Good afternoon.

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No, okay, we'll move on to item three.

Um, our closed session items.

We have four items today.

Comp three point.

Do I need to enumerate them?

Would you like me to read them?

Okay.

All right.

Uh do we have any public comment on items three point one through three point four?

Seeing no public comment, we will recess into the closed session.

We need to make it with me.

Welcome back, everyone.

It's nice to have so many people with us today.

All right, it's four o'clock and we will reconvene in open session.

Madam City Clerk, could you please call the roll?

Thank you, Mayor.

Councilmember Rogers.

Councilmember O'Krepke.

Here.

Councilmember McDonald.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember, pardon me, Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Mayor Stopp.

Here.

Let the record show that all council and acknowledge that Councilmember Fleming is walking to the dais.

Thank you.

Yes.

All council members are present.

Thank you.

Yes, that was a dramatic appearance.

Okay, let's move on to item six, our report on study and closed sessions.

Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Just one second.

I do have one item to report out from closed session.

Uh council by unanimous vote with council member, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Alvarez absent, authorize uh the city to initiate litigation, the defendants and details of which will be disclosed upon inquiry once the action has been commenced.

Um I would also like to note for the record that the vice mayor did join us in closed session at about 2 20 p.m.

And otherwise I have no reportable action from closed session.

Thank you very much.

All right, we'll move on to the fun portion of our agenda, our proclamations and presentations.

We'll start with item 7.1, our proclamation uh for October being domestic violence awareness month.

Ms.

Fleming.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Whereas the City of Santa Rosa recognizes that domestic violence affects one in four families in our local community, and nearly all of us know someone who has been abused.

The crime of domestic violence violates an individual's privacy, dignity, and security based on systematic use of emotional, physical, sexual, psychological, and economic control or abuse.

And whereas established in 1976, the YWCA Sonoma County is our community's singular and vital resource for local residents experiencing violence in the place where we should all feel most safe inside our own homes.

YWCA operates Sonoma County's only confidential safe house shelter and Sonoma County's only 24-7 domestic violence crisis hotline.

YWCA's counseling support services offers trauma-informed individual and support group therapy for victims and trauma of trauma and domestic violence, including the students at YWCA's therapeutic preschool serving one of our most vulnerable populations, children three to five years old.

And whereas only an informed community effort will end the side cycle of violence for local families.

Members of our community are encouraged to participate in YWCA's scheduled events and programs to raise much needed funding to support their vision of every family in Sonoma County to live healthy, productive lives and be safe in their own homes.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that Mark Staff, the Mayor of the City of Santa Rosa, on behalf of the entire council, recognizes and recognition of our community does hereby proclaim October 2025 in Santa Rosa's domestic violence awareness month.

No.

Yeah, go ahead and clap.

Before I turn it back over to you, Mayor, I would like to make a couple of remarks, if I may.

Please.

Um, which is that I want to thank you all for coming here, both our our team internal to the city and the folks at the YWCA for all the work that you do, and just acknowledge what an uphill battle it is to do this work in an economic system where poverty is a feature and not a bug.

And that is really one of the keys to getting us out of this hole, is making it so that people aren't dependent economically on situations that are just unsafe.

So I want to thank you all for working in a situation that is just impossible.

Thank you for those remarks as well.

Ms.

Miss Keegan O'Connell, do you have a do you have some remarks for us?

I do just a few.

Uh good afternoon, everyone.

My name is Madeline Keegan O'Connell.

Uh, honorable mayor and members of the city council.

It gives us such pride uh to have you honor us with the proclamation for domestic violence awareness month.

I'm very pleased to be joined by the uh the workforce, the advocates of the YWCA give a wave, everybody.

Uh these are the very strong uh community individuals that support the 24-7 crisis hotline from inside our safe house shelter.

I think they deserve a round of applause, if I may.

Also, shout out to Chief Cregan and members of the SRPD.

Really happy to have them with us as well.

Um regrettably, uh this year alone, Sonoma County has experienced six incidences of domestic violence, resulting in the loss of life of 15 individuals.

And this, of course, is in comparison to an average of one or two circumstances of this kind in recent years.

Nationally and locally, domestic violence-related homicide and suicide rates are on the rise.

And for YWCA Sonoma County, we want you to know that we remain steadfast and committed to our vital and singular role in Sonoma County.

Of course, you can learn more about us at our website, YWCASC.org.

And in closing, I just wanted to say that we've been here for a good long time, supporting local families for nearly five decades, and we will continue to be here for Sonoma County as long as you need us.

So thank you so much.

Thank you so much for those remarks, and thank you also for highlighting the work the center as a police department has been doing, especially in recent weeks.

Uh before we do our photo opt down front and invite everyone to come forward, let's open this up to public comment.

Are there any members of the public that would like to celebrate the work that YMCA is doing?

Peter.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I applaud uh these uh hard-working people and dealing with a never-ending problem.

I will share that domestic abuse and scope is like a war, and that it's time for us to open our eyes to efforts addressing the cause at its core.

As you do under the least of me, was always about the children and the animals.

I am Peter, and I am telling you true through my heart to the hearts of you.

What we allow to happen to the animals is what we spiritually allow to happen to the children and the women and those being abused in this domestic realm, which leads to all the wars worldwide.

There's a reason Charles Schultz portrayed uh the peanuts gang all 55 years as vegans.

There's a reason that the religions, virtually all of them that uh deny the fact and keep away the uh Essence Gospel of Peace, where Jesus speaks wholeheartedly as a vegan, that Gandhi was a vegan, Cesar Sava's Dolores.

These young people that are listening should look up famous vegans of all the religions and of all the ethnicities.

It is we who have turned an intentional willful blindness to what we are allowing.

So better than just saying thank you to those that have to uh deal with the results of all this, let's deal with it at the core.

The concept of the promised land is women and children and animals in the gardens, and there's never abuse of any kind, let alone animals on the dinner plates.

There's a reason that this has been going on all this time, because we continue to close our eyes to the issue at its core.

He said, I'm always with you.

So those whose hearts are true, filled with love and truth that want to see the freedom and liberty for all of us, need to now stand up together and shut this down.

It's called the power of Christ in our hearts.

It's not religions.

Religions lie about all this.

They always have.

They want you to sit still and give them money to lie to you some more.

The power is with us.

We have this beautiful opportunity in this beautiful place that where I believe is beneath our feet is the true promised land that must be opened up by freeing the animals and the earth to beautiful gardens.

This is where we are.

This is who we are.

This is the power that's in our heart, and this is what time it is.

It's not time to turn a willful blindfold eye any further.

If I like Yeshua possessed a mod magical wand, I am commanding all believers together by the common bond.

As all vampires, I am binding by their secession, thereby taking this nation to its highest station.

All time is now and now is a time.

It's about love.

It's about really putting forth the power of love in our hearts.

And it's time for us to be who we truly are, arisen, busting the chains of this old prison.

Thank you for blessing me with your time.

Thank you, Peter.

All right, looking for other members of the public that want to thank the YMCA.

Any other members of the public wish to speak?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment.

And if I could invite everyone to come down, let's do a photo here in front.

Thank you again for coming out today.

Thank you again to for all the volunteers at the YWCA.

I realize that I misspoke earlier, the YWCA as well as SRPD.

Thanks for coming out today.

We will move on to proclam our second proclamation on behalf of the geysers' 65th anniversary.

Ms.

Ben Wellos, when you're ready.

Thank you, Mayor.

Whereas in September nineteen sixty, Unit One at the Geysers began operation, marking the first modern geothermal power plant in the U.S.

And whereas Calpine Corporation owns and operates the majority of the geothermal plants at the Geysers, the world's largest geothermal field, and whereas despite more steam being extracted in the 1970s and the 1980s than was replaced, resulting in the lower steam production.

Calpine remained and invested in sustainable solutions, and whereas Santa Rosa's innovative 220 million dollar Santa Rosa Geysers recharge project completed in 2003, delivers recycled water via a 41-mile pipeline to recharge steam fields and increase clean energy production.

And whereas today this partnership produces enough clean renewable electricity to power 100,000 North Bay homes while simultaneously protecting the Russian River by substantially reducing discharges to the waterways, and whereas Calpine's operations at the Geysers support over 300 employees and 150 contractors contributing significantly to the local economy and actively engages with the community, partnering with area organizations, schools, and charities, and whereas Calpine is the nation's largest geothermal power producer and a leader in clean energy with 13 geothermal plants producing 725 megawatts of green energy and 2,000 megawatts of battery storage and development.

And whereas Calpine's innovation substantially harnesses geothermal power helping meet California's climate goals.

Now, therefore, may it be resolved that the mayor Mark Stapp of the City of Santa Rosa on behalf of the entire city council in recognition of our community congratulates Calpines Corporation's geothermal operation at the Geysers on 65 years of power production, its contribution to the community and its commitment to sustainable power production for the future.

Thank you so much to the Geysers team for traveling quite a ways to be here.

Amy, the floor is yours.

Say a few words.

Thank you.

Thanks.

I'm honored to be here.

And on behalf of uh nearly 300 of us at the Geysers, it's truly an honor to accept this proclamation.

As we celebrate 65 years of geothermal energy from the Geysers, let's reflect on the ingenuity of the Santa Rosa Geysers recharge.

Jamie, if you could lean into the microphone a little bit, it's not pick up very easily.

There, that's a lot better.

Okay, thank you.

All right, so as we celebrate 65 years of geothermal energy from the geysers, let's reflect on the ingenuity of the Santa Rosa Santa Rosa Geysers recharge pipeline project and the shared benefits of our long-standing partnership.

For over two decades, this partnership has benefited the region by delivering recycled water from Santa Rosa's Santa Rosa's water laguna treatment plant through the 41 mile long pipeline to recharge Calpine's geothermal steam fields at the Geysers, helping to increase clean energy production.

Sustainable energy from the Geysers today is successful in large part thanks to our recycled partnership with the City of Santa Rosa.

It is truly a win-win partnership, and Calpine looks forward to continuing this highly successful collaboration for many years to come.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

There we go.

Everyone loves this partnership.

All right, we'll open up the public comment.

Uh Dwayne DeWitt, you're up.

Thank you.

Oh no, no, thank you.

And then Peter, you can you can go next.

Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

I wanted to thank you for giving the proclamation to the project.

Also wanted to thank the project for all the good it's done.

And I wanted to thank two people who almost 30 years ago were really instrumental in getting the pipeline project to move forward, and people have forgotten a bit of the history, if you will, and that would be Pat Wiggins and Naureen Evans, former city council members that took on the idea of having the pipeline in the first place, because all the bureaucrats at that time were more like, hey, let's just go ahead and keep dumping it in the river.

And so it was their visionary approach that was like, hey, we can reuse this water, make the pipeline project work really well.

And as you know, Calpine has been able to be very successful, and the city's been able to do a good amount of success with it also.

So thank you very much to all your efforts.

And once again, never forget Pat Wiggins and Naureen Evans.

They did really good work for us while they were here.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dwayne.

Peter.

Thank you, Duane, and thank you, Mayor.

I just want to say that uh I was recently listening to uh and watching something uh out of Iceland about how they are almost entirely uh run by geothermal and and just natural uh scenarios from the earth, like a gift from God itself, right from the earth like that.

And I have known people that have worked up there, and I've known people that have worked for PGE like Earl Anderson for 50 some years, and they're all good workers and they do good work and it's all positive.

But the question to me is why is PGE start to charge so much money for for our PGE rates?

Is it's I'm not into the socialist thing at all, but the capitalist thing when it when it becomes greedy, it's like you know, how can people be charged so much money for PGE because a handful of people that claim to own the whole situation?

PGE was originally or at least one time run or owned by most of the Rothschilds, and uh the bankers and all wars or banker wars and all wars are based on deception, and uh while we appreciate the the positives of of what this offers, the question is, I believe if every household just paid 25 or 50 bucks in every business of 200, they would still be making lots of money, but they're charging a thousand times more than that.

And I think that the people, as we are the most powerful people in the most powerful state, could utilize our government, meaning us.

They're talking about a government shutdown.

No, those are government servants.

We are the government.

The uh the people up on the dais up there are well-intentioned states people, but we are the government, and if we've decided to do a uh our own shutdown financially of the system, would PGE stop preparing and providing this?

I doubt it.

We have the power to change this equation with a little bit of critical thought and some spiritual courage.

And where are the windmills and the wind wheels?

We have so many wonderful opportunities that are not being presented, and that could be tied into the good works that these people are doing uh up there with the with the geysers.

Why are we not uh encouraging that sort of energy, which is available as proven?

Instead, we're like stuck in this loop, and people are paying extraordinary amounts of money.

People that don't even use their electricity are getting two hundred dollar bills.

Am I alone in understanding this?

I know businesses that are paying ten thousand dollars a month, and the situation is like, what are we talking about?

So, to the people that do the good work, thank you very much.

But to the public, which is the true government, perhaps it's time for us to uh talk to each other and make a difference as we can.

Thank you, Peter.

Are there any other members of the public who'd like to like to speak?

Seeing none, we will thank Calpine one more time for powering from for giving electricity to 600,000 people here in the North Bay.

Um, and Amy, could you and any other members of your team come down front for a photo?

Through the mayor, I would like to announce that the YouTube feed online is currently experiencing some technical difficulties.

So if you are participating or you're communicating with people outside Council Chamber or not on Zoom who are trying to access the YouTube feed, it is working on repairing the feed.

For now, you can participate at Santa Hyphen Rosa.com to watch the meeting, as well as the Zoom feed on the agenda is working at with no issues.

So if if you are in communication with people outside the council who are trying to watch via YouTube, if you can direct them in to those other platforms, we would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you, Madam City Clerk.

Uh, my mom walking watching back in Wisconsin is gonna be very disappointed if we can't get that feedback up.

So thank you for your efforts.

Um, all right, and thank you again to Calpine for making the long drive over in the case of some of you.

Uh and it's it's entirely appropriate that our next proclamation is for the water, it is for uh water our water professionals here in the city for the reason that it is Santa Rosa who ships four billion gallons of treated wastewater to Calpine and to the geysers every year to power those steam plants.

Um so please, Ms.

Rogers, uh celebrate our water professionals here in the city.

Thank you, Mayor.

And before I do, I just want to say that uh it is an honor to work with such dedicated um individuals for something that most people take for granted.

Um, but you guys work really hard to make sure that we have the water that we need.

So thank you, thank you, thank you for everything that you do.

And with that, whereas water is Santa Rosa's most valuable resource, and without it, our community economy and environment cannot thrive.

And whereas we are extremely proud of the role Santa Rosa water plays in delivering reliable water and sewer service, capturing storm water to prevent flooding, and protecting our watershed and the environment.

And whereas, thanks to our highly skilled team of water experts, we are ensuring a dependable and resilient water future for our community.

