Good evening and welcome back to Byline, our weekly public affairs show right here on Amherst Media, co-sponsored by Amherst Media and the League of Women Voters. And through these shows we are trying to introduce or reintroduce, depending upon who the guest is, people to the community who are serving in our new town council or as our newly elected state representative and state senator on Beacon Hill. And so today our guest is Andy Steinberg, who's no stranger to the community, because you, Andy, have served in quite a number of public offices over a number of years. Give us your quick elevator speech on your history with town government offices. Well, good evening, Stan. I appreciate you doing this show and appreciate being here. I have served in a number of capacities, first on town meeting and then on the finance committee and three years as chair of the finance committee, which I was the position that I held in 2014 when I ran for select board and then I was reelected to the select board in 2017. So I served almost five years on the select board until it concluded its business with the transition to the charter commission's work, the charter and the council. Great. So when you ran at large, the community basically knew who you were and they got to know you even better, but you had to reframe a lot of what you were talking about because you had, you were going into a new body. Could you tell us a little bit about how that campaign differed from your previous campaigns in terms of what you focused on, because you were going from a five-member board to a 13-member board, but that 13-member council was replacing more than 200 people as a town meeting. So tell us a little bit about how you fought differently and what you found differently on the campaign trail as a result of campaigning for this different town-wide office. Well, it's an interesting campaign and a different campaign, though I think the differences came from some other things. One is peculiarly enough the time of year because it was a campaign that was taking place to coincide with the general election when there were a lot of other things on the ballot and there was also instead of just an election for town offices and a small number of town offices, two people for a select board, two people for the library trustees and the school committee, all of a sudden there was really six elections going on for council all at the same time, of which voters had to be participating in two of the six elections but were sort of seeing signs and being aware of information about all of them. So as I was going through the campaign process, I had to be very clear about what it was that I was a candidate for and frequently I had to explain that they were going to be voting for an at-large, two-at-large, three-at-large candidates and two district candidates participating in two separate elections and there was a lot of voter education that was required that was probably something greater and different from previous elections. And all of that had to happen in the context of a statewide election and where you were used to having the whole spotlight on town government in an April election, now you were on a ballot in November, September and November and you had to fight for some attention from the voters even as they were trying to learn and understand what this new town council is going to be all about. So that must have been interesting and of course you and Alyssa Brewer both got elected to the town council and you were the only two who had previously served on the select board. So when you sit at the town council meetings, since each of you brings different experience, you and Alyssa are both wearing two hats, a former select person and a current at-large member. Do you find some tension and conflict there? Do you find yourself censoring yourself because you don't want to talk too much about the past or how does that work for you? I try and sense what the interests are of my fellow council members because there are frequent times that they actually are looking to us for background on how a decision had been made previously and how we would transition that thought process and that kind of decision to the council in its new role because it is 13 people, it is different dynamic than being on a five person board. This is a really great group of people to work with there bringing a whole range of very different experiences and different knowledge but variable experience with town government and I think that is what Alyssa and I ran to offer continuity and experience and I find that the council really looks to us for that experience. When you say how the previous decision was made by a previous select board, do you mean the process or the content or both? It can be both. As far as process is concerned, I think that that is something that it might be interesting for new members of our council to know but it is important that the council find its own way of making decisions and we are now in a period of developing and understanding what the process needs to be going forward but at the same time there was information that we had reasoning that we had for decisions that we made and that is of probably greater interest to the council because that is something where they really can build on what we did as opposed to reinventing it. So you are careful about how often you speak, when you speak and sometimes you are speaking as today's councilor about today's issue from today's perspective and sometimes you are offering history that might be valuable for the council as they are considering action on something today. Very much so and I think that all of us in the council need to be conscious of the fact that there are 13 of us and that there is a limited amount of time that we have available in public meeting, we don't want to have any one person capitalize the time so we need to be respectful of each other and respectful of the amount of time that we are presenting. I am very cautious about it and I find that my colleagues in the council are very cautious and respectful also. So each of you bring some unique capacities and experience to the table and some of you might be a group of, a part of a group of one or two or three other people who have background and experience in a particular issue. So like Evan and Kathy Shane, I'm sorry Evan and Darcy Dumont have a lot of experience and focus on climate change, not that Kathy doesn't have an interest in it, but both you and Kathy have a lot of background in finance and in your case you have significant public finance background because you served on the finance committee and you were elected chair of the finance committee by the council, am I correct about that? Yes. Okay. And Kathy is the elected vice chair. And she's the vice chair so we have two people with a lot of experience in economics and public finance who are leading that committee. That is really terrific. Let's focus on that committee a little bit because it's starting to get up and running and starting to take on some tasks. But of course the biggest task is the creation of the annual budget for the municipality. And so we used to have a finance committee. Now we have a finance committee, but it's different. Tell us how it's different from what you had experienced as a member of the finance committee previously and what as chair you think is going to be different and how this is going to play out under our new form of government? Some of it is work in progress, but the finance committee that existed previously was a committee of the town meeting. It was appointed by the town moderator and it was charged in the former town government act with providing advice to the town meeting about any matter that might come before it in the financial consequences of that action. The current finance committee is a committee also of the legislative body. So there's a lot of similarity in how it proceeds. So I'm not sure that the differences in the larger sense will be that great. There are differences in timing however because there's a smaller window between when the town manager is required under the new charter to provide a proposed budget for council's consideration then was required under the previous town government act. So that we are going to have to create an appropriate procedure that allows the committee to review and understand each of the budget section recommendations, but to do it in a smaller window. And these are the recommendations from the town manager and his department heads? Yes. Okay. But there is another difference isn't there here. You're talking about a finance committee that was a committee of 200 plus people, I'm sorry, from among 200 plus people and it was a handful of people on the finance committee. Here we have five finance committee members out of a body of 13 who will ultimately approve the budget. How is that going to be different in terms of how you think the process is going to work because five of you will be in the room when you vote on the recommendation to bring to the full council. Eight of them will not have been there, however some of them might have been on some of the alphabet soup of other budget related committees that we have in town. So there's three other panels that relate to finances. One on capital, there is a joint committee, help me with the names of these committees. The joint capital planning committee which will be working on the capital side buildings and equipment and the other is the operating budget side. The budget coordinating group is really trying to coordinate the process of budget development with the schools and the libraries and the town. And then the participatory budget commission is a new feature as well. I mean it's a new feature. So you've got three panels that are working away on their part and their role in the budget process. And then all of those get integrated through the work of the finance committee and then ultimately the council as a whole has to take up that budget. Are most or all of the members of the other three panels council members? No and actually on the finance committee they're not all council members either nor were all of the finance committee members and the old finance committee members of town meeting because the moderator could appoint people without regard to whether or not they were members of town meeting and occasionally there were people who were appointed or people who had been members of town meeting and were not reelected but continued to serve. There is a provision in the new charter that provides that in addition to the five members who are members of the finance committee there also are non voting community members to be members of the finance committee. How many? I believe it's four. And those people would apply through the normal process to volunteer for town committees or they could be recruited. We haven't determined that yet and that actually was on our agenda for the first meeting but we only had very brief time to discuss it but we want to find people and encourage people to contact us if they would like to serve. Contact who? Contact the probably the president of the council unless we incorporate it into the committee, general committee process which is a mechanical thing that needs to be determined. So the charter doesn't dictate how those four people get selected? It leaves that open and the council will have to decide upon a process? There's a fair degree of flexibility left in the charter as to how it is to be done and there are actually two different committees because the governance committee may have the larger role in how