We're all here um want to welcome the public hello uh and say thanks for joining the city of Santa Rosa's first ever virtual community meeting this one in response to the COVID-19 homeless emergency response and this is an emergency. So I'll start I'm David Gwine I'm the director of housing and community services and we'll be serving as the moderator for this future meeting and answer some questions. I want to go over our agenda for tonight which is in four parts. We start with introductions and welcoming comments by Santa Rosa Mayor Tom Schwedhelm. We then go to a presentation of the safe social distancing program envisioned at the Finley site. We then go into a question and answer period and we'll talk more about that in a moment because there's some uh steps you have to take and then we close the meeting with remarks by Mayor Schwedhelm. Just want to say about the goal of the meeting our goal today and for the presentation that you should be able to see us all on the Zoom platform and that we want to present and answer questions on what what Santa Rosa's doing in response to this emergency. Why? Why are we taking these actions and why Finley was selected as the most appropriate location? Where? Where at Finley will we be providing safe social distancing? When? When the setup of this temporary site will occur and when will the parking area be restored to its original use? And how? We plan to accomplish this work to protect unsheltered people and our community from this virus. So let me start by introducing the people on the screen. We of course have Mayor Tom Schwedhelm joining us tonight. Kelly Kaikendall, our Homeless Service Program Manager. We have Jenny Lynn Holmes, our Chief Program Officer, Catholic Charities of the Santa Rosa Finley Operator. We have Jason Nutt, Assistant City Manager, who among other duties oversees the city's parks and facilities. Tina Rivera joins us from the County of Sonoma. She's the Assistant Director of Health Services as well as the Assistant Director of the Community Development Commission with the County of Sonoma. And we have our Public Safety Representatives, Captain John Cregan of the Santa Rosa Police Department and Battalion Chief Mike McCallum of the Santa Rosa Fire Department. And behind the scenes operating this virtual meeting is our City Clerk Stephanie Williams, an Assistant City Clerk, Dina Mannis, who will coordinate questions from the public and act as the meeting host. So that is our goal. That is our panel. And at this time, Mayor, I'd like to turn it over to you if you'd like to make some opening remarks. Thank you, Dave. And thank you to everyone for participating in this important community discussion. You know, the past eight or nine weeks have been extremely difficult for all of us. The City of Santa Rosa has been in a very unique situation and challenging situation in that we don't have any public health officials. So we are responding to orders and direction as provided by Governor Newsom and out of the Sonoma County Public Health Office. This is especially challenging when addressing those members of our community who are experiencing homelessness. Tonight, you're going to hear about the City's efforts and how our strategies have been guided by direction from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Sonoma County Public Health Officer, the California Judicial Council, and case law out of the federal courts. Let's make no mistake about this. The City of Santa Rosa is currently dealing with two significant emergencies, our homeless emergency and the COVID-19 pandemic emergency. I really encourage everyone with a question to ask it. We've been continuously updating the City's website with answers to the questions that we're receiving. I really encourage everyone to visit the City's webpage at srcity.org backslash COVID-19 homeless support. It is absolutely the best location to find up-to-date and accurate information about the situation. Please go to that site and don't rely on other sources of information for information related to this. I also want to thank Tina for joining us from the county. As we've been demonstrating over the last few years, we look at homelessness as a regional issue and just not a city or individual entity's responsibility. I also want to thank I know other members of the City Council are not participants in this meeting, but they're definitely listening in because I can assure you all seven of us on the Santa Rosa City Council are interested in what folks have to say here and any suggestions they may have for us moving forward. So with that, I'll give it back to you, David. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. So we move into the second stage of our agenda, which is a brief presentation coordinated by Kelly Kaikendall and Jenny Lynn Holmes. And we'll try and get that up on everyone's screen to see in the moment. Just want to make sure that my fellow panelists can see that presentation so I know it's live for the public as well. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. This is Kelly Kaikendall. I'm the City's homeless service manager and I work in the Housing and Community Services Department. I'll be presenting this evening with Jenny Lynn Holmes. Dave introduced her already and she's with Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Santa Rosa. So to provide you with a brief overview of the presentation, we will cover city homeless programs, the city's COVID-19 homeless emergency response, the safe social distancing program, which is the subject of tonight's meeting. I'll cover some of the questions that have been coming in from our concerned citizens and residents. We'll go over resources. At the conclusion, we'll have an update from Captain Cregan and battalion chief Mike McCollum, and then we'll move into the question and answer session. So city homeless service programs, the city supports and provides funding in five key areas. We provide funding to day services at the homeless service center. That's a drop-in center in downtown Santa Rosa at 600 Morgan Street. That's operated by Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities also operates two emergency shelters, a family shelter, which is near the homeless service center in downtown, and that provides up to 138 year-round beds for families experiencing homelessness. We also operate and funds or Catholic Charities operates and we fund the Samuel L. Jones Hall homeless shelter. That's on the west side of town and that provides up to 213 year-round beds for single adults experiencing homelessness. We have the street outreach team. That's the homeless outreach services team and our encampment resolution team. That's the homeless encampment assistance program and housing support. So through our outreach team, we offer rental assistance and help with security deposits. There's also a landlord or housing first fund that provides incentives to landlords to rent a person's experiencing homelessness and through our housing and community services department, we also have affordable housing programs through our Santa Rosa Housing Trust and rental assistance through the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program. In terms of community-based solutions, we have the Community Homeless Assistance Program, otherwise known as CHAP, and that allows for private property owners to use their property for homeless services and that's primarily achieved through the provision of safe parking in our community. In terms of our COVID-19 homeless emergency response, the city has taken a number of actions to date and these are outlined in the slide. In mid-March, we moved 45 high-risk individuals from the Sam Jones Hall shelter into motel rooms and when I say high-risk, I mean individuals who are 65 years and older or have underlying health conditions that put them at risk to exposure to COVID-19. So we did this to create social distancing in our shelter as well as to protect these individuals from potential exposure to COVID-19. In late March, we worked with the county Emergency Operations Center to place portable toilets and hand-washing stations at or near known encampments in Santa Rosa. I know this was done throughout the county. The city also provided refuse containers or dumpsters. They were located at or near known encampments. In mid-April, outreach was conducted to unsheltered individuals living in encampments and additional 26 high-risk individuals were replaced in motel rooms. So that's a total of 71 motel rooms that have been secured for high-risk individuals and 77 individuals. We also distributed face masks to encampments for individuals living in encampments and here we are in May and we're talking with you this evening about the safe social distancing program as our next step in our COVID-19 response. The next couple slides I'll cover the safe social distancing program and Jenny Lin will join me in that just to touch briefly on the purpose of the program. This is along with the other action steps the city's taken today is to create social distancing within existing encampments in response to COVID-19. We're also trying to protect our vulnerable homeless residents and and doing so the community at large and this is a temporary site. So the the goal the plan for this program is that it will be in place so long as the Sonoma County Health Officer shelter in place order is is in effect and unlike past actions of the city to close encampments and resolve encampments our focus with this program is emergency response related specifically to COVID-19. So it's different than past encampment resolution efforts it's not related to a closure and we recognize that the 70 spots that we're setting up at the Finlay Community Center will not be able to accommodate all individuals that are living outside at this time. I also want to note that the site is will be will be prioritizing and targeting encampments most in need of social distancing and bringing individuals into the site will be referring any at risk risk individuals to the the non congregate shelter that's been set up at Sonoma State. However, if individuals that are at risk want to come into the Finlay site that is also an option. Here we have a visual of the Finlay Community Center campus you can see the orange highlighted area on the screen is the parking lot and that is between the person senior wing and the tennis courts. The next slide I have has drone footage so give me just a sec to pull it up. This minute will last about a minute this video the drone footage sorry will last about a minute and gives you another visual of where the site is at between the person senior wing and the tennis courts you can see the area is fenced we're proposing up to 70 tents each tent can accommodate one to two people we're not anticipating having 140 individuals at the site that's nearly the tent capacity the tents are not there yet they should be up by tomorrow and we are placing them 12 feet apart from each other in alignment with the Center for Disease Control Guidance on social distancing for encampments and I just want to highlight that the site is managed and secured 24-7 by Catholic Charities and private security and we'll go into a little bit more detail in the next couple of slides with that you can see the white tent that's set up right now that's the the staff tent the truck next to that is the area where the sanitary facilities will be and there's two entry and exit points that will be staff 24-7 there's parking reserved outside specifically for emergency vehicles with that I think I'm going to turn it over to Jenny Lynn already covered this slide just talking about how many sites how many tents will be there in the CDC guidance so the next couple slides I'm turning over to Jenny Lynn thank you all right thank you Kelly thank you to everyone who's interested in learning more about this program so just to kind of go through a few of the operational items we'll cover a variety of them try to get some initial analysis around the questions that came in to try to proactively address them but I'm sure more will be asked and answered hopefully during the questions time we have saved during this conversation so just to kind of piggyback on what Kelly was mentioning around the screening and engagement so our street outreach host team has been out working with individuals in our in the encampments again we're kind of we're focusing on the most densely populated encampments in the city the ones that are most in need of social distancing and the initial triage that everyone's working through is identifying individuals who are in the high risk category that if they are to contract COVID-19 would have a higher likelihood of complications or even due to the virus so people over the age of 65 or with serious chronic medical conditions we're working with those individuals to try to get them into the county of Sonoma's non-congregate shelter site that was Kelly mentioned was at SSU for individuals that that's potentially not an option for we will be screening for them to come into the Finley site we've started that process over the last couple of days and have already identified several people who are looking forward to the opportunity to come into the program with the program operations we will be holding expectations of individuals that are in the site every person that will be coming in will be offered the opportunity to review those expectations and to ultimately sign off an agreement that this is a good program that would work for them and their certain situations some of those things was you know really focusing on the health and safety of that site of the individual and everyone involved in the surrounding area and programs we also will be having as was mentioned on-site security as well as on-site staff the staff that's on site will be our people who actually have long-standing relationships with many of these individuals and we'll be working towards offering a variety of services to help the individual in the moment to keep them safe but also to kind of help them with their longer-term transition into potential housing options as well the security company will be there 24-7 we will have one during the day alongside of three other on-site staff and then we'll also have two security officers there during the evenings we'll be staffing the entry and exit to make sure again not only that the individuals inside of the program are safe but that we're limiting outside contact to keep it safe and free of potential social distancing issues and and outside individuals bringing in things like potential exposure to COVID-19 some of the services that will be offered Kelly mentioned several of them there will be on-site showers we have a laundry service that will be providing for the individuals who be living in this in this site we also will have restroom facilities and meal services we're partnering with a couple of our local restaurants who to kind of help out from that perspective as well and provide meals on-site for the individuals additionally our staff who is thoroughly trained in the area of homeless services and trauma-informed care will providing on-site service and housing navigation they will be doing community referrals continuing to help the individual you know with with different things that they might need we have a fantastic partnership through St. Joseph mobile medical unit and they'll be providing on-site medical services a couple of days a week so they'll get on-site medical care as well as behavioral health support through variety of different partnerships we have across the county of Sonoma and other nonprofit partners so we look at the the next slide I will kind of go into our COVID-19 safety protocols one of the things that we did early on as a homeless service operator was to look at creating through guidance that we're receiving from national and state partners