re that the rules for what happens with an actual firearm also come back? It would be interesting to compare what the regulation is for a gun and a toy. It would seem odd to have them be the same. So it would be interesting to have that regulation. When I'm guessing it's gonna come back because I can count. And I would again like it to come accompanied by the procedures that you agreed to. So thank you. Ms. Toyosaki. Thank you. I would also prefer that if, if this does come back, it should come back with the County Task Force presentation and let's be comprehensive about this so that we're not trying to solve it piecemeal. But my fear with this measure, as was said by one of our speakers, it's gonna further separate the public from law enforcement. And that's my big fear. There's already two to go golf. When I was a kid growing up, I knew my neighborhood beat cup. My friends that played in the street knew my neighborhood beat cup. I live in a fairly secure part of town and the kids there don't know their neighborhood beat cup. They don't want anything to do with them or her. And that's truly tragic. That's truly tragic. I think we have a state law coming into effect in less than a year that hopefully can start to solve the problem of these imitation firearms. So as has been said many times on this dais, we can't arrest our way out of this problem. And yet that's what we're trying to do here with this measure. And that's why I just have a problem with staff time if it's not in conjunction with some of these other measures. So I'm not inclined to support this at this time. Thank you, Mr. Waisaki. Council, we have a motion and a second. And may I have your votes, please? And I have four ayes. Council members Combs and Waisaki voting no. Thank you very much. This time we will move to 10.5 discussion regarding placement of public comment on city council agenda. As the council knows, we have had these conversations actually for quite some time. And even though it's a little bit before we have discussed the recommendations coming out of our open government task force, we are, when possible, trying to implement certain things that seem to be low-hanging fruit, if you will. And so what I'm going to do this evening is just offer an idea for changing actually what would be happening is we would be adding a second public comment period closer to the beginning of our meeting. And then there would be another one at the end. The one at the beginning would have to be limited. My idea, and we can discuss this, would be up to 10 speakers that would equate to about a half an hour of public comment. Again, this is a public comment time for items not on the agenda. There's always plenty of time to have public comment on those items that are contained within the agenda. But this is non-agenda, items not on the agenda. And then we would have that time and then once again at the end of the evening, we would have the time again. I'm looking at this in the beginning to be very simple and straightforward without a lot of parameters and rules and trying to keep it as simple. Like I said, my idea is that we do it just after consent. If we find that that's not working, we can always change that, but I would like it to be, I'm just as far as we can tell. So people coming in, they see where we are on the agenda and it would be after consent. And then we would move into public comment for as many people up to 10 as we would have cards for. So Mr. Waisaki. Thank you, Mayor. I'm generally supportive of your idea. I'd like to throw out for council consideration that we have some sort of requirement that if you've spoken to us in the previous meeting or in the last two or three meetings, you don't get to go to the front of the line. Because what will happen is we'll hear the same and they have a right to speak, the same five or six speakers, but they're gonna be here at 3.30 or at 4.30 or 5.00 or whatever the definite time is. And we want all the public involved. So I would like to have some sort of priority if you did not speak last meeting that you would have a priority or someone that has spoken the meeting before. Mind you that that individual that has spoken before would be able to speak a comment or at the end of the time if there was plenty of time. Right. That would be my suggestion. Ms. Carlstrom and then Mr. Olivares. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And thank you for bringing this forward. This was one of the larger, more highly supported recommendations that came out of the open government task force. A lot of public support for this idea and I know that various iterations have been attempted in the past and previously there was some resistance to retrying it because well, we've tried that before but I think what we're acknowledging is, you know, we need to hear the public when they ask for a modification and accommodation to be heard. And I appreciate you putting this back in front of us. I wanted to just ask a tiny clarifying question which is that if there are fewer than 10 speakers, would the public comment period need to remain open for that half hour? Would we have the flexibility to move forward if not that many speakers had? So we would allow up to 10 speakers if there were 10 speakers and then we would have the public comment at the end of the meeting for people who either came late or did not have an opportunity to speak. So you wouldn't get two public comment periods. If you speak in the first period, you wouldn't get to speak on the second public comment. If you came late, you could speak at the second public comment or if there were more than 10 speakers at the beginning then you would have an opportunity to speak at the public comment at the end. So my question, thank you for that but my question was actually the reverse which is the mayor is proposing up to 10 speakers at first if for example, only five people submitted cards. Do we keep the public comment period open or do we then close it? Not at the beginning. So if there were only five vote once all the five people who were here spoke move on with your business and then if more people came and wished to make public comment on items not on the agenda, they would speak at the public comment period at the end of the meeting. Okay. The suggestion of who is eligible for this pre-speakers list. I have some first amendment concerns with that. I'm wondering if the city attorney might address that. There potentially could be and it's also challenging for staff to keep track and how far back you would go. I think when we discussed this with the mayor the idea was an order having staff randomly pick people which was discussed at the task force. Or the hat for example. To perhaps have the mayor shuffle the cards and then he would take the first 10 off the top if there happened to be more than 10 so that just because you're first here doesn't necessarily mean you'll be first to speak. I just think we might give it a go, see how it works and revisit it. But I really, really appreciate bringing this forward and I know there's some concern among the council about whether we've taken the task force report as a whole but I think this is one that we can knock off pretty quick and show some real dedication and commitment to actually opening up these chambers. I appreciate that. Mr. Oliver, some in Ms. Combs? Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to change the recommendations. I tend to like what Council Member Westlock is talking about making some fairness. I haven't thought this through but I was just thinking if at that first half hour if we would consider going to two minutes to allow more people to speak during that half hour just a thought, I haven't given it much thought but just trying to make, because I don't know how many people would actually show up to take advantage of that but I also like the idea of a test period to try it out for, I don't know, six months wherever we agree on and make whatever tweaks we think might be necessary to just make it accommodating for the public. Sure, thank you. Ms. Combs? Thank you for bringing this forward. I think it's a great move. I appreciate you're doing that. Can we clarify, which start of the meeting do you mean? Do you mean the start when we come for closed session or do you mean the start when we start at four o'clock after all the closed sessions or do you mean a time start at five 30 when people have gotten out of work and can get here? I didn't, I don't think I got which... The recommendation was after the conclusion of the consent calendar. That's about as close to time certain as we're... That's not as time certain. Well, we've struggled with that and it becomes a bit of a compromise because no matter what we do unless I stop the meeting in the middle of whatever might be being discussed and it could have happened tonight in the middle of our conversation about this item on the agenda where I would have to stop and say it's now five 30, we're gonna move to public comment. So it is, it's a problem and it's part of why we have and that's why I'm entertaining some ideas and why I'm trying to be as open as possible about these compromises, these various compromises because I know we're not gonna get to perfection. I'm just hoping that we can get a little closer to it than we are now. It concerns me that people who work, it's very hard to get here before five 30 and if there's any way we can say as close to five 30 as possible. May I? Say five o'clock, five 30 upon the conclusion of the matter being, item being discussed at that time that it becomes the next, people's uncertainty. It's either at five 30 or five 35 or five 45 if we're in the middle of an item. I don't think anyone here would be okay with, oh, let's defer the item for a half hour so we can talk about things on the agenda. We should finish what we're talking about and then we can go right to public comment that would give some certainty to the process because consent could be a while too. Yeah, and we struggle with that and I think that we probably, I like the idea and I think we might be able to move that inside the realm of the mayor being able to reorder the agenda. The part of the conversation that we had about consent was that at times and not unlike tonight, depending on the consent agenda, we can have a fair amount of staff members here waiting to make presentations. We can live with that. Okay, so let us, maybe what we can do is we'll come up with some, taking these concerns and these considerations and trying to strike a nice balance. I like the idea of as close to possible to a time and at the close of a particular item and then moving to the public comment. As far as the shuffling and whatever, that will fall on the mayor's responsibility. If there seems to be a pattern of people having perhaps an unfair advantage, then we'll just deal with that. I think the main thing is that we have more participation at the beginning of the meeting and we'll do that anyway we can and be as time-certain as possible as well. Mr. Olivares. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to propose, I mean, it would be nice, it would be nice in the perfect world if everything we did in our meetings was time-certain. Because, you know, we go through that. We have consent items where staff is here but they're here throughout the night. The public is here on report items and public hearing items that go in late, late, late and it would be nice if those were time-certain. I think this is a good compromise to say that as soon as we can after consent that we do that, it's big, I mean, other than having to wait till late into the hour to have your public comment, I think this is the good compromise that we can try and again, come back to it and tweak it if we have. Yeah, we can be nimble, we have that flexibility and I appreciate your support tonight for moving forward with that and we'll do the best we can and we'll roll with the punches. Okay, Mr. Schweigel. Not to reiterate all of it. One of the other things I would just suggest, keep it simple so that everyone knows that I'd offer a set number once you get, you know, if it's gonna be 10 random search and it goes and it's an agenda item, just like everything else. Yeah, so. Thank you. Just so you know, Vice Mayor Corsi, what he first said when we were talking about this item as well, he said, just keep it in the beginning, especially keep it as simple as possible and then let it evolve. So you all are in agreement with that and I agree with that as well and I appreciate your comments that we will take it to heart and then we'll come up with a, it'll happen on our, we'll be discussing it at our gender review on Wednesday and it will happen next week. And I do actually do have Bill Haluzik on this item. Good evening. It's a pleasure to be able to talk about this item because it's been a sort of a thern underneath the saddle for me for some time. I've come to these meetings at four o'clock and I've been here as late as 1045 and not being able to speak my three minutes. It's a lot of time to spend in a council on something that I've never spoke about anything that wasn't specifically city related. So to address all these things you've talked about, I propose that you do, you have an hour set aside that would be between say six and seven o'clock for items that are not agenda items. This would give you a range to stop whatever you were working on previously. Give a whole hour. I don't mind sitting here an hour to wait for three minutes to speak to items which are specific to the city. I've been here and I've listened to people ramble on about conspiracy theories and about poetry that had nothing to do with the city. All right, we should stick strictly to the letter of things that are specific to the city. Not rambling on about, like I said, conspiracy theories or poetry or whatever else. So this would get you around, like I said, the situation of the number of people. 10 is there's probably not more than 10 people that would speak specifically about city items, be it park, public works, police department or whatever, whatever it is, but it has to be specifically city related. If someone starts talking about some of the things they should be dismissed. To be able to speak to the council about whatever it is they want to at the end of the council meeting. On anything they wish, which is, you know, they're right. But I think that initially it should be about city specific items. Stuck in a timeframe that's an hour, say between six and seven. So nobody minds waiting an hour to speak their three minutes. That's about it. I think that addresses all the things you were talking about, unless there's something I missed. Did I miss something about, you know, about what agenda and when to stop and addressing what and whatever? Okay, well, that would be, I think I've summed it up and pretty much nailed it on the head. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but this would satisfy me. I'd be happy with this. Thank you very much. Thank you, Bill. Kevin Conway. Kevin was followed by Magic. Good evening again, everybody. Kevin Conway. I just want to come and stand in favor of putting public comments, non-agenda comments in the beginning of the meeting. I think it will definitely increase community participation and promote open government and transparency. I waited until midnight last time to make my public comments. And I have a daughter and son-in-law who both teach high school here in Santa Rosa. And I know that from a teacher's perspective, as you alluded to, Aaron, to get the young people involved, for them to be able to come at 5.30 or between five and six o'clock is gonna be much more convenient for their schedules. But in order for this to work, and I hope it happens, it has to be publicized. So I hope that Kevin McCallum will write a good article on this, if it is adopted, and that everybody in the city knows that this is now their option, as opposed to passing it. And then nobody knows that that's the case. And they go, I'm not gonna go to the city con. I'm gonna wait until nine o'clock to make my comment. So I just would hope that would happen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Patrick. I wanna thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, for bringing this forward. I think it's very important. And I just wanted to mention that I appreciate the 5.30, because over and over again, people can't attend meetings. It's great that the city council will do that. I also think we need to stick to three minutes. We really, it's hard to develop ideas and have that shortened. Also, the prioritizing of people that come every time and speak, I don't think that would be that difficult to track. And I also wanted to know if the public comment is videotaped at these city council meetings. Thank you. The one other thing is the word audience, I hope is not used when this is written up. You may think that's frivolous, but it seems to be coming in an epidemic. It was used here tonight. And actually on the Board of Supervisors page, it says audience participation. I brought that to the attention of Susan Goran, and that will be changed. So if we can eliminate the use of audience for the public, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you council and members of the public for your recommendations. Sorry. I don't have. Oh, I didn't see it, Linda. I'm sorry. Come on down. You may have added a number there that I didn't see. Well, no, that's my responsibility. Yeah, thank you. I'll just be really quick. This is also a real topic for me. I really appreciate it being able to come to the public comments at the council meetings quite a while ago and for a long time. So what I'm just gonna say is the importance for the marginalized population and people who ride buses, that having it at the front of the meeting as much as possible is really important. And so people who either don't have technology to get the news that also is, and I don't know how to deal with that to get the word out, but. So anyway, just that's all I wanted to say and thank you very much for putting that out. Thank you. You bet. Thank you, Linda. We'll do our best and to Bill's point about topic, I have discovered in my past experience in running a meeting here at the council and when I was mayor prior to this particular season, I spent more time when I tried to do that and keep people to subject matter that was pertinent to Santa Rosa or even to our council meetings. I spent more time fighting with them and trying to explain to them that your comments are not within our purview and I spent, so I decided just let people speak for three minutes and they would be finished and it was easier and less stressful on everyone and so I was using my gavel less often and the meetings were less stressful and I found that a place of least resistance and I think it's the best way to go. Though I understand Bill's frustration, we do get some comments that are not necessarily within our purview or our ability to change things and I've discovered that it's okay. Just let the three minutes elapsed and we'll just let it evolve and we'll do the best we can and try to be as time-certain as we possibly can and that's our intention, so thank you. I'm sorry to interrupt you, it's okay. One of our speakers asked whether public comment is videotaped and I'm wondering if our city, yes, I'm seeing an affirmative, yes it is. There was a brief period where the council had not televised it but it's not, it is now televised. Do you have it? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we now will move to city manager and city attorney's reports. Yes, I just wanted to take a moment and make sure that the word got out that we have hired a new transportation and public works director, Mr. Jason Nutt. Mr. Nutt will start on March 16th. He was here for a while. He moved on to working in Marin County and most recently worked for the County of Sonoma before he's gonna be coming back and assisting us here and we're very excited that he's starting very soon. Thank you. Well, he was here first, so it's welcome. Good to have him back. Thanks, I will be out of town Thursday afternoon and Friday for a seminar in Orange County but I will be checking emails and voicemails in case you need anything. Thank you, Ms. Vowler. Moving to Consent, Mr. McGlade. Consent items, item 12.1, Resolution, Grant Application to the California Department of Water Resources Urban Streams Restoration Program for the Construction of Lower Colgan Creek Restoration Phase II. Item 12.2, Resolution, Grant Application to the California Department of Resources, Recycling and Recovery, Cal Recycle for Illegal Disposal Site Abatement Funding. Item 12.3, Resolution, Declaring Weeds and Rubbish in the City of Santa Rosa Apublic Nuisance. Item 12.4, Ordnance Adoption, Ordnance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa Amending Section 1-04.020 of the City of Santa Rosa City Code regarding minor modifications to the city logo. Thank you, Mr. McGlade. And Council comment or questions. Mr. Waisake. I would like to comment on one of these items just because I feel strongly jumped right out at me when I was reading the staff report. And it's item 12.2 on the background. I just wanna read two points and I hope that people really get, I hope it impacts on the way it impact me, number two in the background. The accumulation of trash in human waste along the city creeks, parks and public lands negatively impact the community stormwater quality and pose a threat to public health. Then go to point five. Despite the city's strong creek stewardship program worked done by city staff, contract workers and volunteers. That includes cleanups to remove debris, trash and solid waste and recent coordination with social services providers. The level of staff and financial resources necessary to fully address these issues far exceed those available. Those are two very powerful statements. And I thank staff for bringing those to our attention. Thank you, Mr. Waisake. Yes, let's just wait on. Just on the same item 2.2, they meant there's reference of a police task force. Can I get a little bit more information? What is, you know, it's kind of a reference to what council member Waisake was talking about. I imagine they'd be maybe tasked with some of that, but. Excuse me, this item has like a PowerPoint, right? I mean, do we want to just pull it and let them present this item? Is there, well, we could go into that depth.  If the answer just from this perspective that there's a consent item. If council wants to pull it, that's council's prerogative. So we can either go for the answer of the question or we can go to, we can pull the item and bring it for further discussion. More in depth. That's the question. I think we're okay. Try the question first. I have a long answer. Good evening, members of council, mayor. I'm Hevin Moore, supervising engineer for stormwater in Greeks. So in answer to your question, this issue, as you can imagine, is multifaceted. So we've coordinated with police, public works, parks and code enforcement. And one of the needs identified was to have police support for enforcement and notification of people occupying these legal camps. So this task force and the funding requesting is to allow for funding of what we propose at this point to be an overtime task force for police support. Thank you. Did that answer the question, Valina? Okay, thank you, Ms. Combs. Will the newly formed host teams be working on this also? This application and the funding pursued is independent of the host program and would be applied along waterways throughout the city and public lands and parks. Would there be coordinating with any of the other helping agencies? We coordinate currently and would continue that effort through our stewardship program and through our interactions with the homeless community and support services. Okay, well, I saw SAY mentioned, but I didn't see Catholic Charities or any of the other hosts. Yeah, and I actually wanted to point out in the PowerPoint, there was an error, there was actually going to be the youth core. And SAY is one of the subcontractors to that. To youth core. Yes, so my apologies on that. Thank you. Great, thank you. Any other questions? Council for the consent items? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the council. Mr. Oliveris, you have the consent calendar to see. Thank you, Mayor. Move consent items 12.1 through 12.4 and we're furthering the text. Second. Thank you. And your votes, please? Nice, thank you very much. Council, would you like to entertain a break for five minutes? All right, thank you. We will break. Let's keep it to five, please. Thank you. For little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know that for our community, farce made life better. Out there in the middle of everything. Over 90 miles of creeks run through Santa Rosa, run off from streets, roofs and parking lots, end up in our creeks through the storm drain system. To help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the stormwater and creeks webpage. Have you ever seen a flashing yellow arrow on a traffic light? I'm Rob Sprinkel, traffic engineer for the city of Santa Rosa here today to talk to you about a new type of traffic signal. Beginning in 2013, flashing yellow left-hand signals will be installed in some of the intersections in Santa Rosa. Studies show that drivers better understand the need to yield to oncoming traffic with a new flashing yellow arrow signal. These new flashing yellow arrow signals give drivers more chances to make left turns, but more importantly, they stress the need to use caution when turning left. Some drivers may be confused when they see a flashing yellow arrow because they're not exactly sure what to do. Let's run through how these signals operate. The green arrow means you have the right of way to make a left turn. All incoming traffic and pedestrians are stopped. The solid yellow arrow is a warning telling you the light is about to turn red. The red arrow means stop and wait. Now for the new part, a flashing yellow arrow. The flashing yellow arrow means you can make a left turn if there's a safe gap from oncoming traffic. Check for oncoming bicycles and pedestrians attempting to cross the intersection. Always yield to the pedestrians as they have the right of way. If you don't see a gap in traffic, don't take a chance. Just wait until the next green arrow appears. The city of Santa Rosa will be evaluating the new technology at locations throughout the city. It will be up to all of us to make sure we use them safely. In recreation and parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community. Striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings, space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know that for our community, our state life better. It's run through Santa Rosa. Run off from streets, roofs, and parking lots, end up in our creeks through the storm drain system. Help protect creeks, keep your street gutters and roadside ditches clear of trash and other pollutants. For more information on the benefits of our creeks and tips on how to enjoy them, visit the Stormwater and Creeks webpage. Have you ever seen a flashing yellow arrow on a traffic light? I'm Rob Sprinkel, traffic engineer for the city of Santa Rosa here today to talk to you about a new type of traffic signal. Beginning in 2013, flashing yellow left turn signals will be installed in some of the intersections in Santa Rosa. Studies show that drivers better understand the need to yield to oncoming traffic with a new flashing yellow arrow signal. These new flashing yellow arrow signals give drivers more chances to make left turns. But more importantly, they stress the need to use caution when turning left. Some drivers may be confused when they see a flashing yellow arrow because they're not exactly sure what to do. Let's run through how these signals operate. The green arrow means you have the right of way to make a left turn. All oncoming traffic and pedestrians are stopped. The solid yellow arrow is a warning telling you the light is about to turn red. The red arrow means stop and wait. Now for the new part, a flashing yellow arrow. The flashing yellow arrow means you can make a left turn if there's a safe gap from oncoming traffic. Check for oncoming bicycles and pedestrians attempting to cross the intersection. Always yield to the pedestrians as they have the right of way. If you don't see a gap in traffic, don't take a chance. Just wait until the next green arrow appears. The city of Santa Rosa will be evaluating the new technology at locations throughout the city. It will be up to all of us to make sure we use them safely. In recreation and parks, the days begin when the sun rises. Most of our workspaces don't have four walls or a desk, but there's a lot to be done to get this place up and running. It takes a big team to cover so much ground. Each space is unique, requiring its own special method of care and service. And it's of utmost importance to see that it happens each day because our workspace is your leisure space. And it includes 950 acres of Santa Rosa. It's the parks, the trees, the fields, the trails, special gathering places, community spaces, and it belongs to everyone. We work for our community, striving to improve quality of life. We provide family experiences, friendly competitions, leisurely evenings, and places to bond with man's best friend. We create space for celebration, relaxation, and artistic expression. You can learn to serve a ball or learn to serve a meal. Take a walk on a path or walk the plank. We've got beautiful settings, space to show off our history. We have room to roam, to roll, or to run. We allow for the silly, the serious, the cool. We offer countless ways to work on your health. We keep our youth safe and teach them to keep others safe. We challenge people to want to challenge themselves. We foster creativity, guide athletes, hone passions. We allow for little minds to dream. And we'll keep doing what we do each day because we know. Okay, council, we're back. And what we're going to do is I'm going to reorder the agenda at this point and I'm gonna move directly to our public hearing and then move back to the agenda as written. So item 14.1, public hearing, Bennett Valley golf course green fee rates and player incentives. Nanette Schmeichel, director of recreation and parks, presenting. Welcome. Thank you, mayor and council. Nanette Schmeichel, recreation and parks department. I'd like to start this evening's brief presentation with just a little bit of background on the Bennett Valley golf course just to help put the green fee rate increase into some perspective. So first of all, our golf course was built in 1969, started in 1969 and it opened in 1970. It is on city owned land and city funds paid for the construction. Since its inception, it's been operated under third party contracts with operators. So in essence, city staff have never done the direct operation at the courses. We currently have two contracts and that's important to remember. The contract for the course itself, the 18 hall golf golf golf course and the pro shop is with Bennett Valley Golf Shop Incorporated and this contract was approved by the city council in April of 2014. So we're about 10 months into this, well, we're 10 months since approval and it started July 1st, effective with the fiscal year. The other contract is for the restaurant and we also refer to