with driver license and registration that's a good way of doing it and so those are the kinds of things that we get into the weeds about to see whether or not there is a pattern of doing that. I'm not suggesting that Santa Rosa patrol officers do that all I'm suggesting is that I've seen that in other jurisdictions so those are the kinds of things we'll be we'll be examining.  Not in and of itself but it's certainly if in fact those questions are only being asked of people of color or disproportionately asked of people of color now we're starting to get somewhere with regard to concerns right so um I think the question in and of itself is not really a great question at least not a question that one would ask right off the bat if you're trying to develop a positive relationship with the individual being detained who is not going to be happy about being detained obviously. But if it's if it appears to be that that is a pattern that is more heavily focusing on individuals who are who are black or Latino or of color then that's a problem and those are the kinds of things we through our auditing would would would detect and uncover. And when you look at officers um and like you said you'll look at an officer and the 10 stops um if an officer has a certain beat depending on that beat they may encounter a certain group or the same type of people if they're in the same you know a neighborhood right so um wouldn't you kind of see the same type of way that they stop people like you don't you wouldn't really see a change so much right yeah um so you're absolutely right in in you have to compare apples and apples as opposed to apples and oranges so what we what we generally do is we look at a squad or a shift um and see whether or not there are any outliers with regard to that kind of activity right so why you would expect to see the same kind of interactions by officers you know that are working that shift working that beat sometimes you don't and so if if you have an officer that is conducting him or herself in a way in which people are unhappy with the way in which they interactions begun and often with the way in which the interactions ended or that officer gets an ordered number of complaints compared to the rest of his colleagues or her colleagues on the shift then you do have an outlier and that's when you know something some sort of remediation needs to be done and do you see the same number of complaints per se from communities of color as you do from communities that are not of color to to to generalize unfortunately for a whole lot of reasons uh cities or neighborhoods or communities of color you tend to generate fewer complaints over in my experience than than neighborhoods that are are white or more affluent some of that I think particularly for our Latino communities some of that has a language has to do with a language issue or hurdle or challenge but but more freak more I think more that's going on there council member is that in some communities there is some lost confidence and lost faith in the process right and so people give up they don't think that making a complaint is going to do any good and and that's where you know brian comes in and his outreach component but that's also where we come in to to sort of indicate now we have an independent police auditor that's not a fill a police department and it's going to be reviewing these things and going to take a look at the body camera independent of the police department and make an independent assessment and tell the community what we're finding so that's the value of this auditing program in my view and in a sense that and and this has been our experience so we've been working with Palo Alto for a dozen years and I think that now there is a greater confidence in that intake process because they've had an auditor as long as they've had and quite frankly if complaints go up that's not necessarily a bad thing if complaints go up that suggests that there's more confidence in the process and that's something appropriate will be done when an officer is stepped over the line and vice mayor this this is also part of our community engagement program as well that will continue and complement the efforts of the OIR group with their outreach efforts and community engagement and involvement activities so there there will be a lot of collaboration and cooperation between those two elements so you said that you've been doing this for quite some time in my experience is that when people do something for quite some time things begin to be normalized so as a mother of eight beautiful brown children what what makes you different your group what makes you guys different why should the community interest you to be different from everyone else in the past to complete this this task and to see right from right and wrong from wrong and to actually say something about it if our community member I would say the jury would be out and and show us your work and show us what you're finding and show us our reports you know that that I think will be the first test for us is is the kind of reporting we do but you know I have been a lawyer for for quite a while now all of my legal career before that I was a school teacher for a few years and really appreciated that all of my legal career has been devoted to civil rights enforcement so I prosecuted police officers when I was a federal prosecutor I have been working in misconduct and oversight field for 20 more years after my years as a prosecutor of police officers so and and if people look at our reports which I'm sure your selection committee did in your city did their hard hitting reports we don't you know if something is a problem or something needs to be addressed or remedied or fixed or something needs to be identified we're not shy about talking about it because it's all we have is our credibility and we want to continue with that and if I may add a little bit council member to your question I do think that from my experience having known the OIR group since I got involved in NACOL in 2012 and seen their continued presence part of what we have in sort of the NACOL family is a very broad range of stakeholders we have people with backgrounds like Mike and the rest of the OIR team we have community activists we have people who have come directly out of policing who worked on issues of police misconduct we have journalists and academics and so NACOL really helps us to constantly be thinking about how do we do things differently what are effective practices and I would say that seeing how the OIR group over the years has continued to bring in new people if it were stuck in the past it would probably be a group of attorneys that are looking at how to prosecute misconduct but over the years they brought in different people now including myself who have different perspectives you know I'm not an attorney I really come out of peace and justice organizing and have that perspective so again I think the jury is out to an extent for what the community will see but for the purposes of your city council making this decision please just know that I am committed to this and I really see this work with the OIR group as an extension of work I've done before so I am very committed to ensuring that those different lenses are present and that all of those voices that aren't normally heard are part of the discussion and that their needs are met to the extent possible again not an easy task but it's what I'm deeply committed to. Thank you guys for taking the time to answer the questions although they may not be the normal conventional questions that you would normally get I think that they needed to be answered and the community needed to hear the answers to the questions thank you. Any other questions from council members? Council Member Alvarez? Thank you. The principal sir how are you Michael? I believe we spoke a little bit back when we were discussing the protests that we had here in the city of Santa Rosa and one of my questions to you was how long have you been involved in the process but you just went over your experience in regards with prosecution and the school teacher as well so thank you for both of those services. In regards to the process that happened during the protests were you able to communicate with the Human Rights Commission when you gave your report when you created your report? We were certainly a council member we were certainly aware of the report that they had done and we certainly used the information that they had produced in the report that they had prepared prior to our report and it informed some of the findings that we you know we looked at so while we didn't while our scope didn't give us the opportunity to address them as a body we certainly learned from what what they had uncovered in their own independent process. Were you able to interview any of the protesters who brought about litigation? Yeah there was an attempt to reach out to those individuals but because of the litigation piece my recollection is that they were not interested in pursuing interviews through the internal affairs investigation but they still have their own you know litigation that they ended up settling but we did reach out to them and attempt to interview them yes. Very well and I hope you understand that this is going back to my original question of how can we get the public's trust to assure them not only of transparency that the reports are actually thorough when we say that they're being thorough and if we falter and we fall a little bit short of that line I feel that we are losing the progress that is made thus far and and and I'm I'm definitely being tough with my questions because I'm I'm coming from the citizen aspect of it and I'm trying to get to a yes which I really want to get to especially after hearing how committed you are to the process so I'm extremely happy to hear about that and this is a city of San Rosa that has a police chief that knelt with his people when someone else knelt on a neck that's the pride that I take in San Rosa with that being said I definitely want to see inclusion I want to see participation I want to see transparency and I'm hoping that you can provide that for us thank you thank you council member and and and that's my commitment and I think Brian would agree with us with absolutely that's our commitment all right thank you Michael I'm going to build a little bit off of some of the questions that council member alvarez asked because what he's really asking is to what extent is the community going to be involved and to what extent is the community going to have oversight and that's one of the ongoing and lingering conversations that is still out there hiring an independent auditor will further our goals of providing additional transparency and accountability within our existing structures and yet we also then have a public safety subcommittee that will at some time have a conversation around civilian oversight board or to what extent of civilian oversight would work and make sense for Santa Rosa if that's a direction we even want to go we have a charter review committee where one of the recommendations that could come out is a civilian oversight measure p type type measure that was supported in Santa Rosa what's your experience working in communities that either have these types of structures or have been in the process of figuring out whether they make sense for their community and how to move into them that's an excellent question and and we have worked as independent police auditors with cities that don't have a formal review board or accountability group different names for for for these for these bodies but no community facing group but we have also worked with cities that do have a police accountability commission or a police review board or or some you know different names for example in the city of Davis from its from our inception as the independent police auditor which we've been for three years now we have worked with the police accountability commission in the city of Santa Clara County we have a community facing county of Santa Clara we have a community facing group that we work with and in cities that have decided to form those review boards or commissions we have provided a role as a liaison to those individuals so we attend the meetings we present we tell them what we're learning they tell us what we they assign us projects at times you know they assign us auditing projects to do and that ends up being a pretty good symbiosis so and and we have actually transitioned to cities that are going in that direction and have helped train the commissioners of the review board members with regard to police practices so that they can be equipped and be talking from a position of more knowledge in addition to their community experience that they bring to the table so we are we are certainly and we and we find that you know in cities that have decided to go that way that that community board or group or commission uh can end up being helpful to our work as well because they're they're the eyes and ears of the community they live in the city we don't and so they bring that experience and um and knowledge to us as individuals who have that expertise and the accessibility to information but we don't have that community component so I know that's a longer winded answer you might ask for but that is something that you know we have worked with um and continue to do and if I may appreciate the answer go ahead Brian I'm sorry no not at all my apologies Mr. Mayor so I'll just say very quickly now and again I'm very aware there's a specific scope of work in a contract that's being discussed but just so you know um in my role at makehold and just other work I've done I have done lots of work with communities all over the United States that are looking at creating civilian oversight uh whether it's counties looking at some sort of countywide mechanism and that's every place from you know Fairfax Virginia to Arlington Virginia to places like as I mentioned Cedar Rapids Iowa places pretty much all over the United States communities large and small that are in that process of thinking about oversight so it's not totally clear to me how that will play out in this particular situation but just know that that is a level of expertise that I have and again I enjoy doing that work so to the extent it's appropriate part of that outreach can be thinking about listening to hearing from the community about what they're looking for what the needs of the community are and then that ties in with what is being found in audits and investigations the longer term history and not just in Santa Rosa but really in Sonoma County because I know there's a complicated interplay between the sheriff's department the city police department and things that happen in other communities like Roner Park still affect people in Santa Rosa so I think that to the extent this comes up in outreach I believe I can play a helpful role in facilitating those conversations and bringing to the surface needs and things that people are looking for as they might consider what type of civilian oversight would be appropriate for Santa Rosa going forward thank you great thank you I really appreciate the thoughtful answers any other questions from council all right let's go to public comment on this item I'll start with folks in the chamber if anybody is interested in providing comment go ahead head to the podium not seeing anyone we've got a couple of hands via zoom we'll start with Evan and then we'll move to resident 0694 are you able to hear me yep go ahead okay I appreciate very much the line of questioning from the council members and I also very much appreciate the responses here from OIR I find them both encouraging but what we're talking about is not just efficacy but also efficacy and credibility and credibility means nothing without trust