how we can take preventative measures within these programs to make sure that we are keeping everybody safe and making sure that everyone is hopefully limiting the exposure to this so some of the preventative measures that we will have been taking in other facilities and operations and will continue through this one is a lot of around education keeping the individuals in our programs informed around what the latest health guidance is how they can be proactive in you know limiting exposure and you know clean and health and health sanitation guidelines as well we'll have on-site hygiene supplies we'll be making sure that individuals are having access to the hand washing stations that will be brought in social distancing will also be part of this it's kind of the whole idea behind the site we'll have 12 feet between 12 feet between the tents and then when individuals are not in their tents we'll be helping to remind people of the six feet requirement as well as face coverings that are also being asked of individuals right now for those individuals that are considered to be in the high-risk category we'll do some special precautionary regulatory monitoring to make sure that individuals are not appearing symptomatic so that we can get them to the medical care that they would need it's so we will be limiting visitors into the site again to limit exposure to COVID-19 from outside there will be a visitor's area set up for individuals to again safely and socially distant way provide that opportunity for the resident people who will be living in this in this this site and we will also be looking at a COVID screening product protocol so we have an our initial screening will happen while the outreach team is out in the field kind of going over symptoms and seeing if they're appearing symptomatic and then when they appear on site we will do a secondary screen which will include taking temperature and so on and so forth those screening protocols are also put in place as we are observing individuals who might be symptomatic we will continue to monitor and and follow the the screening protocol to make sure that people are safe and secure additionally as part of the program expectations and agreement this is something that we have in a variety of our programs but we will be asking individuals that are a part of this program to be honoring what we call a good neighbor agreement and the good neighbor agreement it really focuses on the fact that program decisions will be made with the neighborhood in mind individuals will be screens as way was mentioned earlier also we'll be asking people when they sign off on the program expectations and agreement that they agree to be a good neighbor while they are part of this program that any behavior that happens in the surrounding neighborhood is asked to be respectful and to ultimately allow for us to hold accountability around them being a good neighbor while we're in this in this operation for the overwhelming majority of the time people who are in our programs are more than happy to agree and abide by this and often become proactive individuals in the helping that's the surrounding neighborhood so if this was not to be the case a violation of this would jeopardize the participants continued involvement in the program then a couple of other quick guidelines that we'll be helping out with and then we'll tell you during the question and answer part I'm sure parking permits so we will be you know trying to monitor the flow of individuals if someone does have a vehicle we'll be going to a parking parking permit process additionally pets and service animals will be allowed in the site service animals obviously have their own process that we go through pets we're allowing dogs one dog per person and we do hold expectations around certain screenings that we have to take around that vaccination and so on so forth in that realm there'll be one pet per person and five per the whole site but hope we will also be taking exceptions and kind of working with individuals and their in their specific needs and then last but not least there we are looking at while we're in a shelter in place under shelter in place order that there will be a curfew at 8 p.m. every night again mostly to protect the individuals that are that are there and knowing that this is kind of an expectation that we're only really doing you know traveling to essential services and so that will be something that we will be looking at from an operational standpoint as well so with that I think those are the highlights again there's a lot more detail that we can go into as we continue through this meeting but I'll turn it back over to Kelly to finish our presentation. Thank you Jenny Lynn the next couple excuse me and the next couple slides I'm just going to cover some of the questions that we've been receiving from neighbors and businesses and just concerned residents and so there's three sort of broad categories there's general I'll start with that and so we've had a lot of questions around site selection and decision-making process I'll touch on that brief briefly the question is basically been why Finley and I will tell you that we looked at city parking lots throughout citywide across the city we convened a cross departmental team and our our partner provider Catholic Charities this included input from police and fire in terms of looking at different sites for health and safety and visibility we were also looked at the CDC guidance and our health officers order and also we landed on the Finley site for a number of reasons including that the Finley community center is currently closed due to the shelter-in-place order and that it's also there the facility has a large parking lot where we wouldn't have to take up the whole parking lot for this particular program in terms of decision-making so I mentioned the staff analysis and recommendation we convened a subcommittee of the city council comprised of Mayor Schwethelm and council member Dodd and also under the the order emergency order that we're operating under we landed on the the Finley site and I just want to acknowledge to all of you that are on the call tonight who live near the site or do business there or you know frequent the area that we understand for you this is not the perfect site and that really any site for a program like this in Santa Rosa would be faced with a significant amount of opposition and and we understand that and we hear that so moving on to outreach to nearby residents and businesses in addition to the meeting that's happening this evening letters were mailed out in English and Spanish to all residents and property owners within a quarter mile radius of the site so about 1500 to about 1500 addresses a news release went out on May 6th to various media outlets we've been as the mayor mentioned putting information on our website you know on a regular basis and actually updating our FAQ almost daily at this point an e-blast and tech mess text messages went out to approximately 68 000 citizens who were subscribed to city the city's news updates and also we pushed out the information on next door in terms of public you know we've had a lot of questions around why are we allowing in kevins to exist in a public health emergency and I think our public safety captain cregan will be touching on that but I will provide a few points on that we're following the guidance of the cdc which discourages against the displacing encampments we're also following the health officer order the terms of a preliminary preliminary injunction resulting from a lawsuit that the city and county are party to we're dealing with a limited limited shelter capacity right now which is makes it difficult for us to enforce and those are sort of some of the key things that are driving our encampment response right now in terms of finley we've had some questions about you know how will the program impact the the the finley community center itself and that center the facility is closed while the shelter in place orders in effect so there's no immediate impact there between the two between the facility and the program and in the event of an emergency we would still be able to use finley as an evacuation center with this program in place in terms of timeline as i i think i've already mentioned the goal for the program is that it will be in place as long as the shelter in place order is in effect and we've had a lot of questions from the community about why not the fairgrounds and i know maire schwedhelm will probably want to speak to city county collaboration and tina reveres on the call as well but i will add that the county is looking at the fairgrounds for their indoor outdoor shelter program that was discussed by the border supervisors in march and that has been delayed because of our current cobin 19 response i will say that the county is currently using trailers provided by the state at the fairgrounds for temporary shelter during our emergency response and the fairgrounds properties county property and subject to the discretion of the border supervisors so just cover a couple questions that we've received and i will say we updated our faq again before the meeting and i spent quite a bit of time yesterday and this morning going over the more than 100 questions we've received and so we're doing our best to incorporate that in the presentation update our faqs and we'll try to address those this evening but any that we don't get tonight we will certainly be adding to our faq and there's other ways that you can reach out to us which i'll share the conclusion of the presentation okay in terms of cost there's about four thousand dollars in sites that have cost and we anticipate approximately 150 thousand dollars to run the program a month that's for services and supplies outreach services site management genuinely and i think covered that very well and we can go more into that in the q&a and encampment versus managed versus versus a managed site we're getting questions from the public like how is this not going to look like the gerudo trail encampment you know is it going to look like the downtown the downtown the underpass encampments and i will say there's a difference between um some of those encampments in a managed site as we've already gone over this is fenced it's secured their services um so it's very different and people will not be allowed to bring all of their belongings we do have some structure around um around um storage and and that sort of thing and in terms of pets genuine touched on that but i want to say that pet owners we are allowing dogs and service animals will be required to comply with park rules in terms of only allowing their dog in the park where they're where they're allowed and then um leash law will apply and also picking up after your pet we plan on providing waste bags for that use okay last slide on the faqs and this one will be real quick because as i mentioned we have captain kregan here and he's going to provide a public safety update and i think genuine covered the security but we've had a lot of questions about that um drugs and alcohol so that will not be allowed on the site um and i think genuine touched on how um you know our behavior based model um lots of concerns around park and neighborhood safety and illegal activity on site and off site questions about increased police presence and curfew um and genuine did touch on the curfew so this slide before i um i wrap up here next step so outreach um to the community as well as individuals living in campments is happening right now um and as a site setup we anticipate um tents and some of the other things coming in by tomorrow um we're aiming to open the program and invite individuals in starting next monday it will be phased we don't anticipate having 70 people on monday it'll be more like 10 and then phasing that out through the course of the week program operations as i mentioned this is a temporary solution our goal is that the program will be in place as long as the shelter in place order is in effect resources so as i mentioned we have a lot of information available on our website please go there check it out we're updating the faqs daily um there's an email homeless at srcity.org um please email in any any questions or concerns that you have about it i do encourage you to look at the faq we're trying to address questions that are coming in that aren't already answered in our faq because we're getting an overwhelming amount of questions right now and i certainly understand why we do have a voicemail setup uh for for people who don't want to email who want to call in you can call in and leave a voicemail with your questions or concerns specifically about this site the voicemail is being set up for the um safe social distancing program at finley leave a message and we'll get back to you um just as as soon as we can with that i'm gonna turn it over um to captain cregan and mike mcallin to provide a public safety update thank you very much thank you kelly so again my name is john cregan and i manage the patrol bureau here at the santa rosa police department so tonight my goal is to be able to hopefully answer some questions that come in from the community about what some of the concerns are and the main thing that i want to let everyone know is that the santa rosa police department and myself specifically are working very closely with catholic charities with the housing community services with our other city departments and we work together we're meeting daily i literally have daily contact with jenny linn homes and with kelly and dave guine we're meeting we're talking about these issues and we're going to be working together to manage this site some of the concerns are going to come up uh from the police department and i want to make it clear that we're managing the criminal behavior that may be associated in the area and if there's any other uh influence there and finley park those are the things that the santa rosa police department's going to be managing it we'll be working closely with jenny linn homes if there are issues in the encampment and officers who are assigned to that patrol area are going to be making daily checks and i've already been talking to the patrol sergeants about the need to have extra enforcement and extra presence in that area to be doing foot patrols or the parks and to have a high visible presence in that area and the hope to make sure that there are no issues but to make sure that our neighbors and the community in that area feel protected and feel like they have the resources that we need we've dedicated that is what we call a beat project so we're going to have a dedicated sergeant monitoring the impact in that area making daily contact there at the uh social or safe distancing site there and contacting the security guards that are going to be present so that's going to be one of the things that we're working on i know there are a lot of questions and community concerns i get the emails i get the calls about the increased presence we've seen throughout the city and the one thing that i want the stress and i can answer questions one on one with folks about that is the understand of there are effects citywide from this global pandemic that we're facing and we've had an influx of people being released from the jails as they're following some of the best practices there for low low offenses that are getting released out into the streets and that's impacted us and we also have as kelly mentioned about the cdc guidelines and the cdc guidelines are the recommendations are we are not to disperse homeless encampments and the goal of that and the intent of those guidelines is so we aren't just moving homeless from spot to spot and we're increasing some of the spread of this deadly virus and that doesn't impact just the homeless community that impacts our whole city as we see if we