the citizen members of committees are chosen generally and then obviously this would need to be consistent with it but I hope that that process can be completed prior to the time that the town manager is required to deliver the budget which is 45 days prior to council action so that they are fully integrated on the committee and participating in the committee process as we review the proposed budget for FY20. So this first budget cycle is going to be quite challenging, I mean budget cycle is always challenging because you have to set priorities and the priorities really demonstrate the values of the government and there's not enough money to do everything that people want so there's a lot of choices and decisions that have to be made but this time you also have to set up the process for completely integrating into the new governmental structure the rest of the steps so here's one example where the charter is not so specific that it's just automatically done a bunch of different decisions have to get made before you can even appoint the people and then you get to work on the rest of the budget process so options are that the town manager could be given the authority to recommend to the town council using the normal committee process recruiting process or it could be that the governance committee the committee that covers governance and appointments could be the place that the recommendations get developed. Yes there really are three types of committees when one is just general committees that exist in town other than the planning board and the zoning board of appeals and there's a process in the charter for the town manager to make recommendations to make the appointment subject to confirmation by the council then the planning board and zoning board of appeals are specifically held for appointment by the council itself and then there's this third group that we're really into with the finance committee and that is committees of the council that include citizen members as either voting or non-voting members and our governance committee will need to work on developing the final steps for all of those processes and I believe is working doing that as we meet now. The challenge is everything we do in this new council right now is we're sort of beginning to understand the complexity of the charter and how it can be implemented most effectively to meet our expectations and the community's expectations for our new form of government as we also try and do the town's business. So let me try to summarize this. If you're a citizen resident of any of the town and you would like to serve as a non-voting member from the community on the finance committee at this point you have to do two things one is you have to watch the process and keep following it so you know when the process is settled and what the decisions the process is going to be for the actual appointments and the second thing is if you want to get a jump start on it you let the president of the town council the chair of the finance committee the chair of the governance committee and the town manager know that you have an interest. Yes and hopefully what we will do and but again this is something that I just don't know because we're all working in pockets at this point and the governance committee is working separately. The select board had a citizen activity form which was available on the website and then people would just complete the form and fill it out. It is my understanding that that is where we are remaining as a general process and if the finance committee appointments can be incorporated within that process I think it allows for the easiest accessibility for the community members who are interested to demonstrate that interest and so if that is what we can achieve that will be the best solution. So the form when I last saw in one of your council meetings was still being finalized it was being refined and perfected is that process finished? That I don't know because that's really the work of a different committee. So at this point a couple of options for people but let somebody know that you're interested. Absolutely that's the bottom line. I don't think you need to let all of the people that you mentioned know probably is the good use of anyone's time but it's important to let somebody know so that they are considered when we get in the mix and so maybe just filling out the form online is a good place to start because they're going to look at those forms no matter what. Yes. Okay so let's go on to another quick topic here. So how do you see the integration of these other committees outside that are outside of the finance committee? They have well established historic processes except for the participatory budgeting commission. So do you see those other two panels capital and the coordinating budget committee both operating pretty much the way they have in the past? Yes and I have served on both of those committees in prior form of government. So let's just be real quick on each one of them. The joint capital planning committee includes members of the school committee and the library trustees are represented and it also includes some senior level staff within each of the three segments. The purpose is to allow each of the organizational pieces each of those functional areas that have capital needs schools libraries in the town departments to present their needs and their requests to a group and the group then meets and considers what each of requests is, tries to understand the requests, look at the entire budget that is available for capital because we will have determined an amount that we assume will be spent on capital and its question of what is most important. What has happened before and is required to continue in the charter is that we not just make the recommendation for the next budget year of what should be in the capital purchase list for that year, but to develop a ten year plan so that if a need is presented for some major piece of equipment or even relatively minor piece of equipment that it isn't just forgotten, it is placed into a year. So when we start the process we look at the list from the priors to what's proposed for the next year and obviously they are making modifications to it. In the few minutes that we have left I would like to focus on the participatory budget commission because that's a new function. The other two committees are going to operate pretty much the way the panels are going to operate pretty much the way they have operated in the past and they will be interacting with the finance committee pretty much in the same way they did the previous finance committee. But the participatory budgeting commission is new. This is a new idea for our town. We have about two minutes left. Give us a thumbnail of what we should expect there and how you think citizens of the town, the community, residents will be able to participate in that. This is an area that really needs a lot of work to develop but I do want to answer your question by saying what I understand the purpose was the charter commission and putting it forward in the vision that we need to then carry forward that there should be some amount of money, some portion of the budget where citizens then can come in and say we have these needs that we have identified and that are excluded from the budget process in the past. We would like to have those considered and the purpose of having this new process is to allow both citizens to make that request and to participate in the consideration of all of the requests that come forward. Even though they may be small, we haven't determined the amount of money that will be available for that. It helps to incorporate the citizens in understanding the complexities of budget processes and it helps to hear from the community about what their perceived needs are. The challenge in the budget as a whole and I'm sure that you've had that experience is that we have a police department, we have a fire department, we have a public health department, we have libraries, we have teachers. The first thing you want to do is make sure that you're funding the good work that's going on. These are likely to be things that would be a one time expenditure because they wouldn't typically be built into the base of the budget so maybe sometimes people come forward with something that will take two years as opposed to one year. Another way of maybe describing it is it's a second bite of the apple. If you haven't been able to convince the finance committee and your town councillors to incorporate something in the budget that's in the nature of a one time expenditure for your neighborhood, your street, whatever, you might have a second bite at the apple to try to incorporate it in the budget through the participatory budgeting commission. And with that we're out of time. So I want to thank you Andy for being here today and to our listeners thank you for being here and you heard it here. If you want to be a non-voting resident member of the finance committee fill out that form, the volunteer form on the town website and if you are interested in participating and trying to get some additional help as this budget process unfolds for something important to you that doesn't make it into the primary budget, get ready to offer your ideas about what could be done through the participatory budgeting commission. We look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you.


Good afternoon, Council Member McDonald. Do you want to do a quick mic check? Sure. Can you hear me okay? I can. I'm clear. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too. Council Member McDonald, how's it going? Working on emails. How are you? I'm good. I see that we have Council Member Rodgers as an attendee with a hand raised. Okay. Okay. I think we're all here. Let's go ahead and call the meeting to order and let's do a roll call vote. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member McDonald. Here. Council Member Rodgers. And Mayor Rodgers. Here. With a record show, all subcommittee members are present. Great. Let's go ahead and start today with our public comment for non-agenda items. If you have a comment that falls within the jurisdiction of this committee, but is not on today's agenda, go ahead and hit the raise hand feature on your bill. Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to our department reports. Let's see if we have any department reports for today. Okay. Seeing none, we'll keep moving. We'll move on to new business. Try the 4.1. That's our zero-waste program update. I'm going to go ahead and introduce Joey Hennowitz, our zero-waste coordinator. I think we have Celia Ferber also who's the zero-waste manager for Recology. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Joey Hennowitz. I am the zero-waste coordinator for the City of Santa Rosa. I'm joined today by Celia Ferber, who is the waste-serial manager at Recology, snowmember RIN, and represents Santa Rosa. So we thought it would be good to provide a zero-waste kind of program update from the lens of the city that I'm working on, then also through the collective lens that our Hauler Recology provides for the residents in the community here in Santa Rosa. So I'll begin first, and then I'll pass it over to Celia to discuss Recology. So let me go ahead and share my screen one second. So the guiding policy document that I follow as one of my main duties is the City of Santa Rosa zero-waste master plan. The zero-waste master plan was passed in 2020 by the City Council. Excuse me, we've partnered with, let me go back. Thank you. We did partner with R3 Consulting. They are a consulting group that the City does partner with them time to time for some solid waste issues. And we had them develop a zero-waste master plan with us, with the input from staff myself. And also we did some input from the community to find out what was important for them as far as zero waste, what kind of strategies they would like the city to implement, what was easy, maybe what would be difficult. And over about a year's timeframe, nine months to a year, we were able to come up with the zero-waste master plan. So just to kind of refresh for the Council and for any members of the public, the zero-waste master plan does have two overarching goals. Those goals are number one, to reduce landfill disposal to less than one pound per person per day of franchised waste by 2030. We're currently at about 2.6 currently. And we do, we have seen some improvement in this area since we've started the master plan and we've partnered with Ecology. When I first started here in about 2019, 2018, we were up around 3.0, about 2.8 as well. So we've seen some improvements there, but we still have long ways to go. And also we are hoping to achieve at least 75% diversion of our franchised waste from the landfill disposal by 2030. So we have our kind of 10-year goals and we're hoping to achieve those by 2030. We're currently at about 45% diversion. So we do have some room for improvement there and we are working with the community to do our best to try to improve in that regard. Some of the main strategies that we developed for the zero-waste master plan were one was to develop a reusable and compostable foodware ordinance. That has actually already occurred. The city has completed that. It is called our Santa Rosa Zero Waste Foodware Ordinance and that was passed late last year and went into effect as of January 1st. The main components of that are going to be a ban on polystyrene foam and also a ban on foodware that's containing PFAS. Along with that, we do have a culture shift that we're asking restaurants and food providers to get used to which is basically the upon request. You only provide foodware accessories like forks, knives, napkins upon request from the customer. And that also does mirror recently passed state law AB 1276. So we're right in line with that, which is good news. We've already kind of checked the box on that strategy. The next one is a mandatory recycling and composting ordinance or program.  We'd like you to have a recycling bin. This is the right thing to do for waste diversion and also for sustainability reasons. We wanted to make that mandatory. So the city has actually already completed that strategy as well. And that's an implementation. We did that more recently with our city code update to SB 1383, which I'll talk a little bit more about in a later slide. But SB 1383 made composting mandatory. And we were kind of ready ahead of the curve with that when we signed on with Recology with the new solid waste provider from the old RADO group. We did make that a mandatory requirement for all single family homes and single family dwellings. And we are currently in the process of making sure for SB 1383 to get those green bins, the composting bins, and all of our multifamily dwelling units and commercial units. As you can imagine, the multifamily units can be a little bit more difficult considering some sizing constraints and space constraints. But Recology and Cillian and her team were doing a great job doing the outreach that she can maybe speak to that a little bit later during her presentation. Third strategy is we are looking to do a construction and demolition ordinance update, which I'll speak to a little bit later in one of the later slides, provide some targeted technical assistance. This was sought out to be probably one of the more expensive of the strategies that we were going to employ, but it was also supposed to be the most impactful. So when we talk about targeted technical outreach, we're talking about bringing in some sort of a consulting firm or some experts in the field, hiring them onto a contract and having them literally do boots on the ground assistance for our largest generators and also some of the single family units drawing just kind of going to their business, going to their door, talking to them about zero waste, talking to them about their habits and talking about how they properly dispose of those materials, really getting that kind of one-on-one feedback is really what we're targeted with that. And lastly, we're really just looking to change the culture, change the culture for zero waste here in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County. And first and foremost, we want to lead by example here in Santa Rosa and we are continuing to do that. Some of the things that we have done is we've passed some of these zero waste master plan policies. But more importantly is we're asking the community to do things, but we're also doing them ourselves. So at this point, it must have been about three years ago and I realized that SB 1383 was coming down the pipeline. I did work with our facilities team and Recology and we're able to basically get the three bin system in all of our city facilities. So when you come to a city manager's office, when you go to planning and economic development or if you go to transportation, public works, I'm located, you will have all three bins in the common areas in the kitchen. So that our staff can properly sort their waste. Along with that, with the recently passed zero waste foodware ordinance, one of the requirements is that dining facilities only use reusable foodware. So you don't use a single use disposable. If you are dining in, we do ask that you provide that on something that is durable and reusable. So physical play, a fork and knife, and that would be washed and provided to a customer later on. We are currently in the process of getting that policy implemented here at the city of Santa Rosa. I have an order in, which I believe half the order was delivered earlier this week for reusable foodware, which I'm going to distribute out to all of the facilities in Santa Rosa so that any staff potluck, any retirement party, any staff gathering, we're no longer using those Dixie plates and cups and single use disposables as we are going to be providing those reusable materials to city staff. So we want to lead by example. Zero waste culture change also includes some school engagement. This is one of the areas where we still need to have some high road in. This is something that I haven't been able to really work on, but we want to be able to do some upstream investment. And we've heard from the community during some of our zero waste planning efforts when we were doing the community engagement is a lot of suggestions to get into the schools, work with them, and to teach the kids young because if you can teach the kids young, they'll take these things into their adult life. And a lot of the times what they do is they can bring that stuff home with the excitement to their parents who may or may not be interested in zero waste. But if they hear from their child that they would like to do this. A lot of times you can get those those book exchanges there at home. So we want to do make sure to engage in schools with that to try to get them get them at the kind of upstream level. We do want to have some zero waste event requirements. And so the plan is for me to develop kind of an event, zero waste event policy kind of guideline document that is also on my to do list. But at a minimum level, we have shared with some of our event folks here at the city that you know permit events that they all of the event vendors and folks and food vendors that come to the events for city permit events do need to follow our reusable or excuse me, our zero waste food wear ordinance as well. So we kind of have made some inroads there on that. And then lastly support for reuse, repair and sharing. Obviously we want to hope that if something can be reused or you know repurposed we want to be able to do that rather than just simply using it and throwing it away. So as I kind of mentioned about the zero waste food ordinance on the previous slide the zero waste food ordinance was passed in the summer of 2021 became effective. January 1st of this year it does ban the food wear containing polystyrene film and PFAS. We do require the food wear accessories to be provided upon request only. The dining accommodations are to have reusable food wear and accessories only. One thing I forgot to mention it is along the lines of SB 1383 as well as the dining facilities. If you are providing an area for where the patrons are to be disposing of their own food waste or other waste that you do provide the three bin waste streams so that you know they can make sure that it goes into the proper stream there. And that you know the City of Santa Rosa staff facilities and sponsored events are required to follow the terms of that ordinance. So that is the zero waste food ordinance which was was effective as of the beginning of this year. All right so a little bit about a brief update on some of the other strategy plans and updates. I kind of already mentioned this but the mandatory recycling and composting ordinance that was already passed through the ordinance you see there which was adopting the SB 1383 provisions and requirements. So we do currently have a mandatory recycling the composting ordinance in Santa Rosa. Construction and demolition ordinance update. This is something that we still have on the to-do list but I currently do have a professional services agreement with our three consulting and there's a couple items that they're going to be helping me with. One of the items is going to be for review and recommendations on how we might improve you know our construction and demolition ordinance. Not only the language that's in there but potentially the program itself and how we operated here at Santa Rosa. It does tend to cross a couple different departments. Myself I do and the administrator of the CND ordinance itself. I approve all of the applicants for the CND ordinance. I manage kind of the administration for that but then there's also folks that are involved with it in at the building counter in at engineering services as far as when they have to get their building permits and go through our planning and economic development department. So we're looking to maybe create some synergies and or recommendations that can kind of streamline some of those operations and help us really make sure that we get the feedback back from the our CND operators that they are achieving the 65% Cal Green requirement for diversion when it comes to CND operations in California. Next is the target technical assistance. This is on the to-do list and we're looking to hopefully develop an RFP for services there for assistance on that on that end probably in late 2023 or early 2024. So that still needs to be developed and delivered and then the zero waste culture changes is an ongoing thing. This isn't something that's going to probably have a finished target day. This is going to be something that we're always you know improving on and incrementally improving but we do have plans for additional expansion and engagement as that is concerned specifically as I mentioned earlier working to try to create some partnerships and you know some team some teamwork with the with the city schools here in Santa Rosa. Okay so one of the guiding policy documents that we do have for the city of Santa Rosa is our is our climate action plan.  