that as the clubhouse and that contract is with sports restaurants Incorporated and they are currently in the second five year option and they have another five option that is at their disposal and so basically that contract can go through 2022, I believe. So in each case with these third party operations contracts, a business plan is an integral part of it and so it helps to expand upon more of the, more immediate goals in the upcoming annual year and so we have their agreement that outlines what the contractor does, what the city does but then on top of it we have another document called the business plan and then it's refreshed every year. So in the case of the golf course which is really the topic this evening with the greens fees, their business plan includes all kinds of actions, goals, strategies that we think help improve services and help strengthen the fund, the financial health of the overall golf course and so I wanted to just list some of the things that the operator has already started to implement since July 1st and that includes a new website for promotions, online booking, adjusted tee time so that play can go faster, an e-newsletter so we're communicating more to our constituents and our customers and an electronic survey that was implemented this February. They've also been working to attract new leagues and tournaments, they've added forward tees so again just trying to make some modifications on the course that will appeal to different kinds of players, adding range balls and that's all been on the operator's side of the ledger. Part of the business plan requires that the city partner with the operator because it's in our interest to make it a very strong and viable facility with lots of great services as well. So we've partnered with the operator to add the fairway sanding project which is it's a three year project which basically allows the courts to drain quicker if it rains and so we have more playable days and then another of the strategies in the business plan was sort of a pro forma budget and revenue so we're trying to enhance revenues so one of those strategies was to bring forward a recommendation for increasing the greens fees and the rates so our budget was built with the idea in mind that we would come forward to the city council with recommendations for greens fees increases without the increase even a modest one we would probably have a $30,000 shortfall in our budgeted revenue estimate for this year. So the last time we were here visiting with you in December on the greens fees and the rates part of what the council asked us to do this evening was bring back more market information and so show a little bit more of the research so we pretty much compare ourselves as much as we can to the public courses open to the public Windsor Oakmont, Foxtail, Rooster Run, Adobe Creek those are the 18 whole courses. Our course is among the highest played courses that's been pretty traditional so the most rounds played in not only our local area but Northern California and then we also just want to mention that just as a national trend, golf usage and participation is down and so is the case with our course as well. We aren't hitting the goal that we wished we were hitting but it's still better than during the recession and we'll show some of that. Part of the other thing that we experience is it used to be that people would make reservations in advance and fill up those T sheets and pay top dollar the going rate and nowadays there's a lot of last minute bargain hunting and an example of that would be golf now and so we participate in golf now and this particular snapshot was a couple weeks ago so but at the time we said this is what it looks like when you go on golf now and you ask to see what's available and we had mentioned to you that in our operating agreement with the contractor he has the ability to offer discounts so again 24 hours in advance he can put something out and say on Facebook and say hey I've got some unfilled time 30% discounts. We allow that to happen because we want people to come fill up those T times and we participate on in golf now and so that is out there it's sort of an advertising and marketing strategy for us as well so Bennett Valley is out there but we're offering these super, super discounts as do the other courses in the area so just so you get an idea of what's really out there it's so it's not the rack rate the published fees these are fees that are below those rates and we participate. So here's some golfy comparisons that we conducted and these are individual green speeds rates and so we looked at the courses that we mentioned to you before and sort of showed how we're stacking up on the official the official rates and we also wanted to so Bennett Valley is third from the bottom row and you can see these are our current rates and we showed you we wanted to show what's the average of those courses that we're mentioning there as well as a median so half below and half above the median rate and then the average is the average and so you can see how the Bennett Valley rates currently stack up against everyone else. We also wanted to show you some of the use history and I mentioned that Bennett Valley is a very highly played golf course but it still isn't at the peak it was back in 2009 and we experienced 82,000 rounds. Then there was a deep dive with the recession we started climbing back up as the economy slowly improved a little bit. We had in 2013 just spectacular weather and so we hit the 75 almost 76,000 range and then in 2014 which we just finished we had some rain in December and so we just weren't really able to have a kind of play that we had experienced the prior year. Our business plan goal for the current year or for the current year 2015 is 74,000 and so that's a calendar year goal and then from a revenue standpoint just the green's fee piece of this we also wanted to show you a little bit of history since 2009 these are fiscal year figures but you can see that in nine again just with the high usage we had a high amount of revenue coming in and then a plunge and then slowly kind of climbing up and going down but basically we are seeing some increases over the last couple years and then the goal again for this year is the 1,379,000. Before we get into the different scenarios and options for green's fee rates we just wanted to go over the notes section which is applicable to any schedule that we would present to you so that what we mean by senior is 60 and older what we mean by junior is high school and younger the various midday twilight rates what the times are for those, et cetera. So the council also asked us to bring not just the one option that we gave you in December but to give you several different options and so this is an option with an across the board $1 increase and then what we're also doing is we're estimating the number of customers that we're going to get with that and so then it plays out to an estimated amount of revenue so with $1 across the board the estimated revenue is 1,386,515. The next scenario was a $2 across the board scenario with estimated players and a little bit of revenue. Option C, $3 across the board. This is where staff and our operator we started talking about well would we maybe lose a few customers in certain categories and so we think well maybe there'd be a little bit of some migration on that so we're factoring some of that in but as you can tell revenues increase and then we move to an option D which is $4 across the board and option E, $5. And we sort of just made an assumption that it's hard to project but at one and two probably about the same customers. At three we figured there'd be some reaction modest and then four and five we said we probably gonna estimate the customers at the same levels because once again it's sort of hard to project but we're presuming that there wouldn't be that big a difference between a four and a five. So the last slide in my presentation is what is kind of attached to the resolution and it gives you those ranges. So this is a public hearing it was noticed in the newspaper and what we published was the current rates that are still in effect and then a proposed rate range which is the one doing nothing is the first scenario. Keep them as the same and then up to a $5 increase in any of the categories. And that concludes my prepared PowerPoint. Thank you very much. Council questions for Ms. Michael. Yes, Ms. Carlstrom. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll start off with a easy one. What's super twilight? I'm gonna go back to oops. This is slide 10. Okay, going backwards. It's a terrible teen movie. Yes, I'm assuming not with respect to golf. So super twilight is between 5.30 p.m. during daylight savings and 3.45 p.m. standard time. So it's that late after it's like a late afternoon lag time. And so there's like a discounted rate for that. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't see that. Mr. Mayor, do you want us to go into all of our questions on this item or are we doing this piece meal? Well, I have asked the city clerk how many cards I have. Well, I just seem like- I have one card but it's at public hearing so I can open it up to the entire, to the- Okay. No, I just, it seemed like our director might have had other things she wanted to present because she said it was the way in which you said this is my prepared presentation. I didn't know if there was other things to come. I think she's anticipating questions. Yes, we know that the focus of our presentation and request to you tonight is for the Greens v. Rates but we also know that we sent you some different information just to provide the context. The agreements we sent that to you in case you wanted to familiarize yourselves more with the agreements, the business plan for the course. There were some questions regarding the golf fund itself which is an enterprise fund and hopefully you received those and we're able to, there are other questions. You know, we're just prepared to try to do our best and answer them. I'm prepared with questions. Why don't you go right ahead then? Okay, I will get right into it. I went through the business plan. Don't know who prepared it. And I wanna pull it up. Is that in this item? No, yes? At any rate, the business plan, there it is, PVGC course business plan references a number of times one of the deliverables in short order being a website including Better SEO, online booking, things like that. If I go to BennettMalleyGolf.com, currently online booking is available. So I'm just making sure that that wasn't a misprint in a deliverable for the future. No, it was this year. It was for this year and it's been implemented this year. Okay, okay. Do our local schools use the golf course for their golf teams? Do Montgomery High School use it as their home course? Okay, so none of the other schools, if they have golf teams? They have tournaments sometimes. They go to other courses. Sometimes have tournaments there. Okay, and I heard somebody else say they go other places. No, that was that you? I'd like to know why the schools aren't using our municipal golf course and how we can encourage them to do that. I'm Bob Borowitz. Hi, Bob. Hi, how are you? To answer your question, Montgomery High School uses Venom Valley as their home golf course, which they host the different schools in the district and outside for specific events. Herbert Slater, junior high school, uses it, Strawberry School comes out, the local schools basically. Each high school in the area has their own home golf course. Ah. Like Pioneer, I'm probably not gonna be real accurate as to whose home course that sort of thing, but I know Fountain Grove, Oakmont, Santa Rosa Country Club, Bodega Harbor, Foxtail Golf Courses, they all host at least one high school. Huh. Just as an area, I think we might consider pursuing is how do we get our schools aligned with our city-owned and co-maintained properties? Why not? Do we have somewhere the figures for revenue that has been previously generated from weddings or events that have been hosted? We do not have that this evening. Could we, at some point, see that? That'd be great, thank you. Um, what if anything, one of the items that stuck out at me were the projections, the costs, including utilities and water use, and I understand that the golf course is not hooked up to city water, but instead utilizes groundwater through wells. Have you done any outreach with our city staff to look at ways that conservation can be achieved and therefore a reduction in the fees associated with that water? And bearing in mind that I understand it's not city water and yet it does incur a cost. Right. The course itself is operated with or irrigated with wells, and so the real cost there, there's no cost for the water per se. The cost might be for electrical to run the pumps and that's fairly minor. We do a lot with conservation. I know Bob and his team are very conservation minded and although we aren't under the stage one drought, doesn't currently pertain to the groundwater, he and his team have gone through the course and they have identified certain sprinkler heads that could be turned off in the event that we wanted, maybe the groundwater rules were to change. And so they're very conscious about watering and the water window, but frankly the irrigation system is so old. It's 45 years old, original equipment. The thing that would do the most for conservation would be when we're able to upgrade that irrigation system and have it on automatic timers and scheduling and head to head coverage just patterned in a different way than it is currently configured. Okay. And I appreciate that there are limitations in place. I'm just always looking for places we can find savings instead of increasing the fees. I would like to see us explore, one of the challenges I always have when we talk about the golf course is that it is viewed as a community, benefited community asset. And yet I have a hard time envisioning young kid from Southwest Santa Rosa hopping on the bus with his golf clubs to go play at this course. And so what I would like to see us look into are city sponsored youth leagues at the golf course, freer or low charge. If we're, I just think we need to be doing everything we can to expand the use of the golf course. And that would tie in with some of the marketing plans of targeting junior players and getting them into the sport in general. And if I'm gonna subsidize it with public dollars, I'd like public kids to be able to go play there. There just were a couple of things on the business plan. A couple of things were repeated. I did have a question. Is Wolf communications present? Negative, Jack Wolf is the owner of the company. Okay, and nobody hear from them? No. Okay, but they've worked with local courses? He used to be involved, Jack used to be involved with the number of golf courses. I can't remember how many years ago Brandon Valley wasn't part of it, but there was a group five, six, seven years ago, maybe the four or five golf courses got together and formed some golf alliance. I can't remember the name, to be honest with you. He does have experience in the golf business. Oh, sure. I just met locally in the county, in the region. Has he worked on other courses? He, I think he's done some work with the Windsor golf course. And that's the only one I remember of. Thanks, I would have asked him. I want to look at, on page three, the business plan, market trend, the use of online booking and available promotions available. The use of online booking and available promotions available with such is a challenge for BVGS Inc. In reaching our optimal, I need somebody to unpackage that statement for me because it doesn't make any sense. It's basically