for letting me speak. And if you need a ukulele player, I'll give you my card. All right, thank you. Go ahead. Thank you, council members and Mr. Mayor for listening to us this evening. My name is Joanne Jones and I'm the vice president of the Santa Rosa Mobile Home Association. And I was part of the ad hoc committee meeting and I really don't think that what the city staff is recommending is fair. As a mobile home owner, I own my mobile home, but when I get a rent increase, I just have to pay it because yes, we live, we're in a mobile home, but that mobile home is not mobile. If we were to move it somewhere, it would probably cost us a good $20, $25,000 to move it. And there's no space to move it too. So what the residents are asking, we are asking for 65% of the CPI with a 3.5% cap and a 3.5% in-place transfer. We think that that's fair and we have been working at bringing this rent control ordinance, a revision to the rent control ordinance and bringing the percentage down. So we implore you to do the right thing and the 5% cap is way too high. We'd much rather see it at 3.5%. Thank you. All right, thank you. Anybody else? Go ahead. Good evening. I'm new to this. I've only been in my mobile home for it'll be two years now. I am shocked at that when our rent does go up it's based on what went up last year and what went up the year before. It isn't just a price that, okay, $25, $25 or whatever, but it's already high when you're coming in. The other thing is I probably wouldn't, it wouldn't matter as much if there was maintenance that was done. What I'm finding out is something has to be very wrong. Something has to explode. Water has to be streaming out of a pipe for days before something is done. So all that money that should be done and it would be better for prevention than it would be just to put a band-aid on it. So I'm seeing, I do feel like that woman, did I make a mistake? And now what do I do? Because I do not get social security. I was a teacher and teachers do not get social security. That's a whole nother soapbox I'll get on some other day. But I really don't think we're asking too much, especially because we've been asking this for years, at least 13 that I hear about, maybe more. So at this point in time, it's not too much at all, especially since we're doing our job, but I don't see it coming from the other end, that things are getting worse. I mean, our park is about from the 70s and there's a lot of infrastructure that should be looked at at least. But I've never met the owner. We can't, you know, how do you do that? I've written to him, but I haven't heard anything. So we're doing the best we can and this is what we're asking. I hope you can hear us. Thank you. Oh, thank you. And unfortunately, social security is not in our jurisdiction, but I hear you. Is there anybody else in here? Okay, I'm going to go to Zoom. We have Patty on Zoom. My name's Patty Rustano. Do we lose Patty? There you are. Yep, we can hear you. Go ahead. Great. My name is Patty Rustano. I actually live in Windsor and I am part of the community effort to address this ordinance in Windsor. So I really appreciate all the work and effort you've put into this. One thing that I haven't heard anything about is cost burden and that's where people are paying more than 50% of their income for housing. So if any other research is being done, I strongly encourage you to find out how many of those mobile home residents are actually paying more than 50% or 75% because in Windsor and in my mobile home park, it is substantial. The other issue I want to key off of the woman that just spoke, you're talking about 5% like it would be just 5%. Imagine if your mortgage went up 5% every year. That means in five years, it would have increased 25%. So what we're saying is this is not a one-time increase. This is a compounded increase. At least if you go down to 3% or 3.5% in five years, it's only a 17.5% increase. So what's interesting to me is that when the owners speak, isn't it interesting that many of them don't live in the parks? None of them show their books. If they're receiving a 25% increase in five years, what costs have they incurred that have caused them to pay 25% more? It really doesn't seem justified. So I'd like you to take into account that they're profitable business people. They're not seniors like I am. And finally, we're talking about rent of this space. Some people also have mortgages on their mobile home. They also have Medicare and medicine, and then utilities, television, phone, PG&E. Please look at the whole picture here. These are just, I haven't even mentioned food. So take a look at the big picture and look at who you're impacting. As seniors in mobile homes, this is an affordable housing option for us. The question becomes, where do we go if we get priced out of these mobile homes? So we encourage you to vote for the 3.5% increase. We thank you for all your efforts and your listening. All right, thank you so much, Patty. It's the last hand that I see on Zoom. Is anybody else in the chamber? All right, then I'm going to close the public hearing. I'll bring it back to council. Before we put a motion on the table and have discussion, are there any additional questions that were generated from public comment that council members have for staff? Seeing that on Zoom, council member McDonald? I have a question about that $800,000 again. Since we collect that money and I saw that there was an average of about $4.58, as I believe what you said, Megan, to us earlier. I know that's not per home, but I'm just wondering since there's such a high balance, is there a way, if we're looking at closing that gap, that since we have so much money that's in that account that we could look at the city's maybe opportunity to not collect as much? Like we actually could reduce what we're collecting from mobile home renters and that would be across a board so we could do some of our own part. That was an item that we had discussed internally as we went through this process. One of my concerns as we adjust the ordinance is that depending on where the amendments land, we need to make sure we have sufficient money for fair rate or return hearings if we do end up in that situation as well as funding to staff the program. So that could be an option, but it really depends on where the ordinance ends in terms of amendments and how those are received by the various parties. I think my questioning goes along the lines that if we're successful at making sure that this is an equitable approach tonight, is there a way that the city can actually, we could always bring the ordinance back if we saw that the funds were depleted, right? But right now we have such a high balance. It would seem to me that with inflation and the cost of food and how much it's costing all of the residents in Sonoma County and because this is typically a vulnerable population that there would be a way that we can even just waive our fee perhaps over the next few years to get people through this time. It's not a long-term fix, but is there a way that we could look into that and potentially look at what we could do from our end? We can certainly evaluate that. In the moment tonight, I'd say my concern is just making sure that we have the resources to address issues. Sure, I understand that. And I just think that as we bring it back that that's maybe information that we would wanna see from council. Again, I go back and reiterate that having such a high balance, we should be able to do something to offset fees for the residents. And I understand that inflation is high right now. I understand that food has gone up 20% and PG&E's gone up. And so my thought process is that as we look at business and we look at residents, what can the city do in part to support our vulnerable residents and support all residents in fact that are unlimited incomes? And then I wanna also go back and see what we have for housing goals specifically tied to our senior population and make sure that we're doing as a city our part to address those needs if there's something that we need to look at for section eight, if there's something in language that needs to be adjusted so that we can support our residents. Any other questions? Mr. Vice Mayor? Thank you, Mayor. Is there anything from the state level that would take precedence about would have precedence or give direction to the issue that we're facing tonight? It seems like we're recreating the wheel when I imagine there's already agencies, regulations that address practices that would impede predatory practices from landlords or protection towards our tenants. But it doesn't sound like we have anything or why are we even addressing an issue that I imagine has protection for the tenants of our city from a statewide level? I'm not sure if I entirely understand your question but I'll start with on a state level mobile home parks are overseen by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. So the maintenance and the permitting is not a local issue, that's a state issue. Locally we have the ability to create ordinances like the mobile home rent control which we are evaluating tonight. And so that is one of the tools that is used in jurisdictions throughout the state to help address the concerns of residents in terms of their annual rent costs and also those of the owners in receiving a reasonable rate of return on their property. In regards to municipal codes that exist in the City of Santa Rosa currently, there's nothing that addresses or protects the residents of Santa Rosa already in the municipality codes. I'm sorry, my voice seems to be going all open. It would be the state but there are... I understand there's state precedents but I've also seen in our municipal codes on our city website that speaks of acceptable income levels. I wish I could hear you in the background. So there are... We don't have municipal codes that speak to the income levels. There is one park within the City of Santa Rosa that does have a regulatory agreement that provides affordability levels for those residents and that is because that particular park received a loan and is now governed by a regulatory agreement. This lets one out of the 19 parks within the City. The general rule of thumb for affordability is 30% of a resident's income but that's not something that is codified or that we monitor. That is a general rule of thumb. We would use that if the unit or the individual was receiving housing choice voucher or section eight or if the project had an affordability agreement that we were monitoring. Okay, thank you. Council Member Rogers. I wanted to ask if any or all or none of the mobile park homes, if there's also a HOA fee or any other fees associated with the monthly costs. The rent should include all the fees. There may be pass-throughs for utilities or garbage and those are separate from the actual space rent but there should not be an HOA fee in addition to the space rent. Thank you. Council Member Fleming. Thank you. I had a question about the fair rate of return hearings. I know it's been a long time since we've had one in Santa Rosa. Have there been any in recent memory in neighboring jurisdictions? I'm not aware of any, no. Okay, have either you or Ms. Bassinger, participant