see this disease spreading more quickly through the homeless population that's going to lead to surges at the local hospital that affects not just that very vulnerable community in our city but it affects every single one else in the city so we have to work together to think collectively about what's best for our city as a whole and part of that is why the city do some of the more people coming out of the jails through some of these recommendations is why the city is coming together and partnering with catholic charities to come up with this program and the police department's goal is to be able to work with our city partners and with catholic charities that make us a success not only for that vulnerable population but the city as a whole i'm going to hear the issues and the concerns related to crime in that area one of the easiest things if you see criminal behavior is just to call the police department if it's an emergency you call 911 if it's a non-emergency you can call our non-emergency line at 528-5222 if you just want to report uh nuisances or you want to just uh let the police department know about some homeless issues in the area or any other issues you can even email us at the srpdimfo at srcity.org feel free to email me directly my email is jcregan at srcity.org i manage the patrol resources i'll make sure that we responsive to the complaints that we have in the area and do everything that we legally can to address those issues and work with our city partners and i'll turn it over to mike from the fire department thanks john i'll just uh just kind briefly summarize uh the fire department's involvement in in establishing this safe social distancing site um kind of echoing what what captain cregan said we've worked uh closely with our city partners um and catholic charities all throughout the development of this uh this program um we've assisted with the site selection um the safe design and addressed both health and health safety and fire safety issues um as the the site was being developed and going forward we'll continue to develop and evaluate and work with those partners um to make sure the site continues to be safe fire safe and and for the the health of the residents there in responding to the challenges presented by the covid 19 pandemic to our community as a whole you know the fire department supports the finley safe social distancing site as a safe option as we move into fire season we recognize and realize there's a heightened concern regarding fire safety in our community and especially you know revolving around the encampments in our community um with this additional challenge we believe that taking this proactive approach um will lessen the impacts to the fire department and the emergency response system as a whole and lessen the the fire risk and safety risk to the community as a whole we'll continue to respond to incidents and calls for service all throughout the community this will in no way affect that or slow down um any emergency response um to the area surrounding the finley site and in fact we hope that it will lessen some of the impact there so with that i'll turn it back to david and we can move on to some questions yeah thanks all well done um we're going to move now into the third of the four part of our agenda which is the question and answer period but i have to go through some housekeeping instructions but i wanted to start by saying that we hope we've answered many of the questions uh based on the presentation that we've received into the city and we're building a frequently asked question page as kelly mentioned and so if we don't get to a question tonight or or uh i just encourage everyone to hit our website and go through that because a lot of energy and work been put into that but we appreciate people may not have had a chance to review it so we can respond to those questions tonight as well so if you're a member of the public you can see you are participating as what zoom calls an attendee and your microphone and camera are currently muted and if you're calling from a phone you need to dial star nine to raise your zoom hand and for privacy reasons dina and stephanie will be renaming your viewable phone number to the word citizen and using just the last four digits of your phone number just for your own protection if you have a question for the panel yet the raise your hand in the zoom format and our meeting host which is stephanie and dina will call on you one by one as we go down the list once you have asked your question the zoom house will lower your hand we respectfully request that you use no more than two minutes two minutes to form your question or questions and please raise your hand once we can so we can respond to as many people as possible i'd also ask that if you heard your question asked and answered that you would lower your hand so we can again move through as many questions as possible and we acknowledge we may not be able to answer all questions tonight and if that's the case you saw in kelly's presentation we have an email and phone number that you can respond to and we'll get back to you as soon as possible and then finally we appreciate many people have an opinion or would like to make comments rather than ask a question and we certainly understand that we understand we recommend that if you do want to make comments that you do so during the public common period at tuesday's city council meetings or write city council at srcity.org so the full legislative body can have the context of what you want to say rather than just this group tonight so uh and depending on how long we go um and how many questions are queued up we'll see if we need to take a break or not but why don't we just get started and i guess i turn it to you now dina are we ready to start hearing questions we are thank you dave uh the first person in the queue is erin hogland um part of the pronunciation i'm enabling your permissions erin please unmute your microphone are you live on the line i should be can you hear me if we can hear you and now you should have a screen share of the screen one moment please take your time are you seeing the timer on your screen i am okay terrific so i'm going to start the timer and you can present your question to the panel thank you thank you um essentially my question loops back to site selection um and i understand it's probably a very complex process um but looking at uh availability of um resources things along those lines the finley centers fairly removed from a lot of county resources um sonoma county department of health things like that that some other locations maybe like uh s rjc where they have ample parking space um surveillance on site the blue light system in case of emergencies a dedicated police force to the area and being within easy walking distance of other medical facilities and uh city services might be a good option and s rjc is also closed right now and will probably remain closed while after the shelter in place orders lifted to allow time for cleanup and relocation so the question loops back around to why not a site that's more um centrally located and has all of those resources available including an on-site medical facility for training nurses thank you question erin did you have another one or was that the primary one site selection that's that's the primary one i okay well i i'll i'll um bring it back i mean kelly touched on in her presentation we looked at city resources first we talked about the county fairgrounds and that's potential use we did reach out to the jc initially for about emergency shelter they weren't quite sure at that space they were in whether they would be resuming classes in a few weeks a month and again and it's an emergency so we're moving as fast as we can so i'll start with that but maybe there's someone else on the panel who would like to contribute a response so yeah i would just say it's a speed issue and what real estate and opportunities the city had at its disposal in the moment so thank you okay the next caller our participant we have to make a or pose a question is jim i'm enabling your permissions jim to talk can you please unmute your mic yes can hear me now we can hear you let me pop up the timer for you one moment great okay the timer is up and i will start your timer now thank you okay i have a couple of questions for you um how and how who are the homeless folks that are selected for this family center my encampment and then the other question i had is what about the rvs that are still using west college and other streets in the city how are those going to be handled thank you yeah thank you jim um maybe jinny lin you can take the how we're selecting folks and uh kelly and i can talk about the vehicle matter yeah great so um so we are going to be screening individuals that are in our most densely populated encampments that are most in need of social distancing will be uh which primarily right now is uh in our downtown area uh and so we'll be working with individuals living in those camps and first uh triaging the individuals who are considered to be high risk of complications if they were to contract COVID-19 hopefully work with them to get into one of the county of sonoma's non-congregate shelter sites and then for those by which that's not an option we'll be working with them to get them into the finley site uh we're screening individuals who are willing to go it's a voluntary program at this point who are willing to come to the to the site and those that are also willing to follow program expectations and guidelines and work work within the the new community that will be established at the finley site to make the program successful so that's that's our current selection process our outreach team knows many of these individuals uh and has been working over the last couple of days and we'll be continuing to do so to select individuals to this uh move into the site uh beginning next week so yeah thanks jenny lin and and i would i would contribute that the focus is on folks living outside cheek to jowl a sleeping bag the sleeping bag 10 space to 10 space because this is a health emergency our evaluation of those in vehicles is perhaps there's a little bit better social distancing but that's not to acknowledge we have an issue here in santa rosa and so our discussions um is to uh sequence these steps again if you recall back to the presentation we first created distance in our shelters we've then created hygiene matters within our known homeless encampments in partnership with the county we then invited our most vulnerable high-risk folks into non-congregate shelter in a hotel room we're taking this step in the moment for our unsheltered and i see our next step is to have a discussion with our city council on options around what we see in vehicle encampments and this is kelly kykendall i'll just add that we had started an evaluation of safe parking sites um back in january following city council direction to look at safe parking and so we recognize there's a need to create space for individuals living in their vehicles and that analysis was underway before um all of this happened with COVID-19 so that it's been delayed a bit and we're anticipating bringing that information forward to um the city council this summer um you know unless it unless it becomes part of our COVID-19 response but it's not proposed at the family site yeah thank you okay moving on to the next question uh it will be from diana followed by christina diana i have unmuted or enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your mic i have thank you terrific and the timer should appear on your screen are you ready to go diana i am thank you okay thank you hello everybody um thank you for this presentation first off i really appreciate the the information that you've already provided i have a number of questions that i think i'm going to send through your website because i've got so many but basically the question i really want to answer here in this forum is how can the the citizens that live within the area of this of the family center that walk there walk their dogs and again and what not how can we help make this uh aside a success what what can we do to ensure that the people who are living within this structure this social distancing um are i don't want to say happy but how are they going to what can we do to help in other words yeah thank you diana um we talked about that a little bit at staff of you know jenny and bahawi accept donations it might not be at the site but what won't you talk about what will be uh kind of covered a little earlier today that would be helpful to start yeah thank you very much for um for for saying that and wanting to to see how we can be proactively working together on this opportunity to make it successful so um so we're again because the situation we're in you know cavatieri's is historically in our homeless services operations relied on volunteers and and donors but in a unique situation such as spread of uh covid-19 we are limiting number of volunteers that are involved in the program we will have some needs um and we will have needs for you know in-kind options that people can bring we'll be compiling a list to hopefully post on the city's website of items that we will be accepting uh for uh to help with the residents as we kind of get in their experience the operations and hear from the residents what are things that we could be adding to enhance the experience there so uh that'll be kind of forthcoming after we kind of move people in and start bringing it in their perspectives from uh what it's like to be in there and what things we could do to enhance um i'll also say you know we helping to spread um the information about this program and the some of the things that were presented tonight is a really great way to help inform your community and neighbors that around what this will look like um and how we want to be proactive and the proactively engaged with the neighborhood and and and spread positive and truthful facts around what's what what this will be and what this won't be um additionally if you have ideas as you're kind of experiencing and and observing the site from from your part of the town please feel free to let us know um you know the the city has set up the information to kind of create a a channel and flow of information and as the operator you can also contact myself uh i will be definitely open to hearing uh concerns as well as things that are going well so um i will make sure that we follow up with contact information and all of those things and that'll all be posted as well on the city's website and i think going to that frequently asked questions page is probably the the best funnel to learn uh what what's truthful what what we're doing and it's where we're going to keep most of the information up to date yeah thanks jennylin okay the next question is from christina christina i'm enabling your speaking permissions and can you unmute your microphone yeah thank you okay your time starts now thank you thanks i too just want to say uh how much i appreciate this information i was coming to rather indignant and then after hearing all of it i'm like oh my gosh you guys have done so much work it's really well thought out um and i just appreciate that aspect of it um considering that like i felt like a lot of times like the west side just gets kind of dumped on and the east side i mean i've grown up here my whole life i grew up on the east side couldn't afford to live there now i'm on the west side sort of deal right so i came in really angry at first like once again you know our one part is being taken away and blah blah blah and after hearing it i feel like you've diffused a lot of that by showing how much you um i really thought it out my question is what's the plan for after this of like how is this removal happening how will the police safety still