with the online, like the golf now application, where you're getting the discounts available to you, that that it just creates a challenge as far as competition. Every golf course is pretty much now using something like Golf Now, where there's some discounts offered and they're also pretty much one of the reasons we gave the operator some flexibility in his contract to do the discounts, you know, 24 hours out and that kind of thing was because that is an industry standard where everyone's competing for folks to come those last minute bargain shoppers. And so that just, it creates a challenge because in a way we, every golf course is doing the same thing to discount and hopefully lure that player to their course. So I guess maybe I'm not understanding why it's being termed a challenge if everybody in the industry is doing it. Are you saying it's maybe not as effective as it might have once been? Well, what we're saying is that it's a challenge to make revenues. You know, we have the rack rate and that's great but everybody discounts their published rates and we're including our course. Okay, so this pull-up point is just meant to identify in general it is a challenge to the revenue projections for the golf course because everybody's making these online discounts available. And it's a challenge because the players are shopping. They're shopping for the best bargains sometimes and so we're out there among it saying, you know, maybe we have the best bargain, you know, 24 hours out, you know, but maybe we don't. And so the players who are looking for last minute discounts and bargains, they're gonna go where it suits them. And so that's what we mean by it provides a challenging, very fluid kind of environment for us. And an opportunity. Thank you for that. Page six identifies that Windsor golf course may have an advantage of their fairway conditions, but it seems as though previously the representation was that our greens were in the best condition. So Bob, can you just address that briefly? There's certain definitions, certain terms used to define the golf course. Greens and fairways are separate parts of the golf course. Greens are what you put on and fairways are what you play from to get to the greens, okay? So Windsors are better than ours? Fairways, yes. Fairways are when you tee off and you're trying to go to the wall, fairways are what you're gonna travel to get to the greens. I'm picking up what you're putting down. I'm concerned that Windsors are better than ours. They are better, yes. But Councilman McCrosk. But our greens are better. If I may, that's why we're doing the sanding program to improve those fairways. All right. There are just a couple more things that I found in the business plan. Okay. Page 14 of the business plan, infrastructure milestones year one to be completed by December 31st of last year. Accomplishment one, three new forward tees open and then in year two, December 31st of 2015, three new forward tees open. These three additional? Okay, that was my question. And then we're buying a lot of mowers. Do we not own mowers currently? We do own some mowers and they are old and at their end of their life cycle. And so that was one of the things when we put this business plan together, we said that the city would continue to capitalize equipment. And so part of the business plan would be to pick out certain key pieces of equipment to replace. Okay, seven mowers over the court. I just wanna make sure I read that right. The only final thing I wanted to point out or ask a question about is that the city used to have a website URL that links to the golf course and it's not operational anymore. Can't we just turn that back on? I mean, the whole point of this, right, is that we're sort of reasserting, this is a community asset, this is the Santa Rosa Municipal Golf Course, the city of Santa Rosa's website maybe ought to have the link to it. My understanding is we do have a link to it on our website. Can I ask Kelly? Yes, we do. But I, okay, we can talk about that offline, but I swear I just tried to look it up and the city's website pops up and says this is no longer. Okay, I'm done, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Carlson. And Mr. Sweider. And then Ms. Colms. Thank you, Mayor. Couple things that we discussed, the junior plays, is there some, does city, rec and park creation, recreation and parks offer any junior golf programs? And I'm not talking about high school, like middle school to kind of generate the interest in the wonderful sport of golf. We do not. We do not have any classes that involve golf at this time. I would just offer that might be helpful in the longer range plan for healthy communities and use of the golf course. And then there were some figures that I was a little confused on. So if you can go to slide eight and it's a total of rounds played. So before or after this one, they're not numbered. Okay, there we go, there they are. So total rounds, they're 74,500. And then when we go to the different price increases, the examples are 51,000. Right. And the reason for that on these financial, or I'm sorry, I'm going the wrong way. Slide 11 would be the. Right. We're culling out in these fee projections, we're needing to cull out the amount that we're attributing to the annual pass holders. So someone buys an annual pass and we say, you know, we're estimating the 75, 12, 40, whatever customers, they play and they're not paying that annual Greens fees. So we're kind of minusing that out of the equation. And so just for the single issue Greens fees, we're basing that on a historical projection of people just paying through the door. Okay. All right, that makes sense. And then the different options, one through $5. Was there ever, or did you do any supply demand analysis?  Do we, I heard you make some reference till we talked about it, but was there any surveys to find out what the golfers at what point would you stop playing? There's gotta be some dollar figure there. We didn't conduct a formal survey. You know, we're projecting, again, one to $2 as before when we came in December. We don't really think that's gonna have a super negative effect on the players who are coming. Bob has his pulse pretty well on his regular customers and $1, $2, people kind of yawn about that. The $3 range is like, they start going, well, maybe I'll think about going somewhere else, you know, more frequently. And so we indicated sort of the blip there. And then when we got to four and five, you know, again, it's like, well, not a lot of difference between four and $5 at that point. We suspect there will be some downward participation, but I think the really important part of what we found out kind of or were reacquainted with since we met with you in December is when we look at averages of the other courses, when we look at the medians, we are pretty much priced below the other courses. And so there's room. We believe there's some room to increase our fees. We also know that we're currently enjoying, you know, high amounts of rounds. And so might we lose some of those rounds to other courses once we increase our fees? Possibly. But in every scenario, we feel like we will still have decent playership because of everything else that Bennett Valley Golf Course offers, the whole experience of the course. Okay. And then I also read one of the, it could have been the business plan, that $1.9 million figure where the city takes 18% up to that, over that it's 30%. Can you tell me the process that, we came to that $1.9 million? Negotiation. Negotiation. How long ago? A year ago this time when we were putting all the final touches on the agreement and working with Bob and trying to negotiate the contract and then we brought that to the council in April. Okay. And then I know council also received an email from, I think one of the golfers about the annual card having a rolling 12 months versus a year. Right. Thoughts about that? I'll try to respond as best I can to that. The first issue I believe was that the annual passes are considered a calendar year product, January through December. We will sell the annual pass any month. We sell them January, February, March, April, May, June but they're only good through the calendar year so it does not have a rolling date. The reason for that is several fold tradition which isn't the greatest reason but the golf, Bennett Valley has never had anything but a calendar annual pass. The second item there is this issue of the annual pass is like the frequent flyer and they're using, so they get really good discount if they use their pass a lot. And so it's really a discounted rate and the theory is that then to further discount that by, I guess, inhibiting our ability to every year consider increases and then have those take effect in the calendar year at the beginning of the year with the pro rata, that all comes into play with the discussion. Now could we institute that? We could but so far we just have not had a policy or a practice that has had a rolling membership. Now we did a little bit more research when we saw that email as well and Bob made the calls and I hope I don't fail with it too much but the courses that we chatted with they also have pretty much calendar years. They will allow someone to join at a new member, they will allow them to join say in June and perhaps do a pro rate. It's not an official policy however, so that's kind of tough for us to not have something in writing but then the following year that person is expected to join for the full year starting in January. So there was a little bit more to the background on that than I think what the email had in it. There was also a couple of other things there was also a question about payment plans I believe and some of the council members will recall that leading up to the new contract and the last time we had a fee rate discussion with you the golf course underwent a review by an outside consultant. I won't say it was an audit but it was a review of the golf course operations and we brought the findings of that review to the council in October of 2013 and among the findings there was first of all there was nothing earth shattering it was really actually a pretty good report but among the findings were that there were some practices occurring at the course that had not received council approval and so a payment plan had not in fact ever been approved by this city council. And so the recommendation was cease and desist. You know, don't do what you're not authorized to do and so we cease and desist. And so that is why in January of 2014 and January of this year as well the annual pass is offered as it is with payment due upon purchase. If the council were to enact a policy decision to allow a different kind of structure then we would be able to entertain that. I mean just for me if it would generate additional rounds and additional revenues I'd be very interested in exploring that versus I told you what you're saying we've always done it this way. Right. It's a new year. The other thing that we appreciated from the emails was although we sort of we had the annual pass fees set in December we really appreciated receiving some of the comparison information on that and it was really interesting that we're not talking with our rates we're talking a $900 increase on an annual basis. That's to be comparable with the other courses. $900 annual pass and then the courses that we touch base with and we ask them about their payment plans those are offered at a surcharge on top of the annual pass. So it's not a freebie it's 10% more in order to do a payment plan or I believe in one case it was $300 more to do a payment plan on top of your $2,500 fee. Thank you, Ms. Collins. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you for answering all of our questions. Do our best. I know, I know. So I just I want to make sure I understand one of the premises here is that if we continue as we are will be 30K down $30,000 down unless we increase the fees. So part of our motivation to increase the fees is to cover that. Yes, as part of the business plan implementation. Okay, and I'm interested in I understand we have a major irrigation system coming up an upgrade. Does the cost or any prorated cost of implementing the transition to the better irrigation system is that included in the 30K? In a manner of speaking, yes. One of the documents I believe I shared with the council was our current year budget. Yes. And so you saw in that appropriations for it was $230,000 for irrigation, right? And so much for this and so much for that and a revenue projection overall. And so yes, any dollar that we miss in the revenue projection affects our ability to implement the expenses as well. And in the case of the year. I'm going to interrupt you. We're saving up. We're saving. For that transition. Yes. And what's the timeframe of the saving up? The savings plan that we, this is the first year of it that we embarked upon with the business plan was a 10 year. 10 year. And is that a reasonable estimate for the particular terrible irrigation system we're currently in? We would love to be able to do it quicker than that. But when we look at the numbers again, it just, it felt like it would be difficult to accelerate it. But we would do our best to try to accelerate it. I understand that you will comply with council direction, but we want to be reasonable too. So in the range from $1 to $5, does that have any significant impact on the 10 year plan reducing it to a five year plan or reducing it to? I would say that what the range does is instead of us coming back to you like every year for a dollar or a dollar, it puts us like three years into the plan if you were to go to the higher level so that cumulatively we might be saving, we might be generating a little bit more revenue now rather than later.  