or familiar with anybody who knows how these go? And I'll just give you the reason why I'm asking is, we're kind of left here with the impossible task of piecing together what without, we've got these mobile home owners who won't open their books to us and we've got residents who are explaining, their social security and fixed income situations, which are, that's pretty easy to understand but understanding the financial situation of the owners is very opaque, difficult to understand. So I'm just curious to know, do these, as unpleasant as they are, do these fair rate of return hearings provide some objective clarity to how these matters get decided? And that was why I was asking because I was curious to know if there had been one recently around here and what did they settle on as a percentage of CPI, if that's what they were using and any sort of caps or in place fees. And I think that'd be super helpful information. So I agree. I think that's a very good question, council member. And the fact that we haven't had one in Santa Rosa in so long since 1999 and it is kind of a complicated financial analysis but it does go back again to the base year which is the year before the ordinance was created, that's 1992. And I guess the assumption behind this method to determine a fair return is based on the fact that it's presumed that in 1992 before rent control that that was certainly a fair return. And then you extrapolate and now you'd have to go all the way out to 2022 if we were to have it. And you heard one of the owners testify that you'd have to get financial experts and attorneys and they talked about the cost. That cost is not a cost by the way that's borne by the city. That's a cost that's borne by the parties. Unfortunately, I don't have a better answer for you. I'm not eager to have a fair rate of return hearing. What I'm trying to see is what has been determined by the experts to be a fair rate of return. But it sounds like we're not gonna be able to get that sort of objective information tonight, so. I was gonna ask some similar questions that might be a way to get towards that, Mr. Burke. And that's first and foremost, does the state have a definition of what a fair rate of return is? So our ordinance has the definition. I mean, then you have to go through that analysis. And it talks about what expenses are considered that you can subtract out of gross income and certain things like debt services excluded. And it's just a detailed comprehensive financial analysis. There are experts out there who can, you know, piece things together based on maybe even the 1999 hearing and other data, and they can make some assessment. We haven't been able to have that opportunity to do that here. And so, yes, it's a difficult situation that staff has been put in, frankly. And, you know, we try to take the data that we could and hear what the residents' concerns were and what the owners' concerns were. And recognizing the fact that there hasn't been an ordinance change to these data points since 2004. So we're trying to strike the right balance. And there are checks on the system. And, you know, the owners can request a fair return hearing. There's also a provision in the ordinance that says if the CPI exceeds the cap for two consecutive years, that the director of housing is required to do an analysis and perhaps bring an ordinance amendment back to the council. So that's where we're at. Yeah, the second half of that question, or the second half of that component is, do we have any data source, whether it's the Park Owners' Association or GSMOL or anybody else on what the expected or average return on the investment the Park Owners receive per year? I think- Obviously that'll fluctuate from year to year, but if you look at it on 10, 20 year horizon. And again, all I can do is go back to the ordinance and the way this maintenance of net operating income theory works is you go back and you look at 1992 and then you bring it back forward. And if the return is about the same as it was back in 1992, then they're getting a fair return. Right, right. I'm not asking about a fair return. I'm asking about the actual return. So does anybody have any data around, you know, a Park Owner spends X per space but receives Y per space? And then that Delta is the change in the increase in investment that they get. Does that make sense? Again, I think the answer is, what was that number in 1992? And I don't have actual dollar figures, but the methodology- I'm not asking specific to ours. I'm asking if you are the owner of a manufactured home park in California, is there sort of an average or an expected rate of investment return that you get each year or from the ownership? You know, 5%, 6%, whatever have you? Whatever that percentage was in 1992 is presumed to be the fair return. I can't give you a number. I just don't know. Yeah, I was just wondering if there- What the methodology is. Yeah, yeah, I'm not specific to us. I'm just wondering if a group has put that number out there as this is what the actual return on investment typically is for us to kind of understand better. Because one of the- I've not heard it described that way. I don't know a number, I'm sorry. Yeah, okay. I figured that that was probably something that we don't have a good number for. All right, any other questions from council? Mayor, I had one question that I was gonna ask earlier about the fair rate of return, which is not the fair rate of return, but the hearing in particular, which is I wanted to ask, Ronart Park has a cap, I think it was a slide back of ways back of 75%, but with a 4% cap. And so the follow up to my question was that there had been no hearings in Ronart Park and the cap was one point lower than the staff record of a nation. So we're just, I just wanted to make sure that we hadn't missed if there had been a fair rate of return hearing in Ronart Park. Are you asking if we're aware of whether there's been fair rate of return hearings in Ronart Park? Yeah. I am not aware now. Okay, thanks a bunch. I appreciate all that you've done. Council Member McDonald. I guess I'm trying to also understand your question, Mayor, on the investment and rate of return, if it had to do with, if somebody was investing, say in a stock market, the volatile market would go up and down, but if somebody was investing in, say, bonds, it would get a certain small amount every single year. So I think what you were asking, if I'm understanding, it was what is the normal rate of return on the original investment from park owners or just per year if there's an average so that we can understand if the average park owner has a 5% rate of return on that year, our profit that year, then if we're decreasing that, right, then how can they be sustainable? So I think that's what we're trying to get to is we don't have the data, it seems, that gives us that information from a park owner's perspective on how much their profit is per year. So I own a business, we have a formula we use on a profit to make sure that our jobs are profitable and we can keep the doors open. So what I'm trying to understand is that's what we're trying to get to from our being able to have that data and information. We understand from the park residents where you're coming from, but certainly we aren't able to strike that balance without this other piece of data. That's exactly correct. That's the other variable that I'm asking is the amount that comes in from rent is an input, then the output is the amount of money that goes into maintenance and then there's something left over that's the rate of return on the investment. So I was asking if there was GSMOL or some other group has put forward, this is typically what we see, 8%, 9%, and then we can have a conversation about if that's a fair rate of return, right? And that to me would be important data to be brought back to us if we're able to get to some of that average. So it's hard to say, because some mobile home parks I think are more profitable so that rate will be much higher where we see some are not nearly as profitable. So it's hard for us to strike a balance from city council's perspective to say, this is the way it is across the board when in fact it's not an across the board ordinance that we're doing. And that's the hardest part of being in this position tonight because we don't have an average from the park owner's perspective. We're not sure that if we put an ordinance in place that we're cutting them so much that then they can't maintain the parks in fact, and that's a concern and we're already hearing from residents that that's a problem. Before we get into comments, let's go ahead and put a motion on the table so that we can respond directly to those. That's good. I just want to make sure that that's where you were going and that is something we could get back from staff potentially. All right, any other questions? Seeing none, council member Rogers, do you want to put a motion on the table for discussion? Yes. Actually, before you do, I had one more question. I apologize. Part of this, part of the timing of this was precipitated by the anticipated increase in January. If the council takes action tonight in changes, how does that impact the letters that have already gone out notifying residents of an increase? So if council was to act on a recommendation tonight, there would be a second reading of the ordinance next week and then it would be 31 days from that date. So the ordinance would take effect approximately January 6th. Mobile home parks, there are 16 that are subject to rent control. There are a variety of dates where rent increases take place because they're allowed to increase their rents once per 12 months. So there are seven parks that have rent increases that would take effect in January and there's a 90 day noticing requirement pursuant to state law. So if it was effective January 6th, it would impact March rent increases and those further out. So walk me through that again. So there are, you said six that the rent increase is anticipated to go in in January. Seven according to my list. Okay, so if this ordinance has the 31 days for enactment and goes into effect January 6th, do those seven that have the planned increase in January, is that still, does that increase still happen? I believe they would need to be renoticed by the park owners. I don't know and I've deferred to the city attorney's office if they've already been noticed, could an owner reduce the rent without having to provide 90 days notice? Where's the 90, where's the 90 day requirement coming from? The 90 day requirement is in state mobile home residency law? I can try to weigh in and that would be, yes, it would seem to me that the park owner would be able to issue a modified notice if the number is going down under our ordinance. If what they had proposed was a higher rate than allowed under our ordinance, that would be permissible, but I have not done that research, so it would have to do that before the ordinance came back for final read. And then I think the more important or implied question there is, if there's a six day gap between January 1st and when the ordinance would go into effect, do the seven rent increases, do they all start January 1st and we would miss