so OIR is limited by the restrictions of their contract and while I'm really encouraged to hear Brian and Michael speak I hope you can hear me in saying that the community was severely disappointed in OIR's report but we don't necessarily hold you accountable for that because an investigator is only as good as the information they have and I'm letting you know that the trust is so fractured in this community between law enforcement and the civilians that there are so many people that did not come forward even including in the human rights commission reports that you can't look past that so also the selection committee I'm not suggesting that OIR is the wrong group to use as this auditor it sounds like there could be a great outstanding group for the community but the fact that you have two unelected and the center was a police department representing the majority of a selection process even though it's unanimous is already creating more distrust in this community and in a contractional status for a contract that's going to be held over their head you know both of those unelected assistant city managers work in conjunction with the police department and you have the police department suggesting who should have oversight on the police department that is inherently not oversight by definition so the process has been flawed even if we've arrived to the right group and now you have it sounds like this is an extension of the professional standards which is what the police department like that's not what it is they can work that out internally this is for the community and it is critical to the credibility and trust this community that not only do we have this auditor and that this contract provide true autonomy and independence for true oversight which it seems like they're more than capable of doing if the scope of work is defined as such but it has to work in conjunction with the civilian review board which yet is still to be determined what that looks like but it is totally critical right now that that scope of work is telling us that you're going to have two reports with the chief ambassador committee that the police have chosen which you know Mayor Fleming pointed out the the oddity to that I'll just tell you right now someone who was attempted to be recruited for that I'm not saying that they didn't land some good candidates I'm telling you that most of the good candidates want nothing to do with that and I'm not suggesting that it shouldn't work or that the police department's not trying their best to do something positive but if you think that's the voices of the community for community outreach you are greatly mistaken and this is one of the inherent problems of using people who are not localized to the community which is again not OIR's fault but they don't understand the nuances the concerns the priorities of the community so they might have the professional chops to do this but you have to have people from the community who live in this community intimately involved in this process and I have concerns about OIR's effectiveness when there could potentially be spread thin if unless I misunderstood seems like there's only five of you and you have all these contracts and you're going to give us an annual report thank you Evan I need you to wrap up if you would yeah look I'm saying OIR is is is totally required but is insufficient and I hope that City Council you will do something that formally leaves the door open for a formal independent civilian review board to work in conjunction with them thank you thank you Evan we'll go to resident 0694 followed by Kathleen Mayor Roger members of the City Council my name is Jim Duffy I'm a neighbor in Runner Park I am a NACOL member and also a NACOL certified practitioner of oversight and thank you for hearing my comments this evening there's lots of really good sections in this contract that you're looking at including the full and unfettered access to materials for complaint audits and the systemic audits of complaints and discipline policies procedures and training so I want to start off saying congratulations on being so thorough in those particular areas there are some things that absolutely need to be fixed first and foremost the chief's community ambassador team also called CCAT is illegitimate and you need to remove any language that refers to it from the contract it violates the very first principle of effective independent oversight as it lacks any sense of independence all its members serve at the pleasure of the chief do not solely the great work that you did putting this contract together by including CCAT in this process the chief can have it you can do it but it's certainly not should not be related to oversight OIR should establish an alternative location independent of SRPD to accept complaints SRPD likely has a wide discretion on classifying communications from the public as something other than an official complaint which then triggers investigations reporting and tracking and we need to close that loophole so there needs to be a place for people to report a complaint that is not directly to SRPD and as lastly just as we established due to its lack of independence from SRPD CCAT is an illegitimate body so the city council will need to eventually establish a legitimate community body to help you satisfy the stakeholder support and community engagement principles of effective civilian oversight OIR and Brian core are more than qualified to help you accomplish that goal when you choose to finally and seriously pursue it thank you for taking my comments thank you Jim we'll go to Kathleen followed by Lee there we go good evening everybody I have two brilliant speakers as predecessors here it's a pretty hard act to follow and they've pretty much said everything that needs to be said I would say that I welcome at long last that we're going to have an independent auditor and I stress independent the structure I think has been pointed out need has some some serious flaws I think is a problem to only have reports in from OIR twice a year I think it should be monthly or at least at minimum quarterly OIR should report to the city council as well as to the city manager not just to the city to the city manager and then I think you know the most important point I think has already been stressed and let me stress it again there is an inherent conflict built in to any kind of advisory body appointed by the chief of police it's nothing personal it is just a fact it has to be changed this kind of consulting team body whatever you want to call it should be appointed by none other than the members of the city council so I assert you to use your powers to change this provision in the agreement because it is unacceptable as it stands it it simply can't and does not represent any measure of independence so let's start let's not play that game let's really do it let's really have the independence with the the community input with its diverse interests and really really well represented then we have a real shot at having a great independent auditor thank you thank you Kathleen we'll go to Lee followed by Kelsey hi thank you for taking my call I just want to take a minute to say that I am in favor of a completely independent community review committee I believe that it's important to have um independent auditors that are not appointed by the police um it it it I'm sorry but it just doesn't make sense to me I'm a former educator and I can't imagine somebody coming into my classroom only when I unlocked the door um it really doesn't make sense I don't think there's any opposition are you hearing it anyway I'm gonna try again yeah we'll give you a couple extra seconds here okay no problem um basically what I am I'm I'm really just saying is I um I want the council to establish an independent community review committee it just has to be independent and the time needs to be taken to to to to to make sure that the the the the focus and the the the understanding by a community oversight committee like it feels to me that it needs to be independent and it also needs there takes time so um to to establish such such a thing um I am going to yield my time but again I don't understand how somebody who is the needs to be audited can say but this is the guy I want to audit me and I'm going to repeat it as a school teacher if I were to say I only want the people that I want to come in here to check to see if I'm doing a good job as a teacher and I'm going to tell you exactly who they are and I'm not going to unlock the door unless those are the people reviewing me it just literally makes no sense it feels gaslighting it feels uncomfortable and it just just please consider that please consider that it needs to not be the person who needs to be audited to say who's going to do the auditing thank you for your time and I yield mine thank you Lee we'll go to Kelsey followed by Michael hi can you hear me yep go ahead hi um my name is Kelsey Barrow and uh been listening for hours but we managed to nail the time I'm nursing a baby to sleep so here we go um so uh I I absolutely agree with everything that's been said um everyone who's been following this who looked immediately caught the chief's advisory board part um really that's all you need to know about it to know that that has to be changed it has to be changed first you cannot sign the contract and change it later I don't know if you can do it in real time or it has to come back to the agenda to be changed but um the the independent civilian body that we've been asking for um is not optional um the discussion around um creating something that is measure p like maybe it takes more time um ways we can empower them with real you know things that they can do rather than even just advise uh and that would take time but I think it's entirely possible that we can um make the body now from the beginning and work on how to empower them with more things over time or with the public safety subcommittee that kind of thing um I just uh haven't heard it said yet necessarily that I was on the meeting listening in about the the protests and the OIR report I'd never heard of them before so uh this isn't our first meeting with the community we've met and I didn't go well um uh many of us including those who had been at those protests who were injured who had settlements later felt extremely frustrated and angry and even traumatized in terms of listening to somebody talk about the injuries and the traumatic experiences they've had um you know as as in such a sanitized way and the contrast to the human rights commission was extremely apparent and so you it they've talked a good game in this meeting and I like what I'm hearing but it's a firm and it's he said it's the business of oversight and it's not local and that's why that civilian body um has to be empowered this is there is no trust um we heard that report um we hated it at the time um basically and I know there were limitations on the contract and that's why we we're looking at the contract now we have to get it right from the beginning um and so those are the main things that I they wanted to say please um fix those things and we will be very happy uh to move forward with the order oh I wanted to say the city manager absolutely cannot the city manager can fire them for any reason it says in the contract and that's what happened last time and it was empty for years that cannot be left to stand they have to talk to the council and give more often reports thank you thank you we'll go to michael hey everyone um michael it's tone so um I'm glad that we're considering having the auditor position filled but when I saw that OIR group is the organization that was chosen to fill that position I was very disappointed um it seems like it didn't you know this is this is this position is maybe it's maybe to us you know what we want is we want uh an accountable police force that's what we want as a community maybe that's not necessarily the goals of everyone who is weighing in on this um but our experience from the protests in Santa Rosa was um we saw that um we you know from being on the street there were a lot of police abuses and we heard many of those abuses in the human rights commission report and then um it seems that OIR only investigated the uh the incidents that SRPD was in the scope of the SRPD's internal investigation and the ones that were investigated um I don't think were particularly good now if that was because um because individuals weren't reporting um the facts I think it kind of speaks to the problem with you know just having a police auditor which is that it's you know part of the it's they're they're perceived as being part of you know the internal investigation of the police and it's not sufficient for people to really trust the process and get well you know give information which is why I think we do need independent um police oversight and that's something that that you know we have to we're not it's not for consideration what I do want to say is um you know again was that OIR's fault or was that the city's fault or was that the police chief's fault I think that it largely falls on the city and so I what I what I guess I guess what I want to say is whether we have OIR or another group I'm that I don't believe trust is going to be uh repaired from this particular choice um and I don't I'm disappointed that we are going with OIR group and just to point out the the previous auditor was fired from his position for criticizing the city's policies on homelessness on homeless sweeps which you know should be criticized especially at the time um was I can see how that would have diminished the uh diminished officer morale to be scooting homeless people around all the time and not really solving the problem so you know we're watching if we end up having to fire another auditor for the same reason I think that's going to be just you know another huge problem. Thank you Michael. Do we have any voicemail public comments? We do mayor. 