguards to the public protect their welfare safety civil rights and liberties next slide please so these are some of the requirements that assembly bill 41 put in place so the first it talks about we had to post a draft policy and equipment inventory and we need to put that online within 30 days prior to public meeting or the meeting we're having today so i'll put the link at the end of the slide but those items as well as our ordinance and some additional information we provided are posted on our website the second thing it requires us to seek government approval or seek government body approval from the city council of our policy as well as the ordinance that's what we're here for tonight to have this discussion this public hearing to hopefully answer any questions or concerns surrounding this but i think it's important to note that it doesn't really just end there this is something that's ongoing and it's going to continue so every year and subsequent or subsequent year after this policy hopefully is approved we need to provide an annual report and that annual report is going to really spell out a few key things related to all this equipment the military equipment this report's going to detail how we use this equipment what the maintenance use and cost are and that's going to include not just the cost of that equipment but the cost of our training time in order to use this equipment how much of this equipment we possess that's going to look at the eternal audits that we have and then it's also going to give the opportunity for community input and really just to address any questions on the use of that or any complaints that community members might have regarding this equipment part of this law it specifies that we will hold at least a minimum of one community meeting within 30 days of publishing our annual report which i said like we're going to do yearly and then with that report we need to be able to identify really the future items that fall under this military equipment that we plan on purchasing we need to put that information in our report and provide it to you the city council for approval in the future next slide please so i talked a little bit about what we need to do with the military equipment but what this law does is identifies 15 categories of equipment that fall under the law and i think one of the things that distinguish that distinction is it talks about military equipment but that is really just a name so items don't need to be from the military in order to be considered military equipment it is just really items that are identified in the law in the law as military equipment these 15 categories of items that they have so at the Santa Rosa police department we have items that fall under eight of those categories and i think just another thing to kind of preface before the start of the rest of this presentation is that these are items that we have possessed for several years sometimes even longer they've already really been in our possession for all this time you'll see as i go through this slide that there is two things that we do not currently have in our inventory that we are looking to purchase in the future one of those is a new bongal command vehicle and an interior drone and i'll discuss that a little bit in the future slides next slide please so this is a breakdown of the categories of equipment that we have at the Santa Rosa police department i'm going to touch on a little bit more detail but you can see these are the eight categories projectile launchers flashbang grenades tear gas and pepper balls command and control vehicles a long range acoustic device specialized firearms and ammunition of less than 50 caliber armor personnel carriers or armor rescue vehicle battering ram slugs breaching apparatuses that are explosive in nature and unmanned aerial or ground vehicles next slide please so i'm going to give a a quick background on the first one which are projectile launchers and what these are these are devices they allow officers to use chemical agents for kinetic energy projectiles and i think the chemical agents we all have a kind of basic of an understanding what chemical agents are but what kinetic energy projectiles are we often kind of refer to them as as sponge rounds um their devices that we use or their munitions that we use as a less lethal option so these are a less lethal option that allows officers to use them at a greater distance and there's a lot of benefits to have a device that you can use at a greater distance because what it really does is it provides us with an alternative option from using a higher level of force so one of the things that we talk about often in the police department is the concept of de-escalation and there's really a few just basic tenets or core principles when you look at what de-escalation is and how we can really implement that in the police department and it's really looking at if we can give officers distance and cover in time when we deal with some of these critical incidents the amount of force that we use can be less and so by having some of these options at our disposal or tools at our disposal where we can have a greater distance where we don't necessarily have to engage somebody at a closer range it gives us options and it lets us slow down the incident hopefully using communication or a less or lower level use of force so talking about these projectile launchers we have really one item in our inventory that we consider projectile launcher and that's our 40 millimeter leslie the launchers i'm sure what a photo looks like on the next slide but one of the things i also want to just take the time to note is when we started to connect our inventory and preparation for this assembly bill 41 presentation is we not only looked at what we had but we really looked at some of the items or equipment in an inventory on the have do we actually need them and so through going through this process of inventorying or auditing thing our item we actually identified two separate leslie's full device platforms that we had that we did not need in our inventory just based off of this new technology of a 40 millimeter leslie the launcher and just really looking at how we use these items with force is something we really need to carry forward in the future next slide please so this is a photograph of what a 40 millimeter launcher looks like we have 73 of these launchers in our inventory and then when we look at how often we use these and i think something you'll see through really all of these items that fall under assembly bill 41 is these are items that we try not to use or we rarely use right they're very infrequent and we actually use them but they're used during these critical incidents where the the propensity for having to use a higher level of force is there and we use these to really just resolve these incidents