Okay, welcome to the Tuesday, April 30th San Rosa City Council meeting. We'll be starting with a steady session Chief Gosner, why don't you introduce? Hello everyone happy to be here to present the city-wide after-action report of the October fires of 2017 so with us. We have Charlie Wilson from widow Brian. He's gonna run through the presentation And then we will be open for questions. Good afternoon I'm Charlie Fisher The chief was just trying to test me Senior managing director for a little Brian's we are a crisis and emergency management consulting firm Based based in DC except when I'm working in in Texas. I say we're based in Houston the We we have several practices one of which is to focus on On after-action reports, and I just want to give you a bit of background before getting into into our findings here some examples, so there was a Horrible fire in a skyscraper in Chicago people were We're set to the hallways and stairways and no one was able to actually get them We were asked to come in and do an assessment of what happened there and Some of our some of our findings actually resulted in major changes in the way the big major cities fights skyscrapers using Mutual aid from the suburbs to come in to help them so that the outer rings of the city can come in to help support that Another example is you may recall the horrible incident at the Indiana State Fair When the stage collapsed on to the audience Right before the concert. We were asked by the governor to come in to do an assessment of that that that Report has had a significant impact on outdoor events And has been utilized by the NFL and major league baseball and NCAA This report Was actually the the second report that was that was conducted on on the incident of the fire The initial report was completed by a company called Kelly Kelly Crow group Focused and it focused on the operations of the emergency operations center during the event The That report was completed by Kelly herself and in Sydney read as well as other members of their staff Margie Bond Paul Jax in Janet Childs Officials of the city Engaged us to do a competitive bidding process and asked us to conduct a wider report that would look at not just within the operations within the workers operation center, but but rather the What was going on in the ground with the individual firefighters with the individual police officers all the all the personnel from the city and To into something to the extent that we can tell the story and tell the stories of what happened that night Our our team that's been working on this project since last year included Doug Main who's a former Emergency management director for a state of Hawaii Doug likes to note that that that he left before the missile notice went off He was not the director at that time the as well as Matt Stanley former firefighter am I close stuff here Karla pool a former police officer Nobert to awareness some of you may know a former San Jose city manager and My colleague behind us here Matt her locker who actually worked on both projects We interviewed over over 90 people Including many of you And We reviewed and evaluated several plans and related documents Our report I'm not going to go through the the report in in detail I want to hit the highlights and so that we get an opportunity for discussion here today But our report includes a description of of the events and Leading up to the fire and in the fighting of the fire itself the evacuation Reentry recovery Brief discussion of the water quality issue that's covered much more in the black and beach report that you that you know of It talks about the conditions and and perspective The years that existed prior to this the years of drought Wind speeds that that evening and morning of 69 plus miles an hour Fire spreading very fast We know it in our report that there was a similar fires, you know in 1964 that affected this area that fire took three days to To do its damage This fire did the same the damage and more in just three hours The I wanted to know that you know that the We've been through and they've toured through the the different areas that that that were that were completely destroyed and affected by this the Hilton complex certainly found Grove Paradise in the threaten the hospital that was threatened the county you'll see facility itself and Remarkable crossing of a 101 all eight lanes by the by the fire the We know in here that the there were many many fires at night in fact The records of redcom which is the official communications network for the area note that on a normal day They would get 900 calls a day. They were getting 900 calls an hour during this event One of the most remarkable statistics that we found in our report is that there were 75 requests for strike teams that evening That's a that's five engines chief can talk more about that that is a phenomenal and Because of where you are located Physically here geographically Oftentimes people coming in from the north from elsewhere were diverted to the fires in other areas The So that's so much of that that mutual aid didn't didn't arrive until much later in the morning the I want to note that that kind of that resulted in your staff having to Go far beyond what is standardly recommended for fire or fire protection firefighting So for example two-unit apartment fire normally would require six engine teams two water tenders two chief officers that night That was fought by one engine one engine team and one captain The chief and others put into effect Leaders intact the strategy for fighting fighting the fire Given the resources that were available and not available and that was continuously communicated through dispatch to everyone that night priorities were very clearly stated life safety rescue safety evacuation perimeter control There Were We heard from individual firefighters who arrived on the scene that they They were based on the guidance. They took independent action. They saw fires They addressed them and moved on to another One firefighter noted that if the winds of less another six hours, we would have lost half the city Oh, I'm sorry. Thank you so As you know 62 city employees lost their lost their homes that night Some of which are in this room Despite that they kept working There are a lot of stories in the report one that I want to share with you right now a Firefighter was one fight was dispatched. He was fighting fires and And and literally saving lives going to one going to one home Woman refused to leave without her dog and helping her get out Safely he gets a call from a colleague Who tells him that there's a new fire up in the hills by his fight by this fireman's home? He immediately picks up the phone and calls his wife she and the children are asleep and Tells her that there's a fire have been identified in the area ask Ask her to get the kids and to get in the car and to go to a new relative's She gets up out of bed looks out the window and sees the fire already in her backyard and In a few minutes later calls and backs as they're in the car and they're hanging down the hill and And She'll let her know when she gets there Half hour goes by he's continually fighting fires going from one to another doesn't hear from him Calls his colleague at the bottom of the hill the Colleague says no, I haven't seen if they haven't come down An hour goes by two hours three hours eight hours Go by he continues to fight fires Putting in saving lives not knowing the fate of his own family Fortunately, they were they were able to seek shelter in a building with the assistance of a Santa Rosa fire department Please excuse me a police officer who helped them the fire just jumped over this over this building They were able to survive, but the the tenacity the dedication As we know it in the report he's he says he doesn't even remember doing this But 34 times he texted her during those eight hours just to check to see where where she was And but that's dedication that that you should all be very proud of The evacuation I think that the evacuation is a remarkable story I mean you You were able to evacuate tens of thousands of people With You know the stories of Police and fire officials going door to door people's homes on fire and me and in you know going into yards on fire being able to go around that I Do want to note that that's that the safety associated with this. Thank you that the safety Record of the department associated with this were very was very very impressive as well only one One fired up injury during the entire event Your standing up shelters versus interim and then for the long longer term recovery and the very effective management of the reentry and Not going to go through it in detail right now, but the exhaustive efforts that have gone on since for recovery The 44 fatalities that evening as you know nine here in Santa Rosa We dedicate our report to to them over 3,000 homes are destroyed 5% of your housing stock 36 commercial structures the workers and and Your fellow citizens were willing to do anything to help residents that that night Even in the face of dangers and I I have to note that we when we do these reports. That's not always the case We have seen situations where We're in a very disastrous situations. Some of the first responders did not show up or or or left Very very impressive what what what has been done here The the the overall attitude of the of the employees of the city is remarkable to me One of the things that that We kept coming back to when we were looking at our notes from the interviews is a quote one one person said we did what we could with what we had and That is very much I think the theme of of the night People creatively and quickly solve problems executed plans to reduce pain suffering and loss of life the leadership of the city Was very impressive as well the city's leaders were trained and I think very importantly remain calm issue in the evacuation orders implementing those orders and And also very important Leaders listen to and trusted their staff when we do after action reports oftentimes one of the things we find is that teams practice for emergencies and and oftentimes the leaders are too busy to get involved with those practices and Then when the actual event comes in occurs that the leaders then then step in and mess it up That was not the case here leadership list listen to what needed to be done listen to their staff and and moved on So we identified That's yeah, I'll go ahead here So we identified a few areas for improvement I think that there is there is a need for more focus on emergency management here In the city there's been a lot of things that have been done and we'll talk about that, but It's it's fascinating to to me that they What's what's happens when you look at the two coasts if you look in the northeast part of the country the amount of Resources that are to get it dedicated to emergency management are remarkable I mean, but they also look at what that what they've occurred in the last 25 years. We've had Terrorist attacks. We've had major power outages. We've had major hurricanes It's been a long time since you've had a major earthquake or other events here and and as a result One I asked our staff if they would do a survey looking at staffing and overall in northern California staffing for for communities this size was not to was was not very substantial But I do think that you should given the the existence of this event and future threats The subsequent fires that have occurred since this event You should be looking at more at your resources The your emergency operation center you have a you don't have a full-time emergency operation center You have a temporary that basically is a facility that is it is used it takes a while to get started up It's oftentimes unavailable to be used for drills and I think that that's important that you should be able to It should make make that a larger a larger more important issue Situational awareness was a was a big challenge on in this particular situation You guys had your own your own issues through the through the communications to the EOC, but but more importantly the You weren't getting information that wasn't coming in from regarding the the nearby fires and in other communities adjacent communities The fact is that the chief was not informed that 74 Strike teams have been had been requested Information that would have been very helpful Training exercise is something that I think that you need to to step up here. It is something that does prove to be effective It it's you don't want to you don't want to meet You don't you don't want to have have to experience these things without having thought about them in beforehand And and also pre-disaster recovery planning something This is being done now and Sacramento and other communities around the country to think about what you're going to be doing in the event of a horrific disaster like you've had here Want to note that that Fire these fires don't respect municipal boundaries so you can take actions here within the community You can take actions regarding vegetation management policy You can take actions regarding other policies, but they're going to be much more effective if they're done as part of a regional effort and I really encourage you to continue to do that through to joy powers agreement my colleague matter locker wrote wrote a white paper included in our report about about that the that the in other disasters that we have worked on those the lessons that came out of those reports and Have resulted in in changes not only in those communities, but in others as well. We hope that you can Do I have been I actually I can name several Several instances what you've already had influence on policy in regarding evacuation water and so forth Is Noted in our report the city has already recommended has already implemented several of the recommendations that we had Today we learned more about this morning learning about continues improvement program has been shared with the council recently And finally I just want to note We as I said we've been doing this for a long time and doing it in a lot of different places They went through some really really hard times One of the things that really stuck out to me in this in this particular situation is that In some of these other communities everybody kind of turned against each other council members turned against staff The staff turned the turned against staff a lot of finger pointing a lot of a lot of accusations And I didn't see any of that here. I think that that is a tribute to your community This is this is the this is probably the I'm not say probably it is that with the worst disaster that we have done in these reviews and For the fact that you guys have come through this and and approach it in the way you have is something to be a product Very happy to answer any questions Thank you just for that presentation chief cosner I know you gave all of council a priority list of action items Or could you give us a highlight of what this document or how this document will be used in the future? Sure, so So this this is recommendations from the report right and both reports the Kelly Crowell report and in the operations report So what this does is gives us What the recommendations are who's working on it and timelines that we are supposed to achieve some of these Some of them have been completed Some of them are a work in progress a lot of this is a bit of a living document meaning we are always making improvements where we can And that's what we're using this document for really is to make sure we're monitoring our progress Make sure we can report out to council and the city manager moving forward on where we're at and why we're we're at right So it's a lot of its funding a lot of it is it just time and commitment And some of it is is waiting for other actions to take place whether