be there in case you know people aren't moving i just don't want it to turn into sort of like a permanent homeless encampment um like no one wants that awful even saying that but um but a park you know is not really where i want a permanent homeless encampment if that makes sense so i was curious what's the plan for at the end of how everybody gets moved out and taken care of in a healthy appropriate kind way thank you for your question christina that is exactly the discussion we're having as a city we have been trying to go through the logistics of making this safe social distancing program a success at finley and at the same time talking about how we return finley to a recreation center and a park and the parking lot for its intended use and so we're looking at several options as a city we call it our intermediate strategy once the shelter in place order is lifted um restoring our shelter capacity we're looking at a variety of options i don't really want to go through a lot of those today i'm going to visit with the city council on that but i will just say that we when i use the term restore our shelter system it means that this is an 18 to 24 month uh challenge not that the finley center will be there that long let me clarify that but we separated the bunk beds at san jones hall to have six feet separation so we lost capacity so we're looking at leasing property we're looking at getting into a contract with a local camp to use their um cabins because they recognize their business model has changed we're looking at partnerships with the county and the whole concept of the indoor outdoor shelter the path we were on before this crisis hit uh we're looking at ways to create management efficiencies at samuel jones hall so we don't have a specific answer in the moment but i just want folks listening and yourself to know that that work is going on so that when the shelter in place orders lifted we can present some options for our city council so thank you okay the next question will be from bonnie followed by judy and rona bonnie i've enabled your speaking permissions can you unmute your microphone please yes thank you very much uh can you hear me yes we can thank you your time begins now yeah uh thank you guys for having this meeting this is really helpful and i appreciate all the great work that you've done um and that you continue to do i i think that the finley center is a good site i happened to walk down there the other day i live on trobridge street so not too far away and i walk down there a lot and it's it's a small area it looks like it's a very well thought out and marked out place a couple of questions and then i'll let you um i'll just let you answer these whoever wants to uh in the press democrat last week it was noted that dr maize was not uh aware that this uh idea was being proposed and i wonder if you have since consulted with dr maize our public health official and also is there going to be any um corona testing done at this site seems like a really great opportunity to do that uh secondly and pardon me if you've spoken about this but i was late to the meeting um are there going to be services offered to folks um for substance abuse mental health um any county or city services that might be um helpful to them uh and then uh yeah i guess i guess that basically covers it thank you thank you bud i kind of heard a three-part question um norm jenny lund maybe start with you about the the testing opportunities i can't remember in the presentation if we talked about st joseph's um being at the the uh safe social distance center in the service review again and then i don't know teen if you can speak to dr maize uh it's right i think we we took her by surprise last week but i think we've had a chance to confirm the 12 foot separation meets the centers for disease control and it's all about social distancing trying to keep the curve flat so so maybe start with you jenny lund yeah so i'll talk i can talk with you about the testing as well as the services offered so um so we do have a partnership with st joseph mobile medical health they've been fantastic in a lot of the work we've been doing at sam jones as well as at the sand man um and other operations that we have in place uh for individuals who are experiencing homelessness um both to do the testing as well as we are working with individuals who are symptomatic to get in access to their medical for their primary care provider and get tested if appropriate so we have an entire protocol as we're doing screening as well as ongoing monitoring of individuals who might appear symptomatic to get them to their medical care provider to get tested so yes we will be helping to facilitate that both on-site as well as getting them to their primary care position um if they don't have on helping them establish a medical home so that they can get um all all those resources that are available to them uh in terms of services we will have on-site trained staff we have a very experienced um a group of individuals who've been working in this field for a very long time and particularly in this community our host team who knows these individuals by names and have has has lost any relationships with them so they will be providing the continued services they provide in our encampments which includes access to substance abuse and behavioral health treatment opportunities for individuals as well as other services to help them with their needs whatever they might be and ultimately our our goal and what we feel like is the biggest um preventative measure we could take is to actually get people housed and so we will be continuing on helping individuals on their journey towards permanent housing as a way to help them in this crisis as well as resolve their homelessness in the long run so those will be some of the services provided um as we continue through this this program and um I can't speak to uh any specific conversations that Dr. Mace has had but I can say that uh perhaps she didn't initially know about the family center but since then she does know and and absolutely this program uh meets uh the social distancing guidelines it meets the health order this is a great program and uh she is absolutely aware of and we we support what's happening here. Thanks Dana thanks Jenny Lynn. Okay we move on the next question will be from Judy followed by Rana and then Bruce. Judy I've enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your microphone. Thank you very much um I would also like to say that your presentation was excellent and it's very clear how much work and thought you've all put into this um having said that I agree that being on the west side feels like a jumping ground sometimes and given that all the homeless most of the homeless centers and resources are on the west side we have more homeless problems encampments etc and we just got over the Joe Rodota trail which was traumatic um but um what I wanted to say is there's long been in my awareness he said she said situation between the city council and the board of supervisors I have heard from several city council members that the board of supervisors want won't allow use of the fairgrounds for this kind of thing and the board of supervisors I've taught I've been in direct contact with Linda Hopkins and Tracy at Shirley Zane's office and they both said that they're open to the use of the fairgrounds for this so um what what I'm wondering about is why that situation wasn't considered and I understand it only takes three of the board supervisors to okay something like this it seems like a far more appropriate place especially since you're going to have to move everybody anyway that's it thanks thank you Judy um earlier in the presentation Kelly covered that the county board of supervisors in March I think it was March 11 provided direction to their staff to evaluate indoor outdoor shelter locations which included the evaluation of the fairgrounds um and they have the 10 trailers that are helping with this emergency response currently I I think I don't want to say it but I you have a comment in there and I don't know if this panel is the best group to respond to that but we can certainly pass that on to the city council or we encourage you to to write city council at srcity.org or share your view at the public comment period during a council meeting. David if I can also just comment um this is Mayor Schwedholm and I've heard some of those same things and you know but he said she said I don't think you've ever heard that from me because I don't say that we're building this relationship working together for it is there some miscommunication because there's a tremendous amount of information going out there I would just go to the source you know um because those conversations as Tina said we have been in conversation but sometimes not every of every one of our seven council members has all the information that the others may or may not have so I can just stress that it is very collaborative of what we're doing here I've had personal conversations with supervisors and supervisor Hopkins those are ongoing this is not just the first time we've ever discussed some joint city and county operations so the spirit of collaboration is there is there could there be some room for improvement absolutely but again I don't want anyone to have the impression out there that it's a you know he said she said and we're not working very well together as evidence by you know Tina's participation on this panel and it's going to continue that moving forward thank you Mayor okay we'll move on to a question from Rana followed by Bruce Rana I've enabled your speaking permissions uh please unmute your microphone okay can you hear me yes we can thank you I have a question about where you're going to put all these homeless people that are in motels and other facilities when the next evacuation happens and transportation also that's it just worried about the next evac so I've understand your question and in in case the the community has to evacuate for a natural disaster how do we manage the folks that we're dealing with with this pandemic disaster yeah well basically the homeless people how are you transporting them and also where are they going to go yeah well I'll start with a response and maybe someone else on the panel could jump in as it gets back to what I described a little late earlier about our intermediate response so again for folks listening the city has been in an immediate health crisis pandemic trying to help our homeless community and keep a virus from spreading through that community in our our our greater Santa Rosa this is one of the steps we're taking to do so to create better spacing with unknown encampments keep folks safe with 10s 12 feet apart the intermediate response is what I mentioned a few minutes ago and that is to expand and restore our existing homeless service the number of shelter beds the number of resources we have to house people whether it's through master leasing rapid rehousing that work is also underway so I would I just want you if we could think of this in terms of we have an immediate response now we have an intermediate response we're in an overlap period in the moment I don't know if anybody else on the panel who's been involved with these discussions have anything to contribute so Dave if I could hop in um Jay this is Jason nutt I'm the director of transportation and public works and assistant city manager um you know the concept of what happens during another natural disaster is one that we've taken into consideration throughout this entire process we realize that that this operation is occurring at the beginning of or right before we get into fire season yeah and we don't know how long this disaster or the pandemic is going to last so in all of the steps we've calculated what it's going to take for us to be able to continue to operate thinly as an emergency shelter for individuals who are having to leave their homes if we get into another situation like we did in 2017 so all of your concerns are things that we've been working through and we've been doing our best to ensure the stability of our community during the course of a subsequent or overlapping disaster from a transportation standpoint uh city bus is providing services not only to to help the individuals currently experiencing homelessness underneath the uh over crossing and at some of the other park locations moved to this social distancing site but in the event that we do have a fairly significant disaster as we did last year where we actually had to evacuate folks out of finway city bus will also be providing some services for those individuals as well yeah thank you jason and thank you ron for that question okay moving on to the question from bruce followed by citizen with a phone number ending in five seven one five bruce i have enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your microphone bruce are you there bruce i still see your hand raised are you there sir you might be on mute bruce all right bruce we are going to move on but i'm going to leave your hand raised um i'm unmuted now i'm sorry okay terrific okay so your time started i was trying to do it in a different setting sorry about that no problem well i appreciate first of all i appreciate this meeting and everything else as a uh citizen that lives straight across from the finley center and the reason why we did that is because we knew it was going to be for the elderly we had a going to have a nice center there for uh retirement people my concern is of understanding of the security of the people inside that are going to be in the tents but our security outside is there going to be a larger presence of police patrol around the area i have noticed in the last year that there is more people uh in the middle of the morning you know with our garbage cans out digging out uh you know for the recycle understanding you know trying to get cans and bottles for for money um and you know it's gets a little eerie and uh you know for somebody walking along with their dog alone and everything else security is a main concern with us in our neighborhood around here is there going to be a larger police security patrol in the area that's it thank you bruce i can answer that from the police department and i can ensure you there will be a visible presence from the police department and honestly it's going to be a two part strategy that you're going to have as catholic charities is already entered in the contract with the security company so you're going to have uh visible security uniform presence on the site 24-7 that are going to be managing the inside of the site and you're going to have a visible presence from santa rosa police officers who are going to be doing foot patrols of the area making sure the surrounding neighborhood and park are safe and there are no issues and visible presence with their patrol vehicles and then again if there are any community concerns that come up related to crime in the area we encourage uh residents to call the santa rosa police department report those issues to us and we're going to be responsive as possible and then directly i manage the uniform patrol officers so if there are issues i encourage you to please let me know and i'll be able to address those and make sure that there's a ceiling a feeling of safety in that community and we're strong partners in this and we wanted to be a success for our city thank you john and thank you bruce for that question spare securities keep okay moving on to citizen 5715 i'm enabling your speaker permissions can you please unmute your mic hi i'm on a phone so i don't have a mic can you hear me you are loud and clear thank you very much and i'll put your oh thank you um well i'm going to try to touch on things that i heard from the speakers one of the first ones with somebody said they chose thinly because it has a