The Santa Rosa City Council held a regular meeting on February 4, 2025, starting with a closed session at 1:00 PM to evaluate the City Attorney's performance (no reportable action), followed by study sessions at 2:30 PM and a regular session at 4:00 PM. The meeting included presentations on the city's equity plan, a reconsideration of development-related fees, an update on the community empowerment plan, appointments to regional boards, and a public hearing on streamlining the Landmark Alteration Permit process and consolidating the Cultural Heritage Board and Design Review Board into a single Design Review and Preservation Board. The council also approved a consent calendar of 10 items. All votes were 6-0, with Vice Mayor Alvarez absent.
The council directed the mayor on appointments for the Sonoma County Mayors’ and Councilmembers’ Association and City Selection Committee. Approved (all 6-0):
Good afternoon. I'd like to ask the interpreter currently on the Spanish channel to commence interpretation of the meeting. For those just joining the meeting, live interpretation 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 globe. Thank you for your patience, everyone. We'll reconvene from closed session. Madam City Clerk, would you please call the role? Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Rogers, President, Councilmember O'Krepki. Councilmember McDonald. Here. Councilmember Fleming. Councilmember Ben Willows. Here. Councilmember or Vice Mayor Alvarez. Mayor Stepp. Here. Let the record show that all council members are present with the exception of Vice Mayor Alvarez. Thank you. Move on to item four point one. This is our study study session focused on the seed collaborative equity plan implementation and approved strategies. Welcome. Good afternoon, Mayor Stabb, uh, Vice Mayor Alvarez in his absence, and esteemed council members. My name is Francesca Roberson, and I am the culture and EEO officer of the City of Santa Rosa. And with me today is our HR director, Dominique Blanchi, and our deputy director, Gobu Gasimia. I would also like to acknowledge the presence of members from our voices of inclusion belonging and equity committee, VIB. If you're here, please wave your hands and stand and let us know that you're here so you can be acknowledged. Thank you. Awesome. In support of the city's goal to create an environment that supports staff and operational excellence, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, and reliably deliverable outstanding services to the community. We are here to present the approved implementation strategies for the city's equity plan. Seed Collaborative is here to present the summary report to your council. And with that, I'd like to welcome Paul Hudson from the Seed Collaborative, who is joining us via Zoom to make the final summary report out of the approved equity plan, implementation strategies. And Paul, if you could please let us know when you're ready to advance the slide. Thank you very much, Francesca. Um, and uh thank you to the mayor and city council for this opportunity to present. My name is Paul Hudson, I'm a senior consultant and principal with C Collaborative, and we were engaged to not only do the implementation plan, but we also conducted the equity plan for the city of Santa Rosa. I just want to preface the the presentation by saying the work product that you will see here is the result of hundreds of city employees and thousands of countless hours in deliberation discussion, co-creation, and consensus decisions. Next slide, please. The executive leadership leadership team decided a hybrid model where the executive leadership team took five of the total recommendations and they prioritize prioritize those and said the executive leadership team is going to handle these five recommendations. The remaining eight recommendations were delegated to a diverse group of employees, diverse by position, by department, by age, by cultural background. And so this body, the implementation task force, were appointed by department directors to serve on this task force. The task force created three subcommittees one community engagement and communications, one around employee life cycle, and run around culture. Those are the three areas that were approbed. And they linked the recommendations to those areas. So you can see the executive leadership team. Well, they had five of the recommendations they had, and then the other eight were done by the implementation team. Next slide, please. This gives you the timeline around this process. We started in December of 23 with the executive leadership team.