with the lowest level force that we possibly can so when we look at some of the numbers for how often we've used this 40 millimeter launcher in the year 2022 this year um year to date we've currently used it three times last year we use this device one time next slide please that's a brief background on what the 40 millimeter launchers do or the projectile launch platforms so the next thing that we have that falls under assembly bill 41 is our chemical munitions and diversionary devices this is a one category and assembly bill 41 it sort of bifurcates into two separate categories flashbangs and tear gas or what we have most in our inventory CS gas so flashbangs there are distraction advice they're used only by our SWAT team and they're used during high risk situations so when we look at high risk arrest warrants for people wanted for violent crimes with long lengthy criminal histories things that would rise to the level where a SWAT team would need to be used to affect that arrest or safely contain that incident or take somebody into custody those are possible situations that we would use flashbangs along with flashbangs the SWAT team also uses chemical agents and they use those during those same high level types of critical incidents where they need to specialize tools to help safely and effectively resolve incidents some of the things they can use chemical agents for to extract subjects from a fixed location denies an area to a suspect whether it's in a residence or a vehicle or some other location or safely detain a suspect who poses a high risk of violence and then in addition to our SWAT team we also have our mobile fuel force team that also has access to chemical agents and they're used those in riotous situations so this category in AB 41 again it includes CS gas and flashbangs and then something to note that if you can go to the next slide there's going to be some just photos of what some of these devices look like that we have here's a look at some of the things we have we currently have 13 separate chemical agent munitions that are in our inventory as well as two flashbangs and those are detailed more in the attached inventory sheets that we attached with our presentation and then something else to note like I talked about when we had initially gone through our inventory in our audit of our equipment we really looked at what is it that we have in our inventory what is it that we can dispose of what is that we no longer need so we went through some of our items and there were 12 items or chemical agents that we determined that we could actually purge from our inventory which we purged and looking at our incidents for this year again just like I talked about with the projectile launchers or the 40 millimeter leslie the launchers these are items that we use infrequently they're really used during those critical incidents when our SWAT team our mobile fuel force team those incidents that they have the propensity for unfortunately a higher level of force to be used and they use this in lieu of using that higher level force so just for some quick statistics in 2022 we had one incident where we deployed chemical agent munitions and then last year in 2021 we did not have any incidents next slide please command and control vehicles all these really are these are just a big vehicle where we have radio communication and it really allows us to set up a mobile field of operations where we can help really just facilitate the units command and control of what we have in the field so these are used during special events critical and non-critical incidents natural disasters and sort of the basis behind this is by having a mobile command vehicles and dispatching near that location it really allows for better decision-making and it does this is because having those resources in that communication at one center focal point as close to the incident that it occurs it really allows for more organization which allows for more communication which creates better decision-making under this category we have one mobile command vehicle and when I talked to the beginning of the presentation about one of the things that we do not currently have in our inventory we're asking or attempting to purchase a separate mobile command vehicle this year the one that we currently have is 20 years old and has exceeded its lifespan we can go to the next slide please this is a photo of the mobile command vehicle that we currently have next slide please the long-range acoustic device so this is a communication tool and really it's its primary purpose for us is we use it to relay critical information during a variety or a wide variety of incidents so you can see on the slide things such as natural disasters evacuations protests hybrid search warrants arrest warrants hostage barricades situations search and rescue we have a separate and distinct policy dealing with the long-range acoustic device which spells out those uses and the approval that that goes into using those or using this device and this is something that we looked at community feedback in the past we actually presented to the public safety subcommittee about a year and a half ago over this and this is advice where we heard some community input there was a concern prior to us implementing this overdue to the warning tone on the long-range acoustic device and what that is is the warning tone is a high-pitched noise that the long-range acoustic device can emit and so we listened to really the community input of there were some concerns with that we listened to some of the council members on the public safety subcommittee regarding the concerns and we disabled that option from our device as well as put in the policy the not allowing that to ever be used under any circumstances whatsoever. Next slide please. This is a photograph of what a long-range acoustic device looks like and then in addition to that you'll see at the end of the slide there's a wing to some of our policies we've also posted a video on our website giving a short demonstration to really show the benefits of how much more stronger the communication is using the long-range acoustic device and how much more effective it is than some of our other devices that we've had in the police department whether it's a public address or a vehicle radio that we use so this is definitely something that we notice that we had a need for we notice that our ability to communicate effectively with the public over long distances during certain events was something that needs to be enhanced and improved and after extensive research this long-range acoustic device was tested with other devices and it was really the best option that we found and it's been more than effective. Next slide please. Specialized firearms and ammunition so this is really it's firearms ammunition that that is outside of what we would standard