14.1 Dwayne DeWitt from Rosalinds please do not hire this group OIR as the independent police auditor we need to have something closer to home here in Santa Rosa starting with the citizens oversight committee and getting people in our community who know the problems we've had for over 20 years this is really important and this group that you're talking about hiring it's just another go along to get along crew they basically haven't helped yet I don't think they'll help at all they're just about making the money and doing the same thing that the police union wants um it's really a sad time that so many tragedies are occurring did you know that most of the homicides in Santa Rosa this year have been over in Rosalind and the one police killing so far this year over in Rosalind so we have a vested interest that we get some honesty in this whole process and I don't think this OIR group is going to bring that to the table they're just another crew that's going to follow what the leader wants and take the money and laugh all the way to the bank please citizens oversight committee with a locally based auditor someone that will stand up to the police thank you so my name is Allegra Wilson and I am calling in on a giant agenda item 14.1 the contract with the OIR group for police oversight services I want to call to advocate for more community input before awarding this contract to the OIR group and the Santa Rosa City Council should know that this is a topic of strong interest in the community and we want as much oversight and input from the people who are impacted by overpolicing and police violence as possible the OIR group submitted a report about the police violence against protesters in 2020 that was completely sanitized and had very little relationship to the actual atrocities that were committed including human rights violations as detailed by the Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights and I really urge the city council to slow down this process involve community voice in what goes into that contract as well as in the selection of a of the right person or body to do this type of oversight we need oversight we needed it long before now as we know that the police have killed yet another person just down the street from my house as a matter of fact and it's harmful to the community it's horrible and there and oversight is needed but more than that community input and involvement on that oversight is needed because more policing of the police by interests who don't care about the people is not going to help us and having this body this OIR group and run the show without any input from the community is unacceptable as they've proven by their report that they submitted to the council in May and so again please involve the community in these types of decisions we need to have a voice we deserve to have a voice and we will not be ignored thank you mayor that concludes public comment on item 14.1 great thank you so much i'll go ahead bring it back to council mr city manager there were two things in particular that i heard a couple of different times one of them was a question about the city manager's authority to fire the independent contract the independent contract here for oversight my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong is that actually stems from the city's charter which says that council members only have authority over two employees of the city the city manager and the city attorney and that we are not allowed to give hiring and firing direction and any other position that is correct mayor the city's charter does outline that authority and that is typical of council manager forms of government in the state of california okay the other question was about the ccat doing the facilitation for the community meetings how was it determined that the ccat was the appropriate facilitator in that instance as opposed to for example the mayor or the the chair of the public safety oversight committee i think chief navarro may speak to this in more detail but my understanding was that the chief formed this community ambassador team it's not an advisory body has no authority within the department or other function of oversight in the department other than to encourage community involvement and engagement and he may want to elaborate more on their role with the community engagement process associated with this contract thank you mr city manager yes mayor so they are they are a an ambassador team that's set up to assist us with additional outreach to the public in the way that they would be again utilized in this particular contract would be to help conduct outreach to the public to again the advice is not coming from ccat they are providing input on where the community is positioned they're going to be used to enhance community engagement and to bring more people to the table and so we not only will use them but again we'll use the city's community engagement team or officer community outreach and all that is an effort to try to enhance more community involvement so they're not an advisory they're it's an ambassador team for our for our community so chief would would there be any objection then section nine page 16 of the scope of services says community meetings will be facilitated by the chief's community ambassador team and held twice a year is there any objection then if we switch that to community meetings will be facilitated by the mayor or their designee mayor i'm you know we're our our biggest pieces to get community involvement if that's the direction we can we can definitely accommodate that i i do know that the members of the community ambassador team do want to get involved in some way so i would hope that they're a part of it but if it's under the direction of the mayor or another designee then you know we can accommodate that okay thank you chief council are there any additional questions otherwise i'll have councilmember fleming put a motion on the table go ahead in regards to the time that that the reports are being brought out i believe it stated that it's only once a year when these reports are made available and i'm wondering if if city council if there's an opportunity for us to meet quarterly during the first year well we see this program being developed and then after the first year on a yearly basis unless a situation arises that demands a report to be made that would be a change in the scope of the contract i would imagine that we would need to discuss that and any cost implications with the oir group what we could do councilmember if if it is uh if it's appropriate is if we choose to move forward with this tonight we could potentially have those conversations and then if a change in scope of service is would require additional finances or something of that nature we could bring that as a separate addendum for discussion either in the budget or sooner if that needs to take place i would appreciate that mayor that does make sense we could we could take a look at the cost associated with that thank you sir councilmember fleming yes prior to putting a motion on the floor um city attorney do i need to do anything to incorporate the the mayor and the chief's agreement to provide the reports to the mayor or the mayor's designee or will that happen in the process after i put the motion on the floor no it would be it would be helpful for you to incorporate that into your um into your motion so that you would move to adopt the resolution read the resolution title with uh with the one change um that and i'm sorry my computer just ran out of batteries i don't have that section i think it's on page no worries i'll give it a good crack and will you correct me if i don't get it right yes actually uh the city manager graciously just handed me his notes so i'm good okay excellent all right um i'm uh honored to bring a resolution of the council of the city of san aroza approving the professional services agreement with oir group llc to serve as the independent police department auditor with the additional amendment to the contract that the reports will be given biannually to the mayor or the mayor's designee if i can correct because i want to make sure we're we're clear uh with the community it's that the community meeting the twice yearly community meeting will be facilitated by the mayor or their designee and just to explain the designee part is because uh my thought is that the actual person who should facilitate the meeting is either the mayor or the chair of the committee that has oversight and we don't know in the future what that committee will look like so i just wanted to make sure that there was enough wiggle room within the scope of the contract to be able to to have the right person facilitating that meeting um in so it's uh page 16 section nine community meetings will be facilitated by the mayor or their designee and held twice a year would you like me to do it again i happy with that i think we can say with those changes yes you can you can just stay with those changes as the mayor said yes very good thank you may i get a second i will second all right so we have a motion from council member fleming and a second from council member alvarez are there any additional comments from council members let's go council member alvarez don't work my way down i want to say that that i'm proud to support this i look forward to a transparent inclusive process that makes our community feel that they are represented with respect and dignity and i'm here at your service thank you thank you council member today is a good day it should not have taken as long as it has but it is here now and so i think that what we ought to do is is anything okay i think that given that it's taken us as long as it has to get here um we ought to consider moving forward how we're going to make sure that we don't end up in this situation again where we have three years without independent an independent auditor and i and i know that council has previously given direction to the charter review committee to take this up um it is my hope and my belief that we are hiring a group of talented individuals who will be able to to execute on our vision of an independent and accountable um auditor or auditor that's independent and provides accountability to our police force and that this independent auditor will allow our community to feel some degree of engagement and comfort and trust and that in turn will that trust will in turn increase the ability of our peace officers to do the difficult jobs that they do with a greater degree of confidence and safety and that in turn our community will be benefited all around thank you council member council member sweatel thank you mr. mayor um i am very supportive of this you know it's how we got here is an interesting voyage and i have heard not only tonight but from other members of the community wouldn't be great if we did have a local firm but i think this is the third or fourth time the city has gone out and as far as i'm my understanding they don't exist yet right um and i do want to thank both uh brian and mike uh thank you for your feedback and the answers to the question the word trust has been mentioned here um i think you really have provided those first steps towards trust i really am anxious to see the work that or oir is going to do and we can really partner to build this relationship so i really appreciate your interest and i look forward for future collaborations thank you council member vice mayor you've got the last word um did someone mention about the process of complaints and how the complaints come in and that that should be changed no okay just checking before we went through all this process um so i must say that i was one of the people that very strongly wanted this position filled and i still feel that way and um it is not the dinner that we just had that was really good that has my stomach and knots i think what has my stomach and knots is that i know that on paper and educationally and in experience you guys check all the boxes and i'm so done with checking boxes that it's driving me nuts the fact that you guys did not talk to the people that did the human rights commission report bugs me it really like gets me in so many places and it disappoints me how you can check so many boxes and just be so close to i know no one's perfect but like on paper and just have the expertise and just be there and just be like have all this experience and like no and you're saying well i couldn't get to the protesters but you were so close to people that interviewed the protesters and had all this experience firsthand with protesters and and people that were were there and you didn't take the opportunity to i don't know it just makes me it makes me feel some type of way um so i have reservations um and and i i hate feeling that way when i'm when i'm voting for something but i have really like not i don't feel great um with that being said i think that i think michael said it and that is you know let let us show you let us show you and um i said i have eight eight brown children so i am as a mother not as a council member as a as a resident i am i'm asking you to i know you don't live here but i'm asking you to show our community better than you can tell us better than you can write a proposal i'm asking you to show us with your with your actions and i'm asking you to hold our police department accountable and i'm not saying to hold us accountable to flip our police department upside down because i think we have some darn good officers i'm asking you because i want our department to be the best so i want you to find things that we can improve upon to train our officers to make us the best not to chastise us to punish us to but to train our officers to point out things that can make us the best that that's what i'm looking for um is to make us the best um and as near perfection as we can get not to point out all the things that we do wrong in order to say we're doing them wrong but so that we can train our officers and make them the best um so with that that's what i have to say but i do have this not in my stomach all right thanks vice mayor madam clerk please call the roll councilmember tibbetz councilmember schwedhelm aye councilmember soyer aye councilmember fliming yes councilmember alvarez all right vice mayor rogers aye mayor rogers aye that motion passes with six eyes with councilmember tibbetz absent right thank you so much we'll be talking mic and brian mr city manager let's go on to our public hearings i do believe we have to conclude any public hearings by or excuse me start any public hearing before nine o'clock yes that is correct great so move on to item 15.1 and try to be expeditious with them may rogers and members of the council item 15.1 is a public hearing on the amended 2020 water shortage contingency plan calling close our senior water resources planner we'll do the staff report on this item thank you very much uh city manager colon and good evening council and mayor we'll go ahead and get started with this and i'll do my best to be very concise for you i know it's been a very busy evening already we're here with this first item to present to you a recommendation to amend our 2020 water shortage contingency plan with two amendments one of those amendments also would include introduction of an ordinance next slide please this slide will be familiar to you it's to remind the public that the california urban water management planning act does require the city to take steps every five years to prepare and adopt and submit a comprehensive water planning document that looks out over a we actually use a 25 year horizon that the law requires at least a 20 year horizon and that we also prepare a separate plan to prepare for water shortages should they occur for any reason whatsoever these are adopted every five years and you held a study session in may and you adopted both documents in june the 2020 urban water management plan that long-term water plan and the shortage the water shortage contingency plan the law does allow for us to make any amendments that we think are necessary in between those five year cycles so we wanted to take advantage of that and to propose these two amendments that i will explain next slide please and just a reminder again a shortage plan prepares us for water shortages that could occur for any reason and it's like an operational plan it's very detailed and has quite a few response actions listed in it for any type of water shortage stage and that's so that we can make sure that the water we have available during shortage will get us through that shortage that will have enough for health and safety throughout that period next slide please we have eight water shortage stages as you're well aware and when we get past stage four when we get into stages five six seven and eight that's when we are rationing water we call that water allocations next slide please when we are rationing water when we're assigning water allocations every individual water service gets an amount of water that's specific to the type of customer and to some data that's specific to that site for example how many people live in that home or the type of business when this is in fact in place it is a requirement that folks not exceed the limit on how much water they've been allocated if they do we immediately would start enforcement part of that enforcement process includes excess use penalties next slide please in the current water shortage plan the excess use penalties are defined by looking at a percentage of use over that water allocation and while on paper and an excel spreadsheet when we looked at this mathematically it makes perfect sense and it works very well unfortunately it doesn't work well with our