The Santa Rosa City Council held a regular meeting on November 28, 2023, convening first in closed session at 3:00 PM and reconvening in open session at 4:00 PM. The council took significant actions including opting out of PFAS class action settlements, accepting a Cannabis Equity Assessment (while declining to immediately move forward with a full equity program), approving over $2.3 million in HOME-ARP homelessness prevention grants, and electing a new Vice Mayor.
Good afternoon. I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence translation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live translation in Spanish is available, and members of the public or staff wishing to listen in Spanish can join the Spanish channel by clicking on the interpretation icon in the Zoom toolbar. It looks like a glow. Once you join the Spanish channel, we recommend you shut off the main audio so you only hear the Spanish translation. Pablo, will you please restate this in Spanish? Hello and welcome everyone to our November twenty-sixth, twenty twenty-three Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now three o'clock, and we will begin our meeting. Seeing a quorum, Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Stapp. Here. Councilmember Rogers. Here. Councilmember O'Krepki? Here. Councilmember Fleming. Here. Councilmember Alvarez. Vice Mayor McDonald? Here. Mayor Rogers. President. Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Councilmember Alvarez. We will now proceed to item two point one, our closed sessions of the day, two point one and two point two, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, and conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation. Thank you. We are now taking public comment on item two, closed sessions. If you'd like to provide a comment, please make your way to the podium. Speaker, go ahead at the podium. Mr. Ells, are you gonna provide public comment on item two? Yes, uh, do forgive me. Um these PFAS uh the DuPont products just as bad or worse than glyphosate and and uh they are various substitutions for refrigerants and things that really didn't work. They're there used to be a law that said you had to give studies of the chemicals that you were introducing, and those were reversed. So uh back at the time when the Toxic Substance Control Act and so on, when these were were implemented in the eighties, in the late 70s and the eighties, was it was required for them to do studies to say that those chemicals were not hazardous or more hazardous than the ones they were replacing. And those laws were reversed through Congress and EPA, or sometimes they were just uh presidential um uh orders. So this is actually very important, and I appreciate the councils looking into that and continuing with that. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I see no one else in the room wishing to provide public comment on closed session items. Thank you. We will now recess into closed session. Is it a is it is it? Welcome everyone to our November twenty-sixth Santa Rosa City Council meeting. It is now four oh one, and we will be starting our meeting, seeing a quorum. Madam City Clerk, can you please call the roll? Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Stepp, your Council Member Rogers. Councilmember O'Krepke. Here.