issue to an officer so things like such as handguns standard issue rifles those are not things that would fall under this but these are things that are used by our special weapons and tactics team officers who have really distinct a separate training additional training as to what an average patrol officer would undergo and so we have a couple of different specialized firearms and ammunition I put in here a 556 millimeter and a 30 caliber what those are those are two separate types of rifles oftentimes you can hear a 556 millimeter rifle refer to as an AR-15 or an M4 rifle and then 308 caliber is what our SWAT snipers use so these are both rifles used by our SWAT team our tactics team and really the enhanced benefit that we get out of this is it allows for more precision and accuracy than a handgun would and it also allows officers in the unfortunate that they need to use this to engage at longer distances and this is important you know because obviously the sooner or the more quickly an officer can engage a possible suspect during a violent encounter such as an active shooter the more quickly they can end that threat and they can really help safeguard the lives of those around them or the lives of the community members around them and they also put in here one more thing that we have is launching cartridges and what those are is that's not necessarily specialized firearm or ammunition what that is is an attachment that we can put onto our shotguns that allow us to deploy chemical munitions at a greater distance next slide please this is a photograph of a couple of the rifles that we possess so the top one is our 556 millimeter rifle and the bottom one is our 308 rifle again our inventory for all of these are um detailed in the report that we attached we also the photo is not listed here we also possess two what we call mp5 subcompact rifles and those are just used for training purposes we do not actually deploy those next slide please armored rescue vehicle so an armored rescue vehicle it's just it's used to provide ballistic protection right protection for the community protection for officers and it's during those those really those critical incidents right whether it's an active shooter a barricaded subject a hostage rescue situation things of that nature it can be used as a rescue vehicle so in the event that an officer needs to conduct a rescue of someone they can use that vehicle to provide them cover in order to get them into a safe position in order to effectively or safely rescue that person and pull them to position a safety and provide them that equate we do not possess an armored rescue vehicle but we have access to one to the snowman county sheriff's office which we use through a mou and then just something to note with the armored rescue vehicle that we used is this is not a vehicle from the military it's not a tracked vehicle what it is is it's a vehicle that's built on a civilian chassis so it's actually built on a four f550 chassis and what it is is it's just an armored vehicle built on that on that chassis so it is not from the military next slide please this is a photograph of what the armored rescue vehicle that we use through the snowman county sheriff's office looks like it is a lancobare cat next slide breaching out harasses so this is another category that falls under assembly bill 41 and what it is is it's any breaching tools that we have that are explosive in nature this does not include kind of what you you often see the battering rams or the handheld battering rams but it's um it's other devices we possess one thing within the police department if you can go to the next slide i'll explain in a little bit detail we possess we're called shotgun breaching rounds and unfortunately there's times these are something used solely by our special weapons and tactics team there are times when if a breach or an entry into a locked residence needs to be done quickly the battering ram might not be the most effective or the most appropriate tool for that situation so what these rounds were designed for is they were designed to be used in a breach and shotgun placed up next to a locked door on the lock and then it allows the lock to be shot out and it allows access and entry to be made at a more quick or a more quicker manner um this is the only item that we possess um that falls under this category next slide uh the last category unmanned aerial ground systems i talked a little bit about um some of the items we're planning to purchase uh one of them being a mobile command vehicle the other one falls under this category it's a interior drone looking to purchase but what the unmanned aerial ground systems are right it's drones and robots really is what they're referred to as and they are it's a tool it's a tool that we use and we get a benefit from it not just in critical incidents but in things such as missing persons crime scene investigations documenting crime scenes documenting traffic collisions and it just allows us to view areas from locations from places that we wouldn't normally be able to see um so there's obviously a benefit to us and the benefits of the community um for their safety for this um obviously it helps enhance our investigations first and foremost when we're using them for things such as criminal investigations or crime scene documentation um or searching for missing for missing persons but in the event that they're used by the tactical teams if a tactical team can see what the situation is or what is going on before they actually go in there they can plan for different contingencies and they can plan for ways to use a lower level amount of force right it's it's a lot easier to plan for how are you going to deal with um somebody who's armed inside a residence with with a gun or in a backyard of residence with a gun if you can see that and you can coordinate that real-time information with the tactical team then if they just walk right into it um so again when I talk about de-escalation and looking at how distance and cover and time really helps give us options um gives us options to to help de-escalate the situation drones and robots these are two things that we we really use um to in order to aid us and help do that and like I said one of the things that we're looking at purchasing is an interior drone so one of the things we've noticed with our drones is all of our drones are exterior which means that we fly them outside we don't actually have a drone that is rated for uh to be able to use in the interior so there's some limitations with those exterior drones trying to use them inside just in terms of being able to fly them and and uh and look at you know documenting crime scenes you're looking at the area um so an interior drone would really aid us in doing that and really allow us to add that that vital tool um to our officers to help aid in