Mayor Rain anymore.

Okay.

Please call the meeting to order.

Call the roll.

Councilmember Kaplan.

Councilmember Dickinson.

Vice Mayor Talamantes.

Councilmember Plucky Bomb will be with us momentarily.

Councilmember Maple.

Here.

Here.

Councilmember Jennings.

Councilmember Vang.

Here.

And Mayor McCarty.

Here.

We have a quorum.

Land acknowledgement.

Yeah.

Councilmember Kaplan.

Absolutely.

And if you were able for our land acknowledgement for Sacramento's indigenous people and tribal lands.

To the original people of this land, the Nissanon people, the Southern Maidu, Valley and Plains Mewak, the Putwin Windbum peoples, and the peoples of Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the Native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous peoples' histories, contributions, and lives.

Please remain standing for the pledge.

Pledge.

Madam City Attorney, do you have a report out from closed session?

I do not.

So mayor, we move to our consent calendar.

I have one speaker.

Shall we take that now?

Sure.

Thank you.

Henry Harry is speaking on item 11.

And then if council members have oh, I'm so sorry.

You have two special presentations, Mayor.

Yes.

Your first is Sacramento Police Department traffic unit resolution, and that's presented by Councilmember Jennings.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Uh tonight we have the honor of recognizing a team within our police department whose work quite literally saves lives.

Sacramento is a safer city today because of the incredible work of these men and women of the traffic division.

They are slowly making their way down.

In 2024 alone, their bold data-driven strategy led to a 30% drop in fatal crashes in our city.

That means fewer DUI tragedies, fewer pedestrian deaths, and more families making it home safely.

Captain Captain Keanu Kayuki Yaki.

K Ayuki.

You are out there late at night, working events, educating our community, and using every tool in your tool chest to keep our streets and our roads safe.

On behalf of this city council and our mayor, we are proud to commend your achievements and even prouder to stand with you as you continue to do this life-saving work.

Sacramento is safer because of each one of you and the work you do every single day.

So with that, I have a resolution that I will not read based on the comments I just made, but I want you to know that this resolution says three times what I just said.

And I am excited to come on down there with you.

If you have some comments, now would be the time at the microphone, and then we'll come take a picture together.

Yeah, I'll introduce you to Captain Kaneyuki who oversees the division.

We have actually a sizable traffic team.

They are small, but they are mighty.

And I want to thank the council for uh allowing us to stand up a nighttime traffic team.

Uh we have our nighttime traffic sergeant here with us today, as well as our daytime uh motor team uh sergeant.

I think what makes this really uh impressive is not only have they worked very, very hard to improve traffic safety within our city, but remember this is the team that handles many of our special events, so a lot of our demonstrations, a lot of the special events, the great things that we're doing in the city of Sacramento.

This is one of the primary teams that staffs it.

And so I just want to say thank you so much for recognizing great work by the men and women of our traffic division.

With that, I'll turn it over to Captain Kennyuki.

Thank you very much, Chief.

Just again, thank you to the council for recognizing the uh traffic and motor team.

They do great things every day.

I tell you that they are a very very dedicated group of people.

And uh we typically, everybody that comes to the units, they typically stay there because they enjoy it.

And again, thank you again for the recognition.

Really, everything is upon the traffic and the motor and the detective officers that work every day.

So thanks again.

Thank you.

About a round of applause.

Councilmember Caplan has a few comments real quick.

Well, as he is walking down, I just want to say, on behalf of District One, thank you.

Um, I get a request daily for you guys to come up near our schools to make our schools safer.

And I will just say um, you know, one Natomas Robla North Lake always request you because last week you guys came out and you did 50 stops with 32 citations, and I get thank you emails from my community that you were helping making the community safer and slowing people down so we don't have any further pedestrian deaths.

So uh you are appreciated in what you do.

Thank you.

And one thing I want to make sure we mention uh this team was uh selected as the uh agency of the year by MAD this year, which is a huge recognition, and want to make sure that they're recognized for that.

So thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right, next up we have National Suicide Prevention Month presented by Councilmember Kaplan.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

It is my honor to lead this evening's presentation to recognize September 2025 as National Suicide Prevention Month.

Since 2008, this month has been officially recognized as a time when mental health prevention uh organizations, survivors, allies, and community members unite to recognize individuals, friends, and families impacted by suicide.

Um, as I mentioned last year, you know, this is something that has impacted my family on both sides of my parents.

Um suicidal thoughts like mental health can affect anybody regardless of age, gender, race, orientation, income level, religion, or background.

Uh in 2025, uh the CDC basically said that uh there was a suicide death once, once every 11 minutes, which is absolutely horrific.

Um, it is also one of the top leading causes of deaths for individuals ages 10 through 64, and second leading cause of death for ages 10 to 15 and 25 to 34.

Um, I am proud to know that our local school districts, recognizing mental health young art among our teens, have added in mental health advocates and programs to help.

Um it is an honor to welcome Christine Gonzalez, who is the COO of Wellspace Health, who has been providing suicide prevention services in the Sacramento region since 1953, and is the second largest suicide prevention center in California.

Um they employ more than 70 professional crisis counselors who respond to more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollar call uh calls, texts, chats annually across 30 counties.

And in addition to operating 11 uh local crisis hotlines and the 988 suicide and crisis lifeline, uh it's important to know that they resolve more than 95 percent of the crises without an in-person response.

And that truly is a testament to the training and those that you have on staff and the dedication they do to saving lives every day.

Well space is not only partnering with the city but the county first responders uh to build a comprehensive health crisis continuum and is a place to call, a person to respond, and a place to go.

Um Christine, while welcoming you up, um staff Dr.

Porteus sends his regards.

He got called away uh to another meeting, but I'd also like to invite to stand with Christine, um Richard Barton, Director of Housing, Romel Antoine, uh Director of Advocacy and Training, and other members of the LGBT center to join uh as well as the group picture, but to stand behind Christine as she says a couple of words.

Come on, Chris.

Yeah, suicide is something that affects all of us in some way.

Um, and I'm really proud to be here to represent Wellspace Health and the 988 system in general.

988 as a three-digit phone number was established nationwide in 2022, but it represents a national suicide prevention and crisis lifeline that's well over 25 years old.

And as mentioned, 30 counties in California are represented by the Wellspace Health staff who take those calls daily, those texts and chats daily.

And what's happening here in Sacramento is really acting as the blueprint for how to respond to suicidal crises across the state, working here with city police, city fire, um, department of community response, um, our local EMS.

The things that are happening here in Sacramento are are happening right, they're happening well, and they are rippling across the state of California and acting as a blueprint for best response and in a public safety manner when it comes to suicidal crises.

So thank you so much for this honor and this recognition.

Um, and we'll continue to do the good work in partnership with all folks who serve um mental health and first responders.

So thank you.

For our teens and our youth, uh, I will say specially, I know statistically, um, our students that I identify as ALGBTQ plus community uh commit suicide at a higher rate, and the work that you guys do day in and day out with having lost a lot of funding truly does save lives.

So thank you so much for all that you do.

Council, I don't want to bite all of you down.

All right, one, two, three.

Okay, anyone here?

One, two, three.

Thank you.

Okay, we're moving along to the consent calendar.

Do any members have items they would like to speak on?

Councilmember Garrett?

Uh item one uh uh Madame Vice Mayor.

Okay, Councilmember Dickinson.

Okay.

Anyone else?

No?

Okay.

Um, Clerk, is there any public comment on the consent calendar?

I have one speaker on item 11.

Okay, we'll do uh that and then we'll do council comments.

Thank you.

Henry uh Henry Harry.

Thank you, members of the council.

Um the data can't contain in um and it's a it's a contract, and it's the data that's in there is informative, and it allows me to better understand how my money is being spent.

For example, the firm Fear and Peers seeks an additional 58,000 dollars to complete work in two areas.

Uh task two is data collection and analysis, and task four is listening and engagement.

Plus, it shows me that the PR firm AIM is um one of his subcontractors.

Now that stands in sharp contrast because at a recent council meeting, I pointed out to this council that it is spending 127,000 on an investigative uh contract, and there's no details in the contract.

So I have no idea what my money is being spent on.

Are entities getting city money through a dubious process labeled investigative services?

In this agenda, it would be nice if the fear and peers contract had text explaining the cost difference between PAS two and TAS 4.

Now, this leads me to several requests to improve accountability and transparency.

Request number one.

Now that the city has established a master list of contracts recipients online, can we create a clickable link to view actual contracts the same way I was able to view it tonight in this agenda package?

This would eliminate the ridiculous step of needing to file a freedom of information request to see the same contract I just saw tonight.

And lastly, can the clerk create a portal so that we uh when people submit letters to the clerk, the public can see them.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for your comments.

Uh first we have Council Mayor Mayor Pro Tungera.

Uh thank you, Vice Mayor.

Uh, just wanted to thank again public works staff for working on the tree T Street Bike Corridor.

Uh that's a very you know popular one, and one of the critical sections is that Stockton Boulevard at 34th Street.

That's a pretty gnarly uh uh section that really breaks away an entire uh part of the city.

You could take T Street from one end of T Street on the east side of the city all the way down to downtown.

But this uh there are there are some critical sections, particularly on Stockton 34th that uh need improvement.

Uh and that really unifies the city in having uh an artillery place.

So with that, uh very very thankful for this, and I'll move the consent calendar vice.

Okay, thank you so much.

We have a motion and a second by Councilmember Maple.

Uh Councilmember Dickinson.

Um thanks, uh Madam Vice Mayor.

Uh wanted to express thanks to the solid waste staff, the integrated waste management staff, whatever name we're we're using to to Aaron Treadwell and John Febbo in particular, and uh um their staff for this this item to uh allow us a little uh more flexibility in applying uh cameras for the purpose of detecting illegal dumping.

Illegal dumping uh is uh I'm sad to say a scourge in uh uh North Sacramento uh as it is as it is in some other parts of the uh city.

Uh but I think this contract uh item before us tonight uh is indicative of uh the necessity uh and the recognition of of that necessity to be more effective and more efficient, get more results from the resources we've got.

Uh we know we can't we can't add a lot more more people, but we can get smarter and better using uh technology.

Uh and this is um this is I think evidence of that.

So I'm very happy to see this and and very grateful for the staff for bringing this to us.

Thank you so much.

All right, we have a motion and a second.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Abstentions, no, Lisa's yes.

So we have two members absent.

Got it, click.

Yes, thank you, Vice Mayor.

You have Mayor McCarty, and you have Councilmember Plucky Baum absent.

Others were all in favor.

Wonderful.

And next up, we're gonna move along to discussion calendar item number 21.

Then we will move on to the public hearing item number 20, and then go back to the discussion calendar item number 22.

So, first up, we have uh Shelley Banks.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council.

I'm Shirley Banks Robinson Human Resources Director.

Uh typically the report that I'm bringing forward, uh a report concerning the topics on item 21 would be thank you for turning down the football.

Um, this report would be as uh presented as a consent item because this item includes the unrepresented resolution, and there's significant reg line changes in that document.

We place it on discussion so you can ask questions that you may have about any changes.

Briefly, there are four components to this item.

First, the classifications of fire assistant chief and fire marshal will move from the SCXA, um, our management group of unit 01 to our unrepresented unit of 20.

This move does not change payer benefits for these classifications.

The unrep reso language clarifies both shift command 24 hour schedules and non-shift command eight hour schedules for these roles, uh, but both roles have the same annual pay on either schedule.

Second, the employer employee relations policy is included because the city updates it when classifications or units are modified, added, or deleted.

Third, we are making a targeted compaction correction to the utilities operations and maintenance superintendent to maintain an appropriate separation from appropriate salary spread from supervising plant operator.

Recruitment has been difficult with only a current 3.2% spread between the classifications.

There are eight budgeted positions affected, and the increase of that change is funded within the Department of Utilities operating budget.

Fourth, the adoption of the citywide salary schedule is required for CalPERS transparency and to implement the changes in classifications, uh, the change to the utilities position, and to implement the binding SPOA arbitration award.

This is a ministerial action to keep posted rates current for retirement reporting.

And I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.

And Mayor, I have no speakers on item 21.

Okay.

So move so seconded.

You were the motioner.

I was.

I heard you I heard you whisper.

Yes.

Okay, a motion is second.

So Mayor, I heard a motion by Councilmember Maple and a second by Council Member Kaplan.

Is that accurate?

Yes, thank you.

Yes.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

No zero abstentions.

Hearing none, one absence.

Item passes 80.

Thank you.

So we move back to item number 20, which is a public hearing.

Um it is an appeal.

Crocker Village Residential Development.

And I would like to open the public hearing.

Um Councilmember Kaplan just um notified us that she is conflicted and is leaving the room and recusing from this item.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

The public hearing is now open.

Uh first question Do any members have any ex parte communication that they wish to report?

Seeing none.

Uh staff presentation, please begin.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm Danny Abbas with the community development department.

Yes, please be in.

Uh this item is a request to develop uh two distinct vacant parcels within the Curtis Park Village planned unit development with single unit dwellings, including the 2.49-acre flex parcel with 31 single unit dwellings and a 2.37 acre multi-parcel with 30 single unit dwellings.

On May 22nd, this development proposal was heard by the planning and design commission.

The commission improved entitlements related to single unit dwelling development of the flex parcel and denied entitlements related to single unit dwelling development on the multi-parcel.

The applicant has appealed the decision to city council.

The general surroundings of the parcels include single unit dwellings and the existing Curtis Park neighborhood, affordable senior apartments, commercial development, Sacramento City College, and the City College Light Rail Station.

The two subject parcels are the only significantly sized remaining undeveloped residential parcels within the PUD.

The applicant's proposal requires that council approve a tentative subdivision map to subdivide the parcels for single unit dwellings, a conditional use permit to allow single unit dwelling development within the shopping center zone, adoption of a resolution amending the Curtis Park Village PUD schematic plan and guidelines to allow single unit dwellings within the family housing designation and site plan and design review to construct the proposed single unit dwellings.