One of the main strategies of the zero waste or excuse me of the climate action plan is waste reduction recycling and composting. It is one of the GHG greenhouse gas reduction strategies. Within the climate action plan itself the strategies include increasing the waste accepted for curbside recycling, um working with partners to encourage restaurants to compost, which we have currently in our doing right now with SB 1383. That's really the main focus of SB 1383 is to get not only businesses and restaurants but to get your single family homes and pretty much all customer segments to make sure that they put their you know their yard waste, which I think we're doing a really good job of here in Santa Rosa. We have for some years but it's really focusing on getting that food waste. So your extra food scraps if you do whatever you don't finish for dinner if you end up throwing it away putting that into your green bin instead of the instead of the garbage there. Increased diversion of construction waste as I just mentioned we are looking to expand that through the zero waste master plan and we do have consultant on that we were going to be looking into that. So we are hoping to increase the diversion of construction waste and looking at ways to do that. Discourage the use of styrofoam and plastic bags. There was a plastic bag ordinance that was passed a few years back through Sonoma County that also Santa Rosa adopted and as I just mentioned we do have that zero waste food wear ordinance that does prohibit the sale and use of polystyrene styrofoam in Santa Rosa. Reduce the amounts of packaging used. This one is is a little bit more tricky because a lot of the packaging we can't control because it does come from outside of our jurisdiction and obviously we don't have jurisdiction over that. But some of the things that myself and some of my counterparts in zero waste in the county are doing is really looking into supporting any sort of state bills or referendums that would focus on plastic reduction and packaging or any sort of extended producer responsibility laws which is basically asking that you know extended producer responsibility means that if you are going to be the you know the industry or the business that's producing these items that you also have some sort of skin in the game hopefully in the form of monetary and you basically are contributing money to municipalities in the state to be able to dispose of these materials because as we know we've got the Amazons of the world we've got you know everyone else of the world that's you know a lot of people are ordering online nowadays sending stuff to their house directly but with that becomes a lot of extra you know packaging that isn't not really necessary you use it one time it gets packaged you pull out whatever you need and then that generally goes either to the garbage or if we're lucky it can be it can be recycled so we're going to continue to focus kind of on a legislative level to make sure that we support any sort of extended producer responsibility or packaging reduction laws that might be coming coming about. Also within the climate action plan was a goal to divert 75% of waste by 2020. This one obviously is not going to be achievable because we're at about 45% right now but we just need to give that about another 10 years and our goal to divert 75% of waste through the Zero Waste Master Plan is by 2030 so that kind of gives you a little bit of an update on some of the strategies and things that we've been working on through the Zero Waste Master Plan through the Zero Waste Program here at Santa Rosa that aligns with the Climate Action Plan here for the city of Santa Rosa. They just wanted to briefly mention SB 1383 I think most of you have heard quite a bit about this from me for the past couple of meetings but this is really focused on diverting organic waste from the landfill. What ends up happening is every night they cover that landfill and the materials that are in there they don't have any oxygen to breathe so what ends up happening is anaerobically digests and what that does is that it emits methane which is significantly more potent than carbon dioxide and so with that we're trying to make sure that we get those organic waste materials out of the landfill to a composting operation where they can be reused repurposed for soil amendments which actually helps with carbon sequestration so it's actually really important that we continue that work with SB 1383. It's a very aggressive law state law it's probably one of the most aggressive solid waste laws in the United States if not California and over 30 years or if ever but it is aimed at reducing those GHG emissions and methane emissions within the state of California so it is a very very important law that we're currently in the process of implementing it did go into effect on January 1st of 2022 and we're continuing to work on implementing that through our partners which is the city of Santa Rosa Recology and Zero Waste Sonoma. And then before I kind of just pass this off to my counterpart Celio of every college I just wanted to briefly mention that we do have an agreement with Recology to provide solid waste collection services this was an agreement that was signed late in late December of 2017 but really went into effect as of January 1st of 2018 it is a 15-year agreement that we have with Recology and we are happy to be with Recology. When we went out to to bid for services when the Rato Group contract was expiring we had a couple of community meetings two of them to be exact and we wanted to receive public input and feedback regarding you know what kind of services that the city community was looking for. The public did express a desire for improved recycling and diversion rates a commitment to sustainability as a culture the need for education and outreach from the new provider and improve customer service and and choosing a hauler that is you know a quality services provider rather than just the least expensive provider so we went through that process and obviously Recology was selected for many of their their high achieving marks in those areas. A couple of the highlights of the solid waste collection services agreement is it does have diversion goals we do have diversion goals that we do place on Recology notably diverting minimum of 50% of solid waste by 2023 55% by 2024 and then 60% by 2029 so the city does have some action that they can take if Recology doesn't meet those goals but there is also a show of good faith that Recology can provide as long as they are doing their public education and outreach their source separating the materials as as required by the agreement and they're working with the city on creative solutions to improve those diversion goals we want to work in kind of a partnership with them and so those goals are there but we understand that it's not only just you know Recology is a responsible for that diversion it's a community wide effort. One of the important things as well was the outreach and education which is why within the agreement we made sure that there was a dedicated waste zero team and Celia at Recology does lead that team and so within the agreement we have a waste zero manager a public education and outreach manager and then also four waste zero specialists and they they are actually there to provide those outreach and education services they provide things like technical assistance they do educational events they do site visits waste audits on site with businesses with you know customers with you know single family homes if they need it as well they do community presentations and tabling letters and flyers etc and you know Celia will go into more detail exactly what those those services are but we've been really excited about that from the beginning and we've seen Recology's you know passion and interest in making sure that the residents of Santa Rosa are engaged with zero waste and they and they're going to continue to provide those services for us and then lastly we do have an SB 1383 partnership with them I was at City Council not too long ago with this but SB 1383 does have a bevy of requirements that they are that jurisdictions are ultimately responsible so we recently did do a fourth amendment to our solid waste collection services agreement to memorialize some of the things that Recology will be taking on on behalf for the city of Santa Rosa which is mainly going to be the contamination monitoring and site reviews and site audits that are required through SB 1383 as well as continue to help us with the the education the outreach which they have they have been doing since day one and that concludes my presentation I'm available for any questions or comments if you have them right thank you so much Joey my first question it's really just one of the barriers that you've seen that have resulted in you know I'm not going to poo poo a 45 reduction that's still great but it is below our target what barriers are in the way and is there more that we can do to try to help meet that goal yeah I think the barriers that are in the way is it's it's hard to change people's people's habits that they've been so used to for so long I think SB 1383 is a ground is a game changer I think we need to continue to provide education and outreach one of the main things is you know about 40% of what goes to the landfill is considered organic waste I think one of the largest issues that we've seen and silly might be able to talk more to this as well is it is a little bit difficult to source separate those green materials in the green bin if they're not contained within the garbage bag because a lot of people are concerned of it creating fly issues of it creating you know animal issues of it creating vector issues and so I think it's it's generally easier for people just to put it in the garbage rather than you know they might have to clean out that green bin once every week or two or three weeks and so it does require a little bit of additional effort and so that has been one of the complaints that I have received from some folks as well I'm not going to compost because I don't want to have flies all around my house so I don't want to have rats running around and so I think we need to continue to work with the community to ensure them that there are there are ways that we can avoid some of those things and that's that probably would be probably the main main issue main hurdle that I've seen secondly I think is really going to be important is that targeted technical outreach I think you know we do outreach online we do outreach through newsletters we table events but we're still not really able to reach a lot of the community I think for the folks that are really interested in doing the right thing they're going to do the right thing for those folks that may need a little extra nudge I think those kind of one-on-one conversations and kind of the one-on-one feedback is going to be something that would be important that would help kind of move that marker. Yeah so if I understand correctly you mean that when folks have bins in their house that they have their compost sorted but they haven't moved it out into that maybe their their final bin that they're putting it into that seems to be the biggest complaint people have. Yeah or when they put it out to the outside bin that it's going to attract you know flies or you know rats or other vermin once they put it out there yeah. Okay. All right can I ask any other questions Natalie? Yes so question first just to show everyone my handy dandy compost bin but the bag helps me with the no rat thing the compost free bag