And whereas our community's drinking water is regularly tested to ensure it meets all drinking water standards, and whereas Santa Rosa Water operates and maintains over twelve hundred miles of water and sewer pipes, and whereas our team operates the Laguna treatment Plant that is in the best district in Santa Rosa that recycles millions of gallons of water, wastewater daily and beneficially reuses nearly a hundred percent of our recycled water annually, and whereas Santa Rosa Water maintains 340 miles of storm drains and cares for 100 miles of creeks, and whereas Santa Rosa's water Professional week 24-7, 365 days a year to monitor, maintain, and modernize our community's water sewer reuse and storm drain systems, and whereas Santa Rosa Water annually invests over 160 million dollars to improve the resiliency of the public system, and whereas the 275 plus Santa Rosa water professionals are dedicated to protecting our community's future.

Now, therefore it be resolved that our mayor, mayor of the city of Santa Rosa, on behalf of the entire city council in recognition of our community do hereby proclaim October 4th through the 12th, 2025 as Water Professionals Appreciation Week, and extends its sincere gratitude to our Santa Rosa water professionals.

Yes, thank you to everyone uh in Santa Rosa Water.

Director Burke, floor is yours.

Thank you, uh Mayor Stapp and Council members, and especially thank you, uh Councilmember Rogers for reading our proclamation.

Um I am Jennifer Burke, the Director of Santa Rosa Water, and on behalf of your exceptional Santa Rosa water team, I'm honored to accept this proclamation for California Water Professionals Week.

Um, our team of little over 275 water professionals work every day to protect Santa Rosa's water and to protect our water future by ensuring the delivery of safe and reliable drinking water, treating and beneficially reusing recycled water via the Laguna Treatment Plant and investing in maintaining in our water infrastructure while protecting our water resources and the environment.

In recognition of this fabulous team, Santa Rosa Water is hosting appreciation events for our team members as a thank you for their expertise and dependability, ensuring that 24-7, 365 days a year, Santa Rosa Water is always on.

This proclamation goes a long way in recognizing those efforts, and I greatly appreciate the council uh for taking the time to um recognize our efforts and for uh having this proclamation in front of you this evening.

Um, on behalf of my team and on behalf of your team, thank you uh for this recognition and thank you to the team for all the work they do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jennifer, and thanks again to the whole team.

Sure, let's you can applaud that.

And with that, we'll open up the public comment.

Uh Peter, you're up.

Thank you, Mayor, and uh hi to the mayor's mom.

If she's watching, hopefully she is.

I had a chance to meet her.

So I want to say thank you to the hard work that's uh required to keep the water going and the water flowing and the cleanliness of it that's always been a very serious issue.

And uh I believe a lot of positive changes have uh transpired over the decades and and I hope that continues.

And no one would intentionally applaud the poisoning of our water system.

It just wouldn't make any sense.

Not for the plants, not for ourselves, and yet we've been told over and over again through time that we as people are probably like what 94% water.

And so I believe that the Almighty has us born perfect.

We are perfect, and that by healthy food, we maintain that perfection.

Without too much detail, I will tell you that in two thousand six there was a dateline sting where Dr.

Maurice Wollen was one of twenty-nine men, showed up and got caught.

His expertise was impact blood impacts and vaccines.

He was on the uh board of uh Emoryville's Shiron Pharmaceuticals that had 16 patents on COVID, three years before anybody here ever heard the word COVID.

That his vaccines given to the military starting in ninety-two have terminated or shortchanged the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of veterans, and that he is the secret partner to Dr.

Pan.

And I believe with all my heart, with all I know, and a lot of hundreds of doctors around the world, as opposed to the ones that we're not told, um, would tell you to never vaccinate your children, and not in this day and age, not these days, and those net and those brain swabs or our delivery system for nanotech.

And you don't want that for your children.

We're better than that.

Our children are born perfect, and we should maintain a healthy water system within ourselves as we also focus to do so with our waterways.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Peter.

Are there any other members?

Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment, and we'll invite all members of our Santa Rosa water team to come down for the to the front for a photo.

Thanks again for coming out.

Thanks again to Santa Rosa Water.

And and for those of you who are interested, we've got a long discussion of public stormwater drain standard or uh standards on the agenda tonight.

You're not gonna want to miss it, especially for the students who are here with us.

All right, we move on to item seven point four.

Our presentation uh about Recology Sonoma Marin's 2025 update.

Do we have Director Hennessy here?

Oh, all right, you're sending your your delegating.

Excellent.

Logan, welcome back.

Thanks for taking the time to be here.

Of course.

Thanks for having us.

Um, is your mic on?

I think so.

It's got a green light on closer.

Our mics don't pick up as well as they they might.

That's better.

All right, thanks.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Appreciate it.

Um, so uh Mayor Sapp and uh members of council.

Uh I appreciate the opportunity to be here to speak with you tonight and and just kind of go over the the past year of of what's been going on with Recology.

Here to provide you an update.

My name's Logan Harvey, I'm the senior general manager for Recology Cinema Marin, and joining me is uh Celia Ferber, our community relations and sustainability manager.

Uh we're just gonna do a little update on kind of what's what's been going on.

Uh so background on Recology Sonoma Marin.

Uh we've been servicing the city of Santa Rosa since 2017.

We service about 51,000 customers, both residential and commercial through the city.

We provide solid waste services, uh, recycle, compost garbage collections, as well as C and D street sweeping and recycle processing at our MIRF.

Recology is 100% employee owned.

Um, so that means all of our employees here from our sorters who sort recycling in the MERF, up through our general manager, our drivers, uh, everyone is an employee owner of the company.

We're not publicly traded.

Um, all of our profits go back into a retirement program that's provided to our employees.

And so we're providing good paying, high-paying local green jobs uh here through this this company, and we're something we're very, very proud of.

Uh additionally, our drivers, sorters, mechanics, the majority of our employees are part of the Teamsters Union Local 665.

So, again, you know, hard working folks, um, and and good paying jobs.

Uh recently, we've uh we've had a number of updates at our facility.

We invested 35 million dollars into a new uh materials recovery facility.

This is where all the recycling from the community and all of Sonoma County is brought.

Um, and this is a 35 million dollar project, so complete teardown and rebuild of our our previous MERF or materials recovery facility back into this new state-of-the-art facility.

Uh many of you were able to join us for our grand opening, and you see uh Councilmember Rogers and Councilmember McDonald there with Buddy Blue, our recycling mascot.

Really good time and encourage all of you to come out and visit the Murph.

It's truly a state-of-the-art, incredible facility.

We're processing over 300 tons of material every single day, and it's just kind of amazing to see the scope of how much recycling is produced in this community.

Uh previous to this, we had been shipping material down to San Jose to be processed, and so this is keeping the material here in in county, uh reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and then uh just providing again uh good paying jobs.

Uh we have about the 85% recovery rate, which means that the material that comes through our MIRF, 85% of it is being turned into recyclables, the rest of it uh would be going to landfill, and we're gonna be investing in new technology to recover even more of that material.

Um we recognize and understand that there's a questions around recycling these days, and there's kind of you know a feeling that it may or may not be as real as people think.

And so we we like to open the doors.

We've had over 1,200 people come and tour this facility and really see what's going on.

And our goal here is to provide confidence that if you put the right material in your blue bin, it is truly being recycled and reused.

Uh so if you're interested in signing up for a tour, there's your website right there, Recology.com, RSM MERF.

We advertise this uh to the community in a broad spectrum.

Other things that we've been doing and trying to just make improvements since I took over as general manager in October of 2023.

Uh, we've cut call wait times in half and actually more than in half.

It typically used to take about five to 10 minutes for somebody to call and get answered uh by our customer service agent.

We're seeing those times down below a minute with a high regularity.

Um our average is about a minute and 20 seconds.

Um we've implemented a safety training program.

So often we're hiring CDL drivers out of experience delivering sodas, but not so much like driving a backhoe through a neighborhood.

So now drivers go through a six to eight week training course.

They start with in classroom and in our yard and then roll out into the streets with a experienced driver.

This has improved our retention, which has led to less uh, you know, less time for drivers, less missed pickups, and the rest of it.

We're only short about three drivers right now, is the only kind of miss that we have from full head count.

So major improvement for us, and obviously safer drivers, safer streets, and safer collections.

We've implemented launching recovery as well.

So this is just a pre-trip that that reduces oil spills and the rest of it, checking our tire pressures, etc.

We're planning to bring, and you'll see an RRI coming from Recology in in coming uh days, which is uh uh our rate adjustment, but also includes uh a bike lane sweeper.

Um and so I see the the commitment to cycling around uh Santa Rosa and the city's always been a great place to cycle, but with the new ballarded bike lanes, there's an issue with our ability to sweep those areas.

So we're looking at investing in a smaller sweeper that can go through and track those bike lanes.

We've also been able to test an electric truck here in Sonoma County, predominantly in Healdsburg Runner Park.

Um, something we're really proud of that technology starting to improve, and we'll be able to kind of have conversations regarding providing electrical electric truck service to the city of Santa Rosa if that's a desire of the community.

I'm gonna pass it over to Celia Ferber to talk about our waste zero work and diverting funds from landfills.

Thank you so much.

So one of our biggest missions at Recology Snowman Marin is to recover resources and reduce the tons sent to the landfill.

And uh we've been operating here for the past eight years, and so we have some really solid metrics to look to.

So in 2019, the landfill rate in Santa Rosa specifically was 1,124 pounds per person that year, 2019.

And so five years later in 2024, which is the last full calendar year, we have data from that was reduced to 992 pounds per person.

So that's a 12% reduction in pounds per person sent to the landfill.

And that's a great measure of success of the compost and recycling programs and the cultural movement towards reuse as well and reduce people really, you know, looking at what they consume with a closer eye.

So really great to see the needle moving in the right direction and at the pace that it is, it's it's impactful.

And um before we change oh, you have control of it.

Um before we switch over, I just wanted to acknowledge the pictures here the before and afters.

Um we work with commercial and residential customers, and we work with them to increase their compost and recycle and reduce their garbage.

So this is just a really nice before and after picture.

This is with King's Nursery in Santa Rosa, and initially they had a large garbage dumpster bin and just a compost and recycle cart.

Most of what they are generating, you know, wastewise is plant material and plastics and cardboard.

And so we were able to increase their compost and recycle services and decrease their garbage significantly, which also save them a lot of money on their monthly bill.

And we like to do this type of thing with all of our customers.

So happy to do that.

And uh so there are some state laws that require recycle and compost service for all customer types that's residential, commercial, multifamily dwellings, schools, government agencies, everyone is expected to recycle and compost in California.

Those state laws by name are SB 1383 for compost and AB 341 for recycling.

And so in Santa Rosa, 1,582 commercial and multifamily dwellings have comp and schools is included in the commercial count here.

Have compost programs in place.

And so what that means is if you're ever out and about and you're like us who work in the industry, you'll if you go to you know, behind a restaurant, behind a hotel, behind a school, behind an office building, you're going to see a compost bin.

And when you flip the lid, you're gonna see material like this.

And so, you know, a lot of people might think, ugh, I don't want to look at this, but when we see this picture, we're we're proud, we're happy, we think it's beautiful.

This is exactly what should be in the compost bin, a mix of food scraps, um, soil paper, and pizza boxes.

This is great organic material that we're stoked to see not go in the landfill and to get recovered as compost instead.

I want to touch on the compliance numbers real quick.

Um, 1383 is a relatively new state law, it just came it became law in 2022, and so the city's at a 98% compliance rate with that.

We're uh working to help the city get to 100% there.

And then AB341, the recycling law has been in place since 2012, and the city is at 100% compliance with that recycling state law.

Thank you.

We are very involved in the community.

We are out and about uh giving trainings, giving presentations, giving assemblies to school kids.

We're out uh at lunch monitoring the waste stations at schools or working with custodial staff, we're working with maintenance teams at various companies, and um, you know, we're really involved in helping, we're training the employees on what goes where.

It brings us great pride to be able to provide that type of technical assistance and help our customers achieve success with their recycle and compost programs, and also um part of our community involvement is I have a board seat on the Chamber of Commerce, which has allowed me to partner with other businesses and and just find out what Recology can do to continue to improve and be a good partner to these businesses in this great community.

Um, before we move on, one other thing I wanted to touch on is events.

You'll see us at events all across the city, and we host educational tables, and people come up to those tables, and we're often settling marriage disputes about what goes where.

That's that's a common thing that happens, but we want to make ourselves available in that setting to answer questions.

And then another aspect of events is the receptacles.

You'll see pretty much universally at events all over the city compost recycle and garbage receptacles.

No longer is it just a garbage receptacle.

And so that's actually a great tool to educate the community because you know, someone's not gonna be maybe motivated to come to our table to talk to us or read our newsletter, but they're going to interface with those receptacles at events, and that's that's gonna kind of that's that's part of that cultural shift over time.

Okay, next slide, thank you.

So we have some particularly exciting things that we're working on in the city of Santa Rosa this year in particular, and I'm thrilled to be able to share them with you right now.

Uh so this year, earlier this year, we worked with the city in partnership on the epic Streets to Creeks program, and we volunteered on Earth Day to help pick up litter in the Roseland area, and we promoted that to get a good turnout at that event, and we had a truck there.

Um, so very very honored to be part of that and to continue to support the litter reduction efforts in the city.

And then on July 30th, we hosted Recology Village at the Wednesday night market in Courthouse Square.

So many of the vendors there that evening were zero waste focused, and uh had programs and activities for kids to promote a zero waste lifestyle or just to educate on how you can get involved or what you can do at home, and that's always an impactful event.

This is our our third or fourth year doing the Recology Village at the Wednesday night market.

We had our antique truck there as well that kids uh got to sit in and climb in, and that was a big hit.

We are working very closely with the children's museum in Santa Rosa on a new exhibit.

We also have a reoccurring station there, an education station, but we are working on an exhibit.

If you go there, you'll see there's an area that is currently boarded off, and it says exhibit in progress with Recology.

And so we'll be unveiling that early next year, and it's it's basically a truck that kids can sit in and play in, and then there's a sorting station, pretty high tech sorting station that gives feedback.

So if they accidentally, you know, put the wrong container in the, you know, in the wrong, or if they put the wrong item in the wrong container, it'll go red, or if they put the correct one, it'll go green.

So it gives feedback.

And also there's some educational panels for the parents, and there's safety vests and hard hats, so uh more to come on that, but we're very excited about that.

This was also the first year that we launched our trash art program, and TRASH is actually an acronym.

It stands for the Recology Art Start Student Hub.

We partnered with Art Start, who we've worked with closely for the past six years.

They actually we donate warehouse space to them.

Um, so they're on our property, and for the past six years they have been, and they're just fantastic.

And uh this year we decided to collaborate to to create trap the trash art program.

And so these five student artists that you see a picture of, they have over the course of seven weeks this summer, they picked through the trash basically at our at our MERF or materials recovery facility.

So they picked items that shouldn't be in there, um, and then they made art out of them, and it was we're blown away by their creativity of the items that they that they created, and we're gonna have a grand reveal reception for the public on October 22nd uh at the Santa Rosa Visitor Center.

So that's um that's from 4 30 to 6 30 p.m.

on October 22nd.

Would love if some or all of you could could join us for that.

It's gonna be pretty neat.

And the idea behind the art program is that viewers you know will think about their waste a little bit more critically and maybe be inspired by the art.