The applicant appeal, which is attachment 11 and begins on page 350 of the staff report, contends that denial the denial of single unit dwelling development on the multiparcel site violates the housing accountability act and that the general plan designation and zoning permit and zoning permit the proposed development despite inconsistency with the PUD.

A full response to all of the applicant appeal claims can be found as attachment 12 on PDF page 354 of the staff report.

The city's the city attorney's office has evaluated appellant claims and determined that they are without merit.

Both the city's attorney's office and the applicant representation met with the State Department of Housing and Community Development, also known as HCD.

HCD provided technical assistance to the claim of a housing accountability act violation.

Their conclusion, as stated within a letter that is attachment 14 at the end of the staff report, is that the city's denial of the proposed PUD amendment to allow single unit dwellings within the multi-housing designation is in accordance with state housing law.

Regarding appellant claims, that a list of allowed uses within the general plan designation and R4A zoning table supersede PUD land use designations and allowances.

Both the 2040 general plan and City of Sacramento Zoning Code contain clear language that internally links and relies upon PUD allowances.

Sacramento City Code states that property within a planned unit development may be used only for the uses that are permitted in the underlying zone in which it is located and that are authorized by the schematic plan and development guidelines adopted for the property.

The 2040 general plan states that general plan designations are implemented through and subject to applicable laws, including regulations and guidelines more restrictive than the general plan, such as specific plans, zoning districts, overlay zones, special planning districts, planned unit developments, and other provisions of the Sacramento City Code.

A more recent letter dated September 5th from applicant representation to city council claims that the PUD itself authorizes proposed court home development on the site designated multifamily housing by the PUD.

Section 2.1.3 of the PUD entitled Multifamily Housing Area distinguishes the multifamily housing area as high density housing and a transition from less intense court single family development, describing the multifamily housing designation as separate and a distinct transition from court home development in the following way.

Quote: The area along the Western property line of Curtis Park Village, south and west of the court single family home area and on the north edge of the commercial area flex zone that contains the affordable senior housing project, can best be described as the multifamily high density housing area in the Curtis Park Village Plan, allowing for the development of apartments and condominium multifamily housing.

The high density housing area acts as a transitional zone between the less intense court single family development to the north and east and the flex zone commercial area to the south and Curtis Park Village.

A site that is clearly intended to transition from court homes, reasonably would not be developed with more court homes.

In 2016, the Planning Design Commission approved a PUD amendment to change land designated multifamily housing to the single to single family land to permit court home development.

There was no claim at this time that the PUD allowed courthomes within the multifamily housing designation.

Additionally, at this time, the height limit within the multifamily housing designation was increased to 55 feet to allow for a quote, higher quote, a higher density housing project of up to four stories over podium parking.

The Curtis Park Village PUD, adopted by City Council in 2010, has always included land designated for market rate multifamily housing, separate and distinct from the senior affordable housing.

The multifamily site was intended to combine with other uses into a quote, truly vibrant mixed-use neighborhood.

The inclusion of market rate multifamily housing with it within the vision statement has not changed since the original adoption of the PUD.

Also, within both the original and current goals and objectives of the PUD is to quote, provide various housing choices, including single family and cluster, affordable senior and market rate multifamily residences.

This clearly distinguishes that both affordable senior housing and market rate multifamily housing have always been planned.

The PUD guidelines denote three predominant types of land uses land use development, commercial single-family housing and multifamily housing.

The original PD schematic plan included approximately seven acres dedicated to the multifamily housing designation, excluding land reserve for senior affordable housing.

The area in the middle of the plan outlined in red shows land dedicated to multifamily housing.

In 2016, the council approved a PD amendment that reduced the acreage of market rate multifamily housing to the 2.37 acres shown, allowing an increase in the land dedicated to single unit dwellings.

Now, the applicant is proposing to eliminate the remaining multifamily housing designation and complete residential development of the PUD without any market rate multifamily housing.

Staff has received multiple letters from community members and groups included within the staff report, including letters that support staff's recommendation, letters that support the applicant's proposal, and letters that support denial of single unit dwelling development on both the flex and multi-parcels.

Staff recommends approval of proposed flex parcel development and its associated entitlements with 31 single unit dwellings based on the findings and subject to the conditions listed in report attachment 4 since it is consistent with the Curtis Park Village PUD and compatible with surrounding commercial and residential development.

Staff recommends denial of the proposed PD schematic plan and guidelines amendment and its associated entitlements, which would remove the high density multifamily housing designation from the PUD.

Staff finds this proposed action inconsistent with the vision, goals, and objectives of the PUD, and that it conflicts with the necessary findings to remove the designation.

Specifically, it is inconsistent with general plan land use policies that encourage development attempt intensity adjacent to transit and encourage a mix of mix of housing types to provide options for residents of different income levels.

If city council wants to approve staff recommendation, the council has everything before it necessary to do so, including findings of the fact and conditions of approval to make the decision.

If the council wants to approve proposed single unit dwelling development on both parcels, that's proposed by the applicant, you'll need to provide findings of facts and support of single family development on the multiparcel and direct staff to return with the findings and conditions of approval.

If council wants to deny uh single unit dwelling development on both the flex and multi-parcels, the commission uh the council will need to provide findings for denial with the flex parcel development and direct staff to return with the findings length findings language for final action.

Uh this afternoon supplemental material was posted online, which uh was a letter uh proposing potential junior accessory dwelling units uh within the houses.

Uh staff reviewed the concept proposal and determined that a residence with junior aid use does not constitute a multi-unit dwelling and conveyed this to the applicant.

Uh that concludes the presentation.

Um the applicant also has a presentation after both staff and the applicant would be available for any questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, do we have council members wishing to ask any questions of staff at this time?

Council member Jennings.

Okay.

Out of staff.

None for staff.

Okay, thank you.

Do we have the appellant presentation ready?

Hi.

Hi, good evening, uh, Mayor McCarty.

Uh, council members, thank you so much for having me today.

My name is Daniel Friedman with Jeffrey Mangles Butler Mitchell here on behalf of the applicant appellant.

Um I would ask if the lights could stay on.

I know the dimming is get kind of dark, so if we could keep the lights on, I'd appreciate it.

Okay.

Um, so let me get started.

So, first I'd like to just I appreciate the identification of ex parte um meetings, appreciate that.

Um, I do also want to note to the extent council members feel like they've pre-decided this case that that be it be determined and notified as and we be notified as the appellant as well of that type of predetermination.

Our client is entitled to due process, and just want to raise that concern from the off from the start.

So let me talk about what this appeal concerns and what it doesn't concern, because when I've heard staff's presentation on this case, I gotta tell you I can't help but my eyes glazed over, and I don't really understand what the issue before you here is today, and so I'm gonna try and boil it down.

So, first off, let me talk about what it's not about.

This is not about the provision of affordable housing.

You're gonna hear a lot of speakers talking about affordable housing, affordable housing this, affordable housing that.

This was a master plan community.

There was a lot of affordable housing required as part of this project.

The affordable housing was provided, and there has been no dispute about whether affordable housing was provided as part of this greater project.

So there is no affordable housing issue.

This also is not about density or the number of units.

Neither staff nor anyone really has raised the issue that this project is not does not meet the objective city requirements with respect to the density or number of units allowed or whether minimum or maximum on the site.

This also isn't about the size of the structures, to be frank.

No one said this project is too big, and no one said this project is too small with respect to height or with rec with respect to the building shape, size, or massing.

This also isn't about deals that have been made with the developer.

One of the main reasons the planning commission acted to deny housing on the multiparcel, was a position that a deal was made with the developer, and somehow that was formulated into the zoning.

That's not how zoning works.

This is not a development agreement, this is a zone.

There's requirements that comp that are that are provided in the zoning, whether it's this developer or someone else, the zoning is what's applicable.

Finally, it's not about community opposition.

The Crocker Village community came out in on math for the planning commission hearing and spoke out in support of this.

And to the extent you've had an opportunity to go out there and see the community and see where these folks live, there's a reason for that.

And this is also emboiled and ingrained in your own general plan, which is they want a project that is consistent with the character of the community that's there.

And the applicant's proposing that, and that's why they love it, they like it, and that's why they were urging the planning commission to adopt the amendment.

Finally, this isn't about traditional single family versus multifamily.

I think there's gonna be a lot of comments about this, there already has been.

These are court homes.

Well, I think that's important.

Well, why?

Because in a lot of documentation, including in certain city documents, court homes are considered multifamily.

And if you go to most cities around the state, they'll call court homes, court developments, bungalow courts, cottage courts, these are considered multifamily projects.

That's what this is court homes.

So the issue before you today is simply building form.

It is court homes, court homes, and whether or not that meets the PUD's definition, which doesn't exist in the PUD, but concept of that it requires multifamily dwellings.

Do these court homes?

Is this multifamily?

And if you think court homes are a form of multifamily, then the decision is made for you.

And the appeal should be granted.

Applicant contends the proposed homes, the court homes are permissible and sh are consistent with the PUD and the general plan.

The planning commission determined it is not permissible and refused to permit it.

So I want to, in case you don't have direct experience with court homes, here's an example.

Court homes were identified as one of the main types of building forms that the city wanted to promote in its missing middle housing objectives in the general plan.

It talked about court homes.

This is from the city's own staff report as a list of duplexes, triplexes, fourplex, these are the missing middles, bungalow courts, and court homes are essentially a form of bungalow courts.

It's the same style of development where there's a shared courtyard into an entry, the homes don't have their own front yards, they don't have their own backyards, and so it's a court style development.

And you'll see in articles, these have been called multi-unit housing, multi-family housing.

You can see here are images of the existing courthomes, it's a lovely neighborhood.

That's the uh the lower picture on the right, that's the walkway in.

You can see they have a shared walkway, they don't have their own front yard.

In the city's own presentation materials dealing with consistency with the new general plan and the missing middle, multifamily objectives and guidelines, cottage courts, court homes, multiplex cottage courts, courts, etc.

etc.

are all considered a form of multifamily.

So that's issue one in our view, that courthomes are allowed.

So what happened at the planning commission?

Well, the planning commission denied court homes on the multiparcel on the grounds that staff finds the proposal to construct single unit dwellings on the multifamily housing site to be inconsistent with the curtain park village PUD schematic plan and guidelines, City of Sacramento 2040 general plan, land use policies, and the greater land park community plan.

So the issue before you today is one of two issues, and this is how I'd like to break it down.

First, whether it's consistent or not, an amendment application has been presented to you.

Meaning the city council has the power to amend the PUD to allow for these court homes.

That's before you today.

In the alternative, this is our issue too.

The city does not have the authority to deny it under the Housing Accountability Act.

And I'm gonna explain to you both issues and walk you through why they're relevant today and why it's relevant to your action.

So first off, on with respect to the first issue, why you should amend, if necessary, the PUD to allow for this project.

Well, first off, a couple points.

The land use designation is neighborhood.

This type of development is consistent with the neighborhood land use designation.

It is also, if you open up the PUD, an allowed use in the zone.

So the zoning for this site is R-4A.

And if you open up the PUD, it says court homes are allowed in the R-4A PUD zone.

If you open up the city's zoning code, it also allows for single unit dwellings, which essentially are what staff are saying are not permitted here, in the R-4A zone.

Now, if you go back to the original general plan when this PUD was adopted, which is the 2030 general plan, and you opened up the prior land use designation, because the land use designation has changed.

It was previously, you can see it there, traditional neighborhood high, which court homes are considered, traditional neighborhood high uses.

Small lot single family units were also permitted in the prior general plan when this was previously approved.

Also, there have been kind of comments in staff presentations that it's inconsistent with the general plan or the greater land park community plan.

That's there's just no evidence to support that.

It does talk about higher density, but it says that it wants it in the Carlton Track neighborhood, not this one.

And then finally, with respect to the general plan, it talks about this neighborhood designation, and it says it allows detached and attached.

Both are allowed under the general plan.

Okay.

Again, issue one is why you should permit this.

Well, I think if you open up the general plan and look at it more critically than I think it has been presented today, you will see that this is exactly the type of project that the general plan is trying to encourage.

Land use policy 6.3.

Ask the city to promote a variety of housing types.

Single unit homes on small lots, accessory dwelling units.

The applicant proposed accessory dwelling units to help resolve staff's concern with respect to these being single units.

And as proposed with the ADUs meets almost all of those housing types.

Neighborhood form, land use policy 6.4 says we want neighborhoods that exist to be recognized in developments that are developed around them, to be consistent with the development types.

That's exactly what this project does.

It's saying look at the context, look at what's being built around it, we can design a project that matches, that fits, while still providing the density.

Recognizing established neighborhoods, understanding what those communities want and how new developers can fit into their sense of place.

And then finally, um broaden, this is land use policy A.10, broaden the range of housing types allowed by right within single unit and duplex dwelling residential zones, and update development standards for missing middle housing types such as accessory dwelling units, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts.

So this is the exact type of housing type that the general plan is pushing for, and we think if if a more critical view of the general plan with respect to this project was made, I think that information could be presented to you.

So why approve this project?

Irrespective of our legal arguments about why we think you can't deny it.

It directly advances the objectives of the 2040 general plan.

It provides the missing middle housing in a realistic time frame.

I can't underestimate why that's significant.

These are homes this developer is experienced at building.

If they're approved, they will be constructed.

They will be permitted quickly because they know how to plan check these quickly, and these will be homes delivered to home buyers.

There is vigorous support of neighboring residents.

It meets all the density and FAR requirements.

Applicant has proposed ADUs or junior ADUs to increase the density or intensity if this commission if this council so wishes.

Happy to have that conversation.

It promotes higher density ownership housing near transit.

And to be frank, I don't see any clear benefit in denying the project.

There's no benefit.

Now why do we contend there is no authority to deny it?

And I'll try and move through those quickly, so in case there's questions about why you should amend it anyways.

Well, first, there's gonna be three main arguments that I try to get through as quickly as I can for you tonight.

First off, there's F9.

Let's call it that.

It's under the Housing Accountability Act Government Code Section 65589.5 F9.

What that says is that where there's a conflict with respect to uses, use type, unit type, the conflict must be resolved in favor of the project.

The intent of this section was specifically to address situations like this.

Saying you have a developer proposing a housing project that makes sense that's consistent with one of the zones, you have to allow for it.