billing software because we end up with increments of thousand gallon units we bill in thousand gallon units so while this does make a lot of sense logically and in many ways it's actually we're not able to implement it in a useful way with our billing system so staff worked with our software vendor and we took a look at a number of different models that we could use so that we could come up with a penalty structure that would have a similar impact but would be easily implemented so next slide please so what we came up with was looking at the thousand gallons of units over use over the allocation and then assign a flat fee for each thousand gallon unit and when we did the analysis similar to the analysis we did and the water shortage plan for the adopted structure the impact would be very similar in terms of the amount of fees that would be charged if someone wasn't complying with the allocations at any given stage so this comes very close to that structure so that's the first amendment that we are recommending we're recommending that we shift to a penalty structure that's based on thousand gallon units rather than on percentage next slide please you're familiar with this slide this is the second amendment that we're recommending the shortage plan currently allows for water demand offsets to increase with the more severe stages of shortage six seven and eight in stage one it's a one-to-one offset but by stage eight it's a four-to-one offset and we would recommend that regardless of which stage we're in when we're rationing water with our existing customers and don't have water to allocate to new uses that the offset be a requirement that's strictly one-to-one for all stages five through eight so those are the two amendments that are recommended next slide please because it's a document that has lots of sections and tables and appendices that amendment includes making sure that those changes are made in all of the parts and pieces of the plan where they are currently embedded my apologies i accidentally clicked out of your presentation one moment no problem so i can mention that you know so what we would recommend is that all of those pieces be included in the in the updating that water shortage plan the other piece that we would recommend is that the ordinance be adopted and the ordinance is necessary to update thank you so much next slide would be great yeah thank you the ordinance would be to change our city codes so that the excess use penalty structure gets updated with the new penalty structure next slide please so in more formal terms the recommendation is this it's recommended by the board of public utilities and santa rosa water that council by resolution adopt the 20 amended 2020 water shortage contingency plan and introduce an ordinance approving revisions to the excess use penalty structure set forth in section 14-04.015 of the city code and i'm happy to take any questions that the council may have thank you thank you so much callin i have just one sort of basic question right off the bat i was at a community meeting a couple of weeks ago and somebody asked me why we bill in thousand gallon increments is there any easy answer for that to explain to people who knows there's an easy answer per se but basically every water department water supplier picks a unit that they use for billing and so we pick the thousand gallon unit some folks pick a ccf or other kinds of that's a cubic foot measure what we do though however i think it's helpful for the community to know is if you used let's say 1400 gallons this month you're actually billed at 1000 gallons and then next month if you roll over the next thousand gallon unit that's when it catches up so so it's really in some ways it favors the customer and that we we go to the the next lowest thousand gallon unit so that we're always billing in whole thousand gallon units and then it does catch up so we don't overcharge our customers we don't round up we round down and we know over time that that does catch up so i i mean because we all uh got pra for our water usage and got to see how much each of us use so you're saying that council member Fleming when she uses less than a thousand gallons in a month she pays nothing that first month and then the second month when she rolls over the thousand it gets added in and she gets charged well it would depend on it's it's when the thousand gallon unit number on the meter turns over so if the thousand gallon unit on the meter doesn't turn over then it's there isn't a water charge that month for the water itself there is still the fixed fee and the sewer fee and the sewer fixed fees so there are still fees and then the next month once that turns over that thousand gallon unit then that counts as a thousand gallons but we don't round up we wait until that thousand gallon unit figure on the meter turns over i hope that makes sense i know it's a little technical no it does i mostly just want to be able to congratulate the council member on being the most water efficient of the bunch that's wonderful i think she was like 900 gallons per month on average i mean just one are there other true are there other questions from council on this i i'm actually i wasn't able to hear that i'm sorry it's i said for the sake of time i have like 20 people at my house i don't think that that's fair i didn't see the new numbers but i have like 20 people at my house i i can't i don't think mine my water usage was that bad was it oh no everybody was extremely efficient but council member Fleming uh one out of the entire group because she has like one person anyway council member tidbits thank you mayor um hello colin one of the questions i had for you was uh what alternatives are there to charging housing to meet some of our water demand offset needs well if i could i think that's going to be our next item and if if i could have your permission to talk about the water demand offset policy itself in the next item um otherwise i'm i'm happy to try to tackle it now but i think we're going to get into more depth about that topic very soon um um maybe i could ask you for some direction on that yeah council member if you don't mind waiting until the item that works for me any other questions from council all right let's go to public comment on item 15.1 if you're interested in providing comment go ahead hit the raise hand feature on your zoom or bum rush cal to get to the podium i'm seeing nobody move and i'm seeing no hands did we have any voicemail public comments we did not mayor okay i'll bring it back to council are there any additional questions none okay let's go ahead and get a motion on the table oh council member sorry go ahead mayor did you need to open the public hearing it's a great question john will open the public hearing provide one more opportunity to see if there's anybody who's interested in speaking and i'm not seeing any so we'll close the public hearing thank you council member my pleasure mayor uh council uh council member fleming oh this is not my item i had a comment on it well i think we get a motion you just want my comment go ahead okay well my comment is that even if you use uh zero thousand gallons of water the water department does manage to get you nearly just the same and it only saves you about a dollar or two so you know winning winning here is relative all right council member soyer excuse me council member spudhelm this is your item thank you uh first of all thank you calling for that clear and concise presentation really appreciate your presentations um so i've moved a resolution of the council of the city san rosa adopting the amended 2020 water shortage contingency plan and way further reading of the text second motion from council member swedhelm and a second from the vice mayor let's call the vote council member tibbet council member schwedhelm i council member soyer i council member fleming yes council member alvarez i vice mayor rogers i mayor rogers i that motion passes with seven eyes now i move in ordinance of the council of the city of san rosa mending section one four dash zero four point zero one five of the san rosa city code revising language applicable to the water shortage rate in revising the excess use penalty structure and wave further in the text uh oh second motion from schwedhelm second from vice mayor rogers let's call the vote council member tibbet's nay council member schwedhelm i council member soyer hi council member fleming hi council member alvarez hi vice mayor rogers hi mayor rogers hi that motion passes with six eyes and council member tibbet's voting no all right let's move on to item 15.2 mayor rogers and members of the city council item 15.2 is our second public hearing on the water demand offset policy and fee study and fees and call in close will also be presenting this item for the city council thank you again city manager colon and members of the council and mayor so we will present to you the water demand offset policy fee study and fees this is following the study session that you had a few weeks ago so uh the presentation's a bit reduced but again we can address any questions that may come up next slide please you may recall from the may and june activities that you did when you considered and adopted the water shortage contingency plan that our priorities during water shortages are primarily health and safety economic stability and landscaping with our existing customers and then as the water supplies allow to then have water for new demand as well next slide please and again here are eight stages of shortage and when we get over 25 percent we get into those water rationing stages and just a reminder that that's when we have a very limited supply and our customers are having to cut back anywhere from 30 to 55 or even 60 of their normal use next slide please so during those severe shortages we're rationing those limited supplies the idea is to make sure that that limited supply will make us through that emergency period we have never had to ration water we've had uh water shortage plans since 1992 and have not had to face this but we know that it could be possible in the future again top priorities health and safety and every water service is assigned a very specific amount of water to that service and if they violate it they're subject to the excess use penalties and so again no water available for new demand so when we were developing the water shortage contingency plan we considered things like a moratorium which for us didn't seem tenable given our housing shortage crisis we considered requiring developers to find new water supplies although we've seen as a city ourselves this is a very difficult task to achieve and it's quite expensive developing public water supplies requires a level of materials and construction that is far above what you might use for say a simple well for irrigating um we also it also can take two or three years for the permitting process we also considered requiring that developers would develop their own offset projects but in speaking with other agencies they found that developers typically didn't take that option expensive it's time-consuming and it can be very difficult and they do still have to rely very heavily on the water supplier so there's still costs that have to be taken care of for oversight inspections making sure customers are qualified and that sort of thing so we came back to this idea of the water demand offset as being a viable option where developers would know in advance what the fee could be and what the process would be so there would be some predictability and and it would allow for our housing shortage crisis to be addressed even during severe water shortages without compromising the amount of water we have available next slide please so again uh california does mandate that we have a certain amount of housing the city is committed to addressing our housing shortage crisis so we want to make sure we keep that in mind as we move forward next slide please so the proposed policy tries to balance the realities of a severe water shortage emergency with an ongoing housing shortage crisis and it does provide that mechanism to implement the requirement and the shortage plan when we are rationing water and need to ensure that we have adequate water supply for our customers and are able to then find a way to still address the needs of housing shortages next slide please the applicability of projects would need to meet two conditions they would have not submitted a building permit prior to the policy going place so projects that already have submitted a building permit application this policy does not apply to them we can't add fees after the fact so again helping developers have predictability and surety about what they're getting into when they get a building permit projects would also be subject to new or increased connection fees so a home that had perhaps been destroyed in a fire would not be subject to this because they've had a meter that project had already paid demand fees when it was built originally rebuilding that project does not trigger this policy so this is for new demand that had not previously been on our system next slide please the process would be that the developer the builder would submit a water demand offset application with the permit for the building permit that helps us understand what the demand is going to be so we can determine what the fee is we put together an agreement very often building projects can take many many years to complete so we want to make sure they understand what the obligation could be and under what circumstances it would be triggered because again we need to give surety and predictability to developers who are working on projects if in that agreement process the builder doesn't agree there is an appellate process that is in place so that we meet all the requirements of the mitigation fee act the building permit assuming we've got an agreement both parties are ready to move forward the building permit is issued and the project proceeds and instead of requiring payment immediately as we do for all of our other fees this fee waits until the impact would be felt and that would be upon final inspection or temporary occupancy or any kind of occupancy at any kind but it would only be due if we're in a severe water shortage and we're rationing water amongst our existing customers so at the outset a developer has surety about what the fees could be what the what would be facing them and then at completion they could have the good news of there not being a severe drought in place in which case the fees would be waived there's no need to pay them next slide please so the water demand offset fee were it collected would be tracked separately to comply with the mitigation fee act and it would be used to fund city projects and programs to achieve water offsets and I believe we mentioned during your study session had this been adopted in 1992 when we had our first water shortage contingency plan between now and then we would have collected exactly zero in fees so we've never had to ration water we hope we never have to but if we do get into that situation we need a some measure of way to reduce water use so that we can allow for new water use next slide please at this point I would like to ask that mark hildebrand be promoted he's a consultant that worked on the water demand offset fee study and mark will present a couple of slides here to help us understand a little bit more about the fee study that this is based on great thank you mr close for the introduction and thank you council for having you this evening in calculating the water demand offset fees what we did was we first looked at your different types of customers your residential water customers to understand how much water different types of customers use on average and then we also looked at known programs known water