it's at the county level The state level the federal level there's a lot of things that kind of go into some of these recommendations But everything we have control of we have timelines associated with them and we're trying to make the hit that mark So we'll be bringing this back on a quarterly basis to the council So this will be a living document there will probably things that will be added to this list of items and things that will Retire once we've put in the to affect the changes But the first go-around was to address The points that were raised in the after-action report Give the council and the community an understanding of where that process is and when we're expecting to achieve Deliverable there are some things that are going to be ongoing They are just going to be part of our annual way of doing business But one of the things that came out of the report Was a need to to realign Some of our communication and situational awareness And to have a better working understanding for the council during a disaster And one of the things we're going to start with is an exercise which will involve council members This summer and it's in the document We're going to put a policy committee together that policy committee will will be Have the mayor and the vice vice mayor involved, but all council members will participate Have the opportunity to participate in the drill and once we go through that drill together Then we'll be bringing back a written policy so that we have a way of understanding where that responsibility is But even embedded in that was when the city created a pio function for the city We now have a way to create a liaison which we didn't have before for council members So there's some things that are going to come forward over the next six months That's one of the things that I wanted to point to is that we're going to have this policy group We're going to drill around it and then we're going to bring back Through that experience and your input a recommendation on a policy that we can formalize around those particular types of events Great. I really appreciate that feedback and realizing that this is a living document And where will this be so that members of the public because that's one of the things that you know Obviously the chamber is not packed this afternoon, but there's a lot of a lot of this information I think many members of our community have no clue how complex this is and I think it'd be wonderful So after after tonight We'll we'll take any input that we garner this evening We'll finalize the document will publish the document with the report on the recovery site And it'll be there on going moving forward. Great. Thank you so much council questions. Mr. Vice mayor Thank you, mr. Mayor So as I was reading through the report I was trying to cluster it into themes and ways that we could sort of start a conversation or further a conversation with the public on What the particularly the criticisms were while highlighting the good and one of the main themes that I saw there was the need to break down silos and I really appreciate your focus on regional solutions to this So a couple questions for the city manager if we could update the public on where we are at on a couple of things In first and foremost we have talked quite a bit about What Long Beach with San Diego? But some of those jurisdictions do to pull people together on to weekly or bi-weekly phone calls For cross coordination. Can you talk a little bit about what we're now actively doing? So, yes, so one of the things that takes place on a weekly basis is a situational briefing that is hosted by the county I have to compliment the county They've stepped into They've leaned into this conversation. They've expanded their their their departmental responsibilities they Are actually proposing their budget to hire additional staff, but they're taking their their role as facilitator very very seriously And and we're feeling very good about that But what what is rude is they host a situational briefing call every Monday where we review any kinds of Events as well as incidents that are on the horizon all the cities and the county participate and that becomes the foundation That helped us weather and I think you I've heard from my colleagues at other cities Really weather the the the floods that happened there the report outs that we didn't get hit hit as hard But the report outs from the colleagues at other cities is that really helped them manage through a very very difficult situation So we're seeing that improvement. We're also working on the you saw joint powers authority We're working actively with county and other cities and we'll be bringing this back for consideration of this body to join a joint powers authority which would replace the old emergency council and create a Partnership between the incorporated areas and the county to really strengthen our our response and our preparedness initiatives, which is very similar as the council members put out as some of the other examples that exist around the state and It was noted in the report that it took 48 minutes I think was the number to get the EOC from a cold status to a to full-fledged up and running Are we in the process of doing a warm status for the EOC particularly around red flag warnings? So we are as you saw we're we're changing our our process around Triggers that were when we do forecasting models were we've done that through the wet season We're in the process of doing that Through the fire season we'll have that running before the before the end of the summer But absolutely to your point. Yes We are we're changing our process and it's going to be based on the forecast and what we believe the forecasting We have specific triggers around that Chief if I could get you to also talk a little bit about the difference between Weed abatement and vegetation vegetation management How should the community? View those two conversations Distinctly and what should they expect to see in the next call it six months to a year? Well, as you know, the weeds are very high right now, right even near my house here four and a half five feet tall They're still green. They're going to turn brown here soon with the with the heat in the wind so weed abatement really deals with that ground cover the weeds vegetation is more of the brush and the trees and the limbing and Producing that safe space around residences or properties to limit the spread of fire Right now the city has a weed abatement program We do not have a vegetation management program right now. We're looking at ways to we've applied for a number of grants Some we're waiting to hear on some we've already heard when we weren't successful on so there There's a number of things that we have been doing There's a number of things that we're looking to do even before we hear about the grant opportunity But we really need to make sure that what we're doing is is impacting The entire community 30% of our city resides in the wildland urban interface and within that 30% is 4.5 billion dollars worth of assets that we need to protect I'll remind you that Fountain Grove was a fire-wise community and we need fire-wise communities Oakmont's going through it There's other portions of the city that are looking at Skyhawk is looking at being a fire-wise community as well What that does is it helps us if a fire starts in our community It helps it remains small so we can get there and put it out What we saw on October of 2017 was the fire started in another county that really came to us under those high wind Situations by the time it hit us it was five miles wide. So it was very difficult To to fight anything like that because we just had to get people out But if we have a regional approach with vegetation management That would create Some space in these areas where we have some of these historical fires that lead to large loss of homes and in life Then we can make a difference, but it is a regional approach. It takes not only Sonoma County will take Napa County or take Marin County in some instances It'll take all the communities around us to do the same thing, right? So you can be the the most prepared as you can be but if nobody else is doing anything It makes it very difficult under those very very extreme conditions So it really does take an original approach the county's I think in making good headway and some of their Some of their vegetation management practices, and I know this state is really ramping up You've heard news with the governor and Cal fire what they're doing but the state is a very big entity so They have a lot that millions of acres to deal with right and so it becomes a challenge because there's only so much resource And I do recognize talk about resources that we are Advocating in Sacramento one of the things that was noted on on page 37 of the report was our request for mutual aid Did not arrive for about 36 hours because they were spread so thin I believe the governor is looking at increasing funding for mutual aid around around the state. Is that correct? Yeah, they're increasing increasing some funds. We did a lot of work last year behind the scenes with the state and Cal chiefs we have Disaster readiness for safer communities were 25 million dollars was put up by the state to upstaff during the red flags It's important to note that we had 10 11 maybe 12 red flags last year would probably lasted 20 21 days But not every red flag is the same Sacramento's in a red flag almost all summer redding is in a red flag almost all summer So it's a little bit different for us but what we really need is that predictive part of it and We know we've seen many presentations of what happened to us and I've given many presentations What we need is the predictive Analysis to let us forecast when that'll happen. It happens once or twice a year There's some years where it happens more there's some year where it doesn't happen at all But those are the days that we really need to hone in on and really upstaff really message That's when you open the warm EOC. There's a lot of things that go with that right now when a red flag happens We upstaffed with the county funds and we upstaffed with state funds So we had two to strike teams one strike team one task force for all red flags in Sonoma County It worked very well and when we didn't have a fire and fires are breaking out in other counties around us We send all our resources to them. We cannot hold on to resources when they're losing structures So it it does work But it we need some more refinement and I think we as a fire industry the weather service All that is trying to find where that that line is Yeah, I appreciate that I'll quote from the from the report Because I think it's it's telling On page 34 it says these fires show that the Tubbs fire should not be considered unusual All three fires meaning that the Hanley and the Great Fire as well Ignited in the Calistoga area occurred in autumn months burned a similar path and were exacerbated by the same hot northernly winds Though it is difficult to predict when the next fire disaster might occur these factors combined likely can cause another perfect fire storm And I know that that's something that we've talked quite a bit about Getting a modeling system in place similar to what we see with the Santa Ana winds down in San Diego looking for resources to do that I understand but I think that that is One of my biggest takeaways from this report is we have a lot of work to do to get there To make sure that our resources go a little bit further Yeah, and I will say let's talk about the strike teams. There were 78 there was ordered before midnight And while there was three major fires in our area the nuns the Tubbs and the Atlas all Three fires were dispatched by San Alina Cal fire San Alina the same dispatch center Three major fires running through multiple communities and they just did not have the staff to be able to parse that out So while we'll get a call in our dispatch center for a fire. It's a Cal fire incident So all requests go through them. So while they were They were requested it takes time to process that's almost 400 fire engines takes time to process and Some engines some strike teams that were dispatched to our fire had to drive through the Atlas and the nuns to get to our fire Right that just doesn't work under those situations. There was also instances where Dispatch centers were calling into blind which never happens any resource available. We need you to come up We're going to put you to work. Well, so they one strike team is going to a fire They get pulled up and they get sent to another fire So there was a lot of confusion that night because there was so much Fire in our area not to mention Mendocino and other communities. There was many fires that night And I you know Redwood Valley. They didn't get any resources sent to them right there on their own So while we did get some resources coming in Let we had some show up not the full compliment, but it was a slow trickle and it was painful And that's that's just we have the best mutual aid system in the world It's great for 12 to 24 to 36 hours when you need the resources right now If you don't dump everything in the East Bay, it's a problem and that's what we experienced So we have some workarounds. We've been working with OES the state and others to try to figure out how we be quicker Right, so it's it's all about For us right now We've kind of the conclusion when we have a fire like this or another Community in our region has a fire like that and they request equipment We are sending it whether regardless it comes from OES or not the request and we'll go mutual aid if it's a fire that's That's burning down homes will get reimbursed if it's not we'll get turned around and we'll eat the cost But we're sending resources. We cannot hold on to resources Can you talk a little bit or somebody talk a little bit it it mentions in the report? public meetings on sirens and it talks extensively about notification, and I appreciate that cute Just for the public. How can they be involved in that conversation since I know quite a few folks have reached out wanting to Yeah, we're in the process of kicking off a community wildfire protection plan for the our city And those conversations will be part of that Sirens to us are a little bit of a knee jerk reaction. It was great in the 40s and 50s They were designed when you were outside you hear the siren go in your house. There's going to you know, it's for bombing We use them for volunteers great and uses one so on a quiet day you can hear it in Santa Rosa on a quiet day Kenwood uses it to call their volunteers in right so there there are some agencies that still use them They do not work well when they're high winds In the middle of the night when your your house is closed up or you're on top of that you're hard of hearing Those just aren't effective ways to communicate with Our residents. They're great for in my opinion You live on fitch mountain. There's one way in one a way out, right?  