It should be deemed consistent.

The HCD letter made no reference to this, to be clear.

I know that was ref, it was it was presented to you as if it was a general conclusion about the HAA.

It did not reference this law.

Government Code Section 65589.5J4, I'll refer to as J4, was referenced by HCD, and I'll address that.

And it concerns where the zoning is inconsistent with the general plan, that the general plan standards apply, and as I mentioned previously, the general plan allows for attached and detached residential units and uses.

Government code section 65589.5, J1 and F4, I'll refer to as J1 is our view that multifamily as described in the PUD is not an objective standard, and a reasonable person would conclude that this project is consistent with both the zoning and the general plan.

So let me start with F9, which I highlighted the main section.

What F9 essentially does is it says, hey, local agencies, there are limitations to what you can do with respect to regulating housing developments in your jurisdictions.

And it says, when you're regulating housing, the standards need to be objective, quantifiable, written development standards, conditions, and policies.

And then it defines that.

As part of its definition, it includes the following rule.

In the event that applicable objective, quantifiable written development standards, conditions, and policies are mutually inconsistent, a development shall be deemed consistent with the criteria that permits the density and unit type closest to that of the proposed project.

So that in our view is very significant.

That's a direction from the California state legislature about how to deal with inconsistencies with respect to unit type.

This wasn't really addressed by the staff report whatsoever.

Now, there's an inconsistency.

The R 4A zone allows this.

I agree there's a definition in there, but there's also a rule.

And that rule was not addressed.

As I mentioned, the R4A zone permits the unit type, and staff contends the PUD does not.

That inconsistency needs to be resolved to permit the project unit types.

With respect to J4, that J4 concerns a situation where the zoning is inconsistent with the general plan.

And it says when the zoning is inconsistent with the general plan, that the project should not be considered inconsistent with the applicable zoning standards, and a rezone is not required.

So in this case, an amendment would not be required.

So the general plan deals with this.

The general plan includes a statement about what is or is not zoning in consistency.

And what it says here is zoning is consistent with the general plan if it is compatible with the objectives, policies, general land uses and programs specified in the plan, zoning is compatible.

If, considering all aspects, it will further the objectives and policies of the general plan and not obstruct their attainment.

So the staff report's response to this issue is that well, the use of the site for single units is inconsistent with the PUD, and therefore the PUD is consistent with the general plan.

Essentially, um the PUD, let me continue, and I'll come back to that.

The PUD is not consistent, and the staff report provides zero analysis in support of its conclusion, and this is a similar failure with the HUD letter.

So let me get into this issue.

The staff report essentially concludes the following that because multifamily is allowed in both the zoning and the general plan and in the PUD that there is consistency across.

Okay, good.

Okay.

So the project, so let me talk about this consistency.

Sorry, I was a little distracted.

Where the project zoning is inconsistent, the general plan standards apply.

That's essentially what J4 says.

Now, here's a critical fact that I think this council needs to understand.

The project site's land use designation was changed.

It used to be traditional high in the 2030 general plan.

In the 2040 general plan, it was turned into neighborhood.

There has been no rezoning since this occurred.

Now the position is there's no inconsistency between the 2040 general plan and the PUD.

This is what the staff report suggests to this council.

Now I encourage you to open up the PUD.

It references in the multifamily housing section that was presented, it states the following.

Within this area, multifamily housing types with a traditional neighborhood high land use designation in the City of Sacramento 2030 general plan are allowed.

It directly references when it talks about use types, the 2030 general plan.

And then I I urge you to look up all those code provisions.

I circled them.

The definite the term multifamily housing, the code provision 17.180.050, chapter 17.18, none of those exist anymore.

So none of these code provisions actually exist in the Sacramento Municipal Code, but it's all consistent.

The traditional neighborhood land use designation no longer exists in the general plan, but it's all consistent.

And no analysis is provided to show you why it's consistent.

Again, the staff position is well, there's there's nothing in the 24-day general plan permitting every type of residential development in all areas designated as N neighborhood.

Instead, it expressly mandates that all development comply with the applicable zoning requirements.

The idea is that it's almost circular, that what's what's allowed in the zoning is, or what's disallowed in the zoning is also disallowed in the general plan.

And that's how the term definition of the term allowable uses is used in the general plan, or it's suggested it should be used.

And that if it's disallowed in the zoning, by operation of this definition of the term allowable uses, it's also disallowed in the general plan.

This does not prove consistency.

This does not prove that it's consistent with the applicable objectives of and policies and goals of the actual general plan.

Finally, I want to address J1 F4, uh, whether or not this is an objective standard.

So J1 basically says an objective standard, uh when a project complies with all the objective standards, the city must adopt it unless it can make certain findings.

So the question becomes, well, and which were not made by the by the planning commission, to be clear.

So those findings, the health and safety findings were not made by the planning commission.

And we're saying they need to be made.

And so the question becomes is multifamily housing an objective standard.

And then F4 concerns the issue of whether or not a reasonable person could conclude that the project is consistent, compliant, and in conformity.

So we contend multifamily housing is not an objective standard.

The staff report's response is the appellant has always been aware of the requirement to develop the site consistently with that designation, and by that designation they mean by applying the term multi-unit dwelling, which does not exist once in the PUD.

Then it says in 2010, the city planning and and development code had an express definition for such multifamily development.

So there was a different definition in 2010 when this PUD was adopted than this term multi-unit dwelling, which they're now trying to apply.

But they say in 2013 the city amended the code, they created this term multi-unit dwelling instead of multi-family, that it didn't change the PUD requirements, and then the the kicker was they said in 2016 there was a PUD amendment.

And then the kicker was they said in 2016 there was a PUD amendment.

And the argument is that, well, when that amendment happened, the applicant knew the code had changed.

And now multifamily presumably meant multi-unit.

The question I have is well, why when they amended the PUD did we not put the term multi-unit dwelling if this was now the term?

If in fact multifamily was always intended to mean multi-unit dwelling, then it should have been amended in 2016.

There's no reason why it couldn't have been.

Could have made that amendment, but they didn't.

So if anything, the amendment only proves that the applicant was not aware, nor did the city understand that the term multifamily housing was intended to also mean the same thing as the term multi-unit dwelling.

So in conclusion on this one, appellant was not aware that the term multifamily is the same as the term multi-unit dwelling, nor is there any guidance document or any evidence whatsoever that these terms were ever intended to mean the same thing.

Multifamily residential housing, the actual term used in the POD has not been defined, nor was a definition provided to you.

In 2010, multiple family dwellings meant one unit with three families in one unit.

It did not mean three attached units, which is being proposed today by staff.

And the concept of you should have known, the applicant should have known multifamily residential housing is the same as the defined term in a completely different document, multi-unit dwelling.

Just doesn't hold muster, it's not an objective standard.

Okay.

Finally, with respect to a reasonable person's perspective.

This is the F1 reasonable person standard.

So court homes.

That's what we're talking about.

Court homes are considered a form of traditional neighborhood high land use.

If you open up the 2030 land use designation, um, that's what you'll find.

Small lot single unit homes are considered a higher density traditional neighborhood high land use.

That's what it says in the PUD.

Look up the traditional neighborhood high land uses and use those uses.

Court homes are allowed in the R4- uh R-4A PUD zone.

That's also what the PUD stick PUD states.

There you see I included the traditional high density land use designation from the 2030 general plan, which is referenced in the PUD, allows small lot single family dwellings, and you'll see in the R-4A zone, single unit dwellings are permitted.

In conclusion, the city council, we beg you grant the appeal.

This is about providing housing on a fast timeline that is accessible to this community, that fits within the character of the community that is being demanded by the community and which could provide housing quickly at the densities and intensities already contemplated in the PUD and the zoning.

This is not about affordable housing, like I mentioned.

This is not about a project that doesn't meet density or intensity or number of unit requirements.

This is not about a deal that was made with the project applicant in 2016 or in 2010.

This community supports it.

They were out here in the dozens.

And that's what the 2040 general plan is all about.

And ultimately, that's the only issue here, right?

That's the only issue is whether to allow units that have this particular type, the building form.

In our perspective and on the appellant's perspective, this building form is permitted.

But even if it isn't, we believe the city council should approve it.

It advances the 2040 general plan's missing middle goals, policies, and objectives, and is a project that can provide housing quickly and on a very fast timeline.

Thank you for your time.

Happy to answer any questions.

Okay, thank you.

Uh we have council members punched up to ask questions of the appellant.

Mr.

Dickinson.

Uh thanks, Mayor.

Uh I just had I just had a couple short questions for you based upon the statement of your appeal as you uh presented it.

Issue one, the amendment to the PUD has been requested, and the city council has the power to approve it.

Do you uh uh acknowledge in stating that the council has the power to approve it also has a discretion to not approve it?

Well as I mentioned, um we believe that the council does not have the authority to deny it on the basis of the housing accountability act.

Aside from your contention, we'll get to that uh on the housing accountability act, would otherwise uh is your statement uh inherent in it that the council has the power or the discretion not to approve it.

Like I mentioned, um the council could deny it.

It would have to make certain findings required under the housing accountability act to just to justify that denial.

But yes, in theory, the council could deny it if it met those findings.

That's our position, yes.

Okay, and then thank you.

And then, secondly, with respect to issue two in the alternative, the city does not have the authority to deny it under the housing accountability act.

Then is it fair to say um you disagree with the conclusion of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, who are charged with the expertise of knowing California development and community community development housing law?

Well, so two points on that.

Uh first off, I think that's a yes or no um question.

I love HDD.

I think it's a great entity, and I think they make they do a lot of great work.

I'm just asking do you disagree with their conclusion that's a leading question of the city's HCD was only addressed one of the multiple issues that I raised.

So with respect to the one issue, we can agree to disagree, but it made no effort or statement or any commentary whatsoever on F9 or J1 and F4.

So the only issue that was addressed by the HCD letter was with respect to with was with respect to J4.

And I, as much as I do have the utmost respect for HCD, they I believe they got it wrong.

Okay.

So I take that as a yes.

You disagree with the I do disagree and happy to back it up.

Thanks.

That's that's uh the questions I had.

Thanks.

Okay, further questions for the appellant.

Seeing none, we'll now go to public comments.

I just would like to make one more thing.

Our client has offered to propose ADUs into this project.

To the extent the the council would like to move the project forward, it can be conditioned so that ADUs would be included into the actual court homes, which would get closer to a multi-unit dwelling, but in theory would not accomplish three attached units.

So I do want to put that out there.

We have made that offer, and um, we think it's a great way to add density and accomplish the city's goals.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah.

Public comments.

Mayor, I have seven speakers.

Michael Turgeon, Rob Wiener, Kathleen Ave, Nancy McKeever, then Alison Colwell.

Hey there, good evening.

Uh Michael Turgeon here on behalf of House Sacramento, a local grassroots organization of reasonable people for housing affordability and opportunity in Sacramento.

Um we want to emphasize that we think uh more units, i.e.

a higher density uh housing type project is the right choice for both parcels, and we're skeptical of claims that something denser wouldn't pencil out on this site.

Uh if that's true, we have much bigger problems to fix.

Uh we can't be turning back the clock and building even more McMansions with two car garages in neighborhoods where we desperately need density and walkability to address the housing and climate crisis.

Uh this is a prime location with likely high demand from students or young professionals that would realistically use the bike bridge or take the light rail downtown.

Um, and noting that the proposed addition of junior ADUs is a step in the right direction.

But if you look at the plans, we are skeptical that these would actually be offered as independent rental units versus say home offices or guest spaces.

Um and to that end, we don't really see that as a uh major improvement, so we urge council to stand behind the general plan and uphold the vision for a more dense, diverse, and sustainable Crocker Village.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Rob Wiener.

Following Rob is Kathleen.

Uh good evening, uh, Mr.

Mayor and members of the council.

Rob Wiener.

I've been a resident of Curtis Park for 35, excuse me, 25 years, no, 35 years.

And also I walk by Crocker Village frequently.

And those courtyard homes sure look like single-family attached homes to me.

None of that meets the conventional definition of multifamily housing or multi-unit housing.

Also, I've been involved in the affordable housing field for about 45 years.

And this sort of lawyerly argument about the difference between multi-unit and multi-family, I've never encountered that in all of my years of being involved in the affordable housing field.

Moreover, I find the developer's objections and fear-mongering really objectionable.

He has uh raised the issue that he's if he doesn't get his way, he's going to build a six-story uh multifamily rental housing for low-income folks, affordable housing, and uh that because of the housing accountability act, uh he has carte blanche to build whatever he wants, whenever he wants, with no public input at all.

That is a complete perversion of the Housing Accountability Act and uh SB 330, which are primarily intended to facilitate and expedite the production of uh housing, rental housing for low uh and modern income families.

That's what we need in Curtis Park and in Crocker Village, not more of these uh bogus multifamily or multi-unit housing projects that he's proposing.

So I strongly uh support the staff report and strongly oppose the appellants' uh arguments.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Kathleen and Nancy Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um I I just have to say that I find it very annoying to listen to my city council being gas-lit with the idea that we cannot tell the difference between single-family housing and multifamily housing, just for the record.

Um I wanted to draw your attention to the 1920, or sorry, 2022 American River Basin study that the City of Sacramento was a partner and participated in.

Um, that report by the Bureau of Reclamation documented the impacts of climate change on the watershed and suggested adaptation strategies to address them.

Development density was a critical assumption in that report and the modeling because of the impact it has on hydrology, on water use and quality, and flood protection and response for our communities.

I just highlight this because this decision is far-reaching impacts, well beyond the feelings of immediate neighbors, including myself.

Um we as a country are obviously in a crisis.

The authors of that report have probably been fired.

The resources that they used to create it have been dismantled or hidden.

Um equally brutal are private developers and local governments who acquiesce to profit-making demands that sacrifice the good and well-intentioned and carefully constructed housing and climate policies that you have created.

So that's what you're being asked to do, and I really plead that you do not do that.

Um, there should be high density housing on both of the parcels, not just the multifamily parcel, but the flex parcel.