I guess the bag is compostable so or something I don't know I bought it so the bag does it it's not a plastic bag it's like a bag that you put this up in and then I can put it in my compost bin does that not really work because you're you're looking I see you want to speak to that Celia you're yeah I look like I'm about to burst I know because that's what it said online because I didn't I don't like rats either. No no one does and that is a really big point of confusion for people it's very confusing with the compostable plastics because they say they're compostable and people want to believe that so we we haul Santa Rosa's compostable material to three different compost facilities we don't own or operate any of the three and none of them are able to take the compostable plastics so they're they just don't break down in a timely manner and they have additives in them that are not they're not good and nutritious for the soil they're trying to create a quality product at the compost facilities and so for those two reasons they just they can't accept the compostable plastics so they're you just empty them in the you just empty them in the green bin once you take them out the house you just empty them in the green bin yeah you if you wanted to empty the contents of them in the green bin and then just take the actual bag itself and put it in the garbage that would be fine or you can use that plastic what was that you still have plastics that kind of defeats the purpose of using it yeah yeah I mean the best recommendation would be lining the pail with a paper bag or newspaper because that's totally compostable you can just put that all in the compost bin I love it see Mayor Rogers these are the conversations that we candidly need to have because people need to know like how do you get over these hurdles of making it easy so you just line it with the the paper bag that we pay ten cents for it works so I'm going to start doing that because that is very important when I don't have to buy those bags and two they don't they don't work how bad is it to continue to use uh plastic wear that just happens to appear because I don't want to throw it away because I feel bad how bad is it to continue to use it reuse it like to wash it or use it Joey do you want me to to answer that one or okay um it's not I mean it's reuse is great if you want to reuse the plastic you know to go wear utensils that you already have sure just reuse them it's it's all about baby steps it's about keeping in mind you know next time you get takeout food just remembering it's just remembering to tell them oh wait I'm going home I actually don't need this these plastic utensils and then when you do dispose of them it's remembering to dispose of them properly they're not compostable or recyclable unfortunately so they would just need to go in the garbage and then last question I must agree with the education part um and I was looking on your presentation which is coming next um is there a place you can go and I saw the ask away zero expert but like a on-demand me and my family often have debates like no you can recycle this no you can't recycle this where you can just like put an item in there and it tells you where to put it or if it's uh recyclable for people that are learning the process yes I'm glad you brought that up yes there's a search tool on our website so it's rcology.com slash rsm what bin and I can put it in the chat if uh oh I don't think I had access to the chat maybe but it's rsn like rcology snummer in what bin and it's just a really handy search tool thank you that completes my question Diana yeah so that kind of brings me to one of the things have you seen those apps where they'll take a picture of a a plant and it'll tell you how much water to put in the plant or something like that so along those lines of what I have found with people is if it's not simple and easy and quick they're not going to do it not many people are going to go to the website and google to see if something's done but what they might do is add on an app like the santa rosa app a way for us to actually like take a picture of the item and it to identify and that would be something perhaps the state level they could they could do with this initiative of sp1383 so it might be something to think about as we look at partnerships and and looking to see the easier it is for people to know where to put things to me that's how you get to the level that you want and I know you also mentioned working with schools and school districts on how this kind of works and that's been something I think we need to do more of right if you tell kids how it all works or how it works to me they actually have coached me my kids have coached me more on how to recycle properly than anyone else and they're adults but they learned it in actually school so I think if we can go out at least for the city of santa rosa and work with the 11 school districts that we have on presentations on let's recyclable and how this works at home kids can put a lot of pressure on their families but also how the schools can recycle things and I know we have businesses that have been doing this but I'm not sure where we're at on on on school initiatives and how that works and if if that might be an area we could we could grow but I still think an app on on where to put this utensil would be probably the simplest way for people to start to learn about how things work and where to put it but it just goes back to exactly Natalie's point of like I would have totally thought the bag could go right into the compost thing and it says compostable that makes no sense to me and I didn't even know plastic silverware couldn't go into recycle so that's horrifying because I totally thought I was doing my part so and I wasn't I was ruining it so so uh you know admittedly I think it happens by a lot of us but I just seem to do it in public forums and admit when I'm wrong so um but that would be something I think is just shocking and I'm embarrassed to well not really embarrassed but I'm happy to report that I've learned something really new today so thanks for that of course and I would just mention I think that's a great idea as far as you know having you take a picture and then it tells you maybe where this goes in the bin I don't think we're quite there yet I think that with the onset of SB 1383 there's a lot of interest from the tech community I had a conversation with the company I forget the name of the company they're just starting out but they're they're essentially this kind of community engagement wayfinding company that wants to engage with municipalities and what you do is they they put up basically these QR codes and you can put them up on a lamp post you can put them up on you know a wall you can put them up on a garbage bin and basically you can go up there you can scan you can scan the QR code and then whatever the city would like to do whether it's community engagement about you know the downtown station area plan or whether it's community engagement as far as whatever you can kind of guide the conversations that way and you end up having this kind of conversation with with an AI thing that's been scheduled and I did ask them that question to ask I said well I'm working on SB 1383 I think this has some potential you know opportunities for the city in general but where do you think that we can make this work with SB 1383 I was thinking the only way that I really think this could work is if they could actually take a picture of whatever they were going to be throwing away and it would tell them where that goes and the gentleman I spoke with said wow we're technology's not quite there yet for that but that is actually very interesting and it is something that he was going to bring up to his upper management to maybe potentially consider especially considering that California is leading the way with this and obviously with the the huge business you know potential that the California has and so I think you're right there with that I think we'll look to that in the future but at the moment that we don't currently have that capability but I think that's a great I think that's a great idea. Chris I think you need to write a letter to the governor telling him that he should invest in that it's part of the climate action plan that they they're going to do. Yeah we write plenty of letters to the governor I'll add it on the list. Thanks. Did you all want me to go ahead and share my presentation? Yep please do. Okay and you all bring up really great points and I'm hoping I can address some of them additionally in my presentation as well. Can you see that okay? Yes we can. All right sorry I'm getting ahead of myself here. Okay okay so thank you Joey thanks for the really thorough presentation I'm going to try not to be too redundant and focus a little bit more energy on some of the the points that you all brought up just now. So again my name is Celia Ferber, I'm the waste zero manager at Recology Sonoma Marin. I've been with Recology for over nine years now and I had the opportunity to come up to Sonoma County and be the waste zero manager up here in 2017 when we were brand new to the area so it's really been a privilege I've seen the programs grow and evolve and progress over the past four and a half years and that's been really rewarding so I'm going to highlight some of the things that we've been able to accomplish in those four and a half years go into a little bit more depth about what we're doing in the community including with schools and some of the tactics that we use to educate the community. Council Member McDonnell don't feel bad about not knowing about the utensils Council Member Rogers don't feel bad about not knowing about the compostable bags these are these are common points of confusion and it's it's good feedback for me to hear it only helps us enhance our programs. We do strive to help you know alleviate some of that confusion through through our I'll go into exactly all the tools that we use to do that and we're basically in the middle of a cultural shift and things are getting incrementally better every single year I have data to support that but it's not perfect yet we still have a ways to go as Joey mentioned so with that I'll go ahead and dive in oh and I should also mention the timing of this meeting is perfect we're actually doing a recology village at the Santa Rosa farmers market this evening so if you happen to be near downtown or planning to go to the farmers market we're hosting a recology table there and there's actually several organizations that are devoted to zero waste or reuse that will be at the farmers market tonight so this is very timely all right so just quickly a little bit about Recology Sonoma Marin we've been serving Santa Rosa since December 23rd of 2017 it was a really great Christmas gift to start serving this servicing the city right before Christmas in 2017 we provide recycle compost garbage construction demolition street sweeping and recycle processing services for the city we're 100% employee-owned company meaning that we don't answer to outside stakeholders all of the employees of the company own a piece of the company and so that really helps us to focus on what matters and be really involved in the communities that we serve and we're also part of Teamsters Union 665 so waste zero it's part of our logo it's part of our mission it's something that we truly believe in and so again I'm the waste zero manager I oversee the department and our biggest objective is to recover resources and to educate so you can see here in this before and