large parking lot and because it's closed that is not true it has been open for residents to go walk or bike there for a while now how are we going to be able to use and enjoy our park even before this camp has come the people that have been walking there i have seen no masks um not a lot of social distancing people using the high touch areas like the picnic tables how can we feel safe using our park and why do they think that that area has a lot of a big parking lot because there are plenty of other spaces including the fairgrounds that have much bigger parking lots even across the street where there are you know county offices or city offices um why did the people think that this is an appropriate use for a public park and one of the other callers mentioned this is our only park in our neighborhood it feels like a violation of the public trust will there be a list of everybody who decided to do this to us and our park so that in case we want to vote them out um is there going to be a list of you know responsible people on the website who made this decision and the last question is the police officer had mentioned criminals being released from the jails and then started talking about this camp please tell me that they are not allowing known criminals into our neighborhoods so those are my questions thank you no thank you and there's a few things in their public safety uh management of the social distancing area um i don't know maybe john you start and jindy lenn follow yeah i'm i'm happy to jump in there and again the the key word today is this the close collaboration that we're going to be working closely with cacti charities if there are any issues there we're going to be responding to them and we're going to be addressing any community concerns immediately uh we are going to be working in conjunction with catholic charities they won't be people who are registered sex offenders won't be in the site and they're going to have a process in place our goal is to make sure that it's a safe area for our community and we're going to be gone there the police department has been going to parks we've been heavy on the education because our goal is to educate the community on the rules of the shelter in place and we'll be continuing to do that we'll work with catholic charities to make sure of any of the residents who are in that park that they're following the shelter in place guidelines they're following the guidelines with the high touch areas and we're going to be working closely with our partners to educate and keep everyone following those rules thanks john yeah and i will um echo like uh captain kregan mentioned you know we as uh from the on-site management perspective as i described earlier we will be making sure that people are following the public health order both the shelter in place component around why we added the curfew we'll also be adding um you know oversight making sure people have face coverings making sure people are following the social distancing guidelines and all of the other public health directives as a part of their participation in this site um as i understand it there will still be access to the park we actually there'll be you know the individuals will be in the side of the site and working to move themselves forward as we progress through this this program and so we will be making sure that public health directives are known and making sure that they are followed we do have the city we've been meeting several times a week we will be continuing to do that in that includes our public safety partners as well as all the different departments in the city to continue to make sure that we're responding to homelessness overall together and making sure that this site is being successful for the individuals living in it and the surrounding community and that will continue to be a high priority i know from our standpoint as an operator to get that feedback and to continue to evolve uh this program to make sure that everyone is safe both in the site as well as around the site yeah thanks shinnylin anything else yeah yeah i can address the last part of how the decision was made you know i appreciate kelly explaining the process i think it's also important for everyone listening or viewing this uh to understand the city and the city manager uh designed basically three different task groups called COVID-19 task groups because there's a variety of things that city staff and electives are looking at as we come out of the situation one of them is our economic development uh task group another one is community input and engagement and the third one of which i am involved in is housing and homelessness and so i also asked each council member or two council members to participate in each of those task groups so on this task group it's myself and um council member dick dowd and so staff had been doing some research then and then we had a task group or a task force uh meeting and both uh dick and i weren't concurrent with concurrence with the recommendation of the family would be the most appropriate site given the totality of the circumstances that the city and the county in this community is dealing with so that's how that decision was made okay thank you okay the next question will be from steve followed by debora steve i've enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your microphone steve are you on the line and ready to go yes okay steve please start your question okay um first of all thank you for doing this secondly i'm coming from a very emotional place um i'm dismayed at it being at finley i'm not against helping homeless i want that to be really clear but um my neighborhood i want to know one of the questions i have is how many of you live in this area that's number one and the other thing is that if you're going to test for covet are you testing them now before you move them in are you doing the rapid testing what's going on with the testing because you could bring 10 out of those 70 people can come in infected and then you've got a whole group of people that are living in quarantine at finley and the other thing i want to say is i have two grandchildren that live in my home and a daughter my daughter works at the indian health project that means that her being able to walk around safely is kind of compromised during her lunch hour if she wants to get out and i probably won't let my kids play in the front yard um we're within a quarter mile of the park and i don't feel safe going to safeways you know we have two safeways here i will probably avoid those stores because i do not want to be have more possibility of being infected i'm um at high risk i'm a senior and i have immune deficiency so mine comes from a really emotional place i could be crying right now but i'm trying to keep it together with this um but my main thing is how are you going to protect us with the testing it takes 14 days or it can take less but if you're bringing people in that are already infected then you've already infected the whole community so that's my statement my questions thank you y'all thank you and maybe we start with uh the selection process of how we're addressed trying to reduce the densities of our existing encampments and the partnership with st joseph and their testing capacity and then of course if someone does test positive this is a socially distant 12 feet of park so they would be you know they wouldn't be able to leave the encampment in that case we'd be bringing services to them but jenny lin I'm sure you have some thoughts there yeah so i i certainly appreciate the question and you know want to say that the whole idea behind this site is to create a better safe situation for not only people living in our encampments but the community you know as we keep people in densely populated encampments the possibility of spread is even greater than if we were to go through what we're planning here which is to have a socially distanced tents from one another so uh so that is the entire impetus behind this to create a safer situation for the spread to be minimized if someone was to contract COVID-19 as I mentioned we have a pretty robust safety protocol we've put in place at all of our facilities and operations this would be following those same guidelines around all of the preventative measures we've taken that includes a two-point screening process we'll be doing initial screening in the field of anyone who might be symptomatic at all as well as an onsite screening process including taking temperatures of individuals before they come into the camp for anyone who appears at all symptomatic or does not uh does not able to get through screening process for uh COVID-19 we will immediately isolate them and get them into a medical care provider to get tested from there there are partnerships that have already been established with the county of Sonoma to create uh places for them to be until their test results come back and when their test results come back and they're negative they are then allowed to come into the site so anybody who's impending a test and symptomatic would uh be in one of these uh other sites isolation sites until their test came back negative and then we could work with them to come back to the site or to enter the site uh if they were one of the selected individuals so there are protocols that we've put in place that the county of Sonoma has put in place to make sure that individuals who are experiencing homelessness that are um symptomatic and waiting test results or our test positive for COVID-19 are isolated out of a communal congregate shelter so those are already in place and we'll be continuing that practice in this facility in this site good good thanks and Dave just because the caller asked who lives by there and I'm the only one who I would I don't expect anyone else to answer this but as an elected official I live on the west side of Santa Rosa and have lived on this side of town for over 30 years so I'm definitely a big user of Finley Park and I consider it one of our community assets and Janie Lynn yeah don't you live over nearby I live yes okay okay the next question will be from Deborah followed by a vet Deborah I've enabled your speaking permissions can you your microphone please yes um I want to first of all thank you for making these tough decisions and I know there's no place that people are going to feel totally happy with but I understand why you pick this location I live about a half a mile away so I do use the park a lot or have in the past um it's not clear to me what um what the time frame is of how long this will be there and it's also not clear to me should the Finley center reopen or the aquatic center reopen will this um uh site still continue to be there so I'd like some clarity of whether these are going to coexist with each other or it had to leave once the other facilities open so if you could provide clarity on that I'd appreciate it yeah Deborah thank you for that and the time frame is really the a key question we don't know when the shelter in place order will be lifted or how we do know that Finley will gradually be restored to a recreational facility we do know that eventually there'll be swimming going on and that gets back to our earlier comments of while this is taking place we're also looking at the options of how we can define this as temporary and as we're standing it up looking at our alternatives to stand it down for lack of a better term and my what I mean by that is alternative space whether it's restoring our shelter system to the number of bed capacity looking at additional options that's all under review currently but I I'd like you would like certainty in a time frame I think we all would and I know our recreation folks Jason's here the lot of demand for the parks leasing the space a lot of things have been canceled that Finley that haven't even been discussed about being restarted because we all are under this uncertain cloud of the time frame about when this crisis will pass and a shelter in place order will be theoretically lifted in a way we might have imagined previously I don't know if anybody else in the panel would like to add anything but that's what I would contribute okay yeah Dave I'll just add that you know one of the one of the other aspects of this particular site is that coexisting with a recreation facility in the park there's going to be a higher level of presence not only from Catholic Charities but also from the police department our whole intent here is to be able to try to find a way to coexist if we have to so the recreation team is working very closely with this group of professionals that you that you see on the screen in an effort to try to come up with the most appropriate way for us to have those services active operational functioning for the community at the same time we're providing a safe social distance space for the individuals experiencing homelessness thanks Jason okay Dave I just want to do a time check oh so we've been at this for 90 minutes I'll get is there a way to tell how many more people have their hand raised we have 17 members of the community with hands raised 17 how's the panel we good to go do you want to take a quick five minute okay good to go let's keep rolling okay terrific thank you if that is the next question member of the community with a question followed by Mara if that I have enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your microphone Yvette are you on the line I am thank you terrific please ask your question I just wanted to let you know that in 2005 my husband and I purchased a property directly across the street it was abandoned we turned them into two homes and our tenants are very concerned my husband and I are both Bay Area firefighters so unfortunately we have a little bit of a jaded inside look of what really goes on in some of these encampments but I do understand and I'm very happy to hear the way that it seems it's being controlled and so it's a different environment but obviously don't want to be as jaded but we unfortunately are a bit my question is is that there's an 8 p.m curfew historically that seems to be when things get amped up is around 8 p.m so I'm wondering are you're going to be doing a roll call is there going to be if people don't show up by 8 o'clock and they still roll in how is that going to be looked at you know we're talking tents and we're talking hot summer nights I'm just kind of wondering you know are people going to be sitting in their tents and you know what's the noise level going to be after 8 p.m I'm just kind of curious the Catholic isn't the Catholic Charities isn't going to be there there's going to be security guards you know I don't I don't know I've you know what their personal interest is are they going to be keeping the noise level down and you know are they going to make sure that people aren't roaming in and out past 8 p.m and if they don't make the curfew then are they roaming through the neighborhoods so I guess the question is how is this 8 p.m going to be looked at and if they don't abide by it through this good neighbor contract will they be removed from the from this community thank you event sounds like operational questions are genuine yeah there were a few in there so I'm going to try to try to write as fast as I could but if I miss a couple please feel free to follow up with me or someone else remind me that I missed one um so yeah so the 8 p.m curfew is is from a couple of different perspectives again it's from the a lot of it is due to the shelter in place order and the fact that you know travel should be around essential services and there isn't a lot of essential services happening after 8 p.m at this point um things will be continually evaluated in this program and and operations and if that is working well we'll continue it if it's not working well for other reasons or health directives change or