So we're still having those conversations The way we're we're approaching our fire season since last year is we have multiple fire cameras that we have up There's I think 15 or 18 up right now Last year there was six to eight to ten depending on what part of the season you're in And we have a media board up in our dispatch center that has all the fire cameras up there during the fire season So if a fire somebody calls in a fire we can train the camera All right, we see smoke and then you can triangulate and figure out where it is We used it twice last year forcing them accounting work great We used it at night. We used it during the day and you're able to pinpoint With better accuracy And that was one of the things that we didn't have that night was situational awareness Santa Rosa was extremely busy before the tubs fire even started We had many fires in our own community multiple alarm fires So when that fire hit us, um, you know the tubs started at 9 45 And we were we had many communities helping us fight fires So it was it was very the situation awareness just was not there And we need to be better at that and we are better at that and we will continue to be better at that And I think all these conversations end up being integrated. So we're having conversations with the county about lifeline routes Which again are evacuation centers and we have to be careful about some of the conversations I know there's a lot of community input that's coming through and that's part of the community while the Community wildlife protection plan process But it's also making sure we have an integrated system to help people There have been examples of communities that have really recently really practice really hard at evacuation And because it wasn't an integrated model and they did it by themselves The result was frankly disaster You have to be careful about solutions and how we're applying those solutions And that's part of the reason we're spending a lot of effort trying to build this platform around a jpa So we can get to common vocabulary and common understanding because if we we can actually cause more Damage if we do things by ourselves if we're not working together I think that that's one of the big lessons that gets repeated over and over again A solution has to be a solution that's integrated and supported regionally And that's why these are very very complex conversations and conversations that that I don't think I have to compliment the council on the willingness to get in these regional conversations the willingness to have conversations with our state and federal electeds I can't diminish the fact that this community actually got certain things put in the reauthorization bill for the recent Federal register are the work that's being glossed over just a little bit in this report because you had a fuller report on this About fountain grove and the work that was done with the water quality issue has changed the epa processes and your this team Your your staff team has actually gone out and provided support to other communities that have experienced this Not just to support those communities, but how do we get to that common language statewide? And unfortunately we have some places where we would like the state to actually be more direct present less options for folks And sometimes we get pushback that well every community is special We do believe that but we also believe that it needs to be common language Across the the region and across the state and that's an imperative And that comes from this experience and I appreciate that. It's a great segue Last thing and then I'll turn it over to the rest of my colleagues Mr. State manager, I'm going to read a paragraph to you and I'm just hoping you can comment Or discuss a little bit recovery is moving forward But santa rosa could benefit from formal pre and post disaster recovery plans to help coordinate the long-term recovery effort Additionally, most of the recovery effort is being carried out by current city staff The challenge with this methodology is it oftentimes doubles the workload and contributes to potential employee burnout Now I know we've talked a lot about how incredible our staff have been I know we've talked quite a bit about trying to figure out how to prevent burnout Can you just talk a little bit about the long-term recovery plan and Any steps we might be taking to try to prevent burnout? So we're always taking that into consideration I mean, that's why we've worked very closely And we've actually contracted for service where we can I think I think one of the things that we've done is We're working with Ernst and young working with widow brian Hagerty to expand caps and then bureau veritas to expand staff capacity I there is a Much respect to charlie and his team. There is a theory out there that sometimes you go out and hire an additional workforce I think in the same report they pointed out that there's a there is some challenges around that About attracting and retaining talent in this locality and I will say I think part of the success and recovery is that the folks that have been Understanding the issue have been dealing with it and we're not creating another division To create another silo within an organization And and again, I think one of the things that you can point to is that there is a visioning exercise going on And that visioning exercise came out of this event and is about what you all have The the opportunity that the metropolitan transportation commission has presented us And this discreet conversation we're going to get down in our downtown specific land Which is going to change the way we realize Our how how we interpret our community council has been very clear about that so again I believe that we have met a lot of those things. There's no perfect solution Um, and we're not even talking about the conversations about what you what long term or short term liabilities You can take on anyone's stretch or period of time, but I think it's always going to be a challenge There are multiple ways to solve this issue, but we try to take this under consideration all the time how much we're asking of staff I I see it every day But I I would say Part of the success and we still have a long way to go has been that the same people that experienced It and work through it are actually managing the process During this during this transitional period Great. Thank you. Mr. Timmets Thank you, mayor Chief gosner, you know, we discussed briefly and I think a while back we talked about vegetation management ordinance Some of the work that you're starting to kick off and and I think it was supposed to come to the council Right around this time maybe in a couple of months But when I read the recommendations here Specifically about formation of a jpa, which I have a subsequent question on But formation of a jpa and doing some of this weed and vegetation management But instead as part of a jpa I mean, I guess my question is is the jpa has always kind of been out there in the background and outfield in my mind As a policymaker it's something we've we've slightly discussed we've we've touched on but I don't i'm not sure what concrete steps are being taken to actually achieve that not to mention the barriers Can you tell me or or staff about where we are with the jpa because it almost seems like we need to get that going sooner than What would it be? January 2020 And get that vegetation management So so like anything you there there are There are lots of stakeholders in this conversation There there is a need to talk to other incorporated cities And we are in a process council member about doing that and I and and we are in it We are helping that we are helping that process, but it is a multi jurisdiction conversation I'm hopeful that you will see something around that this summer The legal team has actually delivered me a first draft of that document But but we are working with our partners because it's not something we can do Solely it's going to be the other cities and the county in that joint powers authority So are we still moving ahead with a citywide vegetation management ordinance? And then you're going to fold that into a regional effort that will happen subsequent to what we do Yeah, we're going to work on a vegetation manager program as well as the weed abatement two separate things If the jpa when it comes through it'll fold right into that But we have to do what what we need to do to protect our community and part of that is reaching out educating providing those inspections and and and making sure we all right Public and private are doing everything we can to make it as safe as we can Okay. All right. Thanks you guys Miss comes Thank you and and thank you very much for Highlighting what a wonderful job our staff has done I think at all levels our staff has been amazing water department bus department I mean departments that you don't immediately expect to be first responders. We're behaving as first responders And I really appreciate your highlighting that Um, I also appreciate your highlighting the actions of neighbors and neighborhoods And I think we've seen before during and after some remarkable work done by neighbors and neighborhoods So thank you very much for that With that in mind looking at for example 1a On the recommendations list from the chief Um Activating the eoc sooner perhaps having it be warm Um when we have a wind from the northeast With low humidity And you know to establish specific sort of more more discreet not every red flag but a more discreet kind of Even more red flag Situation because that's pretty much. It's the it's the very dry High wind from the northeast it gets us into into big trouble If we have that is there a discussion going on where we would notify Our neighborhoods so that people can make a decision for example to evacuate early or to have their radio on or to keep their phone on that night or You know to be prepared For a notice to come I've driven through regions Where I've you know, there's been a sign that said you know red yellow green You see the fire warning sign as you're driving along You receive a really clear notice. It doesn't require a whole lot of siren infrastructure Have we had a conversation about having this kind of sign? Available in areas that need to know that the eoc is now at a warm state so that our residents know Yeah, we haven't discussed Creating signs to notify whether the eoc Is in a warm state?  Well, we lived it. We understand that we need predictive models There's a lot of good work going around that But a red flag There's many visions of a red flag, right? So we need a purple flag or a black flag and those are the days the eoc gets warmed up Those are the days we we're pushing out information all the time But you make a concerted effort to say look these conditions are the one percent conditions So pay attention. These are the radio stations you listen to we send messages out crews are out talking to residents So we are thinking that way and this will all be part of the community wildfire protection plan as well Because we need input from how do the citizens want to be notified because not everyone's on facebook Not everyone's on that we're having that particular conversation because I'm now following myself The wind direction and the humidity because I figured that out So I so of you So now when the wind direction and the humidity is in a certain way I behave a little differently and I would hope that my neighbors would be able to know that Without having to follow, you know those details about wind direction and humidity themselves just to receive a notice So I'm really When when I look at the critical recommendations that you've listed on page nine And I see emergency operations center coordination communication I may not be reading it quite right, but I keep hearing internal coordination and communication and I want to make sure That that becomes external Coordination communication with our neighbors. It is going to be you know, we are always externally faced So if that's if that's the if that's with perception, that's exactly the feedback we we need today Because that is is really we're talking internal and external One of the chief challenges in this in this incident is both the county and the city had stood up a Call center to handle issues that became a huge issue Just in communications because we were had computing competing communication messages confusing communication messages and you see even that is being addressed to The initiative that the Sonoma county Excuse me united way of wine country has Taken over the 211 system and I suspect We are going to be back not in this budget cycle But in a future budget cycle and asking you all to be investors in that model Because that's one of the keys to actually getting a consistent informational briefing So to answer your question councilmember that this would be a reliable place where folks could understand the current conditions It's one center that was coming back With with multiple languages being able to be fielded And taking a lot of pressure off of our 9-1-1 dispatch And it's how that worked in san diego. I'm hoping that we're looking at a similar We are and and I want to make it really abundantly clear that that's part of this is that it's not just internal facing it's external communications And you know again We're trying to make people prepared not just for fire events, but for all all hazard events in this summer We're doing a series of community workshops that was funded by the community foundation As one of the lead participants to go through neighborhoods to help people be better prepared But we need partnership just like during the firestorm where people help neighbors Community members have to be prepared. They have to take ownership of that And and we're not going to I think I think it's less than 3% of our population is first responders We're never going to reach everybody Neighbors have to help neighbors. You can't make assumptions. We need you to go out and knock on doors We need you to assist during an emergency situation. That's one of the big lessons here is that neighbors It wasn't just the first responders. It was neighbors helping neighbors We need that assistance. We're always going to be up on that which you have Segwayed me beautifully to my next questions You know, I have been a strong advocate of support of our Neighbors helping neighbors program the original one that we had was called cope And I am not married to the concept of cope. I would take a cert or any similar organization though cope is well Organized I have moved now within Santa Rosa three Three different neighborhoods each of which had very good and effective cope programs Including my new one which I was surprised when my neighbor came over and knocked on the door and said hello You're new to our neighborhood. We need your cope information. That's oh great. I didn't know it's still going here So I am aware that we are not Staffed in a way that makes us able to To do cope the way it could be done And even if we choose another mechanism Can you give me an idea? Will we be having a budget conversation about the cope system? Is it coming forward to us so that we can read Invigorate and energize it what and I think now is the time to you know They excuse the analogy of strike while the iron is hot So we we are going to be having a conversation in budget. The county has actually Budgeted for a position. We will be bringing a similar budget position back for consideration We are hopeful that there may be as this is a regional Model gain strength that there there may be some real synergy to make sure again That in all these exercises, we're using the same vocabulary across the county. So you are going to see Some things in the budget that are specifically referenced in here and strengthening our community Involvement and education is going to be one of those budgetary items Okay, is that included in the section 8a on the list from The chief i'm looking at 8a and then at 10 I think it's 10a and 10b are going to cover that topic Okay, and the other one I wanted to check was 13 B Which is the inventory of organizations and individuals that support emergency preparedness Those seem to all be linked to me in terms of cope activity Or related to emergency preparedness in our neighborhoods I think 13b is more directly responding to the voad and volunteers after disaster But I I do I want to I want to point out that that is a Another misanomer that that I think even voad would recognize Those that organization needs to be functioning even not after a disaster But As a continuous process And so we need to strengthen that that's one of the another things that one of