after picture this is actually King's nursery in Santa Rosa this was you know there before they had a garbage dumpster bin pretty large and just a small compost cart and a small recite these aren't exactly small carts but they're a commercial account and they just had a cart for compost and a cart for recycle we were able to work with them get them a big compost bin for their their landscaping material they're in a nursery so they have a lot of plant material they also had a lot of cardboard so we were able to increase their recycle size for dumpster bin and then once they were able to recover those resources we're able to decrease their garbage service to just a cart and this is just an example of what we like to do with every single account whether it be commercial or single family residential we want to work with people to recover resources and then decrease their garbage and so here's some some data to support the progress that we've made with with that effort in 2018 we had 94,000 tons landfill from the city of Santa Rosa and in 2021 we had 86,000 tons landfill for the city of Santa Rosa so if you compare those two calendar years on top of each other that's a decrease of 8,000 tons which is a pretty hefty number 8,000 tons less went to the landfill in 2021 than 2018 and that's considering population growth in Santa Rosa over that time period as well so that feels really rewarding that we're seeing the landfill numbers going down here over a year and then likewise we also want to see recovered tons go up and so in 2018 we were able to recover 69,000 tons of material and in 2021 we were able to increase that to 76,000 tons and so by recovering that means recycling and composting so 7,000 tons more in 2021 were recovered than in 2018 so really good metrics to support that what we're doing out in the community is working and we'll continue to see progress over time so public education schools brought up significantly in our conversation prior to this and could not agree more once you get the kids caring about these issues and excited about them they do bring that excitement home with them and that really helps with that cultural shift that we're talking about so in 2021 we did 89 presentations to audiences those were primarily at schools whether it be single classroom presentations or assemblies we do work with all the school districts in the city of Santa Rosa we have Wastero Specialist Anita Migliore up in this picture here she's speaking to a high school class and I'm going to go down here to this last bullet point a lot of these teachers are really great and they'll send thank you cards and so one of the teachers sent a thank you card where all the students wrote a wrote a note to Anita thanking her for her presentation and one of the students said I'm a use your methods in my house which was just kind of it was just really rewarding it was like this is a kid who maybe wasn't thinking about this at all prior to the presentation and she really reached that student and he's gonna he's gonna take that information home with him and maybe his household's gonna make a change so it's it's that's that's exactly what we want to see through these presentations at schools a lot of presentations are also through partnership with the Chamber of Commerce there's two different Rotary clubs in Santa Rosa that we partner with the Sierra Club and then we also work really closely with Zero Waste Sonoma so anytime there's a group gathering that gathers on a regular basis sometimes they'll ask us to come in and be a speaker we're more than happy to do that and I have down here these are two flyers that we did I wanted to note that during the height of the pandemic when everything was pretty much remote we did pivot to do remote presentations so that we could still get the word out about what goes where and why why Zero Waste is important so we did a we did several series of remote zoom presentations and we did them in English and in Spanish I'm skipping around with my bullet points but I wanted to go back to the top one and highlight that we not only did the 89 presentations to audiences we did 117 staff trainings as well in 2021 and so what that looks like is working with a restaurant back-of-house staff or hotel staff you know maybe it's basically staff yeah staff trainings at various businesses so that they're all trained on their compost and recycle programs and how to use them properly we also host educational tables at community events in the top left here this was this was the Earth Day of this year in downtown Santa Rosa and I was actually at that event and it was we were so there was three of us there and we were talking the entire time our table was so busy people have a lot of questions and it's really important to us that we're at these tables and and they're you know able to answer those questions we love being able to host those tables we're really glad that you know these outdoor events are happening again and we also provide receptacles at a lot of community events so tonight if you happen to go to the farmers market you'll see our color coded receptacles with signage and this is really great because not everyone's going to be motivated to necessarily come to our table and talk to us but you know they might just learn a little bit about compost and recycle just by looking at our carts at a community event it might just register with them oh yeah I'm seeing this compost everywhere now okay that's what can go in there okay yeah maybe I should do that it's just another tactic to to reach people okay so how do we get the word out how do we alleviate some of this confusion about what goes where we use a variety of tactics so I think our number one tool is our spring and fall newsletters there are four pages we mail them to every single account that we serve in the city of Santa Rosa and we we do tend to touch on the the most confusing things that we hear time and time again like the compostable bags and the plastic utensils um fully recognizing that people are really busy you know people are getting our newsletters in their mail some are taking the time to open them and read them um and a lot of households maybe don't have the time to read them all the way maybe they hold on to them maybe they take a piece of them but they don't take all of the information so it's just important that we're hitting on those topics over and over in those newsletters and um you know having some breakthroughs over time that way we also put ads in the press democrat quarterly we do full page press democrat ads and we do ads in the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce um they do their own newsletter so we make sure to get ads in there too we did a radio ad earlier this year um just we worked with wine country radio and so we were letting everyone know FB 1383 is here please put your food scraps in your green part it's the law and um you know that's just another way to potentially reach people we have um these these ads on our trucks um that says food waste and soil paper belonging in the compost and so those are in those are ads on um they're on a good chunk of our trucks in the city of Santa Rosa so people happen to be seeing our truck on the road or servicing their house then you know that's kind of a it's a roving billboard educating them we also provide posters to commercial customers recycle compost and garbage posters that are really clear really visually appealing we have custom labels for recycle compost and garbage both horizontal and vertical and all different sizes that we provide to anyone who needs them we provide compost kitchen peels you can see one here those are available for pickup at our office i'm happy to report they've been so popular this year we've gone through several thousand this year alone um we ran out we ran out I believe back in April and then we got more in and we're actually about to run out again so this is this is people who are who are seeing that they need to start composting and they're taking the time to come to our office and pick up a pail so that they can start composting at home it's really great to see it's really great to see that popularity so we're actually partnering with zero waste Sonoma and the various jurisdictions in Sonoma County on a large on a larger compost kitchen pail order and so those will be coming in September so we'll be restocked and ready to hand those out again we use our website as a tool to provide information and again that that search tool is on the website councilman mcdonald totally agree that would be really great to have a kind of like a artificial intelligence app where you just sort of get you just take a picture of an object and it registers oh this is recyclable or oh this is compostable um I do think that I don't think that exists currently um but I'm right like it should it should exist and I think it will exist so I wrote it down I think it's a really cool idea maybe if you develop it we'll have a whole new funding stream for the city um I will look into I'll look into what resources we have I'm not a tech person but uh I do think it's doable and I think it's a really great idea so uh we also use Facebook uh to get the word out on things as well all righty so Joey went into this a bit in his presentation I'll just touch on it briefly this is kind of the cycle of compost uh you you know you eat your banana you have a banana peel you put your banana peel in your green cart we pick up we service your green cart and then we haul it to one of the three compost facilities that we partner with they put that material in long rows called windrows the various compost facilities they each have their own slightly different methods but basically they give the material 60 to 90 days to break down they turn it over they make sure it's very oxygenated um and then at the end of that process they screen it and so they're putting they're running it through a quarter inch screen to take out any contaminants or any items that didn't break down in that time frame and um we're left with a beautiful compost product that is referred to as black gold it doesn't smell uh it's farmers can't get enough of it these compost facilities are are selling out and the you know the farmers are buying that compost and they're applying it to their fields and it's not only helping them to grow better crops and to enhance their yield it's also sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the soil and it's also acting like a sponge in the soil to um to to make the plants require less water so it's a it's a drought um it's a water conservation methodology as well so you have that that wind that that awesome effect of sequestering carbon it's helping with water conservation and because it was kept out of the landfill it's preventing that method um the methane production at the landfill so it's really one of the best things we as a society can do to combat climate change all right so a little bit about the commercial compost program in Santa Rosa currently we have 1,172 commercial accounts with compost service in the city which is a pretty large number um we're really proud of that number because when we first came in um back in 2018 it was that number was quite a bit lower so we've really been heavy boots on the ground getting those programs implemented uh we were recently able to achieve 100 compliance with state law AB 1826 1826 is the uh is basically the precursor to SB 1383 it required that most commercial accounts have a compost program not all but most and so whereas SB 1383 requires all and so that basically has set us up for success