the community their safety as well as help with looking at crime scenes and criminal investigations next slide please here's some photos of some of the drones that we possess so um if you look at the bottom one that's the interior drone that we're we're looking at purchasing a top one is is one of the drones that we have exterior drones that we have that we use and then our one robot that we possess um on our special weapons and tactics team the robotex avatar to is in the top right hand corner uh next slide please so this is a link that we have um all of our policies the ordinance uh the inventory which details the numbers of each assembly bill 41 item that we have as well as their purchase price the budget that they come out of um and as well as some additional documentation it's all listed um at this link and then in addition to that we've created an email address ab41 at srcity.org so anybody with some issues or concerns or who just like some more information regarding the military equipment policy or really anything that we can do to either answer look at concerns um take people's input or feedback they can provide that address and we're more than happy to really collaborate with our community about how we can make this all successful moving forward next slide please so that really is just a really brief rundown um on some of the equipment that we possess again um for more information it's it's spelled out each piece of those equipment each piece of equipment is spelled out in our policy um along with some things the capability the usage the training that goes into that um again and as well as the inventory so each piece is spelled out in our policy so it's all attached to this presentation it's on that link so somebody who wants more information can access it um through those routes um and I'm really looking at going forward um if approved if the policy and the ordinance are approved we'll continue to have access to these resources um that we had access to prior to 41 and we'll continue to use those to help provide those effective tools um to help safeguard the safety of our citizens of our community and as well as the officers responding to these calls um in addition we'll be purchasing a new mobile command vehicle and an indoor drone to assist us in those critical incidents um as well as crime scene investigations and going forward we will track the usage of the items and we'll prepare that annual report detailing um what we used why we used it uh you know in addition to the ongoing costs associated with it and then have community meetings um related to that report and looking at any issues or concerns that community numbers have and then just the important thing to kind of stress here is that these tools again they were items that we had in possession prior to 41 and they really just they give us those options that we need to safely resolve um really these violent and volatile incidents um and it's really to maintain the safety of our community you know I think we look at um some of the increases in violent crimes you've seen over the years um you know active shooters there was 61 active shooters reported by the FBI um in 2021 and again these are infrequent events and you know you look at an active shooter and it's something I hope I never have to see or deal with in my career but that doesn't mean we can't be prepared from and we need to have the effective tools in our place to be able to deal with them and really maximize the safety to the community and to us as well. Next slide please okay and then without approval um so the policy ordinance is not approved we won't have access to these items um we'll cease using any items listed in 8041 and again um these tools will not be available to us to respond to these critical incidents so I think it would really cause us to evaluate what we would have the capability to respond to and what we would not have the capability to respond to um you know whether it's like I said whether it's uh high risk arrest warrants um that we would use our SWAT team for active shooter incidents things of that nature we'd have to reassess our capability or look at relying on possible mutual aid although if this uh the policy ordinance isn't approved there might be some legal hurdles with us using outside mutual aid to provide some of these these tools in the city of Santa Rosa uh next slide and so so based off that um our recommendation so it's recommended by the police department that the council introduce an ordinance to amend title two of the Santa Rosa city code by adding chapter two dash 38 the military equipment use ordinance and approve the Santa Rosa police department policy 707 military equipment and next slide so with that that's just a brief presentation on again the assembly bill 481 what it requires us to do the categories of equipment that fall under it the categories of equipment and possession of the police department and what our recommendation is in regards to the policy in ordinance so I or Chief Creighton will be happy to answer any questions that the council has right thank you so much captain I'll look to the council to see if there's any questions on the presentation I had one for you captain on the ordinance on page five it talks about the use of these uh categories in exigent circumstances could you give me an example of what type of an exigent circumstance we might be talking about yeah so yeah so the um the exigent circumstances um obviously in the nature of police work it's oftentimes difficult to predict what could or what might possibly happen so when we look at exigent circumstances some of the things that would readily come to my mind if for whatever reason um we don't have access so you know let's let's say for example um we didn't have access to the equipment we currently have you know things that we can't necessarily plan for there's a fire at the police department um all of our all of our chemical agent munitions are destroyed or or something's destroyed and we need to readily purchase those before we're allowed to come back to council for the following year that would be an exigent circumstance where we wouldn't have access to those items we wouldn't have any more inventory that we need to do something so I think really you know looking forward when we put exigent circumstances in there we're not planning to have a situation that would really qualify for this but at the same time I think as we all have seen over the last couple years things are unpredictable and we need to be prepared to have a plan in case something unpredictable arises um and make sure that we can still find a way to access to that equipment that were to happen now I really appreciate that answer uh very clear and I agree with it I just wanted to make sure we're explaining to the public the circumstances that might arise as well um just as a