Lastly, my last highlight, which uh is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, is the reuse bazaar, which we're just coming off of.

It was on September 27th, so just this past Saturday at the at the Santa Rosa at the sorry, the Sonoma County Fairgrounds at the Grace Pavilion.

And so this was our second year doing it.

We did it last year at the at Finley Park, and it was such a big success last year.

We were like, we need a bigger space.

So we moved to the Grace Pavilion at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.

We served close to 750 people on Saturday, and so for three hours, people could come and drop off a car full of items that they no longer needed that are in usable condition, and then from uh from 12 to 3, people could come in to the Grace Pavilion and quote unquote shop those items for free of charge, completely free of charge.

Just take what they need.

The only checkout system was we we weighed what they took.

And so through our tracking, we were able to prevent thir 34,000 pounds or 17 tons from going to the landfill and get it into the hands of people who need it.

So really honored to be able to do that for the community.

We had 68 employee owners out there on Saturday volunteering their time to.

Oh yeah, you could go to the next picture.

Um these are pictures from the event last year.

The event this year was just three days ago, so we don't have the pictures from this year.

But um, we look forward to doing this annually.

It's it's a customer appreciation event as well as a reuse event.

So really cool event.

Last year we had uh a guy who had just gotten an apartment with his daughter and he didn't have any furniture, and he was able to come and get a couch for free, bring it back home, and so he was really kind of overwhelmed about that.

And this year we made sure that we advertise on Spanish radio as well.

So the Latino community was a big part of it this year.

And um just seeing people be able to grab you know a new bike for their kids or um, you know, some some new kids' clothes or toys or whatever was really awesome.

Um, some folks, you know, got there lots of different equipment, sporting equipment, golf, golf gear, and and all types of stuff.

So really, really cool to see that uh work out.

We actually had an organ donor this year too, donated an organ.

Anyway, apologies.

But they weren't.

All right.

And with that, that concludes our presentation.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Uh, and we are gonna do a zero waste presentation as well, correct?

Uh I'll look to my colleagues.

Do we want to ask some questions now of this of this presentation?

Uh all right.

Who wants to go first?

Mr.

Krupke.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you so much for this presentation.

I appreciate all that uh all that you put in here.

The community involvement stuff is great.

Um, I love the trash art program.

Uh, not only is it a cool program, but I also have a good acronym.

Um, my one question for you is of all the services and community involvement that Recology provides, I would say far and away the number one we number one item that we get responses or interactions with is street sweeping.

So can you um sort of cover any sort of um uh issues, hurdles you may have with your street sweeping program that may be educational to the general public?

The big yeah, absolutely, and and we're about to get into leaf season here, so there's gonna be uh more and more questions that always kind of rises and falls right around fall.

Um, the uh the biggest issue we have is cars parked on the road.

Um, we're not able to get against the curb if there's a lot of cars parked there.

If we have things like basketball hoops or low-hanging uh tree branches, this is also a barrier for us to get in there.

We've done a lot of training um with our with our street sweeping team to make sure they're going against the curb, that they're going slowly, that they're using water, um, and so those are kind of really important pieces for us.

Um, so you know, we've done that training.

We partnered with the city uh last year to create a video to kind of try to educate and put out to folks to let them know about you know trying to make sure their cars off the curb and the rest of it, and we'd be open to partnering with the city if they wanted to be, you know, provide signage and things like that to know when when the day is.

The other thing is in Santa Rosa, it's it's kind of what every every couple weeks, so it's not as a regular schedule, and so that can be a little bit of a challenge for folks to remember when that that uh that street sweeper is coming by.

We often also have folks that you know we have we can tell where a truck was.

So if the city reaches out and to say, hey, you know, they say you haven't come by, we do have GPS locators on it where we can kind of look back on the slug trail and find out uh where that was.

But you know, the the truck's only in front of your house for 30 seconds or less, and so if you're not paying attention during that time, you may think it's never come by.

Um, yeah, it's it's a challenge.

I appreciate that.

I would be interested in learning more about possible signage to help people with the days and times that the um street sweepers coming through.

Um but in the meantime, where can someone go to find out the street sweeping schedule for their area?

They can go to Recology.com/slash RSN schedule, and we actually we promote that in our, we do a spring and fall newsletter every year as well as an e-blast, and we we the e-blast is quarterly, the actual print newsletter that we mail is twice a year.

So we promote that and that um URL in those formats.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms.

McDonald.

I get questions all the time about what can you actually recycle.

So I've heard that even if the little sign is on the sign or whatever it is, that sometimes you can't actually recycle them.

So I was challenged on this out um when I was in Oakmont, and I just want to make sure that if I'm putting something in the recycle bin that it's actually able to be recycled.

So how do we check that?

So the chasing arrow symbol or the commonly known as the recycle symbol is really just a denotation of what type of plastic it is, right?

So there's number ones, twos, threes, fours, five, sixes, and sevens.

And predominantly right now, what is easily recyclable is uh is ones, twos, and fives are the the predominant ones that are recyclable, one being polypropylene, which is like a water bottle, uh, or sorry, not polyproylene, PET, which is like a water bottle, twos being high density polyethylene, which is like your tide container or a milk jug, um, and then fives being polypropylene, which is typically like a yogurt container or something like that, will usually be polypropylene food food grade.

Um and so we we do accept you know mixed rigid plastics and the rest of that too, and try to bail that and take care of it.

Recycling is really a question of can we bail it?

Is there a market on the back end for it?

Um, and you know, in in the cases of like polystyrene and um and low density polyethylene that like a like a um a plastic bag, there's less markets for it when it comes through our system.

Sometimes when they're separated out previously, you can you can find recycling markets for that, but it's really the ones, twos, and fives that are the most recyclable, but it's also the most common items that people have in their household, right?

The majority of plastic that you bring in is that way.

The other stage of that is making sure material is clean.

Um, and right now we're seeing a situation where uh recycling markets are starting to drop in price and and quality is being really really closely looked at.

How how much contamination is is in the bale of recycling.

So making sure those those materials are as clean as possible is really important as well.

But it is being recycled.

We get paid um for our our goods um and uh and and we are recycling it.

There's recently been a law SB54 uh which came out, which is gonna have extended producer responsibility for plastics and other recyclables, and we're starting to see that that being implemented now, which is gonna make sure that you know there's there's responsible end markets and the rest of that is is done.

Recology is a company, we we take a lot of pride in the end markets uh recyclers that we work with, and we you know even send folks out, you know.

If we ship overseas, we we we verify where we send the material to and that it is responsibly being recycled.

But yeah, it's the ones, twos, and fives through our system and your blue bin are the most readily recyclable.

So those water bottles, soda bottles, milk jugs, detergent containers, um, you know, kind of your tubs as well.

We can say tubs and jugs.

Yeah, so on that little symbol it'll say a number one, two, or five.

Or how okay.

It'll say number one, two, five, it'll have it'll have one through seven.

Okay.

But the best way is to look at our website.

We also have a tool on our website where you can Google an item or not Google, but type in an item and it'll tell you if that's recyclable, where to put it, if it's garbage or not.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Sure.

And we send out guides as well about that, and you can always call or email our waste hero team, rsm waste zero.com, or rsm.

Way zero at Recology.com.

Yeah.

Thank you.

That was an impressive off the cuff summary of the plastic recycling economy.

Ms.

Rogers.

Thanks.

Starbucks cup.

Starbucks cup, put it in the bin.

Oh, hot or cold, yeah, good question.

Well, the paper.

The cold one, the uh plastic.

Yeah, we can put it in the bin.

Put it in the bin.

You mean my husband was right?

So he was uh, I mentioned we we settle a lot of marriage disputes at the table.

Well, I'm happy that he said he can't get the he can't get this up.

It's only in Spanish for him.

So we won't tell him that we won't tell them that he was.

You just tell him I said you were right.

Okay.

I love that.

But then slip them in there.

Um, we want the recovery.

I wanted to bring up the two feet uh between bins.

Sure.

And the reason why I'm bringing that up is one, I get it.

Right.

But two, the way we are developing our streets and our and the way we're building.

Um if I have three bins, um it just doesn't fit.

And so tell me how does that impact the driver or impede upon them being able to uh pick up or collect.

It's a significant challenge.

Um I mean these guys uh I encourage you and if you wanted to let me know and I'll set you guys up on a ride along.

I think it's pretty eye-opening to see what these guys do every day and and and honestly, it's a minor miracle that that trash gets picked up at all in any community.

The the amount of work that and if I can just as an aside, it's solid waste workers is in the top five most dangerous jobs in America.

Um it's the the fatality rates are very high for these guys.

So I just just they're they're industrial athletes.

The issue is when you're doing a side load collection vehicle, right?

You have the arm that goes out and grabs it.

If we don't have space for those arms, they're they're they're fairly accurate and they're they get pretty good with it.

It really impacts efficiency.

So our ability to get it tight enough to go around it and then grab that bin and hug it and bring it up is what's impacted by it.

If our drivers have to get out, well, the way we've bid the contract and the way that we've planned is around side load service, versus what we used to do, which is rear load, where we would get out of the truck, grab each bin, bring it to the back, and then dump it.

That takes more time for each bin to or each cart to grab with our side loads.

We have the arm and grab it, which is a higher cycle time and that's more efficiency, and then that's kind of when we think about you know price for rates and all that kind of stuff.

It slows down the speed that we can collect.

And so having that space, one, it it allows us to be the most efficient, two, it prevents, you know, injury and things like that, guys getting out of the truck to go grab the material.

Three, they're not pulling uh a heavy bin to the truck to get it safe.

You will see drivers when they're really good, they'll they'll kind of separate out the next person's bin, they'll leave it out a little bit.

We get complaints sometimes that oh, you know, you left your bin in front of my driveway.

Well, a lot of times that's because there wasn't enough safe space between them, they're moving that bin so the recycle driver can come behind them and grab the the next one, right?

And so we do get complaints sometimes that we didn't put it back in the exact right spot.

The other consideration that we have is if it's too close to a vehicle, um that's a major concern for us because we don't want to damage somebody's vehicle, um, which we we do with arms on occasion.

Um, and so yeah, that space is really important for those arms to be able to get in.

I actually had the the pleasure of uh using one of the ASL arms uh the other day, and they're they're they've got some dexterity to them, but it's it's hard to be really efficient with them.

And you know, I just encourage and continue to encourage in the city of Santa Rosa does good do a good job with us.

When you're planning new developments, you know, garbage is often or you know, refuse service is often the last dog of the bowl for that.

And so including us in that planning profit process is really important.

I've seen some of the condos where it's really kind of chaos and they're not they should probably be on dumpster service, front load service versus going to cart service.

People like the carts because it's individually their trash and and you know the rates are a little bit different, but sometimes we gotta go front load just because the efficiency of service, the amount of cars that people have, all that kind of stuff is important.

If that makes sense.

Makes total sense.

I am down for uh to do a run with someone, so I'll sign up for that.

Cool.

Reach out, we would love that.

And because I'm not gonna raise my hand again, I just want to thank you guys for your commitment to not only providing a service, but to informing, educating, and engaging the community.

You guys are doing a great job.

When I go somewhere, I always see you tabling and trying to uh let people know that their husbands are correct.

Um so just thank you, thank you for that.

I think it's one thing to provide a service, but it's another thing to engage the community so we can all partake in what we need to be doing to make our environment better.

So thank you.

Thank you, appreciate that.

Uh and thank you for the uh the nice segue opportunity when you mentioned the a homeowners associations and the condominiums.

Uh that was perfect.

Uh we uh the city of Santa Rosa appreciates the work that you've done with places like Vista Delago, um, some of the other homeowners associations, um, condominiums.

Uh those do those do present logistical um and accounting challenges.

So thank you for your patience and thank you for coming to the table with those groups.

Of course.

Uh Celia, thank you again for your work with the children's museum.

I mean the whole the whole company, but for your for for being out there and supporting that event.

Um again, that's that's really nice for our for our students and for the community.

Uh and as long as we are all required to ask one personal uh recycling question.

Mine is gonna be around batteries.

I've always been afraid to put my plastic bag of batteries out in the bin because I wasn't sure if I had to separate out my recyclables and my lithium for my alkaline.

Tell me what I need to do for my batteries so I can I can stick them out there.

If they're in the bag, that's I'm gonna say put them in the bag.

I think the the lithium can present a bit of a challenge.

I'm uh you know, I should know exactly what our rules are.

Celia, Celia knows this better than me.

It's yeah, just go ahead and put them in a bag, sealed bag, clear bag on top of the recycled bin.

You don't need to tape the terminals.

And um, you know, originally we weren't really accepting the lithium ion batteries, but they're becoming prolific, and so we are accepting them as well.

And the reality is is having them on top of your bin is so much better than having you them in your bin.

We've had multiple fires at our Murph.

Um, so that's a that's a pile of cardboard and and uh and paper, and now there's a thousand-degree fire inside of it because the lithium bar iam battery has been run over by a uh trackloader and so or a wheel loader, and so that that's a huge danger.

We get them in our trucks as well.

We had one a couple years ago up a hill in Forestville.

The the the truck was on fire, and we have to eject that load.

And so just given the fire concerns around this community, our safety of our drivers, the rest of it.

Just encouraging folks to if they have any device that's chargeable, that means it has a battery.

Um, they you know, the the desire to put batteries into everything.

I don't know why a gift card needs to sing you a song, um, but that's become a desirable thing apparently in our community, and so this presents a danger for our drivers because people are just gonna throw that carelessly into the recycle bin.

And so just batteries are our number one safety concern for us.

Um we lose a truck that's 475,000, and that's a lot of missed pickups.

Um, and it does happen, and you can you can research that yourselves, but yeah, it's it's important.

So I appreciate you bringing it up, and the more we can partner to educate, you know, I'm starting to call them batteries now, B A D.

Uh, but uh we'll keep moving forward.

Sorry.

Can't help myself.

Chris isn't here, so the puns in his in his honor.

Thank thank you for that.

Um then actually final point.

Is it true that you only have two um two driver positions open right now?

We have like three or three, yeah, three.

Of how many out of how many positions are you in?

We have over 200 drivers.

Um, so we're we're getting close to full.

Um, there's always churn.

Um there's always churn that happens, but we're we're somewhere around uh maybe there's five max, but it's less than 10.

That's an incredible thing.

That's an incredible vacancy rate for for any kind of CDL position.

I'm really, really proud of it.

Um, it's something that our we worked hard on, and and it's really the safety training program.

We we we weren't doing that prior to to me taking over as GM, not to cast any dispersions, but we would get guys that would would come and they were not used to driving these vehicles through neighborhoods that were used to kind of dropping off um, you know, at a commercial facility.

They would get in accidents, you know, minor ones, they would get scared driving the truck, and now they have enough time to really get to know the vehicle before they get out there in the neighborhood, they have that training time, and that's safety of the public, that's safety of our equipment, and then that's that's retention that we've really focused on as well.

And so it's just it's been a it's been a wonderful program, and these are again good paying jobs uh in our community and come with the pension and healthcare and all the rest of it.