the 211 system can help strengthen But we do need to work on that but I would say That could fall under that conversation, but we're going to be bringing forward a position That would be thank you to be doing some of that work because it is just not possible For the eoc manager to do that and do the eoc manager's job so To sum up where I was headed The three key points of communication training and exercises. I just want to make sure that they're not Limited to internal but our outward facing and really involve Our neighborhoods and our community engagement And then lastly There's no way we can ever staff up enough or resource enough for this kind of fire It's doesn't seem to me to be reasonable to have on staff The the personnel and the and the resources of our own To fight a peak fire every 30 years or every 10 years How do we I'm hearing that we're talking about this regionally But what's the kind of model that we would have for Having the resource stood up and available For peak fire seasons Within the context of the region or the state. I'm not really getting How you do that And I'm sorry, maybe it's is it here is no, I don't think it's here. I think that's an ongoing conversation I I just I think we we can't afford to have that many people on call council member that's That's going to be one of the the conversations not two either. So we're in this spot Well, one of the things that I think the jpa may be an opportunity to present is a commitment to be organized as a region And then figure out how we can leverage that to get investment dollars from the outside because frankly We're not going to be accessing some of the resources that other places do Based on population density based on risk that Homeland security money might be applied to those locations. We're going to be looking Frankly to sacramento To say we're structured in a way that will help mitigate your risk state in response If we have the right tools on the ground and the right resources So it is going to be a conversation Both on the state level there potentially would be a step conversation on the local level What do you want to invest in? county And citizens of this county to make sure that we are Having enough resources to address these issues, but we need a baseline understanding mitigation as we move Absolutely, I mean And we have a couple of different ideas about that but I I do appreciate that Yes, you know the first one may be vegetation management But I also think how we're constructing in the fire hazard area is another big one that we need to be talking about And I hope we include that under under mitigation It is going to be part of the conversation In fact, that's what's going to be the I believe the deliverable by The end of the calendar year is on the building code side building very much. I really appreciate it and again As a side note during the fire disaster I was receiving a number of phone calls from folks And in order to get an answer I called the fire chief He very politely explained to me he was busy He was and and I want to appreciate that we are looking for other routes of communication Because I he shouldn't have been answering a phone to me and I appreciate that he tried. Thank you. You're welcome Mr. Vice mayor Thank you Just really fast in this listening to my colleague I was struck by and maybe this is not the right document for it to begin with Feel free to say that but I was struck by how little Discussion there was in here of coordination with private sector and nonprofit entities as well in particular PG&E red cross our hospitals Our utility providers Comcast AT&T Verizon Those also seem like very critical connections For us to make sure that everybody is operating together Can you talk a little bit about why there was not more discussion of that or what next steps we might pursue on that front? a Late added scope to the project. We have been meeting with the all of the vo ad members all of the NGOs and identifying their What their recommendations are in terms of working and that that will be in a supplement to this report To your point about the I can't disagree at all. I mean, I totally agree with that that all members of the community that own the critical infrastructure Utilities and so forth work with them very often on on on efforts after after disaster events That is important as well and our focus and scope here was was was specifically on the city But I don't agree. I don't disagree with what you're saying at all And I would only like to add council member that that's one of the I'll say one of the most frustrating things is when you start to look at some of the after actions that come out Typically the state talks to the state the feds talk to the feds I I think that there's should be more energy because I don't know how we are all going to address It's it's already a struggle sometimes to get the attention of the state and the federal government and the county government But to try to have those comprehensive I believe that's a challenge that should be delivered to the state or the federal government That they should be trying to regionalize and and really look at these things and not have that fall back fully on the municipality There is some real struggle though In getting those agencies typically the state talks to itself And the federal government talks to us. How did we do right? They don't really they haven't set up real formal mechanisms especially the federal government about how to how to get together And compare after actions or where what's the missing in that conversation? So I think to your point it always becomes a where do we stop this conversation and frankly we could go on in analysis In a whole other set of circumstances, but to charlie's point We did recognize that that was one of the things that we really really wanted to capture And we've asked for some subsequent work on that front. I appreciate that. Thank you I I could address the two specific agencies you talked about so we have a great relationship with the american red cross And we coordinate with them and work with them all the time one change that's been made since the fire is um They're actually on our eoc notification now So anytime we activate the regional uh american red cross Coordinator is called immediately at least to check in with me and see Not that we had a problem that night actually opening shelters, but to see if we need their assistance immediately We've also made a space for them to be embedded in our eoc Additionally, we're having on a on a A spectrum of issues conversations with pg and e about Many of the issues that are at the forefront of this community's mind Neil could you just introduce yourself for the audience and our viewing public? Hi, i'm neil bregman. I'm the emergency preparedness coordinator for the city of santa rosa. Great. Thank you miss lemming Chief cosner and staff. Thank you very much for this presentation I'm keenly aware that i'm the only member of the council that didn't weather this firestorm With all of you and I just want to say from a constituent perspective Thank you so much for all you did and that you know It was a fire department and it was our neighbor to neighbor outreach that did save my home and my family That being said I do have one area of concern going forward which is That night of the fire, you know, I didn't find out about it till You know hours later when my mom called over and over and broke through the do not disturb I'm one of those people who doesn't have a landline doesn't keep their cell phone on at night and Would have been in a really scary situation And and when I got that call finally I jumped over neighbor's fences and woke other people up And so there I know that um, there are really good reasons that sirens may not work But there's also, you know some I challenge all of us to consider how we're going to get in touch with people who don't have Traditional methods of being contacted. I mean a siren if it had gone off in the middle of the night I would have at least turned on my phone or turned on the radio or something Yeah, I I don't disagree with you with that what I would say is Uh when my phone is on it's on vibrate during the day and at night time it's on As loud as it can be Now I get paid to get woke up at night. So but whenever that phone rings, it's never good, right? At night time I want to know what's going on. So I encourage everyone that has a cell phone You don't have to sleep with it next to your head But keep it in your room keep charge it before you go to bed because a lot of people charge it in the kitchen And it's silent, right? But that does not help us the way our The way communities communicate today Is is largely a challenge for all of us. So we have to employ multiple Ways of communicating and to make matters worse on that night We lost 70 something towers in the first couple hours which impacted The system greatly as well, right? Which means that you know If that were the case then, you know, it wouldn't have worked any way for everybody But the other thing too and and this is getting pretty personal, but when you have a baby sleeping You don't leave the phone on vibrate or anything I mean, I understand the greater point about public safety But that there are a significant portion of people who just aren't going to do it And so we need to be creative So that's going to be a challenge to notify everyone So I hear that and that'll be that'll be part of the discussion community wildfire protection plan Hey, um Thank you. I just have a couple questions on page 11 of the report There's some comments and you might have covered this a little bit Tony about careful consideration is given to department commitments for out of county assignments Is that related to mutual aid calls? Because I'd be interested to know that say we're on red flag warning You know, we need our all of our personnel here, but something's hit in marine county late county Can you tell me what that means to us? Well, what I could tell you is When we have staff It's for our community and for the county as well So if our neighbors need help we send help and when we need help they send help But I will tell you if we're not on fire and another community is we will send those resources out to fight fire So while we when we send a resource out we always backfill So the city is always whole the night of the fires there were everyone was in and all the equipment was tapped So people were in pickups and vans and everything that we get our hands on So we typically don't go with the station That's once we send a unit out the station gets staffed back up. Does that make sense? Yes, that does. Yeah Anything else where you done with that? I'm talking about the phone because I remember when we were in washington dc and your phone went loud obnoxious sound there was a medical emergency Is that the we are the wireless emergency alert? That's the wireless emergency alert for pulse points. So that activates for anybody So I have it on my phone If there's cpr needed Within a quarter mile my phone will activate letting me know so I can if I'm close by I could help It also tells me if there's a eds around so we can shock people But that is the same technology that that we did not use in october Which was the wireless of emergency alert we use soco alert, which is a knocked in wireless as an opt excuse me Yeah, wireless is a knocked out so everyone has it on their phone and lets you go in there and turn it off Soco alert is an opt in which means you have to sign up for it And when we send out an emergency notification, it'll it'll do that to your phone It'll activate and let you know what's going on right so with the we and I know what we are advocating in dc Is to get the private carriers to participate with can you give us an update as to where we are with that effort? Yeah, so the what we found the county did some tests Last year that we were part of we tested community of roseland I think I believe canwood the russian river area There was five areas that we the county tested we were part of that And what we found was that whether you had a tnt or verizon and you were in the same room One phone would go off and the other wouldn't and part of that was the way It was the system was designed how you create a polygon or the area that you want to notify If you're just out if the if your cell tower is outside that polygon it might not activate depending on the carrier So we're working with the FCC and the state we bring this up with these meetings that we deal with the state all the time Everyone needs to be on the same page if there is an emergency every tower needs to Be able to send the message no matter what? Who the carrier is because it's a matter of life and death. It's public safety. And so we're working through that it's I won't say we're there yet, but we're doing everything we can and we're working with the FCC as well, so That's about as much as I can update I mean where it's a problem for for me because it just does not make sense and And when you talk to the FCC or other folks they they kind of look at me too like yeah, that doesn't sound right But there's so many variables in the technology that it's difficult to pinpoint We're working towards it and with a regional approach with the other fire services This is is this a regional issue? That is being addressed regionally or is it just the senator was a fire department has an interest in no No, no, no, this is a regional regional approach. Okay, and can I read in the report that you Are they being deployed and if so what is the takeaway for residents that may see as I'm driving down coffee lane And I see oh the red flag. What would your recommendation to the members of the public anytime You see a red flag flying on a flagpole the fire station, which means we have a red flag condition Which means it's low humidity high winds combination of both that should alert people to pay attention Just like councilmember comb said she looks at weather differently now We also are trying to get that message out to the To the residents of santa rosa and quite frankly that's a county-wide system So the snowmobile fire chiefs Have bought all the flags for all the stations and the thought is everyone on those red flag days Would raise them and it would there would be messaging on all of our websites. This is what it means and why and when you'll see it great, okay Talking about sirens is my understanding not the center was the police department, but other law enforcement may have purchased sirens on their vehicles Which seemed kind of confusing as we're advocates for This regional approach a do you know it is that the case and b if one were to hear A police siren what message does that? what uh, so Napa county decided after the alice fire that they would use the high low siren which is not a Not a siren that we typically use in the state of california, right? So they reprogram the radios and that high low siren Is to alert occupants that there's evacuations in progress Sonoma county sheriff's department also went that way and I believe santa rosa pd is also Going to employ that so when you hear the high low That is to say that there's an evacuation order in place and to get out where we're out with that right now I am not sure But that is the thought it's more of a regional So so we're looking at that we've applied for some funding for for for that particular initiative But the the challenge is as I've understood it is even though there was an intent from some of these law enforcement agencies that the Once again the technology may be more challenging than the desired solution So I I actually my understanding is I don't believe Unless neil can correct me that that has actually been implemented yet I'm not aware that srpd has implemented the high low sirens whether they're on a police car, of course or fixed locations They're