that? Or do they start later in January and we would capture that in the ordinance? They would start as of the effective date of the ordinance so that a park owner would have that higher, potentially higher rent for those six days in January before the ordinance went into effect. Okay. If I may, I assume the purpose of the notice, the rationale for it is to give the residents an opportunity to know that their rent is going to be changing. And so, and maybe that's the same thing the city attorney was just saying, but I would think that if council wants to decrease the amount of the rent that that should be able to go into effect on January 6th. City attorney or Megan thoughts on that? It seems like the purpose of the notice is to protect the residents, right? Yeah, my question is, are there parks that slide in and get the rent increase in place before the change, if there is a change, and does that then impact seven parks as opposed to the rest, who it sounds like would be covered by the ordinance? That's my question. All of the parks would be, I'll take a stab at it, all of the parks would be subject to the ordinance and the ordinance terms and the ordinance's limitations would go into effect on January 6th. So up until that time, the noticed higher rent would be in effect. But again, it would only be in effect for that six days. Again, I haven't kind of spun that through on any detailed research, but that's my take. Yeah, okay. Maybe I'm just looking at it the wrong way. My question was, if they get the rent increase in before in that six day window, then does it apply retroactively to their rent or are they still covered moving forward? Just like some of the parks, if you have a higher rent when you come in, you still have that 5% or that 4%, whatever it ends up being at, that goes on in perpetuity. Does that make sense? Because it compounds at that point. Yes, now I'm understanding what you're saying is that that would then be the baseline for that year and would be in effect for that year because the change went into effect before the ordinance went into effect. I think we'd have to take a little bit of a look at that. But again, we could certainly come back before the second read or at the meeting of the second read to confirm how that would operate. Okay. There's not a lot that we can do about that. If in fact it takes place the way that you're suggesting there's not a lot that we can do about it unless it was done by an urgency ordinance. Well, that was gonna be my next question is if the council so chose, if we come back for second reading and we find that there is going to be that impact for those seven homes, excuse me, parks, could the council add an urgency clause into the second reading to have it take effect before the January 6th date? If the council makes the appropriate findings for an urgency ordinance, then you can make it an urgency ordinance as of the second read. Okay. And in your opinion as the city attorney, would there be grounds for that? I believe that there would be grounds. But again, I don't know the details. I understand there's seven parks. I don't know what the number of people that are affected, what the difference would be between the ordinance and the noticed rent increase. Again, I'd want to confirm that once the rent increase was in place, it would take effect and be in effect for the full year and then be the base for the next year's increase. I'd want to do all that research first before I committed to being able to make those findings, but it's certainly quite possible that those findings could be made. Council member McDonald. Just a question on that. Is there a way that you could do a moratorium for no rent increases from January 1st to January 6th until the ordinance was passed in place? Yes. And we've talked about doing that at the staff level. I was thinking when it was brought up earlier today was what the council could do would be to set the change at zero rather than going through the findings that are necessary for a moratorium, which are different than what is needed for an urgency ordinance. So I'd have to bring back a more thorough statement as to what findings you would have to make if you want to do a moratorium. A moratorium that would go into effect immediately so that there would be no rental increases as of January. And then just as a quick follow-up, if there was a way for us to do the ordinance, but it start at a specific date, so say January 1, is there a way to do that for a second reading or it simply has to do with that 30 days notice that park owners, I'm trying to make it so it's a cleaner process not only for park owners but also for residents so that whatever we put in place isn't based upon our meeting dates but based upon a calendar year. Right. If it's a regular ordinance adopted by the council, by law, it is not effective for 30 days. The only way to have it effective sooner is to do the urgency ordinance. And again, I'll look into doing it as a moratorium, simply a moratorium on rental increases for a brief period of time until the effective date of the ordinance. So again, a set of findings have to be made to be able to do that. Thank you so much. You had your opportunity to speak. I'm just answering your question. Council Member Rogers, if you'd like to put the motion on the table. Thank you, Mayor. I first would like to thank staff for working on this ordinance. I know it was really hard and thank Tom for his persistence and pushing us to get to this point. And I would also like to thank all the residents and the owners for their participation in finding a resolution. I would like to make a motion to introduce an ordinance entitled Ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa to amend Santa Rosa City code chapter six dash 66 rent control mobile homes. But I would like to make an amendment to the staff's recommendation. The proposed amendment would modify in the permitted annual increase from 100% of the CPI was 6% cap to 70% of the CPI with a 4% cap and allow mobile home park owners to raise the rent 10% on an in place transfer. So that would be my amendment to staff's recommendation. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Motion from Council Member Rogers and a second from Council Member Fleming. There any discussion from Council Members? Really? No discussion after all those questions. All right, go ahead, Council Member McDonnell. Kick it off. I just want to make sure that I'm clear that you're offering an amendment to reduce the CPI just 70% but you want a 4% cap. Is that what you introduced? Yes, Council Member. I think my questions are what will be the repercussions of this? If we lower it this much or have a cap that that's that low and same with the in place transfer. I mean, when we were talking about this earlier it would seem to me that increasing the in place transfer but keeping CPI low and the cap low was the biggest concern. I think the repercussions will have to see over the course of time if, and those will come through in fair rate of return hearings. So if the various parks are not able to achieve revenue that they find is necessary to meet their parks needs then we will be receiving fair rate of return hearings. So that will be the indicator of whether or not we have moved too far in one direction. Council Member Rogers. For me, I would rather take that risk in having the hearings than have more of our seniors on the streets and not be housed. So maybe we can look at a program that can support the owners of the parks if they're having a financial hardship and waiver of fees or something to support the owners in supporting the residents of the parks. But I would rather look at that than to have more people, especially our seniors become homeless. So I do think that there's a, we can find a way in between we just need to continue to talk to the owners and see how we can support them to support the residents. Council Member Fleming. Yeah, so the reason why I seconded Council Member Rogers' proposition and why I think that it's pretty spot on is that in Rohnert Park, they have functionally 75% which is pretty much where we're at, 70% is the hair lower with 4% and to staff knowledge, we haven't seen any fair rate of return hearings. The broader principle here for me is that as a council we continually espouse affordable housing as a value and the reason we do so is that it prevents homelessness, it causes economic development, it trickles down into support for small businesses and just general stability. So it meets a lot of our overall goals. And so to my mind, this is pretty darn close to what works in Rohnert Park. And while I like the friendly city, I don't want to be beaten by them in terms of providing fair and equitable and affordable housing without disenfranchising our owners. So while I do share some concern about a fair rate of return hearing, we do have nearly a million dollars in that fund. I hope that this doesn't precipitate use of it. But I think that we're comfortable to so many other jurisdictions both in Sonoma County and across the Bay Area that I think that we'll be safe. And if we're not, we're in good financial stead to weather that storm and then we can adjust pretty easily as we've seen here. Well, maybe not the most pleasant type of council meeting we have to deal with when we're dealing with people's personal pocketbooks and the land use issues that we all enjoy so much in our time here in these seats. I do think that this will get us closer to what the goal is for most of us in terms of affordable housing and protecting our seniors. So that's why I seconded that. All right, thank you, council member. Any other comments from Zoom? Any other council members? Council members, what up? Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Originally I lowered my hand because council member McDonnell asked the same question I was thinking of. And for me, I'm not supportive of this new motion. I'm supportive of staff recommendation because when this process started and having talked to both owners and tenants, my big hope was to find a fair balanced compromise for this. And I know staff has put a lot of time, energy and effort in coming up with this recommendation and they have a lot more information they were actually in the meetings where we were not. And the challenging part for me sitting on council is when a variety of different individuals are predicting what the future of any decision we make will be. And some may be accurate, some may not be. We hear it a lot when we have, let's talk about cannabis dispensaries. If we allow one to go into this neighborhood, what's gonna happen to that neighborhood? And so far, at least in those examples, they haven't come to fruition. And so I'm having the same thing here where staff has put a lot of time, energy and effort into this. And I think it is a fair balanced recommendation. And quite frankly, if it does, we go with this staff recommendation. And if we do have one of those hearings, that will give the council at that time the opportunity here, here were the results of that, do we need to come back and change this ordinance? So that's why I'm supportive of the staff recommendation at this time. Thanks. Thank you, Council Member. Council Member Sawyer. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I'm going to mirror Council Member Schwedhelm's comments and I'll let you know why. When we deal with a meeting like this, it all depends on who you talk to in the meetings, who you listen to and who you believe. And that is a really unfortunate way to make policy and to execute governance on doing it on the fly. And it always gives me a pause when we do that. And I understand why, because we want to, at least in this case, what I can see in this change from staff's recommendation is kind of a nod. The, in each case with the staff's recommendation, we move from 100 to 75% in the CPI from six to five in the cap. And from none in the current, owners are looking for 15 and we're recommending 10. A decrease in each one of the, at least two out of the three recommendations from the, between the owners and staff's recommendation. Of course, the residents are not going to be, would not be happy, will not be happy, unless all of our numbers move closer to what their concerns are, because we are dealing with a pocketbook. And I appreciate council member Fleming's acknowledgement of that. And that's part of why it does make it so difficult. When we are trying to reach balance, we're trying to come up with some kind of surety that we've reached balance and that we have reached fairness. And there really is, again, depending on you talk to, there's really, you're going to get a different answer for almost everyone. And we can't give everybody everything that they want, whether it be the owners or the residents. I am concerned about if we move away from the package deal. You know, one of the, one of the speakers talked about food and heat. And our, I don't really, I can't really tell by looking at the proposals or looking at the change in the recommendation from staff, whether or not it's going to really move the needle and whether people can actually afford food and heat. But even though $100,000 when broken up between the various parks might not sound like that much, it's more than what they may get if we move in this other direction. And that does give me concern. So I think that because the staff was at the table, the owners were at the table, the residents, they were at the table as well. But I have, I'm moving the direction of taking my staff's recommendation because they are trying to do the same thing that I think all of us are trying to do. And that is to be, is trying to be as fair and as balanced as we possibly can. And if I'm not mistaken, maybe we will be seeing one of those fair rate of return hearings. I hope not. I do believe it will be patently unpleasant for all concerned, not unlike other hearings that not this body necessarily, but other bodies have to deal with. So it does give me pause, but I won't be voting for the change in the recommendation. I will be moving to staff's recommendation for the reasons I indicated. Okay, thank you, Council Member Sawyer. Additional comments from the days. So as I mentioned in my questions, the thing that I care the most about is keeping the residents that are in our manufactured homes stable and off the street. And so I do understand the concerns that were expressed on the transfers and not having the transfer fee too high because it makes it more difficult for people to ultimately sell the manufactured homes. My question is for Council Members, I really do think that there's value in trying to see if we can get to a compromise amongst us. For Council Member Schwedhelm and Sawyer, who have expressed, you prefer staff's recommendation, would you be willing to come down to the 70% and 4% if we then went up and took the request from the owners for the 15% transfer fee, or 15% transfer? You know, for me, Mr. Mayor, thank you for asking the question. But as Council Member Sawyer said, doing this on the fly, I'd like to see the data. What impact will that have? What impact will, what are the people directly impacted by this, both the property owners and the tenants, what impact would it have on them? So I'm real hesitant to do it. Does it sound nice? Sure, but I want to see the data behind it. And again, that's why I'm supporting the staff recommendation because they did do all the research as the staff report indicates. And Mayor, thank you for that offer. I would be concerned as well because of the way the owners presented the package, I would like to know what would happen to that package. It's very, there's a possibility that they would continue their contribution offer even with the drop in the CPI and the cap if we were to move the in-place transfer. But I would want to have that conversation or I would want staff to have that conversation because it would influence how I would want to move forward given the owner's offer. I can understand that council members. I think where I'm a little bit challenged as I hear you on wanting to see the data, we don't have the data on whether or not the owners are getting a fair rate of return or if they would continue to get a fair rate of return. If any of the proposals, what I do know is if we do end up triggering a fair rate hearing, we'll find out, but if we go too high and never end up in one of those hearings, we won't know. So the question is, where do we find the balance point? I was trying to offer that compromise because I think there is a way to make up some of that money on the back end. And like I said, I'm concerned with keeping people in their homes. But if that won't sway council members, then that's particularly, that's fine. Are there any additional comments before we call the vote? Council member McDonald? Just going back to what your figures were from 65% to 75%, I wanna say that the average was about $4 per month in that presentation, if I remember correctly. And if I was looking at that $4 and going back to the $800,000 that we have, would that offset that? So if we were to go, say, down to the 75% that was offered, right? But then we were to come in with that offset it and actually be at 65%. So to answer your first question about the rents, and again, these are based on averages across all the parks. So it's not specific to any one particular park or space. With no changes to the ordinance, the increase with the current CPI would be $762. If council was to proceed with the 75% of CPI, the rent would be $752. So that's a $10 per month decrease based on averages. The 65% of CPI, which is the resident's current proposal, would be $748. So that is $4 less than the 75% of CPI, again, based on averages. At this point in time, it's too premature to discuss using that $800,000, because again, we don't know where we're gonna be as a result of that. But you see how my math and my brain is working. Yes. Okay, that's amazing. So okay, that's where I'm trying to get to is if we set it at 75%, is there a way for the council to come back later with more data and look at closing that so that the residents in fact do get the benefit of that reduction actually more than 70%, it would go down potentially if we were able to bring that back. And would that need to be part of this ordinance or could that be something brought back separate? It would need to be brought back separately. And so staff's intention with one, the offer from the owner package of the $100,000 and then also evaluating the $800,000 fund balance is to come back at a later date after we've had time to review the numbers and develop a potential program for council to review and provide your input on that proposal. But we do need time to see how the ordinance settles and where the funding sources are. But the $100,000 isn't being offered based on staff recommendations if I'm reading the presentation correctly and it's not being offered in fact based on the amendment that's on the floor, correct? Correct, thank you. Actually, that's not quite correct. If I understood the question, the $100,000 is not consistent with staff's recommendation because staff's recommendation is not quite exactly what the owners wanted. So I did want to point that out. So if council went with staff's recommendation, we'd have to encourage the owners to still contribute the $100,000. I just wanted to point that out unless I misunderstood. Thank you, Mr. Burke. Council Member Swaddle. Yeah, I'm sorry, I just needed to respond to your closing comment, Mr. Mayor, that you said with your compromise, you're just interested in trying to keep people housed. And I think it was mentioned earlier today. I think that's all of our interest. Everyone in the chamber right now, staff, and the fact that I may not support something other than the staff recommendation does not mean I'm not 100% invested in trying to keep people in their homes. A lot of the data that's been pulled out from the point of time count I'm very familiar with and it's somewhat a bit out of context, but I'd still like to make it very clear that I am confident, 100% confident that all of our staff and all of the council's main interest is keeping people housed not only in their manufactured home parks, but in this entire community. I just want to clarify my comments and so they're not interpreted as if I don't have an interest in keeping people housed in the city of Santa Rosa. No, absolutely. And my apologies if it came across, my comment came across that way that I know that that is not the intention and I know where both of you and council member Sawyer stand on that issue. So there was no ill intended on that. My comment was more to have our ordinance function more like Prop 13 does for homeowners where it keeps the rents or the mortgage low or the property taxes low, but when there's a transfer or a sale of ownership it brings it back up to kind of market value. That's what I was trying to intend. Council member Rogers. So I just have one last comment. I won't say anything else I promised. I feel like we're not dealing with pocket books here. We're dealing with people's lives. We're dealing with their ability to feed themselves, to stay housed is a bit different from a profit margin for me. So I would much rather go low now. And then like you said, see if we have one of the hearings then we would be able to really see what we're working with and what we're dealing with. And I also, it's my understanding that the owners did have the ability to show numbers and to say this is, this is why, right? That was provided to them that they could show the numbers ahead of time prior to this conversation. It was a suggestion at our meetings. There's nothing to compel them to turn over their books for all the parks as well. And remember there were three that participated. So they only have per view over those, those parks that they own or manage. Yes, and we can, we can come back and look at an ordinance. But what we can't do is go back and re-house people that may lose their housing or that don't have heat or that we find in a mobile home because they don't have food or heat or any of that. So yeah, we can come back but a lot of things are irreversible. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member. Mr. Vice Mayor. One of the things I heard earlier today was do the right thing. And I feel like we're lacking a lot of information on the diaspora. I don't feel comfortable in any direction that we actually move in. But I do have a set of questions. And that question is we've heard the numbers being presented by both the residents and the owners. And I wonder if there was justification or context to the numbers that we're seeing today. Because they're seeing where we're playing loosely with percentages. But as one of my council members stated, it's not about the profits, it's not about the numbers. It's about what actually means the food, the heat, and making sure that the mobile homes stay open for people that should live in. So are there contexts to the figures that we're being presented today? Whether it's the 75% the 100% or even the 70%. So when we're looking at the percentages, one of the things we did, and certainly redirect me if I'm answering a different question than you're asking, we looked at what jurisdictions do statewide. And so mobile home rent control ordinances, the majority of them throughout the state, use a percentage of CPI if there is an ordinance in place. So while the percentages may seem arbitrary, it's consistent with the way that ordinances are constructed throughout the state. And certainly as you saw in the examples throughout Sonoma County, the other jurisdictions within the county are set on percentages of CPI. Thank you. And the reason I state such a comment is because government is not well known for making great deals. And we that have the responsibility of people's lives, I wanna assure that we do not make the error of thinking that we have the power to interject into a business dealing and all of a sudden create a situation where we can't come back from. And that's my ultimate goal. Thank you. Council Member McDonald? Just for clarification on the Rohnert Park ordinance, it says it's one half of 1% less than the CPI. Can you tell me what the CPI is and what that percentage is an increase this year for Rohnert Park? This is where it gets a little bit more complicated. So Rohnert Park doesn't use San Francisco CPI, they use National CPI and National CPI was higher in the last year. So they use one half of 1% less with a 4% cap. So they invoked the cap this past year. Okay, so I see what you're saying. So they've used the National cap was much higher and their one and a half or one half of 1% would have been much higher than their 4% cap. So they invoked the 4% cap. Is the 4% cap on the National CPI? Or is it a? It's just 4%. It's just 4%. So whatever the percentage was, they could not exceed, the cap is essentially a ceiling. So the rent cannot be higher than a 4% increase. Just 4% based on each resident. Correct. They just per the residents in each of the parks. And how many mobile poem parks does Rohnert Park have? One moment, please. I'm seeing folks in the audience go like this. I can't see behind me. So let's go with six. The reason that I think it's important is sometimes we're trying to compare apples to apples, but it's not. And so that's what I'm trying to get to is if their cap or their CPI is different than what we're using, then saying we're reducing it to this to match Rohnert Park, in fact, may not be at all, matching what Rohnert Park is doing because they may have a higher amount that they're going to. And that's what I wanted to make sure was that whatever ordinance we're putting in place, we're doing our due diligence and we're not trying to be comparative to another jurisdiction. All right, Councilor, any final comments? All right, so the motion on the table is 70%, 4% cap and 10% for in-place transfers. Madam City Clerk, please call the vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Schwedhelm? No. Council Member Sawyer? No. Council Member Rogers? Yes. Council Member McDonald? Yes. Council Member Fleming? Yes. Vice Mayor Alvarez? Aye. Mayor Rogers? Aye. That motion passes with five ayes. All right, thank you so much. We are going to take a five-minute break so folks can go ahead and file out. Council Members can use the restroom and then we'll come back and finish our meeting. Thank you. You did it. No, I didn't. You did it. You did it. Jeff was a little wishy-washy. No, really. I didn't stick with it. No, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. I appreciate it. It's all good here. It's all good. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for joining us. How do you address a really bad one? I need a new challenge here. No, you don't. No. We need to all see each other. You got it. Standing. Mr. Martin. I did it. I did it. Well, he was, you know, getting married to you. He was getting married far, far away. All right, let's go ahead and bring us back. Madam City Clerk, if you can call the roll. Council Member Schwedhelm. Here. Council Member Sawyer. Here. Council Member Rogers. Present. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Fleming. Here. Vice Mayor Alvarez. Present. Mayor Rogers. Here. Let the record show all council members are present. Excellent. Madam City Manager, let's go on to item 14.2, please. Thank you. So item 14.2 is an energy audit and micro grid study. Doug Williams, the facilities maintenance and operations coordinator will present. Thank you. We have Doug. He's on the attendee list. I think he can speak. And if you want to promote him over to panelists. Council members. We are coming to you tonight. We've been working on an energy audit for the last couple of years. We started in January at 2020. We received an energy audit from a ecom. We have brought the energy audit to the climate action subcommittee. They recommended that we. We had a business plan. One of the complications with. That we found with the energy audit was. The funding. Yeah, there's various ways to fund. Energy upgrades. Solar panels. Micro grids. So we asked. AECOM to help us develop a business plan. So tonight I'm going to turn this over to AECOM. I'm going to talk to the committee. I'm going to talk to the committee. Who will go through the slideshow presentation with you. And just walk you through what we've been doing the last couple of years. Who I've been promoted. Can you hear me? Hello there. Mayor City Council members. Thank you for the opportunity. As Doug mentioned, we have been working with Doug Williams for a couple of years. And the idea was basically to look very comprehensively at the city and their operations and how these operations can become more efficient in terms of the utilization of energy. And how renewables can be deployed and how. The city operation can become more resilient. So if, for example, if the city is in a geographical location where wildfires are effective life, right? So the idea initially was basically to look at what a few facilities within the city to figure out how micro grids can be deployed to make sure that certain mission critical operations of the city can keep on working. So all these different things were analyzed. If you can move to the next slide. So, so basically we started with phase one as Doug mentioned energy audits. It was primarily a little bit more than energy audits. We looked at all city facilities to look at the energy efficiency measures which can be implemented. We looked at around 60 plus facilities to see how we can deploy solar PVs and batteries. And then as I mentioned, we looked at a couple of micro grids looking at 10 building clusters and eventually even looking at everything out that it might make more sense to deploy a lot more micro grids than just the two micro grids because micro grids in general have certain constraints on how they can be deployed and operated. And based on that study, then we basically moved forward to phase two where Doug wanted us to kind of focus on the municipal service center north and figure out how solar PV batteries and energy efficiency measures can only be deployed on that. So we looked at that. And that's what we are basically going to cover. Next slide please. One more. And this is basically what I just mentioned. Again, the idea was that we started with resiliency sustainability objectives. In phase one, we looked at citywide and we looked at a bunch of different projects and then based on the recommendations we provided, Doug wanted us to look at some additional solar opportunities with center rows of water. And that's basically what we have accomplished in phase two, which I will turn it over to Homo so she can walk you through some of the details. Thank you, Mr. If you could go to the next slide please. So I will provide you a quick recap of what was accomplished and what was in scope for phase one of this feasibility study. And then I'll move it from there to phase two. If you go to the next slide please. So phase one overall included three major components including energy efficiency, solar PV solar and battery storage microgrids. And then on the energy efficiency, during this feasibility study, we looked at 47 different facilities and which some of them are marked on the map with the blue marks. And the objective was to reduce energy consumption of these facilities to look into any deferred maintenance and also to address any electrification goals that the city might have. Next slide please. From this feasibility study, things we found were that we can break into three categories. We identified opportunities for lighting controls upgrades, lights with this opportunity that had about 150,000 annual cost savings and 5.5 years of payback. That would be the first column. On the middle column you see opportunities we found for HVAC upgrades at eight different facilities which included replacement of different HVAC systems. And then on the third column you see opportunities for retro commissioning, control optimization, more softer measures that we identified for 10 different buildings based on the feasibility study. Next slide please. So making sure that we keep track. So I'm talking about phase one, energy efficiency now moving into renewables. So on the renewables we looked at 107 different sites. Of course this is too many sites to complete the work. But the next slide is also at the same time. What we did is we looked into different aspects and how well these different buildings are suited for getting PV installed. We looked at space availability, shading and electrical infrastructure available at different sites. And we tiered them and scored them basically accordingly. Next slide please. Summary of what we found is that we identified 11 sites as tier one, basically good opportunity for solar and tier two as medium visibility, six sites. And together that would be 7.2 megawatt DC. And in this analysis we also completed a preliminary layout for each of these sites and that is the graph picture you're seeing on the right. It includes, for example, in this scenario we're looking at rooftops, we're looking at bus parking stations and then the carport area. Next slide please. And then as Moshtag mentioned, we also look into microgrid opportunities. And as he mentioned, in different clusters of buildings for two groups of buildings, 18 building in one and seven in the other. And then we looked at how we can optimize reduction in carbon, economical savings and resiliency. And in this triangle, how each of these buildings and facilities locate and optimize the different objectives. Next slide please. And then this