So yeah, it's it's good we're able to get get folks in and and uh and get them trained up and get them and keep them.

Absolutely.

Sonoma City Council's loss was for College's gain.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um any other questions from the dais?

All right.

Well uh Leslie, I think you're up with your waste.

Thanks for being here tonight.

Uh we'll do it after after Leslie's presentation.

I'm gonna let you.

I don't I don't know this, I just know the snow garbage.

Vice Mayor and the council.

I'm Leslie Lucash.

I'm the executive director of Zero Waste Sonoma.

And Zero Waste Sonoma is a joint powers authority, and we are made up of the 10 member jurisdictions, which Councilmember McDonald sits on our board as representing the city of Santa Rosa.

And we were established in 1992, and our core job is to make sure that all of our member jurisdictions are in compliance with various state regulations.

We focus on education and outreach for zero waste recycling and composting programs.

We operate the household hazardous waste management system here in the county, as well as organics of the residential bins.

Our mission is to empower personal action in waste reduction and materials management by implementing practical solutions to protect our natural resources.

One of the main things that we do is education and outreach, and our probably our most popular tool is our website, which is ZeroWasteNema.gov.

We also have on our homepage, you know, what do you do with this item?

Because we do know that people are confused about what goes where at times.

Our website is highly visited with over 20,000 visitors from the City of Santa Rosa to our website.

We are also out there doing community outreach at events alongside uh Recology.

In Santa Rosa, we did 52 various events, and that could be electronic collection events, mattress collection events, solar panel collection events.

We also print the zero waste guide annually, and we distribute that to our various community partners, businesses, city uh councils, city halls, as well as a local businesses.

Our education outreach program is also in Spanish.

We are on three different Spanish radio programs, and we target Spanish outreach to the Latino and the Spanish speaking community, and we also work with businesses that are primarily run by the Latino community.

We've really shifted from uh recycling and composting to looking more upstream at reuse and reduce.

So in 2024, we partnered with um reuse alliance, hosting various events throughout the community of doing repair fare, so that's when people can take, you know, electronics, um, maybe a bicycle, knife sharpening, and we actually um work with fixers that will fix the products.

And in um 2024, uh we diverted over 4200 pounds.

Um, that's actually the reuse alliance.

Uh one thing that we have done is we are funding uh one event per jurisdiction this year, so um there will be one in Santa Rosa coming soon.

We I mentioned the household hazardous waste management program, so this is pretty much toxics that people bring into their home, things that you find under the sink under your um, you know, sinks in your kitchen or in your garage.

So we're open free to the residents Thursday through Saturday.

We also collect it at various locations throughout the city every Tuesday, or sorry, throughout the county every Tuesday, and we have a rover program for people who actually can't go to an event where we will go to your home.

And we also have a reuse program where the toxics and um chemicals that we receive, if they're 50% or more full, we put them on a shelf and people can take them for free, and we also mix paints to make a off-white-ish cream-ish, uh purple-ish and a green-ish color that you can get for free, and your city can get that actually for litter or for graffiti abatement if needed.

Um we do e-waste collection events, uh, 14 per year, and and as well as collect mattresses, and we make sure those are all properly recycled and managed correctly.

First in the state ever, we got a grant to do solar panel recycling.

Solar panels cannot go to the landfill yet, there's no funding mechanism to make sure that they're properly managed.

So we uh did uh 13 events and we actually collected over a thousand panels.

Um I have an updated number.

So those are panels that really had nowhere to go, and they were collected from uh residents only, and we partnered with the conservation corps, and we made sure that they were recycled, and about 10% of them were actually tested for reuse, and we partnered with the um Habitat for Humanity as well as a high school and a couple farms to get those panels back out and reused.

Some of the newest news is that we uh purchased four acres to build a more central household hazardous waste facility.

It's off of Shiloh.

Um, we're just about 100% design of the facility and starting the permitting process and hope to have that facility up and running in about a year, year and a half, depending on how permitting goes.

Uh, 1383 was mentioned, that's getting organics out of the landfill.

It's a very prescriptive law, and we uh work alongside Recology to make sure that your city and all your businesses are in compliance with the regulations.

One of our focuses is edible food recovery per regulation of the law, and we actually have received over three million dollars so far to rescue edible food and get that back out to people that are in need of food.

And I can say with one of our grants, we rescued um 330 um thousand pounds of edible food and got that back out to the community and uh diverted from our landfill.

We also have a number of compost hubs where we give away free compost, and the there is a compost hub and for residents is located at also at the children's museum, and so we fill that up every week, and we just uh continually give out free compost.

We also give a compost uh rebate to people buying 20 per 20 cubic yards of compost or more, so this is more like the ag industry, and so we pay 10% of their we rebate them 10%, and this is another way to make sure that compost is being purchased and putting back on our soils as compost is a great soil amendment for soil health, uh water retention.

There's many benefits of putting compost on the land.

We are also in the works of citing a new compost facility within Sonoma County located at the airport, and that um once it's complete will process 65,000 tons of compost annually.

Um, right now we're exporting compost out of county.

Well, we're exporting the green bins out of county, um, and to just bring compost back into it ag county.

So it really makes sense to bring something back local.

Um, right now we're at 30% design and going through the environmental permitting, which also will take probably another year or two to finish permitting and then hopefully we'll be up and running.

We've also worked um on a construction demolition recycling ordinance because we know C and D materials highly recyclable, and we want to make sure that it gets out of the landfill.

A certain percentage of our landfill debris still is high, you know, this material that could be recycled.

So we received a grant in working on that.

And I'll close on uh next week is Zero Waste Week, where we have um actually over 60 events happening now and partnering with SNOM with Marin and NAPA doing a few events in their communities as well, and we have um actually 50 community partners, and we're just targeting it's it's a great way to get our zero waste message, but we're working with the libraries, um, the haulers, the compost facilities, and just doing tours and fix it clinics and um, you know, edible food uh recovery to canning and jarring, so it's just many events throughout the community happening uh that week.

So that is my report of what we've been up to this last year.

Oh, and all of it are great highlights.

Thank you so much.

I'm looking to my colleagues for questions.

Mr.

McDonald.

This is mostly so I don't have to report out on the zero waste meeting that I attended last week.

So I'm gonna ask you a quick question.

Something that we touched on during the meeting was around um the emissions, the greenhouse emissions that we're reducing based on all of our good work in the city and how that will go back out to us for our climate action plan.

So can you tell me about that report and what the data is that you're collecting and how that's going to be used for the city of Santa Rosa's climate action?

Yes, so we hired a consultant to do a proper analysis of all the work that we're doing to get a greenhouse gas avoidance.

Um, typically uh the RCPA, Regional Climate Protection Authority has been looking at just landfill diversion going down, but there's actually a bigger story that's happening, and that is um the EPA has come out with what's called the warm model, and it calculates all of the recycling and compost and the benefit of doing that system versus just purchasing new and extracting resources, and so they give us better data on what those GHG avoidance numbers are.

So we have actually five indicators.

That's just the materials is one.

We do a number of carbon sequestration projects by putting compost on agland, which I mentioned, and so we're calculating the carbon sequestration that's happening, the food recovery program and the reuse reprogram, and then we're also looking at it per jurisdiction.

So now the report was just finished.

I'm going to report it back out to our board next month.

But now we can give that data to you so you have more accurate data of what the zero waste efforts and recollegies efforts are because now we've finally calculated the real picture of the GHG avoidance of all of our activity, and that'll supplement your um climate action plan.

Thank you.

Uh and I just wanted to um ask once the composting facility is up at 65,000 tons a year.

What percentage of that?

Is it what roughly what percentage of that is on that what what is the percentage of the compost that we're currently shipping down to is it Marin or Solano?

We ship to two different locations.

One is uh Redwood Landfill down in Navado, and then the other one is cold compost up in Mendocino County.

Okay.

So we process about a hundred thousand, just over a hundred thousand tons of organic material from the residential bins.

With 1383, we know that number will increase.

So although I'll have the compost facility at the airport, we'll still have to outhaul a certain percentage um of material and and likely use uh redwood landfill since it's so close.

At least we're bringing some of it back.

That's a huge lift.

But thank you for pushing that forward.

Any other questions for from council?

All right.

Let's open it up to public comment.

Uh Peter, I see you there, but looking at our students, students, this is your chance to ask questions about recycling and composting.

Don't let it slip by.

But Peter, kick us off.

Okay, thank you.

Um, kind of impressed.

Uh, surprising the amount of things that this group is doing.

Um regarding compost, I am a little discouraged to see some of it's taking out of the area.

I remember when there was a compost uh uh operation on top of the hill off of Meachum, and I was certainly hoped that that might be considered again.

Um I get free compost from the Petaluma uh Bounty Garden every so often, but I think it'd be wonderful if a lot more of it was available here in Luther Burbanks uh home county.

Um I would like to know if uh the manager, the new general manager would consider uh adding a much needed new service.

Uh there's there's uh uh in recycling, there's like I don't know, how much does Sonoma County spend on storage units that people never even see what's in there anymore?

Things that have been sitting there for years or paying for it.

I'm suggesting that they could consider uh a flow system utilizing high school and college students to uh uh for the price of one month of their rent and just set get this stuff out of there and um and at the same time encourage huge garden pro programs so that possibly it might not sound perfect, but I can tell you that 200 people as Sam Jones is a percentage of them that would love to have a storage place for a little apartment if they were working in gardens working for uh this group, which would be a wonderful thing.

So here you got a storage situation where millions of dollars could be changed into uh something usable for other people, and um uh the storage units could be used uh in another way for for people to be uh living in, and at the same time the garden program, and I'd like to offer to uh them right now one thousand dollars worth of my uh living cactus fences, which is what Luther Burbank created, the most underrated food source on land.

It's a firewall.

It's an erosion control.

It's wonderful, it works.

I would love to offer you some for the place out there by Meacham or wherever you might like.

And uh they're they're heavily fruiting right now, and the fruit is low glycemic.

There's there's nothing on earth that provides more food per square yard uh than these cactus um opportunities, of which I have two of the most heavy fruiting of all time.

And with these big gardens, I think it'd be wonderful to start huge gardens with all these students so that firefighters and uh uh truck drivers, but f and and and law enforcement can get free vegetables and fruits.

Uh why not?

I mean they go they work too many hours that they don't have time to do their gardens, and uh this is Luther Burbanks' uh home area.

And uh oh, lastly, I will tell you that uh I did have an airbreaks class B uh passenger uh license at one time.

I drove for the Redwood Empire Food Bank and I drove limousine.

So if there's a part-time position, I'd be glad to talk to you about that.

And I do have a flyer for the cactus fences.

Uh thank you, Peter.

All right, I'm looking at the other podium.

Go ahead, introduce introduce yourself, and you're ready, you're good to go.

Hi, my name is Anna Bashan.

Thank you so much for College and Zero Waste Sonoma for what you guys do.

I have a couple questions.

First is um, I'm wondering if or when there will be options for industrially compostable, like plastic alternatives, those green plastic veggie bags at the grocery store or some of those chip uh plastic bags.

And then my second question is uh, are there measures or I guess um metrics to be ensuring that the composted material isn't containing trace amounts of pollutants from say ink from papers or recycled paper in newspapers?

So thank you.

So we don't really want to get into a back and forth, but did any of our panelists have an interest in giving a very quick answer to that?

I'll just quickly state with compostable plastics.

Um, there is um synthetic binding material in the plastics.

Um, so um ninety-nine percent of composters across California do not accept compostable plastic.

Unfortunately, just because of the synthetic binding material, compost is made to be organic.

If they accept that product, then their compost will negate their organic certification.

So that's the reason why we don't accept it.

Thank you for that.

And I'm looking at the back of the room, and do we have other other members of the public who wish to speak?

I see a few.

Step step up to the microphone whenever you're ready and uh thank you for being here tonight.

Um, our first question is um how do you do you recycle clothes?

And if so, how would you do that?

What why don't you do all three questions or all of your questions at once?

That is all of our questions.

That's all the questions.

Close recycling, that's a good one.

All right.

What do our do the panels have a quick answer to that?

Sure, yeah.

We're not able to take textiles in the mixed recycling bin, they get pretty dirty in our at our facility, but um a lot of there's a lot of thrift stores in Sonoma County that will happily take them.

Goodwill is the largest, and those that are you know a little bit stained or dirty that they can't sell, they're able to bail them and sell them as industrial cloth to other to other buyers across the world, actually.

So there's a good system in place locally to recycle textiles.

Uh Ms.

Rogers.

Also, the event you guys just mentioned with the reuse bazaar is another good way to recycle clothing.

Yes, thank you for that plug.

Appreciate that.

Uh Ms.

McDonald, one more.

And this would finish my report for zero waste.

Um, there is a close swap as one of the um events that they're having, I believe.

So there is um information online on zero waste of where you could go and exchange clothes or give clothes to that.

Uh it's I think it's one of the closed swaps.

I'm not sure where it's located.

You'd have to go online and look, but that is an event that's coming in October.

Thank you, and thank you for our students for uh for their and for their public comment.

Uh are there any other members of the public who wish to speak?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment, bring it back to the dais for any final any final uh comments from council.

I think just a thanks for us.

Just spectacular work.

Thanks for taking the time to come and present tonight.

All right.

Seeing that we are a little past five o'clock, we are going to jump ahead quickly to our public comment on non-agenda matters.

This is the chance for anybody in the public to comment on any items not listed on the agenda.

Alright, there's an exodus.

Let's start with Peter, and then we're going to go on to Dwayne.

Thank you again to our students for coming out tonight and to their teachers.

Well, you're welcome back anytime.

Peter and then Dwayne.

Sure.

Janice, kick us off.

Thank you.

Thanks, Mayor.

Janice Carmen.

I've been thinking about earthquakes lately.

And I went to the Beatle concert on Saturday at the fairly new junior college theater.

And it was a fantastic show.

It was a three-hour show where they all stood on the stage, 40 piece band, kids, all from Sacramento.

It was awesome.

And it's a very steep theater.

It's new.

The old one, I don't know how old it was, but it's probably like 75 years or something before they replaced it.

And it's very steep, and it's very um hard to navigate.

But you make it, and we were about the fourth row from the top in the uh small theater, and I noticed a crack from the top of the concrete step all the way down, and it just kind of meandered like a creek.

And I got to thinking about the earthquakes.

And it's been a while since we've had one.

Uh we haven't had one real serious for quite a long time.

But we're starting to inch up with the properties, and that's very disturbing to me, uh, particularly with the uh previous uh background with the county, uh, trying to uh fix buildings so that they can be uh reused or used commercially or whatever, and having to um earthquake proof them.

And the earthquake proofing is uh expensive.

Uh it's sad to see this new theater in the condition that it's currently in.

And I just wanted to bring this up as a public notice that uh we've had a lot of earthquakes here, some of them very serious, and uh we may be due for another one uh with the way things have uh been going along with climate, etc.

And that's it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

All right, Peter, and then Dwayne.

Oh, thank you, uh, mayor.

So I got a question, and then I have uh my writing for the day for your heart and spirit.