point of feedback I've also heard from folks in the in the public uh won a lot of support for how we've laid this out I want to appreciate how clear it is and also an appreciation for how Petaluma is doing it as well and the visuals that they're using so I know as we move through this process we've got our style and we know that other cities are going through the same thing and I just want to appreciate that I'm hearing from folks that it's clear and easy for them to understand so thank you thank you council member Fleming thank you captain and congratulations to everybody on your promotions I think everyone would like to know that the captain also enjoys outdoor entertainment at Howarth park I saw you there last week oh yes lovely the kids did a great job as did our park and rec crew um I do have a question for you about how you might answer concerns that we get from the community around privacy in regard to to drones I know we've went over this in the public safety subcommittee but I think that it would be soothing for some of our community members to hear your thoughts on this in this moment yes I don't have the drone policy in front of me but I can tell you is we have a specific policy related to drone deployment so there really is specific instances of when a drone can be deployed and one of the things we put in that policy is that it can't be used just to conduct random surveillance you know I get it I think one of the things that we've looked at kind of as a community we get a lot of actual complaints within the police department about civilian drones the invasion of privacy and so that's something that we definitely recognize going forward one of the things that we did before we even implemented this drone policy several years ago is we provided a community survey to the community to really look at their concerns that they had and we use that to help structure our drone policy going forward so when that drone policy came out it really it spelled out the the circumstances which we could use it and one of those career things in there is that we're only using it you know in the events that we have some type of situation whether it's a you know a high research warrant that we have to do a missing person something that necessitates the need for us to use that drone it's it's spelled out again specifically that policy that we're not going to use that drone to just provide random surveillance you know and to invade on people's reasonable expectation of their privacy right and so exactly you spoke directly to my concern which is that there is a policy in place and that these drones don't get used outside of that policy thank you very much any other questions council okay let's go ahead go to public comment i'll open the public hearing anybody can provide comment duane we'll start here thank you sir duane do it united states army ninth infantry division veteran vietnam war one of the things that's most important to keep in mind about all of this stuff is that people who are breaking the law active shooters especially are doing something wrong and it's important for our law enforcement people to try to end the threat to do so in such a way though that is not seen as abusive if you remember the slide of the 40 millimeter launcher it's called less lethal one of those hit you in the head or the eye or the cheek it could probably kill you so we have to have good oversight and i believe that captain mirin sick and chief kriger are going to do a good job with the equipment they get i don't know if you remember but it used to be kind of standard operating procedure for fbi to carry what we're called brownie automatic rifles the bar or tomsen submachine guns there was a lot of firepower on the part of various organizations so they could be ready to deal with folks who don't want to play by the rules i have a harsh view of active shooters i believe those people need to be neutralized as soon as possible could have saved a lot of lives in uvaldi texas or el paso texas where i had used to live and actually visited the site of that massacre one of the things that's really important is that we protect our law enforcement officers at the same time as we have accountability i would like to see them also get what we used to call apc's armored personnel carriers you called a rescue vehicle here now and you can actually get them from the military so i would ask that you try to get some donated for free instead of having to pay for these types of things and then i would also ask that you make sure that you have a good sniper team some of those weapons that you saw were nice you have to have people that know how to use them and use them quickly and make sure that they do them as accurately as possible without any what folks like to say sometimes collateral damage but if somebody has come into your neighborhood and wants to do volatile and violent actions lethal actions and kill strangers they've never met our law enforcement people need to have the support of the community to be able to take that threat out just knock them out if need be and i am glad that captain kreger and excuse me chief kreger now captain marin sick these folks are willing to look into this whole thing about getting the equipment being accountable and holding the yearly meeting personally i don't have much sympathy for anyone that takes up a loaded weapon and goes out and tries to threaten people let them bear the costs not us thank you dwayne we'll go to zoom i see alan followed by kimmy yeah hi um first i want to address uh something that the last caller said um i my jaw dropped when he referenced ubaldi as a reason why the police need to have more military weapons because the police in ubaldi were armed to the t and they sat there for almost an hour with uh you know dozens if not hundreds i can't remember what the final count was of officers there just doing nothing so just arming police has uh no bearing on a situation ending well uh as in that example um i think that uh we need to start removing uh some of the militarized equipment that our police department has uh i know that uh you have a policy of not using the alert tone on the l rad but uh it's pretty unclear on uh if officers would be able to disable that themselves if they just decided to and what what would happen if they decided to do that um because uh l rads are a weapon of war and they're you know banned under the genetic convention so uh yeah so i think that uh we can just easily get rid of that like if you need to talk to someone over a long distance even at a protest megaphones work fine that's why protesters use megaphones so people can hear them so um that would be a perfect option that you know can't really be abused um in addition to that there's all this talk about using these in like extremely violent situations those situations aren't happening here they