savings programs that the city has implemented over the years so we looked at the cost of your direct bathroom conversion programs from the past your enhanced high efficiency clothes washer rebates as well as rebates for turf removal to understand how much it costs to save water so we calculated the cost of these rebates and the cost of converting the bathrooms and estimated how much water that saved to understand how much it would cost to offset new developments and so we compared that demand with those costs to come up with the fees next slide so on this table you can see the proposed water demand offset fees on the right side and we've classified your different types of residential in the same manner that they're classified for your connection fees so we've grouped them into small medium and large lots because obviously the amount of water used by those types of connections are significantly different as you can see from the fee we also looked at the water used by triplexes duplexes condos and difference an assortment of different accessory development units and other smaller developments finally at the bottom you'll see that the commercial industrial institutionals framed a little differently because these types of developments are so different from one another that your development department actually assesses how much water they expect to use per month based on the permit that's being that's being submitted and so the fee is based on the projected water for that specific development and it would be $415 per thousand gallons per month next slide and I will turn it back to Mr. Collin. Thank you very much so in terms of the implementation should the council take action on this fees would not go into effect in any sooner than 60 days after adoption this again is part of the mitigation fee act so if it were adopted tonight the implementation would not begin until after January 29th so functionally that would be Monday January 31st when this would go into place uh word adopted this evening next slide please we did quite a bit of public outreach we sent letters to over 170 groups and individuals and an additional 59 contractors and developers we made presentations at publicly noticed meetings and since your city council study session we did go to the board of public utilities on November 18th and they adopted a resolution and when we talk about the recommendation tonight I'll make clear what they are recommending and during that meeting there were two members of the public who gave comments during that meeting during the public period Ananda Sweet from the metro chamber of commerce did mention that the policy from their perspective did not provide benefit because we were waiting until later stages and they wanted to see a menu of options to be available and then we had a representative from generation housing and on-profit housing advocacy group expressed that they would like to see the general fund help subsidize affordable housing and I think I'm not I don't have all the details what I think what they meant was to subsidize the offset fee but I don't want to put words into their mouth then we also received email comments from Alan Levine of the Coast Action Group and those have been submitted as a late correspondence and attached to the agenda for this evening's meeting so that's also available we also as you know made a presentation to the north coast builders exchange governmental affairs committee and we did publish the policy and fees study on our website on October 20th and when we sent out letters and notices to folks that was published as well and then of course we did the public noticing in the press democrat and that also included information contact information and ways that folks could participate tonight in the public hearing or in submitting comments prior to this evening next slide please so with that it is recommended by the board of public utilities and Santa Rosa water that the council by resolution one adopt the water demand offset policy two adopt the 2021 water demand offset fee study three adopt the water demand offset fees and four authorize the water demand offset fees to be adjusted on an annual basis to account for inflation at the beginning of the calendar year January 1st starting in 2023 using the engineering news records 20 cities construction cost index and it is further recommended by the board of public utilities that the council consider a general fund subsidy to offset the water demand offset fee for affordable housing projects that concludes my presentation and we're happy to take any questions you may have great thank you so much Colin councilmember tidbits thank you mayor first i want to start off with a question for sue sue and response to your text message about a potential conflict of interest i wanted to ask you our building permit on our project has already been issued and i believe our fee our water fees have already been levied do i should i be worried about a conflict of interest um yes councilmember tidbits um in the event that st vincent uh does st vincent have any st vincent of paul have any uh plans uh for further development uh further development meaning new new projects first not not on the immediate horizon now okay um i think the same as i think then that anything would be too speculative going forward since you already have your permits currently um i think i think you're okay um you may wish to recuse particularly given the recommendation from at least some members of the bpu to provide subsidy for affordable housing projects um which could include the work of your organization okay thank you i'm going to try to navigate carefully and perhaps if it comes to a general fund subsidy of affordable housing projects i will consider our recusal at that point if that's all right um but i my question i do have a follow-up question and this is uh for you Colin first of all thanks for this presentation having been a member of the bpu going through our first study many years ago for drought recommendations i know how much work goes into this um i i do have a question though and it's it follows up on my previous question alternatives to charging housing at all um and i'm asking that question because my appointee to the board of public utilities chris grable asked this very question and i think it became a pretty significant point of conversation at the bpu meeting um specifically there was there's going to be some concern around i think one of the questions was is could we just charge all ratepayers for higher use as opposed to charging housing opportunities could you shed some light on on alternatives to housing certainly i'll do my best um so in terms of some alternatives um one alternative as you know would be having the general fund if there was a desire to not have offset fees charged to any particular kind of project or area of the city or whatever the case may be the general funds are not don't have the same limits on um how they can be used that the water funds do so with in terms of the water funds the money that the water department earns through revenues on the sales of its water those are limited by proposition 218 and proposition 218 makes it very clear that customers cannot be required to subsidize another set of customers and so um we couldn't use our rate revenues to pay offset fees for new development for example that would be a violation of prop 218 so we wouldn't be able to do that we do have cell tower revenues that we use currently those are not um those don't have the same limits of proposition 218 but they are currently used um for our help to others program and what that does is that provides funding for reducing the water bill of customers who are low and very low income customers by having the cell towers that generate income from companies that that use cell towers that money is used to pay the fixed charges for water and sewer so then the customer is only responsible for the water charges which they have full control over they can reduce their water use and reduce their bill directly so that money is um used currently for that program but it could be that if we were so directed that program could be ended and the funding could be redirected to offset um to subsidize the offset fees if we were in a situation where offsets were required we also in our water shortage plan as you just saw tonight with the adoption of the water shortage plan the excess use penalties are a penalty and they also are not subject to prop 218 however it's always been our commitment to work with our customers particularly during drought to make sure they can comply because when we're in a drought what we have a shortage of is water and so we do have the excess use penalties and we absolutely can institute those we're building our billing system to be able to do so but our as we show in our water shortage plan and as we promised you in may and again in june when you considered and then adopted the shortage plan our promise to you and our customers is that first we do progressive enforcement we reach out let them know there's a problem work with them provide technical sense assistance and that sort of thing so if a customer is recalcitrant we have that hammer and we can use it but really what we need is a reduction in water use so we don't anticipate and we don't build into any of our revenue models any income from excess use penalties as being in any way something that we would ever rely upon so there's just no guarantee customers can avoid them by not over using water so those were the alternatives we also mentioned the ones i mentioned tonight alternatives to the offset program altogether the things that we considered the moratorium the requiring a new water supply the requiring that contractors do projects we also discuss those during the bpu meeting as well so i think that that covers all all of the options that we had brought forward during the bpu discussion i appreciate that colin and i want to comment on those before i do or one of the ideas that came to my mind leading up to this meeting you know whenever we're talking about water in my mind in prop 218 was always i think my biggest frustration being on the bpu because it kind of made so many things that would logically follow and have a clear political nexus to the issue almost impossible and to follow up on that comment what i'm driving at is you know when we look at new housing development it's it's far and beyond way more water efficient than all the houses that people are living in currently that were built in the 1950s 60s and 70s that may not have gone through some sort of an upgrade low flow toilets water efficient faucets things like that and so my i guess my follow-up question this is probably one a little bit for jesse oswald or somebody in our building department but um our i believe we have permits that people come in for whether it's electrical plumbing or something in a remodel process where would it would we be restricted by prop 218 to put surcharges on remodels as opposed to new housing construction that didn't violate 218 but still helped us generate the income i can't address that piece as as you're probably aware but i i know that mr oswald was going to try and attend tonight and so we can ask him before i jump to you mr oswald i would like to just address one thing we did look at the efficiency of our single family and our multifamily homes and their water use patterns over the past 10 years when we were developing our urban water management plan because it's really critical to know what our building stock age is and how much we have in different categories of age and how much water use those are because that drives how much water we believe we're going to need in the future so the good news was twofold one water use since 1990 has decreased per capita in the residential sector alone by 44 percent in santa rosa 42 of that 44 decrease was achieved before 2010 so while we do know that older building stock is not as efficient when it was built we've had something like 50 000 i'm sorry 56 000 toilets that we've helped to rebate to get um switched out and you know tens and tens of thousands of faucet aerators and shower heads and we've worked with our customers over the years so what we see is that the 1994 and earlier group the 94 to 2009 group and the 2010 to current group have very similar water patterns in terms of the amount of water used per unit so um it it is true that new housing is built to be more efficient but we see that our customers have taken our programs to heart over the last 30 years so just wanted to clarify that you're right in that older houses were not built to be very efficient but we don't see a significant difference in water use by age of construction and then mr oswald if you might address the other issue that i'm i'm not qualified thank you call councilmember tibbetz good evening thank you um if i understand the question correctly yes um existing stock there are requirements uh when permits are applied for for say renovations uh to a certain extent to require the new efficiencies be uh new new fixtures faucets toilets uh shower heads so yes you're you're accurate in that we are uh through state law um going after so to speak existing stock but it's only in from from from our perspective it's very very much like many of us know that if you pull a building permit you have to put in smoke alarms very much the same thing it's it's a tackle we can only get them in the door when we get them in the door so to speak and i do believe that on point of sale that's also true i think on point of sale it's a requirement from ab i want to say 1847 um that that's also they have to come up to current water efficiency standards well that's that's certainly good to hear and then that would probably lose my support for adding on additional fees to those types of permits i think that what i where you're gonna hear me coming from in the comments and i'll listen to public comment before making up my mind but um but i really don't like about this plan has to do with that we're just adding fees to housing opportunities and that is so especially true when it comes to affordable housing developing in this town is still really difficult this council has spent the last six years trying to undo those fee structures that are incredibly cumbersome uh through fee waivers through fee reductions and i remember we actually the water department made probably the most substantial water and sewer reduction that contributes towards building permit fees and and and while i recognize some of these fees are kind of de minimis in comparison i think it it's also i mean this we know that this adds up number one but number two it's it's also i just don't like the message that this is housing opportunity and then when we talk about equity it's also having to do it you know a lot of communities of color accessing these affordable housing opportunities therefore um i think it makes a lot more sense from an equity perspective that we actually look at the penalties because it bothers me that somebody who would just say well i'm going to continue to water my lawn during a stage four stage four drought in california at a time when this town's you know lifeblood is agriculture and we put a premium on water hence groundwater sustainability districts and potential metering um that you know somehow they're not paying for that that privilege i'd much rather see the source come from from there other questions from council members council members what up thank you mr. mayor and thank you calling once again for the presentation if i could just confirm i heard you say we've never had a ration water before in other words we've never reached stage five in our history that's correct although i will say in 1976 77 um we may have had to i don't know exactly i know we were bringing water trucks in and we were