My question is why does the Sonoma district attorney seek five years for DXE Zoe Rosenberg's rescuing slash stealing of four chickens while ignoring DXE's Monica Martella for stealing two of the world's most well-known African Sulcata tortoise worth $5,000, featured in the beloved book that even Jeannie Schultz and so I'm told Carlos Santana loves, the adventures of Pedro the Purple Turtle, featuring Pedro and Tierra the turquoise tortoise and Sonoma County children that saved the world from the blinded religio-political leaders.

So that's my question.

How do they ignore $5,000 worth of uh tortoises?

So hypocrisy protects the aristocracy, religiosity 101.

Those who say do not take the Lord's name in vain, do so as a matter of course to maintain the insane.

Listen, learn discern or burn.

Those of you convinced to simply wait for Jesus to return, is it or is it not true that Yeshua said, I am always with you.

I am Peter, servant of Master Peace Theater.

He came not to seek followers, but create and encourage leaders.

The second coming emanates from ourselves only as almighty spirit Warriors, not mammons elves.

Oh, happy days when Yeshua walked, while most all religions altered the meanings of messages that Christ talked.

Breaking on through the deceptions of illusions through a myriad of their patriarchal vampiric profusions, ingesting flesh and blood, but maintain soldiers forever expiring in the sand and mud.

Swedenborg spoke true, I tell you truly, with a smile on my face.

Being mistaught to eat murdered flesh, twas truly man's fall from grace into the realm of shadows and demons, lest you be brain dead, you comprehend me my meanings.

Let us arise as one to shine through all shadows with the power of the sun.

For Israel, the name has meaning.

Pay attention to spirits cleaning.

Issa Ra Elohim means sure.

Jesus is the Son of God, who has many times commanded the iron rod as we are to be the light with a purpose to serve with almighty nerve in restoring true sight.

With the cleansing power of floods leading to the Genesis gardens to which we aspire.

For as you do into the least of me was always about the animals and children be clear to see.

If I, like Yeshua, possess the magical wand, I am commanding all believers together by the common bond.

The 40-day freeze frame for peace is all agreed, oppressions we cease.

The USA now fully fledged.

Our U.S.

Constitution has truly pledged by allegiance to the red, white, and blue.

This call through my heart to the hearts of you, for they could never heist the unbeatable power of Christ.

America, the most regal eagle, as the cancerous corruption crashes, the Phoenix Thunderbird arises from the ashes.

Thank you, Peter.

Mr.

DeWitt.

I would be disappointed if we weren't, Dwayne.

Come on over.

All right.

Hello, my name is Duane DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

I wanted to thank you for having the Creek Week events.

I wanted to point out all the hard work that the City of Santa Rosa staff has been doing over in Roseland.

On uh the first day the Creek to Coast Cleanup, I was out there at Roseland Creek, and we were picking up debris there.

Many people in our community are very glad that you folks had city staff come out to what we call the Roseland neighborhood and do underbrush clearing, especially clearing of the flammable materials, vegetation management.

It was really a good thing that happened, even though there might be some critics of such a process.

What I also like to thank you about is that there's a path going in right now on uh the Burbank Avenue side of the Roseland neighborhood on the north of the neighborhood.

It's been started a few days ago.

Uh it looks like they'll be completing it sometime in the next week or two, and they may then begin to do an actual crosswalk over Burbank Avenue to the Roseland Creek Elementary School.

This is really a good thing to have it come forward.

We wanted to make sure also that you knew about the safety issues on Burbank Avenue.

We've got to slow the traffic down.

We've got to find a way to perhaps uh maybe get one of those speed limit measurement signs that are there, like on Humboldt Avenue, and get it on Burbank, which is only a 25 mile an hour zone, but many people drive 40 to 50 miles an hour there.

We really need to make sure those kids are safe at that school.

Also, wanted to ask you to come out on Saturday, the 25th of October at 10 in the morning, make a difference day.

Lots of people in Roseland will be there at the Roseland neighborhood doing debris pickup, cleaning up along the creek.

We've got some people that have been living in the creek.

Now that the rain has come, their debris is gonna start washing out.

There's a thing called first flush when the major big rains come, all that stuff goes out to the laguna, unless we find a way to stop it first by picking it up out of there.

So please come.

Saturday, the twenty fifth of October, 10 o'clock in the morning, Roseland neighborhood, as we call it, across from Roseland Creek Elementary School on Burbank Avenue.

We would appreciate your attendance and your participation, and we also appreciate all of your patience with us over all these years of us advocating to have that park there in what we call the Roseland neighborhood.

We only started 30 years ago.

We realized we probably only got about another 10, 15 years to go on it.

We'll be there though.

We're not giving up in any way, shape, or form.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Duane.

Thanks for the heads up.

Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak on an item not listed on the agenda?

Seeing none, we will close this part this portion of public comment, and we're gonna jump back to item nine.

Our uh assistant city manager and city attorney's reports.

Jason, back to you.

Uh thank you, member uh mayor and council.

Uh wanna report out on one item.

Uh a pumpkin scavenger hunt in our city parks begins tomorrow and continues through October.

Kids and kids at heart are invited to search for pumpkin cutouts and select city parks.

And if you find one, return it for a prize.

Uh visit the October calendar at SRCity.org for contest details, including the list of participating parks.

And that does it for the city manager's report.

Thank you.

Madam City Attorney.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

I do have my monthly litigation report.

Um there is one settlement uh over $50,000 previously authorized by the city council in closed session that was finalized in the month of August.

In Angelina Lopez versus City of Santa Rosa, plaintiffs brought a wrongful death action in federal court relating to the 2021 death of Jordan Poss.

Plaintiffs asserted a variety of claims under federal and state law.

A total settlement amount of two million nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents was agreed to in exchange for a release of all claims, with the city paying approximately nine hundred thousand dollars of that amount, and the city's risk pool, CJPRMA, paying the remainder.

The incident that led to this lawsuit involved Santa Rosa Police Department responding to an active shooter in a residential neighborhood.

The settlement followed a district court's ruling exonerating four of the five SRPD members named in the lawsuit, determining that SRPD's policies and practices were lawful, and concluding that only the actions of one officer were appropriate for trial.

In terms of ongoing litigation, our caseload remains uh fairly constant.

We currently have 34 litigation matters with trial dates assigned to approximately one-third of those matters.

Four cases are currently on appeal following rulings in favor of the city at the trial court level.

We continue to try as always to resolve smaller cases at little or no cost to the city.

That concludes my report for the month.

Thank you very much.

Uh would any members of the public like to comment on this item?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment and we'll move on to item 10.

Statements of abstention or recusal by council members.

Any state any statements of abstention or recusal this evening?

Seeing none.

We move on to our mayor and council members' reports.

Are there any reports this evening?

Looking to my colleagues.

Ms.

Rogers, why don't you kick us off?

They're already giving me the eye to go fast.

All right.

So I did attend a bunch of events.

I'm not gonna say the dates, I'm just gonna um go through some of them pretty quickly.

Um attended the positive images, new office grant opening.

Their new office is located at 1000 Apollo Way, suite 11 in Southwest Santa Rosa, District 7.

Uh, also attended the merit awards, which was um a lot of fun honoring our volunteers and people in the community that are doing fantastic work.

Um, the Latino service providers had a health and wellness fair that I was able to attend.

Army Corps in Congressman Huffman um came out for a tour of the Lono Trunk Phase One, which was both educational and a lot of fun just to see what water is doing.

And I was able to participate in the downtown underground tour.

Took a twilight tour of the huge underground culvert and fish ladder, and it started at Prince Gateway Park where Santa Rosa Creek runs under downtown Santa Rosa.

That was my first time doing that, and it was a lot of fun.

So Exchange Bank, thank you very much for hosting us at your lovely reception.

And on 925, attended the Head Start Welcome Day at Finley in 927.

There was a Low Rider Festival for the Arts in Petaluma displaying beautiful art.

And on that particular day, Lowrider vehicles were displayed outside.

So thank you to Annabelle for the invite.

And then lastly, bear with me, colleagues, please.

I believe it is on the third.

So I know he is not here, but hopefully he does hear this.

Alan has spent 31 years in public service, beginning his career, spending five years working as an analyst in the public works department in the cities of La Miranda and Glendale and Southern California before joining the city of Santa Rosa in 1999 to work in the finance department.

For the last 26 years, he has held the positions of administrative analyst, budget analyst, administrative service officer, revenue manager, deputy director, and finally chief financial officer, which is the position he holds now.

Alan, I hope you hear this or you're listening or will listen to it.

As you embark on this new chapter of your life, I want to take a moment to express my heartfelt gratitude for your unwavering dedication and remarkable service to our city.

Your tenure in the finance department has been marked by resilience and expertise guiding us through both financial challenges and successes.

Your strategic vision and commitment have not only strengthened our understanding of our financial situation, but have also fostered a culture of transparency and trust within the city and our community.

Through your leadership, you have navigated the complexities of our finances with grace, ensuring that our city not only weathered the storms but emerged stronger.

Thank you, Alan, for your hard work, your passion for public service, and your ability to see us through the ups and downs.

You are leaving a lasting mark on our city, which will be felt for years to come.

Wishing you all the best in your retirement, may it be filled with joy, relaxation, and new adventures.

So thank you very much, Alan Alton.

Thank you for that.

I'm sure all of us in the data second those remarks.

Thank you for all of your work, Alan.

Moving over then to Caroline, Miss Ben Wellos.

Thank you.

I have a just a few a list of things that I've did over the last couple of weeks also, so I'll just kind of go through them really quickly.

Let's see.

First, I attended the Russian River Watershed Association Board.

That's a board that meets quarterly, so I haven't had an opportunity to go to a lot of meetings, but they're really doing great work, and I look forward to getting more involved as we get into the maybe the fourth quarter.

Also attended the Santa Rosa Junior College President's Address.

Dr.

Garcia, always very inspiring, so I was really glad I was able to attend.

For the Sonoma County Homeless Coalition meeting, I just have a couple of highlights from the point and time count that uh we wanted to share.

Um, countywide, the point in time count said that there were 1,952 people experiencing homelessness.

That's a 23% decrease from 2024.

In Santa Rosa, the number was 1,140 people experiencing homelessness, which is a decrease of 16% from 2024, and 58% of the total countywide count.

We have a lot of uncertainty, of course, on funding at the state and federal level, as well as the local level.

And this, we know this could mean a temporary decrease because our numbers have gone down.

Increase in the number of chronically homeless people, 20% from 2024 count, and 606 persons to 730.

And families, 37% from the 2024 count, 57 families from 198 family members to 78 families with 209 family members.

So it's just just those are just the highlights.

And also, as we many of us did tended the Merit Awards, and then I guess the highlight for me was our town hall for the Fifth District yesterday, which I think was really successful.

I wanna I know she's not here anymore, but wanted to thank Anna Horta and Misty Wood for all the work that they did, as well as all the staff members that came last night.

Thank you so much.

Um you were really um really really helpful.

We had about 24 people attend.

Um, yes, and our assistant uh manager was there, as well as our mayor, and all of the staff members that came.

Thank you for taking the time to come last night.

You're so helpful, had a lot of great questions about homelessness, uh, the new flood maps, um, uh parking.

Parking is always such a big issue.

So a lot of great questions, and I'm really glad that we're doing this.

I think it's gonna be really good for the community.

So thank you.

That's it.

Agreed.

Thanks for mentioning that.

Ms.

McDonald.

Well, since I don't have to report out on zero waste tonight, my report is a little bit um shorter.

I attended the merit awards along with many of our council members, and I just want to congratulate the awardees for all their great work that they do in the community.

And the violence prevention program team met.

We went over all of the choice grant awardee recipients and how they're doing on their goals and meeting their metrics to support the youth in our community.

This is um not a full time frame, just a snapshot of what they've been working on, but a little snippet shows that there's been over 16,700 community members reached with all of the programs, and that more than 53,000 hours of service have been spent on engaging children and youth in the community to prevent violence violence prevention, or to help prevent violence prevention.

Sorry, I misspoke.

And then as of last week, there was still 31 tickets left to the seminar that we're having for violence prevention on October 9th.

That'll be held at the Finley Center, and the theme is standing together to support survivors, and as always, we get our updates on the school districts that attend those meetings each of our law enforcement partners, including the public defender's office, the district attorney's office, as well as juvenile probation.

And one of the things is we have seen lately is an increase to domestic violence and how children are impacted because of that.

So, with that, it ends my report.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Ms.

Fleming.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, so I I'll just want to talk briefly about an experience that I had this last week.

I was um lucky I've been serving on the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which is a committee um formed by the CASA compact, um, which was legislation passed a few years ago to work on our housing crisis here in the state of California.

And many of you all know that we tried to put a bond on the ballot in 2024, and we were unsuccessful for a lot of reasons because it was a difficult year for many things.

But at any rate, we went, a couple of us went to Vienna, Austria last week to study um how they do social housing.

And we got to tour many, many communities where they they build not just housing, but they're really building communities.

And we got to see that there's both a thriving market rate housing development community as well as uh government subsidized housing community and that these um systems work in tandem and complement each other, and there's lots of different ways for the community to prosper.

So if anybody has any questions or wants to talk about how we can start to do these kinds of things here, it would take it takes a lot of effort.

It's gonna have to be um statewide and regional to make these things happen, but really excited to talk about how we can strengthen our communities and make life better for everybody.

Thank you.

Vice Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to take the opportunity to thank uh really staff, whether it's our public uh works, whether it's our and I'm sure our assistant city manager had something to do with it as well.

Uh but city manager, just the amount of work that's being done in District One Rosen, South Park is absolutely phenomenal.

And I'm getting so much positive feedback from my community.

So, Dan, appreciate you, brother.

Uh, and and all those who I know uh are are helping you uh to do the good work.

And I know it's it's it's being expedited, and I know that there's a lot of work is being done in-house, which normally wasn't the case.

And I know that that's that's definitely being noticed by the community.

So just a big thank you to uh to staff of the city of Santa Rosa for for really putting the effort in and it's showing.

Thank you.

Uh let's continue to place praise Dan and his team for a moment.

Um a couple of weeks ago, the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition awarded uh, let's see, Dan Hennessey, Terina Wilson, and Alexander Osaguera uh with the uh civic bike leaders of the year award.

And a few of us were there, we're glad to be on hand to celebrate them.

Um it's fair to say that you've really uh created a new and extremely positive reputation for the city of Santa Rosa in the community with your work around active transportation as well as public works more generally.

So thank you for making all of us look good and congratulations on that award.

Uh and then I'll move on just to to with the three items that I'll group underneath the um the revenue generation and economic development label.

Uh we had Southwest Airlines do their official um opening a couple weeks ago, and I was I was proud to be there along with representatives from the county and from the the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber, um Sonoma County Tourism.

Uh they're gonna start flights in April, as I'm sure everyone's read, and that's gonna be a huge boon for the county and for the city of Santa Rosa.

Um it's another sign that we are we are firmly on the map uh with companies looking to come here and expand services here.