rarely happen anywhere so all of this is just fear mongering so police can have new shiny toys um and it's just kind of ridiculous like when when these weapons of war have been used on our citizens in the past which they have um it's been against peaceful protesters and have uh you know permanently disabled some of them and like cause serious serious injury to people who are doing nothing but protesting peacefully and the city was sued for for that and then lost so after all of that i just find it appalling that we're even discussing getting more militarized equipment uh into police officers here it should be less thank you thank you alan we'll go to kimmy followed by jim hi can you hear me yes we can hi good afternoon everyone my name's kimmy barbosa i'm part of the police accountability task force with north bay organizing projects um i want to thank you everyone for this presentation um i would also like to encourage the council to before they approve any policies to um garner even more community input um just like in the presentation it was said that the lrad the alert feature was disabled because of widespread community outcry and this wasn't um community input that was solicited by the city in fact it was organized by community members who were concerned about this new um weapon or this new um well it is a weapon it can be used a weapon the alert mode that's what we um cried about and got the um alert mode uh feature disabled but it's reasons like this that it's really important to have a very transparent open process and really solicit a lot of community input it was just by chance that i actually knew this meeting was coming up um so clearly if me who is someone that keeps tabs on these things found this last minute you know there others who i'm sure have greater um input who are harmed by these weapons who would like to put input to make sure that no one else is harmed um just like the last caller said you know there has been misuse of these weapons even with your trained um your trained forces there was misuse of the barricade rounds they were used against human beings instead of a building and it caused permanent damage um and like they said disabled folks um these are citizens who are residents who were not doing anything violent um so um yeah i think that's really what i'm trying to ask is please put in some community input do not approve this as it stands i think that we deserve to know more and and how rare it's used honestly too i'd like to see in those rare instances that they were used in what three times in 2021 or 2022 and i think once for the projectile shooter like what are those specific reasons that this these are used and if they are so rare can we actually use real de-escalation tactics because in my mind using weapons at all is not does not say de-escalation to me and in fact i think one of the reports have shown that that is not a de-escalation tactics when using um when doing riot control right um but actually using those weapons is not de-escalation anyhow yep my time is up so i'll just go ahead and yield the rest of my time please please give some time for community input really let's we all deserve to put in our our words and help develop a really robust policy um so community members won't be hurt thank you thank you kimi we'll go to jim followed by kelsey um mayor it appears that the speaker is using an older version of zoom and so it won't allow i have to promote him to a panelist for him to be able to speak all right jim so if you can go ahead and call into the the council meeting that might be a way to do it says that you are using an old version of zoom we'll go to kelsey followed by alegra and jim if we see a number pop up we'll come back to you hi um my name is kelsey and i'm a senator as a resident um yeah i think um that a lot of the public are rightly alarmed um about military equipment in the hands of police and rightly so um i agree one when we're hearing presentations on this um it's customary and that police use like essentially euphemisms when talking about how these things are used and what they do and you know as i was listening to the um presentation that i was as others have stated thinking about recent events that have happened um here locally that were relevant to these items and sort of not being able to square my experience of of essentially facing these um types of weapons um to what was being discussed and so i urge the council always to have a critical eye and ear when you're listening to this kind of information about who and what and why these things have to be used um you know it's my belief in general that people probably don't need to be tear gas at all in our community um and that we could create solutions that make that possible instead um you know i have questions also about um this reporting that uh this policy talks about that it would be an annual report and they would publish it but it wasn't clear necessarily whether that would be public information or not and then i know that the oir group was you know recently hired to be the auditor of the police force so what would be the relationship of a report that is written by the department it sounded like um about their military equipment and why and how it was used um to what the auditor is doing or whether they're reviewing that or weighing in in any way and those kinds of sort of details are not clear at this point or not clear to me anyway um and that goes for you know i remember when the protest happened and these types of this type of equipment was used and used inappropriately and we heard the report you know nine months later or whatever it was um and you know in general even though policies were broken even though ammunition's that were not supposed to be used on people were used on people even though there were injuries that were settled in court um no discipline happened no changes to policy was essentially this conversation that said sorry we needed more funding we needed more staff um to be present and that's why we accidentally shot someone in the face with a barricade round or something like that and i just don't see where that conversation went it just evaporated and instead we're here talking about which tanks to you know or what armored vehicles to have or what drones to have or what guns to have and i just think in order to protect us you have to protect us from those thank you thank you and we'll go to resident 0694 i suspect that that's jim and then we'll come back to oligra it's jim duffy uh live in runner park mayor rogers members of the city council chief cregan thank you for taking my comments um i do want to thank you for the seriousness with which you're taking your ab 481 hearings as major as mayor rogers said uh petaluma did a great job and you guys seem to be doing a great job to say that you're head and shoulders above the county and