connecting private wells to our water system back in the day because it was so catastrophic and we didn't have lake sonoma so this is a huge advantage that our community has invested in lake sonoma because that buffers us during these severe droughts in a way that is you know almost incomprehensible so in comparison to 1976 77 so i could stand corrected someone might be able to have institutional memory and say perhaps we did in 76 77 that that i don't know um but other than that uh no especially since we've had the building of lake sonoma we've we've never had to ration okay and part of the thing is trying to get my arms around some of the concerns that councilman tibbetz mentioned is that we've this council's priority has been on housing um and and i some of this water offset kind of almost uh comes to the conclusion that new building or new homes equals increased water use but then when i look at the data specifically the gallons per capita per day going back to 2008 i think we're at 128 gallons per capita per day and in 2015 i'm going prior to the tubs we were down to 84 now i i don't have the numbers and i'm not asking you or just to say what were the number of new houses or construction between 2008 to 2015 but i'm sure we have more housing but that did not equate to more water use would that be accurate um actually we did use more water for example 2020 is one of our highest water use years since 2013 but what you're looking at is 2015 was drought so we had very low per capita in 2014 1516 compared to say 2018 so that's i think that's perhaps one of the differences there and we've also seen a population decline according to the california department of finance demographic research unit we're waiting to see what the census data will finally land on for 2020 for santa rosa once that's done the state will then go back and correct their estimates as needed to adjust to that because the census looks as though it's increased population rather than decreased in 2020 to 2021 so it's a little more difficult than than it might seem because when you're doing per capita you're taking all of the water use and dividing it by the population so it there is some potential there for things like the population numbers shifting or a drought that can really drive that curve in a way that's counterintuitive if you didn't know those additional facts and so back in 2015 to get down to the 84 gallons per capita per day we did not have this water offset fee charged to new constructions would that be accurate we were not in water rationing we did have it in our water shortage plan as a strategy we didn't have the policy in place but it's been in our water shortage plan for i want to say about 15 years now so but we've never been close enough and this year with climate change and with it being two severely dry years in a row we're closer than we've ever been since the building like sonoma to truly thinking we need to make sure that this is built into our billing system that we've really dotted our eyes and crossed our t's so this is a this is a drought situation that we haven't seen before 2014 to 16 we got atmospheric rivers and even though we had significantly less rainfall it came in large streams and replenished the lake each winter so we had below well below average rainfall but we still had adequate water supply so again it's a little i hate to get too far into the weeds there but it is a little bit more technical i'm with you and i appreciate the night getting too deep into the weeds but i'm also aware that there the water department does have some water contingency fees that does help the rate payers and smoothing those out what are some of the allowable uses eight aka would some of this suggested the three different programs that if we do get to stage five are there any other water contingency funds that'd be available for that use versus charging new development the only thing that we could come up with that is actually a revenue stream is the south cell tower money that is used for the help to others program the excess use penalties you know if we got into water rationing there is a chance that we could collect excess use penalties but you know we're just not anticipating that there would be a significant amount there because again in the first month we're working to bring people into compliance and in the second month if we're not seeing a change we're starting to move in that direction so certainly it is a possibility but and those penalties could be used for whatever purpose but we can't see those as a revenue stream because their penalties and completely avoidable certainly some folks will be will have those fees levied on them they will not comply but we just don't project we see our for example in 2014-15 our community we asked them to cut back by 16 percent that was the state's mandate they cut back by 25 percent so we just don't typically see folks not you know contributing to to the success that we need to have during drought right thank you for that and so where i'm kind of struggling again at the council priority of housing versus the water that you know again this policy doesn't create any new water what would be the impact of no action by council tonight so if council decided not to take any steps we would be where we were yesterday we would have a water shortage contingency plan that calls for offsets but we would have no policy in place to implement it so if we go into a stage five or worse water shortage we still have this mandate to offset to to ration water among our existing customers there's nothing left for new development and we have a requirement to have an offset but we have no policy no procedure to achieve that offset no nothing in place to fund it nothing in place to ensure that it occurs so hope is we get more rain and we simply avoid this and we and we so that would be the best case worst case nothing happens tonight no policy is adopted and we get no more rain and we find by you know late spring early summer next year that potentially we're in a stage five rationing water and no way to provide water to new development thank you council member Fleming thank you and thank you mr close um i uh many of my questions were already answered by council member schwedhelm and tidbits but i feel indulged me i do have a few more um i i do have a broader question um it's you know perhaps rhetorical um and one to think about which is when the water department hears the council year after year say that housing and homelessness is a priority and when you hear us this year say that equity is a priority do you take these things in it and really grapple with them and say because i i think that every person i've met in the water department is really good hearted but i i sometimes wonder if these things are addressed in the same sense of unity across the city or if they're in a silo so you don't have to answer it but if you do want to tell if you do have a way that you address it and you would like to share it i would love to hear it well um i can tell you that you know speaking personally i grew up in abject poverty and have been homeless so i certainly understand these from a very visceral perspective the importance of housing and reliability and equity it's certainly very near and dear to me just in terms of my own visceral experience um but from a water department absolutely so for example years ago we started to see that the percentage of um low and very low income folks compared to their water bill was out of whack and it was something the water industry throughout california was talking about was deeply concerned about but we have prop 218 so we knew we couldn't simply subsidize and do what pgne does and have sort of that that kind of um i forget what their program is called care i think it is we couldn't do something like that because of prop 218 so we had a committee that worked week after week looking at what could we possibly do and not violate the law and what we came up with was the cell tower revenue and we worked with legal just to make sure that it wasn't something that was subject to prop 218 and then we worked with local providers so that we would have a mechanism where local nonprofits would vet the folks and double check because we don't we don't have uh social workers we don't have a way to check someone's income so we worked with local nonprofits to make sure that that would work and so then we had to help the others program to help reduce the cost of water bills so you know in that way yeah absolutely the other thing is that we're very um careful about not shutting off water for non-payment it's not our first step if someone's not paying we work with them extensively to come up with a payment plan and to find some way to help them our water use efficiency team will go out to their home and spend you know go out as many site visits as necessary trying to help find how can they reduce their water use still have plenty of water that they can use for health and safety but reduce their water use so that they can get their water bill down so there's a couple of mechanisms I think that that we you know that we use um and we are very limited by prop 218 and so um that does hamper us in ways in terms of not being able to do some of the kind of creative things you see with companies that are not hampered by that um so uh I don't know if that really addresses your question but it does it does in part um and I do want to appreciate you for your your bravery and your honesty and sharing that personal detail with us you know it means a lot that that you'd be that vulnerable and open with us um and it informs my understanding of how you approach this work I have some more technical questions moving on um I'm curious to know what your current water conservation budget is oh oh that's a terrific question I do not have that at my fingertips um um I could get back to you I'm sorry I won't be able to provide that for you tonight I apologize I can tell you it's very technical do do you have a water conservation budget yes we have a water conservation team it's headed by a water conservation specialist and she has a team of two analysts and two technicians it's also one of our most robust intern programs we tend to have anywhere from three to six interns that work with us and they're learning on-the-job skills and learning about water and the water industry and water policy and water conservation so it's actually really a fabulous program it's been funded since I think 1991 was the first time someone was hired and that's really one of the main reasons why we've been able to get water use reduced the other thing I'll mention is that the program is designed to be cost-effective so when we look at a rebate or an incentive and we say for example a new toilet would have a lifetime of say maybe 15 or 20 years what would be the cost of providing a rebate for that toilet and staff time and running the program how much water would that save over that lifetime and we make sure that that balances out so the water department knows that it's going to buy less water over the next 15 years by giving this rebate and therefore it pays for itself over time and so we've had programs that are basically paying for themselves over time and we're also very active in getting grants and that sort of thing so we work with Sonoma water on large regional grants that we implement say for restaurants and for homeowners and that sort of thing so there's just a whole range of ways that we go about trying to make sure these are cost-effective okay excellent so going back to the water conservation budget have you determined what the revenue generated from the new development fees would pay for and and how that would apply to the conservation programs and what additional revenue would be needed and and perhaps could it be achieved through other means such as budget cuts I don't know about so budget cuts in the water department are funded by rate payer funds so the budget is funded by rate payer funds so I don't know if if there's a way to do something with the water department's budget but in looking at the study the study looked at two programs that already exist what could we do to provide larger incentives to drive quick response in large numbers so that we could generate offsets quickly so two programs the only costs that are associated are the costs that are over and above the existing program costs those are the cash for grass program and the clothes washer program so the normal program costs are not included in and the offset fees those are covered by the department's regular business the toilet program we know is immensely popular but it's it's expensive in terms of being able to do that as a day-to-day utility so we did it in 2014 I'm sorry 2015 and 16 with a grant we had a two and a half million dollar grant so we were able to implement that program with a grant so the offset fee fully would cover the cost of that program and we looked at trying to design all three programs so that they would ultimately have a similar cost per gallon and again the toilet program would be going from no program to developing and implementing a program and the other two programs would be building on the programs we already have and the cost would only be what's over and above what we already have so the the biggest cost is increasing the rebate thank you mr. close this is mark hilderbrand since I do have the honor of doubling as your rate consultant I I opened up the files from the most recent rate study and that indicates that you are demand your demand management budget for the current year is I mr. hilderbrand I cannot understand anything I don't know if it's a technical issue on your side or our side is that well you know he was going to talk about what the budget is thank you mr. hilderbrand that's okay I can I can get back to council through the clerk's office I really appreciate that okay thank you any other questions from council all right let's go to public comment on this item if you're interested in providing comment go ahead and start to make your way towards the podium can you open the public hearing yeah we will open the public hearing and thank you for sticking with us tonight is it on it is but go ahead and raise up the podium and then make sure you talk right into the microphone we've been having a a hard time tonight hearing some some folks thank you I think it's a little too short good evening mayor rogers uh vice mayor rogers and council members my name is kawiks I'm the policy director of generation housing where we advocate for more more diverse and more affordable housing um first we we do want to knowledge uh excuse me acknowledge the positive changes in this revised ordinance um maintain the offset ratio you know to a one-to-one um and abandoning the plan to escalate it although the original plan um increasing from one-to-ones suffice to four to one might have not really honestly passed the the legal muster in in any case um but we we are still concerned that this interferes with progress on council priority areas uh you know as it was mentioned by some of the council members tonight you know especially concerning housing homelessness and equity and the proposal is is particularly troubling giving uh that our housing shortage you know mostly you know most acutely uh impacts our communities of color and other historically marginalized communities um so we we are left with uh some of the following questions I had a list here but I know some of the council members have been pretty diligent in the research and and raised them I do appreciate that um first and foremost the description of the conservation programs the offset fees would fund is is pretty bare bones um I mean I know calling to to some extent you know he did describe what exactly these fees will pay for but um you know I maybe a little more information about what