Uh and then again, as Councilmember Rogers mentioned, we had the Army Army Corps of Engineers uh up to look at both our Lano wastewater treatment or our Lano wastewater pipeline project that's underway that they've been very helpful with, uh, and then we hope they will be uh good enough to to grant continuing funding.

Uh and then they also again looked at our our um culvert project downtown.

Uh the Army Corps of Engineers is extremely pleased with the city of Santa Rosa and the planning we've done back to you and your team down.

Uh so it's a it was a pleasure to have them here for their first tour in a while, and they seem um very interested in continuing their work with the city.

Uh and then finally, uh I was I was able to attend a San Francisco Foundation event down in the city of San Francisco.

Uh the San Francisco Foundation has a great communities collaborative underway.

Um they are they have historically not paid attention to Sonoma County with grant making, but they're starting to now.

So the hope is that in the long term uh foundations like the San Francisco Foundation and other uh Silicon Valley and San Francisco funders uh will look north uh for their grant making.

Uh and then finally, uh we I guess you could say we officially kicked off the budget discussions for the upcoming year.

Uh we had a meeting of the long-term finance committee last week.

Uh some of my colleagues, uh, Ms.

Ben Waylos and Mr.

O'Krepke um received a full presentation from our finance team, uh, where we again uh bid bid a fond farewell to Alan and thanked him for all his work.

Um we will be presenting those updated uh revenue numbers and expense numbers in just a few weeks here at council, but suffice it to say that the uh the a very long and complicated uh conversation has begun again for the city, uh and there will be plenty of opportunities during the course of this year to talk about what the city's budget is going to look like in the coming years.

And that concludes my report.

We'll we'll open it up to public comment.

Would any members of the public like to comment on any of these items or any of these reports?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment and we will move on to item 12.1, approval of minutes.

Are there any any amendments to the minutes as submitted?

Mayor.

No, on the minutes.

I did notice that I had um made an error on the minutes and gave uh city attorney stricker a promotion to city manager on the minutes, and so I just want to make sure that gets corrected or acknowledged and approved as submitted, and I will make the correction post-meeting.

Thank you very much.

Is there anything for us to do here?

All right, thank you very much.

So we can uh approve with with that adjustment.

We can approve the minutes.

Excellent.

Uh any public comment on the minutes.

Seeing seeing none, we will move on to then uh our consent calendar.

Madam City Clerk.

Thank you, Mayor.

Item 13.1 motion approval issuance of multiple purchase orders for the purchase of training and in-service ammunition.

Item 13.2 motion approval of an exclusive negotiation agreement with LH GPM LLC for the development of city-owned property located at 730 Third Street, Santa Rosa.

Item 13.3, motion approval of professional services agreement, design engineering services for highway 101 Hearn Avenue, multi-use pathway and pavement rehabilitation.

Item 13.4.

Motion installation of speed cushion on South Avenue between West Avenue and Dutton Avenue.

Item 13.5 motion contract award, Howarth Court Renovations.

Item 13.6.

Resolution entitled Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa authorizing multiple mid-block crosswalk installations.

Item 13.7 resolution entitled resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa accepting funding from the County of Sonoma Measure O for the in-response mental health and support team in the amount of three million forty-three thousand one hundred and fourteen dollars, approving and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement between County of Sonoma and City of Santa Rosa for mobile crisis response program funding and related documents to accept such funding and appropriation of funds.

Item 13.

Resolution entitled Council of the City of Santa Rosa, accepting funding from the County of Sonoma Measure O and Oh, my apologies for correction.

Um item 13.7 is I have to open up the resolution one moment.

Thank you, Teresa.

Uh resolution for 13.7.

Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa approving the sale of surplus parcels located at 4740, pardon me, 5740 Montecito Avenue and Zero Fountain Grove Parkway, APNs 181-010-025-026 and-027.

Item 13.8 resolution entitled Resolution of the City of Santa Rosa.

Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa accepting funding from the County of Sonoma Measure O for the in-response mental health and support team in the amount of $3,043,114, approving and authorizing the city manager to execute an agreement between the County of Sonoma and the City of Santa Rosa for mobile crisis response program funding and related documents to accept such funding and appropriation of funds.

Item 13.9 resolution of the city or of the council of city of Santa Rosa approving minor amendment to the permanent local housing allocation program.

Item 13.10.

Resolution of the C Council of the City of Santa Rosa confirming the amount of an administrative cost recovery lien confirming and ordering the recovery of administrative costs assessed and imposed by the administrative hearing officer for violations of city code provisions occurring on the property at 961 Stony Point Road, Santa Rosa, APN 035-121-052, and ordering the administrative cost recovery lien be collected on the tax roll by the Sonoma County Tax Collector.

Item 13.11 Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa confirming the amount of an administrative cost recovery lien, confirming and ordering the recovery of administrative costs assessed and imposed by the administrate administrative hearing officer for violations of city code provisions occurring on the property at 1810 Guernville Road, Santa Rosa, APN 152-320-001, and ordering the administrative cost recovery lien be collected on the tax roll by the Sonoma County Tax Collector.

Item 13.12.

Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa approving an airspace lease amendment 04 SON-101-0002-05 with the State of California Department of Transportation for Freeway Lease Area SON 101-0002.

Item 13.13.

Ordnance entitled for ordinance introduction, ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa amending section 1-08 of the Santa Rosa City Code and adding section 1-09 to Santa Rosa City Code.

And resolution entitled Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa Revising City Council Manual Procedures and Protocols.

Second reading, ordinance of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, correcting a clerical error in ordinance number ORD-2025-001.

And that concludes the reading of the consent calendar.

Wow, you earned your paycheck tonight, do you know?

Thank you for that.

All right, bringing back bringing it back to council.

Any any questions or concerns with any of any of those items?

McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, on item 13.4, um, my only question is I've heard before that we don't install speed cushions because of the noise issues as well as um the concern for our our fire truck equipment, and I'm totally fine with the speed cushions going in on this, but because this is a community question I get, can you give us like a rationale as to why we would put that in at this site and maybe not other sites that we get questions about?

I'm looking right at you, Dan, so thanks.

Good evening, Mayor Council Dan Hennessy, Transportation Public Works Department.

Um, this came specifically as a result of a request from a resident when we noticed them that that we would be repaving the street.

Um they asked for uh consideration of speed mitigation.

We work specifically with the fire department to make sure that this was both not a critical artery for their response times and that their vehicles could move around the speed cushions based on their axle widths.

They operate differently than passenger vehicles, so they won't even notice that they're there.

Um, to the specific question about the noise complaints.

I'm not sure that I've heard that before.

If you could elaborate a little bit more about what you've heard, that the bumps make too many noises when the cars go across.

Well, so this one, the residents specifically requested it.

Um, we surveyed nearby, everybody was on board.

Um, we did have a little bit of speed data that suggests um not a lot of speeding, but that the speeders are significantly speeding, um, given that it's a uh straightaway stretch connecting to north-south collectors.

Um we thought that this was a uh okay location and that we were already out there doing the work.

Um your authorization tonight is gonna have us add this on to the pavement maintenance project.

Thank you.

Thanks.

And then I just have one more, it's not a question, but it's a comment on item 13.8.

Would it be the appropriate time or would you like me to wait on that?

Uh go go for it.

Okay, I just want to say thank you to our city manager and for those that worked on um with the county on receiving this money for um in response.

This is something that I know the council has really been pushing us working with the county on having funding for this critical program that we um that we have for those of the people that need it in the city of Santa Rosa.

So I just want to say thank you to the county um for funding this for this year, and thank you to everybody who is involved to make sure that we receive the funding that I believe we were due for this program.

So thanks.

Thank you.

Um and as long as we're giving Alan a lot of a lot of uh air air time tonight.

I did notice that he is listed as the the person to whom we would direct questions for item 13.12.

If if hypothetically, I had a question on the approval of airspace lease amendments.

Is Alan actually online?

I just want I just want to make sure that was noted for the record.

We look we love you, Alan.

I I have no questions on item 13.12.

Uh and with that, we'll we'll open it up to uh to public comment.

Yeah.

Dwayne, do you want to uh a comment on any of the consent items?

Yes, thank you.

Hello, my name is Dwayne DeWitt.

I'm from Roseland.

I'd like to give my positive comments first, and that would be that um the item that was just talked about on South, that's so important and so good that we're getting that after all this time.

So that's a good thing.

13.4.

Thank you for staff for doing that.

13.6, the mid-block crosswalks, those are also very important, especially on Giffen Avenue near RL Stevens Elementary School.

This is really good to make sure for school student safety.

We've got to make sure that the public understands to slow down at the crosswalks.

Then another good one, 13.8, that was just discussed.

It's great to get that funding from the county and have it be helpful for the city.

A maybe at 13.9.

The way that funding goes forward, we have to see how it's used if we can get the good stuff from it.

Another maybe 13.13.

This idea about taking the reading of the titles out, might not be so helpful.

There's not a lot of um discussion here to point out that there are people who aren't tuned into the internet.

It's actually here where they hear what's going on, and hearing the title of something helps them to understand the item better.

Now you got some bad things on here today, and I want to make sure that it's important you understand.

Please do not be bamboozled on the item 13.2, the exclusive negotiating agreement, or on the item, excuse me, 13.7 selling of the land that the city owns.

I bring this up because in the past, the city has been bamboozled.

A perfect example is right over here, over by the courthouse square.

We're across the street, a building that we call the ATT building was sold to a local developer with a stipulation that in the future we'd be getting housing in the building.

He was given a nice uh incentive, if you will, a bit of a waiver on the price.

Some people called it a sweetheart deal at the time.

And you know what?

We never got any housing in that building, and it's sitting right over there.

And we're always talking about hey, we got to get more housing, and we're getting ready to improve even more tall buildings for more housing.

So whenever you do any kind of negotiations with these people, you make sure you stipulate that housing has to be built.

That they're getting that deal because the agreement is for the housing.

In the past, you didn't do it, you didn't get the housing, and now you're going to go into exclusive negotiations and talk with people, and they're going to try to get over on you.

So keep it in mind.

Be hard-headed fiscal oversight on that situation.

Thank you to all the staff for the good work they do.

Thank you, Duane.

I see Peter listed next.

Is Peter still here?

Yeah, Peter's out there talking to the phone.

All right.

Uh Janice Carman.

Um I wanted to comment on uh 13.8.

Um I have been uh listening to hearings and starting with the um Sonoma County supervisors, starting in the fall of 2023.

And uh it's it's uh a lot of money, and I'm understanding that it's a week's training, and from the beginning.

Um, I I don't feel that they have enough training.

When they first started, they were talking about them using their own cars, using their own cell phones.

I know we're way beyond that now, but I'd like more clarification about what it's going for and a breakdown.

I'd like to see it actually on paper, if I could, on the on the website, uh, so that uh we have a better understanding where that over three million dollars is going for that uh e-response team.

So that's the only thing I'm gonna say about that, because it seems like uh it's a lot of money, and that they're not getting a lot of training, and I'd like to know what uh resources they have, and I really want to be sure that these people are safe when they respond to uh things that have been vetted by the people who answer the phone at the police station.

Thank you.

Thank you, Janice.

Are there any other members of the public who'd like to speak?

Go ahead.

Hi, I'm in a machine.

I just want to second that.

I would appreciate oh hi, I'm in a shand.

I just would like to second that.

I would appreciate that transparency also.

Thank you.

Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak on the consent calendar?

Seeing none, we'll close public comment and I will bring it back to our vice mayor for a motion.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'd like to move items 13.1 through 13.4 and wave further reading of the text.

Second.

All right, we have a motion, we have a second.

And did we say 13.1 or 13.14?

Correction, you are right, Mayor.

Uh 13.1 through 13.14.

Excellent.

So we have a motion and a second for those items.

Madam City Clerk, whenever whenever you're ready.

Councilmember O'Krepke.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Aye.

Councilmember Fleming.

Councilmember Ben Wellos.

Yes.

Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Mayor Stopp?

Yes.

Let the record show this pass the five affirmative votes, and Councilmembers Fleming and Rogers.

Absent.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

So that brings us to our main show.

Uh items 15.1 and 15.2.

We'll start with item 15.1, a report on the city asset naming and renaming policy.

And as assistant city manager Jason Nuts makes his way to the table.

We want to thank him strenuously for the uh the tedious and difficult work that went into this particular item.

Thank you very much, Mayor.

Uh, let me get my presentation up, y'all.

All right.

Good evening, Mayor.

Council members, I am back to talk with you again about the city asset naming and renaming policy.

As you recall, I brought this back to you in July, and we had a discussion about the draft policy that I had presented at that time, and there were some concerns that were raised by council members in particular.

Criteria for outstanding individuals, for major donations, making sure that we're properly dealing with fairness and equity in the application and outreach process, and then the fact that we're managing and maintaining the financial responsibility not only for the city but of the community that's making these requests.

And so I spent quite a bit of time looking at various options, having conversations to determine where the key pieces of the language needed to be adjusted or amended.

And I'm back to help provide you with a revised draft that hopefully will meet the needs of city council and the community at large.

As you recall, there are nine sections to the policy that's provided to you.

In particular, we're going to spend time talking about 3.1 and section five.

And those are the areas where council members and the community members have the greatest areas of concern.

So I'm going to walk through the specific questions one by one and talk about the question itself and how I've responded within the draft or uh the draft policy that is attached to the council agenda item in a red line format so you can specific see all of the various changes that we've made in the interim.

The first one that we want to talk about is about outstanding individuals.

There was a question relating to the length of time required for an individual's passing before they would be considered for naming or renaming.

As I had conversation with folks about this particular issue, the key issue seemed to be that there are assets that the city has that may be valuable to be able to honor existing or living individuals and not just wait until uh they're become deceased after a period of time.

And given what research we've done over the course of time to uh to pull this particular section uh of the policy together, uh we just I decided that it would be appropriate just to focus that particular time frame to park assets only.

When I look at other cities that have similar policies, the park assets is where this is most commonly used, not necessarily for other city assets, and that seemed to be consistent with the way uh council and members of the public had asked us to respond to that.

So that is one of the changes you'll see in there.

Um, secondly, we move to uh section 3.14, and we talk about the major donations.

This is where the lion's share of conversation ended up occurring, not only at the uh during the July discussion, but in the period of time between then and now.

First and foremost, uh there was a question relating to how long a donor's name would be associated with that specific city asset.

Um so those are individuals or corporations or families that are donating sums of money, land, or uh endowments to the city uh for the benefit of city use and the use of the public.

Um we would require and request that all of those types of donations come in the form uh come with an associated donor uh agreement, and that donor agreement would specifically state the length and term of time that that uh particular name would be associated, whether that is 10 years or in perpetuity.

Uh, those are options then that the council would make at the time that they would accept that donation uh toward the benefit of that particular facility.

I did add a section 3.1.4.6.

I apologize for the total number of dots.

Um, uh, but that's where we added that specific section that clarifies how the time frame would work.

Uh the next session was about donation threshold.

Uh, this is an area that um I've answered, and then I've provided an alternative for uh because based on feedback from council members, wanted to make sure that there was not just what we had proposed, but there seemed to be an interest in looking at potentially an alternative to this.