the shelter in place order changes obviously some of this might change as well so the 8 p.m curfew is one we will be doing a roll call uh not a roll call but we'll be checking on how people are it's also not just to protect the communities also protect the individuals to make sure that if they aren't there we're going to do every attempt we can to contact them and make sure they're safe and something didn't happen to them during the day either uh and so that's important for us to kind of also make sure that they their whereabouts are safe and secure as as as much as the the the site that we're operating in the surrounding community um if individuals are not communicating with us and are not coming back to the site they would be removed from the program so we can make space for someone who is going to utilize the the program site so that would be part of the continued compliance to be in the be in the site and eligible for the program is to be following the program expectations which at this point because of the shelter in place orders includes the 8 p.m curfew so so that i think it covered a few of them there might be a couple i've missed if i missed any please other panelists let me know and i'll i'll i'll try to address those ones as well i also heard something about noise level a concern about no yeah thank you and and that reminds me so security will be acting to make sure that all of the same rules and regulations are followed they'll be playing very much similar role as the staff is both you know on side and off and so that is still going to be component even during the after hours of the 8 p.m component they'll be working to keep the noise down working to make sure that all the program regulations are followed so that will be the role of security i just want to add one thing um in that even though this is an outdoor shelter unlike some of our existing shelters that are indoor programs we have similar curfews and proto protocols in place that are other shelters that are operated by catholic charity so they are experienced with dealing with this sort of curfew monitoring and compliance with the new shelter in place environment that we're all living in thank you okay the next question will be from mara followed by juda mara i have enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic hi thank you so much you can fire away with it okay great um i just want to say first and foremost thank you so much for putting this thoughtful presentation together and this plan um it's clear that you've really taken a lot of community concerns into heart so i appreciate it um i have a comment and then i just have a quick question um the first common is i just want to respond to some of the concerns folks have around safety um as somebody that works with i work with health care workers across several hospitals here in sitama county and i live with a doctor i just want to say one of the best ways that we can ensure our unsheltered community uh are less likely to contract covid is when we have uh well thought out shelters that have bathroom facilities and hand washing facilities so i just want to dispel any mist for folks that you're any more unsafe you should continue to wash your hands you should continue to stay six feet apart from folks when you're walking regardless of whether they have a home or not so um i just want to say that your plan and your presentation is clearly taken into consideration those needed facilities the question that i had as i heard you answer the question around the long term and you know post covid or at least post this covid thinking about moving people into housing uh how can community members or uh organizations help to support the city and thinking about long term and and actually helping you start to relocate folks uh over time thank you yeah thank you mar that's a fair question um we as a city have been inviting the community to help us with this through several programs primarily our our chat program community homeless assistance program because this is a big issue and we recognize it needs a partnership with the county the other cities and the community and so as we get we get closer to uh forming recommendations for the city council we would be liking to reach out to the community here here the idea is get your feedback on on some of the thoughts we have that i mentioned earlier um and then invent how this could help like we heard from jenny linn earlier about donations and how to manage that for not just the people that'll be residing at the finley site but our other shelter system and i don't know may if you would have anything you wanted to add to that well for me thanks for the question again this is uh tom the way i think a lot of people can help talk to your circle of influence especially if they're landlords that are willing to offer up housing units we've got a variety of different programs run through at least the city run through catholic charities regarding master leases um and they can participate so if you're a landlord and you want to try to help the situation contact the city contact catholic charities and we have different programs that can assist to make this a win-win uh and generally do you want to talk about some of the masterlies programs that really um catholic charities manages the clients for the most part which is i think a really advantageous situation yeah and i appreciate this opportunity as well i mean just because we are you know it's been a really important for us to make sure that we're taking an emergency immediate action in this uh safe socially distant site is is one of those actions but for us as an operator i know in several conversations with the city this is just an opportunity to not only get people safe but also to continue on our long-term goal which is actually housing people we have not stopped housing people we are still working through our housing navigation and housing location process and in many ways our um our team has been housing people at rates higher than we have in the past um for example at our family shelter we were able to place in one week six families out of the housing out of the shelter into permanent housing no longer you know resolving their homelessness and so that is a continued effort that will happen still in this site uh is making sure people have access to housing um and we're very grateful to the city of santa rosa's offered us several opportunities uh to increase that housing from a creative perspective with two different programs one is our rapid rehousing program where we actually work with landlords in the community to help house individuals and help subsidize the rent and provide in-home case management we also have a master leasing program that the mayor mentioned around uh cava cherry is actually leasing a unit from a landlord and then sub leasing it out to some of the individuals we're working with it's been a great effort uh to allow us to provide housing for some individuals that maybe wouldn't be considered around it and cava cherries comes in as the property manager and working with the individuals to keep the property safe and to make sure that all interests are are protected the residents as well as the landlords so uh we have a robust landlord incentive program that the city funds for that which includes a risk mitigation pool if anything happens to the unit we're able to cover that from a damages perspective um as well as other sign-on bonuses that we work with landlords to to help us uh make sure that our most vulnerable individuals are housed and as i mentioned earlier for us housing is the best preventative measure we can take for people experiencing homelessness in light of the COVID-19 pandemic so yeah thanks okay the next question will be from walden followed by kathy k walden i've enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your mic yeah can you hear me yes i can thank you i've got um a few questions uh so i noticed this meeting was being recorded and so will the recording be posted somewhere and then the second question i had was is the sandman full or is it only for high-risk individuals and if this site is filled it are are there going to be alternative sites and those are the only questions i have okay well now here are three of them as the uh this meeting is recorded and will it be posted i think the answer to that is yes dina yes we'll have it um it is being recorded we'll pull it off the cloud and um determine where to where the best access for the public will be to put it i don't know if that will be on the homeless web page or on the city clerks page but um we'll make it available as soon as possible okay then regarding the sandman that is the non congregate shelter location where we moved our most high-risk folks that were sheltered and unsheltered in our community over a month two months ago all those rooms are not full we have 77 people there janielyn that's if i recall yeah and then i think your question walden was if this site fills up what's next this and i'll start that maybe kelly you can help us we remember the goal is this is health in the emergency of covid 19 and we're trying to lessen the density of our known encampments in santa rosa and most of us on the call know that you know that's under the 101 freeway dole park drive fremont park primarily in those areas and so by inviting folks uh and keeping them safe in this location our outreach team will be encouraging and coaching folks in the known encampments to separate better uh and earlier in the meeting we talked about how we placed hand washing stations portlets and trash enclosures near these encampments and so that's the whole goal of this immediate response it's just the health and safety matter um anybody else want to contribute something in our immediate response for yeah well i want to go back to the question about posting the information that i got a text um from our city pio while you were asking that question that it's going to be posted tonight because she's so fabulous and an eblast will go out tomorrow morning letting people know where exactly to find it but i imagine it's going to be where we've been putting everything else homeless related right now um if you want to sign up for the eblast you can do s r dot e s r c dot org slash news um and then i would just i just want to mention again as i did in the presentation and echo what dave was saying is that this is really about emergency response right now related to covet 19 and we acknowledge that there are more people out there than we have shelter for whether it be in our existing shelters or the finley site and that's something that we're continually evaluating thank you so adrian's watching uh thank you okay we'll move on the next question is from monti followed by diana bell cur monti i've enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your microphone okay thank you terrific you're good to go okay i wanted to thank everyone for this presentation and the opportunity to ask questions uh mostly have two questions and they've sort of been touched on it was mentioned that um this encampment is intended to get high risk individuals socially distanced and uh it was also stated that other high risk individuals have been housed in hotels so i was wondering what the difference is why do some people get hotels and some people are given this encampment as an option and then my second question is um if the individuals that are participating in this program are free to come and go um and you know they're not really held accountable to social distancing measures what what's the point what is the point of doing this thank you yeah thanks monnie um i have a couple points here the um maybe we start with the outreach shimmy lin about the offer to transfer folks into the portal for the sonoma state placement and so forth yeah um so so just to kind of clarify the first point we're doing is is we're reaching out to the encampments that are the most densely populated and most in need of social distancing and from there we're first triaging individuals who are in that consider the high risk category uh which is people over the age of 65 and with some of the chronic medical conditions like respiratory illnesses and so on so forth that put them at high risk of complication if they can contract COVID-19 um for those individuals uh there has been a process set up through the county of snowmen and Tina is on the call and sure she could probably speak to it much more eloquently than me but um we're working to do the go through the referral process to get them into one of the what's considered non congregate shelter sites which is the hotel that was mentioned but also ssc which was also mentioned earlier in the presentation the reason why those individuals are getting into non congregate more isolated is because we're trying to keep people who are high risk similar to the public health order around people over the age 65 and people who have chronic medical conditions stay isolated in your home limit your your you know your communal uh interactions these individuals don't have a home and don't have the ability to isolate which is why this non congregate shelter was set up so that's the purpose behind first triaging people into there now if for some reason uh non congregate shelter is not an option for somebody who's considered high risk or somebody who is not high risk that doesn't qualify to get into uh a non congregate shelter that's what this site will first be will be set up for is for those those populations to be able to do social distancing um in terms of the secondary question i think i heard in there about people you know being free to come and go and people uh not following uh public health guidelines that that's actually the entire purpose behind this site is to follow the public health guidelines and as the operator we will be making sure people are first dedicated around this as well as following all of the public health guidelines um including face covering social distancing and all the other preventative measures that have been uh asked of us um by our our officials um who are protecting us in this pandemic so that will be something we'll be doing we will be having a sign in and inside out process again to make sure that we are helping make sure they're safe um and also to encourage essential services travel only so that that is all protocols we have put in place and will be continuing to operate not only at our other facilities but also at this site um as we continue great thank you okay uh the next question is from diana followed by jen diana i have enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic good evening i want to to say thank you first and foremost to everyone for um the wonderful work you've been doing and the way that you are uh handling all of our questions this evening i'm a neighbor of finland center i swim there and currently i'm i'm running over there um i live on trobridge and my initial question i think has been answered and that was one of how can we encourage other neighborhoods to to welcome these encampments to keep everyone safe and my second question i think you may have just answered jenny lin which is basically how how can i as someone who's wearing a mask and walking or running or biking um is there anything that you would like to encourage us to do or not do for our new neighbors here at the park thank you diana yeah i think so i'll dive into that one um so thank you for that the opportunity to kind of answer that question i think uh similar to what we're going to be holding the expectations of the individuals living in this site uh you know we we want the rest of the community to do so as well as they're kind of visiting the park and running or walking or whatever might be next to this site we are here to not only protect the community from uh the the spread of COVID-19 but also the individuals in this site