all outdoor warning systems that have the same Issues when you're inside a home at night with the windows closed and hearing them We have applied for a grant for something else which would be so there the noa radios the national weather service ones Can be used in other situations as well And we're working with the national weather service To be able to employ those as a way of warning the public and and if we were to get a grant do like a radio giveaway for the public which is Along with the other systems we uh so-called alert a more effective way of people in their homes being alerted That's something that's occurring rather than an outdoor warning system Which is likely to be unheard by the majority of the population And I totally get that I guess maybe if you just When we get the answer to find out what is here locally because as we've talked this is a regional issue and if if i'm On cross the line from the city santa rosa the county here this siren i'm not exactly sure what to do So it'd be great So that's that's one of the continuing and again, that's why we're trying to get some baseline understandings here So that we we are working in concert there there's There's progress there, but there's still a ways to go in that Okay, and this may be more for you mr. City manager on the recovery efforts Kind of was touched on finding nine in finding 19 The long-term recovery efforts and I didn't see rocks in the county mentioned here anywhere where it's in Related to the individual recoveries How does that incorporate into this report and our action plans? Or is that a separate conversation? So I think you heard From from charlie that we've reached out to have some of those conversations with the vo ad team that became the rock team We will have subsequent There'll be a amendment to this which will include some of that documentation. Thank you very much Council any other questions before I go to comment Okay First card is from dwayne duit followed by thomas ells Hello, my name is dwayne duit. I'm from rosalind within santa rosa The rosalind fire district had a fire siren that worked very well for a long period of time Everyone that lived near the rosalind fire station on burbank avenue Knew that when the siren went off There was a serious fire Somewhere along the way technology came up people convinced themselves that oh, we'll do something newer and better And yet I do believe that sirens When the community is educated that that siren goes off like out in greaton Where they're fired and cost much to maintain that siren system and have it for the all out emergency type of situations And I do believe you could actually get federal funding for it under what used to be called civil defense There was a whole situation back in the day when we were worried about The bombing from the russians There we had shelters We had alarm systems We had it all in play and it was something that was recognized and was useful So I understand everybody perhaps wants to go with a different approach, but I do believe that warning sirens and a well educated public about That noise means fire in your neighborhood and you got to get going We'll be quite helpful. Thank you for your time and good luck on your efforts Thank you. Thomas ells Hi, thank you for having this discussion um It works its way up sort of to a high level discussion project management is often where you work up to a high level Back to a low level up to a high level back to admit and a marriage of all of those things in between um I would like to ask if and I'm not really able to address the the consultant. So, uh, charlie, I believe If they evaluated the new book point patrol About view point up here and those people who saved their houses Nine people in a dog, whatever. I don't know what the dog did. I think the dog carried water. I don't know um And how they saved those houses and and also pomo village and and how they saved their village and as I understood from uh, one of the uh pomo native although he was from Point arena, but he said that I think seven of their homes burned in that village. So I mean, it wasn't like they didn't have anything happen You know, they saved a lot of houses and they had a lot of them burn in the pomo village up there Uh in redwood valley And and the way they did it was with volunteers And using all kinds of equipment and and all kinds of of things that were were ordinary equipment If you if you will construction equipment, I don't mean you pulled it out of your back pocket But but there were Significant pieces of equipment that they had that were around and they could use those But it was it was a sort of a ad hoc If you will And I would also and one thing I would point out about that is it It's imperative on us Of the there's a thing called the common enemy doctrine and that's the doctrine of all of our laws One of the main parts of our laws that is the common enemy doctrine that requires us to participate to protect our selves and our infrastructure and things At the same time that the neighbor is so these things is that you would have With regard to joint powers and so on those fall under common enemy and they should they should In fact, I can't see how they couldn't participate. They must participate But at the same time they're going to be watching out for themselves So I would have questions. How are we going to evacuate? I mean if you really thought about it, you have a joint power or whatever people are coming up here To help and how are we going to evacuate? It'd be nice if we had all six lanes or something going south But you can't do that if you're going to have people coming in So how are you going to do that? And then mike thompson has created this thing and Everybody's involved in this this national infrastructure plan that should involve the the water Water lines water fire prevention and these things Empowerments and development of water. Thank you. Thank you thomas Those are all the cards we have council any final comments I just want to thank you for the report it did As councilmember flimmy mentioned having not been here but having been there and being in that area it's I found myself in the important putting names and faces to police lieutenant one or the others because as you were saying I think one of the treasures of this community is that it's the relationships So one of chief gosner's folks is calling one of chief schriders folks and they're connecting right away because it's not the first time They ever talked they've been working on community problems For a long time and that's you know credit to all senior staff and all the city that we're all in this together Neighbors help my neighbors. So thank you for the presentation And with that we are going to take a five-minute recess and reconvene at four o'clock Okay, we'll reconvene The april 30th city council meeting Madam city clerk could we get an announcement of the roll call? Let the record show that all council members are present Report on steady session mr. City manager. Would you like to do that briefly? Nothing additional to add Madam city attorney closed session council held closed session This afternoon discussed the item gave direction to staff and We'll be moving forward from there. Thank you. All right. We have a couple of proclamations Ms. Forman proclamation for children is more of flag day And if uh, greg spaulding or mike miller are here this proclamation is For you gentlemen um Whereas the fourth friday in april is recognized as children's memorial flag day throughout sonoma county in memory of children who have died by Violence and whereas throughout america tragic cases of violence against children who were Frequently insensibly and destroy innocent lives and devastate families And whereas the people of this The city of santa rosa believe in the celebration of life diversity and hope for the future Through our children and deplore and condemn acts of violence committed upon children of our communities and whereas Moves minimizing occurrences of violence in everyday society and the sonoma county human services department Are committed to raising individual and public consciousness of the need to care for our children and honor young lives lost and whereas Moves has acquired a children's memorial flag from the child welfare league of america Which has become a recognizable symbol of the need to do a better job of protecting children in which Is sponsoring a national effort to memorialize child victims in which has been adopted in the other california communities And now therefore be resolved that i tom schwedhelm mayor of the city of santa rosa on behalf of the entire city council In memory of our children who have died by violence do hereby proclaim the fourth friday in april as children's memorial flag day Sir, would you like to make some comments? I see you in the mic Okay, we can just stand here It's an honor to be here before you are mr. Mayor and city council My name is steve barry and we've been working with the group moves now for over 20 years Move was started originally by I'm judge honor rosenfield He wanted to bring about something called the day of non-violence And so for 20 years now we have been doing that Usually it's a friday in the month of november Since this is the month of april, which is child abuse prevention month We come before the city council and we ask to have the proclamation issued and so thank you for doing that We were asked to point out you see the silhouette of the missing child Last time we didn't do that just wanted to bring that to your attention So in addition to having the memorial flag We still have the day of non-violence, which is a day in november And it's usually a luncheon that we we have and we honor Individuals and groups that are working toward the causes of peace And so we always like to say we only have that one day of non-violence But it's our hope that every day will become the day of non-violence And this is john and john goring like to say a few words too. Once again, thank you all for your support My name is john goring. I'm also a board member of moves In addition to the flag and the proclamations this april for the first time moves has Distributed a no-violence sticker Um, and we're currently distributing them at the toy works in sabastopol and at fair market in santa rosa We're looking for more participants This is a way to get a symbol of the desire of our community to support non-violence So we thank you again for your participation in our movement Great. Thank you so much All right, we have one more proclamation. Mr. Oliver is the volunteers and police services Thank you, mr. Mayor. I get to welcome uh, quite a few VIPs in our community this afternoon. So I'll ask them all to come forward I think we have Ken and Dave and ron and less and richard sandra, maybe a host of others that are coming down And I'll begin reading the proclamation Whereas april is national volunteer month to honor and recognize those individuals who volunteer their time and talents with the santa rosa police department Which benefits the santa rosa police department itself as well as the residents and visitors of the city of santa rosa And whereas the santa rosa police department's volunteers and police service program VIPs has been in place since 1997 and whereas the santa rosa police department greatly relies on its vips for a variety of services including neighborhood watch presentations Citizen police academy use citizen police academy Policia policia y la comunidad senior expo iron man the human race rose parade other community events downtown ambassador program abandoned vehicle abatement the tree lighting ceremony enforcement of disabled parking laws graffiti abatement bike safety and bike rodeos photography of events and various administrative duties and whereas in 2018 22 vips live in excess of four thousand six hundred and eighteen hours Which results in the city of santa rosa savings of approximately 215 thousand six hundred and seventy five dollars during the past year And whereas the assistance they provide both the department and the community is essential in providing customer service to the santa rosa police department And to the citizens of the city of santa rosa Vips help make santa rosa a safe place to live work and play Therefore be it resolved that mayor tom schwedhelm the city of santa rosa on behalf of the entire city council Thanks and extends gratitude to the volunteers and police service Mayor council members apparently they're shy when it comes to toting their own horn the proclamation said it all in some ways You're talking about a group of individuals that donate four Thousand hours annually to this community giving back in so many different ways As well as other communities when they ask for it over in sabastable for different parades and events They're here on our streets helping our neighbors and community members for vacation checks and these kinds of things and Recently we had the honor to bestow the badges on two vips that had been with us I think john g was 18 years and Bill was 16 So you're talking about individuals that not only donate to this community But have been part of the santa rosa police department in family Longer than many of the members that have been working for us now So we do appreciate all the works the vips do for us. Thank you very much Thank you chief and I would invite all of my colleagues to join us for a group photo down I asked some of the vips if they're going to stick around for the whole mean And they said they'd stick around as long as the chief does so I said the standard hank All right, mr. City manager. Do we have a fire recovery and rebuild update? Yes. We have two presentations today The first will be by gay bosborn and the second will be by jason nut Good afternoon mayor schwedhelm and members of the council I appreciate the opportunity today to provide an update on some of the rebuild efforts that we've been undertaking for a while now Specifically the the focus of the discussion today is going to be on some of the public outreach in the form of document preparation And we've really been doing this since the very get-go And we found that it's really important to maintain consistency and messaging So as we really presented with a problem in the rebuild we developed solutions And then we then presented those solutions in the form of a variety different documents And very early on in the process most of these are really associated with the physical rebuilding process But very early on in the process we began began engaging the standing home community because we knew as the Rebuild progressed standing home community would have a different set of issues and a different set of concerns And now that we're occupying more homes the standing home community is actually increasing So recently we actually Created a new document and I do apologize. I will have to do a refresh here That focuses on the standing home, which we're referring to as our welcome home document And really we cobbled together as many resources as we could That focus on the various things that someone coming back to the community would need to know about So we really partnered with the postal service to get a better understanding about Reestablishing mail service We worked with PG&E and they developed documents that were very specific to someone coming back and the resources They would need from an energy efficiency standpoint And we also factored in noise construction activity Which is something that as people come back they will have to deal with so in each of these sections We have provided the appropriate point of contact And included as much as we could to direct them to getting the appropriate questions answered So we roll this out as of today This is really a collaboration of as I mentioned multiple agencies as well as many community groups We work closely with