Um, in 2022, when um the residential, when flex was allowed to be residential, um, permitted residential uses within that zone included multi-unit dwellings, dormitories, and residential facilities.

That's it.

So the Flex zone also needs to be high density housing.

Sacramento needs it wherever it can get it, especially here.

Thank you for your comments.

Nancy McKeever and Alison Colwell.

Thank you, uh, Mayor and Council.

My name's Nancy McKeever.

I live in uh Curtis Park, have lived there for about I don't know, 23 years, something like that.

And I just completely changed my comments based on what I heard from the appellate.

He said there's no benefit in denying their request.

And um the benefit is exactly that many, many more people could live close to transit with all of the amenities that that neighborhood offers.

And I listed them.

There's quite a few.

I listed them in my comments to you.

I hope if you haven't had a chance to look at them, you'll look at them.

Um could live there as opposed to the cottage homes.

And each of those many, many people could live at a much lower cost than they could if they lived in a cottage home.

And the cottage homes self are starting over 700,000 apiece.

Uh, why is it cheaper?

You know, you I think you know this, but it's the size in the shared infrastructure that comes with uh multifamily construction as opposed to single-family homes.

And another benefit, um, the plan was adopted um years and years ago with seven acres of multifamily, now it's less than five.

Um the PUD goal was to get the benefits of the public investment, the transit, the college, the head bridge, all those things that were public investments, plus the parks that are in Curtis Park, all those things, the college that has a theater and classes.

Um, and so more people could have those benefits when you stick to the multifamily development.

Um Sacramento, everybody knows is in a housing crisis.

In some of my comments, I submitted data from SACOG that showed that less than one percent of the remaining undeveloped parcels are within a quarter mile of transit.

And that very likely could be those two Curtis Park parcels.

I don't I don't know for sure.

But um so there's not much left.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

I have three more speakers, and next is Alison Colwell, then Raisel Rachel Isgow.

Hi, I'm I moved to Curtis Park six years ago with my husband.

We were um we aged out of mountain homesteading, and I we bought our house from a woman who um was aging out of maintaining a hundred-year-old two-floor house.

She moved to a one-story house that's newer in the neighborhood.

Both of us are um what you might find it convenient to come to refer to as the ABP, which is the aging boomer population.

There's a lot of us in Sacramento now and in Curtis Park, especially who love the neighborhood, we're aging out of our difficult to maintain homes, but we don't want to leave.

So I'm looking at the Crocker Village over the past few years, and you've got a uh grocery store, a gym, and a senior center or senior living, and I think, oh great, that's me in 20 years.

But I'm thinking, wow, that senior living center is really small.

I do I need to get on the wait list now.

So I'm really hoping that the last two lots that are to be developed will be in the form of multi-unit apartment buildings with small single floor units with an elevator, so when I can't go up and down stairs, I can still stay in the area.

I'd like to see all Sacramento neighborhoods have a um uh some land set aside for apartment buildings that have accessibility for people who can't go up and down stairs or maintain yards.

And so um the the Crocker Village has a lot of homes, and some of them are dense, but they all have a lot of stairs.

So this is why I oppose any form of thank you for your comments.

Our next speaker is Rachel and then Varun Aurora.

Good evening.

I'm Rachel Isco, and uh I'm representing tonight the Sacramento Housing Alliance.

Um I refer you to that alliance's letter in your package, uh laying out the arguments against downzoning, this uh transit-oriented site.

Any downzoning would be an opposition to the city's housing element, the general plan, the city's pro housing designation, and fair housing law.

I personally live three blocks from the site and welcome housing diversity in the form of multifamily housing.

Uh in my neighborhood, there is pent-up demand for apartments from people who wish to live in our neighborhood and simply cannot afford to purchase a $700,000 home.

As important, the housing alliance opposes the planning commission's earlier action granting a single family use permit for the remaining flex parcel.

There was no justification for granting this use permit.

It was clear that the commission felt pressured to approve it.

But we know that any decrease in housing decrease in opportunities for multifamily housing will exacerbate the city's existing housing crisis and close off housing options for renters and non-wealthy households to prevent these types of actions and loss of multifamily housing opportunities in the future.

I urge the council as you overhaul the city zoning code that you remove single family housing as a conditional use on these flex sites so that in the future, if a developer wants to build single family housing in these flex zones, they would need to come to city council with a full rezone application.

If our goal is to verse to diversify housing types in Sacramento to reflect the diversity of housing needs of the city's residents, our zoning code and processes must give the commission and the council the tools to enforce that vision.

Thank you.

Arun Aurora is our final speaker on this item.

I'm also getting rid of my pre-planned comments in light of the comments by uh the lawyer.

Um a couple of years ago, my girlfriend taught me the concept of a shit sandwich.

Do you know what a shit sandwich is?

Sort of with the bread through the shit inside and the bread below that.

And so the bread here is congratulations to uh Mr.

Petrovic on building amazing housing for so many people, giving them their first homes, shopping centers, public space, um, clean and contaminated space.

Now the shit.

The appellant has made a mockery off the words, the linguistics around the woods, multi-family and multi-unit, he's made a joke of it, and they've drowned you in legal gibberish.

Um it's difficult for any leader, any person working in politics, any person working in council to make progressive decisions in the future if there are 20 other documents that need to constantly be referenced and compared with so that the linguistics are absolutely perfect.

This is not magical software code that all connects with each other.

This is language, and so this is appalling.

Um I guess if this is the way things are gonna be, then why are we even uh asking for multifamily and multi-unit housing in in Sacramento?

Everything should just be single family housing, right?

Uh the same argument can be made anywhere.

So what you say today, what you do today will have a precedence in the future.

Back to uh the bread at the end of the shit.

Um the appellance client's father was a hardworking man from uh Croatia and Sicily, and they came to the country, and he constantly says that his father made 20,000 in salary.

That would be $60,000 equivalent today.

He has shat all over the idea of affordable housing and the menace it is, but his own father would not be able to give him birth and raise a family and make him a successful developer if all we had was single family houses that cost a million dollars.

Thank you.

Mayor, I have no more speakers.

Okay.

Thank you so much, members of the council mayor McCarty.

I appreciate your time this evening and for your consideration.

Uh I'll just make a few quick comments and rebuttal.

Um again, it's not about more units or less.

There has been no argument by staff that this is not consistent with the density, minimums and maximums required by the code.

The concept that deny this housing because you'll get another project in the future.

Well, I don't see that being any different than just denying housing because we want to find a reason to deny housing.

That's precisely what the California legislature is trying to avoid.

With respect to the dismissiveness of the ADUs, um my client is an experienced builder, and to the extent I hope some of you have seen the products in the community.

Some of it, some of these products include separate entrances and exits for ADUs.

Especially you can see them in the brownstone style developments.

He can design and he can propose projects that clearly have multiple units, two units in a single build single dwelling, and which will be effective at providing additional housing opportunities.

Third, with respect to this concept that we should uh um again, deny the project because there's gonna be an affordable project.

This is being given to you by folks who are not experienced builders.

Well, it's relevant, right?

Right.

Part of the problem is that people are saying, don't allow this because we want that.

But if that is not financially feasible, that's relevant to your consideration.

The whole reason for this amendment is because a project was designed that makes financial sense.

The multifamily projects, they don't pencil.

My client knows what he's doing.

I mean, he knows how to track what rental income would be versus the number of units they can provide.

If he thought he could make money and actually profit to the extent that it would pay for the project, he would have considered it.

He would, he did consider it.

So the question is not, well, let's have the dream project that the government builds for us, because that would be nice.

The question is, well, what pencils?

What makes sense?

What works?

And I think ultimately that's the issue.

Again, this isn't about the number of units, this isn't about prior deals, this isn't about the developer.

And I raise an objection to the prior speakers raising it my club, my client's father.

It's totally inappropriate.

The issue here is about building form.

Whether whether these unit types are not presented to you with three units attached, that that's a justification to deny it.

That alone is a justification to say, well, because these three units don't touch each other, none of the objectives and the policies and the goals of the general plan make any relevance to this application.

It obviously does.

And the concept of, oh well, don't piece.

We we're we're um playing mint uh word lingu the word games with you.

Well, words matter when it comes to legal requirements.

I'm not the one who wrote the municipal code that defined terms that has a whole section of defined terminology that was vetted, reviewed, made consistent with the general plan, and then adopted.

So there's a reason why words have meaning, and there's a reason why certain words are used and others are not.

And we can bring that to you.

That the reason to deny it, the speaker said the reason to deny it is because there's a whole bunch of other ways we could use this land.

Well, that's a reason to deny everything.

Any land can be used for a million different purposes.

In theory, if you have different laws and different, if you have free money and so I I would encourage the commission, I mean I'm sorry, the council, my apologies, to boil this down in the following way, and this is how I'll conclude.

If you look at the applicant's proposal and the requirements, is the building form itself a reason to deny it under the general plan?

Is the fact that the three three of the units don't touch?

Is that why it doesn't meet the objectives and the goals and the policies of the general plan?

Because that's really the only issue before you.

Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Do we have any uh questions or comments for the applicant rebuttal?

So, Mayor, um, can I uh let you know the public comment period has closed?

Correct.

I mean council comments, no public comment periods closed.

Well that I'll move to council discussion, Councilmember Jennings.

So um I've had the opportunity to review the staff report, and I first want to thank all those who came out tonight and test making their testimony.

Um but I've had the opportunity to review the staff report prior to tonight's meeting.

I've had the opportunity to listen to the testimony of the staff and the public.

And I'd like to make a motion in support of staff's recommendation.

I'll second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second comments, councilmember Gera.

Uh thank you very much.

Um mayor.

Uh one a couple things here.

Um in my uh time, I think 23 year years working in the legislature and advising legislative staff and other senators and assembly members on housing.

I've never once heard this discretion, this this discrepancy between multi-family housing and multi-units.

And uh and clearly a reasonable person would understand, uh in my I'm not an attorney, but uh uh and in my experience, uh reasonable person would understand what multi-family unit is.

Second, in also in my time as a as a planning commissioner uh for the county, and then uh the time here, I also have never once seen that.

And I was very moved by the testimony of uh you know Mr.

Wiener, who uh I've known has worked in the multifamily housing world for many years as well, and also Ms.

Iskow uh as well, and uh who have actually penciled out projects in very difficult areas.

Uh so uh you know the the last piece that I I'll say that in my time on the county planning commission was that uh it's an important decision for the land use authority to think about when they make a decision to approve a project or deny a project.

And um some may say that a project will by not doing anything, the project will be vacant and nothing will come.

Uh but also on the flip side, uh I think uh a haste uh haste uh hastily done decision um when um as Mark Twain said, you know, the um you know by land they're not making any more of it.

Once we make a decision on the use of this land, um it stays in that uh form in that perpetuity for many years.

And I will just uh reflect on the experience on Stockton Boulevard.

Uh when we made a decision on this council to be thoughtful about that decision, um it uh spurred the opportunity for new uh options to come forward.

Um I uh will be supporting the motion.

Um I do uh also though uh regret that uh we're not looking at higher density and that the other port portions of the parcels are are not in that um and I'll be supporting the motion because um you know it's uh inconsistent, the application is inconsistent with the general plan, particularly when you look at that location there.

Uh the location that is uh next to uh uh light rail next to as you heard walkability.

Uh all of those keys, all of those factors are what we use to determine our land use decisions.

And so um, you know, this is uh this was a new uh uh uh argument that I've never heard before, but one that uh I don't find credibility to and that a reasonable person would would know what multifamily housing is, and with that I'll I'll be supporting your motion, Councilmember Jennings.

Thank you.

Councilmember Dickinson.

Thank thank you, Mayor.

I um I want to uh just establish that that uh I've read the staff reports and and the material submitted by all parties, uh including council, listen to the the public testimony.

Uh and in conclusion, um without a great deal of explication.

Um in conclusion, uh uh I am struck by council's concession that if as to his contention over issue one, the council has the discretion to um deny the the request and and the appeal.

Uh that that uh to me uh infers that uh in fact the staff has appropriately identified um the issues that should apply in consideration of uh this appeal.

And it and uh the the applicant uh has not uh in in my judgment made a compelling case for for concluding to the contrary uh on that uh on that issue.

On issue two, the applicant's contention is that HCD uh is mistaken to the extent that it is expressed uh its opinion uh in writing uh to us uh and that has been incomplete in its in and its consideration um uh of this.

I would note in the in the the letter that the HCD um says the project is not eligible for the protections provided by government code section 65589.5 subdivision J1, and the city is not required to make written findings under this section to deny the project that's uh I think particularly meaningful uh in this in this context.

So uh in this instance I find um that relying on the expert opinion of the agency at the state charged with uh uh with uh implementation in effect of the housing uh accountability uh has concluded that it doesn't apply here.

And uh for those who have watched ACHCD in the last few years, um that's not the common conclusion that it comes to.

I I find that to be uh meaningful as well.

Um I will only add uh uh that I'm going to I'm gonna support the motion uh although uh I think it's unfortunate that uh in a sense we're splitting the baby uh uh uh on this with regard to the the flex parcel as well.

I um I I wish they were both being uh and would be uh designated for and developed uh in a higher density uh and multifamily uh configuration.

Uh and I'm disappointed in the applicant because uh I have worked with this applicant in the past.

I know what this applicant can do uh when he is um committed to an outcome that serves uh both uh a worthwhile development interest and a community interest.

And so um it's discouraging uh to see this contention here when when I know he's capable of uh of much more.

Um but as I said a moment ago, um in consideration of all the uh all the factors here, I I will support the motion that's on the floor.

Okay.

Thank you.

Uh no further comment.

Madam Clerk, you want to repeat the motion we have before us?

Yes, thank you, Mayor.

So council member Jennings closed the public hearing and made the motion to approve the staff recommendation.

That was seconded by Vice Mayor Talamantes, and Councilmember Kaplan is recused from this item.

Okay.

The motion and a second.

All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any no's or abstentions.

None.

Thank you.

Next item, please.

Mayor, we've already dispensed with item 21.

So we'll move to item 22.

That item is an agreement, gunfire detection system.

I think the rest of the team's coming here in a minute.