um there has been some recent research that shows that people who are experiencing homelessness are three to four times more likely to have severe complications if they contract COVID-19 not only because they don't have the um ability to self isolate and have access to certain hand washing stations and things that we all might that are you know that are housed but also just the underlying medical conditions that is um higher is found to be higher among the homeless population so we're trying to protect them as well so continuing to follow your best practices around wearing masks and following all the public health guidelines is is very much encouraged as well um lastly i will say um you know we are going to follow up with some opportunities for people to help with um potentially in-kind donations uh for the site i can tell you right now what's probably going to be on the top of that list is going to be face coverings um and other hygiene supplies that will keep us well stocked at the site we are working with several vendors the city of santa res has actually provided additional a lot of additional support for us to make sure our shelters are safe and fully stocked with these items but we are also relying on the community especially in the area of face covering so i know that'll be a number one uh request we will have and we'll uh continue to update that list and and let people know how they can be a part of this uh program uh making it successful as well great thanks okay the next question is from gen herman followed by joanne gen i have enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your mic hi there can you hear me i'm clear yes thank you i just want to echo all the gratitude that's been opening up these great questions um tonight thank you for the opportunity i'm a nurse practitioner here in the community and i care for lots of people experiencing homelessness and first i just want to know how i can refer them to this program and two and listening to several of the questions um from neighbors who are very emotional and very um how can i say i don't dehumanizing toward people who are experiencing homelessness i feel like there's this re traumatization that's happening in the way that we talk about people who are experiencing homelessness that we're not seeing people without houses as our neighbors that people are viewing them as other and as really less than human in a way that i find deeply troubling and so how can we protect the people in this finley program from the negative negative attitudes hostilities and even possible violences done to them by this surrounding neighborhood attitude thank you an interesting question i i wonder if you have an idea before we drop your hand or maybe we did already oh yes i'm here um one idea would be a public um service announcement kind of campaign with um sharing stories and just humanizing people with faces and giving examples of ways people can um be kind and be neighborly and really um not having a societal intolerance of these of these attitudes and just calling it out and naming it and having a zero tolerance for it really in all settings especially for county meetings like this okay thank you any member of the panel have anything to contribute uh yeah i'd like to say something um you know oftentimes i think we we don't do enough to tell the story and i think it's important um for us to even tell the story of you know some good things that came out of these emergencies you know we're we're often always in emergency mode and work mode and uh you know and it's great we do great work but i think it's also important to talk about the successes and tell the story of those successes and and what happened when someone was connected to services while they were in uh one of our programs or while they were in a non-convergate setting so i think it's really important that we you know take time to share these stories with our communities and i think that also helps to dispel these negative attitudes and i'll just add um i appreciate that opportunity and i i certainly understand the um you know all the concerns from all different perspectives and you know know that a lot of the individuals that we've worked with during this uh kind of pandemic and disaster have actually been some of our biggest uh volunteers in support in at least our shelters um for a lot of it has been education um they not not everyone that's living in the experience of homelessness has access to media and the the the information that we might have and so as we've been educating them a lot of them have proactively you know helped clean our shelters helped you know make sure that their peers have hand saniters make sure that people are following proper you know coughing protocols like all of these things that has actually enhanced our um the community of the operations that we have and we uh hope and and you know experience will continue at this site um in the similar way it has in our other operations and i think in terms of you know what we can do is you know help us as operators and you know let us know when there's concerns let the city know when there's concerns so that we can continue to evolve and and make sure this program is successful for the people in it and for the community surrounding it um and and help spread you know the the facts that you're learning here tonight and point people to the website and when they have questions you know for us a lot of it is um is is making sure that the misinformation is uh corrected and we have a feedback loop to help us be better we also have a feedback loop to the community around what we are trying to do what we are trying to accomplish and and what this site and management will look like and and how the people are actually oftentimes um some of our our most active participants in trying to make things safe yeah we talked some of times in our meetings about good new good new stories and Zatina's point we're so busy responding to the situation at hand we we should be more conscious of taking the time to tell the good story like you just described thank you okay the next question will be from Joanne followed by Mio Joanne I've enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your mic hi can you hear me yes we can uh yes I have I live nearby and I'm concerned uh I'm concerned in regards to how the uh I'm not concerned about the people that will be in the uh sheltered area at Finley but they obviously will be having friends and associates nearby and I'm wondering how the safety and loneliness will be kept up in the playground area for children and also along the creek trails that many of us who live here use regularly and by cleanliness I mean like used hypodermics and increase uh when the Bodota Trail is here there was a few fires and increased rat problems and just that that is also being addressed for us who live here thank you well thank you Joanne and and um you know I'll kick it off about the distinction between a managed space and a non-managed space and what Ginny Lynn talked about earlier the the conditions to be a good neighbor to be a part of the safe social distancing area so again thank you Ginny Lynn yeah I'll I'll start off and there were a couple of different things that maybe public safety wants to also address um so just from our perspective we will again we have our on-site operations we also have our on-site security we also are funded and through the city of Santa Rosa and through other funding sources to actually do what we call the conservation crew our conservation crew is where we actually pay individuals who are experiencing homelessness and trying to actively get out of it we actually give them stipends to help us do cleanups of our surrounding communities and that's something we're happy to put in place here to do extra work in the Finley Park and even pay individuals who might be living in the site to help them get some income and to help them towards their steps towards housing and also make sure that the surrounding name you know park is also safe and secure so that's something we can definitely put in place through our existing program for this particular site so I think that's to address the cleaning component and then in terms of the surrounding neighborhood you know we do have the good neighbor procedure where we will be making sure that people are being a good neighbor while they're there which includes um you know anything that might cause a negative to turn it into the community and also to protect the other individuals in this site again we want to be very clear this is all this is also about keeping these individuals safe as well so that's that's the dual balance we play so that will be part of our role as an operator and a manager and then I'm not sure public safety wants to address um uh around the other concerns that were were brought up yeah I think both Mike and I can talk to this from our prospective agencies but certainly the police department like we talked about will be making proactive extra patrol in that area things like you brought up hyper-nerving needles we work with Wreck and Park and we'll be making sure that uh any of that area is cleaned up if we were to see any of that then we're going to make sure it's safely disposed of and the important thing is let us know we're going to be as responsive as we can and be proactive but we want to hear from the community if there's concerns contact the Santa Rosa police department if you don't get the level of service that uh you're expecting and call me directly and I'll deal with it and I'll make sure that you are getting that and that we're working one-on-one with the beat officers in that area and then Mike can talk directly with some of the product to work the fire department will be doing that area related to the fire hazards you brought up yeah I would just echo both with Captain Cregan and Jenny Lynn said and believe that being in a supported and managed encampment or camp is going to be a large benefit um from the folks that are in encampments that are spread throughout the community which honestly do have some inherent fire danger whether it be from cooking fire or warming fires or other activities that are taking place um but as we move into fire season we're aware of that that danger and um you know we'll take each case on a case by case basis evaluate um the individual case and and take appropriate action to mitigate any of the hazard that that we find there to um to remove that hazard so um as Captain Cregan said reach out to the the fire department um obviously if it's a emergency dial nine and one and it will respond out directly to handle the situation and I'll add on the maintenance side while we did do our absolute best to try to protect our staff during the shelter in place early on we have started to restore some of our maintenance services back into the city we're working about half capacity right now but we are focusing in on these very important safety areas to try to bring them back up to the conditions that they were pre pre-pandemic and so as as Captain Cregan mentioned that's something that we're going to be working very closely with the police office as well as the staff that Jenny Lynn has out at the site to make sure that we're addressing conditions out in the park out in the parking lot on the tennis courts all along the creek trail is needed so just wanted you to know that the maintenance teams are also being restored and starting to get back to work good point jason thanks everyone the next question is from followed by Pist about Finley Mio I have enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute yourself I did can you hear me now yes I'm clear thank you really appreciate mr veras and the previous nurse practitioner comments these are on-house neighbors they deserve compassion and respect I'm very glad that the city of Santa Rosa has decided to stop the bulldozing of homeless encampments and recognize in the middle of a pandemic we have a health emergency knowledge is power information is power and I'm wondering I have some questions regarding just the informational issues with the unhoused in Santa Rosa first was dr mase invited to this meeting with the largest municipality in the county and I think we deserve to have a county health official be here to answer questions in regards to the pandemic number two what is the total cohort of unhoused people in the city second I'm third excuse me sorry how many of the unhoused cohort have been tested for COVID-19 of the number that have been tested what percentage is positive these are all issues I think the community needs to know and again when we look at the statistics in the county and nationwide uh minority populations this is being a little outside of the uh the error issue of the homeless minority populations in particular have a much higher incidence of COVID-19 than their representation in the community and the the county health officer has just published some information in the last couple of days that shows that to be true with the Hispanic community in Santa Rosa and Sonoma County have have Hispanic uh members of the community has there been a is there a testing regimen to address this thank you thank you there's several questions there that might be broader than our efforts at finley I do know that dr mase holds press conferences several times a week uh maybe tina you can do you know the schedule of that so he might be able to tune in or we can certainly refer him to that uh I do not know the schedule on hand uh but I can address your question regarding the latin x community uh we do have a um testing schedule for our 19x community uh actually it's a fairly robust testing schedule we'll be doing robust outreach uh actually uh targeting our latin communities this saturday we are um and and ongoing so absolutely we're partnering with our um latin providers and others within the community uh to push uh education uh our social distancing uh education and things like this into the community so absolutely there's a push for that um but it as far as her schedule uh I can circle back with you about that I don't know but I she did she is on schedule I want to say it's monday wednesday friday but I don't have those times for you uh you can call our office our pio communications office and and get that information I just called it up to tina it's monday wednesday friday at 3 30 facebook and I think jenny lind or sorry kelly you have the homeless count numbers did you were you just able to pull it up yeah I just usually this is fresh in my mind but uh we've been busy with other things right now so I just pull it up on the internet and so we have in sonoma county there's about um 3000 people uh persons experiencing homelessness on any given day and this is based on our point in time data that we do every year this is a 2019 count um about 2000 of those individuals are unsheltered and a thousand of them are sheltered so when I say sheltered that means living in a homeless shelter like sam jones hall or family support center or some of the other emergency shelters we have in the county for santa rosa we have about 1600 individuals experiencing homelessness now the breakdown on sheltered versus unsheltered we have about let me just make sure I'm looking at the right number here for um 2019 we had about 700 uh sheltered and about 950 um unsheltered so I'm just answering the question about the the unsheltered um cohort and I don't have data on what testing has been available for that population thank you oh Dave let me just add this information's on our website srcity.org forward slash homeless um we have a fabulous homelessness solutions page and on that there's data including links to the 2019 homeless count the 2020 count should be up there this summer good information okay the next question is from pissed bout finley followed by marcie I have enabled your speaking