So the request in particular was looking at a fiscal donation, something that was a monetary donation toward a city asset and a request for that particular donor to have their name applied.

What we had seen on other city policies was a 50% threshold, that 50% of the engineer's estimate towards the total construction cost and development of that facility or that asset.

We did kind of review and evaluate this, and at this point in time, the initial proposal or the initial draft right now doesn't make any change.

However, in response to the exit to the additional questions, we've provided an alternative for your consideration.

And so when we get to the end and you look at hopefully uh making a recommendation to approve this, I would ask you to clarify which of these two sections you prefer to have in the policy, whether it is the policy as written or the alternative.

The alternative makes an adjustment towards major donations.

In particular, what it does is, hold on, excuse me for a moment.

So I apologize, but there must have been another version of the presentation, and this particular slide didn't make it in there.

That helps me describe the major donations.

So the major donations alternative, and you find that as an uh as an attachment to the staff report, the request that was made was to include or remove a phrase that says instead of a 50% financial threshold is to remove or significantly reduced strict thresholds specifically relating to cash donations to encourage more donations and provide greater flexibility to council.

An example was provided from another institution.

How that proposed language would go is quote, a major donation should provide substantial benefit to the city.

The term substantial in this context is deliberated or is deliberately not defined by arbitrary standards to allow council the opportunity to appropriately consider all reasonable requests, however, common examples of major donations include.

And it's that particular stretch that is would remove the 50% threshold and instead put a standard example and change that to 25%, where the threshold would reduce substantially in an effort to encourage additional donors to come forward.

Again, I apologize that that I erred in not getting that into the presentation slide.

When we think about individual donors, under the major donations section, there was also a question that came up relating to is an individual donor a family, a surname, a corporation, a trust, or a foundation.

And if that is true, how does that then relate to the question back in section 3.1 relating to how long an individual must be deceased before their name can be considered for that?

As you recall, when I meant a comment on that section 3.1.3, we've eliminated city assets other than parks relating to that deceased criteria.

In addition, we added a section in here noting that family surnames, trusts, corporations, and foundations don't need to comply with that.

So we ensured uh with clarity uh in this in this subsection that that doesn't need to apply to the deceased uh criteria.

On the application criteria front, we wanted to, the request was to ensure that the criteria is open and fair to all community members.

And we did go back through, we clarified, we made some adjustments just from an aesthetic perspective, and I'll touch on that at the end.

But we found that the criteria is consistent with best practice.

And what that means is if you come forward with a major donation, there's no need to obtain a petition requirement to bring that donation forward and make a request for that donation to then be part of a naming of that city asset.

Again, to be clear, and if I wasn't clear in my prior statement, it's not the donation that requires the application, requires the petition, it's the request of a donor to have their name associated with the facility or city asset that they're looking to help build.

Again, section 5.3 from a fair and equitable outreach effort.

The question that came in was to ensure that outreach that outreach efforts are used to reach the greatest possible and most diverse constituents.

So if, for example, we have a new city library or city recreation facility that's to be considered for naming that there would be a sign posted on that facility so that individuals that are passing by had the opportunity to know that they didn't have to have access to electronic uh media, or they didn't have to live within a 300-foot radius of that facility or immediately adjacent.

And then the last uh key section that was brought up during the course of the discussion in July was the implementation costs.

Um the intent of the original draft was to limit the exposure of the city toward um constituent uh to limit the exposure of the city to uh substantial number of requests coming to naming.

As you heard from one constituent, uh, when they looked to request that parks rename a park, they were seeing a total of almost 90,000 dollars because there were three primary signs that were out on the streets and with the current conditions and the current requirements for signage for a park, uh it has become rather expensive.

When I evaluated this and in conversations, um, what I what we agreed to do was to retain the language that I included in there originally, which places the applicant uh as the primary responsible agent, however, we added a subsection that gives council the opportunity to waive conditions either in either all or in part to allow you to make a decision during the course of a request and a review process uh to incorporate additional city uh support for that signage installation.

It gives you the council flexibility to assist in making those types of investments happen, and then uh as you'll note during the course of my review and evaluation, there were some other just whether it's grammatical errors or additional uh definitions that I felt was important to incorporate in there just to improve the completeness of the policy.

Uh, we did make a couple of additional fairly minor changes that are more uh organizationally uh needed than anything, and so with that uh it's recommended by the city manager's office that council by resolution adopt council policy titled City Asset Naming and Renaming and rescind policy zero zero two five titled park naming policy procedure, and I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you again so much.

Bringing it back to council for questions, Mr.

Krepke.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Thank you for this presentation for bringing this back and the um the communication and and outreach you've done on this so far.

Um, there's a missing slide that seems to be kind of crucial to the alternatives that you presented to us.

So while I agree with most of what's on here, can you revisit?

I think it's 3.14.

And I think in our presentations in the one that was displayed, uh there was only one alternative, which means it's not really an alternative.

So can you is it I don't know what the solution is to this.

I'd like to see what they are side by side because we that's how I process things.

I totally understand.

Uh I mean I could make hard copy uh I could make a print of what I have currently if you want to take a very short break, and I'll make that happen and bring back hard copies for you to be able to compare the text that was in the slide uh deck that you see, and then the additional alternative that we're proposing.

It is attached to the staff report.

However, I recognize you might not all have staff reports in front of you.

So I'm happy to go up and have some additional um copies made.

We can either do that or are you able to talk about this from the red line version?

Is that what you're thinking?

I could definitely walk talk you through it, but uh the council member wanted to be able to view it side by side.

Do side by side.

Um, all right.

Uh we want to take a five-minute break as we do that.

I I would defer to my colleagues.

Uh Ms.

McDonnell has a question on that on that subject.

Jason, just so I'm clear, isn't the attachment attachment to where the alternative would go from 50% to 25%?

And that's what you're talking about, and then the document, if adopted, although it's currently red line, would have the subsequent changes to lower that threshold from 50 to 25%.

It would lower the threshold, but it would also create a uh narrative associated with it that describes why those are just guideposts and not necessarily hard numbers.

The draft, the original draft are more hard numbers.

They are this is our threshold.

So that's why there's a narrative component as well as just the changing from 50 to 25 percent.

So I'm not thank you.

Thank you for that question.

Um, does everyone have access to uh I think it's attachment two?

I think that gets us quite a quite a ways to addressing this.

Again, the way I processing, seeing that I'd have to go back and forth between the official uh what is it, attachment one or yeah, attachment one and attachment two to see the difference between the two versus.

I do have one copy in front of me.

I'm happy to provide it if the other council members don't need a copy.

Does anybody else need to need a copy?

What why don't we do that?

That'll keep us keep us on track.

If you don't mind, can you do you could do this from memory, Jason?

All right, good luck.

Otherwise, we'll take the break.

And to be clear, what you just handed, uh the council member was attachment to.

So this is uh this is something that's already in the packet.

The community uh has had access to this since the agenda was posted.

Yes, thank you.

And so the alternative, the way it's phrased, would read a major donation should provide substantial benefit to the city.

The term substantial in this context is deliberately not defined by arbitrary standards to allow council the opportunity to appropriately consider all reasonable requests, however, common examples of major donations include.

And then that would be the preamble, would take the place of it would take the place of three point one point four point three that says the thresholds for consideration to naming or renaming a city asset for an individual organization or business include one or more of the following.

It's a presc.

So the draft that's presented is a prescriptive um threshold.

The alternative proposal removes the prescriptive nature and makes it more flexible for council to evaluate other types of requests that come forward.

Yep, I got it.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Nice work.

All right.

So back to back to counsel for questions.

Mr.

Krippy, did you want to mull that over?

All right.

Ms.

McDonald.

Just one more question for you, Jason.

On 5.2.2.

There's a there's some information around vetting the vetting process.

And it says that staff will actually vet.

Uh let me go back to it.

The staff, it would be incumbent upon staff basically to vet the names specifically of people that they want to do that.

So my question to you is do we have enough staff to be able to go through this process to really thoroughly research if this is an appropriate renaming or naming of a city asset, or is it incumbent upon the applicant and is that conveyed in the policy so that the applicant actually needs to do their research and give that rationale as part of the application?

Yes, it's actually it actually puts a lot of the burden and onus on the applicant itself to present materials that clearly define why that particular individual or more surname uh or corporation is uh there the naming of that asset is warranted.

Uh there is a staff requirement to go in and vet that information.

Uh the hope is is it's less complicated if they're not doing all the work themselves.

Uh it will, however, this process does, however, have a time for staff.

Um it's it's gonna be time consuming.

Um we've been lucky that we haven't had too many of these come forward, although as we spoke last time, there are several that are in the queue waiting for a policy to be adopted and they'll be coming forward.

Uh and that could create a an instantaneous burden on staff as we get multiples coming through the gate.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

None from me.

We'll open this up to the public.

Uh Dwayne, you're up first.

So, thank thank you very much.

Is it Connie?

Connie, go ahead.

Is it on?

Yes, I'm in favor of the application process being opened for the renaming.

Um, I found that the for the public, the language was very confusing.

I'd like to see a little more assistance for somebody like myself.

Um I'm not in complete agreance with the time frame being many, many years later.

My quick response to that is in my situation, I'm looking to name after a local individual that uh passed away on a certain trail that he's been riding in Howard's Park trail that's unnamed, and there's already been an approval for a tree and a rock on that trail in his memory.

He was somebody that rode that trail, broke that trail in since he was very, very young.

He did tricks in Howard's Park.

He's a local contractor, he built lots of freeways and schools and was involved with many many community projects, and I'm doing this along with the support of a few other people, and feeling like that place is his.

Oak alive on this trail, and so my goal is to get that trail that he helped cut in with many many other people named in a person's honor that was very active in the community.

So I'm very confused about some of the language and requirements.

Just naming this said trail that was carved in that currently has no name.

Um I would also think that there wasn't really any maintenance costs, and it's confusing to think that uh any further, you know, there the fees would be waived, and I'm confused whether it's 3.14 or it's under 5.5 or 5.51, but that is my goal in applying myself as for an a name trail that a person had huge community ties to that took their life there in a tree in a a rock has already been approved for that location.

So I'd like some guidance on and how to do that, and I don't see anybody that's gonna uh not be in favor of that.

So I would like some guidance to get that goal achieved.

Thank you.

I think we can handle that offline.

Uh Dwayne, you're up.

But um from Roseland, I appreciate the comments just made before me, and I understand that confusion that person has.

This is a difficult process.

I want to make sure uh the group that's trying to put the name Pomo Park and Preserve on a park out on Burbank Avenue is in the queue.

We don't know if that's occurred yet, even though it's been brought up a few times trying to get that name there.

The thing about it is it's the situation of the city staff put a name on something without asking the community.

They just came out and said, Okay, this is Roseland Creek Community Park, this is what you get, we're going forward.

And the people out there are like, well, wait a second.

We've been working on this for a really long time, and we'd like this to be Pomo Park and Preserve and honor the indigenous people and do it in such a way that the community can actually save you guys money.

I am not clear on exactly how we do the signage, but I know that the volunteers that are already out there doing things, we could build the signs, we could put them up, we can paint them.

We want to put a veteran's trail in there.

We were told that the first 5.9 acres that was bought for that land was to put a bike path across the land on the south side of Roseland Creek.

That was the justification to get that land bought when no one in the community had asked for it in the first place.

We had want the land to the north of the creek.

Well, that's all water under the bridge, if you will.

The city now has 19 and a half acres there, and there's a path going on the north side of the neighborhood right now.

We'd like to have a path on the south side of the creek, like was originally promised, and veterans would like to put it in there.

In the past, the Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 223 put a path up at Anadale Park.

They did it all themselves.

We could do it again.

So I want clarity in this process.

I want to do it so it doesn't cost you folks any money, and we can volunteer to do a lot of stuff.

We just need to know the appropriate way to put in the request to be in the queue, to have everything going forward that yes, we want Pomo Park and Preserve out there, and we want a veterans' trail out there.

We'd even like to see what's called a gold star memorial in honor of the veterans that have lost their lives that came from Roseland and gave their life for their service to our country, and we could have that there at that Veterans Trail, right there off of Burbank Avenue, and we'll cover all this stuff ourselves.

It's the kind of thing where in the past we didn't understand what the bureaucratic obstacle might be.

So you guys could clarify it all.

We'll get it all done, hopefully, in my lifetime, nothing but a good time alrighty.

Thanks, Duane.

Any other members of the public wish to speak?

Seeing none, we'll close a couple of public comment and bring it back to the dais.

Uh Vice Mayor, I think you have a question.

In regards to the questions just posed, is there a way to save funds for a community who wishes to have a name on a park that isn't online yet, or a structure, or is there a process that you've that you've included in your presentation?

Uh thank you, Vice Mayor.

That you know that the question that Dwayne asked is a good one, and it's and it's timely.

Uh it even though the city had identified a specific name for a park that we were working on.

Um the park isn't developed yet.

Uh we haven't constructed or installed signage.

And that becomes what gets memorialized as part of that construction project.

So that is one that we're in a the right time frame to begin working on that type of effort, so that when we go to build the signage for that park, it's the right signage.

So to um if I understood it clearly, the community should be advocating their wants to council prior to that park coming online.

Yes, yes, they should be.

And there will be an application that we've created.

We've not had an application in the past, and therefore the type of requests we get have sort of been all over the board uh and unorganized, and so what we're trying to do is create a little bit more organization so that there's less burden on staff as we bring this forward through the system.

Great to hear.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Um there comments or final questions from uh from council?

Ms.

Benguelis.

Um thank you.

Um Jim, I'm just wondering, because I think um from what I'm hearing, is that um I uh you know what what is the process, right?

And first of all, I want to thank you so much for all the work you've done on this.

I know it's a lot.

Um, but I'm wondering if there's a way, you know, I'm thinking about when people ask for proclamations, for example, um, and everyone says to me, well, just send them the link and you know let them go.

Well, then I get a call back and it's like I don't know what this means, how do I do this?

And and I think that's what's gonna happen here is that we have to remember that it's the public that needs to know how to do this, right?

And we can help them, but we're also very busy and we might not be able to um do it in a timely way.

And and so I'm just wondering if there's a way that we can make it as you know that that the steps that the public needs to take um are really a little bit more clear and simpler, if you will, um, so that it doesn't look so complicated because even I I'm thinking, oh, if I wanted to name something after some someone or something, I would be overwhelmed.

Um, you know, you know, you know, it is the application first, do I talk to a council person first?

Do I do a do I go to a cab person?

You know, what is the process exactly so that folks know what what they need to do, and maybe there needs to, I don't know, needs to be a checklist or what, but to simplify it so that it makes it a little bit easier for folks to um, you know, go endeavor on this and go, oh my gosh, and not be overwhelmed.

Um, that's the only thing, and I know you've worked so hard on this.

I I'm sorry to bring it up now.

Um, but that's that's my thought right now.

Yeah, did you want to respond to that?

Yeah, I think you know, council member, that that's something that we can absolutely work with.

Um, for example, as we post this uh on the city's website, being able to identify those exact steps.