the coffee strong group the block captain group And we really do want to look at this as a living document So this is going to be the first version as we find that there are more questions out there We'll incorporate a more or a lot second versions of this. So that really Finalizes the summary. So at this point we can open it up to any questions you may have Council any questions I just want to throw not a question but just thank you for your efforts I know david's up there your direct report Gabe was there last night at coffee strong He's always at those meetings along with leo and jesse and just the whole center was a staff Two weeks ago. I think we had lieutenant snetsinger there And bob aller has been there and what I really appreciated is that the residents Of this community get that we really are working on this thing together because as you know, you know We'll admit our mistakes and we own it and we end up working on a product that works for everyone here So I truly appreciate the efforts and your continued commitment towards this rebuild effort is very much appreciated by all of us So thank you Gabe Mr. City Manager your next presentation Good afternoon mayor schwedhelm and council members jason nut director of transportation and public works As we prepared for a public meeting with council member Fleming this last week We started thinking that that the information that we're we're setting up to provide Thought it would be a good idea to deliver to the entire council. I'm in particular relating to the Disposition of street light repairs at sidewalk and street tree repairs Our street light program is starting to progress We have about 500 street lights that were damaged during the during the fire itself that we're working on recovering We've been working closely with PG&E as a partnership and an effort to restore Street lights and power to those street lights in those areas where we had substantial damage In particular PG&E's underground system as you're aware was damaged in both covey park and and hidden valley And it's it's been a A coordination effort for us to work with them to ensure that our service lines that feed the Street lights are also repaired and put back into service the way they were intended to be And in some cases we're having to do full redesigns of those service lines So we've got contractors being prepared that will be coming out into the into the community in particular coffee park starting in july That will be specifically working on trying to restore those street lights So that the temporary power poles and street lights can come down in the coffee park neighborhood Similar work will be happening in hidden valley shortly thereafter And then we're focusing our efforts on trying to keep The other street lights that are that were damaged up in fountain grove and getting those restored Our staff is currently doing about 10 to 15 restores a day. I'm sorry restores a week So we're getting about 10 to 15 street lights put back into operation every week We are running into some some material issues And so we've got a number of materials on order in fact just about every piece of material We're going to need to fully restore the system Is is in the process of being ordered some are already in the mode of being produced and shipped Simple things like a globe that goes on the top of a post-top street light That has a four to six week lead time And so those are on order and they will get here as soon as they're here will begin to deploy We also have a number of fixtures that need to be repaired on the inside and we are converting from High pressure sodium lights to leds. So we are changing our mode as we're doing restoration All of those things are qualifying expenditures for fema because it is the new standard As we're moving forward So we are in attempts to try to get all of these street lights repaired by the end of summer That is our goal. That is what we're going to be focusing on There is one window or one component of the operation that we have not yet started on There were a series of wood poles about 60 wood poles that were burned during the fire Wood poles had direct burial cable that went into the pole So all of the cabling is gone the pole is gone The fixtures are all damaged because they fell from 18 feet to the ground And there's no foundation for a wood pole And so in those communities we have to begin and completely redesign and build those Systems from scratch in an effort to try to be fire safe moving forward. We've also utilized We're going to be utilizing a different pole type It's our intent to try to match the type of pole that was there previously Which is a wood pole with a carriage light on the end We will be moving forward with a steel aluminum pole That will have the similar carriage light fixture on it, but it will be a steel pole And it'll be fire resistant moving forward So those are some of the upgrades that it's our intent to try to to match as best as we can the community aesthetic While still trying to improve things moving forward to On the street tree and and sidewalk side Sidewalks as we talked about before we are currently We are currently denied by FEMA for receiving reimbursement for making any sidewalk replacements. That's under the That's because of an ordinance that the city council established that that made the sidewalks the funding property owner's responsibility We are in the process of Appealing that denial and we have yet to have our final say With FEMA in front of us to be able to state our case on this We do believe that there are some legal issues that that make our position because of the extenuating circumstances The correct position and we are going to be continuing to lobby FEMA to help them see our position in our case With that said, we did notify Residents up in Fountain Grove recently that if you have the opportunity or you or you feel the need to move forward with sidewalk repairs Please feel free to do so because I can't be convinced that we're going to be getting support from the federal government to assist In that case on the street tree side staff has Finished an entire arborist report that identified all trees that were directly within the city's right-of-way Or immediately adjacent to the city's right-of-way that could pretend that could pose a potential threat To to those individuals using the right-of-way that arborist report has been submitted to FEMA as part of the process of that public assistance project And we are in the process now of soliciting contractors in an effort to figure out how we're going to Begin taking those trees down. It is our interest in taking all of the trees along the street As part of our process And we're still looking to see how that's going to function with FEMA We have not received a green light from FEMA to move forward with that yet However, we are working closely with them to try to get them to understand that this is an important component And I expect that we'll be having more and more discussions in the next three to four weeks With our counterparts there so that they understand what our what our position is So I wanted to just give you that update on those three items as people start to move back into their communities There seems to be a heightened sense of interest in those three I wanted you to know as well as the public to know that we are actively working on those We've not been sitting um and doing nothing over this time We've really been focusing on on how best to position ourselves to receive FEMA reimbursement And to do the a comprehensive job in doing this type of restoration for our communities And with that, I'm happy to answer questions Great. Thank you Jason Council any questions? Veronica Victoria go ahead I just wanted to thank you director net as well as mr. Osborne and Mr. Nelson from srpd as well as lanie wall and the community advisory board for coming out To the found broke block captain meeting last week I think that that's going to be the first in a series of meetings and a campaign of communication with our residents who are Repopulating and rebuilding in our in our fountain group neighborhood. I know that we have lessons learned from coffee park And I'm hopeful that we will be is effective in communicating as as in this neighborhood as we were in coffee park So I want to thank you and your staff and your counterparts for your time I do have a couple questions. Just you had mentioned the trees Can you talk? Let us understand the difference with the trees stumps and sidewalks and there's got to be an order That it takes place and how does fema fit into this? And what can you tell our residents how to deal with those that trifecta? Really you're going to throw fema in there Again, just so I think I think the overall issue that we're going to face with fema Is their interpretation? Of our ordinance I think the city attorney has communicated to us That that isn't necessarily where we should be drawing the the line and we are going to have subsequent conversations But I think just an overall issue Fema has taken an interpretation that those are the property owners responsibility We may have a different point of view Moving forward in fact, we do have a different point of view and but it is an iterative process And so we're going through an appeals process. So that's the overarching statement And now I'll let the director Discuss the the minutia Yeah, so the the street trees actually we've not received a notice of determination on the street trees We are moving forward and proceeding as though this is a fema eligible project We've only received a notice of determination on the sidewalks On the street trees there are three components to street trees that we're taking into consideration So we actually have to divide our thought process three ways. There is a fema eligible tree Those are trees of substantial size substantial meaning. They have six inch diameter trunk four foot off the ground and greater An ineligible tree is anything lesser than that at four foot from the from the ground And so both of those That trees have been separated into different lists Then there's the stumps on fema in their in their protocols do not allow the removal of stumps And thus the stump is is exposed 50% and in a fire that doesn't happen unless it's exposed from the top because the tree burned all the way to the ground So all three of those specific pieces are ones that we've we've uh are incorporating into our bid process We're treating fema are we're working with fema with those as individualized projects and we are Talking to our staff as to how we would address those in different ways if we depending upon the type of feedback We get from fema great. Thank you. I know it's very detail and I just and I know city staff isn't working on this It's not as easy as I think a lot of people think just cut the tree down and we're done much more complicated We also talked about how different areas are now being repopulated What would residents who believe that one of their neighbors let's say it's still a vacant lot has burned out trees So now it's a private property not public right away. What should they do if they feel that tree is a hazard to their own yard house property Yeah, I might Look to my counterpart gabe if he wants to come back down If if they believe there is a question or concern And gabe might be able to correct me. I mean first We need to they need to contact so they can contact somebody here and we will help to navigate that Ultimately, there may be other places like their insurance company or Code enforcement that would help justify that but gabe So there's a few different situations that could potentially prevent present that risk So obviously there's a vacant lot with the tree and no active building and that's a little bit of a different situation than if there is active building So typically on those vacant sites if they have some level of surface movement If there's a building permit, we will work with the contractor to expedite the removal of that tree If it's interpreted to be a threat to the adjacent property owners or the public right of way The more challenging situation is obviously if the lot is vacant and inactive Tracking owners because parcels have changed In some situations we have utilized code enforcement for that that is normally outside of the fire rebuild the tactic to do that What we're looking at is a more kind of collaborative solution to figure out holistically how to deal with all of the trees So there's a lot of discussions happening right now We do not want to bog down our code enforcement team. We're trying to figure out how our rebuild team can help with that I properly identify the trees and properly identify the threat More more questions do arise as the building happens So we're looking at that now and hopefully we'll be able to develop some solid solutions in the next few weeks Because we're getting into that fire season with a level of activity Increasing as well the level of occupancy is increasing So we also have an outstanding hazard mitigation grant that is is to address this issue Our understanding is is that currently at it's been passed on from the state to that's how the process works The state to the federal government for review But we're looking actively at what iterative state steps we might take Without jeopardizing the grant and its status. So it's an active ongoing conversation And also as we've been as we've now completed the public right-of-way evaluation We're going to be looking at public properties in the same way that we're asking private citizens to do Okay, really appreciate that information council any other questions. No, thank you for the reports All right, item nine sitting me on it or do you have a report for us today? Bear with me just a second From recreation and parks The recreation and parks department hosted their annual senior expo at the person senior wing this past saturday 56 vendors shared resources demonstrations health screenings nutrition Safety and travel tips to 400 seniors seven sponsors supported the event including two major sponsors via capri and Sutter health community engagement the office of community engagements violent prevention partnership hosted the third annual parent engagement month A series of trainings and educational opportunities delivered to parents of high-risk youth to strengthen families and build safe communities The april 2019 lineup included trainings To santa rosa city school district english learners advisory committee and laurence cook middle school's parents club A community policing workshop with srpd in the roseland area and a family engagement night in the south park area. Thank you Great. Thank you. Madam city attorney. Do you have a report for us? I do i have the quarterly report of litigation Um and settlements I would note that we had no settlements In the first quarter of this year We did however resolve three of our cases at no cost to the city That included a summary judgment in a wrongful death action A dismissal of a claim for personal injury as well as a dismissal of a negligence claim again Those three cases were at no cost to the city So our pending litigation list includes 14 cases eight of those cases are scheduled for trial before the end of this year So there's a lot of work going on in those cases In all of the cases discoveries underway and in several of the cases we're engaged in some some rather Detailed and lengthy settlement discussions I'd also note that that list is primarily the cases in which the city has been sued the city is Is a defendant what is not on the list or some of our cases where the city is the plaintiff and suing others so most Significantly is the pgne litigation And that is moving forward both in the bankruptcy court and before the cpu c And particularly the cpu c proceedings are very active at this point. So