permissions can you please unmute your mic I believe I'm unmuted can you hear me perfect you loud and clear fantastic thank you so first you did a commentary and then a couple questions um I live here in santa rosa I've been here for a decade I've lived in Sonoma county for multiple decades it's heartbreaking watching the decline that's happening around here I work throughout the Bay Area it is heartbreaking watching the decline of civilization watching the tense city spring up the trash that comes with that uh in so many different ways right it's it very difficult for all of us to see there are a lot of people I think that are looking out for these homeless people and these addicts and these mentally ill people trying to find help for them I think that the big disconnect that's happening not only within the county here but elsewhere is in lumping homeless people in with the mental ill moving on to questions I'll try and keep these concise and precise but uh there's our number of questions here tonight I hear a lot of information indicating uh there'll be an increased police presence down at finley what frequency of patrols are we talking about um indicating a call to santa rosa police department should be made if lawlessness is observed my question would be how will these services differ any more than uh the lawlessness that is taking place underneath every overpass on highway 101 um the people living in finley during the shelter in place order supposed to be filtered we're going to filter out the sexual predators the criminal um sexual criminals that are there what are we going to do about the rest of these sexual criminals that are running rampant underneath every one of these other overpasses over a Doyle park and all these other and then lastly I'm not having a whole lot of confidence you know in this evening's dog and pony show um what's different now than what has taken place and how the city has responded to the same issues in santa rosa over the last three to four years okay I think I heard four park questions police patrols what's different than the 101 um sexual criminals and what's different now I can go in reverse order what's different now I would contribute for your consideration is that we're under a pandemic crisis we have guidelines from the centers of disease controls that we can't disperse encampments or offer folks an alternative because those alternatives are very tight right now we're trying to keep people safe and stop the spread not just within the homeless community but our own broader community and maybe the john can you speak to some of the police patrol questions absolutely I appreciate the question and and I think we all feel some of the frustrations that we're seeing some of the visible uh homeless encampments growing and the underpasses and throughout the city and we're working closely with our community partners to address some of those but the big difference is what david touched on right now we're in the mandated pandemic response right now and that has some limitations for the safety of our full community we're talking about the extra patrol our city is divided into nine different patrol zones and this is patrol zone uh five that uh the finley center is going to be in we have a dedicated beat sergeant who manages those officers and if you go to the santa rosa website it has the beat lieutenant's uh name it has the beat sergeant's name and actually you can you can email each one of the beat the nine beat officers who worked that and I encourage you to reach out to them well we've already launched a beat project for this and it's going to be each week i'm going to be meeting with those supervisors talking to them about the progress uh going through any community concerns that have come in and making sure that we're being responsive as possible so you can email us directly or you can go to that website and email any one of those supervisors but we're going to be closely monitoring that area we'll be responding to any criminal complaints in that area and the citywide pandemic response is evolving as we as a nation go through uh the covid response some of these guidelines are going to start loosening up we're going to be able to start following some of our patterns that have been quite successful of addressing these large encampments and we have a process in place that our city partners come together on a weekly basis and a process called heap the homeless encampment action plan that you guys can see on the website that uh kelly has talked about and we have a comprehensive plan to address these large encampments work with our city partners to address them and as soon as we're legally and safely able to start addressing some of these other encampments we will do so and i want to encourage you to keep sending us the emails letting you know about the problems and we're going to do our part to address them thanks john okay the next question is from marcie followed by kathy marcie i've enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic okay can you hear me loud and clear please ask your question all right um first of all i want to thank you all for hosting tonight's presentation it's been very informative um i have a lot of empathy for the tax paying residents especially those on doile park drive who are constantly dealing with problems associated with the unhoused people that are residing on doile park drive currently um for example there's a lot of middle of the night fighting lots of garbage hypodermic needles dangerous animals human feces um this is a family neighborhood and a lot of kids are exposed to this on a daily basis which is very disturbing to me so my question to you is um will the unhoused people that are residing on doile park drive be required to go to finley the encampment thank you okay i can start us off the um this whole response of a pandemic and to lessen the density of our known encampments certainly we're very much aware of doile park drive and we can talk about some actions taken there but it isn't a requirement this is this is a voluntary request to reduce the density of our known encampments i would note that finley center is going to be managed as we've talked about doile park drive is is currently well known to the police department but we don't have social workers or housing navigators are there 24 7 so the short answer is is this is a voluntary program not a required program to clear a complete encampment to another location i don't know john if you have anything that contribute from what's been going on and your responses out there recently well i can let you know the doile park when we're very well aware of it and i was actually out there today uh driving in and our we had our downtown enforcement team we have six officers and a sergeant that are dedicated solely to address some of the issues not only in the downtown core throughout the city related to homelessness that team was out there in doile park today and it's a two-part strategy we're doing some outreach and working with catholic charities and actually today was a success from my understanding from talking to the sergeant two of the homeless residents there on doile park were actually put into housing today through our partners with catholic charities and also some enforcement action was taking for some criminal behavior today and two people were also put in jail today by that downtown enforcement team that were there but honestly doile park is one of the biggest examples why we need a managed encampment so that's the big distinction doile park is not managed there are some issues family park is going to be managed and it's going to be a whole different landscape as a result so i think that's a critical distinction for us to understand of managed versus unmanaged but understandably doile park and some of these areas need some attention and working within the parameters of our pandemic response the police department is out there and you saw some progress today but undeniably more progress needs to be done and will be done in the next coming weeks and we'll be out there with catholic charities making it a priority to voluntarily get people from the doile park area and underpasses to move over to the managed uh campsite yeah i'll just um also follow what captain cregan mentioned that we have been out there we are working to house people and find the right um option for them uh you know everyone has a different pathway and so that's why sometimes it doesn't happen immediately but doile park is one of the areas we are going to be continuing to reach out to and look for placement into the uh the safe safe social distance site thank you okay the next question will be from kathy k followed by judith and then the last hand at this point that is raised is teresa so kathy i've enabled your speaking permissions and can you unmute your mic hi hi can you hear me okay great um i just want to say also thank you all not thank you all for your public service and every day is a different circumstance with this virus so i appreciate that you're trying to protect the community as a whole um and i would just um my question then pertains to it's kind of changed to this call because some of them have been answered already um but the and i'm looking at my notes here what happens if you have few willing participants to leave their uh current situation um i know because of mental health issues and or substance abuse issues that many of these people don't want to follow strict guidelines and they're just happy right where they are so if you end up getting you know and maybe that's not going to be the case hopefully but if you say get a dozen people to sign up is that going to maybe cause you to reconsider the site as a whole that it wouldn't be cost effective to maintain it because just prior somebody mentioned that this is a violent these are voluntary efforts and you're not required to be um well you can't disband current uh encampments i understand that um and then also i just would like to have you consider uh making that nighttime curfew higher so that more people aren't locked out of the uh campsite and lastly um just an fyi i just a week ago uh oh time's up but let me just finish that the um drinking fountain outside the tennis courts there is operational and i just read got another update on the city's website that said as you open up parks all over you will not be uh the drinking fountains will not be operational so just that's an fyi so thank you yeah thank you kathy and so we understand when you make a statement of a higher curfew you mean later into the evening instead of eight o'clock yes if you can still hear me yeah so you raise a good point what if there's few willing participants were this week we're doing the outreach maybe jenny linda can give us a status on what your team is seeing and hearing um and uh i i don't know jason you might want to comment on the drinking fountain but let's start with that yeah so in terms of the outreach that's already been done and as well as the curfew you know the curfew is again a lot of it is correlated to the shelter in place order um trying to keep both the individuals in the site safe as well as the um surrounding community ambien alignment with the fact that travel should be for essential services at this point um and so we we're we'll continue to evaluate that as the the health directives of uh it continue to evolve and as the program site continues to evolve if it becomes something that is a barrier to service and or you know again things change then then we'll continue to look at that and keep the community updated uh through the the city's website and the frequently asked questions um as it relates to the engagement that we've already done we've already um just with the what uh has been announced in the public we've already had several inquiries of people who want to come to the site um and we today uh we're did our first big uh outreach effort into some of our more dense encampments and we already have 22 individuals screened and selected uh for the site and that's just on day one of kind of this initial placement uh outreach so we'll be continuing to do that um we're and uh transitioning people over beginning next week um in terms of you know if the site doesn't become full that that would maybe more of a policy discussion or something from the city's perspective but our our goal is to fill the site and keep people safe um are you know from the work we do with the individuals they want to be safe just like everyone else during this pandemic and so um you know having access to things like restaurants and hand washing stations and socially distanced tents is a way for a lot of them to be able to do that and so um you know they want to be safe too so that's that's our hope is to provide that option for them and the meals as well right yeah yes and the meals yeah and I'll just add thank you for the information about the the drinking found I'll have maintenance go take a look and see whether or not this is something we can manage and so we'll we'll get on that as soon as we can thank you the next question is from Judith followed by Teresa Judith I've enabled your speaking permissions please unmute yourself hello um I'm a 75 year old woman that lives just a couple of blocks from Finley um there are several things that have been already answered but I feel that further uh Claire well details I would be happy to get more information um you mentioned uh symptomatic being persons being tested but this uh COVID-19 has been known to be amongst asymptomatic uh people as well and because they will be out in the community during the day um I'm curious on your testing uh and whether uh um it will be done frequently enough and the other question is I know that I would feel better as a resident not to just have the public health department or director some type of representation in the meeting I'm thinking of having that presence public health presence in partnering with you guys to make sure you know that there's a hand in there that's that's um going to be a prize of the situation which leads me to one of my other questions is will we be informed if there is a breakout amongst amongst the the encampment and the other thing is will you mandate the use of masks um they won't uh it's my understanding that there will not be laundry or shower facilities so washing hands will help but uh there's other uh facets to to hygiene and cleanliness so that's okay that's my questions okay juda thank you I think we have four parts um I'll start going again and backwards there will be showers and restrooms and hand washing stations on site of course if there's a breakout of the pandemic we'll be informing everyone love to have um and we will be building a public health presence with our partners at the county and you might have heard earlier that st. joseph health is there twice a week or is it three times a week shinnylin twice and go ahead I see your mic's off you probably have a few things you want to share great job but uh yeah as our as Dave already mentioned um you know there will be laundry there will be showers there will be restrooms there will be hand washing stations so all of those things will be provided as well as um three meals a day for individuals that are that are living there um in terms of again people being uh safe this is to provide a safer alternative to what is already existing in our community uh you know we will again be following all public health guidelines including the social distancing of 12 feet between 10s which is the cbc's guidance six feet as the people are in communal environment you know the communal spaces uh we will also be helping people with face covering that is part of the public health uh guidelines right now is that people was they're out in in you know out in the public they need to be wearing face covering so we will you know when