is basically a recap of our findings for the microgrid study. Identified seven individual microgrids with estimated implementation costs for each of the scenarios, O&M costs, operation and maintenance costs and then the associated solar PV that can be linked to each of these systems. Next slide please. So with that, that is what we've completed in the phase one of analysis. This feasibility study that looked at many buildings for different aspects of sustainability. Now from there, as Doug and Moshtag mentioned, we moved to phase two and we reduced the scope into MSCN only and finding financial solutions for installing that reduced scope that I'm going to describe next. If you go to the next slide please. Thank you. So this is the reduced scope that we looked into and then we identified different financial mechanisms for. So for energy efficiency at MSCN again, we looked at lighting and HVAC replacement opportunities. And then for solar PV, we looked at about 500 KWDC installation, which is then interconnected with about 200 KW battery size for the microgrid. And then we also added to this scope another plan that the city had that was electrifying the city buses, which was planned for two phases, 10 chargers in each stage. That was also something we added into our business plan analysis in phase two. Next slide please. So, okay. What was our objective from the business plan and how we approached it? Our objective, as I mentioned, was to identify the best financial mechanism that is available to install the scope that I just went through. And the methodology we used is we looked at four different financial mechanisms that Mushdaq will go over. And we created a cash flow analysis. The idea of creating cash flow analysis is that we are doing, for example, 25-year investment, right? And we want to identify the net present value of that investment. We also, aside from the financial value alone, we also wanted to look into complexities, risks, and advantages that can be associated with these different options that we were looking into. Next slide, please. Mushdaq, back to you. Thanks, Huma. So, as Huma mentioned, we looked at basically four different types of financial mechanisms. One was basically an energy services performance contract. And this is a pretty standard vehicle, which is utilized by both federal and non-federal entities to implement and detriment on this project. So that was one. The other one was kind of a combination of energy savings performance contracts and power purchase agreements. The third one, which is still kind of a newer contract vehicle, but still it's kind of gaining traction. And many different entities are utilizing that is called energy as a service or you know, re-saving agreements. We're basically, the assets are owned by a third party and they are basically in charge of how the assets are run and you're basically providing a service to them. And then finally, we also looked at a simple PPA, plus the energy efficiency measures or the defer maintenance measures. For example, upgrading the HVAC on MSC and buildings or changing the lights. It will all be done by funding available from the city. So those were the four mechanisms we looked at. Now ESPC as I mentioned is a pretty standard contract vehicle. The idea basically is that you through California 4217 you hire an energy service company. They'll come and look at your facilities, do an investment grade audit based on those recommendations and a 30% design, they will give you basically a firm fix fee, which will then be basically financed. For a city like yourself, it will be financed most probably with a municipal lease purchase. And these kind of contracts are kind of performance guarantees in most cases, where you will be signing like a 25-year contract with the ASCO and they will basically fund the entire thing through alone and you will get savings on your bills and those savings will be guaranteed by the ASCO.  Now this mechanism is very well established, but at the same time in conversations with Doug it seems that other cities have utilized that and ACOM by ourselves, we are also in ASCO so there are always examples where these type of contracts do not pan out in the way they're supposed to for example in the long run, you might not see the savings but the ASCO is paying you for that but depending on how the contract is written there may be some fine prints and you might basically going back and forth and determining where the issues are and who is responsible for the lack of savings. So these are kind of complexities associated with this kind of a setup. Next slide please. So energy as a service is slightly different in ESPC it's basically kind of an off balance sheet setup where a financier along with the firm which is very comfortable in owning and operating assets would come in install the batteries, install the solar install all the HVAC and they will own the assets for duration of the contract and they will operate it and they will be responsible for whatever savings are being generated and the city will be only providing a service fee based on mutually agreed upon terms to do that entity and in this way you are basically not owning anything so in a way it is slightly better than an ESPC because you are kind of transferring some of the risk of how the things are operated back to the financier and the owner of the assets but at the same time you are not in control of those assets. Now if you go to the next slide a power purchase agreement again is a very established mechanism for funding renewable projects you basically sign up a deal with a solar aggregator they can also deploy solar PV and batteries in a combination they will own the assets and you are basically purchasing power from them for the next 15, 20, 25 years whatever the length of the contract is and this is the most simplest especially for MSCN looking at the size of the deployment and the complexity and at the same time Doug and his team will have the flexibility to do the HVAC lighting utilizing their own stock and their own funding so in that way that will remain so these were basically the things we looked at the fourth mechanism was basically a combination between ESPC and power purchase agreement so ESPC would only be for the energy efficiency measures and still there will be a power purchase agreement for the renewable part next slide please come on Thanks Marcelle so the aim of this table is to show basically where the money comes for the different scenarios that was mentioned so on the left we have the different options listed and the three main aspects that go into under each of these options and then high level money sources is getting your loan self or grant funds and then it's also different types of service contract fees for example for the second option which is a combination of ESPC and PPA what will happen is that solar and battery storage will be installed through a PPA and it will be paid with minimum upfront cost to up to zero minimum and then it will be paid through the service contract payments and then energy efficiency under an ESPC would be funded by a loan and then bus electrification would be self or grant funded so this table basically provides the source of money or the source of fund for the different options and their aspects please so basically the heart of this business fund analysis was a cash flow analysis and what a cash flow analysis is is that it provides a net present value of our investment in this case we looked at 25 years for this investment and during that 25 years you look at how money comes in and out of the project of the operations and what is the value of that money today with the relevant discount factor accounted for to create this model we look into different inputs it includes capital cost it includes operation cost and the savings and then different contract fees and also escalation rates as fuel gets more expensive as electricity gets more expensive and labor gets more expensive and we will consider it in the 25 years and then in the end what it does is it provides a one number value that helps the decision making of choosing the net present value of this investment that helps you choose between the different options but again this is one of the factors to be considered during the decision making on the right you see couple of examples of inputs that goes into this analysis on the capital cost for example is the cost of installing a new chiller on operating expenses would be now the energy cost that you're saving by this new chiller and for example if you're now having electric buses you're not paying for the fuels anymore but your electricity cost is higher another thing that is important to note in this model is that in this 25 years we're looking into equipment that their useful life is not 25 years and you might need to replace them during this time so it's important to consider funding and basically how that plays into your net present value calculations next slide please this is basically the summary of that model what you see on the top row is a net present value for each of these options and then some specifications for example contract term with 25 years and then for each of these mechanisms that most of mentioned for example ESPC PVA what portion of the sustainability scope was included for example energy efficiency PV energy storage the amount of loan that would be applicable for each of these options and some other financial specifications what we take away here is that as we expected energy as a service is our most expensive option it has the lowest net present value for this 25 year and that is usually because higher complexity of these contract forms higher contract fees and lower overall values the remaining options have very similar net present values but keep in mind that scope might be a little bit different between them because for example on the fourth option PVA is for renewables and it's not for example applicable to energy efficiency projects and another thing to keep in mind is that the market is changing and these contract fees is basically a fee that different vendors provide we provided these estimates based on recent projects that we completed similar size, similar scenarios but as you get closer to decision making point it's important to get actual contract fee values from different vendors to make a better decision next slide please much thought back to you so basically as Homo mentioned one aspect is to look at the next net present value for each of these options but at the same time we also need to understand the project and how or which financing mechanism or contract vehicle would be best suited for it so if you look at contract complexity, accounting implications implementation period, ownership and all these risks we do think that if you are just looking at MSCN and if you want to deploy solar PV and batteries the best option for the city is to just go with the PVA just develop this as a standard solar PV and battery project and sign a PVA but at the same time on the energy efficiency side or the defermented inside go ahead and fund those projects based on available funding from the city and at the same time we have also discussed that electrification and infrastructure