the relative you know budget share of each would would be helpful and um are there any metrics uh for their efficacy um also um I I think you you touched on this and may have missed it but is there money currently in the budget for these conservation programs now and if so um you know for how long uh would that sustain the program at its current size and have other solutions such as project prioritization delay and reduction been considered um and I know um I know the water department budget is is presented to support rate increases uh shouldn't also be with proposed fees and penalties um and then also at a recent meeting uh miss Burke told the council that the increase in water demand created by recent uh new multifamily developments was negligible um given that it seems important to know exactly how much demand is created by multifamily development um and and and I know to some extent Colin has described night um there are other options so I've said it I'd like to further explore that um and then the presentation given to the vpu slide a showed a dramatic decrease in per capita use over the past 30 years and I think to some extent and you might agree Santa Rosa population growth has clearly leveled probably as consequent of the fires um are these facts incorporated in the water use predictions um and then of course is doesn't appear that the rebate programs are limited people who can show need uh that rings you know our equity alarm bells uh how uh how income limits you know really been considered um and then finally our general plans are based on decades of data averaged uh this drought is a single point time if these fees are levied what is the timeline flow chart for actual water creation and with that um I'd like to say thank you I appreciate your attention to details I appreciate staff's work on this and uh I look forward to uh further conversation thank you so much mr weeks Jen now you can lower the podium I know all the times I've been in this chamber I've never actually spoken from up here um good evening mayor rogers council members Jen close executive director of generation housing where we advocate for housing at all income levels but guided by strong commitments to equity and sustainability the proposed demand offset policy while stensibly reasonable given the drought operates in stark contradiction with this council's priorities in building housing reducing homelessness and advancing equity the obvious conflict of the is that it creates additional cost barriers to housing development which right now barely pencils at both the affordable and market rate levels the more considering the more concerning insidious conflict of the policy which make no mistake is a housing policy is one of equity our housing crisis a scarcity across our entire housing system at all income levels is most acutely felt by our low wage workers our communities of color and historically marginalized communities paying half of your income on housing when you make thirty two thousand dollars roughly the average wage of home health workers and hospitality employees hurts a whole lot more than when you make a hundred grand when it's impossible to make ends meet you may be forced into overcrowded households or onto the streets our latino community members are ten times more likely to live in overcrowded households than whites and this led to the tragically disproportionate covid transmission rates where latinos were nine times more likely to contract the virus than whites slowing the development through raising cost barriers making a choice to maintain the status quo which is one population primarily whites continue to be safely stably affordably housed and another population primarily our communities of color continue to suffer myriad impacts of housing cost burden and stability one council member asked me what other cities are doing and so we researched it and you know what they're doing the same thing they're doing new development offset fees but that is not all that surprising and should it really guide us housing policy in our country including here in san aroza has served to segregate to discriminate and to create and build tremendously wide wealth gaps so doing anything to preserve that status quo like slowing that status quo like slowing development is is inequitable in its face in fact any housing policy that does not improve opportunity for our communities of color is inequitable on its face it's preserving and exacerbating structural inequities and let's be clear that structural racism which has very real and human impacts so today we have one reasonable ask put this decision on demand offset fees off for a couple months ask staff to put their creative problem solving hats on unleash their imaginations and come back with options that are developed through the lens of your priorities housing and equity the drought is here it's real but a commitment to equity with exceptions for drought for disaster for anything is not a commitment at all please don't abandon your equity commitment because of assurances that that might not have to be enforced the principle here and trust in your equity ethic is just as important so we encourage you to be leaders on this be the first city to do something different to be an example of doing something better of doing right with housing policy and we thank you for your service thank you seeing no one else move towards the podium we'll go to zoom and i see a hand in ananda good evening mayor rogers and council members ananda suite with the saner is a metro chamber first we really appreciate the conversation on drought impact and completely support the need to assess our water resources and our conservation and supply solutions the primary challenge that we see with the water demand offset fee approach is that it doesn't align with the city of santa rosa's housing needs and housing goals the city has a stated strategy of encouraging housing by offering an aggressive mix of lowered fees and reduced permitting process burden this strategy was formed with an understanding that housing development barely pencils out affordable housing already relies heavily on subsidies to do so and that's reminding the permitting process and improving the time certainty and cost of housing development is critical to meet our goals from the frame of water conservation new development as you know is much more water efficient this approach of charging new development also seems to imply that these residents are all new water users so require someone to pay the fee for the resulting extra water but what we know and what has seemed to be a key motivator in this council's aggressive approach to housing development is that we don't have enough housing to meet current need forcing families already here to double up in homes or accept inadequate or unstable living solutions this offset fee is an approach that brings a lot of risk in terms of discouraging needed housing and highly water efficient new development by adding another layer of permitting burden and potential development cost calculations to every project and does it with little to no benefit for that negative impact when the actual fee will only apply if we reach stage five level drought yet adding a new layer of uncertainty to the development process today this has also been framed as a choice between building housing or stopping development rather than a conversation about generating revenue to fund other water conservation efforts even if an offset fee was determined to be appropriate revenue generating solution some of the negative impact on housing development could be alleviated by at least putting this on pause in the meantime we'd really like to see a much broader conversation and a comprehensive approach to water resource management including how considered policy solutions align with our community's needs and priorities thank you so much for your time on this thank you inanda let's go to our voicemail public comments there are none mayor okay we'll go ahead and close the public hearing then i'll bring it back to council to see if there are any additional questions council member fleming yeah i wanted to give mr close an opportunity to circle back about the conservation budget it's okay if you don't have it but i thought it was an important item if you had a chance to get it yeah i'm so sorry i'm not connected to the city system in a way where i could actually get at the uh our one solution finance system so i apologize i understand it's a very technical question i should have given you that before i apologize i used to manage the team and i should know it like the back of my hand so i apologize okay no worries thank you so much yeah absolutely all right council member soyer let's go ahead put a motion on the table for discussion thank you mayor uh and thank you colin for your comprehensive presentation and for sharing your impressive knowledge and your personal perspective with us this evening so i'll introduce a resolution of the council the city san aroza adopting the water demand offset 2021 water demand offset fee study and water demand offset fees and wait for the reading looking for a second to the motion second moved by council member soyer in a second from the vice mayor council member tidbits do you want to start discussion uh sure mayor um the way i would like to see this play out uh is that we take no action tonight um i would like our staff in the water department to explore alternatives i'm particularly interested in understanding what a potential excess use penalty would look like um also i assume that we have recorded information about how many people we have done outreach to and and offered warnings to and i am appreciative that the water department takes an approach where we give warnings first but i think if we're in a situation where we're on a stage four stage five drought um i think the warnings uh might not be the best approach i think at that point it needs to just be clearly articulated via water bills via city communications that uh it's a drought it's a severe drought it's been going on for years if not decades in california now um and in california waters are most valuable resource and i i don't think it's unfair to ask people who want to have green lawns and take long showers during an upper stage drought to pay for that that privilege i would much rather see the offset fee revenue come from that source than charging our new housing opportunities in the city and that's not to say that you know who knows maybe not a lot of drought or excuse me development is even happening uh during these times but i i just really struggle with um going this direction after six years of going the other direction council member soyer thank you mayor i i'm just you know i'm wondering how much time the senator's water has been already looking for alternatives is there is is there a way calling you could articulate for us um to what depth you have and you're you and your group and your team has looked at at alternatives to what you are proposing this evening yeah certainly um you know i i know it was a very brief verbal update to you and we did touch on it during the study session in a little bit more depth but the alternatives that we can see would be a new source of water that a developer would bring to the table but we've seen with our own efforts these take years and they're very expensive they have to be built in certain ways to meet water quality standards and there's no guarantee for example if you drill a well that you're going to get a given amount of water and then it can take two to three years to get that permitted for a drinking water source have to be in the right place there's all the infrastructure to connect it to our distribution system the cost become astronomical so we thought new water supply probably not viable another is to have the developers do offset projects of their own we don't think there's actually much cost savings there and there's still quite a bit of cost that has to be paid to the city for oversight and for vetting customers making sure they're eligible and that sort of thing and when we talk to other cities and water suppliers who've had permanent offset programs in place for many years they've said that it just it's not a viable option they've abandoned those options they just don't work of course we did you know moratoriums always an option we just don't think it's the right option but you know it is an option and then we looked at other funding sources and so that brought us up to the water shortage plan piece of it it got adopted in the water shortage plan and then when we came to the council during the study session and the adoption we made sure you knew that there was going to need to be a policy put in place and you asked the council asked about that and we indicated at that time that based on our experience with studying the issue in the past it was likely going to be some kind of an impact fee but that we would come back then we convened starting in early May a multi-disciplinary team of about 14 folks across the city so we had folks from five sections of the water department and I think three or four sections from planning economic development the building official we also had the city manager or city attorney's office excuse me city attorney's office there to guide us as well and we worked with a consultant Woodard and Curran is the consultant that we hired to help us they have some expertise in this area and they helped to guide us as well and they facilitated our interdepartmental meetings that we held every two weeks to see if there's something that we could do to crack this nut because we were all very aware of a couple of things COVID has created so many problems for so many people we have a housing crisis we want to support economic vitality and we just ultimately this is what we came back to was we couldn't find another way through we've never collected excess use penalties because we've never had to ration water so we're not sure what we would do to estimate what those penalties would be but when we came to you in the study session and also to the bpu there was tremendous concern that the excess use penalties would actually hurt the least the folks who could least afford it right so you know a five or ten dollar fee on some people's water bill would be an annoyance for some families that's half the groceries for that week so we we promised you that we wouldn't just put excess use penalties as an automatic find that we would work with our community and our experience is very often it is folks who have the least who suffer the most from penalties so we promised you that program would not be set up as a revenue stream of any kind and that we would do everything we could work with our community so that we could get what we needed which was reduced water use so we were happy to you know if the direction is you know take this back and do some more work of course staff will happily do that but honestly working with hilderang consulting on the fee study piece and working with woodard and curran on the policy development and working in an interdepartmental team and after years of looking at what other alternatives could we possibly have this is what we've come forward with and it wasn't done lightly and it was done with tremendous discussion and some pain i'll be honest i mean the team was deeply respectful with each other but you know folks had some really clear understanding of some of the issues you're bringing forward and and so you know i i think we've again if the direction is go back and do some more homework of course we will go back and do some more homework but we we really tried to do a lot of due diligence before we came to you in the first place because we're very cognizant of just how difficult these issues are thank you for that and that brings up my concern is that