with SB 1383 which is what we're we're currently that's currently the big focus that went into effect as Joey mentioned January 1st of this year and it requires a 75 percent reduction in landfill organics by the year 2025 and so the state's looking for that 75 percent reduction from um 2014 levels they did a statewide characterization in 2014 um the pictures that you see here this is I I love to see this enthusiasm this is a catering company they have a green team they were really excited to get a compost program and um you can just see their energy and enthusiasm about it so it's nice to see that ripple effect in the community so um we did just recently enter into an SB 1383 franchise amendment with the city of Santa Rosa Joey presented to the council about that um think about around a month ago maybe a little bit longer and it's it's basically very similar to um what we have been doing for the city but there's just a couple additions like um route auditing SB 1383 requires that every single route in the city is audited at least once per year so um we're making sure to handle those and then track that and report on it and that's basically the state's mandating that because they want to it's a mechanism for them to get reporting on the success of these programs we're educating customers on SB 1383 and we have color coordinated containers and signage and we're implementing the compost programs to all the commercial customers all the multifamily dwellings and um also working with residents so that they start using their green card for food waste and we're so we're tracking all this and reporting on it some challenges um so like Joey mentioned uh there's there's still a stigma with compost I've seen it get better every single year but you still do hear people say oh that's gross I'm not going to do that I'm that's going to make my my house smell that's going to make my heart smell I'm going to get pests um you still do hear things like that but more and more people are doing it and they see no actually I don't have any pests I don't have any odors this is actually pretty easy and I've seen I've seen this evolution on next door on various Facebook threads um where someone might complain and then now others will say well actually if you try this it's if you put it in a paper bag you know that that's a good way to contain it or oh you could put it in your freezer until collection day if you wanted to try that or you could put baking soda in your cart if you're having any kind of odor issues I see community members troubleshooting with each other and providing advice and um it's cool to see that shift of more people are doing it successfully and they're able to encourage others and so then here pictured are just some of the other challenges that we see um this is you know these are what the waste service specialists are dealing with as they've implemented more programs over time in the community is uh commercial customers don't always use the bin properly they um you know then they have turnover of employees also so they need to be retrained from time to time you can see on the left here this is actually this part is actually a compost part and this customer is confused they're using green bags um which are not accepted in a compost cart and they probably thought the green bags were compostable but these are just regular plastic bags uh and they're they're stacking them way past the part so now it's onto the recycle bin which this is this makes it so the driver can't really service either one um so just kind of a silly picture and then uh the top over here we have we have filters in the compost bin which obviously are not compostable this is just someone who maybe took the garbage out at night and wasn't paying attention and so they just threw in the compost bin so that's contamination that we're dealing with uh we see in the middle bottom here this is a customer this is their uh they have a compost bin they understand that they should be putting their bread that they that has gone bad in the compost bin which is great but they're not recognizing they need to take it out of the plastic first so that's just a point of educating them again you know thank you for putting your bread in your compost bin but we need to get it out of the plastic um and then uh over here in the bottom right the compostable bags issue um this is just a really common confusing confusing one for people so um we do see that all the time the compostable bags going in the green cart um which they're not accepted I do want to mention that um not to confuse you all any further but I do want to mention that of the three compost facilities that we haul material to um one of the facilities is enrichment and uh the commercial the big green dumpster bins the commercial compost dumpster bins the material from those are hauled to the facility enrichment they can actually break open compostable bags and then compost the contents so they will take the compostable bags they won't take compostable utensils or cups or plates but they will take the they they will accept the bags in those dumpster bins um so we do allow like if a restaurant has a compost dumpster bin they can they can put their materials in a compostable bag because it's going to that facility enrichment the um the compost carts that residents have those are hauled to um there's a facility in Nevada and there's another facility in Ukiah and they don't have the capabilities to handle the compostable bags so that's where we're at with that okay I'm going to end on a high note these are successes so when the waste area specialists uh go to accounts and they flip the lid and they see these you know they think this is beautiful I think this is beautiful this is this is exactly what we want to see we want to see that um these are food scraps mixed with with soiled paper pizza boxes are great and their napkins are great the paper egg cartons gorgeous these customers are doing a fantastic job and we are seeing more and more that look like this which is exactly what we want all right with that I will open it up for questions great thank you so much I don't have any questions but I'll look to Natalie and Diana to see I don't see any movement so let's go to public comment and see if anybody in the public has any questions or comments so I'd hit the raise hand feature on your zoom I don't see any comments we'll bring it back uh and I just want to give a sincere thank you to the two of you I know that there's a lot of moving parts particularly with legislation in Sacramento over the last couple of years uh so thank you for the the partnership and I think what I heard from from Joey and I I agree with it is that largely this is just making sure that people are educated to understand how to do what we're asking them to do which does take time and it does take a lot of effort to change people's behaviors but I think that we have the tools that are in place to start to do that and I think we have a good partnership to be able to do that uh so I want to thank you both for for continuing to to fight the good fight on this front thank you mayor thank you it's a pleasure all right we'll move on to item 4.2 good afternoon uh mayor rogers and members of the subcommittee um happy to offer a informational presentation on the cool cities challenge and the cool block block program give me a moment I will bring up the presentation looks like you're seeing my screen now I think I need to swap real quick right looking good now yeah we can see uh we can see both the big slide and the next slide okay there we go all right I had it backwards I apologize thank you um so yeah I just wanted to clarify this informational update um uh to do some interest in the public as well as this subcommittee uh providing with update on the cool cities challenge the cool cities challenge is being turned to a climate moonshot strategy it is a grant program opportunity from the empowerment institute a private grant program opportunity I am really this moonshot strategy is to attempt to accelerate the rate at which cities pursue carbon neutrality specifically uh trying to focus on reaching that goal by 2030 within the cool cities challenge there is a primary strategy related to the cool block existing cool block program and the cool block program is really pursuing a bottom up chick change driven by the citizen consumer and really trying to implement change one block at a time throughout cities so um the cool cities challenge grant program the first round of grant awards were issued in 2021 uh three pilot cities in California were awarded one million dollars uh those were the cities of Petaluma Irvine and Los Angeles uh prior to this um in Los Angeles San Francisco and Palo Alto there were already 45 blocks uh that were participating in the cool block uh program and really uh through this grant program the goal is to institute a framework in these cities for meeting carbon neutrality by 2030 without offsets uh and I will talk a little bit more about what the the grant program itself involves so I was able to meet uh with uh councilman from Petaluma uh Delinda Fisher and Natasha Giuliana who is a resident of Petaluma uh last month um and wanted to learn a little bit more about their program um and really it's the program uh is going to be spent split into two different parts it's really two phases um the first $500,000 will mostly be spent on organizing and really establishing those cool block leaders um already they have over 300 volunteers so um they've been able to penetrate pretty quickly gather a lot of volunteers throughout Petaluma and um as of now they are focusing on integrating uh businesses and other community leaders uh to be a part of this and um what's unique about this program is that the grant itself was spearheaded by uh the council member um and citizens themselves uh and the citizens themselves will be there's a group of folks that are acting as a contractor for this program and will be pursuing uh the grants uh efforts uh and then as I mentioned there's two phases so the second phase in two years will be a moonshot project uh and as of now that project is yet to be determined um that will be developed with the institute itself and the project leads um so that is the second phase after they move through the cool block uh program implementation phase so the cool block program has been around for a while um but as I mentioned in some of these pilot projects um this isn't a foundational piece that implements the cool city challenge it really begins with these cool block volunteers uh that volunteer to be block leaders um I kind of compare it to a neighborhood watch of sorts but it's very focused on climate change actions at a local level um and block leaders themselves request the creation of a cool block uh and so what they're required to do as a block leader is a schedule an informational meeting with neighbors on the block uh and then schedule a team building meeting to get those residents kind of together fired up uh and to work together on this project and uh within this um they meet regularly and use an established curriculum covering eight topics uh residents are you know take actions initially on in their home and leads and actions that eventually uh roll up and impact their entire block so some of the topics as I mentioned there's eight topics in total um are focused on energy and disaster resiliency um and focus really on the pieces of what they're calling the cool lifestyle you know making changes in your daily practices focused on making actions that are focused on climate resiliency