I am not going to take that long just so we can get that out.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

I'm Deputy Chief Zach Bales.

Uh, with me is uh Captain Ethan Hanson, and we are here tonight to discuss uh the sound thinking shot spotter system as the contract is up for renewal, um, and then we will be available for any questions.

Um I'm gonna turn this over to Captain Hanson in a moment for an overview of the system, and then I'll be back up with a few closing comments and to take any questions.

But before I turn it over, I wanted to be clear that the police department strongly supports the renewal of this contract.

The the use of this technology accomplishes many department goals that are in line with our violent crime reduction strategy, um, including leveraging technology to the most efficient use of officer time, precision evidence-based response in the moment gunshots are being fired in our neighborhoods, and preservation of life, even when we don't get a call from the community reporting shots being fired.

With that, I'm gonna ask Captain Hansen to come up and give a brief overview of the system to you.

Good evening, Ethan Hanson with the Sacramento Police Department.

I'm captain of our investigations division.

So as Chief Bale has talked about, I'll just give a very quick overview.

ShotSpotter is a product owned by the company of Sound Thinking.

So when you look at the contract, the Sound Thinking and ShotSpotter may be used interchangeably tonight.

But ShotSpotter is the actual product, Soundthinking is the company.

The Sacramento Police Department first incorporated ShotSpotter in 2015 in a three square mile polygon in our north area.

In 2016, we added a three square mile polygon in the south area.

And 2017, a 1.7 square mile area in our east area of the Sacramento.

And the way the system works is within those zones, there's a multitude of microphones that when two or more microphones pick up a noise that sounds like a gunshot, that activation or detection is sent to Shot Sputter headquarters.

At that point in time, staff for ShotSpotter review the audio to determine if it is a gunshot or something else.

If they determine that it is a gunshot, it is sent back to the police department as a published detection, and it goes to our communication center.

At the same time, any officer who's logged into the ShotSpotter app will get an alert that'll give a precise location as well as the audio from the file.

So that all happens within 60 seconds on average of the sound being heard by the system.

That allows the officers to quickly identify where it's going, sometimes even before the call for service is entered into our dispatch CAD system, and they could start driving to that location and responding.

And when we get there, we engage in our preliminary investigation.

And of course, the first thing we look for is any victims that need medical treatment or services.

But then after that, we will work to determine if a crime occurred.

Because a shot spotter detection in and of itself does not constitute that a crime occurred, nor develop probable cause for any sort of arrest of a person.

So when they get there, after determining any victims that need care, they look for witnesses or evidence to include surveillance, any casings, or any other thing that can prove or disprove whether or not a crime occurred.

So now understanding how the system works on a very high level without going into uh nitty-gritty details.

We'll talk about the cost of it and the value we see in it right now.

So the contract we're looking to renew right now costs approximately $530,000 a year.

And we are looking at a five-year extension with an out clause for each year.

And the reason we asked for five years is to lock in the price so we don't have unfunded liabilities in the future.

That is a 4% higher cost per year than what we've been paying for the last four years, which was $509,600.

That is paid for through blended funding choosing a MyOp and federal JAG funds to cover the cost.

Now the value we get out of the system is uh about four different things that are specific that we're gonna highlight right now.

The first thing is the system allows us to vet gunshots versus other noises.

So as I mentioned earlier, the microphones will pick up that noise and send it to their headquarters for review.

As an example, in July, there were about 3,900 detections that were uh detected by the microphones and sent to headquarters.

Yet only 55 were determined to actually be gunshots when it had human review.

So that means the police department was only sent 55 of those publications as opposed to chasing around sounds of shot fire that are inaccurate or misplaced information.

And so it helps more efficiently deploy our resources and make sure that we're not going after things that are not gunshots.

Not quick question who reviews those gunshots or the shot spotter staff.

Yeah.

So police department staff, city staff, no one from the police department is involved in that at all until it comes back to us as a published thing.

So 3,850 detections, the city had nothing to do with in the month of July.

So that saves time.

Other systems don't have that human element to review the sounds uh once they're detected by AI, and so that could lead to additional work if it's not vetted.

The second thing that's important about it is we actually get alerts because on average we see that uh less than 20% of the activations in our shot spotter zones have correlated community call-in, which means 80% of the time there is a shooting in those zones, and no one from the community is able to call us or willing to call us.

We are still able to go to those communities and serve them and provide them the justice as well as any victim resources they need without the community ever having to reach out.

With those alerts that we didn't have the community college with, or even if a citizen calls in, the shot spotter system gives us a precise location.

So anyone who's actually heard a gunshot occur outside, you may recognize it as a gunshot, you may give a general idea of where it came from, but you're usually not able to identify the street it's on, and definitely not down to the hundred block or the exact location.

So when that activation comes back to us, the officers within a minute are able to get a longitude and latitude and start driving there to identify any victims who need help, as well as any suspects who may still be in the area endangering the community.

And the last thing, as I mentioned earlier, they can listen to those audio files while they're responding.

That means while they're going there, they can listen to hear is it one gunshot?

It's a multiple gunshots.

Is it full auto fire?

Is it two different types of guns based off the audio?

And that way they can make a safer approach and they could do a better job at trying to identify any victims that may be unseen, as well as any evidence that they need to utilize to further their investigation.

Now, with that being said, I'm gonna turn it back over to Chief Bails.

All right.

Um, just to illustrate how we use ShotSpotter, I wanted to share a recent example with you.

In a moment, I'm gonna show you a video, but I want to describe uh what you're gonna see first.

Up on the screen, you're gonna see footage from the CHP Air 21 uh helicopter that responded in conjunction with SPD ground units to a series of shot spotter activations that we had in our north area.

Um, as the air unit arrived at the shot spotter reported location, they observed the shooter uh once again fire a gun out of that car.

Um, as you're gonna see in this um video in a moment, the air unit was then able to follow until our SPD ground units were able to locate the suspect and detain him safely.

Um, during that investigation, no other witnesses that could or would identify the suspect, vehicle or shooter were located by officers and investigators.

So if we could start that video real quick.

So in the bottom left hand screen, um, that you can see the shots being fired right now, um surrounded by that box, and another shot being fired right there.

So the air unit was directed uh initially to that area by the initial shot spotter um activation that came in.

They arrived on scene uh very quickly as SPD officers were responding, and they happened to record that last series of shots.

If it weren't for the shot spotter alert to that location and the subsequent response of the air unit, we possibly would have never had identified that shooter, let alone have the video evidence of him firing the gun.

And we certainly would have not had um uh had detained that suspect less than 10 minutes after the initial shooting had occurred.

Um the suspect was subsequently uh booked for uh the shooting, possessing the loaded firearm and child endangerment as he had a four-year-old in the car, as you can see being carried out by an officer right there at the time of the shooting.

That's good for the for the video.

So there's a few um highlights I want to talk about in the shot spotter system.

Um the first is that shot spotter is one piece of our violent crime strategy.

Um, this technology piece is in addition to all of the other technologies and strategies that we use.

We use community-based organizations, we use the real-time crime center, we use ShotSpotter, we use our violent crime reduction teams, we use a tapestry of different strategies to apply to violent crime in order to have the outcome, which we've been fortunate to have.

Um, and I'll talk about that in a few minutes.

But ShotSpotter by itself is critical to life-saving emergency response.

Right now, over 80% of our gunfire incidents, and this is over the life that ShotSpotter has been with us, 80% of those incidents go unreported by uh by our residents.

Meaning 80% of the time, without that alert, we would not have police officers or emergency medical being able to respond to those areas uh otherwise.

We know that violent crime disproportionately affects communities of color.

In 2024, 77% of shooting victims in Sacramento were either black or Hispanic.

Our shot spotter zones are located in historically impacted areas and uh home to some of our most underserved populations.

Removing this tool would disproportionately harm the very communities that are most at risk, undermining our equitable public safety.

Shot spotter helps us avoid over policing while targeting an actual crime.

Traditionally in policing, if we had a spike in crime, we would oversaturate that neighborhood with lots and lots of patrol officers and lots of lots of police cars, and we would just start stopping people for minor violations.

But that type of high impact policing has a toll on the trust in the community and the and the community that we serve.

This tool basically allows for precision-based responses to a latitude, a longitude, to a place where we know a shooting just occurred within 60 seconds in our neighborhoods.

That that precision policing is best practice in our industry.

It really has demonstrated uh quite a bit of success for um you know throughout the United States, but right here in Sacramento, our own stats have shown a uh a 45% drop from 2021 to 2024 within our shot spotter zones.

We went in those zones from 989 alerts in 2021 and we're down to 527 in 2024.

But shot spotter alerts alone is not the metric.

The metric are how many less people are being shot.

And I am uh proud to say that we have had year over year reductions every single year, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 in firearm assaults.

Probably most importantly, is this tool helps us promote public uh public safety equity and promotes public trust.

We know that eliminating shot spotter will leave potentially hundreds of gunfire incidents on basically unresponded to.

This can amplify a perception of abandonment in some of our most challenged neighborhoods and areas where people are challenged to call police in the first place.

And since they know the system is up and running, they use it as a silent safeguard, knowing that we will show up.

Discontinuing gunshot detection would mean leaving communities already burdened by violence even more exposed, and dismantling a proven method of precise accountable policing.

I think that we can all agree that if someone fires a gun in front of our own house, regardless if we feel comfortable calling the police or not, that we want a police officer to show up, respond quickly, ensure that no one is hurt if they are administer aid, and hold accountable the person responsible for such a reckless and dangerous behavior.

With that, I'm available for questions.

Thank you so much.

We're gonna take public comment first and then we'll do we'll do council comments.

Thank you, Vice Mayor.

I have one speaker, Keon Bliss.

Members of City Council, my name is Keon Bliss, and I'm a former chair of the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission.

And I'm urging you to vote no on renewing this shot spotter contract.

It already expired in June, and ending it today would actually immediately save Sacramento taxpayers more than $500,000 a year.

And if you renew this, it will lock us into wasting $2.6 million through 2030 on a tool that doesn't work to prevent gun violence and doesn't even reduce gun violence.

In fact, there are studies that show that it actually increases police response time, not reduce them.

Shot spotter is costly, ineffective, and dangerous.

In Chicago, 89% of alerts led to nowhere.

In St.

Louis, only one in 300 alerts found evidence of gun violence.

And here in Sacramento, 73% of these alerts produced no reports from the police.

And what do we get for these millions of dollars we've wasted already?

A system that overwhelms dispatch with false alerts.

Even law enforcement leaders call shot spotter a gimmick and an utter failure.

Worse, it's not just wasteful, it's harmful.

Shot spotter has been linked to wrongful arrests, deadly police encounters, and increased surveillance of black and brown communities, which this which the captain or deputy chief just described.

Meanwhile, our city faces a third year of budget deficits.

Every dollar spent on shot spotter is a dollar not spent on violence interrupters, housing, or mental health crisis response.

The solutions we know actually keep communities safe.

Sacramento deserves safety, not uh gimmicks.

Sacramento deserves justice, not waste.

And we most certainly deserve investments in people, not microphones on a pole.

All you have to do tonight is simple.

Vote no, let the contract expire, and you instantly save $500,000 a year for Sacramento.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Vice Mayor, we have no more speakers.

Thank you so much.

Councilmember Maple.

Thank you, Madam Vice Mayor.

And I just have a couple quick questions.

First of all, I just want to say thank you to our mayor and our interim city manager making sure or city clerk for making sure this is on the discussion calendar.

I know that I I've had some questions as I've you know read over the documents and um having the opportunity to learn a little bit more.

Um actually tasked my my staff with putting together our our own analysis based on you know what we've read on the internet, we with different reports that have come out, and we have about 40 pages.

I'm not going to bore you guys with this, um, but it's been really helpful for me to understand.

So I'm gonna start out with um my first question is around the amount of money that we have going towards the SIS.

So the vast majority of the money, the 491, almost 492,000 comes from that JAG grant.

Is that correct?

Well, it depends on it's year or year over year.

Yes, that's how much is in the JAG fund currently, excuse me, but that's allocated annually.

So as it goes on, um that that increase that uh amount fluctuates based on the federal government.

The last year I think they um allocated nationally 499 million um nationally, and then we we have a portion of those JAG funds.

And when we apply for JAG funds, do we say explicitly that we're using it for this purpose, or is it a source of money that the police department can use for a variety of different purposes?

Uh it is is fairly specific and narrow in what we can use it for.

It is for um fighting violent crime, but it specifically enumerates personnel and overtime, equipment, technology, travel and training, uh, supplies and operating costs all surrounding um crime, and it also has a uh non-supplanting um uh clause where we can't you know use it to um uh make it so that we're you don't have to use city funds to are for our primary purpose.

Okay, that's really helpful because I see I um I looked through a list of some other JAG uses in other cities and El Paso, they use it for communications equipment like radios in Las Vegas they use it for tablets for patrol officers, and actually in Tennessee they use it for a comprehensive approach to violent crime statewide and not just um in individual cities.

So I thought that was really interesting.

Um it can't be used for other things, uh, but this is what we use it for historically.

Correct.

Okay.

Along with the MIOP, yes.

Okay, great.

And then um my next question around the funding is so we have the MyOp and the grant.

We we're not calculating in the staff time for for what this so, for example, if you get uh a verified activation that comes to you, then we obviously have someone on patrol who goes out and and goes to that, spends time investigated that is that calculated in at all to what we're seeing in this number?

No, this this uh it's a great question.

No is the answer.

This is just strictly for the subscription to the service and the maintenance of the equipment that comes with that service, the alerts, access to the app, um, and all of the feedback loop that we do that.

The the um and I'm if if I can expand on that, we've evolved how we've responded to shot spotter over time since we've had it.

So when we first deployed it, we had shot spotter units, officers that were dedicated to just the shot spotter calls.

They weren't on 24 hours a day, but they were placed on uh shift when they were most likely to get the most activations, and we deployed them in different parts of the city.

But with staffing um uh constraints and best use, we have reallocated those officers back into patrol response, and in turn, we've um then put uh trained all of our patrol staff to respond to this call for service, just like any other call for service that they're trained to go to, like a domestic violence or uh you know you know a disturbance or whatnot.