Here's how you would go through if you have a specific type of request.

Here are the links that you would get to be able to pull the documentation out and what it is we're looking for.

So I believe we can start to create something that's easier for members of the public to understand how they would go through the process.

Thank you for that, Miss McDonald.

So I have a couple quick questions, and could you point to me in the ordinance?

Because we had somebody ask if they don't want to actually rename a park, but like a trail in a park, does the application allow for that specific item to be done?

And then if it is something where they're not naming the entire city asset, but perhaps just a portion of it, do they still need to go through the exact same process of a thousand signatures and all the other things?

So that's my first question.

And and so I'll find the specific piece um, and so the the answer is yes, we would still want to go through the same process, even for a portion of an asset.

And so uh, for example, under section 2.14, um, we talk about the ability to uh names aspects of a particular park, right?

Fields or a clubhouse or a special use facility.

Uh there's also in here uh an opportunity to name conference rooms uh within a building or other aspects of that building.

So um, for example, the speaker who asked about the trail, there is a way within this uh through the definitions that describe we will absolutely consider naming a trail.

Uh here there is a process we still want to go through so that it's fair for all individuals who are coming forward with requests.

Great.

And and just to comment on what um council member Benwillow said.

If we had some sort of flow chart or something that um that members of the community could follow, like step one, you go here.

If you want to do this, go to this.

Um or if the application itself was preemptive where it was uh allowed to just push them forward.

I know these things can exist.

I can't tell you how to do them.

I can just tell you there's ways to do them, and I couldn't even tell you which way to do it.

But Brian probably in IT can.

So I'm hopeful that we can make the process as easy as possible for those who want to memorialize people who've contributed to the community.

And those are kind of some of just the thoughts and ideas, and I appreciate you addressing how to do just a portion of a city asset as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh any other thoughts?

Not at that end.

I just there's just a few of my own.

Um, one, I concur with my colleagues that um we do need to condense this into a more digestible format, uh, but that would come after after we approve the final document, and then we can certainly have things as the assistant city manager said online or in document form that will make it much easier for the public to figure out what what the steps are.

Um I did want to signal uh signal my um complete sympathy with city staff around the issue of naming.

Um since I uh have spent uh at least a good portion of my career at institutions where naming and tracking the naming and dealing with the naming was a significant portion of my job.

I can confirm that even apparently small and easy things like benches and trees and trails get to be frankly a nightmare to track.

So we need the city needs to be very careful in how it uh allows things to be named and how it manages those that naming process.

Um so and I think you've done a nice job in trying to balance the the tensions along with that particular issue.

Uh and then finally, I like the way that you um your alternative for the major for the major donations with the narrative that you put together, making it very clear to the public and any potential donors that a gift has to be significant, and I think having a baseline there of I think the 25% baseline makes perfect sense because council still has discretion to deny naming opportunity when that comes forward, uh, but it makes it clear to any to the rare, frankly, donors who might be out there that the city would is open to a conversation, but also that there's a very high bar to being considered for a naming.

Uh I think you've synthesized that well too.

Um so again, I'm I'm certainly in favor of the policy as you put it into place, and I would I would I would vote for that the alternative wording on the uh on the that the major gift section.

Other than that, no corrections for me.

Uh and if there are no other comments from the uh from council, then I think I turn it over to Mr.

O'Krepki for a motion.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um, I will using the alternative outline in attachment two.

I'll move a resolution, uh, a wave reading of the text and adopt a resolution, move a resolution entitled Resolution of the Council of the City of Santa Rosa, adopting council policy zero zero zero-xx titled City Asset Naming and Renaming Policy.

We have a motion and we have a second by Voice Mayor Alvarez.

Madam City Clerk, whenever you're ready.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rogers.

Aye.

Councilmember O'Kreepke?

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald.

Hi.

Councilmember Fleming is absent.

Councilmember Ben Wellos?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Mayor Stepp?

Yes.

Let the record show this passes six affirmative votes.

And Councilmember Fleming, absent.

Thank you very much.

And Connie, thank you for coming out tonight.

We only allow one public comment per person per item, but uh in either after this meeting or well, it looks like assistant city manager nut might be able to help you right now.

Otherwise, we'll be sure to to assist you in the very near future.

Uh thank you.

Thank you again, Assistant Manager Nutt.

Uh, and so this brings us to our final substantial item of the evening, 15.2.

Our report on the adoption of the revised public storm drain standards and delegation of approval authority for future revisions to the board of public utilities.

Director Director Osborne.

Who else do we have?

We have uh Cleve Gurney and see.

Well, welcome all of you.

It's been a long day.

No, Gabe, when you get to the uh engineering schematics, I don't want you to feel like there's any rush.

I want you to take all the time you need for this presentation.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

We will do quite the opposite and try to move through this fairly quickly for you.

And bear with us.

Oh, Cleve is ready to go.

Uh so good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and members of the council.

Gabe Osburn, Director of Planning and Economic Development.

Joining me today is Cleve Gurney, Deputy Director of our Development Engineering Services Division and Flannery Bank's supervising engineer.

Um, before I hand it over to my two colleagues, I'll just give a brief overview of the action today.

It's focusing on a modification to our storm drain design standards, which are very critical documents that govern the design of storm drain, predominantly publicly maintained storm drain.

So they create transparency and process for our development community, but they also help guide internal processes through our capital projects team.

Um a really important point with this is we to bring a solid uh presentation to the council.

We've done quite a bit of work to work with our internal partners, the various departments and the divisions to come up with a solid document that incorporates their feedback.

Uh we also incorporate quite a bit of public feedback in this, and that public feedback is very focused to our design community.

Uh over the years, the engineering team has created very positive relationships with the design community here in Santa Rosa, and we typically partner with them for the creation of these documents.

Um, in many situations, we take the feedback and we can incorporate, in some situations we can't, but it is a very collaborative process where we come together through a document that we all agree with, and it factors in their feedback in that.

Um another important point to this is because these are very technical in nature, these documents, and historically they have been adopted by the council.

We wanted to provide a proposal to delegate this authority to the BPU.

The BPU does have authority over the public storm drain system, and a previous council has delegated authority to review and approve the sewer and water design standards to the BPU.

So this would follow in line with that.

Uh so with that, I will hand the presentation over to the team.

Oh good evening, Mayor Stapp, Vice Mayor Alvarez, and City Council.

Uh my name is Cleve Gurney, I'm the deputy director of development services.

I'll give a little short summary on how we got here with this updated standards and then give some history and then hand it over to Flannery Banks, supervising engineer.

So, really the goal of the update to these standards is to meet the needs of the community to meet the needs of the city, so our CIP projects and how we review private development projects, um, and to meet the needs of updated industry standards and how we operate and maintain this public storm drain infrastructure.

Um, something to note is November 8th of 2022.

RC charter was ratified to delegate the authority over stormwater to the BPU.

So currently the charter has that delegated authority over water, sewer, and stormwater.

In 2017, city staff um brought forward to city council an update to the water and sewer standards and um asked for an adoption of those updates, but then also delegated authority for future revisions to the BPU.

So that's the same thing that we're doing here today, but for storm drain.

Something to note in that first item uh of the resolution is for an effective date of 30 days from the date of adoption for those updated standards, and that is to account for any projects that are in the pipeline to allow those designs to move forward once applied for, and then any projects that are applied for after that 30 day um date would have to comply with the updated standards.

Um here's some background as to what really would be applicable for these updated storm drain standards.

So it'd be any capital improvement project, any private development project that comes through PED, and then work performed by city crews for operation and maintenance of existing infrastructure.

In the packets uh provided for those attachments, we tried to clarify exactly what was changed and color coded those.

So it'll clarify in those attachments if it's for government regulations, for industry needs, um, or just even for clarity.

So all that's color coded in the standards and the details as well.

The last time we adopted an update to these storm drain standards was back in 2005.

So these are well needed, and um we did a ton of internal and external outreach, as Gabe mentioned, not only within the planning and economic development department, but with the water and TBW teams as well.

Then here's a list of some of those external partners for that collaboration that we worked with.

Then lastly, city staff brought forward to the BPU uh back in June of 2025 these standards, these updates that are proposed to you today, and that was moved forward and passed to council to adopt these revised standards, and for the future delegation for adoption to the PPU.

So now I'll hand it over to Flannery Banks, revising engineer.

Thanks, Cleve, Flannery.

Um, where I could, I tried to give you guys some visuals to give you a little relief from the technical writing.

So we considered a variety of different things in these standard updates.

Uh the formatting is pretty straightforward, numbering that makes it easier for staff to identify which clauses we're talking about and correct grammatical errors.

Uh, one of the important revisions is a variety of federal, state, and local regulations that have occurred since 2005.

Um, an example of this, this is from one of our own capital improvement projects.

These systems used to be called bubble ups, where you might have an intake at one point and then goes through a pipe and it bubbles up out of another catch basin.

So they don't have positive flow, the water can't just flow and discharge into a creek.

This actually creates vector issues, which can spread diseases.

We do have mosquitoes that will breed in these uh within our jurisdiction.

So this is one example of the regulatory compliance, so that retained water.

We incorporated a number of different things for industry support.

So this was largely stuff that the industry's come to us or has been a pain point during reviews of public infrastructure.

Uh, these included clarifying and increasing transparency or formalizing interpretations.

Our developers and contractors should not be surprised at the comments city staff is making.

So, as much as possible where we are making clear interpretations consistently, we've tried to now incorporate these into the standards.

So, hopefully, that's less ambiguous for our contractors and our designers.

Um we also incorporated a number of requests.

So shown before you is one of those.

These are a couple designs that the design community kept asking.

What is the city's preference?

Can you just give us some geometry recommendations that you'd like to see?

We've also had a couple other things, like the inclusion of a new pipe material, which is the second time polypropylene is mentioned tonight, which is a little odd, but uh we've included the high density polypropylene inclusion of the NOAA Atlas 14 to simplify that.

That's just one of the things that uh design engineers use to get precipitation or rain intensities, and we use that as part of our design analysis.

So that's another thing that is just really normalized within the industry at this point.

Continuing with industry support, these actually came from our contractors.

Um, when you're joining dissimilar pipe types, uh, they really wanted something standardized by the city that they can just pull from when they run into this in the field.

So we've done that with this um concrete collar.

Similarly, we kept running into this with design engineers and contractors where there's insufficient cover over the pipe.

And so these concrete bedding caps really provide uh increased structural stability for the pipes, but they also serve as like a warning track because they're so shallow, people might not be expecting to encounter these facilities within that shallow depth.

So it's also kind of like a warning system when they're working, they'll hit the concrete cap before actually breaking our infrastructure.

We included a number of operation and maintenance needs, and one of those was decreasing the run length between structures.

So the linear feet between one structure and another has been reduced down to 300 feet, and that really has to do with our efficiency that we can get with our cleaning equipment.

And we've also increased the flow velocity that designers design to.

We're an urban environment, we need some more help, and the um increasing that velocity requirement, which is how we establish a slope of a pipe and storm drain design, helps us keep up with the needs of the system based on what we're seeing in the field.

This is not a vision test, I promise.

This is a screenshot from District 5.

So we have West Ninth on the bottom of the page or the south.

We have Jennings Avenue on the top of the page, and really this is to highlight how much our jurisdiction has changed over the years.

So water runs off a lot faster in this urbanized environment than when we had been agriculture.

We also considered a number of things like the fire risk and what we've experienced and growing out of those experiences.

So, with consideration to that, again, these are public infrastructure standards.

We've restricted some of the material usage in the wild urban interface areas or the wooy areas to help with the city's resiliency.

With that, why delegate future authority?

Really, it's streamlines streamlines the process and improves our efficiency and be able to keep pace more in a more timely manner with updates that are needed, whether it's our own operations team, whether it's the development community.

So that's really the where that root recommendation is coming from, as well as the consistency that BPU already has the delegated authority over sewer and water, so just bringing that organizational consistency.

Um there might be some concerns about how this might impact projects.

We don't expect a significant impact to projects.

What we're recommending is the revised standards go into effect 30 days from city council adoption, and that they only apply to new applications submitted after the effective date.

So everything that's already has an application with the city would not be required to conform to this.

Um with that, staff recommends city council by resolution adopt the revised public storm drain standards as presented with an effective date 30 days from the date of adoption and delegate authority to the BPU to adopt future revisions to the standards.

And with that, we'd like to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much.

Uh, in all seriousness, this was a really um it's an important and was a it was an important presentation and a well-done presentation given how technical this is.

Thank you for making it succinct uh and teaching us a few things along the way.

Bringing it back to council for questions.

Let's see, I don't think I have no corner questions for me at the moment.

Uh, we'll open up for any public comment.

See, no members of the public here will close public comment.

Uh, bring it back to council for any final for any final comments.

I'm gonna make a few just to show that I I appreciate the presentation.

Um if I had more energy, I would be making a few more wise cracks up here.

Along the lines of um we should have tied this in with our streets to creeks program and require contractors to be putting cute pictures of otters and other wildlife.

Um, but Jennifer Burke's not here to hear that one anyway.

Um I was also the I I am in reality very supportive of the delegation to VPU.

I mean it makes perfect sense.

If Duane had stuck around, I would have been tempted to oppose that under the and accused him of a of a less than transparent power grab.

Um but in reality I am supportive.

Uh and then I'll conclude by saying that in reality this is extremely timely, and thank you, Flannery, for your for your discussion of the um you know flow velocity and and what's going on with our storm drains because with the FEMA, new FEMA maps that are out there right now, all of a sudden um it is kind of a hot party topic to be talking about um storm drains and culverts and and flooding potential in the city.

So this is um this is an important issue for us.

Uh and thank you for taking the time to bring it to bring bring it to us today.

Um and if there are no other comments from council, I will I will turn it over to uh councilmember McDonald.

Thank you, Mayor, and I too am thrilled to have the board of public utilities take on this riveting um information for us.

So thank you for the present today.

I move resolution of the council of the city of Santa Rosa adopted the revised and updated public storm drain standards and delegation approval authority for future updates to public storm drain standards, including without limitation design standards, construction standards, andor construction specifications to the Board of Public Utilities and waive further reading of the text.

Second.

We have a motion and a second by Ms.

Rogers, Madam City Clerk, whenever you're ready.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rogers?

Councilmember Okeppi.

Aye.

Councilmember McDonald?

Aye.

Council Member Fleming is absent.

Councilmember Ben Wellos?

Yes.

Vice Mayor Alvarez.

Aye.

Mayor Stepp.

Yes.

Let the record show this passes with six affirmative votes and council member Flynn mean absent.

Thank you.

Uh we'll move on to item 17.1, our legislative update.

Uh these are listed here.

I'm just going to check with our city attorney for a second.

Do I need to do I need to read these legislative items?

You do not.

Thank you very much.

Um, but they are there for the public.

Uh we will go to our final public our our final public comment on non-agenda matters.

Are there any members of the public still in council chambers who wish to comment on any items not on the agenda?

There are none.

So we'll close public comment and uh with a final thanks to um uh for that last presentation.

Thank you all for coming out.

We will adjourn.

Take care.

Okay.