Okay. And I think I sent you a request for a history of the fee increases over time. And I was fairly vague about what I wanted. It was okay, for example, to tell me how long we've had the $40 rate for the adult 18 round. You know, has it been $40 forever? Has it was it $20 only two years ago? And I never got a back of response but I wonder, I got a different response back. I did not recall receiving that request from you, Julie, so I apologize. Okay, do we have a clue now? Can we guess, has it been $40 for 10 years? Was it $40 for 10 years? I think we just raised it in 2014. From... There've been two increases the last couple of years. Pretty sure it was in a report. One was not specific dollar-wise in the report but it was five percent and then a nine percent increase. We could get you that information. We would just take a little staff time to show you some of the history of the rates. But it's there. Is this coming back to us or is this it today? Is it? This is it. Okay, don't waste your time. Can I keep my hopes up? Yes. Don't waste your time unless it's coming back. I have two other questions. One of them is a follow-up on the annual pass. I found the letter compelling from the gentleman who wrote about the annual pass and the rolling 12 months. Is the pass like an annual pass? You can play all you want for 12 months or does it have like tear off? You get... No, you play all you want during the calendar year for that fee. So there is a significant difference in benefit if you buy it halfway through the year than if you buy it in January? Yes, because you have six months instead of 12. Right. And do we prorate the... No, we do not. We do not. And you can come to us sometime in the future to talk about payment plans if we need to get there. That's correct. I'm hearing that there are bargain hunters among our golfers. Absolutely. And because we can drop the fee rate down, we've given the power to the operator to drop the fee down if the course isn't being used. We could go to the higher levels on the fees for the people who aren't caring what the fees are. Is that a misjudgment of what we're being told about how the fees work? Because it sounds like there's... People who don't care and they come when they want and they'll pay what it costs. And there's a bargain hunters who are gonna get a discounted rate anyway. I mean, one of them said $11 on that. Well, not everyone's gonna get a discount. Okay. So part of the flexibility in filling slow times, yes. But if we don't need to discount, we don't. If we have enough players, we don't offer the discounts. The idea behind the discounts is to pretty much meet industry standards and stay competitive with the other courses in the area and to recognize if there are those slow times that we need to incentivize. I guess I'm trying to understand if there really is an impact on players, if they can get a discount to below whatever the current rate is anyway. Yeah. And did you look at it in terms of seniors are less likely or more likely to use a discount or juniors are more likely or less likely to look at a discount? And so we could adjust the cost across the different categories or is it just across the board? Everybody pays a dollar more. No, again, we're offering you options and that range in every single category because we understood that the council really wanted flexibility. The way we're presenting it tonight is one, two, three, four, five, but you could absolutely pick and choose. If we knew how. Okay. And what I'm hearing is we don't have the data on young adults are the ones that are getting the coupons or seniors are the ones that are getting the coupons. So. Can you have adults on who? Generally speaking, it's, I'm not sure what your definition of young adults, but the 20 to 40 year old range, you know, the seniors are to receive a pretty good decent discount. So they're not generally, maybe on the weekends they might, where they're not eligible for a senior discount at Bennett Valley, but primarily it's the, I don't know what you, the terminology is, but 20 to 45 year old is where most of our discounts takers are coming from, I think that demographics. So adults. Adults and on the, and the discounts that people are really looking for are during prime time, you know, the prime time weekend. That's what people are hoping to, you know, either go to golf now and snag a $11 rate instead of. Because if we accidentally make it too high on times adults are using the coupons, since they're using the coupons, we haven't made it too high because they're getting the significant discount anyway. When the, when you go look and say, well, we have slots available, you can still fill them. You understand what I'm thinking? Is that, have I said it somewhat clearly? You'll be filling them anyway because you're using the discounts to fill the, to fill the course. Right. In a manner of speaking, yes. Okay, if we could figure it out, we could do it. And I have one other sort of comment and then I'm done. The bus goes to Bethards. It doesn't go to the course or to the park or to the soccer fields or to Galvin in any way. You have to walk from the bus stop to the course entrance and it's fenced off. So you have to go all the way down around and in and through and on the street. There actually isn't a sidewalk from the entrance to the, you have to go through the parking lot. Can somebody look at whether or not that's affecting the use of that park and whether or not we need to have the bus get there. I mean that, for me, that might affect junior players who aren't driving. So, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Jones. Mr. Baisaki. Good evening. I'll be brief. Dry, I didn't see any mention of driving range revenues. Are those significant at all? They're significant. We don't set the fees for those the operator sets the fees for the range per the contract. But they're part of the budget. And so in every case, we're hoping we hit those revenue targets in whether the city is setting the rate in the case of the greens fees or if the operator is setting the rates in the case of the range. Is it fair to say that those fees are similar to in comparison to the other courses in their driving ranges? I'll let Bob answer that. For the most part they are. When you consider any so-called range cards available, bonus word that Ben and Valerie offer four different cards where you'll spend $45 and to sort of player reward type thing and they get $50 in balls. They spend 80 bucks to get 100, 150 to get 200 and so on. Some of the price per ball does average out within about a penny or two per bucket for most of facilities. Okay, so it's relatively insignificant difference. I note in the contract that the minimal service levels and expectations for this golf course are comparable to Windsor Rooster Run and Oakmont. And that is, I would assume is because the courses are roughly similar. Yes. That's when I go and I appreciate that because that's what jumps out. And if I go to the presentation then and go to page seven and you'll have to back up maybe two or three or four and you have the golf fee comparison chart. If you look at those courses, we're quite a bit below the non-residents. So it just makes me wonder where we're gonna lose our players as a business consultant. That's what I would look at. So I'm skeptical of the loss. I know we'll probably lose some. But if that's our competition, Windsor for a non-resident on the weekend, $56. Rooster Run, non-resident weekend, $58. Oakmont, non-resident on the weekend, $54. We're still at least $9 under. So I know that was a comment, but I thank you for your time. Hopefully we can resolve this and move on. Thank you, Mr. Wesselski. Mr. Oliver. Thank you. And to your point, Councilman Wesselski, I haven't been there lately, but I also understand that Fox Hill South is not exactly a desirable place either. It's very low, but I think it's for a reason. Although it's supposed to be just the dog of the whole area. Right, exactly, yeah. So I almost kind of wanted to discount that as part of a comparison. Part of my question was answered. I think the last time we were here, we talked, there was three areas that we wanted covered. One was the options and you've covered that the comparisons and then the other was the outreach. So public hearing, we talked about notice to players what was done as far as outreach to notify players about tonight's public hearing. Yes, we were sure that we had that posted at the course. The fees posted prominently at the course and the notice, the public notice. Okay, and there was no other, I think somebody mentioned survey. There was no focus groups or any other efforts to get some feedback from players as far as the fee increases. We did not do a formal survey on, I guess, price sensitivity. Okay, thank you. Council, I'd like to open up the public hearing if I can now, if you're, okay, let's show some questions, burning questions. Ms. Carlson. Just one final, if we don't adopt any fee increases tonight, what happens? We continue with the existing greens rates. Earlier you referenced a $30,000 budget deficit. What, can you walk through for me what the consequences of that are? As far as this year's operating results would be, we are estimating that we won't meet the revenue projection by about $30,000. And so it affects the bottom line of our operation, less money into the golf fund. And I would suspect that it affects the savings plans primarily for the capital improvements which we want to implement at the course. So whereas we have, this year as an example, we said we would save $230,000 for the irrigation system and we'd spend $60,000 on the fairways and we would perhaps maintain the buildings. I think it was $80,000, those kinds of things. So we would anticipate that our savings goal is what would be affected. There's a possibility that we will have less expenses in other areas of the budget which could help us. But overall, it's really just as simple as just not meeting the revenue goal. Okay, thank you. Okay, council, I'm gonna open up the public hearing. Thank you for your questions at this point. You don't have to fill out a card to speak this evening during this public hearing, but I will recognize the card holders first and that would be Mr. Farron. Thank you, Mayor and members of the council. I'm Gregory Farron. I'm also a member of the Bennett Valley Golf Club and I'm treasurer of the Bennett Valley Golf Club. Though I'm not speaking for the club tonight, we did not have a large discussion of this, but several of us have been participating in the hearing process, the Board of Community Services recommendation and providing a lot of information. I wanna bring your attention to three specific things. One of the charts you saw showed a decrease over time in the 18 hole and an increase in the nine hole. I just wanna bring that to your attention. We are playing shorter, we are savvy shoppers, we are looking for the best deal that we can get. And the other thing I wanna point out is, all of those one, two, three, four, five dollar increases are across the board. And many of us believe that whatever you adopt, whether it's $1 or $2 or $3 or $4, we don't think three, four, or five are very useful because if you look at the dollars you're gonna be making at three, four, and five, it drops off. You're getting fewer people playing. One is 51,000 rounds, two is also 51, which we kinda doubt. Three goes to 49, four goes to 46, five goes to 46. You're dropping off, we're bailing out and we're not playing as much. That's not in anyone's interest. So the higher you raise the fees, you lose golfers, we lose rounds, everybody loses. We think you ought to come up with a strategy that is a fee raised for the 18, half of it for nine, none of it for juniors. I mean, if you're looking at this, you know, it is a business, but it's a life and we would like you to encourage people to play. So it makes sense to us that the weakest, least capable players, the ones you wanna encourage the most who are the youngest, why are you trying to ask more money from them? I'll give you an example, your $1 fee raises $38,000, covers your $30,000 deficit. Wipe out the juniors and you lose 2,500 bucks. It's not a big deal. Same thing with all the rest. Going to two, you raise $90,000. More than enough to do it. If you get to two, promise me it'll be two for the 18, one for the nine and zero for juniors. I mean, you can do that. You have the flexibility. It's not very hard to comprehend and you can give staff that direction. But don't do this across the board. Everybody pays the same. That's not fair. Fair golf is what we're asking you to help us get to and keep us there. So don't make it so hard. Those are not comparable courses. Everybody has their own favorite course. Everybody goes to what they care about. Everybody goes to the ones that have good benefits. And if you lose people, you lose money more than Greens fees. You lose lessons.  If we don't show up there. So think of the whole of it. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Byrne. Would anyone else like to approach the council on this item this evening? Seeing no one rise. Close public hearing. Bring it back to the council. So council, comments. Ms. Rolaveras. Quick question. He just referenced juniors, nine hole and twilight. Is that listed here as far as the increases, the options that we have? There's a schedule in response to council member Waisaki's request. They were given a range. So you don't have to do across the board on all of them. If you wanted to pick and choose which ones you wish to increase or increase them in different amounts, you have the discretion to do that. Right. Yeah. Because we have seniors listed on the comparison chart, but not juniors, nine hole and twilight. So I guess the question is, is that included in the five options, the increase? I'm not sure I'm understanding your question. There's the junior rate, 18 and nine hole. Okay. So it is on the proposed to go up as well. Okay. Good. So as far as comments, and I think there was some disappointed last time about the turnout. And I'm disappointed about the turnout tonight and even responses. I mean, we have very little correspondence from the users, disappointed that we didn't reach out to the users. I think there's plenty of opportunities there. Not necessarily a formal survey. It could be a simple focus group, spot checks, talking about it. At this point, I'm inclined to suggest the $3 increase. And, but I would also consider some leeway with a senior piece of it. Just looking at the figures here with some of the increases with the $3, it still keeps us competitive. And we're talking about a rack rate. We cannot fit this count rate. So it's a starting point. There's different variables as far as what causes I'm not an avid golfer or something, but I assume there's different variables that would cause somebody to choose a course. It's their preference. People have their favorites. It's the location, proximity to their residence. It's maybe looking for a different challenge down then and trying a different course out. The level of service, their loyalties to a certain golf course, the condition of the course. But the only one that is probably consistent would be the weather, which would impact whether or not you're gonna go out and play, whether they allow you to play. But it concerns me that it seems like we've made a lot of assumptions about what's gonna happen with the increases that people are gonna start dropping off based on what, based on, it sounds like a group discussion, but not including the actual players that say, what point are you gonna drop off? So that really concerns me. And if it was noticed properly, they know that the ranges that we're considering to raise it up to $5, I think if that was a really significant impact on somebody, they would be outraged and they would be here or they'd send in some correspondence, they'd look, five bucks is too much. I'll go to, I'll go a buck, whatever. But I'm missing that piece of it for me. So at this point, I mean, I'm throwing out there the $3 increase and I would consider some other options for some of the other groups, whether it's youth or seniors. Thank you. How about we just go down the line and this might make it easier, certainly easier for me. Thank you. Mr. Winsocki. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you staff for the presentation. I do, I did look at all the individual options and one of the speakers noted that we start to drop off after $2. The total revenue on the $5 increase is the largest. So that, just to correct that statement. His point was well taken to this councilman about the juniors. I can see that you don't really wanna hit them, because they are an insignificant, very insignificant amount of increase. However, I'm a little reluctant to give them weekend time, because that's prime time. So certainly on the weekdays for the juniors, I can see keeping it where it's at to keep, to bring them along. Just going right to the bottom line, I see $42 brings in 1.439 million, $45 brings in 1.467 million. As was stated earlier, the general fund subsidizing this course for a variety of reasons, not necessarily the golfers fall, we've been through that many, many times. I would be in favor of an immediate $2 or $3 increase. This year, next year go to $45 and give an allowance for juniors during the week. Yeah, that's some to entice them to come back. That's a point very well taken. I just am very uncomfortable running deficits for this operation when the city has so many other needs. And especially when you compare it. And then to add on, just to finish my point, Windsor, Rooster, Run and Oakmont were way underpriced. We just are. That the slide shows it. So that's where I'm at. Thank you, Mr. Wiseauke. Before I move down the line any further, just wanted to double check with Mr. Oliveris. You mentioned three, at least at this point, also no junior increase. No, I'm open to having a discussion about some of the other considerations. Okay, thank you very much. Ms. Combs. Thank you. I appreciate the staff's work on this and giving us the flexibility. I too hear the statements from our person from making public comments and agree with council member Oliveris that three across the board is the reasonable one, except. I would suggest that on weekdays, we consider seniors, juniors and nine-holes with only the dollar. And I note that a number of the other courses had weekend non-resident 18-hole rates that were $910 higher than ours. So it would seem to me that for the weekend non-resident adult 18-hole rate, we could consider going to five. We do not have a non-resident rate. So we have a $40 rate for weekend adults. Correct. And we included that as the weekend non-resident rate when we were doing the comparison. Right, we, since we do not have a non-resident rate, it's this, our rate would be the same resident or non-resident and that's how we showed it on those charts. We still showed you where. I saw that there were. It was like 40 all the way across, but I didn't quite process that that meant no non-resident rates. Is there a difficulty in separating our residents and non-residents that made us not do non-resident rates? The council, we used to have that and the council changed that about, I think, two years ago. Okay, well I'd love to hear what other people say. To answer your question, we were told it was difficult to track, as my recollection, for residents and others. The other courses do it, but we have trouble doing it. Okay. Right, there was, there was a potential abuses of it. So it just made more sense just to have a flat rate on both. Okay. It just seems like weekend adults are probably either, if they're cost conscious, they're checking the coupons. And if they're not cost conscious, we should be charging closer to what other courses are charging. So before we move on, just so I can track this, could you encapsulate your recommendation so we can discuss it after I've gone down the line? Okay, and again, I'm feeling just really flexible. This is on the fly, just like everybody else's. I'm not married to this. Okay. Agreeing with council member Oliveris, $3 is a mark to hit because it helps us pay for the coming needs for the course. But I also have sympathy with seniors who are on fixed incomes. So would want senior, anything that says senior on here to go a dollar. Okay. Anything that said junior on here to go a dollar. Okay. And nine whole weekdays maybe go to a dollar. Okay. And then I was trying to figure out a way for weekend 18 whole adult players to pay a little extra, like five. So you'd moved to five for a weekend across the board other than- 18 adults. Okay. 18 whole. 18 holes and adults. Yeah. Because they're the ones who can find coupons. Okay. I got that. And we're already doing nine or $10 less anyway. Okay. Thank you. And again, I want to be clear that I'm motivated by making up the 30K shortfall and not taking additional funds from other programs that we're going to be seeing in the future and increasing the savings we have so that irrigation system can be fixed before it breaks. So thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Ms. Carlstrom. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I don't support any fee increase. Just like I didn't last time. I think we heard tonight that the target audience is changing their bargain hunting and I know the course needs to remain competitive. We need to maintain the infrastructure that's been built there. We need to maintain it as an asset. I am reluctant to diminish the value perceived or otherwise in our green speeds until I see more out of the box approaches to how to reach that revenue gap for youth golf leagues addressing the junior issue. Are we getting the schools on board? What's the revenue from other events? Weddings, how are we marketing that? And then I may be willing to consider, but right now nothing. Okay, thank you. And Mr. Schwadau. Thank you, Mayor. I too, it's a little frustrating. I'm a data kind of guy and there's not a whole lot of data. There's anecdotal data and no disrespect to you, Bob. I know you have your pulse on the local golf scene but I really wish I knew what that price point was. If we had some data and some analysis about supply and demand, that gives us some, cause I'm not sure what consequences three would be. And so for those reasons, and again I'm not 100% in concrete on this, but I agree, I don't think we should be increasing any junior fees, cause again across the board percentage why is that from a $6 to a $7 heck of a lot more from 22 to 23 and the rest a buck. And then what I would like to see is a five year plan about how we're gonna meet some of our revenue and operation expenses. And little check ins maybe on an annual basis if rounds go up to pre 2008 levels or whatever, then maybe it warrants automatic kick in for another buck. But let's have a longer term strategy because my biggest fear if we go too much, we're gonna lose the golfers and we're not gonna get them back. And we'll be having similar discussions about other impacts that these same golfers have about the other rounds and the other facilities out there. Okay, thank you. So just so I can recap, you're if you could increase, but now with lacking the data, you would be in favor of a three accept? No, it would be no increase to the junior fees and a $1 increase to the rest. To the rest, okay, across the board. Okay, except for the juniors, got it. Okay, well, I have to admit I'm also frustrated by the need for one reason or another to have as much guesswork. I do trust Bob's intuition about rates and fees. I've heard for years that we are undercharging. So I'd like to be able to address that piece by some increase in fees. Totally go with the no junior increase. I mean, showing what that increase gives, it looks like it's, let's cut them some slack. I'm less concerned about the seniors being able to absorb two. I was going for two actually, and because I saw this drop off in the numbers that were provided to us, it's very difficult for a municipal course to be as nimble as the private golf courses. And I understand that I would very much, as far as their fee structure, almost anything, they can change at a heartbeat and we have to go through a public hearing process. So I mean, they don't have to do that. They can say, well, change in the rates. Next week done, bingo. And we can't, and we know why. But I think that I would like to see after we go through this process, some more analysis about how creative we might be able to become. Whether that be, that's a technology issue, increase our technology. I mean, the original reason for not going for the residential rate partially was there was abuse. There were abuses and someone said, well, all you have to do is ask them for their driver's license. And how do you abuse that? If it doesn't say Santa Rosa, you don't get the rate. So I'm not, I don't know, and that decision was made a while ago and I'm sure it was the right thing to do at the time. But I would like to see, it would have been great to have more public input. I don't know, Mr. Farron mentioned the Board of Community Services. I'm not sure how much input was provided in that venue. Sounds like not all that much. So it is disappointing. We're shooting in the dark a little bit here. I would, I'm hearing, I'm not even sure how we're gonna go forward because we have, we're, you know, we actually, I would, like I said before, I was more moving toward the $3 rate or a $2, I'm sorry. But I'm not hearing anyone, Mr. Waisaki mentioned two to three. I'm hearing three as a more comfortable rate and no increase in the juniors. The dollar for the seniors and dollar on weekends or the $5 rate for 18 plus on the weekends, I think I get, I get concerned about confusion and difficulty in managing it and it sounds simple, but I would, I can go forward tonight and I'll try to cobble something together here so that you can get your rate increase or the fee increase and try to mitigate this $30,000 deficit which makes me very uncomfortable. But I would love to be able to find a vehicle to do some creative analysis of where we might, since we're, we know that we can change anything we want. We've just done it with the junior and it came from, you know, a recommendation from the public saying, look at this minimal impact by changing that, by keeping the juniors insulated from this rate increase. It's that kind of input I think that we need in the future to make adjustments as we move forward. But we do have a lot of work to do on the course and lots of things to pay for. We, and I know that we need to remain competitive but we don't wanna be giving it away. So I look forward to future conversations about this ability to set these rates. Mr. Waisaki. Ken. Oh. My mind, I was gonna go, you know, I originally was wanted to because I was concerned about this drop off given the data that we were provided. I would be willing to move to three without, with no junior increase, but keeping it simple at a $3 across the board increase except for juniors. May I craft a motion to see if it goes. Based on what I've heard, I'd like to move that we raise green fees $2 immediately with the exception of juniors on the weekday. Two for this year, then effective January 1, 2016. We raise another $3, Q1 through the five. Across the board. With still exempting juniors on weekdays. I think that's a very good point. It's minuscule. Your recommendation is March 1st. They would be implemented. Okay, that's fine. Thank you. To 45 or three more. Correct. And I will also exempt. Thank you seniors on weekdays from either of those. Reluctantly. And you've got the sheet open here. What is the senior effect? If you will. On weekdays? Just like the juniors where it was, it did not change things that much. What happens with the seniors? Weekday senior 18 whole. I have a, oh boy. It goes up. It's a $13,000 increase on $3.  Would you consider holding the seniors at a dollar? Or were you exempting seniors all together? I wasn't clear. I would hold this. I could go with that. I'm flexible with seniors, sure. Okay. I would hold seniors to a dollar. $2 starting March 1st. Exempting juniors. Seniors, a one starting March 1st. A senior increase in seniors of $1. Is this throughout no week, nothing changing on the weekends? Or is this? Okay. Is it weekends only? Weekdays only. Weekdays only. Weekends is, it would be for juniors and seniors, weekdays. The only exemptions, let me restate. Let me try it again. Effective March 1st, rates go up $2 across the board with the exceptions of juniors on weekdays who will have no increase. Seniors who will go up $1 on weekdays. Effective January 1st, $3 across the board with the exemption of juniors on weekdays. And seniors only another dollar increase. That would be my motion. Okay. Just to be clear, that's an additional $3, not going from $2 to $3. That is correct. That's correct. Thank you. Mr. Oliveris. Thank you. I would support starting someplace we have a deficit to deal with, but I have to agree with Councilmember Schoenhelm that if we need some real analysis of where we're heading with this, and yeah, I think we need to re-look at this again as far as an additional increase, but I think we're almost guessing here. I think we need to do something now, but take the time to do some proper analysis with the Councilmember Schoenhelm that was speaking to it's, it needs to mean something. We need to have it based on some really good data we can get the data. And I don't know how to do that. If I may respond, I understand the need for data, but throughout my careers as CPA businesses, they take risks and there's the unknown. To me, the best data appears the rate comparison with the other courses. We're a huge value right now and we have huge needs for this course.  And we have to start building a preserve. So can I ask a clarifying question? I think one of the challenges I'm looking at is it was identified in the conversation that the private sector courses are nimble, fleet of foot, they can take risks, they can do experimentation to respond to the current market forces that are underway. One of the challenges I think we're wrestling with is a point of fact that we are not that nimble. We can't, responsiveness is subjective. You would sit down with a focus group and they might very well tell you, if you do any increase, I'm not coming back to the course. I'm not gonna say that that's what the valuation will be. What we could do is hire a third party consultant to do the review. I think one of the things is this is falling back into the lap of staff, which is not necessarily fully equipped all the time to do some of these discreet analysis compositions. But I will say that on the flip side of this is the fact that in the private sector when you're dealing with this to jump on council member Weisaki's page is the nimbleness and the ability to experiment in these environments to understand what's going on is one of the things that those courses would have in this conversation. So if it would help to get to a conversation, I could explore with staff what it would cost to bring in to help do some kind of third party analysis working with our contract holder to understand some of the variables that you're looking for more definition about. That would cost some resource, but I think we could then maybe bring back some data. I'm not promising that, but we maybe could bring back some data to do the next year forecast. Would that add some level of comfort to this process that we're underway with right now? Mr. City Manager, have you seen the third party analysis that were done by Ceres and there were two third party analysis already given for this course? Well, we would review that. But what I'm saying is an option is is that you could take an immediate stab. We could take a deeper dive on this front and look to see if there's a way to get some of the data sets that you seem to be asking us on about future projections, not necessarily what we're doing right now, but future projections. One other clarifying point too, and I appreciate that. The ability to discount, that's remaining unchanged here. So if these are way out of whack, correct what's gonna happen. Correct. Correct. It's leveled out by the discounting process. I don't wanna see staff, and Bob, how many times have you been here in the last 18 months? Probably too many. Exactly. I don't know the numbers way too many. But I'd rather see him concentrate on the golf course, quite frankly. And I just, to me, the data set is what's it cost for the comparable measures, levels of service, we have that. Let's go. That's what I would say. Can I second your motion? Okay. Can I just ask one question? What are you proposing to do about the weekend rates for seniors and juniors? Cause your previous motion was only for the weekday play. They don't get the exception to the increases. Okay, so those would be increased to the $2. Correct, I consider weekends prime time. For both, everybody. Okay, Ms. Carlstrom. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wanna thank the city manager for trying to help us with the creative solution. The problem I'm encountering is we're attempting to run a business from a dais. I may be alone in this, but I vehemently oppose the expenditure of more city revenue on a consultant to study the golf course. I would suggest, though, that we have at least one representative of the affected constituency group in the person of Greg Feren, who frequently loves to get involved with city stuff and has a lot of good ideas. So if we can tap into the golf, what'd you call yourself? The golf club. So Greg, could you circulate a survey or send out a flyer, a doodle pole, something to figure out where people sense, I mean, there's resources. And, you know, Sean, I appreciate that as a solution, but I don't want any more money thrown at this. Thank you, Ms. Carlstrom. So I'm ready to move forward with what's been presented. I am a little uncomfortable with having an automatic increase without more discussion on January 1st. I can see the need, but it does concern me, we get more revenue, but that $5 number just makes me a little uncomfortable. I think we need to stay competitive, but that $5 just at the top of the range starts to make me squirm a little bit. Bob, did you have something you wanted to say? Yes. Thank you, Mayor. You said the keyword is revenue, and what I'm looking for is the same thing as the city is to maximize the overall revenue. The focus tonight is on the Greensfield revenue. As we go up in numbers, and we didn't do a formal written or mailed out survey, but we did speak with the golfers that came out the last three or four weeks since the last meeting or however long it's been, getting the pole as to what sort of increase they might handle without choosing to play elsewhere on occasion, which is how we came up with the numbers. And I do have another schedule, I guess you'd call it, which is similar to which a couple of members have suggested were a $2 increase for the 18-hole Greens fees, $2 increase for the midday in the twilight, and then a dollar for the nine holes, and the remainder of the fees. And that amounted to 1.439, well in excess of, let's see here. Bob, what were those numbers based on? Did you do a, did you say you did a survey, a pole in the 21-hole? Fertile, as our customers came through the door. We started asking people. I mean, I'm not there 24 hours a day, I'm here, but I asked our staff just to take an informal poll.  So we do have some data. Exactly, I mean, yeah. We have people who said we would maybe go somewhere else if you, I mean, when you ask somebody, will you pay $2? They might not respond happily, but they might continue to come back. There's a difference between what somebody will tell you when you're thinking of raising a fee and what they will actually do. So I'm not sure what we have. If I could also add that we did increase this council in December, the annual passes by 10%. That's equivalent to a $4 increase for this rate. Can I add a couple more things, please? Mayor, you mentioned the key word is revenue and the city receives the same percentage, whether or not the revenue comes from greens fees, range balls, all rentals, and cart rentals, and equipment rentals, I should say. And you receive the same percentage, not that I pay you, but the same percentage from the hot dogs and the coax and the beer you sell. It's important, I mean, I'm in it for, I want to make as much money as I possibly can, and I want the city to make as much as they can.  And I don't want to lose golfers to other facilities, because they're taking their money elsewhere, and they're harder to get back once they leave. I have about 33, 34% of our golfers ride a golf cart, they rent a golf cart. The city gets 18% of that fee. And so in our figure, if you're losing players, you're losing that additional revenue. And I just, you know, prior to this new agreement, yeah, I had no vested interest in how much the green's fees were. I wanted it, and I still do, I want as many people out there as possible so I can rent my carts, so I can sell range balls, so the restaurant can sell more hot dogs or whatever it is, okay? That hasn't changed. And I'm just afraid if you go to where, you know, the four or five dollar increase, that we're gonna lose players, and it's a projection, I don't care if you do a formal poll, that doesn't mean, and you mentioned it, a council member of Combs, that it doesn't mean that's what's gonna happen. You know, golfers, you do the poll, and you say how much is gonna, if I'm taking that poll, and they ask me how much is gonna take to, that caused me to move to the golf course. I'm gonna say a dollar. I'll say two dollars. I don't want an increase, you know? So I don't know if there's confusion. I know you're all very intelligent, way smarter than I am, but not in the golf business, you know, and you have to trust me. You've trusted me for 30 some years to be a part of the golf course, and I'm trying to do what I think is best for the golf course, which in terms of City Santa Rosa, and I'm trying to make a living and pay my employees. So what's your recommendation? My recommendation, okay, I have it here in writing. It was one of the initial recommendations we had that wasn't presented in this, because we didn't think you wanted that, was a combination. Was a two dollar increase on all the 18 whole fees, excluding the juniors, okay? A two dollar increase on the midday, and the twilight pricing. One dollar increase on the nine whole fees, okay? And then I think it was one dollar on the juniors, which is just because of one dollar. We could take that out. Your microphone, your microphone's gone. Did you do a calculation on what that resulted in? We have in our presentation, if we did a one dollar across the board, is there a calculation for? For the two dollars, like I said, on the 18 holes, two dollars on the twilight and the midday rates, a dollar on the nine whole greens fees, and a dollar on the juniors was going to, based on projections of not losing any players, which was real key for me, and for the city of Santa Rosa, for the golf course, to continue to make budget was 1.421 and $140. Bob, could you put that on the overhead so the public can see the numbers you're referencing? I give someone to show me how, sure. Thank you. Just to get the totals, there we go. It's kind of dark. 1.421, 1.40. 221. Council? Here's the recommendation from the man who does it every day. Mayor, I mean, I'm supportive of this, and I'm guessing this is just for one year? Yes, it is. And one of the recommendations from Sirius, the review that was done a little over a year ago, a couple year and a half ago, I guess it was, was that they understood the position that we're in, as far as having to go through what we do to set rates, but they, I think the words were, he said it was ridiculous to set the rates six months out, let alone a year ahead. I don't think you can set a schedule now for next year until you get well into this year and see what you're gonna need or not need. I think that's part of it also. So. Yes, we just this year, and then next year review, which is very typical in the golf businesses, you review annually based upon what you've done and what you need to do, and you go from there. It's not necessarily set for one year period. Those fees would remain until you change them. But if the staff came back on an annual basis, obviously they'd change if you elected to change. Would this be, would this be part of the proposal that you would be coming back on an annual basis then for fees? Does that. Then I'm not sure of the only reason we've come back in the past, though, than the issues we've dealt with a couple years ago, was when we're looking, if we're looking for an increase. I mean, it may not be next year. Right, you know, anytime that we have modified the fees, we've come back to council and it's been, I think we had in the staff report in 2013 they were raised, in 2014 they were raised. So it's been sort of an annual pattern. And so it's the intent to review with this business plan, every year we look at our milestones, we see if we've met our goals and then do we need, and we could evaluate how many players are coming or not. I'm in agreement with Bob that it, and you know, you've experienced this tonight. It's really hard to predict the future. It's very hard to predict the future. Our customers are loyal, but they're also gonna look for a good deal and a good rate. And so I'm with Bob, we wanna keep them there because it's not just the greens fees that they might spend money on and enhance our revenue. There's the restaurant, all those other things. So participation is important to us. Thank you for that, Ms. Combs. So I'm just trying to understand the impact of the general fund because for me, that's really where we are. And we have, if we do the plan just presented to us, I think we're okay with the 30,000 shortfall. Is that correct? Yes, we believe that the adjustment in greens fees give us the ability to meet our budgeted revenue for this year. Okay, but we're still subsidizing the golf course. That is correct. And we subsidize the golf course to the tune of what? I'm remembering 400,000. 471,000, and that is debt. Right. So the general fund subsidy is directed towards the repayment of the bonds. Right. And the repayment of the park development loan. Okay. And neither of those include the savings account. Well, they include a little bit of the savings account for the new irrigation system that's coming. The debt payments. No, the debt payments don't have anything to do with it. I'm just adding things up in my head. We've got a 30,000. We've got saving up for irrigation system. And we have with the golf course, 400,000. So I'm very sympathetic, but I'm having trouble looking at a $2 increase because it doesn't help us offset much of the costs. If I may follow, because I am while you're pondering. Don't we, I'm sorry, don't you Bob, don't you have the ability to discount now if you've got plenty of open play? Yes. So what we're giving you really is a ceiling. We're not giving you an absolute.  If you'd like to give me that or continue to give me that, I mean, I personally, as a businessman, I want to keep everybody there that we have. And I'm also looking out for the golfers a little bit, to be honest with you. I mean, as you increase in green fees, you look at our agreement, I mean, I'm getting 82% of that. And the city's getting 18%. So yeah, I'd say, you know, raising 10 bucks. But no, but that's what my point was. Yeah, we can get it down to sure. If you want me to, that's how our approach is in the past because Bennett Valley, the number one, not the number one reason, but a big part of why we are the number one played golf course or amongst the highest played in Northern California is we're the best value. It doesn't mean the cheapest, but the best value. And as our prices go up, our value is reduced a little bit because golfers are gonna go, as we get closer and closer to Windsor prices or specifically Windsor, our rooster run is that, you know, for somebody and they're both very good golf courses, he comparable, if not, maybe depends on who you talk to, maybe a little better golf course, but, and they might want to play a little faster around and we've done a good job in managing our pace of play. We're now, I mean, it's under five hours regularly. Greg Farnold testified, or testified, whatever you want to call it to the other, our Benz Club events on the weekends are now at four and a half to 445 and four and a half is a very nice pace of play. Yet some people consider that slow and they'll choose to pay a few, maybe a couple more dollars as we get closer and closer to the other facilities rate and go play Windsor. So, what I'm reading here is that Windsor weekend, non-residential is $56 and ours is 40. So we're talking about $16. We're not talking about one or two here, but we're only talking about whether we're raising $2 or $3 when there's 16 more and you can still provide discounts. So we're talking about a ceiling, not this. They're also providing discounts. That's their public rate. Yeah, if you approve, the council wants me to run the business similar to the other golf courses where we're having, we're putting ourselves in a position where we're having to offer discounts or in the past we never used to. And if that's what you want me to do, that's... So what you're saying is we, because of the way we function and our inability to be nimble to maintain the ridership, if you will, of our golf course, we need to be more, we need to be competitive plus. Not just competitive, but competitive plus. Otherwise, we will start to lose our edge and as we move closer to those published rates, it could be harder and harder to retain the customers that are players that because we're convenient and for all the reasons we know, they still come to Ben and Valley. But as we get closer to the other rates, we may be competitively price wise, but we also start to lose our, we could start to lose our edge. So being careful with these increases like have been presented tonight and I think these are very, what would appear to many to be conservative increases actually help us maintain our edge. Mr. Oliveris. Thanks, thank you, Mayor. I'm hoping we can move us along here. Pursuit. I don't know how it works, but I would make a motion supporting Bob's current proposal. There's already a motion on the floor. I understand we're procedural, right? So. Mr. Oliveris. So we need to, so we're, the first motion was Mr. Waisaki. Would you be willing to withdraw your motion? No, I want to call for the question. So you would vote on the first motion. If you want to make a second motion, you could put that out there, but you would vote on the first motion first. Right, so I made my motion then, so I guess I would ask for a second on my motion. Would you consider amending, I understand the desire to have a one year rather than a, I mean to have a now rather than a multi-year, would you consider? Well, I'm hearing that the rates that we set are set until we change them. It's not, there's not a deadline on it, but it sounds like there's more work that we would want to do. And it sounds like some of you are even inclined to include the club and having some discussions as well. Well, we need to start someplace. Would you consider a $3 increase on the 18 hole instead of two, and then accepting the two midday twilight and the one nine hole with nothing for the juniors because he's proposed a dollar for juniors? Okay, so you want to offset the. Well, I'll set the dollar for juniors by putting $3 on the 18 hole. Yes. Thank you. Okay, I would like to withdraw my second from the first motion. Okay. Do I hear second for Council Member Oliveris' motion? Mr. Mayor, I think I heard Council Member Waisaki call the question on the first motion before Council Member Cromes withdrew her second. He did indeed. So that vote needs to be taken. So we need to take that vote. So, oh, there is. I think you're too withdraw the second because he already called the question. Yeah, that's right. I can count. I'll just withdraw the motion. Thank you, Mr. Waisaki. So we have a motion on the floor and a second was the second. Mr. Schwedhelm, do we have a second? So my second was with what was presented by Mr. Borowitz. So I would second it as amended. Okay, and now we can have that discussion on that piece of it. On the amendment. Okay, so we have a second. So the details to figure out or to finalize these details. So let's be just clear. What the last thing that I heard that Council Member Olivares agreed to amend his motion in response to Council Member Cromes, $3 increase for 18 holes and $2 for Midway and Twilight, which is what Mr. Borow recommended, $1. And exempting any increase for juniors or increase? I'm not in favor of going up on the juniors. Okay, so no increase for juniors. Yes, yes. Right. Weekends as well. Weekends as well. That's Mr. Borowitz's recommendation. Ms. Yes. That was doing with the juniors, correct? Yes. Right. Yes. Ms. Morrell-Strum first. Mr. Mayer, thank you. Could we provide direction to our operator who has adroitly pointed out that he has been doing this for 30 years and I've only barely been alive for 30 years. Could we not provide direction that establish a new fee schedule up to $3 additional with no increase to juniors being given consideration and let him figure out the details? No, because in the agreement, the city council sets the green's fees. And by law, the city has to set those. Down to the dollar. Yes. Ergo, our lack of nimbleness. However, we do allow him to discount. Yes. So he has to discount. So I have a motion and a second on the floor. Is everyone clear on the motion? Yeah, and I don't know if there was a comment on that or discussion, but yes. I think that... I ask a real quick question of the gentleman representing Benavelli Golf Club. Are you okay with what we have? Do you have? Okay. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to confirm we were still okay with the representative of the club who's here. Thank you. And I'm willing to go for that three. Yeah, can I call the question? That's it. Thank you. Your votes, please. And I have four yeses and two noes. Council members, Carlstrom and Waisake voting no. Thank you, Council. Thank you, staff. We need, I'm sorry, we need a vote on the play card, if you would, please. Can you clarify that? Yes. The play card was a new product, which we proposed gives people 10 plays and the range was between $330 and $370. It's a product that does not exist currently. And if memory serves, the Board of Community Services came back with a recommendation of $330? That's correct. And what would that make our single, how would that make a single round fit into the, if we divide that number by 10, we get 33? Right. And that, that's a significant difference. Can you use it at the $40 time? Right, exactly. So they're paying for 10 plays and it equates to $33. In advance. In advance, we get the money in advance. We get the money in advance. And Bob, does this sound, does this, I mean. And what was the range again? $330 to $370. It was a $50, I mean, excuse me, a $40. Yeah, and that was based upon the highest rate we had, which is the weekend rate of $40 and a very close, almost exactly a 20% discount. So as the, that rate went up to 43, and they have a calculator council member, why soccer configured this head, whatever, you know, an $8. So I'd have to go up to $350 or $360. It wouldn't be a $330 based upon that $43 green fee. Would it be, thank you for the plug. I appreciate that, but would it be a fair something to say this is another discount that will increase the reliance on the general fund? Yes. Player loyalty. So the 20%, excuse me, the 20% discount, what is the, so we can set this, if that's what you were going for, the 20% discount. Right. Yeah, so that's how it's figured. So it did $43, what's that, $8 off. They're about, so it'd be a $350 for 10 plays. I'd move $35 per player. I'd move $350 on that. Okay. And just to be clear, we're moving the resolution with the proposed fees as outlined. Yes. Do I hear a second? Okay. The motion fails at this point for a second. So we needed some discussion, but before we discuss, we need a motion. Well, just for, go ahead, Madam City Attorney. Council Member Schwedhelm had seconded. Did you second? Originally, was I incorrect about that? Not on this one, no. Okay. So, I need, is this gonna fail? Are we not gonna, these cards are not gonna go forward unless we hold those three? Someone throw another number out, because I'm happy to hear other numbers. This was a new product that was offered in response to the business plan and new and creative ideas of offering play, and products, someone who maybe wants to commit and get some discounts, but not at the annual pass level. And so the idea behind this was a 10-play card that people could purchase in our low seasons. I move offering the new 10-play card at $330. Was that the, that's three and 330. Do I hear a second? Mr. Waisaki. My comment is we're already offering discounts every day. Looking at the rates. So I'm not inclined to support the play card at all. Can I just ask, to this, I understand that the genesis of this, of the play card, in the scheme of things, and Bob, thanks for being here to help illuminate us on some of these questions. How important is the play card? It's brand new. I mean, it's just not a, well, not that it matters. It's not a deal breaker, as far as all this. I don't know. It's all projections or conjecture, whatever you want to call it, how much additional revenue. But it is an additional method of keeping players at Bennett Valley. You know, golf courses have not just play cards. Some of the facilities have what's called a player loyalty program, where you spend 150 bucks upfront and that entails you to discounts throughout the year. So this would be our version of a discount. And we might look into that player card down the road if this is successful. Okay, thank you. I just would really like to suggest the play card because it gives people an option for multiple play purchase when they can't buy the annual. So it makes it much more user friendly to folks who can't fork out a lot of money for the annual upfront. But I'm, since 330 failed and 350 failed, I'm willing to try the 370. So I would try the 370. Clarifying question. When you proposed the 330 to 370, what was your process to come up with that figure? It was based upon a high rate of a weekend rate of $40 and a 20%, reflecting a 20% per round discount. If you bought that card. So my answer, what would the figure be if you did the same methodology with the new figures but only gave it 10% discount? What would that figure be? 430 dollars minus 43, so 390 something. Yeah. So I would propose 390 given a 10% discount for the 10. So published. We published the 330 to the 370 rate, so you can't go above. You can certainly go below. 370. You can't go above 370. 370 was the highest I could offer. I could offer 370 then. Was that the motion? So motion is 370. I hear. I'll do a second. Second from Mr. Schwedhelm. Your votes, please. And I have five ayes and one no. Council member Waissaki voting no. Thank you, Council. I've never anticipated this time on the call, especially with one card. Staff, I want to thank you for your patience with us through the process and look forward to a more data-driven decision the next time. Okay. I need to find out where I'm on the agenda. It's gonna, we're just gonna follow along now with the rest of the agenda as it's written for the concept. We're gonna move to report items at this point. Mr. McLean. Item 13.1, report open data initiative. Eric McHenry, Chief Technology Officer presenting. Good morning, Mr. McHenry. Yes, thanks. Well, Mayor and members of the council, thank you for this chance to talk to you tonight about our open data initiative. We're pretty excited about it. I'm gonna go through it relatively quickly in the interest of time. We have a lot of topics behind this, but I wanna make sure that we have time for questions. So I'm gonna cover about six topics. First of all, what is open data? Why does it matter to the city? And more importantly, why does it matter to the public? We'll talk about the approach we're taking. Who else is involved? I'll give a little bit of a demo, although I'll probably just show some screenshots. And I wanna close on the issue of how do we link to other city information?  And one of our jobs in IT information services is how do we make information available, not just to city staff internally, but also to our public. And information drives success of an organization. This started long time ago. Back six or so years ago, President Obama launched an open data initiative at the federal government level. You can read his words up there, but essentially he says that we're gonna work together with the federal government to ensure public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration. It's all about openness. For the city of Santa Rosa, our goals when we started looking at this around two and a half years ago was how do we develop and promote a single data heavy web portal, right? Not the information that necessarily is on our current portal, SRCity.org, but a lot of information about data, employee data, crime data, Public Records Act request results, a lot of really rich and heavy data the public is starting to ask for now. So we decided to go down this path. And so paired with SRCity.org, we think we're gonna have a sort of a very rich and deep data set available, set of solutions for our residents who are focused on government data. And there's a lot of them. There's studies that show that the younger people in our community really want their data. They say, don't package it for me, give it to me and let me look at it and turn it and twist it and visualize it and make decisions and ask questions on my own. The last one I'm gonna talk about a little bit more and I've asked one of my counterparts here at the county, Mike Leibensmarger. He is the Systems and Programming Division Director at the county of Sonoma. We've been working more with the county of Sonoma to try to figure out, look, if we're gonna present solutions to the public, many of the public, they either live in the county, they may live in our city, they may live in our city borders, but they probably have interest in both the county government data and city data. And so we said, hey, can we do this in a way that we present a portal that's the same type of a portal the county is using and that potentially other cities in our region are using as well so that a resident, the public, doesn't have to learn two systems. And in fact, when the county launches, you'll be able to see that from one system, you'll be able to see city data and then right below it, you'll be able to see what we call federated or county data. I'll talk a little bit more about that. The timeline though, as I mentioned, it started a little over a year and a half ago in the winter of 2013. I was working with the existing CFO at the time. We were considering using open data concepts to better publicize our budget 2014, 2015. If you look at our budget book, we have an award winning budget book, but it's about an inch and a half thick. And our belief was that most of the residents would probably not spend the time to dive into the pages as much as we like. So we decided not to go forward with it in 2013. Starting in mid 2014, we started to talk with other cities. One of the leading cities, as some of you know, is the city of Palo Alto. I talked to my counterpart down there. They were moving ahead with their data initiative. But I think a real turning point came in the fall of 2014 when my counterpart at the county, John Hartwig, their CIO and I started talking and Mike, who's on his team, started talking with us and we said, look, let's do something together. And in fact, we've actually are trying to use some of the similar language. Their board of supervisors has been brief. They'll be going to the board shortly, shortly to launch their portal as well. And that really got a lot of steam going for us. And then of course, right now, you notice that we launched the open budget component, which is the first part of this just before the holidays. It was called budget.srcity.org and it was a way for people to easily and interactively navigate our city budget. And of course, now we're launching the big deal. Just stepping back a little bit, looking at where we came from. When I talked to some other cities about a year and a half ago, they said, you know, our city of Santa Rosa is actually in pretty good shape. We were much further ahead than most cities. We had over 20 data sets already. We didn't call them data sets at the time. We called them bits of data. They're on srcity.org. If you know where to look, you can find roughly 20 or more sets of information from salary information to salary plans to financial information. But the problem was it spread across srcity.org and I challenged anyone to find half of those data sets. And so we realized, look, let's figure out a way to get this together in one place. Let's make awareness of it once it's there. And also we wanna make sure that it's available for what we call visualization. I'll talk a little bit more about that. Basically data without visualization is useless in my opinion. So we decided to go toward this one, highly branded, highly visible portal. In fact, if you start to learn and pick up on open data platforms, most of them, the URL is data. Like data.sf.gov, data.alamitacounty.org, gov, data.srcity.org, and it's a variant of that for the county as well. And so we picked a name that people are starting to recognize as well. So I mentioned that the site is rich in data. There's a lot of, I call it wonky data on that site. And we plan to put more on there. It is completely accessible for offline analysis. And I mentioned the regional matter with the county. And the last part, when I spoke with the city clerk about it, we said, you know, look, there's a lot of public records act. I think the latest information is about 150 to 200 a year we get coming into the city. And one of the best practices of other cities who have opened data portals is that they realize that for some of that data, if one person wants it, it's very likely five or 10 people, other people want it as well. So just take that public records act data, or at least some of it, put on your data portal and say, okay, it's out there, go look at it. And that not only makes it easier for our staff and the public, but it really reinforces this concept of just open by default. You know, we're putting it out there, take a look at it, it's data, use it, share it, massage it. And not to get too far deep into the weeds on this, but there's a big difference between traditional data, which I call hard to use, and open data platforms. For example, there's data on our platform about our salaries, the top salaries, or sorry, wages for city of Santa Rosa employees. And two years ago, if you tried to get that data, it'd be really hard to get. And if you got it, it might be in a PDF file. In a PDF file, as you know, it's really hard to pull the data out of it and sort by department, by length of service, by job classification, you just can't do it. But one of the basic tenets of open data platforms is that everything that's up there, you can pull it down, you can massage it, twist it around and visualize it, you can drop it into an Excel spreadsheet, compare it to other municipalities. In fact, our salary data, our wage data, comes from the state of California's controller office. They actually have an open data portal. We also provide sort of canned visualizations, because we know not every public is gonna wanna do a custom visualization or custom graph, so we have some sample data of what it would look like. But if you wanna dig into some more, download it or flip it and turn it in and do a different type of a plot. Now talk to the city manager about this. I was really happy to say that we are among the leaders. If you look on this chart of the people that are involved in open data, you see most of the large cities in California. In fact, this actually is a list that's probably six months old. You see a lot of the counties, I guess there's probably twice as many other by now that have launched down this path. In fact, Mr. Leibens-Bartler was sharing with me from the county that there's a Senate bill that's being discussed right now, SB 272, I believe it is from Hartzwig, that may encourage local government seeking to encourage local governments that open data platforms. Well, fortunately, we're ahead of that. So here's some examples of some other dat