They know all of the investigative steps that they need to take in order to you know complete that call for service.

That has made uh much better and quicker response to all of those um different shot spotter calls.

So um the staff time actually would be pretty difficult to calculate in individually.

Um I mean we could we could calculate how much time that one officer spent to go to that one call and investigate it.

But this is just one piece of evidence in these calls.

That that that shot spotter activation may be linked three weeks from now to another shot spotter activation based on casings that were located there and entered into our Nyvan system, and or some other investigation where it comes out, oh yeah, I was at the scene of this shooting, or someone said identifies someone to that shooting, where we link back two or three shootings to a single single suspect.

So it's hard to quantify, you know, that that individual shot spotter uh activation into one piece of staff staff time.

Okay, that's helpful.

Um and that's actually kind of is a good segue into some of the other questions I have, which is around how often are we seeing that?

So, you know, like how often is an activation happening and it's leading to us finding some crucial piece of evidence, whether that be a firearm, casings in a case, whatever it may be that's actually leading to hopefully eventually an arrest or some other outcome like that.

Yeah, I I it it's difficult to quantify how many arrests are directly related, other than if an officer shows up at the scene, someone's holding the gun, or says, Yeah, that's the person who fired the gun, and the investigation lot leads to enough probable cause to arrest that person right then and there.

Um but what I would say is kind of what I referred to earlier is this is one piece of technology that we're levering, leveraging in our wider violent crime reduction strategy.

So our violent crime reduction teams, they review the shot spotter activations over the weekend.

They are able to use investigative techniques in order to try and uh link particular people or known actors in in our neighborhoods that would potentially be suspects of this back to that.

Not to mention that we have all sorts of ongoing investigations in these areas that often are tied to those, and whether or not that individual activation is charged, doesn't mean that we aren't able to prove that that person did in fact fire the gun at that location.

Besides that, our only goal is not an arrest when we respond to an activation at shot spotter.

Our goal is to make sure that no one is shot, that there aren't bullet holes in a house and someone is bleeding out inside of a house.

Um our goal is to like create safety in a space that was just very unsafe where someone's you know firing a handgun in public.

Okay, that's really hard.

And then how often have has a shot spotter activation led to us finding someone bleeding, for example, in your in your scenario?

Well, it it depends because these are in zones.

I don't have the specific numbers in front of me of we don't keep a stat of how many times we show up and someone's bleeding, but yeah, um, but I what I will say is when someone is shot in one of these zones, whether it's an aggravated assault, a homicide, a negligent discharge, whatever the case is, those applicable charges uh happen.

And it allows us, and we do have cases where we show up and there has been no call and someone is bleeding on that call.

Okay, so it does happen.

Um that's really helpful for me to understand too, because what I'm trying to get at here in my own mind as I've read through all of this just to just to be transparent, is around you know whether the cost-benefit analysis of this and whether or not what we're paying for, which I know in part is from a grant that we could also maybe use for other purposes down the line, um, is actually worth it.

And so um I've I'm thinking about this in terms of you know, how how often are we seeing this result in something that would either lead to someone who's shot their weapon being arrested somewhat or getting um evidence for a case or saving someone's life in the examples that you've brought up.

Um, and then another question I have is around the false positive rate.

That's something that I've read about in other cities where they they've at least with this particular program had those issues.

Do we experience those issues here in Sacramento?

Um yeah, let me address both of those things.

Um, first of all, on the the cost-benefit analysis, um, this is a very common question, especially in with public safety.

I mean, with all public safety spending, whether we add more police officers or we add more police cars, or we add a particular piece of equipment, it's hard to measure the worth of saving a life or measure the worth of taking a handgun off of the street or out of the hands of someone who's already proven that they're willing to shoot somebody in public and preventing that next shooting.

So that that measure is very difficult for us.

Um, but I think that in our opinion, we are using these dollars and leveraging these resources that we have the best way possible to make best use of this.

And when uh we are able to use precise data, hey, a shooting just occurred here 60 seconds ago, and we're able to get an officer to that location versus hey, go patrol around in this neighborhood, and maybe you'll be in an area when a shooting occurs or there is really an excellent use of of police dollars.

Um, to your second point, the um accuracy of the shot spotter system.

Nationally, they have a 90% um accuracy rate.

What we like specifically about sound thinking is it's just not a computer algorithm that is identifying that, um, which some of the other systems that we've looked at and have evaluated, it's just a computer algorithm.

This has a human that verifies that hit.

And as uh Captain Hansen mentioned in the month of July when we have fireworks going off like crazy and there's 3,000 oh bangs going on out there.

Um they're able to discern uh those out all the way down to the rate of we only responded to 54 of those.

Um so in our opinion, it's it's highly accurate.

Okay, all right, thank you.

I'm just gonna have a couple more comments, but I'm done with my questions.

I appreciate it.

Yep.

Um, so you know, as I mentioned, we put together this uh report that basically analyzed some of the research that's out there on this program nationwide, um, as well as news articles, what other cities have done, and so I just want to point out a couple things that I've just noticed in in the work in the research that I did, um, which is you know that while it is you know it may be 90% accurate in terms of identifying um a gunshot versus something else.

It also 90% of those alerts don't actually produce actionable results as is defined by a lot of the research out there, which means are we arresting someone, are we getting um a weapon, are we getting some other kind of thing that's gonna help us in um in our investigation?

In fact, um, you know, a lot of other cities have gotten rid of this program because they found that what it did was waste a lot of time for officers.

I'm not saying that that's the case here, um, because I would need more information on Sacramento specific data, um, but that's what other cities have experienced.

Um this was mentioned earlier, but we have I can list off the cities that have recently um in the last few years gotten rid of it.

So that's New Orleans, uh Louisiana in 2013, Charlotte, North Carolina in 2016, Trenton, New Jersey in 2016, San Antonio, Texas in 2017, Torrey New York in 2017, Fall River, Massachusetts in 2019, Canton, Ohio in 2020, Atlanta, Georgia, 2018, Dayton, Ohio, 2022, Durham, North Carolina, 2023, Portland, Oregon, toward 2023, Seattle, Washington, 2023, Chicago and Houston, both in 2024, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 2025, and Little Rock most recently.

Um, and in almost every single one of those cases, um, as I went and actually went back and watched some of their city council meetings, read the report, their staff reports on this, they all noted uh essentially that they did not feel like that they were for lack of a better term, bang for their buck.

They didn't feel as though the programming was actually leading to a reduced reduction in gun violence.

They didn't feel as though it was leading to them being able to solve cases better.

Um, in fact, many of them cited that that it was taking up a ton of staff time from the police department, and they actually opted for other violence prevention strategies instead of using ShotSpotter.

Um so you know, these are I can share these studies with everybody, of course, so happy to share with them.

And so when I look over the totality of what we've spent as a city since 2015, we're looking at over four million dollars.

Um, and it's really unclear to me whether or not we've seen that direct benefit financially.

Um, and so I'm I'm very skeptical about whether or not this is a good use of funds in my opinion.

Um, I don't I don't want to substitute my judgment for for those on the on the street who are doing the work, but it's really hard for me to look at the data that we do have and make the um judgment that we are that this is a good use of funds based on just the data that we have in front of us.

Um, and so you know, I am happy to share this with everyone because I don't want to belabor this.

I know it's been a really long day, but I I'm personally gonna be voting no on this today.

Um I I'm not convinced of the um accuracy and effectiveness of this program, and um I I'd like to see hopefully us being able to use some of this funding for other uh violence prevention strategies in the future.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We have three more uh council members, and I appreciate your line of questioning uh uh council member maple, but there's one follow-up question to your to your final comments.

I'd like to ask uh Deputy Chief Bailles to uh to maybe address is uh I I did hear earlier and from the public comment that there was some departments that opted out of this, and you're not here to talk we're Sacramento there, San Antonio and other cities.

But if you could maybe um characterize what why you think that they left and why we feel comfortable staying, if you could do so, please.

Sure.

Um I wouldn't propose to offer why they left, but I would say that shot spotter is not like any other tool in public safety or any industry.

It's how you use the tool or the data.

And here in Sacramento, in conjunction with our violent crime strategy, like that I mentioned with that is a diverse set.

We believe that shot spotter is a crucial piece of that, and we our data is that we have year over year violent crime reduction, firearm reduction in people shot.

And really that's what we care about.

And is so in best use of our dollars, we're seeing a positive result from the use of these dollars, along with our all of our other strategies that we are employing.

So I do know that there's several cities, including large cities like Oakland and San Francisco, that right here in our own backyard that are staying with um shot spotter and that do find it a valuable tool.

But it's difficult to know across the nation how they employ it, if they how they respond to it, and if they use it as a uh as a piece of evidence and as a diverse approach to violence reduction versus relying on it to solve their violent crime problem.

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Vang.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, first I just wanted to take this time to thank Captain Um Ethan and Captain Bells for your presentation.

Um I um actually councilwoman maple asked a lot of my question.

I do have just one or two questions and mailing some some comments.

Um I think the first piece is um I really want to center our Sacramento Police uh review commission.

I know that year after year our Sacramento Police Review Commission has recommended that the city terminate its contract.

They uh made that request in 2022 and then 2023, and I believe the last time this council had a conversation about this pilot growth program was actually in 2003, um, because I went back to look at the city council conversation around the budget uh to fund shot spotter through grant funding, um, the Jack grant, I believe, and a little bit of the MyOp as well.

Um I just you know wanted I'm glad that this item is coming to the full council.

I know that it's already set to expire.

I think one question I just had um for city staff was in the report, um it was noted from 2020 to 2024 that you had 4,000 um over 4,000 shot spotter activation, 607 activation with the citizen call.

Um what is the accuracy rate for Sacramento of the 4,136?

Are all of those actual gunshots?

They're gunfire incidents, um, and I think we are on par with the national average.

Uh so it there are times where in that 10 percent, the the 10 percent, uh there can be issues like if a gunshot is fired, say from inside of a car.

It matters if the arm or the firearm is inside of the window, outside of the window, if it's muffled by a physical barrier of some sort.

That can that in that 10 percent is the where the algorithm has a difficult time, but those give us possibles, and officers are able to go to that area and still ensure that no one is shot, um that someone is is not fleeing from a the scene of a shooting at those times.

So our I believe ours are about on par.

What we do have is a feedback loop with the shot spotter team, and if officers arrive and they determine, oh no, no shot shots were fired, they show up and kids were lighting off fireworks, and they talk to the neighbors and the neighbors say, Oh, yeah, for sure, there was nobody shooting, kids were lighting off fireworks.

What our team does is we then get into the shot spotter program and we enter that.

Hey, this this particular detection was not shots fired.

This is what in some notes about what it is, and I they use that data to further refine their product so that it gets more accurate over.

Okay, so quick question on that.

So of the 4,000, the 4,000, those are actually confirmed gunshots.

That's that's my question.

They're gunfire incidents that are reported to us.

I out of that, I don't know the the exact number of the of whether it was 90% or 95%.

But the 4,000 is confirmed fire incident.

It's it's incidents where shot spotters called us and say, hey, someone fired a gun there.

You know, as it's and it was verified that it was an actual gun.

The 4,000, I that's my question.

My I'm sorry, I don't I guess I don't understand.

I those are those 4,000 are times ShotSpotter has said would they have an alert?

Out of those, out of those, there's a 90% aver 90% national average of accuracy.

I don't have in front of me our local statistics of what we're is that what you're asking for?

Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

I'm I'm also curious um outside of the 4,000, because the 4,000 is verify gunshots, right?

Actual fire.

Were there numbers reported to shot uh spotters outside of the 4,000?

For example, like if there's a detection like fireworks or whatnot.

Oh, yes.

Okay, so like Captain Hanson said, I think I'm I think I'm understanding your question.

Like, do they detect sounds that are not that they determine are not gunshots all the time, and by a great majority, because that like in July, like I mentioned, when they have 3,000 plus you know, shots, you know, or or bangs being heard.

The algorithm and the human verification distills that down to oh, we believe that only 54 of those incidents are actual gunshots, and when they do that within 60 seconds, they are contacting our dispatch and alerting on the officers app and they're we're getting officers to those those scenes.

And following up to confirm if they are correct.

Okay.

You mentioned that there's been a decrease.

I think your number was 998 to 500.

Was it 500 shootings?

We've seen a decrease.

So what what I meant, are you talking about the firearm assaults?

Yes.

So in 2021, we had 902 individuals shot in our city.

In 2022, we had 828 in 2023 that reduced down to 659.

And in 2024, we're down to 562.

Well, that's still too many.

That that that trend is ongoing, and we're continued to make efforts.

Yeah, and Captain Bells, would you would you say, I guess I'm gonna ask you, would you say that has to do with shot spotter?

Because just as you said, and I know Chief has said this too, that when we think about uh reducing gun violence, it's a holistic approach, and I know that crime overall in the city and in this country has actually gone down.

Um, and so like the correlation of like because we have uh shot spotters the reason why you know our gun violence has gone down.

I mean, someone can also argue um, you know, we don't have shot spotters, right?

For example, and that crime overall has still gone down.

And so I'm just trying to also have a better understanding of that correlation.

Yeah, it's difficult to in any public safety effort, whether we put 50 more police officers on the street, or we add a new piece of equipment, or we employ uh an additional community-based organization to be in an area.

We do not believe that there is any one thing individually that does it.

Um, in order to have a positive outcome, and I I believe that we have struck an amazing balance with a diversity of uh strategies to achieve this outcome.

I'm very proud that our department has continued this trend.

We have literally cut in half almost the amount of people who are being shot in our city over the last three years.

I think that's quite an accomplishment, and it really takes all of the tools at our disposal and best use of our dollars in order to accomplish that.

Okay, thank you for that.

Um we're definitely in agreement that I think it's a holistic approach and it's not just one thing.

Um, another question I had was um Councilwoman Maple had mentioned in terms of the grant.

I know um that you submitted data, this the SAC PD submits data annually actually uh to apply for that grant particularly.

Um if you didn't use it for shot spotter, what other um programs or activities would you use it for?

Yeah, I so the the JAG funding obviously can be used in inside of that area, um, those areas that I that I mentioned.