the other cities as someone who follows this around the county would be an understatement they're not even up to your ankle standing on their tippy toes so i really appreciate that the quality that has come from the center as a police department people may not like the equipment but but at least you know you're not trying to authorize unlimited use which is what was done around the county uh which is bananas i do want to request that uh in your annual reports that you start reporting uh the ethnic and racial breakdown to the community members who are targets of any military equipment used credible credit using military equipment often claim that it is mostly used in the war on drugs and that most of the people who are quote unquote victimized by it are black and brown community members and so we should be tracking that and uh looking at those things also uh you want to track the true costs of having the military equipment so you really want to be looking at the staffing cost for maintenance and the staffing costs for training on the equipment because down the road city council is going to be doing a cost benefit analysis of it costs us this much money annually to to maintain this equipment and keep it and we have to do a straight line depreciation we got to appreciate you know replace it every five years and what else could we be doing with this money how often do we actually need to use it and for them to do their job as managers you really need to have all that information thank you for taking my comments thank you jim we'll go to allegra followed by michael hi good evening thank you for taking my comment um i am calling in because i am concerned about this um just blanket approval for what's already in place i think as other folks have referenced what's already in place is actually too much um our police force has unfortunately shown us that they will use these weapons some of them that are already banned by the geneva conventions against our citizens including minors um i think you know the public has a long memory and i really deeply remember when you use tear gas against children that that was a big moment in our community and i and not and not not shining you all in a good light so the idea that we would just blanket you know copy paste from what's in existence to what could be in existence is a bummer to me this is an opportunity for us to have this conversation with the police with the city council about what types of weapons are appropriate for police to have and instead this feels like like i said like a rubber stamp a copy paste um and we could really have a robust community conversation about which of these weapons are appropriate and why um instead of us just responding to this long presentation about you know why and how we can justify using weapons of war against citizens um i in particular you know the use of the word deescalation you have a couple social workers on the city council i wonder how they would feel about the use of the word deescalation when we talk about using a slightly less harmful weapon against a human being um you know people with appropriate solid training and deescalation actually use their words so i just want to put that out there and what i want to request is that you give the public the opportunity more than just a single hearing where we respond to a presentation but where we can really have this discussion out in the open where it's not at an inconvenient time at a you know and and you know like not publicized not except in the general way the usual way people need to have a voice and you have a responsibility to bring them in and let them have a voice in this conversation the community deserves better we deserve to have our um our voices heard and our input taken on this matter because in the end of the day these weapons are not just being used on random violent criminals they aren't being used to stop kids being killed in schools they aren't being used to prevent any type of to prevent violence they're being used to perpetrate violence against communities and we want it to stop thank you thank you alegra we'll go to michael everyone i agree with a lot of what the last speakers have said um i believe that we need to demilitarize our police i believe that it having the language of like we want to you know have a better public image of the police we want to encourage the police to be more of like community police and then while at the same time like accepting the are accepting military equipment for them and trying to normalize that is extremely dangerous i you know i'm gonna say that you know seeing what happened at um the elementary school in ubalte unfortunately you know rings a little true for me that like you have these police departments that are heavily militarized they're supposedly very prepared to take down you know real threats to the community and they don't and then it rings true for me from you know witnessing the george floridge protests and seeing the amount of militarized gear that our police had it really feels like that military gear is for protesters and it's not for the types of situations that we might you know see with active shooters and stuff i'm not saying that we would never use that equipment in active shooter situation um but a lot of the there's a you know there's a lot of i guess the way that it's marketed as kind of like blue lives matter or thin blue line kind of thing of like we're you know basically defending the community from agitators that all makes me uncomfortable but um i would advise the council to have a robust process where the community can have input on these things because um my opinion doesn't speak for everyone else's opinion um i don't think we should normalize the use of l-rads i think those are dangerous um and i'm worried that i would i really hope that you know the most dangerous aspects of that tool are really disabled and are not just disabled by policy because policy can change on the ground very quickly um and i don't agree with the use of tear gas um against protesters it can have extremely damaging effects to people on the ground and um i would like to see you know i guess maybe more input from council members in terms of promoting when certain things like this come up that are you know you just know that a lot of the community is going to want to weigh in on these things thank you thank you michael and we'll go to concerned citizen yes we can i'd just like to echo what the previous collars before me have said um i don't agree i mean i don't think that the police should be given more military weapons they can't even give us a clear definition of what de-escalation is um the use of military weapons does seem abusive because i have been around and i have seen situations where we have been informed of active shooters and the police didn't pull out the military equipment they pulled