upgrades will be available to grants and incentives and we also know that even for energy efficiency measures incentives will be available one other thing to note is that through the inflation reduction act there is a possibility and I think by the end of March we will have a better understanding if ITCs can be available for even entities which are not private entities so we need to take that into account as well so once this project is actually moving towards the implementation phase all these things will need to be taken into account but again that is just for MSCN specific not thinking about the city as a whole and looking at what we have completed during phase one and looking at all the different projects if we look at that level there may be other venues available for the city to figure out what is the best way to move forward and both energy savings performance contracts and energy as a service can come into play because one thing to understand is that in general if you are looking at micro grid projects micro grid projects are not the best fit for 4217 type work which requires that it needs to be paid back within the useful term and microgrids in general are done for resiliency they are carbon benefits, they are economic benefits but at the same time the aim is to increase the resiliency they might not be the best fit for ESPC but for energy as a service there are entities out there who are actively funding micro grid projects for cities and one example I would give is that we are working with the city of Realtor to develop a micro grid project where a third party financier is basically going to come and own and operate the micro grid for the next 25 years and they are able to generate enough savings for the city through their wastewater treatment plan that one micro grid is actually financially viable as a standalone project so again if we are looking at a city-wide level and in order for the city to increase the resiliency have more renewables on site and go towards the goals of becoming greener there are ways to fund those projects but again if we are just looking at the MSCM then our recommendation is still to go with the PPA I think that was all we had alright thank you so much I'm looking to my colleagues to see who wants to start with questions Council Member McDonald thank you Mayor I have a couple different questions I understand that there are some generators that are not run on diesel fuel out there is there any reason those weren't included perhaps in this presentation and would we be able to go back and look for those types of generators so that we're reducing our carbon footprint even further and then have a couple more questions for you to the generators I know that we have a propane generator for for the radios for police and fire and I believe we have another propane generator I couldn't tell you where it is right now I'd have to get back to you but most of our generators are diesel so I'd like to look further into that I did come across at the last conference there were some other companies that were there that offered generators that were not diesel fueled so if we could look into that I think would be an important thing since we're looking at carbon neutral to be carbon neutral in the city so that would be one of my questions the other question I have is based on the solar microgrids that are being proposed would that be the size after we would go through replacing HVAC equipment and the lighting and the suggested things to make sure that we're not oversizing the solar panels based upon new equipment that's more efficient that's a really good question now one thing to understand is that the load at MSCN and the solar we are suggesting is won't be able to take care of the complete load of the facility secondly the size of the solar we are recommending is kind of limited by the availability of infrastructure from PG&E so if we really want to take care of the entire load of MSCN we won't be able to because there is a bottleneck upstream so we can only provide a certain amount of solar PV generation to that particular facility and yes in terms of that the energy efficiency upgrades which will be deployed by Doug will be taken into account but still the solar which is going to be deployed along with the battery will not take care of the total load of MSCN thank you and then we currently have all the city buildings their run on the steam from the geysers is my understanding is there going to be a way to redirect that energy to be able to be used for other things in the city and has this program accounted for that and then I have one more question about paying for the equipment as far as the loan and the presentation are we able to wrap that in there or are you just suggesting that we only fund that through city general funds or is there a way to do that under this lower loan rate let me talk to the loan piece first our recommendation is a power purchase agreement for solar PV and batteries that is not really a loan it is basically that you're asking a solar company to come and install solar PV and batteries which they will own and you're basically going to purchase power from them for the next 15-20 years on the efficiency side we are basically saying that you are going to fund it through the city general fund we are not recommending a loan for either the HVAC or the lighting now going back to the steam piece we came across some chillers and boilers but in general most of the things we have seen are rooftop units so can you speak to to the council members statement in terms of the steam being provided we are discussing there is we are getting power from synomically power and we are up our tier so that we can get money back into the local energy providers to have renewable 100% renewables you have signed up for the renewable tariff so you are basically getting renewable energy products steam being produced somewhere wherever so that is fine so a couple of things that is one way to get electricity but at the same time that is basically getting renewable energy credits from basically buying clean power what we are recommending in terms of solar PV and batteries for the micro grid piece micro grids are again specifically a solution to make you more resilient so for example due to a wildfire or any other climate event the main grid from PG&E is shut down if you have a micro grid at MSCN combined with MSCN south you will be able to run your engineering department if you have another micro grid at the family center you will be able to provide shelter to people with all the energy available to them during a shutdown so that is again the basic idea for increasing the resiliency at the same time having solar on site within the city helps you reduce your basically on-site greenhouse gas emissions so that is what we what the recommendations from us are but at the same time I think the one thing that you mentioned was basically signing up for the 100% renewable tariffs from Sonoma Clean Power is definitely a good start to actually procuring renewable energy Council Member Spedum Yes, thank you Mr. Mayor I just had a question process wise and I'm not sure if this is for Mr. Williams or Mr. Mayor as the chair of the Climate Action Setup Committee reading the staff report it looks like Climate Action Subcommittee gave direction to TPW in October of 21 to initiate this report and then the staff reports in September of 2020 but I'm assuming in September of 2022 that some of these results were shared with Climate Action Committee A, could you confirm that and B, I'm wondering were there recommendations from the Climate Action Subcommittee as to what direction were their thoughts on the Climate Action Subcommittee thought of this proposal Yes, I can speak to that We brought the original Phase 1 completed report to the Climate Action Subcommittee It didn't do a deep enough dive for us to do anything with it The subcommittee instructed us to look at buildings, facilities that we know for sure that we're going to be in for the long run MSC North and MSC South the Finlay Center definitely fit that bill at the time we were still really looking at doing a PPA or excuse me a P3 with City Hall the Annex, the Chamber Building the Public Safety Building right now we are reinvesting into those buildings but when we initiated this study we were specifically looking at MSC North and MSC South we had a little bit of a push when the State was looking at changing the net metering it's been stalled going from NEM 2.0 to NEM 3.0 we don't know what NEM 3.0 is going to look like so we definitely wanted to get some solar in with the NEM 2.0 and MSC North checked all the boxes we're going to be there we know that we are looking at electrifying our fleet and that this is a good place to start and so again going back to Club Action Subcommittee did they do a recommendation just to bring this to council or did their recommendation which option to choose which option to choose we needed to know how we were going to fund this it's a heavy lift and there are several as you can see several different ways to fund it without really diving in deep on general fund reserves so that's why we did the Tier 2 study great thank you and I do really appreciate the detail in the business plan it appears to be very thorough and I appreciate that any other questions Mr. Vice Mayor without ignoring that it was just stated that this would be a very heavy lift it's more of a general question that I'm going to ask and it's really comparison between private entities as well as public as we pay down the amount owed of the equipment is it possible is it a practice where we can purchase the equipment at a depreciated amount should we so choose yes sir so basically depending on how the contract structure there are always off-ramps after certain amount of years where you can basically own the equipment by paying or whatever is what is the price of the equipment at that point seeing that you said yes I know that the contract is for 25 years what is the normal life expectancy of the equipment depends on the equipment if I'm talking about a chiller and a boiler 25 years is pretty common if I'm looking at a rooftop unit they last around between 15 to 20 years if I'm looking at solar PV and batteries I would say they have to be replaced every 12 to 15 years solar PV I would say a little bit more but batteries around 15 years and then we spoke about life expectancy what about technology becoming obsolete have you seen a turnaround that's very rapid or have you seen the equipment actually have a good sustainability with comparable technology being I would say the only thing which is evolving fast are controls in terms of the base technology for any of these types it's it's becoming cheaper but it's not really evolving too fast so for example lithium ion batteries we have been seeing that for a long time we are going to see it for the next 20 30 years everybody is the actual the density is is becoming better so you can have more batteries in a smaller footprint but are they going to get obsolete and they will move to something else for example flow batteries or or even gravity based solutions it will take some time they are currently in pilot stages so I'm not too worried about that