The my op would have to be you know determined by council to be to be reallocated.

Um but as far as a different tool or strategy that would achieve the outcome of putting an officer accurately to the location where a shooting had just occurred within 60 seconds.

I know no other tool that can intervene in public safety in that way.

Okay, thank you.

Um the last question I had was um has PDE had a conversation with our police commission uh given that um this was an um one of their several recommended recommendations over the year to um terminate this contract.

Have you all had a conversation with the police commission, the police commissioners?

I'm not aware of any recent conversations that have been initiated by the um by the commission.

We'd be more than happy to discuss it with them if it was uh still an item of concern for them.

Yeah.

Thank you, uh, Captain Bells.

I appreciate that.

So I just um thank you so much for answering those questions.

Um so you know, I uh just want to go back and center our police commission.

I also got several emails from commissioners and my commissioner in particular, urging us to end this contract.

Um I just want to share that um our police commission, um, commissioners that we all appointed uh in 2022 and 2023, if you were here, um, did recommend us do to uh terminate this contract, and I lean heavily on my commissioners because they do their due diligence, uh, they work in the community.

Um, and I just want to share uh some of their analysis, and I think that's really important.

And so um I know that in the 2022 and 2023 recommendation, they noted that um over 73% of shot spotter alerts resulted in no reports from 2015 to 2022.

Um a lot of this data I actually followed up with them was actually gathered through the numbers that PD submitted for the federal grant uh in particular from 2016 to 2022.

Um it also noted uh in the commission report that um that shot spotter uh only really resulted in four percent of arrests from 2015 to 2022.

Um, and that um a lot of these numbers, again, like I shared with you were provide these numbers are actually provided by PD.

Um I just you know want to share with my colleagues um that you know there are so many cities across this country that have already terminated their contracts because they found that the top technology um you know really uh wasted police resources.

Um in Houston in particular, um, you know, only five percent of shot spotter uh alerts led to arrests, and that 80% of all their actually shot spotter alerts didn't result in crime.

In Boston, um they did an audit and found that 70 percent of shot spotters' alerts actually resulted in no evidence of gunfire, um, and that 16% of them um were pretty much vehicle backfire or construction in Chicago.

There was another study uh that led that showed that there was 86 percent um that uh of shot spotter response that actually led uh to no report of crime, and then in St.

Louis, another research showed that one in every 300 shot spotters also led um led responders to the scene um uh with basically uh no no gun shots.

Um and then recently in New York, um they found that only 13 percent of shot spotter alerts uh were related to actually confirm shootings.

Um I share this because uh, you know, this city in particular really prides ourselves in data.

Um, and so many of our Sacramento youth and families are really struggling in this moment, and it's so important for me that we use our limited resources, especially because we're facing a larger budget deficit next year, that we focus our dollars on methods that we know are actually effective and actually prevents uh gun shooting or crime, gun violence before it happens.

Um, I believe we should be you know prioritizing investing uh in resources that actually prevent violence uh prevention and actually result um in real uh public health solution.

And so, you know, if we don't renew this contract, we're saving over 500,000, half a million um a year, um, and we can redirect that money uh to more proven strategies to stop gun violence.

Um and so respectfully I'm gonna be vote voting no on this item.

Um, and I you know urge my colleague that we let this expire and that uh we find um other alternatives in terms of um addressing gun violence, as as I shared earlier with Captain Bills.

Um you can't just point to one item is the reason why um violent crime has been down.

I think it's a holistic approach, and we should be looking at methods that are actually about preventing um gun violence before it happens.

And so those are my comments.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor Talamantes.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I have a question for PD, a question for legal comment to the chief, and then a few brief remarks.

Uh so I guess I can have PD come up first.

Uh just to clarify, so when the gunshots happen, who clears the sound to make sure whether it's an actual gunshot or fireworks.

So the um the actual company, first of all, the algorithm clears it through, it detects and like runs it through its own filters, and then sound thinking has employees that then verify that on their end, not a city employee.

And only after both of those two steps happen, do they then alert the police department to that?

So the 4,136 shot spotter activation, sound thinking is going through and verifying all those.

Those are correct.

PD is not responding to 4,000 calls running around like that.

We we're not running into we're not running around to a much higher number than that.

The the 4,000 over the last few years are the ones that have met that criteria and that they that they know that a shooting has occurred.

Okay, sounds good.

So just confirming PD is not, you know, and I know I stopped the comment with the presentation for this, but I think that there's a common um understanding the community that police is responding to all these activations, and I'm like, no, sound thinking the company that we're hiring is the one going through.

By over 90 percent, we are responding to a place where a gun was just fired in public.

Okay, thank you so much.

And then question for legal.

Welcome, thank you so much.

Um, and I know we postponed this um from a few weeks ago uh because of the contract and because of some of the concerns that we were getting from the community.

And it's a five-year extension.

So if we at any point here on the city council want to opt out of the contract and say, hey, we don't want to work with this company anymore, can we do that?

Good evening, Vice Mayor and Council.

Um yes, these types of contracts are actually quite complex sometimes, and in fact, they're not known.

These types of companies are known not known to negotiate things such as termination clauses.

Fortunately, after doing a lot of work, we were able to negotiate a very strong and favorable termination clause for the city, which has two components.

Number one, uh it can be terminated the contract without costs.

Just upon a 30 days notice.

So that's very favorable to the city.

Secondly, it has a um uh prorated refund.

And we mean included the mathematical formula within the contract.

That way there is no ambiguity and to avoid any litigation as to how that is calculated and all that.

So you know, we were actually quite surprised that they uh accepted our terms because they're quite favorable to the city.

And so that's the legal work that went into uh along with the police department to to make sure that we negotiated a favorable term for the city.

Okay, thank you so much.

Um yeah, and that's important to me just because there is concerns out in the community, and I did have my briefing with the police department um in regards to what happened in a lot of those other cities, and you know, it's not our role to say, hey, this is why they left it, and you know, I did my own research too.

Um so just having the ability to say, hey, we don't want to work with the company anymore, I think it's really important to me.

Um so then my recommendation to the chief and to you know everyone here is just to come back with additional data every single year with a report back on the number of active, you know, the number of calls that we got and how many were I verified and to continue monitoring this just because I don't want to, it's a five-year contract, so I don't want to see it in five years from now.

Uh I need to make sure that we keep our eyes on it.

So um I will be supporting this item.

Um I do have a few neighborhoods where we have a lot of gun gunshots, um, multiple casings found in early in the morning, and families are scared to report the gunshots um out of fear of retaliation.

And the only reason why we know that incidents happen there is because of these systems that we have in place.

And um I do see it as a tool in our toolbox uh to help, you know, with the detection and with gun violence prevention and making sure that the community knows, like, hey, the police department may be there even though we're not physically there.

And so with that being said, I will move this item.

Thank you.

The motion is second.

Council member Dickinson.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Actually, uh thank you, Mayor.

Actually, Councilmember Telamantes was going down a very much aligned path from uh my line of thinking, particularly with respect to the termination clause.

So I appreciate appreciate um her asking that uh that question.

Um and I uh I I have one other question related to this uh shot spotter uh activations themselves, but I also have I want to go on just a slightly uh uh slight detour here, and is there an opportunity with this technology and what it reports and how the screeners are able to uh ferret out gunshots from other noises to identify fireworks?

There is not um this technology is solely focused on gun gunshot technology and trying to dispatch officers as soon as possible to a location where a firearm was just used.

Well, that's too bad.

Uh because uh in the part of the city that I represent, uh there is a scourge of illegal fireworks, um, not just around July 4th uh on a pretty much continuing basis, if we could if we could interdict that in an effective way, and frankly, we're working with code enforcement using technology drones, et cetera, to to be more uh effective and efficient in that regard.

But it uh if we had other tools such as such as this, since they're deployed anyway, it would uh it would certainly I think uh be potentially very beneficial.

Coming back, coming back to the uh the the action uh that uh the sh this um shot spotter can actually undertake.

I'm I'm maybe asking a question that's been asked, but in a in a different way.

I'm curious, and if you answered this, I apologize I didn't hear it.

I'm curious in and how many uh and what percentage of instances if you can if you can say where uh you get an activation call and an officer responds is uh some element of physical or testamentary evidence recovered as a result of of that deployment of the officer to the location.

Yeah, I'm I'm glad for the chance to clarify this.

One, I I don't have that percentage in front of me, but I think it's important to illustrate the circumstances in which officers do respond.

When officers respond to a shot spotter activation, the absence of a bullet hole or a casing on the ground does not um does not uh completely discount the fact that a firearm was just used.

A revolver does not does not, you know, um kick out a casing uh or any sort of evidence in that.

And if someone is firing that into the air or into the tree or a ground or something where an officer is not a readily apparent, you know, a quarter inch hole is not uh immediately apparent to the officer, they may not be able to find evidence of that shooting.

We also have lots and lots of cases where criminals are savvy enough to pick up casings after they they fire a gun, um removing that evidence from the scene prior to officers getting there.

Um they also sell equipment, um, catch catches for the the casings as well, which also helps them prevent evidence from going onto the ground.

So when we talk about verified shootings, we're talking about the the chance that officers are going to find evidence that's left behind, or there's a person who shot or a piece of property that's shot.

Um that doesn't mean there wasn't a verified shooting.

So the the statistic of a verified shooting would probably be misleading since um it's it wouldn't be not verified that a shooting did not occur.

Um a lot of times we will go to those types of calls and neighbors will say, oh yeah, a gun was fired out here, and officers aren't able to find any specific evidence of physical evidence of that at the time.

Um so those that verified piece is is difficult to measure.

Um regardless though, neighbors are happy that we show up and knock on their door and say, is everybody is everybody okay?

Because a gun was a shot.

Yeah, I'm just curious.

So do you have a a sense of this and how how many uh more than half the time is there some either physical or testamentary evidence that that is uh uh accrued as a result of uh of an officer being sent to the location?

Yeah, I I don't have that that in front of me, nor do we track it in that manner.

Um it's something we could potentially track if we had somebody you know give us a statement that yes, that was that was a gunshot in my opinion.

Um if there was a bullet hole.

If there's any if there's any um evidence that's located, that's documented in a report.

So we collect the evidence, a report is written.

If there's someone who um says they they heard a shooting, that's documented on the call normally.

So there are we do document and track that, but as a metric of what we call a verified shooting, or not, that's not really a metric that we use.

Um and just to illustrate further, what might not be a verified shooting by that's being used in this vernacular right now of they show up and find evidence, investigators three weeks or two months from now could be in the middle of a separate investigation where someone says, Oh, yeah, um actually I was in a car with someone else, and we are at this location around this time, and we did fire a gun.

Well, now we have a piece of evidence that helps corroborate that shooting, that negligent discharge, regardless of the fact that at the moment officers were at the scene did not find a casing or they did not find anything that was shot.

So being able to then track that back to yes, a crime occurred, yes, there was a negligent discharge and or a bullet hole that was found days later, um, it'd be difficult to quantify that, but we find it to be a very valuable tool both investigatively and for preservation of life.

Well, I do think it it would be beneficial to think about what additional data just along the lines we've been talking about in the last couple minutes.

We we might uh uh record in order to continue to assess the the value of this particular um and uh as uh uh council member vice mayor, excuse me, Telamonte suggested I do think at least an annual review does make sense.

Uh and I um if and when there's a motion or there was a motion made and you incorporated that, did you not?

Yeah.

Okay.

So I think that's a that uh uh makes a lot of sense, and I think we all, whether we support this or not tonight, we will all will be looking for additional validation uh uh of this.

Um for my own part uh uh I um uh represent a part of the city that suffers from uh perhaps more gun violence than any part of the city.

And I certainly see the value uh of a variety of approaches to reducing uh gun gun violence.

Uh in fact, and there's some I think we we should also be investing uh more in, which obviously is a challenge in the in the current uh budget environment.

But safety for all, uh especially safety from gun violence has got to be a foundational uh value for us, I think, in in our community.

Um in that light and uh looking at this, uh well, I I do think there are very legitimate questions that that have been raised.

I I subscribe to an all the above strategy.

We have to use all the tools that that we think reasonably are going to help us reduce gun violence.

And uh I've come to the conclusion that uh at this moment I think this is still a um tool that makes sense to continue, but I also think that it's one that deserves um regular and um frequent review to see uh if it continues to to make sense to invest money and recognizing that the uh chunk of this is grant is grant money, federal money, um, or whether there are other uh applications that could help us even more, both within the department and beyond uh in reducing gun violence, because that is the point.

It's reducing gun violence.

How do we manage to do that uh in the most efficacious manner possible?

Thanks.

Thank you.

Councilmember Jennings.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'll try to be quick.

Um I just want to know uh if we were to vote not to have shot spotter, um what possibly would you use to replace ShotSpotter with what tool would you use to replace the shot spotter and the impact that it's had to the organization?

Um thank you for your question.

Uh there isn't a tool that we could use to replace it that meets the standards of the police department and fits within our violent crime strategy.

Our violent crime strategy is working.

Um it the shot spotter is one piece of that violent crime strategy.

Um I would hate to move away from something that we are seeing work to reduce um gun violence.

Um, but like I mentioned earlier, there is no tool um that's out there that uh we believe meets our standards and can accurately put a police officer at the scene of a shooting within 60 seconds of you know, alerting us within 60 seconds uh and getting an officer to either help help somebody who's been shot or bring someone to justice that's shooting a gun.

So even with all the cities that have made a decision to go away from shot spotter, I'm hearing the city of Sacramento is saying this is a vital tool in our toolbox in order to be able to prevent crime and gun violence.

Well, it's you you are correct, and we're not the only city, like I mentioned, both San Francisco and Oakland that also have significant violent crime challenges are using it and using it successfully along with a whole host of other West Coast cities.

Um like I said, it's not the tool, it's how the police department employs that tool effectively to prevent all of the you know uh negative things that can happen with any public safety tool.

So we have better response, we have better information.

I'm hearing that we need to do a better job of keeping statistics.

Statistics like when you go to where a shot spotter has identified that you should go, and you go there and the person has been shot, but you were able to get an ambulance there to be able to save their life because you got there as quickly as you did.