if you've already you know you've i believe i have to believe that you've hashed out about as much as you possibly can i am concerned with moving too long into the future without a policy in place because some something needs to be in place and if you have already looked under every rock that you possibly can i'm not sure that sending you back is going to be fruitful unless there are some some concepts that you thought about and dismissed as as concepts that we might find unacceptable potentially i mean you could give us any number or any any long list of unacceptable concepts that we will dismiss potentially i'm just not sure how to i'm not sure how to how to advise you or what how to recommend in going back to the table and and just trying to hash it out again i'm i just i'm not sure where to go with this i mean we could just withdraw the withdraw the the resolution and and send you back i just what i'd like to avoid is an exercise an exercise if there are other models out there that we could we could kind of embrace that had been tried and true and they're not the model that is yours being suggested tonight then i would be interested in hearing them but it sounds to me as though you have reached out to the broader water community and have come back with this with this recommendation so i'm even if it's not it's not perfect that's not exactly what we would like to embrace as far as our given our housing needs on the other hand i'm not sure how to in what direction to to send you so i'll i'll leave that with leave that to the council at this point um council member sorter if i could just chime in i just want to respond quickly in jennifer's absence i'm going to step in and support colin a bit here so in response to your comment and questions by council member fleming i think what colin just outlined for you is a very conscientious approach that center center was a water took to this they didn't take it lightly they took into consideration all of council's priorities they really focused in on how they can try to come up with different alternatives they looked at the market they looked at the other alternatives that that other communities have tried to implement um and i think and i think colin explained it in a very clear way that that they there really was an effort to look at every possible aspect walking into this and and if council gives us direction to go back and look again we certainly will um but i can't and i don't think colin could guarantee that we'll come up with anything new or different uh than what we've already presented because i think the staff has already put an enormous amount of effort um looking at this issue um and so so that's i just felt it was important for me um to to chime in and provide that level of support for the statements that colin made previously thank you council member schwaddle thank you mr mayor and once again thank you colin for your presentation um very supportive of all the work that's gone into this and my dilemmas you probably recognize from the questions i was asking is we have these priorities of housing and homelessness and when it conflicts with lack of water and for me um i i appreciate all the work that's been done um i don't want to do anything that sends a mixed message to developers or anyone else in the community about our focus our priority for me is housing and homelessness and so having an impact to those two goals i just have a hard time supporting at this point um i would ask you know if we get to that stage five and that's the problem here is i i heard you say we may never have to collect any of these dollars right i'm not a developer but you have to figure out how are we going to pay for that if we do get to stage five and to me that possibility at ways there's got to be some other solutions even coming back to council if we're getting there ask the council we need x number of funds to you know you talk about the three different programs the bathroom conversions enhance rebates for dryers and enhance turf removal let's be very specific we need x number of dollars to do this and that's going to help mitigate our situation but again i don't want that to be reflected upon either the direction by the bpu or the excellent work done by uh san rosa water staff thanks nice mayor um you may have already said this but i've been kind of in my head so um the water demand offset fees can um if a certain percentage of a project is uh subsidized for low income uh could could those be subsidized or no only through the general fund is what that's yeah that's my understanding council member uh excuse me vice mayor rogers is that um that we couldn't use rate payer revenue again we could use the cell tower revenue but that would be taking from the help to others program but that revenue is also a stream uh that we we know comes in we have some predictability on it so that is also another revenue stream but it would mean uh that folks who are low and very low income would not get that assistance month to month but i i have to defer on anything beyond that in terms of you know the general fund because that's a little bit outside of my area of expertise i'm not sure if assistant city manager net would like to say anything to that but i i think i should defer on that yeah vice mayor um i think the way we would want to establish a subsidy program is through our budgeting processes we would create a fund that fund would um either recirculate annually if it goes unused uh or it would drop any unused funds would drop back into the general fund and be allocated in the next budget year um that would be one of the few ways that we could establish a subsidy program we would have we were on to create a mechanism as to which projects receive that benefit right now the recommendation from the board of public utilities was intentionally was intentionally vague and just identifying affordable housing i know that affordable housing is a much broader statement than some of the development rules that we have and so we would look to council to provide us additional guidance on how we would utilize a subsidy program for those different levels of affordable housing but that would be the recommendation is that we would go through and appropriate funds into a dedicated account that we would draw from in the event that we were in a stage five rationing and we had developers coming forward with the specific level of affordability that council designates um because tech technically if oh it looks like that picture um technically we could uh actually uh do it and just say that we would come up with funds to help subsidize no okay bye you don't answer to me you don't answer to me well go ahead councilmember all right so uh there's a quote that that i've been thinking of throughout this whole process which is um one that i see walking through my neighborhood frequently saying it's a Frederick Douglass quote saying i would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong and i believe that our water department is is good people but that asking me to do this or asking us to do this on any level is even if it may never come to pass is asking us to implement something that is you know as some of our public commenters have noted structurally inequitable and in a version of structural racism and that's something that i can't be a part of that said you know i hear the concerns from some of my council members about well then what are we really asking staff to do and and what can be done and to that end you know a couple of things that i think we're missing today that that i'd like to hear you come back with if i can be specific it would be a budget a budget of what is needed to solve this problem um to that end you know what are the anticipated expenses what is the revenue generation potential from these demand offset fees and and potentially what are some budget reduction options um and you know it's it's pretty obvious to me that even if we were this might sound outlandish but it's possible we could delay capital projects by just one year and we would cover these the these costs i'm assuming but i can't make that determination without a budget so i invite the water department to return with a budget and with um set with some some of these items that i've laid forth today and again thank you and to this and the board of public leg utilities and i believe the planning commission heard this item as well a couple of months ago your efforts are greatly appreciated but i will not be supporting this in any form Mr. City Manager so we'd be happy to return to council with additional information um including a budget uh based on programs that are suggested by staff for water conservation and achieving the water offsets for new development i i think as you look at that information uh you should have the broader context of what other subsidies we put in place we have uh forgiven a number of water accounts due to COVID and so we have a substantial a rurage in our water enterprise fund uh last i heard it was about 1.2 million dollars um we have a similar situation in our parking enterprise fund where council's made very reasonable and reasoned decisions to subsidize and to try to minimize the impacts of COVID to our business community we have another proposal coming forward to extend those benefits another six months to two years um and the parking fund uh balance is headed this way um substantially um you've just had a study session on one time funds and listed a whole series of very progressive uh and beneficial projects and programs that we don't have enough one times to one time funds to completely move forward with and so as you make these decisions the only thing i'm urging you to do is look at that in the whole context so that you understand if you do decide to subsidize with general funds what other things are you not going to move forward with as a result of those decisions and um thank you for that reminder city manager and at what point will we be hearing um staff present that we have a roughly an eight million dollar budget overage um general fund overage this year as well so as you know we've we've briefed each of the individual council meeting uh council members on that we've also gone to the long range financial planning committee and we plan to return i believe it's in the second meeting in december with a full briefing of the council and some recommendations on fiscal policies and so you'll see that at that time okay i think that would be an excellent opportunity to address some of the concerns that you're bringing up because the council is clearly moving in a direction that is increasing equity and there's a price tag that comes with it you know everybody loves equity until you got to pay for it right and so now we're at a place of wanting it and being willing to pay for it and now the question is can we so we'll have to address that thank you council member tibbetz thanks mayor i'm sorry to take time twice but i feel the need to speak up as the chair of the renewal enterprise district for just a moment um because i know that one of the comments emanating from the board of public utilities and someone brought it up here tonight was well what happens if we um basically exempt affordable housing and then backfill it with general fund money um mr close if you could let me know how much uh the cost per unit would be for multifamily housing if you don't mind i i don't have the slide in front of me certainly well it does depend on the type of multifamily housing so um um the fee for the um apologize just gonna take me one moment to get to that slide and my hard copy real quick here oh thank you so much oh that was so thoughtful uh so for duplexes and triplexes you can see it's 1649 condos apartments mobile homes if they have a separate irrigation meter it's less because we're not funding irrigation through that meter and we anticipate that during drought they're not going to be turning an irrigation meter on necessarily so uh without the irrigation service it's higher because they would be having that accessible for irrigation and then eligible ad use those are ad use that are over 750 square feet senior housing single room occupancy and the small high density apartments which are those 750 square feet per unit or smaller the fee is eight hundred and sixty eight dollars thank you so much so the reason why i asked for this is to i'm hoping that the council will also uh give some deference to market rate housing as well and specifically the efforts of the red which we've supported to the tune of ten million dollars and hundreds of hours of staff time um so the what the snow just using one project example the Keith rogel project on san rosa avenue those demand fees would total 180 thousand dollars and in the timeline actually could line up when a lot of these red projects actually come to fruition when we could see a potential drought just having seen what lake sonoma and lake mendicina the levels they were at this last summer i mean that gives me pause for concern this is one project of about five market rate projects that the fund is going to be considering totaling 500 600 units so when we think about that many units times that fee we're now looking at maybe the red funding instead of six units were fun or excuse me instead of funding six projects we're funding five because it's adding up and it's going to probably to some extent cut into the red fund in the the loan subsidy or the loan requirement that the red would be putting into those housing so i i just really wanted to kind of hopefully provide some sort of a ballpark example of what we're talking about any other comments from council all right for me there's two things that stick out to me in this conversation the first while we talk about the city's priorities and i understand housing and homelessness are two of the city's priorities it also has not been mentioned yet tonight that addressing the impacts of climate change is also one of our cities and uh top goals top priorities there's a tier one priority last year it's continued to be a tier one priority uh so i don't want us to lose sight of the impact of climate change as well and collin had a quote that i wrote down because it's oftentimes what i'm thinking about when i talk about climate policy the people who have the least suffer the most we already know who is going to suffer the most from a drought in our community it's the same communities that were impacted by covid it's the same communities that continue to see under investment that that's the first comment i wanted to make the second comment that i wanted to make is that there's an inconsistency that's happening right now with the council we almost voted down in an affordable housing project last meeting because of a lack of infrastructure in the area that we're talking about this is how you get a lack of infrastructure in the area is by when the rubber meets the road not providing the infrastructure that we need to have uh and not preparing for the future of it i get that we've cut fees i get that we have uh bent over backwards to try to get projects moving and at the same time the council is going to have to adopt at some point if we move into tier five we're going to have to actually bring to us a discussion about adopting additional water restrictions for the rest of the community as well the reason that i've been so supportive particularly on our housing front up to this point through our tiers is that the new housing that's being produced is water efficient that meets what the goals are or what the the tier restrictions are when we move beyond that we have to have a conversation about the way that this impacts our entire community uh and and to me i see the direction that council wants to go on this that's fine my recommendation would be that we actually set this aside then and and attach this to the water dec