piece thank you sir any other questions the resiliency piece aside microgrids aside some of the other recommendations around the photovoltaics did you were you able to and I understand from reading the full document most of the data is from 2019 in 2020 the council made the shift to the evergreen program 100% renewable energy through synomoclean power is there a way for us to look at this study and balance the investment of our time and putting in the infrastructure for additional solar versus just continuing to get it through synomoclean power and put that money elsewhere into other types of efficiency measures we can definitely take a look at it it would require some additional comparison of what your current rates are versus what we are suggesting so yes but once again in general there are two ways to go I would say 100% carbon free 100% renewable one is what you have already done right you signed up for the 100% renewable tariff which again basically means that that you are buying renewable energy credits but in terms of your onsite within the city of Santa Rosa what you are using may not be the cleanest right because you are basically buying the credits now depending on how the city of Santa Rosa is planning to become green if that is the approach that is totally fine but if the approach is to have more onsite renewable so you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the city then you will have to deploy solar PV batteries and a combination I think for me it is half a dozen to one six to the other where either we are creating our own system which adds renewable energy or we are continuing to purchase through SNOMA Clean Power which drives demand which allows them to invest in the same types of programs and I can tell you after we came online with evergreen from the city of Santa Rosa we were able to create a new system and spur investment in additional solar and geothermal resources that added renewable energy to the grid for SNOMA County to utilize so to me it is sort of the same thing it is a question of additional staff resources level of headache for the city manager and to that end I do think one of the things that is a little disappointing to me is the study doesn't necessarily match the goals that Santa Rosa has that if our goal is to be carbon neutral by 2030 some of the recommendations around natural gas for instance don't mirror that overall intent overall goal from the city so how can we square the study with where we need to go or want to go so one thing I would add is that if you go back and look at the phase one recommendations we made sure that we included all the electrification measures in so just to just to make sure that you do not have any more natural gas fired for example heating we did provide the option of installing all electric systems now the biggest issue with all electric systems is that they usually do not pan out in terms of finance could you repeat that a little bit I lost the so all electric systems when you compare them all electric and gas systems are way more expensive because natural gas is cheap right so if you are comparing for example if you have an electric and gas HVAC system 40 and you want to replace it with an all electric 40 that all electric 40 term system will not pay back in 25 years not even 30 because you are comparing it against natural gas prices the electricity price so we included that as an option for the city but there needs to be like concerted effort across the city to figure out how best to finance those kind of projects because they are not going to pay back okay did we look at other types of partnerships as well such as the system accounting energy independence program pay as you go financing mechanism so in terms of the first phase what we looked at was basically the incentives available from the utility so it's basically from PG&E we did not look into the specific program you have just mentioned okay and did you look into the utility I assume you also looked into the Sinema Clean Power incentives as well yes in general both are kind of compatible as far as I understand in terms of the energy efficiency Sinema Clean Power is not under CPUC is not a program administrator so they are basically running PG&E incentives through Sinema Clean Power I might disagree with you on that just because they do have their own incentive programs that they do run through Sinema Clean Power but I get the point that it's been looked at Council Member Fleming did you have additional questions I think my question is more of a comment so I'll hold it okay I'm going to go along along your lines earlier around resiliency and decarbonization okay I appreciate that any other questions from Council alright let's go to public comment on the item and see if folks have any comments on item 14.2 if you do go ahead and raise your hand on Zoom and here in the chamber we went from about 400 people to 3 alright I'll go ahead and bring it back to Council Council Member McDonald this is your item go ahead and put a motion on the table for discussion I move with the direction of the Council to direct the transportation and public works department to pursue solar and micro grid options for the municipal service center north complex second so motion from Council Member McDonald and a second from Council Member Schwedhelm comments from Council and I'll go to you first Council Member Fleming I'm not sure that my comment still stands but I can't say that I got enough clarity tonight to move forward that's probably the best comment that I can give and I just really struggle with maybe Mayor you can kick us off with comments or help frame this a little bit because I'm just feeling like the whole picture wasn't really taken into account like the future of water in the geysers as well as the implications of potential you know the NEM 3.0 how that's going to affect the cost of solar the diesel generation you know our goals as a Council is getting to being carbon neutral and that not really being the cost of that only being one factor for us and it doesn't seem that our consultants really were factoring that in so I'm just I'm really struggling with this one so sorry about that. Yeah and if it's helpful I'll kick off some comments here and for me doing nothing and remaining stagnant until we have a better understanding of how carbon neutral puts us further and further behind our goals of being carbon neutral and so we don't know what the CPUC is going to do with NEM 3.0 that's not a factor we can control we I'm going to be strongly pushing staff to do the zero carbon or net zero carbon approach I think that's important for us to pursue that at least within the city or at least say implementation of this report in alignment with the city's stated goals I think is an important way for us to talk about it and yeah I'd love more information I'd love to have all the other things factored in water and what not but from a practical perspective I'm good to move forward on this from a resilient perspective I hope that wanting more data for more information was not a I don't want to take action I needed a little bit of information and leadership from folks like yourself who are closer to it than I am to feel comfortable moving forward I would be supportive of this I'll be supporting the recommendation tonight so long as we make sure that we get to either carbon neutral or not using fuel gas fuel I feel like we have to buy the bullet and move on it's time to be done with that even if it is a little bit costly any other comments from council members on zoom I'll look to the dais any comments councilmember mcdonald I think the thing that I'm comfortable with the most is that we're actually just pursuing the options on this item we're directing you to get us to the next step that's why I'll be supporting the motion that I made all right and my apologies councilmember soyer if you wanted to jump in thank you mayor just a quick question about fiscal impacts has the I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know fiscal impacts has the consultants cost been accounted for prior to this I don't remember a conversation I remember lots of conversations about getting to 2030 and carbon neutral but I don't remember the cost of the consultants and whether or not that's been factored in and I'll ask Doug on this one if I remember correctly we had a grant to pursue this study but can you weigh in from what I understand it was all general fund reserve money the original audit and then the amendment so it's already we've already paid for that and just to be clear about what we're asking here today Mayor Rogers you're absolutely right we're we've got a like I said earlier a heavy lift and we need to start somewhere and MSC North just seems like the best place to start it's where our fleet maintenance is it's where our city maintenance works out of we're looking at putting our EOC at MSC North it just made a lot of sense and it's someplace to start what we're asking from council is to have us pursue the PPA that was recommended by EECOM for solar and battery storage now I believe that we can with our electrical department hand of the lights the HVAC is a totally another conversation the units need to be replaced as it is like Mushcock said the cost to change those gas units up to heat pumps is significant and we would need to have that conversation at a later date any other comments from council okay Madam City Clerk if you can please call the vote Council Member Schwadhelm I Council Member Sawyer I Council Member Rogers I Council Member Fleming I Vice Mayor Alvarez and Mayor Rogers I the motion passes with 7 ayes alright thank you so much and we'll be checking back in with you thank you council that was our last item of the night let's go to our last public comment for non-agenda items item 17 that was not on the agenda tonight you hit the raise hand feature on zoom saying none I'll go ahead and bring it back and we will adjourn council thank you so much


We are at Vale Mountain School. We are in Frisco, we're at our new clinic doing a pre-participation, pre-season physicals for a lot of the high school athletes. And we're providing free sports participation physicals to our local community. What we're doing today are general health and orthopedic specific physical examinations just to make sure the kids are healthy and ready to participate in their sports. We'll do height and weight, blood pressure, heart rate. Then they'll go in and do kind of a review of history. And then they'll go in and see one of our doctors and they'll do a musculoskeletal exam and they'll listen to their heart, make sure that there's nothing abnormal sounding there. And then they also do a vision screen. Not being from the mountains, it's very impressive how many kids are not only skiing but skiing in an organized or competitive fashion. Kids are active all year long up here. I mean it's really awesome to see how much outreach we get to do and how much we get to interact with the community and kind of give back. Awesome, hi Attica Armando, nice to meet you. Yeah, we're excited to be out here. It's fun to be part of this community working with our student athletes and making sure that they're safe. Yeah, no problem. Good luck this year.