it out for the protesters they'd rather abuse the community instead of protect people and i don't think it's clear it's a good idea to give people in that state of mind more military weapons and l red that's ridiculous like that there just shows you don't care about your community at all i don't agree i don't think you should give them more military weapons that's not right thank you thank you and sandy i believe we had a voicemail public comment on this item we do thank you mayor hello my name is jordan bird i live in district five i'm calling in regard to item 15.2 and the public hearing regarding ab 481's military equipment ordinance um my community urges the council to keep your commitment keep your word to sonoma county communities following the summer of 2020 and to not and to choose to not further militarize our local law enforcement arming police officers with military grade equipment for use in war zones and conflict condones directly condones excessive force and fractures trust with our marginalized communities you have the responsibility and authority to ensure ab 481 does not supersede the policies put in place around militarization as discussed with the community after the summer of 2020 when the uh santa rosa police department and other local law enforcement harmed community members through excessive use of force and use of military grade equipment srpd and the santa rosa city uh committed that the recently acquired lrad device be modified to remove the alert mode used by law enforcement against communities which can cause permanent hearing damage santa rosa city council must seek community input before deciding to arm srpd with such weapons and my community input is a hell not thank you very much take care that concludes voicemail public comment okay i will close the public hearing and bring it back chief there were a couple of questions that were in there that if you don't mind i'm going to jump in on and ask one was a question about the report if it'll be public as well as what the relationship will be between uh the report the annual report and the oir group yeah absolutely by by the state law actually by 481 it'll be a public document so we'll be posting it on our website we'll have it on that dedicated page for 481 and it's not built into the scope of work with oir but it's certainly something that we'll be providing the annual report to oir but that's something that we can like and and we can talk about we meet every other week with oir we go over any complaints any significant uses of force that fall under uh senate bill 1421 our ab 748 which are uh we're have a a list of things but mainly talking about where people are gravely uh injured from use of force so that would fall in line when we're using some of this police military equipment that oir would be doing we have that independent view looking at that report for that but the short answer is absolutely the annual report would be made public and that'll be something I think that if we could go to chair Fleming on this too for the public safety subcommittee but that would probably be a perfect item that we would present before the city council public safety subcommittee okay there's a question about whether we considered tracking racial demographics for the use of these uh items yeah absolutely and actually I looked into that even that today looking about that and we have it we have put on our website some of the racial demographics with the use of force so I think that's something that we can continue to do to put on that so if you go to the san rosa police department's web start when uh web page when it talks about some of the use of force we have done that breakdown and that's certainly something I think that we can continue and to be able to put in with our language with the uh regarding ab 481 and when these tools were deployed in the field great thank you um in the cost breakdown I captain I heard you kind of loosely mentioned it but there was a question about if we are tracking the cost for training and maintenance of the weapons as well yes and that's one of the things is as 8041 has come forward we're actually changing the way that we track these so as opposed to looking at specific teams in their budget we're actually going forward going to be tracking the specific ab 41 categories so when you see that annual report come out at the end of the year there's going to be that cost breakdown in terms of um the training hours accounting training hours went into each piece of equipment and then the training costs associated with that in addition to those maintenance costs and the purchase costs okay and then the last one was sort of a general one that I heard from multiple people about this being a single hearing can you talk a little bit about the community engagement that was done prior to tonight uh to get to this point yes I can I can talk about it um so one of the things that we had uh done is this is something that we had presented prior back in April to our public safety subcommittee um we'd also presented this on um more than one occasion to our the cheese community ambassador team which is made up of a diverse group of community members and really had them reach out to their everybody that they live in the community way to get feedback from them as well in addition to that we again posted this on our website with information regarding the policy and then encouraging people to provide feedback to that email address below and then here we are today before the city council member so we went through several different facets in terms of just having those informal conversations with community members conversations with outside groups conversations with other law enforcement agencies um regarding this process going forward all right thank you councilor are there any additional questions council member Fleming yes thank you I have a question about the use of the word militarization in this discussion is this per AB 41 that we have to have a policy about military um tools and if so why are all of these things some of which are quite clearly you know have military uses um or don't have any civilian uses and others like drones for example have both military all the way to recreational uses so is this something that's coming down and is a list from the state or did our staff decide to have a conversation specifically adding in military weapons into our into our conversation today yes so this is something it's specifically with the state law at AB 41 and that's the name that they give these categories of equipment so you know again it doesn't have to be from the military we don't have to receive it from the military it doesn't have to be something the military uses it's just when this law was crafted and when it was enacted they determine anything under these categories we will call military equipment um henc