efficiency in terms of energy and water efficiency in your home and thinking about how you use transportation daily so ways that you can offset your carbon footprint through the transportation that you choose as well as water stewardship very important today in this drought um safe healthy and green blocks uh and then um thinking about community resources uh you know creating a larger greater community uh that is involved in focusing on climate change actions and then ultimately living as a cool block um and focusing working together and coordinating at a larger level so in terms of the next steps you heard about the three programs that were selected in three cities throughout california they launched their programs in january of this year um they're just getting this off the ground full speed ahead in january 2023 the pilot results will be evaluated and and really the details for the next cool city challenge will be released potentially expanding this opportunity to other areas outside of california too as was being called contemplated um future applicants must of course have a minimum population of 50 000 and the city council itself or maybe a town council must pass the resolution to become carbon neutral uh by 2030 um in terms of strategies that santa rosa itself already has in place i did want to identify that we do have the community-wide climate action plan which was adopted in june of 2012 um and really that community-wide climate action plan secap guides greenhouse gas reduction policies and activities at community level this includes you know greenhouse gas reduction inventories identifying where those can be reduced and climate adaptation strategies as well the plan really focused on regulatory and incentive-based programs for new and existing development to achieve certain goals and strategies and these are assigned different city departments and supporting agency partners you just heard from mr anowitz and recology so they're they're very much focused on implementing pieces of this climate action plan and i just want to highlight that an update to the secap is currently being encompassed within the santa rosa forward general plan update so that is getting rolled up into that that update as well so you'll be seeing more of this going for so in terms of future planning for the city you know with this program the cool cities pilots may lead to a better understanding of this bottom-up approach of utilizing citizens working independently to help globally meet these strategies for the city and this approach to ultimately achieving greenhouse gas reductions um you know in santa rosa we'll look to the evaluation of these pilot programs to determine the best way to incorporate this or potentially even similar programs in the update to the secap so um you know that these these strategies are out there they are novel and we can look at these as an opportunity as well so with that i've left a couple links up here um for you to veruse if you so juice and i'm happy to answer any questions as well thank you so much peter and i'm really glad that we were able to bring this forward for discussions just because i've heard of from folks down in pedaluma who found really good success and is and thinks that there's a lot of value let's see if there's any questions from my fellow council members natalie looks good diana let's go to public comment then if you'd like to provide comment on this item go ahead hit the raise hand feature we'll start with mike thank you uh mayor and council subcommittee members thank you with us mike yeah i'm ready to go all right go for it thanks um yeah i've been hearing about the cool block and cool city challenge and i'm grateful that the subcommittee has started to become a little more agile in how we start to think about using some of these programs the one of the benefits i see is that it is meant to engage the public and i don't think i've seen the public engaged since the tubs fire obviously that was very important that the public became engaged and i just hope we don't have to have another disaster to engage the public again so this has the great potential in that regard i would encourage i've encouraged this the subcommittee to move this on to the city council as as quickly as we can once we can understand it it's a bit disheartening that pedaluma seems to be upstaging santa rosa with their eliminating new gas station applications it's good to see this is in the planning conditions hands tomorrow it just seems that santa rosa should be leading the way on a lot of different things i understand it's a you know a more slower slower moving ship let's say but it just seems like we're starting to feel like the subcommittee in particular is a little more agile than it was when it first began so i'm encouraged to see that and i would just hope this moves forward as quickly as we can get it thank you thank you mike let's see if there's any other hand alexa hi there can you hear me yes we can um yeah i just wanted to echo my sentiments that i'm glad to see that you were getting a report on this and it was uh interesting for me to hear that report too because i've heard of it sort of informally um and i just want to put in my two cents that uh i it would be really appreciated um by lots of people that i know if the city council were to take up something like this or you know or something similar if not this i think there are so many of us who really want to help on the climate change front and don't need don't know exactly what we can do other than just like trying to take care of our own house and our own personal choices but how we can amplify those efforts and how we can organize them into really helping the city move and in the in the absence of direction from the city council or some sort of unifying project that we can all put our volunteer energy into we're sort of stabbing at the dark you know in the dark so something like this i think could be incredibly valuable again whether it's this program or some other program where city leaders create a vision and then ask the citizens to join them in that vision rather than the other way around having the citizens trying to push the city council like it's a better dynamic i think so i just wanted to say thank you for considering it and one other question i have and i don't know peter if you uncovered any of the details about this but one of the barriers to equitable participation in in these kinds of programs is people who just can't afford you can't afford that many volunteer hours so i was wondering how much of that that grant money might be used in a way like the p-cac work that was done by daily acts down in pedaluma to actually pay folks to show up and do part of the work organizing their blocks and stuff so that we could maybe get a more diverse group participating thanks so much that's the last hand that i see so i'll go ahead and bring it back so peter what type of feedback would be helpful from committee members um i think you know uh you obviously recognize that you have this opportunity with the update to the community wide climate action plan coming up we do see that you know it is uh and i just don't think we we know uh kind of where that direction is going but this council has an opportunity to do that uh in terms of i neglected to say uh the cool block program itself it all the resources are available online and in any person can become a cool block leader uh irrespective of whether or not they are reside in a one of these folks as part of this cool cities challenge there's many cool block champions throughout the state and maybe even the nation that are already participating this program utilizing the resources that are available online for free on coolblock.org so you know that that also could be pushed out to folks throughout Santa Rosa too as well. Perfect Natalie, Diana anything to add? All right well i'm really supportive i think that this is a great idea and i think that that was one of the things that we had talked about when we created this committee was pre providing a space for people to bring us good ideas for us to collectively talk about what we're doing i feel uh i get it from people that we kind of took big swings early on and are going a little bit of a different path than some of the other cities uh for example we're going to be at about 50 of our bus fleet is is now slated to be electrified and we did uh 100 renewable energy for all city buildings right off the bat and and so we've got to continue to build on that and bring the public in and hear from the prep the public where they would like to head with this next uh so i'm going to be really supportive of our efforts around this. Speaking from myself i you know just should be recognized as Santa Rosa is a leader in terms of water conservation during this drought which is an incredible part of that strategy you know many other you know if you want to show that we are a leader in the region we do rally other municipalities and contractors throughout the region and they adapt a lot of our strategies too as well. Yeah absolutely. All right let's go ahead and move on to item 5.1 that's our future agenda item. My name is Tasha Wright and i'm from Santa Rosa water here to give you your future agenda items update and i just want to remind you it was mentioned briefly that the planning commission was going to hear uh it's the public hearing on the zoning code text amendment to prohibit new gas stations and prohibit expansion of this is a long title fossil fuel infrastructure for existing gas stations and so that planning commission meeting starts tomorrow at 4 30 if anyone wants to tune in and hear the update on that so that's was requested by the public that staff looks into that and of course Mayor Rogers didn't go ahead and ask that staff looked into that and sometime later here it goes to the planning commission so that's pretty exciting. So August 10th we have uh Peter from Santa Rosa water it was just on he will be bringing forward an update on the drought response and also we have transportation and public work staff who are going to be coming and giving an update on the city buses you know transit electrification and infrastructure so everybody turn tune in for that one that's gonna be really exciting and then um September 14th we are tentatively looking at uh the climate action uh community climate action plan and the municipal action plan update as part of the general plan and working with our consultant as far as incorporating that into the general plan so we'll get an update on that and then we also have some other things on the schedule tentatively in the fall we'll also be talking about the short-range transit plan another service-related items and then there are quite a few other pending on the schedule that are there available on our sheet so that's it for me thank you all right let's go ahead go to public comment and ask folks what future agenda items you'd like to see so far i'm not seeing any hands so go ahead bring it back council members other than what's already slated to come before the committee is there anything in particular that you'd like us to focus on i'm seeing those all right paschal we'll keep working through our list i know our next meeting is going to be a good one and yes i alluded to it a little bit our transit work is particularly exciting with some good news that we just received last week so we'll go ahead and wet people's appetite with that one and we'll come back next month with with a full update and with that we'll go ahead and adjourn thanks everybody thank you have a great evening