our folks are are engaged in all of that List also doesn't include our code enforcement cases. We have a number of code code enforcement cases including three Active receiverships at this point another couple probably in the works This also doesn't identify some of the Um a shorter Matters that we address the weapons issues and the pitches motions and we have quite a few of those as well In terms of new claims that were filed in the first quarter We have eight new claims including five personal injury Cases or claims two claims regarding police actions And one claim regarding to a fatal traffic accident So we will be addressing those and working with risk management on those claims as well And happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you. Council any questions Seeing none. Thank you for that report statements of abstention by council members I'll be abstaining from item 12.4 Any other abstentions i'll be abstaining from the boards and commissions conversation earlier today buddy Mayor council members reports who would like to start I'm not sure i'm getting whisper over here, but I do want to bring something up. It is You know one of the things currently actually can I ask you mr. City manager? What public banking is it did that make it to our priorities list one two or three this year? I can't recall It did not make it on any lists on any tier it there will there will be a conversation about the Work plan and the tiers next week. Okay, but but it is not on any tier and in fact It had I can only say that the long-term finance committee reviewed it and did not recommend it to bring forward Because there is no Viable way to do it at this time although there are discussions about There needs to be some legislative changes. I believe that's what was determined in them in the meeting with a long-term finance committee Yeah, and on the the legislative front there's a plan to discuss at the mayors and council members legislative executive committee We just haven't met because of the league of cities Get together an action day that happened Last week when is that that reception going to be that meeting with mayors? It's not the it's not the full reception with all of the council members being invited. It's the monthly Meeting that has one council member from each city to talk about legislation Sacramento that have that impacts us And that one I want to say it's three weeks out, but I've got a check for you three weeks out Okay, I do want to make a motion that we we do discuss a resolution for assembly bill 857 which is that bill that I think helps allow cities like ours to have a path forward under the department of business oversight To create a public bank now. I understand that we don't know where the league of cities is or where we are yet But just just to get it on the agenda if there is a second in the room I'd like to do it and then hopefully we can bring it back to council for discussion after you council vice mayor rogers Have your your report out from from that that meeting. I'll second it for discussion Okay, we had a motion second so Agenda discussion on ab it was 857 mr. Tibbets. Thank you anything else on your report Sorry, that was the whisper. Okay, I'll work more to follow. Go ahead. I will give an update on the renewal enterprise district, which Council member combs and I are a part of and she's the vice chair of the red We started to continue or what we've been working on starting with our first meeting is honing in on what the criteria is going to be That this red really looks at to help spur housing creation Two important things that this council needs to be aware of one is that we sent a letter To the state of california and governor newson's office requesting funding assistance to help kick start the renewal enterprise district He's been pretty Upfront that he wants to see entities like this exist to remove regulatory barriers But also create the right type of housing that california is looking for and we felt like this was in lockstep with that So we've sent him a request and i'm sure Assistant city manager guen will update us on when if and when that funding comes through the hopper The second big one that we went over in the renewal enterprise district was discussion of an enhanced infrastructure finance district This is something that the council is going to have to weigh on in the future because if the renewal enterprise district jpa board decides to press forward With an enhanced infrastructure District it's going to require buy-in from both jurisdictions that will do some of the profit sharing of the Future earnings of their property tax revenue Specifically the city of sanarosa and the county of sonoma We did we there were some examples of what the revenue sharing would look like but no No commitments or even conversation really went into that that detail. So we're just getting ideas at this point and either I or councilmember combs will continue to keep you updated on those meetings Just as an addition at some point we will need to talk about if we have Eifd dollars tax dollars for the tax increment Um At some point we will have to decide how much or what percent will we put into the red housing fund for the jpa And uh, I think that that rises to the kind of decision that we need to bring to you all and i'm Hoping that that we can count on staff to do some presentations on that so that it's really clear what our options are And what our long-term consequences will be And I had asked the city attorney a question about this is that Yes, and I was just going to clarify that the decision of Formation of the eifd and the percentage that the City would contribute Uh to the red those are both decisions for the city council as a whole as a legal matter. So done with report This comes are you done Did you yet did you want to make a report? Uh, no, thank you. I mainly just wanted to ask that was a wonderful and interesting meeting and I appreciate staff's involvement in that jpa that read I did ask at the last meeting when the cap it meeting would be scheduled And uh, haven't heard from anyone about the scheduling for the climate action plan Uh, technical advisory committee, which is often referred to as cap it I asked that at our last meeting, which I think was more than So I think again I think next week is going to be and I don't know if the mayor is going to announce something tonight Which will drive some of these other conversations, but there's not anything scheduled waiting Some additional input at this point. That's why there's no update because nothing's been scheduled Was that it? Okay, I have a couple things first Start with 11 point one point at the ground water sustainability agency the gsa had a board meeting on april 11th We received an update on the ground water sustainability plan. It looks like the county is trying to find some funding to support Rule well owners so to our next meeting and I apologize. I don't have the specific date But decisions will be made at that next meeting in the only Specific vote we took or one of the specific votes we took both Linda hopkins, who's the current chair and I whom the vice chair were both Elected by her peers for another one-year term on the gsa board And then on item 11 point 1.9 homeless system of care our leadership council in this chamber We had a meeting on april 17th. It was a continuation of our march meeting where we decided approximately 14 million dollars in funding So I don't have all the different agencies and projects that were funded. It is somewhat of a moving target I'm not a hundred percent sure is what the board did today to see if those funding levels remained But on the homesonoma county website all of those funding Decisions are posted Until I see it in writing, you know, all yeah, so Then on to some other things on April 22nd Councilmember combs is mentioning we had our goal setting subcommittee and both Councilmember fliming to myself provide a feedback to staff regarding our specific priorities Identify the engagement as feedback on regarding specific smart goals specific measurable achievable relevant in time bounds So that will be returning to this body on our may 7th correct said manager We're still on track for that. So may 7th. This body will be voting on accepting those recommendations Additionally, one of our tier one priorities was implement the climate action plan We had three specific items 100 renewable energies city council subcommittee on climate And then all electric ready ordinance. I am prepared to Appoint myself councilmember combs and vice mayor rogers to be members of that climate subcommittee So that should give the information that the city managed to do our next step to form that committee And the last thing that we attended last wednesday I think it was legislative action day in the capital Vice mayor rogers was there councilmember fliming was there along with city staff lobbying for Seem like a lot of housing bills that we're supportive of So it was a great opportunity for Connecting with air legislators, but also other city council members League of california cities sponsored a couple of different presentations So it's great to talk about items of similar interest And I appreciate the city manager and your staff for Any courting in that busy scheduling for vice mayor rogers getting us in on an unscheduled visit. That was great Okay, any other reports Seeing none moving to Item 11.2.1 This was I believe my item to receive direction. I'm looking at our city clerk You're right george my bad One card on 11.1 george uberty Oh, yes, sir. Thank you so much So there are a lot of uh, how y'all doing there are a lot of agencies on here Well, let me start by saying the first thing that I want to say is thank you Because I heard y'all mentioned a public bank So you can hear Your ears are open. Absolutely. Everybody in this city wants a public bank. There is not a person outside of you That trust banks to do anything positive for us. They're private organizations. They serve private interests a public bank serves the public interest all right now You heard us say that Congratulations to you and I mean it The guy who means what he says if you've caught on Now I want to talk about the rest of these agencies. I see a lot of them here Sonoma county water agency the homeless system of care, right? And I hear a lot of conversation about how we're going to find money Right, and I think that we have a lot of conversation about how to find money Because pretty much 100 of the time that we're not in this building. Y'all are hiding it Um, and you use organizations like this to hide it I see what seven eight boards here. I can I would be shocked if there were that many members on the board Right what y'all do is appoint yourselves. I mean you've already done it today You appoint yourselves to head these boards, right? You get uh, you get a per diem every time they meet Right, you have a simultaneous meeting eight nine boards You get a thousand dollars in your pocket and you make pretty much every significant decision That needs to happen, right and unsurprisingly a lot of those decisions just kind of move money around in ways That end up in your pockets and a lot of your friends pockets All right, um now a public bank Would be one of the very first steps that we could take To to making that process a little bit more difficult for you all All right There's no i'm not going to stand up here and and play pretend like everyone else in this room. It's time for that to stop All right, it's it's just it's time for that to stop. We need to be grown-ups about this Okay, now I recently went to a Sonoma county board of supervisors meeting And uh, they were discussing the proposed water budget rates for the upcoming year All right now You know while they were discussing that I I had a look at the operations and maintenance budget for that 769 uh million right now just in storage and bonds Right, uh the storage common bonds or that's 122 million. That's that's uh about 16 percent of the total operation and maintenance budget Just caught up in doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with the quality of our water in hiding money and moving it around You know putting it in bonds creating financial products. It's not what a water agency does All right water agency cleans water Right, it's a steward of public resources. Nobody owns water All right belongs to everybody and it's our business as a government to take care of what belongs to everybody not to make securities With that's a ridiculous thing to do. All right. It's time to pull our heads out of the clouds Get them right back here on earth where they belong start taking care of public resources Thank you. All right 11.2.1 I wanted this on the agenda action to take a position on the casa compact letter because it appears is um Though could you firstly have foundation about your legislative committee because the mayors and councils at our last meeting formed a Subcommittee to I believe create another letter in support of what you did and I'd like some feedback from this body As to which direction they would like me to support Yeah, and just by way of a little bit of background the Every city in Sonoma county appoints one council member to the mayors and council members legislative task force And what the task force does is it meets once a month and it discusses pending legislation in sacramento That impacts cities What we do is we bring them together. We discuss once a month Potential positions that we should take and If all nine cities are unanimous in what our position is support or opposed on this legislation Then generally we take that position if it is a substantial bill Or if more than seven of the cities but not nine cities Agree on a position we'll make a recommendation to the full mayors and council members association and I can't remember if it's monthly or if it's quarterly Every council member from the region is invited to come and discuss those pending issues When it comes to the cost of compact We had multiple substantial conversations at the executive board committee both about the compact in its concept and the 10 outlying issues As well as the way that the Legislation is being crafted in sacramento. Those two things are very distinct from one another Particularly given that the compact is All or nothing But each individual bill is the elements of the compact and are not necessarily linked whatsoever to the other 10 The executive committee by a unanimous vote Chose to oppose the cost of compact in its conception Uh and sent that to the mayors and council members association where the mayors and council members then ratified that position as well Now that is not a particular Support or opposed on the the bills that would implement the cost of compact but on the compact as a whole So thank you. That's very helpful. And so some other jurisdictions have authored letters specifically for or against it I don't know if anyone has said they're for it. There. There are some east bay cities that have gone in support Particularly areas that would end up getting presumably more of the funding that comes in have I know from sonoma county Healdsburg cattadi In ronard park. I believe have all sent opposition letters As well as an opposition letter from the mayors and council members association So we have a couple of cards here and I'd like to take some public comment But what I'll be looking for from you Basically as vice mayor roger said the legislative committee wrote a letter not supporting the cost of compact I'm anticipating the subcommittee of the mayors will write a letter consistent with that I'll be looking for direction. Would you want us the city of santa rosa to sign on that letter? Probably most likely opposing the cost of compact. Yeah, and I do think that it's important to note substantial amount of the conversation