Just things like that that really justify it beyond just the cost, because it's saving lives.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So I'll be supporting this tonight.

I I understand that there are a lot of concerns about the dollars and whether it's the best strategy and everything like that.

But I don't hear a replacement strategy.

I'm hearing that it's something that you support within the police department, and you feel it's a within your tools in order to be able to get the job done that you want to get done for the city of Sacramento.

It's gonna keep all of us safer.

When in fact there is a shot fired, there is a response out there much quicker than we could do on our own without shot spider, shot spotter.

So therefore, I'm gonna be supporting this tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Guerr.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh, you know, I I've grown up uh with seeing in too many incidents uh people firing firearms.

Um not only carelessly using them carelessly, uh still many of them don't, many folks don't lock their firearms, and they've got kids in the house.

Uh and uh and I think it's important that the city send a message that if you're gonna use firearms illegally here uh that uh that they know that we're gonna that the city is gonna respond quickly.

Um to that point, I mean I remember questioning in 2015.

I think Councilmember Jennings and I are the only ones here when we first started Shot Spotter.

I think Councilmember Jennings and I are the only ones here when we first started Shot Spotter, it was a new technology.

Any new technology, um, uh it's we're gonna learn from it, and I think uh I think we have, and I think it's fair to say that there's been ups and downs on it, and and the city of Sacramento has figured out better how to use it.

Second, it uh when it's new technology, it it usually isn't you know uh at a cheaper rate, which goes to my question here.

Um, you know, the the my concern I think is is how the city itself look at um at changing the market here.

And I worry about a five-year contract.

So this so let me first start asking about this because um if new technology was to come into place that was cheaper and better and faster, you know, um glad I look uh you know I appreciate the time on the termination clause, but how can we start looking at at that aspect?

So that's that's my concern with the five year contract.

So talk to me about why the five-year contract and why the negotiation on the contract.

Um first of all, if there is that technology, yes, please.

Um it it doesn't exist currently, and we know that because we do a comprehensive look at all of the best technologies that are out there, um, and we confer with our colleagues throughout the major cities in the United States on a myriad of things, but including software technology, gunshot detection, and things like that.

Our research and development um group in our training division is tasked with doing most of our research for best practice and for emerging technologies.

Um but every time that we renew a contract, we are looking to spend our finite dollars very wisely.

Um the five-year contract, I'm glad you asked, um, we are trying to lock in a price.

Software, in probably all of you have seen this, um, goes up in price every single year.

Um, and so with this, we get the best of both worlds.

We're able to lock in the 2025 price all the way through 2030.

And if we don't like this in 2027, or there's the city's um financial situation or the federal grant situation, any of that landscape changes, thanks to the city attorney and Captain Hansen, we can opt out of that contract.

Um, and if there's a better technology, we can opt out of that contract.

That is one of the things that was very important for us was the no cause termination, so that if and when there is uh something that we believe that would meet our rigorous standard and be able to deliver us to 80 percent of gunshots that are occurring in our city with a no no other way of detecting that gunshot, um, we would absolutely take that opportunity.

So was there ever a uh, you know, maybe maybe it's a fool's errand, but was there never ever a an attempt to do a like a national RFP for uh a different device or different contract?

I guess what I'm getting is how do how do we create more competition in the market so you don't have essentially one monopoly on a technology?

Yeah, I don't know how we create competition other than um constantly asking for more from all of our vendors in all of the different tools that we ask.

But was there a uh a discussion about an RFP or a national RFP?

We we looked at other vendors um uh but the problem is other vendors do not have things like human verification, which is very important to us to reduce that um to reduce the inaccuracy and make sure that we are responding to actual gunshots being fired.

Um the other systems are either too new or unproven um or do not provide the same service uh as the current mark, you know, the current product does.

Um whether or not there's an um you know a company out there that is able to take that over.

Um we've seen throughout um, you know, at least in my career, going from in-car cameras that are VCRs to that is dominated by Panasonic to going to other vendors, uh, Motorola for radios.

There's all these different vendors that are out there, but they're constantly competing for market share.

Um, and so when we interact with all of our vendors, we have a lot of asks, and we leverage different capabilities from different vendors against each other.

Like, hey, uh this vendor offers this particular feature, we would really like that feature, and we'd like to not pay more for it, or we'd like to stay with your company to do it.

So I think that's probably the best way that we spur innovation in the market, um, is continuing to engage with our vendors about what makes uh the best product for our officers on the street at the time.

Well, thank you.

Well, I appreciate that.

Look, I again uh it's evolved a lot.

I think 10 years of experience uh with this department on the on the has uh probably made it more effective where you get to be much more critical of other vendors, but I still I I still think that there needs that there is something more that the city could do, and if Sacramento, Oakland, and San Francisco are using them.

I mean, it seems to me that that's where you know with your counterparts.

Um there should be a message being sent out there to the market saying there's you know a willingness for this technology, and could they come up with something better and more uh at a at a cheaper price point?

So uh the fact that it has uh you know, kudos to your department and and the city attorney's office for that uh you know that uh one year termination clause.

Uh and thank you for taking the time to go through uh uh you know for your staff or go earlier with me through the contract and and uh on this issue.

Uh but I but that I think uh uh we the city cannot be held in contracts, long-term contracts that uh that later on future councils have to figure out how to how to pay for those.

And I think that that's my biggest concern here.

Um this contract here has an exit clause, but um I I don't want to repeat to for example, I'll I won't bring up other past contracts from other councils that we have to still pay for, but uh but uh but I'll say um uh that uh uh I'm glad that the department is using it as a component of a tool, and that it is sending a message that if someone is shoes using a firearm illegally, that we're gonna take uh active action on it.

And I do know people sometimes are afraid to report.

They do they are afraid to report.

So uh having a tool, I think is important.

So thank you.

Okay, just a quick um question of clarification for our motion, Madam Vice Mayor.

Um so what I heard in the motion was a yearly review, um, but I didn't hear any specifics.

So I I guess my question um I I see the writing on the wall here.

I don't think my vote's gonna change the outcome here.

Um, and so I'm I I could see myself supporting this motion if I if there's some specificity on what it is exactly that we're gonna see in this review, and I think specifically I'm interested in the information that's gonna help us make better decisions on a year-to-year basis.

So um, for example, you know, tying it to arrests, to firearm recoveries, um, false positive rates, um, and then specifically um looking at the differences in in outcomes based on traditional 911 calls for um for for gunshots versus shot spotter looking at the differences there, seeing if we see anything, and the last thing is just making sure that we have really clear performance benchmarks from from PD about what they what you all want to see in this technology.

So, is that something that either we can include in direction um as moving forward or in the motion itself?

Yeah, um absolutely actually, Chief.

Can you please come up here?

Um yeah, I included in the recommendation to do an annual audit or you know, evaluation of this program given all the research and some of the concerns from my council colleagues.

So, do you think um one year from now review this and make sure you put on your radar for it to come back to council?

Oh, absolutely.

We actually currently publish statistics, you know, violent crime as we presented in 2022 was our priority in trying to reduce gun violence.

We have put an incredible amount of work into data collection and crime analysis.

Um, obviously, for some of the reasons um that were outlined by Deputy Chief Bailey, some of these are more difficult, but we can certainly continue to provide those and share some of the metrics because you're not the questions that you're asking are very reasonable when you're trying to look at where we're putting our dollars and if they are in fact the most effective, you should know that we have those exact same questions.

We have to stand here and explain and uh justify the need for this product.

So we also have the same questions we ask a lot of our vendors, and I will be happy to come back with a comprehensive report.

Um we will and I I do believe uh you know we should review this every year, and typically we come back and we present where we are on violent crime and just crime in general, whether it's the best.

Just to be clear, so what I'm asking about is um data specific to the efficacy of shot spotter, yes, not just violent crime in general.

I understand.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, and I understand the uh change in the motion.

So, yes, absolutely great.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I'll say including but not limited to.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you very much.

So, with that, um, I'm you know, I uh obviously I've shared my concerns, but I also believe in not letting perfect be the enemy of good.

I really you know want to make sure that we see the data moving forward and if and hopefully be convinced by that.

Um I just didn't I didn't see that today, but I'm happy I'm gonna support the motion today just because I I agree that we should start that review and have the data to make those decisions.

Okay, um so I made the original motion, uh Council Mark Kaplan.

You're okay with the amendments.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you so much.

We have that to be clear, do you think so?

Yes, we had a motion by council member talamante or vice mayor talamantes and a second by Kaplan.

No, I mean the details they revisit.

Absolutely, yeah.

The direction was clear.

Okay, thank you.

Um all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any no's or abstentions?

No.

One no.

Thank you.

Next item, please.

So, Mayor, we move to council comments, ideas, questions, 8123 reports.

And then I have three speakers for matters not on the agenda.

I am not seeing anyone signed up to speak.

Um, Devin Strucker, Mary Tappel, then Zion Taddis.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor City Council.

I'm Devon Strucker.

As the executive director and a resident of the river district, I'm here today to voice our strong opposition to the city's plans to create a new facility for the unhoused in our neighborhood.

The river district is already home to a high concentration of social services, transitional and affordable housing units, and 526 city and or county funded shelter beds in our 1.25 square mile district.

In 1989, the city council made a promise in the form of a resolution not to locate any more shelter beds or social services in the river district.

In the 36 years since the in house crisis has grown exponentially.

In 2021, the city council adopted a comprehensive siding plan that identified 20 priority sites, none of which were in the river district.

However, that plan stalled.

So in March of this year, the city council voted to rescind that resolution to allow additional shelter beds in the river district.

Our mayor and district four council member were absent for that vote.

So the other seven council members, two of whom have zero shelter beds in their districts, essentially voted to once again use the river district to bear the brunt of our region's homelessness crisis.

While the media is reporting that the new microcommunity sites would only have 40 or fewer residents.

At our social at our security summit two weeks ago, we are told that our site would have up to 120 residents.

That would bring us to 646 shelter beds, more than any council district, and in fact, more than districts one, three, five, seven, and eight combined.

Our businesses are struggling.

Our residents are frustrated, and we will never fulfill the river district's economic potential if this plan comes to fruition.

We already have done more than our fair share.

It's time for the rest of the city to step up.

I did um submit a map for you all to see where the shelter beds funded by the city and county are located throughout the district.

Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Mary Tappel.

Mayor McCarty and members of the council, thank you for this opportunity to address you.

I first uh I wanted to adjust what I was originally going to come up for was the uh the uh uh uh operations by the utility department currently and Middle Arcade Creek.

That is a section of the creek from Marysville Boulevard crossing to uh upstream to the Del Paso Boulevard crossing, and a vast amount of earth had been moved out.

I was adjacent property or has a natural park.

My husband and I own a natural park.

We've done a bunch of grant work.

I don't know if there is the uh camera that uh can you see no no?

Well, anyway, this is this is that natural park from the front, but it connects directly to the creek, and we've had a lot of successful grant work done there.

Uh so I would I was feeling that the we were losing some public value there.

And uh so that but thanks to Councilman uh Dickinson um and uh the uh department of utilities acting director uh Cheryl Hune uh and Adams Strevel of uh North Area Supervisor Utilities District uh were working on it to see if we can come to some mutual agreement that's reasonable to go ahead.

So I'm putting that aside, but I did want to make the point that uh this to me is not a vacant lot.

I understand the bureaucracy that it has to be registered as if it was a vacant lot instead of a very treated uh natural park.

Uh, but it was not acceptable for the city to send around a notice um to just deliver a notice saying that that we needed to have everything cleared uh uh down to one uh foot height, uh all of the weedy material.

Um and if we had any any comments we want to make about that, we would be heard in full if we could somehow transport ourselves back in time to 10 days earlier to be at a council meeting fully.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Our final speaker in Zion Tatis.

So that was a thank you for your Zion is our final speaker this evening.

I am the lady thank you for having me.

So just one moment, please.

Let me make sure your microphone's on.

So I'm here to uh complain about uh a commercial uh real estate builder building companies that I have least two years ago for my carnivos business in my Shiva's cafe for coffee shop.

Uh but apparently when I list the building, um they didn't have the electrical, the fire, the basic necessary things that they were supposed to have before leasing the building.

And then the city is making me accountable for the real estators that uh who owns the building was supposed to not lease the commercial, which is common sense, without getting their electrical than the plumbing and the uh mechanical and everything I had to do, spend all my money and my time, my energy to get just certification of uh uh occupancy or capacity, and once I get that, they use the city to actually remove me without it being me being there.

So that type of systemic uh system needs to be accountable and nobody is making them accountable.

So they keep on listing the building to somebody like me, underserved underrepresent this community.

That's why we have 77% of in our community deficiency, and instead of uh, you know, working on the prevention, we work on the action and nobody's being accountable.

So I would I'm trying to put the motion that this commercial building before they listed to people like me, they need to have the certification of their capacity themselves for the building permit.

So it's taking me two years because I had to the city had to make me get all that done, which is unfair.

So I'm just putting an emotion so for you guys to really look at the building uh permits, and then I have a commercial right next to thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Mayor, I have no more speakers this evening.

Thank you for your comments.

Your time is complete.

Yes, thank you.

Please take your seats.

Your your time is complete.

Thank you, Queen Sheba.

Thank you.

We have no more speakers and no more business to come before the council.

Okay, I have one adjournment.

I would like to um adjourn in memory of Larry Ramitas.

Larry um passed away uh suddenly at a local uh shelter um this past um this past month.

He was a team member at Sacramento Navigation, one of our nonprofits.

We recently honored at our um Sacramento nonprofit uh recognition day just a few weeks ago that I I met him that day along with five of his um you know team members with SAC Navigation.

He was very proud of the work that he was doing.

He over overcame a lot, um, addiction, poverty, homelessness, and was um serving alongside his team members trying to make a difference in his own life as well as um team members um helping it make a difference for people throughout Sacramento.

So we want to adjourn um this council meeting in his memory and express our deep condolences to Larry's family, his friends and his loved ones, and again, uh honor acknowledge his work in the city of Sacramento.

Thank you.

With that, we adjourned.