around santa rosa in particular is not a nimby don't build housing anywhere near us Conversation but rather an acknowledgement that most of what's in the cost of compact we already do And that the financing mechanism behind the cost of compact would be better utilized Here in santa rosa as opposed to the compact 75 return to source Which would mean sending 25 of the funds down to san jose or down to other areas that have not taken the substantial steps from santa rosa So I want to make sure that that part of the discussion is very clear That it's it's not an anti-housing position that santa rosa has taken rather. We think we can do it better Thank you for that clarification. Actually before I go to comment. Are there any questions from council? Go ahead mr. Tibbets. Thank you, mayor This has been kind of my my ongoing concern with the position we took last time which I still agree with I don't think it's in santa rosa's interest to sign this letter and become part of the compact But I don't want our our letter of opposition to to be essentially taken as a letter of opposition By the people who are buying into this who have created it and who are supporting it So in your mind or least Vice mayor rogers what i'm hearing is that there is a way to effectively say Respectfully santa rosa needs to you know march to the beat of its own drum up here with the renewal enterprise district and other initiatives But we support what you're doing down there or we can support the bills Effectively just individually on a come as they go basis Yeah, and I will tell you and this is going to be my own personal opinion There are three areas of the compact that I think are particularly problematic for santa rosa One of them is the financing to make sure that the dollars that are generated here actually come back to projects that are here The second is that we've taken the time to have these hard conversations with the community about what growth and development is going to look like And we've tailored it to our approach. It wasn't a top-down one-size-fits-all approach I think we all would agree that what what works in san francisco doesn't necessarily work in katati And we've been more nuanced in santa rosa to fit our our community The the the third and the the final one Is there is a perverse disincentive in the casa compact for areas that already don't want housing To also reduce their public transit because then that would allow them to slip under the requirements of casa We've talked a lot from the dais about supporting housing locally as well as supporting access to public transit And there are already a couple of communities down in marine county that are reducing their bus trips Along high quality corridors because if casa passes Then that would require them to build more housing It actually creates the opposite what we're trying to do for some communities So for me, those are the three main points that i'd like to see outlined in the letter. Okay Any other questions, mr. miss combs But first let me clarify I think With a slip of the tongue you said if casa passes and it is it is not coming for the legislature as casa if implemented If implemented through the legislation some of which is Said to be parallel too, but in fact doesn't look anything like and other Elements have already been dropped by the legislature Just to be clear I have already Throughout the process as you're a bag representative been writing letters Expressing concern about elements of the compact About our problems in About what we're doing in santa rosa and that they shouldn't mess it up because we're doing it right That Certainly our red wrecking is a is a variation of regional housing development entity Our jpa red and we don't need to be a part of another one that will take the money further appealed So i'm I'm available to answer questions about what some of the problems are With regard to the compact having worked it from the inside trying to improve it but I'm i'm not enthusiastic about The current form or about the way the legislature is gone. I will be interested in hearing the public's comments Great, thanks. Let's go to those. We have two cards myles bergen followed by dwayne duet I may have shwelled down members of the council on myles bergen from southwest santa rosa Um, I wanted to start by first thanking every one of you For your hard work in addressing the housing crisis From your 80 u policy to permit streamlining to the density bonus to the downtown station area specific plan It seems like every opportunity this council has to make santa rosa a more livable and affordable city you all take So with that said i was a little surprised and more than a little bit disappointed When by your reaction to the cost of compact several weeks back And I stand today to urge you all to treat this issue with the type of thoughtfulness and nuance that it deserves And the type of thoughtfulness and nuance that I think is lacking from the letter from the mayors and council members So the letter lays out three major complaints about kasa many of which the vice mayor already talked about A one-size-fits-all approach to housing Opposition to regional approach to housing and a lack of outreach to the communities Especially up here in the north bay and I'd like to address each of them First with regards to outreach It's true that mtc and abag didn't formally reach out to every municipality in in the bay area But it's also true that each and every meeting of the kasa compact was covered by the brown act and was open to the public elected officials in sonoma county had ample opportunity to go to meetings make their voices heard and get informed about the compact, but they didn't Sonoma county also had multiple elected officials involved in the process I mean it seemed like every other week councilmember combs was giving us a brief on the goings on Information is a two-way street and the inaction of our elected officials is no reason to stop solutions to our housing crisis With regards to the one-size-fits-all argument Not only has that issue already been addressed in the legislature But it's the perfect example of why you should be lobbying on our behalf instead of rejecting a compact outright Last week there was a deal struck between senator weiner's sp50 and senator maguire's sp4 That would fix this one-size-fits-all approach allowing lower minimum zoning requirements around transit and counties with less than i think it was 600 Thousand residents So the fact is the legislative process is working and i urge you all to use your voices to engage that in that process and improve the compact Finally is the issue of a regional approach now while this the letter or the author of this letter may want to point the finger at san francisco in the south bay Let's get some a couple things straight first of all not only do housing shortages there make our housing more expensive here But we're falling short too Despite all of your best efforts and again I have no doubt that every single one of you takes this problem seriously What you have done so far is yet to work according to the most recent rena numbers We've only permitted two percent of our below market rate allocation The status quo clearly isn't working. So it's time that we find something that does So I ask you to step up. I ask you to do right by the young people of this community I ask you to do right by the working and middle-class families who have been forced out of our community in mass And I ask you to put aside the politics of provincialism Support what the cost of compact gets right and use your voices to improve it for all of us. Thank you duane duight Thank you. My name is duane duight from rosin within santa rosa Want to thank the previous speaker for his comments and also thank you for beginning to look into some of these things devil is in the details Tonight I want to read a part of this letter so people here know what's being talked about in a sense This letter from the council members association and the mayors States we understand why a regional plan has been prepared But we do not understand why the process to develop that plan Failed to include outreach and meaningful feedback from the cities who will be affected We support creative and bold action to address the bay areas affordable housing needs Since the mid 1990s the sonoma county housing advocacy group has been pointing out that san aroza Has not really been providing much in the way of affordable housing Now those records are available to you and I won't Spend a lot of time on it. I just want to mention based on what mr. Rogers has said And also mr. Tibbet's Mr. Rogers had said that san aroza is not a nimby type of place When did that change? It's always been a nimby place when it comes to affordable housing And then mr. Tibbet's pointed out that the renewal enterprise district will be in san aroza And that that might be a way to be helpful we need to know that there was a rosin redevelopment project area Founded in 1984 There was 264 acres that had a joint powers authority agreement between the city and the county which may still exist And now that same land although redevelopment isn't here Has been reclassified as the roseland opportunity zone with some more land added to it So one would think that it's an important approach to have these collaborative efforts But as the speaker before me who i'd never met before just pointed out Only two percent of the regional housing needs Are being met for below market rate housing For the affordable housing that these children and families might need that are here tonight We're in a dilemma, and I hope that you folks will look back into some of the past In 2004 an opportunities challenge and challenges study for roseland was turned into the council and the board of supervisors Mayor bender supervisor Riley It pointed out how to do positive things in roseland But apparently was sad on and wasn't really acted upon It's somewhere in the records people have known about these approaches to get more affordable housing in two areas Such as rosin, which is an opportunity to developers now But what about us folks that live there and need affordable housing now? Work with the state make positive things happen. Thank you for your time Thank you glane Mr. Vice mayor Thank you, mr. Mayor, and I do want to Mention that I do agree with a lot of what myles just said In particular what we're trying to do tonight is dispatch with the cost of compact as a whole And move in the direction of being able to discuss each individual piece of legislation And in particular why I laid out those three sort of attributes From the from where I think that the cost of compact falls short Is because it allows the mayor particularly at the end of session when there isn't much time to be able to still take Take steps based on the direction being given from council I think if you look at what we have done and last time we discussed the cost of compact I walked through everything that we've done in terms of incentivizing housing I think that those are appropriate steps for the mayor to end up supporting From a santa rosa perspective. Again, my concerns were around decrease in public transit Financing and keeping our dollars here locally and then also make sure it's not just a one size fits all Okay, so I would like to just bring it back to council And if you just give me some general direction about what your thoughts and comments are I just want to start one side and go all the way around so mr. Tibbets have I can hear your comments. Thank you mr. Mayor I think I pretty much already communicated my comments which remain unchanged You know, I really do support what the cost of compacts trying to do but a big concern that I have I mean, especially now that the renewal enterprise district is looking at Basically tax increment financing. Well, what happens if this other entity comes in with with a property tax over the nine barrier counties or whoever's participating? Well, now we've got you know an issue there So I really want to stay the course with the renewal enterprise district. I think it has a lot of promise I think it's achieving the exact same goals that the casa compact is Or at least it certainly is in a position to to achieve those same goals But here on a local level that's focused and is basically designed for this community So I would support you signing the letter In opposition to casa compact correct. Thank you. Ms. Fleming Thank you, ma'am Generally speaking most of the elements in the casa compact. I believe are in our benefit However, given the community's response to measure and In the fall as well as our own efforts At home to get housing stock rebuilt I don't believe that all 10 of the elements are Advantages to our community and I would support you in signing the letter of opposition Thank you. Ms. Gomes It's interesting to me that we are doing this instead of discussing the actual legislation And I would hope that we are not Sending a signal to the mayor that he may Accept individual elements of the compact As it's going through the legislature without a prior discussion here It's not clear to me that we we're taking care of the supposed problem coming forward Which is that as the legislature gets close to the end There's a quick turnaround time and we would like to be able to to put our two cents in so I hope that The legislative committee will come back with an explanation of which of the Pieces of legislation that are moving forward. They're interested in supporting so that we can Have regional and statewide improvements in our housing stock There are a number of elements that are moving through the legislature now that are not That have that the compact has a set of elements that are looking like they're not going to make it through the legislature And those are the elements that really kept me involved in the process I was very willing to trade some of the Construction elements that were likely to create displacement of members of our community If they had protections that included just cause for eviction and rent caps So because the rent caps and the just cause for eviction are no longer moving In the same way that they had been through the compact People are more vulnerable to being displaced through New construction, which I know sounds like an odd paradox, but in fact is shown to happen So I have some concern about that So I want to clarify that what we are What we are doing is saying no to this package without saying Yes to individual elements within the package Because from my point of view the fact that it was a package was why I was working on it So since the legislature has taken the package apart I I'm not I'm saying Do sign against the compact But please be clear that that is not a statement that I support individual elements What that are going through the legislature now that are not a package Thank you. And just to clarify the question will be before me with the mayors and councils They fully anticipate a letter about the cost of compact and that's the direction We're not talking specific legislation as those of us in Sacramento last week learned that the legislation is still To your point it's air evolving So there is no discussion about the specifics of a lot of different pieces of legislation because it's not there yet And if it's helpful, I've already not signed the compact for our region So it feels redundant Yeah, and if it's helpful just for a little bit of additional context too where we're at in the legislative session is We're now beyond the policy committee for fiscal bills. The the deadline has is I believe this week It will all go into the fiscal suspense file in the first house And then you have what's called the house of origin deadline Which means that all assembly bills have to be to the senate all senate bills have to be to the assembly It's also the great barr